The Amarna Age: What Can Ancient Letters Tell Us About Their Authors?

This module covers the 14th century BCE, with a focus on the late 1350s to the mid-1330s in the ancient Near East (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, as well as Syria and the Levant ). Using excerpts from letters between ancient kings, students will explores the relationship between these powerful rulers (the so-called “Great Kings,” which included the pharaoh) as well as that between the pharaoh and his vassals in the Levant and in Syria. Important themes addressed by this module include the manifestations of power and ideology within royal correspondences; cultural misunderstandings and their implications for our knowledge of ancient peoples; emergence of new powers (Assyria in northern Mesopotamia and Hittites in Anatolia after the Mittani Empire is destroyed by the latter); and the use of epistolary material to understand history.