Amarna Letters: Rebellious Peasantry (2024-05-06)

Created by: Englund, Robert K.

A letter from Rib-Hadda, the mayor of Byblos, to Amanappa, an Egyptian official.

Another portion of the corpus includes foreign correspondences to Egypt from its vassal states. These letters give an idea of the Egyptian state’s administration of its territories in the Levant. Of the 382 tablets found in the Amarna cache, 64 are thought to have been written to or by Rib-Hadda, mayor of Byblos. One of these letters, EA 77, is named “A rebellious peasantry” by William L. Moran because in it Rib-Hadda expresses his fear of his restive farmers. In his distress, he requests support from the Egyptian king. Lines 26-37 from the tablet (translation by Bill Moran): If this year no archers come out, then all lands will be joined to the Apiru. If the king, my lord, is negligent and there are no archers, then let a ship fetch the men of Gubla, your men, and the gods to bring them all the way to you so I can abandon Gubla. Look, I am afraid the peasantry will strike me down. Sources: Moran, William L. 1992. The Amarna Letters. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Rainey, Anson F, William M. Schniedewind, and Zipora Cochavi-Rainey 2014. The El-Amarna Correspondence (2 Vol. Set): A New Edition of the Cuneiform Letters from the Site of El-Amarna Based on Collations of All Extant Tablets. Leiden: Brill, 2014. CDLI reference: P271082

credit: Hilliker, Heidi