The Tell El Amarna Period

In this concise, scholarly journey, listeners are taken back to the remarkable excavation of the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna, founded by Amenophis IV around 1380 B.C. The narrative details how explorers first mapped its streets, uncovered rock‑cut tombs, and stumbled upon wooden chests brimming with cuneiform tablets once hidden in the desert sands. These tablets, written in Babylonian script, reveal a bustling diplomatic network between Egypt, Syria and Canaan.

The book unpacks the painstaking work of early scholars who rescued the fragments, restored them to museums, and began to translate the letters that illuminate everyday administration, trade, and royal correspondence of the period. By weaving archaeological context with linguistic insight, it shows how a foreign Semitic language became the lingua franca of Near Eastern diplomacy in the fifteenth century B.C. Listeners will come away with a clearer picture of how Amarna’s sudden rise and fall left a unique documentary legacy for modern historians.