The Amarna Letters: The Syro-Levantine Correspondence

During Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty (ca. 1550-1292 BCE), the New Kingdom pharaohs campaigned repeatedly in Syria and the Levant, establishing political control over much of the region. As a result of these conquests, the rulers of Levantine city-states sent letters written in Akkadian in the cuneiform script on clay tablets to the Egyptian pharaohs. So, too, did the kings of the other great geopolitical powers of the time—Assyria, Babylonia, Hatti, and Mittani—maintain an active diplomatic co...