The Amarna letters are famous because nowhere else in bronze age history do we have a cache of documents quite like it. Thirteen letters from Kadashman-Enlil, and later his son Burna-Buriash, addressed to Pharoah Akhenaten of Egypt, give us insights into the nuts and bolts of bronze age international diplomacy that even most bronze age folks would have not understood unless they were part of the royal courts. What did ancient kings know about their neighbors, how did they think about their kingdom, and how did they solve disputes? All these and more are in the Amarna letters, and as an added benefit, these letters will take us through the reigns of these two kings, continuing the tale of Kassite Babylonian history.
Notes for the episode are on the webpage at oldeststories.net
The Oldest Stories podcast tells the history and myth of bronze age Mesopotamia beginning with the first written clay tablets circa 3000 BCE. Using their stories and histories, we can learn a great deal about the people of the ancient world and see how the people of the very first civilizations were not all that different from us nowadays, except of course for the places where they were very different. The past is a foreign country after all.
This youtube channel is an extension of the Oldest Stories podcast, and is also available on any good podcasting app, or at the website [ Ссылка ]. Also, I hang out over at a mythology discord with some good folks who know quite a lot about a broad range of topics [ Ссылка ]. New episodes release will be once a week each Wednesday.
