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Amarna letters

The designation Amarna letters (sometimes "Amarna correspondence") denotes an archive of correspondence, mostly diplomatic, between the Egyptian administration and its representatives in Canaan and Amurru. The letters were found at Amarna, the modern name for the capital of the Egyptian New Kingdom, primarily from the reign of pharaoh Amenhotep IV, better known as Akhenaten (1369 - 1353 BC). The Amarna letters are unusual in Egyptological research, being mostly written in Akkadian cuneiform on clay tablets. The known tablets currently total 382 in number, 24 further tablets having been recovered since the Norwegian Assyriologist Jørgen Alexander Knudtzon's landmark edition of the Amarna correspondence, Die El-Amarna Tafeln in two volumes (1907 and 1915).

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