Letters of the Great Kings of the Ancient Near East - Trevor Bryce 2003

255 Pages·2003·3.78 MB·English

LETTERS OF THE GREAT
KINGS OF THE ANCIENT
NEAR EAST

The Royal Correspondence of the Late
Bronze Age

Trevor Bryce

LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2003
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

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© 2003 Trevor Bryce

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
(Data to follow)

ISBN 0-203-50498-4 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-56985-7 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 041525857X (Print Edition)

CONTENTS

List of illustrations

v

List of abbreviations

vi

Comparative chronology of the Great Kings

ix

Introduction

1

Part I Setting the scene

7

1
The main players: the five Great Kingdoms

8

2
The interaction of the players: imperial administration and
international relationships

38

Part II The letters and their themes

50

3
Letters and messengers

51

4
The club of royal brothers

70

5
Gift-exchanges

89

6
The marriage market

100

7
Sending for the doctor

113

Part III Historical episodes

121

8
The Syrian principalities

123

9
The warlords of Amurru

137

10
Hittite frontier correspondence

161

11
An extraordinary request

178

12
Letter to a Mycenaean king

190

13
The elusive Urhi-Teshub

204

14
Last days

214

Appendix: the Amarna letters

223

Bibliography

228

Index

235

iv

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Maps

1 The Near East in the Late Bronze Age
viii

2 The Syrian principalities (fourteenth century)
122

3 Sites of the Hittite regional archives (fifteenth to early fourteenth century) 160

Figures

1 Chronology of the Great Kings

ix

2 The ‘King’s’ Gate at Hattusa

25

3 Ay performing Tutahkhamun’s burial rites

187

4 The Lion Gate at Mycehae

193

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AA
Archäologischer Anzeiger
AfO
Archiv für Orientforschung
ÄHK
Edel, E. (1994) Die Ägyptische-hethitische Korrespondenz aus
Boghazköi, vol. I, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag
ÄHK II
Edel, E. (1994) Die Ägyptische-hethitische Korrespondenz aus
Boghazköi, vol. II, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag
AJA
American Journal of Archaeology
AoF
Altorientalische Forschungen
AS
Anatolian Studies
BiOr
Bibliotheca Orientalis
CAH
Cambridge Ancient History
CTH
Laroche, E. (1971) Catalogue des textes hittites, Paris:
Klincksieck
DS
Güterbock, H.G. (1956) ‘The deeds of Suppiluliuma as told by
his Son, Mursili II’, JCS 10:41–68, 75–98, 101–130
EA
The El-Amarna Letters, most recently ed. W.Moran (1992)
HKM
Alp, S. (1991b) Hethitische Keilschrifttafeln aus Maşat-
Höyük, Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi
JCS
Journal of Cuneiform Studies
JEA
Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
JEOL
Jaarbericht Ex Oriente Lux
KBo
Keilschrifttexte aus Boghazköi
KUB
Keilschrift Urkunden aus Boghazköi
MDAIK
Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Kairo
MDOG
Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft
MIO
Mitteilungen des Instituts für Orientforschung
MsK
Texts from Meskene (Emar)

PRU IV
Nougayrol, J. (1956) Le Palais royal d’Ugarit IV (Mission de
Ras Shamra Tome IX), Paris: Klincksieck
RAss
Revue d’Assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale
RS
Tablets from Ras Shamra
SMEA
Studi Micenei ed Egeo-Anatolici
StBoT
Studien zu den Boğazköy-Texten
TUAT
Text aus der Umwelt des Alten Testament
UF
Ugarit-Forschungen
Urk
Urkunden des ägyptischen Altertums, Leipzig and Berlin,
1906–58
WVDOG
Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichung der Deutscher Orient-
Gesellschaft
ZA
Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie

vii

viii

Map 1 The Near East in the Late Bronze Age

COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGY OF
THE GREAT KINGS

‘Effective rule begins after Hatshepsut’s death in 1458. **Possible period of co-regency
with Amenhotep III.

INTRODUCTION

The region we refer to loosely—and from certain perspectives quite
inappropriately—as the Near East is today occupied by a large complex of states,
from Turkey in the west to Iraq in the east, and from Syria southwards through
Lebanon, Israel and Jordan to the eastern fringes of the Peninsula of Sinai. Our
study of the ancient Near Eastern world extends also to Egypt, for the kingdom
which arose in the land of the Nile developed close political and commercial
links with this world, and came to exercise a profound influence on its history
during the second millennium BCE. Cyprus too played a role in Near Eastern
affairs, as to a lesser extent did Mycenaean Greece—thus adding further
elements to our study of international relations in the period under review.
This period, the so-called Late Bronze Age, covered some 500 years, roughly
from the early seventeenth to the early twelfth century BCE. It saw the rise of a
number of Great Kingdoms, whose rulers between them controlled almost the
entire region. Such control was neither easily won nor easily maintained. Even
today, with all the advantages of modern communications and formidable
arsenals of weapons, it is virtually impossible for any great power to impose
lasting control over any part of the Near Eastern complex. How much more
difficult the task must have been, we might reasonably assume, for the ancient
kings of the region.
During the Bronze Age, effective means of communication were as essential
to the maintenance of political and military control over a particular group of
territories as they were to the development of international trading links, upon
which a kingdom’s prosperity and very survival might largely depend. And
effective communication depended on unobstructed travel by land or by sea. The
logistics and risks of such travel in the ancient Near East could be daunting.
Journeys often involved vast distances by ancient standards, whether undertaken
by merchants, royal messengers, diplomatic missions or armies on campaign, and
could involve passage through extensive areas of rugged, waterless terrain, on
routes infested by bandits and often impassable because of harsh seasonal
conditions. Travel by sea was equally, if not more, hazardous, with the ever-
present threat of violent storms and attacks by pirates, and few safe havens in
long stretches of harbourless coastline.

The complex ethno-political character of the Near Eastern world presented its
own set of problems and challenges to potential overlords. The region was home
to an array of petty kingdoms, nomadic and semi-nomadic groups, independent
communities and aggressive mountain tribes—a wide range of disparate ethnic
groups speaking a wide range of languages. Yet throughout the Late Bronze Age
this unwieldy, politically and culturally diverse conglomerate was to a very large
extent controlled and exploited by four men. Between them, these men exercised
sovereignty over almost the entire region. How did they do it?
One of the key elements in their success was their system of regular
communication with each other, and their ability to co-operate and resolve
contentious issues through diplomacy more often than by brute force. Great
Kingdoms and Empires had been built in the past, particularly in Mesopotamia
during the third and early second millennia (i.e. in the Early and Middle Bronze
Ages). But they had proved short-lived, for their rulers had failed to appreciate
the complexities and the sheer logistics of the task of administering widespread
subject territories won by force, or the merits of reaching an accommodation
with the rulers of rival powers who sought to establish their own dominance in
the region. The possibility of peaceful co-existence based on negotiated
settlements between two or more Great Kings, along with an agreed
apportionment of subject territories between them, seems never to have been
seriously entertained before the Late Bronze Age.
Five major kingdoms emerged in this age: the kingdom of Hatti, with its
homeland in central Anatolia, the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni in Upper
Mesopotamia and northern Syria, the kingdom of Assyria in northern
Mesopotamia, coming once more into prominence after the collapse of Mitanni
in the fourteenth century, the Kassite kingdom of Babylon in southern
Mesopotamia, and the kingdom of Egypt, once more resurgent under a line of
native rulers after the expulsion of the Hyksos. For much of the Late Bronze Age
control of the Near Eastern world was apportioned between four of these
kingdoms, with Assyria replacing Mitanni in the second half of this period.
Their rulers constituted what has been referred to as an elite and exclusive
club.1 They were styled ‘Great Kings’, addressed each other as ‘My Brother’ and
were in regular diplomatic contact with each other. In some respects they were
little better than glorified warlords, and from time to time throughout the Late
Bronze Age wars flared between them. But Realpolitik often prevailed over more
narrowly based military ambitions. More could be gained, in terms of both a
king’s personal prestige and the power and prosperity of his kingdom, by
forming an alliance with a powerful rival than by forcing a military showdown with
him. The region was big enough for a Great King to satisfy realistic territorial
ambitions, and peaceful interaction with his peers offered many benefits in terms
of international trade opportunities and access to sought-after materials from
other lands. Moreover, all kings benefited from the greater stability conferred
upon the region as a whole by their pacts with their fellow kings. (We shall have
more to say about this in Chapter 2.)

2
INTRODUCTION

The essential underpinning of the Great Kings’ relations with each other was
the diplomatic communications which passed between them—above all the
letters which they exchanged. It is particularly in these documents that we see the
process of Near Eastern international diplomacy at work. But some surprises and
disappointments may be in store. On a first reading the letters offer little that
might be considered uplifting or statesmanlike. Their authors seem much more
concerned with complaining about apparent trifles—the paltriness of a royal
brother’s gifts, the lack of courtesy shown to a royal brother’s envoys, or the
failure to send a message of sympathy to a royal brother who had fallen ill. Such
complaints may appear petty, at least to our way of thinking, but, as we shall see,
they have a significance which goes beyond mere pettiness, for they highlight a
number of matters of procedure and protocol whose correct observance was so
important to the agreements negotiated and the alliances established in the world
of international diplomacy.
The letters also provide us with some interesting insights into the actual
personalities of many of those in whose hands the destinies of the Near Eastern
world lay. They reveal aspects of their characters which by their very nature
never surface in their public monuments and documents. And in several respects
they bring us as close as we can possibly get to the actual time in which their
authors lived. Above all, they enable us to reconstruct the period as they saw it,
through their perceptions and reactions.
As a student I once had the task of reading a number of Cicero’s works,
primarily as source material for an assignment I had been set on the last decades
of the Roman Republic. The Roman statesman’s speeches were obviously a
valuable source of information, but it was only after reading the letters written by
him to his friends and associates, and vice versa, that I gained a clear sense of
what the political atmosphere of Rome must have been like in those politically
turbulent days. To read first-hand accounts of what was happening in Rome—as
it was happening—by those directly involved in the intrigues and faction
disputes and street violence conveyed much more effectively a sense of being
part of it all, of observing events as they were actually unfolding, than the most
graphic of the speeches. So too the letters from the Late Bronze Age enable us to
put together first-hand accounts of events in the Near Eastern world, in some
cases observing them through each stage of their unfolding. Such accounts, a
record of events told by the actual participants in them as they happened, can
have far greater impact than a record of the same events made by a third party in
retrospect, sometimes long after the story has run its full course.
Of course letters are but one of a number of sources of information on which
we draw in reconstructing a history of the ancient Near Eastern world. And we
need to take full account of all such sources in order to provide as balanced and
reliable a picture as possible of the various kingdoms which constituted this
world. This I attempted to do in my history of the Hittite kingdom.2 Yet in
writing this history I became increasingly interested in the prospect of devoting a
book entirely to the correspondence of the broader world in which the Hittite

INTRODUCTION
3

kingdom arose. There are many fascinating stories which the letters have to tell,
may fascinating insights which they provide. Unfortunately these can only be
touched upon lightly in a general history, which must draw upon a wide range of
sources without giving undue attention to any of them at the expense of others.
Hence came about the idea which has led to this book.
Some of the letters already dealt with in my history and my subsequent book
on Hittite society3 will appear again here, though this time they will be treated in
fuller detail and placed more firmly within the context of events in the Near
Eastern world in general, as well as within the genre of the royal correspondence
of the period. It is almost superfluous to use the word ‘royal’ in this context,
since almost all the surviving letters of the period were sent to or from a king or
other members of his family, or to or from a member of the palace bureaucracy.
That is a reflection of the fact that practically all surviving documents inscribed
on clay, including letters, have been unearthed in official archives. Of course the
number of literate persons outside the ranks of the state bureaucracy was likely to
be extremely small. Hence, what we find in the official archives probably does
provide us with a genuinely representative sample of the range and type of all
correspondence produced in this period. But voluminous though the quantity of
preserved letters appears to be, they must represent only a tiny fraction of those
that were actually written. Fortunately we know the contents of many letters
which have not survived from passages quoted verbatim from them in the
responses which their recipients made to the senders. We shall say more about
this in Chapter 3.
Two further observations might be made on the survival of the texts. First, it will
soon become clear to the reader that letters to and from the courts of Egypt and
Hatti figure most prominently in the correspondence dealt with in this book. To a
large extent that is a reflection of what has been found. The largest quantities of
letters known to us from the period are those that have been unearthed in
Egyptian and Hittite archives, and also in the archives of the lesser kingdoms like
Ugarit which had particularly close ties with Egypt or Hatti or both. Aside from
this, there is no doubt that during the second half of the Late Bronze Age, the
period to which most of the letters belong, Egypt and Hatti dominated the
international scene. It should therefore be no surprise that they appear to have
played a more prominent role in the network of international communications
and diplomatic exchanges than did the other Great Kingdoms which enjoyed
theoretical parity with them. Of course, we must always make allowance in
drawing any such conclusions for the possible distortions of chance survival.
Second, there is a very good prospect that tablet archives with large numbers
of letters will continue to surface in the years to come. The important recent
finds of archives at sites like Ugarit and Emar, and within the Hittite homeland at
the sites of (modern) Maşat, Ortaköy and Kuşakli give high hopes that further
excavations within the Near Eastern region will bring other such archives to
light. But to date, by far the most important collection of international
correspondence is still one of the earliest to be discovered, the tablets that came

4
INTRODUCTION