Letters to Pharaoh: The Canaanite Amarna Tablets

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The Amarna Letters, a collection of cuneiform documents discovered in Egypt, provide a wealth of insights into diplomatic relations between Egypt and the kingdoms and empires of the Late Bronze Age. The letters written from the kings of the Canaanite polities illuminate the social and political realities these rulers faced, as well as the contours of their Canaanite language.

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Endnotes

1. For a widely read and accessible translation of the letters, see William L. Moran, The Amarna Letters (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1992). All translations given in this article, however, are by the author.

2. Shlomo Izre’el, “Canaano-Akkadian: Linguistics and Socio-linguistics,” in Rebecca Hasselbach and Na‘ama Pat-El, eds., Language and Nature: Papers Presented to John Huehnergard on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday (Chicago: Oriental Institute, 2012), pp. 171–218.

3. Krzysztof Baranowski, The Verb in the Amarna Letters from Canaan (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2016).

4. Eva von Dassow, “Canaanite in Cuneiform,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 124 (2004), pp. 641–674.

5. Alice Mandell, “Speaking Clearly Through the Canaanite Amarna Letters: How to Connect with an Audience in Cuneiform,” in Betsy M. Bryan et al., eds., One Who Loves Knowledge: Festschrift in Honor of Richard Jasnow (Columbus, GA: Lockwood, 2022), pp. 263–276.

6. Yuval Goren, Israel Finkelstein, and Nadav Na’aman, Inscribed in Clay: Provenance Study of the Amarna Tablets and Other Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Tel Aviv: Emery and Claire Yass Publications in Archaeology, 2004); Juan-Pablo Vita, Canaanite Scribes in the Amarna Letters (Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2015).