26 



KNOWLEDGE 



[February 1, 1893. 



scarabei or other Egyptian antiquities, with which practice 

 has made them familiar, came upon a number of inscribed 

 clay tablets. In the aggregate, some 320 of these docu- 

 ments were unearthed, and forwarded to the dealers of 

 Cairo for disposal. A cursory examination sufficed to 

 determine the fact that, although discovered on Egyptian 

 soil, the writing on the tablets was neither hieroglyphic 

 nor hieratic, but in the old Babylonian cuneiform character. 

 The dealers communicated with the Ciovernment of the 

 Khedive, with the result that the whole of the find was 

 secured. Of the 320 letters, 82 were forwarded to the 

 British Museum, 160 (mostly fragments) to Berlin, 60 were 

 retained in the museum of Gizeh, and the remainder 

 found their way into private hands. 



Much interest attaches to the discovery of these tablets. 

 The ruins amid which they were found form the site of the 

 city and temples erected by the heretic King Khu-en-aten, 

 a Pharaoh who, under the title of Amenophis IV., reigned 

 in Egypt b.c. 1500. Among the tablets are a number of 

 letters received by Amenophis III. and Amenophis IV. 

 from reigning kings of Babylon, and reports from governors 

 of outlying Egyptian provinces, as also copies of letters 

 sent in reply. The whole of the writing on the tablets is 

 in the Babylonian cimeiform, or wedge writing, and many 

 are docketed with the date and from whom received in the 

 Egyptian hieroglyphic character. The peasants who found 

 them may be said to have stumbled on the ruins of the 

 Foreign Office of the Egyptian Government of 3400 years 

 ago, and accidentally io have brought to light an interesting 

 political, social, and dynastic correspondence, covering the 

 years from 1500 b.c. to about 1450 b.c, carried on between 

 the Pharaohs of the fifteenth dynasty and the rulers of Syria 

 and Chaldea. Valuable information is also found in the 

 tablets concerning the Hebrews and their semi-conquest 

 of ancient Phffinicia (Canaan), recorded in the books of 

 •Joshua and .Judges. 



To imderstand the references in the letters, it is desirable 

 to recall the leading circumstances of the period to which 

 the tablets refer. Amenophis III., who reigned thirty-five 

 years, had married an Asiatic wife, the Princess Thi, and 

 it was probably owing to the influence of this lady that 

 Amenophis IV. discarded the religion of his ancestors in 

 favour of that of his mother. After the death of his father, 

 Amenophis IV, openly avowed his attachment to sun 

 worship, introduced the Aten (sun's disc) into the ritual, 

 and built the city, palaces, and temples now in ruins at 

 Tel-el-Amarna. 



Among the tablets in the Berlin Museum are six from 

 Babylonian kings to Egyptian Pharaohs ; in the Gizeh 

 collection, two ; and in the British Museum are three. 

 These letters supply considerable information concerning 

 the political relations existing between the Pharaohs of 

 Egypt and the kings of Western Asia, besides details of the 

 commercial relations between the countries, and offensive 

 and defensive alliances, marriage customs, religious 

 ceremonies, and court intrigues. 



Of great interest are seven letters from the King of 

 Mitani, a country east of the Euphrates, and near the 

 Hittite fortress of Carchemish. Most of the letters from 

 this king are in the Assyrian dialect of the cuneiform, 

 which differed from the Babylonian cuneiform as Cornish 

 from Lancashire, or Irish from Scotch. Carchemish was 

 a Hittite iortress. From this spot we have in the British 

 Museum some half dozen monumental fragments inscribed 

 in a hieroglyphic character that has never yet been 

 deciphered, and suggesting that the Hittite branch of the 

 Semitic race, like the ancient J-^gyptians, possessed a 

 sacred hieroglyphical fonn of writing of whicli the key is 

 yet to be discovered. One of the Tel-el-Aniarna tablets, 



from the Hittite prince Arzapi, is written in tlie dialect of 

 the ancient Akkadian, or Mongol tongue of Mesopotamia. 

 This ancient language occupied, for the Babylonian student, 

 the same position in education as the Latin tongue does 

 at the present day with us. Among the tablets in the 

 British Museum, from the great library at Nineveh, are 

 school books of the time of Ashur-bar-ni-pal, b.c. 668, con- 

 taining Akkadian words, with their Babylonian equivalents 

 written in parallel columns. It may be mentioned, in 

 passing, that it is a question if modern Chinese has not 

 been developed from this old Akkadian. 



The Tel-el-Amarna letters being all in the cuneiform 

 character were considered as unlikely to be readily 

 deciphered at the Egyptian court. Hence it was the 

 custom of the Babylonian kings to send interpreters with 

 them, and reference is made to such messengers in several 

 of the letters. But a scribe able to read and write the 

 Babylonian cuneiform was undoubtedly kept by the 

 Pharaohs for purposes of translation and for inditing 

 replies. Some of the tablets are copies of such replies, 

 written in cimeiform, but retained for reference, just as we 

 in the present day preserve copies of important corre- 

 spondence. 



One of the most suggestive of the series secured by 

 the British Museum is a letter from Burraburiyash, a 

 Babylonian king of Karaduniyash, addressed to Amenophis 

 IV. It commences by stating that Burraburiyash is him- 

 self in good health, and he hopes that Amenophis and his 

 wives and children are also in good health, and that his 

 country and army and government are in a prosperous 

 condition. He goes on to remind the King of Egypt that 

 ill days gone by their respective fathers were agreed in 

 friendship, and periodically presented each other with 

 substantial tokens of mutual regard, and i^roceeds to refer 

 to a gift recently received from the King of Egypt of two 

 manehs of gold. He bluntly complains of its insufficiency, 

 as much beneath the quantity his father, Amenophis III., 

 was wont to send. He entreats him to forward at least 

 half the quantity his father usually sent, and enforces his 

 request by reminding the King of Egypt of certain obUga- 

 tions both he and his father were under for past friendly 

 actions. On the occasion of the Canaanites sending a 

 messenger to Babylonia inviting him to join in an invasion 

 of Egyptian territory, he not only declined to make any 

 league with them or have anything to do with it, but told 

 the ambassador that if they induced any other king to join 

 them in an attack upon the possessions of " his brother," 

 the King of Egypt, he himself would go forth against them 

 in battle. Further, he tells the King of Egypt that if the 

 Canaanites had actually invaded Egyptian territory it was 

 no fault of his, as by the hand of a trusty Babylonian 

 messenger he had sent the King of Egypt notice of recent 

 suspicious proceedings on the part of the Canaanites. He 

 reminds Amenophis that as long as there is an offensive 

 and defensive alliance between them the Canaanites are 

 powerless to do much harm, and may be easily driven oft'. 

 As a present (evidently with a lively sense of favours to 

 come), he sends the King of Egypt three manehs of lapis- 

 lazuli and live pairs of horses. 



A letter from Amenophis III. to Kallima Sin, King of 

 Northern Babylonia, is earlier in point of time, and 

 scarcely less interesting. It is the only known letter of 

 Amenophis III. in the I'.abylonian language and writing. 

 No such King of Babylon as Kallima Sin was known until 

 the discov-ery of these tablets. The letter commences: — 

 "To Kallima Sin, King of liaraduniyash, my brother, 

 thus saith Amenophis, the Great Iving, the lung of Egypt, 

 thy brother ; I am well, may it be well with thee, with thy 

 government, with thy wives, with thy children, with thy 



