In 1887, an Egyptian woman made an astonishing discovery among the ruins of the heretic king Akhenaten鈥檚 capital city, a site now known as Amarna. She found a cache of cuneiform tablets, nearly four hundred in all, that included correspondence between the pharaohs and the mightiest powers of the day, such as the Hittites, Babylonians, and Assyrians. Love, War, and Diplomacy tells the story of the Amarna Letters and the dramatic world of the Bronze Age they revealed.
Blending scholarly expertise with painstaking detective work, Eric Cline describes the spectacular discovery, the fierce competition among dealers and museums to acquire the tablets, and the race by British and German scholars to translate them. Dating to the middle of the fourteenth century BCE and the time of Tutankhamun鈥檚 immediate predecessors, Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaten, the Amarna Letters are the only royal archive from New Kingdom Egypt known to exist. In them, we learn of royal marriages, diplomatic negotiations, gift-giving, intrigue, and declarations of brotherly love between powerful rulers as well as demands made by the petty kings in Canaan who owed allegiance to Egypt鈥檚 pharaohs.
A monumental achievement, Love, War, and Diplomacy transports readers to the glorious age of the Amarna Letters and the colonial era that brought them to light and reveals how the politics, posturing, and international intrigues of the ancient Near East are not so unlike today鈥檚.
Eric H. Cline is professor of classics and anthropology at George Washington University. His many books include 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed; After 1177 B.C.: The Survival of Civilizations; Digging Deeper: How Archaeology Works; and (with Glynnis Fawkes) 1177 B.C.: A Graphic History of the Year Civilization Collapsed (all 91桃色).
“This fascinating and wide-ranging book invites readers to listen in on debates between the scholars who translated and published the Amarna Letters, and on debates, thousands of years earlier, between the kings, princes, and officials who originally wrote them. Eric Cline weaves these two narratives together masterfully, not only detailing the crises and vivid characters of the ancient Amarna period but also immersing us in the intrigues and rivalries surrounding the publication of the letters.”—Amanda H. Podany, author of Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East
“Love, War, and Diplomacy brings to life the discovery of the Amarna Letters and their fascinating political backdrop, set in the period of the colonial race to find and export ancient Middle Eastern antiquities to Europe. Through this wild history, Cline offers a timely discussion of the fractious relationships between antiquities dealers, scholars, museum agents, and local communities, speaking to the ethics of archaeology and museum collections today.”—Alice Mandell, Johns Hopkins University
“Love, War, and Diplomacy provides a unique perspective on the intricate tapestry of human history woven by the Amarna Letters. Eric Cline not only meticulously crafts a nuanced interpretation of the seminal tablets but also demonstrates a masterclass in vivid style and captivating storytelling, revealing the complexities of power, loyalty, and conflict in the ancient Levantine world.”—Jana Myn谩艡ov谩, Charles University
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