Philosophy Science Psychology Society Culture Essays Videos Popular About DONATE NEWSLETTER MENU / / Aeon DONATE / NEWSLETTER / SIGN IN / The Amarna letters 42 minutes Hills and mountains 8 minutes Great art explained: Tamara in the green Bugatti 16 minutes Bhutan: the last place 10 minutes When it started to burn 36 minutes A vocabulary for the future: nature 6 minutes The secrets of Hohle Fels cave 11 minutes Into the fire 24 minutes Africa’s cultural landmarks: tombs of Buganda kings 11 minutes Evolution of Manhattan 8 minutes I won’t remain alone 15 minutes EXCLUSIVE All-around junior male 8 minutes Save Share Letters from Bronze Age rulers reveal how little diplomacy has changed Save First discovered in Egypt in the late 19th century, the collection of clay tablets known as the Amarna letters is one of our richest windows into the ancient world. The letters are extraordinary not only for their contents – diplomatic communications exchanged between Egyptian pharaohs and other nearby rulers in the 14th century BCE – but also for their script: they were written not in Egyptian hieroglyphs but largely in cuneiform, a writing system most often associated with ancient Mesopotamia. In this video from the British Museum, the always entertaining Assyriologist Irving Finkel details how the letters came to be and how they were discovered, and delves into the fascinating correspondence itself, which includes petty disputes over perceived slights, leaders lobbying for military support and more than a few requests for gold.
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