Decipherment of the Ancient World: The Unlocked Treasures

I am frequently asked how it is that Queen Ankhesenamun's intimate and emotionally charged letters to the Hittite ruler, Suppiluliumas, have been understood and preserved for so many years given the limited shelf life of papyri writings?

First, we need to know that despite the absence of modern communication, leaders of the ancient world carried on lively exchanges of correspondence. This was especially true in the governance of international afairs between Egypt, its vassal states, and the major powers of the Middle East, Babylonia, Assyria, Mitanni and several countries in Westren Anatolia.

A reasonalby coherent picture of ancient language became possible in 1897, with the discovery of the so-called Amarna tablets--359 pillow-shaped clay tablets, impressed with cuneiform signs in Akkadian and Babylonian, the language of diplomacy and the franca lingua of Western Asia.

The story goes that the tablets were found by a peasant lady while rummaging around the ancient ruins of Armana, in the area of the Records Office. When the local villagers found out about the discovery, they rushed to the site hoping to find artifacts they could sell to dealers. The tablets were roughly handled--edges broken off, and in some cases the tablets were deliberately broken in pieces in hopes of selling them piecemeal for a greater profit. The letters, which seem to cover the reigns of Amunhotep 111 and the heretic king, Akhenaten, were preserved for our time owing to the habit of disposing of the translated tablets into a rather large hole in the House of Correspondence or Records Office by cuneiform clerks. Since no copies of the outgoing correspondence was saved, there is no way of knowing how Pharaoh responded to the corresspondence.

The tablets exchanged between the Egyptians and the Hittites were revealing in other ways. For starters, it soon became clear that the Hittites had been a dominant Near Eastern power throughout much of Egypt's Eighteenth Dynasty. The Hittites were protective of incoming documents and preserved them in their archives at the Hittite capitol of Hattusas.

But more important to my novel, THE WOMAN WHO WOULD BE PHARAOH, and consequently our vision of Queen Ankhesenamun as a real person, was the preservation of her letter to the Hittite king--two candid letters from a distraught and beleagured woman appealing to a distant king in order to save her crown and her life, and at the same time avoid marriage to her own grandfather. He voice sounds down through the corridors of time, a poignant plea for help--a plea that could have easily been lost in time.

The widow of Tutankhamun is afraid my gracious Lord. She fears for her very life. In these fearful times I turn to you with humility and beseach you to come to my aid. Send me a son that I may cleave to in marriage.