Chapter XX, The Amarna Letters

Chapter XX
The Amarna Letters, 1450 to 1350 B.C.

Found at El-Amarna, 1887, some 350 tablets.
Concern: Affairs in Palestine, reign of Amenophis IV (Akhenaten) and Amenophis III. Almost all written by Canaanite officials.

(I have the text of two of them, in “Documents from Old Testament Times,” by D. Thomas. Review follows:

Letter No. 287:
From Abdiheba, a Hittite, pre-Israelite governor of Jerusalem, under Egypt’s suzerainty: complaints about his neighbor and his precarious fate.

Letter No. 288:
More complaints: his land is about to fall to the Habiru.
The tablets are written in a jargonized Akkadian. 68 of them are to or from Rib-adda, prince of Byblos. It was a time of corruption, low morale and rivalries between the Canaanite “kings.”