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Home > Magazines > Archaeology Odyssey > May/June 2001

When a Mittani Princess Joined Pharaoh’s Harem

Politics as usual in the mid-second millennium B.C.E.

By Gernot Wilhelm

Around 1354 B.C.E. a caravan of hundreds of donkeys laden with valuable treasures departed from Washukkani, the capital of the Mittani kingdom in present-day northern Syria. Protected by a formidable military corps of chariots and infantry, the caravan headed through Syria and Palestine to the Egyptian capital of Thebes—a 1,400-mile journey that would take about four months. As we know from a cuneiform tablet accompanying the caravan, the donkeys carried golden earrings and necklaces, finely carved objects of lapis lazuli, perfume jars, combs and elaborate garments. The main cargo, however, was of the highest possible diplomatic importance: Tadokheba, the […]

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Footnotes

1.

Mitanni kings bore Hurrian names until they actually ascended to the throne; then they assumed their Indo-Aryan names. A number of Hurrian words dealing with the breeding and training of horses are also Indo-Aryan.

2.

The Bible records a later exception to this rule: The Israelite king Solomon (c. tenth century B.C.E.) married the daughter of the Egyptian pharaoh (1 Kings: 9:16)

Endnotes

1.

Trans. by John A. Wilson, in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, ed. James B. Pritchard (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969), p. 374.