German Museum Puts Amarna Letters Online
Bible and archaeology news
Berlin’s Vorderasiatisches Museum, which houses more than 200 of the famed Amarna letters, has made high-resolution images of the ancient diplomatic correspondences available online. The 14th-century B.C.E. archive consists primarily of royal letters sent between Egypt’s New Kingdom pharaohs and the rulers of various Canaanite city-states. Among the photographed tablets are several letters (EA 285-288) written by Abdi-Heba, king of Canaanite Jerusalem, to the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten.* In the surviving letters, the ever-loyal Canaanite king implores Pharaoh to send more troops to Jerusalem so that he can defend the city against the machinations and plots of neighboring Canaanite kings.
Berlin’s Vorderasiatisches Museum, which houses more than 200 of the famed Amarna letters, has made high-resolution images of the ancient diplomatic correspondences available online.
* See Nadav Na’aman, “The Trowel vs. the Text,” Biblical Archaeology Review, January/February 2009.
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Good work guys!
I haven’t seen it yet referred to at either the Cuneiform Digital Library (which works with the VAM collection: http://cdli.ucla.edu/collections/vam/vam_en.html) or the SMB (VAM’s umbrella site: http://www.smb.museum/smb/sammlungen/details.php?objectId=23&lang=en).