AMARNA (TELL EL-AMARNAH). — Locality on the eastern bank of the Nile, in Middle Egypt, IV (v.) was accidentally discovered in 1887. He had built there his capital Ahet-Aton (“horizon of Aton [solar disk]”) or Il-n-Aton (“Aton takes delight”), which, immediately after the death of the pharaoh who had instituted the religious reform, was abandoned.
The archive has yielded more than 350 letters on tablets in cuneiform characters, in the Babylonian language (today more than 200 are in the Berlin Museum, more than 80 in the British Museum, and others in Cairo, the Louvre, and Oxford). They contain the diplomatic correspondence exchanged between the pharaohs Amenophis III and IV and the rulers of Babylonia, Assyria, Mitanni, Arzawa, Alasiia, and Hatti (between 1410 and 1358 B.C.). But most of the letters, as is shown by the index below, are from the more or less allied and protected princes of Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine.
A large part of the writings are addressed to Egypt; of these, 35 come from independent kings (“brothers”) to the king of Egypt (10 from Babylonia, 2 from Assyria, 13 from Mitanni, 1 from Arzawa [Cilicia], 7 from Alasiia [Cyprus], 2 from Hatti); 1 is sent by the rabisu (prefect?) of Alasiia to the prefect of Egypt, his “brother”; 1 by a prince of northern Syria, dependent on Egypt without being its subject; nearly 300 are letters from Syrians and Palestinians, subjects (“servants”) of the king of Egypt; 5 are from women addressed to the king or to other women called “ladies.” The great majority of the letters are addressed to the pharaoh himself.
Only seven letters are sent from Egypt to the regions of Western Asia, all written by the pharaoh or in his name. These Egyptian letters are sent: 4 to independent kings, called “brothers” of the king of Egypt (three to the king of Babylonia, one to the king of Arzawa, written partly in a language that is not Babylonian), 3 to subjects of Western Asia.
The letters of the rulers are of great interest for details of political history; the letters of the subjects provide abundant information about the customs and practices of the period. These data have been confirmed and supplemented by the texts of Boghaz-Köi (v.). They are of particular importance for the history of the Old Testament, since they illustrate the political and social conditions of Palestine and the biblical East in a period that perhaps coincides with that of the Exodus (v.).