by Lian Slayford-Wei

Created on: July 19, 2009   Last Updated: March 05, 2012

The ancient Near East, known collectively as Mesopotamia, have produced some of the world's most fascinating cultures and artefacts. One of the most exciting finds to come from this area are the small clay tablets known as the Armana Tablets; not only do they illuminate the very time of the Israelite Exodus from Egypt, but they also hold significant details about the various peoples living in the region at the time as well as the diplomacy between them all.

The tablets were supposedly found by a Bedouin woman while she was collecting top-soil from among old ruins located about 190 miles along the Nile south of Cairo, Egypt. Later, the area became known as Tell el-'Armana, despite the fact that the ruins contains no tell at all. The Bedouin woman found some pillow-shaped tablets in the ground and informed others about her find. They returned to the area, searching for more. Recognising that these tablets were ancient and valuable, the Bedouin sold them to dealers.

Eventually, some of these tablets found their way into the hands of scholars. During the winter and spring of 1888, representatives of the Berlin, British, and Bulaq museums finally purchased relatively large lots of the tablets, while a few fragments and even whole tablets remained in private hands, although some later ended up in the Louvre in France. One ended up in the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, and two to the Metropolitan Museum of New York.

The Armana Tablets are a collection of letters to and from the Egyptian pharaohs Amenophis III and Amenophis IV (Akhenaten) with other kings and with Egyptian vassals and officials located in Mesopotamia. Some of these letters were inscribed to the Kassite kings, Kadashman-Enlil and Burnaburiash of Babylon. There are two letters from king Asshur-uballit of Assyria and 13 tablets concerning Tushratta, king of Mitanni. In addition to this, there are 8 tablets involving and from an official of Alashia, an island kingdom, which scholars believe could be Cyprus, or the city of Enkomi in Cyprus. The collection includes a letter from the Hittite king, Shuppiluliuma and a letter from a Babylonian princess to the Egyptian pharaoh.

The great powers of the 14th century BCE in this area (Egypt, Babylon, Hatti, Mittani and Assyria) created an international society, a "Great Powers' Club" with conventional forms of diplomacy and established rules of etiquette. The kings referred to each other as "my brother", as the foundation of the Great Powers Club

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