The Tell el-Amarna Tablets

Abstract

IT is fifty-three years since the famous collection of cuneiform tablets known as the Tell el-Amarna Letters was discovered on the site of the ancient capital of Amenophis IV, better known as Akhnaton, the ‘heretic’ Pharaoh. Twenty-eight years after the discovery, a careful edition of the text, with translation, notes and glossary, was produced in German by Knudtzon, with the collaboration of Weber and Ebeling. In the interval an edition, of a somewhat provisional nature, had been published by Hugo Winckler, and translated into English by Mr. J. M. P. Metcalf, in 1896. But, until the appearance of the present edition from the hand of Prof. Mercer, English scholarship has produced no independent edition of these most important documents.

The Tell el-Amarna Tablets

Edited by Prof. Samuel A. B. Mercer, with the assistance of Prof. Frank Hudson Hallock in the final revision of the Manuscript. Luxor edition. 2 vols. Vol. 1. Pp. xxiv+442. Vol. 2. Pp. iv+443-910. (Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Ltd., 1939). 84s. net.