This time around we take a look at a few select cuneiform tablets from a collection known as the Amarna Letters. Discovered in Amarna, Egypt, these letters are a rare insight into the communication between the pharaoh and the rulers of many cities around the Bronze Age world. First, the king of Alasiya is forced to defend himself against accusations of piracy. This letter mentions the Lukkan pirates, perhaps the oldest reference to a pirate group in history. Our second letters come from Rib-Addi, the ruler of Byblos, a man under siege from both land and sea. Ultimately, the Amarna Letters help us better understand the Bronze Age Mediterranean around 1350 BCE.
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Episode Transcript
Introduction
Our last two episodes have looked at the so-called Minoan peoples and their heyday on the Mediterranean followed by their slow decline after the Thera eruption; though, as we saw, the eruption wasn’t the sole cause of their decline, but was likely a contributing factor. Today we’re going to take a brief excursus, one that I hadn’t planned to take but that I think will be helpful and enlightening at this point in our discussion. As we’d discussed last time, the Thera eruption rocked the Bronze Age Mediterranean around 1628 BCE, but the Minoan Civilization wasn’t completely off the scene for another 150 years or so, at which time they were supplanted by their Mycenaean neighbors. We’ll likely talk about the Mycenaeans more next time, but almost all of the archaeological evidence from the Mycenaeans comes from around 1300 to 1100 BCE, so it makes sense to talk about that in its turn. A nutshell synopsis of their early influence is needed today, though, so here goes.
The Minoans, in Short
The Minoans, though probably not a full-fledged thalassocracy as we’ve also seen, were ubiquitous on the Bronze Age Mediterranean, controlling trade routes around the Cyclades and making frequent contact with Egypt, the Levant, Anatolia, and perhaps even west to the very Pillars of Heracles. Though it’s also doubtful that the Minoans possessed a naval force, especially a centrally-controlled navy like the modern navies we are familiar with, Thucydides called Minos the first king to establish a navy, using it to “put down piracy in order to secure his own revenues.” Thalassocracy or no, it seems a likely thing that the Minoans did indeed put a damper on piracy in the Mediterranean, because before the Minoan decline, we have little historical mention of piracy in the region. But, once the Minoans were weakened, round about 1500 BCE, the Mycenaeans moved in, taking over Crete and exerting their influence over the region the Minoans once occupied. Obviously, the shift from Minoan to Mycenaean was gradual. The first Mycenaean artifacts of note are the shaft graves at Mycenae itself, dated roughly to 1600 BCE, with the continuing use of these graves until 1500 BCE. We can look to 1500 as the rough timeframe of the Mycenaean emergence as a true power in the region then, and it was at this point that they likely began to push out the Minoans.
The true nutshell of what we’ll discuss more fully next time is that by the time the Mycenaeans had fully displaced the Minoans, piracy had arisen in the region. It’s reasonable to surmise that this is because the Mycenaeans weren’t nearly as worried about policing the sea routes as the Minoans had been. Yes, the Mycenaeans traded with many of the same civilizations that the Minoans had traded with, but as a very broad observation, it seems that the Mycenaeans were more war-minded and less commercially attuned than the Minoans had been. Generalizations, indeed these are, but I think they will suffice for now. We can explore the nuance more fully next time, by looking to archaeological evidence from the Mycenaean period, but for today I want to fast forward to around 1350 BCE. We’ve reached this point already in our looks at Egypt and Mesopotamia, so I trust that all this jumping around isn’t too disorienting.
To set the scene, here are a few realities from 1350 BCE. Depending on the chronology to which you ascribe, either Ahmenhotep III or his son, Akhenaten, is the pharaoh. We are roughly 100 years removed from the reign of Thutmose III, a pharaoh you may remember from our discussions of Egypt. Thutmose III had used naval forces in conjunction with Egypt’s armies to conquer much of Syria and the Levant, including some of the coastal cities that we’ll discuss today. A particular city in the group was Byblos, the famed city that is among the oldest of cities on earth. It will be a much larger focus of our discussion in the future, when the Phoenician people rise to preeminence, but I wanted to talk about Byblos before we move on to the Mycenaeans because it is so central to everything that happens during the Bronze Age collapse, and because it factors heavily in some letters that are our focus today.
To finish setting the scene, though, the Minoans have disappeared, and by 1350 BCE, the Mycenaeans are the big naval force in the Mediterranean. The New Kingdom has just begun in Egypt; the Hyksos have been gone for around 100 years, as well. The Hittites are reaching the peak of their influence in Anatolia, much of it at the expense of Babylon’s power and influence. In sum, the Bronze Age world is in flux, a foreshadowing of the collapse that is still 200 years on the horizon. If you can, try to keep this picture in mind as we now discuss some amazingly insightful artifacts from the period.
The Amarna Letters
It is in this context that the Amarna letters inform our view of the Bronze Age world. The letters, or tablets, were first unearthed from the ruins of Akhenaten’s New Kingdom capital city, the very city that he dedicated to the worship of his short-lived religion to worship the sun-disk Aten. The Amarna letters, as they’re called, are contained on clay tablets and are mostly written in Akkadian, despite their burial in Egypt. The language of their writing is due to the fact that the letters contain diplomatic correspondence, addressed to the pharaoh and written by his ruling representatives in the coastal cities of Canaan and Syria, along with still more letters from Babylonia and Cyprus. The most remarkable fact about these letters is that they give us a rare insight into the behind-the-scenes relations between the pharaoh and his ruling representatives throughout the empire. Normally, we are forced to read between the lines of the pharaoh’s ‘official’ records in Egypt, records that are almost always heavily edited to paint the pharaoh in a flattering light. Some things never change, I suppose. The Amarna letters, however, seem to be the straight correspondence from abroad, no alterations, no editing. As such, what they’ll reveal to us today is quite useful.
As I said, a big chunk of the letters originated in the Levantine coastal cities that Thutmose III had conquered a century before, cities like Byblos, Tyre, and Sidon, among many others. The Amarna letters are a treasure-trove of information about the high-level relationships between the ruling families of the various near-east civilizations of the time, but as is par for the course here, we’ll keep our discussion narrowed to the maritime history impact, which, keeps us limited to a discussion of the coastal cities. If you’re interested, though, the content of the tablets is largely available online.
The letters are made up of many series of correspondence between the pharaoh and different rulers in different cities. The first such series that is of interest to us are two letters that were written by the king of Alasiya, a place we now know as the island of Cyprus. In the letter, the king of Cyprus vehemently denies the pharaoh’s accusations that the Alasiyans were part of a group of pirates that had apparently raided an Egyptian holding. Remember, this letter is dated to around 1350 BCE, at least 150 years before mentions of the mysterious Sea Peoples, so this may very well be the first mention of piracy in the ancient world. If it is, it’s actually quite insightful. I’ll go ahead and read the text of the letter, and then break it down a bit. The king of Alasiya wrote:
Say to the king of Egypt, my brother: Message of the king of Alashiya, your brother. For me all goes well, and for you may all go well. For your household, your chief wives, your sons, your horses, your chariots, among your numerous troops, in your country, among your magnates, may all go very well.
Why, my brother, do you say such a thing to me: “Does my brother not know this?”
As far as I am concerned, I have done nothing of the sort. Indeed, men of Lukki (or Lukka, a small society possibly based in Anatolia), year by year, seize villages in my own country.
My brother, you say to me: “Men from your country were with them.”
My brother, I myself do not know that they were with them. If men from my country were (with them), send (them back) and I will act as I see fit. You yourself do not know men from my country. They would not do such a thing. But if men from my country did do this, then you yourself do as you see fit.
Now, my brother, since you have not sent back my messenger, for this tablet it is the king’s brother (as messenger). Let him write. Your messengers must tell me what I am to do. Furthermore, which ancestors of yours did such a thing to my ancestors? So no, my brother, do not be concerned.
- EA38; From the King of Alashiya (Cyprus) to Akhenaten
The Lukkan Pirates
Unfortunately, we don’t have the text of the pharaoh’s accusation that resulted in this self-defense on the king’s part. What we do know is that the Lukka were mentioned in several separate Hittite texts, allowing us to conclude that the Lukka were a nefarious group of raiders and pirates that called Lycia their home. Lycia is in southern Anatolia, giving the Lukka a good access point to the Mediterranean and putting them within reaching distance of Cyprus and other wealthy Mediterranean coastal towns. The Lukka will pop up again in our discussion of the Sea Peoples, as they were listed in Egyptian records as being among the group of peoples that comprised the Sea Peoples as a whole. Anyway, the other interesting tidbit to come from the letter above is what the king used as his defense: he said that the “men of Lukki, year by year, seize villages in my own country.” Kind of vague, yes, but it does bear some application to the reality that piracy and raiding in the ancient Mediterranean was a seasonal occupation; and yes, I suppose you can call piracy an occupation, Thucydides sure viewed it as being honorable, at least initially he did.
Anyway, the seasonal nature of piracy was somewhat necessary, especially if the goal of the pirates was to plunder food. Harvesting cycles are annual and by extension, the best times to launch a pirating raid would be at around the same time each year. Shipping cycles, driven by seasonal winds, are also tied to a temporal schedule, so pirates were again behooved to abide by the schedule in order to maximize their profits...I mean, plunder. This reality is one of necessity, as I said, and it’s probably universally applicable. A 12th century Viking chieftain talked of going on what he called a ‘spring Viking’ every year after the spring seed sewing had been accomplished, coming home for a break at midsummer. He’d then go on his ‘autumn Viking’ after the harvest had been gathered and come back in midwinter, stocked with food. Thus, this short letter tells us a universal truth about pirates everywhere, as well as gives us some idea that the Mediterranean had become a bit more treacherous following the rise of the Mycenaeans.
Letters from Rib-Addi
Our second conversation string from the Amarna letters comes from a local prince named Rib-Addi. He was basically the mayor of Byblos, a city that in his tongue was called Gubla. Rib-Addi is, well an interesting character, as I hope you’ll agree by the time we look at his letters to the pharaoh. Out of around 350 letters discovered at Amarna, 64 were written by Rib-Addi, 1/5 of the total cache.
The overwhelming takeaway from these letters in their reflection on Rib-Addi as a person is that he was a whiner. And a repetitive whiner, at that. Thankfully I can summarize his correspondence and take some choice quotations, but to look at the originals, it’s quite obvious that he repeated his complaints, word-for-word, over and over again. It’s quite painful to read, and I imagine that Akhenaten must have been somewhat more patient than we imagine pharaohs to be. That, or perhaps the removal of distance and the dire straights in which Rib-Addi found himself led him to have no trepidation about being annoyingly repetitious. Either way, let’s take a look.
Despite his allegiance to Egypt and Egypt’s indirect control of Byblos and the surrounding region, Rib-Addi seems to have entangled himself in regional conflicts on several different occasions. His main conflict was with Abdi-Ashirta, the ruler of Amurru, a relatively young kingdom in southern Syria, a kingdom that was also ostensibly under Egyptian control. Abdi-Ashirta hoped to expand his power in the region, but since such an expansion would curb Rib-Addi’s power around Byblos, he decided to whine loud enough and long enough that the pharaoh would intervene. His most common plea was for the pharaoh to send soldiers and provisions, as Abdi-Ashirta had hired mercenary soldiers from the local tribes who were fine with fighting for pay. Rib-Addi accused his enemy of inciting the citizens of Byblos to rebellion, of sending assassins to take his life. Eventually, the pleas shifted from simply needing soldiers and food to needing Egyptian influence to stay the enemy fleet from mounting a blockade of Byblos. Apparently, ships had been mobilized from Beirut, Tyre, and Sidon, all three major port cities of the Levant, cities that later became the central hubs of Phoenician power. In these cities, Rib-Addi begged Akhenaten to “put a man in each city and prevent them from using their ships against me!” The plea went unheeded, because a later letter has Rib-Addi lamenting that “the enemy has placed ships . . . so that grain cannot be brought into Simyra. We cannot enter the city.” He likens his situation to that of “a bird that lies in a net. The sons of Abdi-Ashirta by land and the people of Arvad by sea are against me day and night.”
The blockade was a success, and the city of Simyra succumbed to hunger. Eventually, the enemy ships went on the offense, as still more letters from Rib- Addi recounted that "Two of my ships have been taken. Later, again: ”[The enemy] has seized one of my ships and has actually sailed forth on the sea to capture my other ships." I find it somewhat comical, despite the severity of Rib-Addi’s position and the obvious sincerity and fear behind his pleas, that in one of his letters, Rib-Addi quoted a previous response of Akhenaten, well, let me just read it to you. Almost all of Rib-Addi’s letters began with this same paragraph: Rib- Addi says to his lord, king of all countries, Great King: May the Lady of Gubla grant power to my lord. I fall at the feet of my lord, my Sun, 7 times and 7 times.” Repetitive, but necessary when you’re writing to the pharaoh. Rib-Addi then references a previous response he’d received when he says “Behold, the king, my lord, says, “Why do you keep on writing to me?” Just great. This letter is only halfway through the stack sent by Rib-Addi, and already we know by Rib-Addi’s own admission that Akhenaten is annoyed with all the tablets he’s been getting from Byblos. I think it’s just as great when Rib-Addi responds to the pharaoh’s annoyance by saying, in the translation, anyway: “Look, as for me, there is no city ruler behind me, and indeed, everyone is antagonistic to me.”
If it weren’t for the fact that this is the Bronze Age, he’d had a hit taken out on him, his city had been blockaded, among the other things that happened to him, I’d say that Rib-Addi had a bit of a persecution complex. But, then a follow-up letter held Rib-Addi’s account that the ruler or Tyre had been killed, along with his entire family, victims of a coup incited by none other than Abdi-Ashirta. The Hittites were invading, and the Rib-Addi’s world looked grim indeed. Now, whether he could see the future, or, more likely, his constant worrying became a self-fulfilling prophecy, we know from a later letter written by Akhenaten that Rib-Addi was eventually exiled from Byblos and executed by Abdi-Ashirta’s son, Aziru. The letter describing Rib-Addi’s death was written from Akhenatenn to Aziru, perhaps a tiny insight into the complexity of the political intrigue that was the Bronze Age world. I think I said earlier in the episode today, and I feel it fits here too, some things never change.
By the tail end of Rib-Addi’s letters, things in the eastern Mediterranean were getting pretty far out of hand, it seems. Abdi-Ashirta had hired mercenaries to be his muscle, but Rib-Addi reported that “ships from the Milim-people penetrated into the Amurri (northern Syria) and killed Abdi-Ashirta.” Akhenaten had likely been personally illuminated as to the threat of sea raiders, as the first letter we looked at indicates; obviously the pharaoh had been visited by the Lukkan pirates and assumed that the king of Cyprus was in on the raid.
This was the situation on the seas round about the year 1350 BCE. Sea power had come to influence coastal cities in earnest, not just by connecting them through trade, but by using force and blockade to cut off that same trade. The Mycenaeans played their own role at this stage of history, and that is what we’ll take a closer look at next time. Thanks for listening once again.
Sources
- Braudel, Fernand, Memory and the Mediterranean (2001).
- Cline, Eric H., 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (2014).
- Casson, Lionel, The Ancient Mariners: Seafarers and Sea Fighters of the Mediterranean in Ancient Times (1959).
- Little, Benerson, Pirate Hunting: The Fight Against Pirates, Privateers, and Sea Raiders from Antiquity to the Present (2010).
- Letter from Rib-Adda to the king (of Egypt); 63 lines, The British Museum.
- Letter from Rib-Hadda to an unknown source; 26 lines, The British Museum.
- Lettre de Rib Addi, roi de Byblos, au pharaon d'Egypte, Louvre.
- Paine, Lincoln, The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World (2013).
- Pryke, Louise M., The Many Complaints to Pharaoh of Rib-Addi of Byblos, J. of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 131, No. 3 (July-September 2011), pp. 411–422.
- 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 (Transl., Anson F. Rainey; Ed., William M. Schniedewind & Zipora Cochavi-Rainey) (2014).
