Amarna Letters (AIA Archaeological Windows on the Bible Project) (original) (raw)

"Amarna Letters" pp. 936-41 in H.-S. Klauck et. al. (eds), The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, Volume 1 (2009; overview: 1,962 words)

pp.936–41 in H.-S. Klauck, B. McGinn, C-L Seow, H. Spieckermann, B. D. Walfish, and E. Ziolkowski (eds.), The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, Volume 1 (Aaron-Aniconism). Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG., 2009

INTRODUCTORY PARAGRAPH: The Amarna Letters span the reigns of Amenhotep III (year 30+), Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, and Tutankhamun (years 1-2), ca. 1360-1335/4 BC in late Dynasty 18, and form a corpus of at least 382 foreign communications, diverse texts (e.g., myths and epics; syllabaries; lexical texts; a god-list; a Hurrian tale), and draft copies of correspondence between Egypt, its Syro-Palestinian vassals, and neighbouring states (Alašia [Cyprus]; Mittani [Syria]; Hatti; Arzawa [western Anatolia]; Assyria; Babylonia). These texts occur on small, baked clay tablets using mainly Hurro-Akkadian and “Babylonian” cuneiform, the international lingua franca during the Late Bronze Age. Most were discovered in 1887-8 by farmers at el-Amarna (Egypt), while subsequent excavation in and near Akhenaten’s records’ office (“The Place of the Letters of the Pharaoh”) produced 34 letters. Although 150-200 letters may remain lost, the majority eventually appeared in private and museum collections. Other similar letters have been found in the Levant at Tel el-Hesi, Tel Aphek, Taanach, Ras Shamra (Ugarit), and Boghazköy (Hattusas: Ramesside correspondence).

Inscribed in Clay: Provenance Study of the Amarna Letters and Other Ancient Near Eastern Texts

Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections, 2009

This review discusses the important results of the petrographic analysis of the Amarna tablets presented by Yuval Goren, Israel Finkelstein, and Nadav Na'aman. Particular attention is given to summarizing some of their key findings, which highlight the potential for scientific analysis of clay objects to provide relevant and otherwise unattainable information on the specifics of human history. This book is a key resource for any individual studying the political relationships between Egypt and the Near East, the historical events of the Late Bronze Age, or the geopolitical layout of the empires and city-states in this region, and offers a promising new approach to ceramic petrography in general.

Dating Seventy-Seven Amarna Letters within the Biblical Timeline: A Synchronization of Ancient Correspondence and the Book of Samuel

2024

Cavalcanti, PG (2024). The Aramean War: David’s Mighty Warriors in the Amarna Letters - Book 2. Amazon. 90 pages. ISBN 9798338974650 This book intends to explore how both accounts of the Amarna Letters and the biblical Book of Samuel were describing the same events. The Amarna Letters were describing the events from the Aramean perspective and the Biblical account described them from the Habiru perspective. The table below presents characters from each source that share phonetic comparisons. Not only that, the next topics will explore how the circumstances of their accounts in both sources are also very similar, if not identical. The next table will give the suggested dates for the Amarna Letter according to the biblical timeline rather than the standard chronology.

REVIEW: Inscribed in Clay: Provenance Study of the Amarna Letters and Other Ancient Near Eastern Texts

Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections, 2009

This review discusses the important results of the petrographic analysis of the Amarna tablets presented by Yuval Goren, Israel Finkelstein, and Nadav Na'aman. Particular attention is given to summarizing some of their key findings, which highlight the potential for scientific analysis of clay objects to provide relevant and otherwise unattainable information on the specifics of human history. This book is a key resource for any individual studying the political relationships between Egypt and the Near East, the historical events of the Late Bronze Age, or the geopolitical layout of the empires and city-states in this region, and offers a promising new approach to ceramic petrography in general.

Recently Discovered Hebrew Inscriptions

Tyndale Bulletin, 1962

THE EARLY HEBREW texts known before 1950 have been collected and discussed in the works of Diringer and Moscati. 1 Since the publication of Moscati's corpus a number of inscriptions have come to light as the result of excavation and of chance discovery. Although there are few which contain more than half a dozen words, they have some significance for Old Testament studies. It may therefore be useful to make a brief survey of them in con junction with those already known. All the ones we shall consider date from the last century of the kingdom of Israel and the ensuing years of the state of Judah. There have been press reports of earlier texts from Arad, near : Masada, but no details have yet been announced,2 Before turning to the early Hebrew texts, we should notice a group of three bronze arrowheads found near Bethlehem. They have the owner's name engraved upon them in early 'phoenician' letters: bf 'bdlb't, 'arrowhead of 'Abd-leba'at'. The type of arrow head and the form of the characters point to a date in the twelfth century n.c. 3 These, then, are examples of Canaanite writing from the time of the Judges, from the days when Gideon made a boy at Succoth write out a list of the elders of the city for him (Jdg. viii.14). The finest specimens of Hebrew writing are naturally those which may be supposed to have emanated from the royal chancelleries in Jerusalem and Samaria. The text from the Siloam tunnel is rightly the most renowned of these and its script clearly shows the trans ference of the cursive hand to stone. The wealthy Judaeans who could afford the construction of tombs in the rock of the Siloam valley may well have used the skills of the royal scribes in the com position and engraving of their epitaphs. Remains of three of these have been found. Two are merely fragments. 4 The third has been