Canaanite scribes in the Amarna letters

About this book

The Amarna letters, cuneiform tablets dating from the mid-14th century that were found at the site of Achetaton, constitute the most significant historical source in the study of international relations in the ancient Near East in the 14th century BC. Most of the Amarna letters are written in Canaano-Akkadian, and originate from small kingdoms in Syria and Palestine, and it is these texts that are studied in this work. The first part of this study intends to individualize, insofar as possible, the scribes who wrote the letters from the Syrian and Palestinian kingdoms (excluding letters from Ugarit and other localities). The various corpora are presented, and the correspondence from each corpora is structured and analyzed. The purpose of the second part is to show, through specific and by no means exhaustive studies, the usefulness of the methodology of palaeographic identification of the hands of the scribe as a tool for future investigation, at various levels, of the Canaanite letters from Amarna.