Rise Of Alashiya And Assyria

From the Amarna Letters that date specifically to the time of Akhenaten, we know that Egypt’s international contacts expanded during his reign to include the rising power of Assyria, under its king Assur-uballit I, who had come to the throne in the decade before Amenhotep III died.

There are also eight letters to and from the king of the island of Cyprus, known to the Egyptians and others of the ancient world as Alashiya, which provide confirmation of contact with Egypt.

These letters sent to and from Cyprus, which probably date to the time of Akhenaten rather than Amenhotep III, are of great interest, in part of because of the staggering amount of raw copper mentioned in one of the letters.

Cyprus was the primary source of copper for most of the major Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean powers during the Late Bronze Age, as is made clear by the discussions found in the letters, including that in which the king of Alashiya apologizes for sending only five hundred talents of copper because of an illness that is ravaging his island.38 It is currently thought that such raw copper was probably shipped in the shape of oxhide ingots, such as those that have been found on the Uluburun shipwreck discussed in the next section. Each of the oxhide ingots on board the ship weighs about sixty pounds, meaning that this one consignment mentioned in the Amarna Letter would have consisted of some thirty thousand pounds of copper—an amount for which the Cypriot king is (ironically?) apologetic because it is so small!

As for Assyria, there are two letters in the Amarna archive from Assur-uballit I, who ruled that kingdom from ca. 1365 to 1330 BC. It is not clear to which Egyptian pharaoh these two letters were addressed, for one simply begins, “Say to the King of Egypt,” while the name given in the other is unclear and the reading is uncertain. Previous translators have suggested that they were probably sent to Akhenaten, but at least one scholar proposes that the second one might be addressed to Ay, who came to the throne after the death of Tutankhamen.39 This seems unlikely, given the late date for Ay’s accession to the throne (ca. 1325 BC), and, in fact, the letters are much more likely to have been sent to Amenhotep III or Akhenaten, as were the vast majority of letters from other rulers.

The first of these letters is simply a message of greeting and includes a brief list of gifts, such as “a beautiful chariot, 2 horses, [and] 1 date-stone of genuine lapis lazuli.”40 The second is longer and contains the by-now-standard request for gold, with the usual disclaimer: “Gold in your country is dirt; one simply gathers it up.” However, it also contains an interesting comparison to the king of Hanigalbat, that is, Mitanni, in which the new king of Assyria states that he is “the equal of the king of Hanigalbat”—an obvious reference to his position in the pecking order of the socalled Great Powers of the day, of which Assyria and its king strongly wished to be a part.41

It seems that Assur-uballit was not idly boasting, for he was more than an equal to the then-current Mitannian king, Shuttarna II.

Assur-uballit defeated Shuttarna in battle, probably about 1360 BC, and ended the Mitannian domination of Assyria that had begun a little more than a century earlier, when the earlier Mitannian king Saushtatar had stolen the gold and silver door from the Assyrian capital and taken it to the Mitannian capital of Washukanni.

Thus began Assyria’s rise to greatness, primarily at the expense of Mitanni. Assur-uballit quickly became one of the major players in the international world of realpolitik. He arranged for a royal marriage between his daughter and BurnaBuriash II, the Kassite king of Babylon, only to invade the city of Babylon itself some years later, after his grandson was assassinated in 1333 BC, and place a puppet king named Kurigalzu II on the throne.42 Thus, the two last major players of the Late Bronze Age in the ancient Near East, Assyria and Cyprus, finally appear on stage. We now have a full cast of characters: Hittites, Egyptians, Mitannians, Kassites/Babylonians, Assyrians, Cypriots, Canaanites, Minoans, and Mycenaeans, all present and accounted for. They all interacted, both positively and negatively, during the coming centuries, though some, such as Mitanni, vanished from the stage long before the others.

NEFERTITI AND KING TUT

Soon after his death, the reforms of Akhenaten were reversed, and an attempt was made to erase his name and his memory from the monuments and records of Egypt. The attempt almost succeeded, but through the efforts of archaeologists and epigraphers, we now know a great deal about Akhenaten’s reign, as well as his capital city of Akhetaten and even his royal tomb.

We also know about his family, including his beautiful wife Nefertiti, and their daughters, who are portrayed on a number of inscriptions and monuments.

The well-known bust of Nefertiti was found by Ludwig Borchardt, the German excavator of Amarna (Akhetaten), in 1912 and shipped back to Germany a few months later. But it was not unveiled to the public until 1924 at the Egyptian Museum of Berlin. The statue is still in Berlin today, despite many requests by the Egyptian government for its return, since it reportedly left Egypt under less than ideal circumstances. The story is told, but not confirmed, that the German excavators and the Egyptian government had an agreement to split the finds from the excavation equally, with the Egyptians getting first choice.

The Germans knew this but wanted the bust of Nefertiti for themselves. So they reportedly kept the bust uncleaned and placed it deliberately at the end of a long line of objects. When the Egyptian authorities passed on the filthy-looking head, the Germans promptly shipped it to Berlin. When it was finally put on display in 1924, the Egyptians were furious and demanded its return, but it remains in Berlin.43

We also know now about Akhenaten’s son, Tutankhaten, who changed his name and ruled using the name by which we know him today, Tutankhamen, or King Tut. He was not born in Arizona, contrary to what Steve Martin once said on Saturday Night Live, nor did he ever move to Babylonia.44 He did, however, come to the throne of Egypt at an early age, when he was about eight years old—approximately the same age at which Thutmose III came to the throne almost 150 years earlier. Fortunately for Tut, there was no Hatshepsut around to rule on his behalf. Tut therefore was able to reign for approximately ten years before his premature death.

The vast majority of the details surrounding Tut’s short life are not immediately relevant to our study of the international world in which he lived. However, his death is relevant, in part because the discovery of his tomb in 1992 launched a modern worldwide obsession with ancient Egypt (known as Egyptomania) and established him as the most recognized king of all those who ruled during the Late Bronze Age, and because of the strong possibility that it may have been his widow who wrote to the Hittite king Suppiluliuma I, asking for a husband after Tut died. The cause of Tut’s death has been long debated—including the possibility that he might have been murdered by a blow to the back of his head—but recent scientific studies, including a CT scan of his skeleton, point to a broken leg followed by an infection as the most likely culprit.45 Whether he broke his leg by falling off a chariot, as is suspected, may never be proven, but it is now clear that he suffered from malaria as well and had congenital deformations, including a club foot. It has also been suggested that he may have been born of an incestuous brothersister relationship.46 Tut was buried in a tomb within the Valley of the Kings. The tomb might not have originally been meant for him, as was the case for many of the dazzling objects found buried with him, since he died so suddenly and unexpectedly. It also proved remarkably hard for modern Egyptologists to locate, but Howard Carter finally discovered it in 1922.

The Earl of Carnarvon had hired Carter for the express purpose of finding Tut’s tomb. Carnarvon, like some other members of the British aristocracy, was looking for something to do while wintering in Egypt. Unlike some of his compatriots, Carnarvon was under his doctor’s orders to be in Egypt each year, for he had been involved in a car accident in Germany in 1901— having rolled his car while doing the unheard-of speed of twenty miles per hour—and had punctured a lung, leading his doctor to fear that he would not survive a winter in England. So he had to spend winters in Egypt and promptly began playing amateur archaeologist, by hiring a pet Egyptologist.47

Carter had been inspector-general of monuments of Upper Egypt and then held an even more prestigious post at Saqqara. However, he had resigned after refusing to apologize to a group of French tourists who created a problem at the site in 1905. He was therefore most amenable to being hired by Carnarvon, as he was unemployed at the time and was working as an artist painting watercolor scenes for the tourists. The two men began working together in 1907.48

After a decade of successful excavations at a variety of sites, the two men were able to begin work in the Valley of the Kings in 1917. They were looking specifically for Tut’s tomb, which they knew must be somewhere in the valley. Carter then dug for six seasons, for several months each year, until Carnarvon’s funding, and perhaps interest as well, were about to run out. Carter pleaded for one last season, offering to pay for it himself, because there was one place in the valley that he hadn’t yet excavated. Carnarvon relented and Carter returned to the Valley of the Kings, beginning work on November 1, 1922.49 Carter realized that he had been pitching his camp in the same place every season, so now he moved his headquarters and dug where the camp had originally been positioned … and three days later, a member of his team found the first steps leading down into the tomb. As it turned out, one of the reasons why the tomb had lain undiscovered for thousands of years was that the entrance had been buried under dirt tossed by later diggers creating the nearby tomb of Ramses VI, who died almost a century after Tut. Since Carter had discovered the entrance to the tomb while Carnarvon was still in England, he sent a telegram immediately and then had to wait until Carnarvon was able to sail to Egypt. He also alerted the media. By the time Carnarvon arrived and they were ready to open the tomb on November 26, 1922, journalists surrounded them, as photographs from that day show.

As an opening was chiseled in the door, Carter was able to peer through the hole and into the entrance corridor of the tomb, with the antechamber beyond. Carnarvon tugged on Carter’s jacket and asked him what he saw. Carter reportedly replied, “I see wonderful things,” or words to that effect, and indeed he later reported that he could see gold, everywhere the glint of gold.50 Undoubtedly, relief was evident in his voice, for during the long wait for Carnarvon, Carter had been plagued by worries that the tomb had been looted at least once, if not twice, to judge by the replastering at the tomb’s entrance, with the stamps of the necropolis on it.51 The penalty for tomb robbing in ancient Egypt was death by impalement on a stick stuck in the ground, but this does not seem to have fazed many grave robbers.

When Carter and Carnarvon did eventually get into the tomb, it became clear that it had indeed been robbed, to judge by the messy condition of the objects in the antechamber, tossed about like goods in a modern apartment or house that has been ransacked by burglars, and by the golden rings wrapped in a handkerchief and dropped in the entrance corridor, most likely by the robbers either in their haste to get out of the tomb or as they were being caught by the necropolis guards. However, the sheer quantity of goods remaining in the tomb was astounding—it took Carter and his associates most of the next ten years to completely excavate and catalog everything in the tomb, even though Carnarvon himself died of blood poisoning only eight days after the tomb was opened, thereby giving rise to the story of the “mummy’s curse.”

The huge number of burial goods in Tut’s tomb led some Egyptologists to wonder what might once have been in the tomb of one of the pharaohs who had ruled much longer, such as Ramses III or even Amenhotep III, but all of those tombs had been robbed long ago. It is more likely, though, that the amazing goods in Tut’s tomb were unique and may have been the result of gifts from the Egyptian priests, who were grateful because he had reversed his father’s reforms and given power back to the priests of Amun and others. Until another unlooted royal Egyptian tomb is found, however, we have nothing with which to compare Tut’s tomb.

When Tut died, he left widowed his young queen Ankhsenamen who was also his sister. And this is where we come to the saga of the Hittite king Suppiluliuma I and the Zannanza Affair, one of the most unusual diplomatic episodes of the fourteenth century BC.