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More on the Amarna Sunset

The Amarna Letters

I'm returning to an earlier discussion of a recent book by Aidan Dodson, AMARNA SUNSET, which concerns the death of Egypt's 18th dynasty.

I won't repeat anything that I said in my previous post on the book. Instead, I'll quote something very poignant I found here.

The Hittites, a Kingdom in north central Asia Minor, received a message from an Egyptian Queen in the 14th century BC. The document still exists, on a tablet such as one of those in the photo above. The Queen was addressing the Hittite King.

"My husband died, and I have no son. But, they say, you have many sons. If you would send me one of your sons, then he would become my husband. I do not want to take a servant of mine and make him my husband. I am afraid!"

If I understand Dodson's construal of this letter, if comes from the waning days of the 18th dynasty. Nefertiti was alone. Her husband, the pioneering monotheist Akhenaton, was dead, as was their only son, Tut. She was desperate to continue the line, an idea which involved a new marriage.  A marriage to a Hittite prince might have produced a scion who could unite the two Kingdoms, the north and south extremes of what we think of as the ancient Near East.

But that marriage never happened, in part at least because the Hittite King -- with the impressive name Suppiluliuma -- did not believe that he was being offered the diplomatic empire-building opportunity he actually was being offered. He thought this was a trick. The Egyptians were trying to lure one of his princes into their realm so they would have a hostage.

I will end there. It's a fine book, that provokes thoughts of the issue of distrust between sovereigns, marriage negotiations, and the fine points of diplomacy then and now.

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