Love, War, And Diplomacy (the Discovery Of The Amarna Letters And The Bronze Age World They Revealed)

By (author) Cline, Eric H.
Description:

From the acclaimed author of 1177 B.C., a spellbinding account of the archaeological find that opened a window onto the vibrant diplomatic world of the ancient Near East

In 1887, an Egyptian woman made an astonishing discovery among the ruins of the heretic king Akhenaten’s capital city, a site now known as Amarna. She found a cache of cuneiform tablets, nearly four hundred in all, that included correspondence between the pharaohs and the mightiest powers of the day, such as the Hittites, Babylonians, and Assyrians. Love, War, and Diplomacy tells the story of the Amarna Letters and the dramatic world of the Bronze Age they revealed.

Blending scholarly expertise with painstaking detective work, Eric Cline describes the spectacular discovery, the fierce competition among dealers and museums to acquire the tablets, and the race by British and German scholars to translate them. Dating to the middle of the fourteenth century BCE and the time of Tutankhamun’s immediate predecessors, Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaten, the Amarna Letters are the only royal archive from New Kingdom Egypt known to exist. In them, we learn of royal marriages, diplomatic negotiations, gift-giving, intrigue, and declarations of brotherly love between powerful rulers as well as demands made by the petty kings in Canaan who owed allegiance to Egypt’s pharaohs.

A monumental achievement, Love, War, and Diplomacy transports readers to the glorious age of the Amarna Letters and the colonial era that brought them to light and reveals how the politics, posturing, and international intrigues of the ancient Near East are not so unlike today’s.

Review quote:
"Entertaining. . . . a welcome, public-facing addition to the recent resurgence in scholarship on the Amarna correspondence. . . . Readers familiar with the Amarna Letters will no doubt be absorbed in the details of their acquisition and publication, which Cline relates in lucid prose. Readers less at home in the Bronze Age will enjoy a stimulating sketch of its lives and afterlives."---Benjamin de Almeida Newton, New Criterion
Review quote:
"Lucid and authoritative. . . . Impressive scholarship illuminates the Bronze Age."
Review quote:
"Illuminating. . . . Cline persuasively argues that the Late Bronze Age—with its precarious interdependence—closely resembled the modern ‘globalized’ world. The result is both a remarkable glimpse into deep history and a savvy examination of an academic discipline’s evolution."
Review quote:
"Cline’s new book reveals the politics and intrigues of the dealers, collectors, and scholars involved in the discovery and publishing of the Amarna Letters during the colonial era—just as it illuminates the vibrant diplomatic world of the ancient Near East. The human side of international relations, BCE and CE, as it turns out, is not so different after all."---Ellen Morris, Biblical Archeology Society
Review quote:
"Eric Cline travels back some 200 years to investigate the inter-relationships between the ‘great kings’ and vassal rulers of the Near East through their correspondence: the so-called‘Amarna Letters’…[he] presents an engaging chronological reconstruction of the interactions of the various players: their demands for gold and gifts, marriage negotiations, and, in the case of the petty rulers of Canaan, their intense rivalries."---Sarah Griffiths, Ancient Egypt Magazine
Biographical note:
Eric H. Cline is professor of classics and anthropology at George Washington University. His many books include 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed; After 1177 B.C.: The Survival of Civilizations; Digging Deeper: How Archaeology Works; and (with Glynnis Fawkes) 1177 B.C.: A Graphic History of the