The Tell-el-Amarna letters were discovered among the ruins of the palace of the famous Egyptian Pharaoh, Akhenaton, of the Eighteenth Dynasty, who died about 1358 B.C.  During the winter of 1887-8 an Egyptian woman was excavating soil for her garden, when she happened upon the cellar of Akhenaton’s foreign office in which the official correspondence had been stored.  The “letters” were baked clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform alphabetical signs in the Babylonian-Assyrian language, which, like French in modern times, was the language of international diplomacy for many centuries in Western Asia after the Hyksos period.

The Egyptian natives, ever so eager to sell antiquities so as to make a fortune and retire for life, offered some specimens of the tablets for sale.  One or two were sent to Paris, where they were promptly declared to be forgeries, with the result that for a time the inscribed bricks were not a marketable commodity.  Ere their value was discovered, the natives had packed them into sacks, with the result that many were damaged and some completely destroyed.  At length, however, the majority of them reached the British Museum and the Berlin Museum, while others drifted into the museums at Cairo, St. Petersburg, and Paris.  When they were deciphered, Mitanni was discovered, and a flood of light thrown on the internal affairs of Egypt and its relations with various kingdoms in Asia, while glimpses were also afforded of the life and manners of the times.

The letters covered the reigns of Amenhotep III, the great-grandson of Thothmes III, and of his son Akhenaton, “the dreamer king”, and included communications from the kings of Babylonia, Assyria, Mitanni, Cyprus, the Hittites, and the princes of Phoenicia and Canaan.  The copies of two letters from Amenhotep III to Kallima-Sin, King of Babylonia, had also been preserved.  One deals with statements made by Babylonian ambassadors, whom the Pharaoh stigmatizes as liars.  Kallima-Sin had sent his daughter to the royal harem of Egypt, and desired to know if she was alive and well.  He also asked for “much gold” to enable him to carry on the work of extending his temple.  When twenty minas of gold was sent to him, he complained in due course that the quantity received was not only short but that the gold was not pure; it had been melted in the furnace, and less than five minas came out.  In return he sent to Akhenaton two minas of enamel, and some jewels for his daughter, who was in the Egyptian royal harem.

Ashur-uballit, king of Ashur, once wrote intimating to Akhenaton that he was gifting him horses and chariots and a jewel seal.  He asked for gold to assist in building his palace.  “In your country”, he added, “gold is as plentiful as dust.”  He also made an illuminating statement to the effect that no ambassador had gone from Assyria to Egypt since the days of his ancestor Ashur-nadin-akhe.  It would therefore appear that Ashur-uballit had freed part of Assyria from the yoke of Mitanni.