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Amarna Diplomacy: the Beginnings of International Relations

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Amarna Diplomacy: the Beginnings of International Relations BOOK REVIEWS 145 temporary and goes back to the man himself. His theism can be de˜ned with “absolute strictness,” even teaching is revealed to us by him alone, with no inter- in antiquity, and indeed the examples of Second mediaries, and it is subject to falsi˜cation only by mod- Isaiah and Islam give clear voice in that direction. ern interpretations” (p. 17). Moreover, since Second Isaiah and Second Temple In a similar vein, Hornung writes, “For the ˜rst Judaism in general precede Christianity by half a mil- time in history, we have a close-up view of how a deity lennium, the reference to the later religion is quite originated. It is as though the Aten suddenly emerged bewildering. from the traditional form of the sun god and then On the topic of Judaism, I agree fully with Hor- quickly shed the last vestiges of his origin” (p. 34). For nung’s statement, “The temporal interval is too great Hornung, Aten is not the solar disk, “but rather the to infer a direct in˘uence from the Amarna Period on light that is in the sun and which, radiating from it, the monotheism of the Hebrew Bible. But undercur- calls the world to life and keeps it alive” (p. 54; and rents that remain hidden to us might certainly have note the title of the book). exercised an in˘uence; perhaps the author of Psalm As the above two paragraphs illustrate, Hornung is 104 indeed drew upon the Great Hymn to the Aten” especially eˆective in situating Akhenaten and the (p. 122). new religion within the study of the history of reli- Notwithstanding the slender nature of this volume, gions, often with simply a quick aside that the educated every issue relevant to Akhenaten is touched upon in reader will comprehend. As additional examples: the some fashion. There is an especially excellent treat- founding of a new capital, Akhenaten, “was above all a ment of Amarna art. Hornung’s clear and concise religiously motivated hegira on the part of the reli- style is exempli˜ed by the following: “Everything that gious reformer, one that did not take him to any of had been static, ˜xed in place for eternity, is now set the old centers, but to this remote locale” (p. 51); and in motion” (p. 44). Similarly, the coregency and suc- “Akhenaten left no holy scripture, so what he founded cession issues are treated in ˜ne manner. Hornung does not belong to the religions of the book. And a concludes that there is no certain evidence pointing ‘Word of God’ is altogether inconceivable in this new to coregencies, neither with his predecessor Amen- religion, for the newly promulgated god remained hotep III nor with his successor Smenkhkare. The silent. The Aten himself did not speak; rather, his physical appearance of Akhenaten also is discussed, preacher Akhenaten spoke about him” (p. 52). though Hornung dismisses the attempts to associate On the question of monotheism, Hornung notes the king’s condition with speci˜c ailments (epilepsy, that, while Karnak was converted to the worship of premature old age, Fröhlich’s syndrome, etc.). Aten, and the worship of Amun in general was sup- In sum, Hornung has written a very readable mono- pressed, other temples devoted to other gods per- graph on one of ancient Egypt’s most fascinating per- sisted in their traditional manner. Only ˜fteen miles sonalities. Hornung’s book may be recommended to from Akhetaten, for example, Khnum, Thoth, and anyone, especially to those outside professional Egyp- Osiris were worshipped at Neferusi. Furthermore, the tological circles, as a convenient treatment of the divine triad persists, albeit with the royal couple of subject. In addition, a series of black-and-white photo- Akhenaten and Nefertiti as members, accompanying graphs and line drawings enhance the discussion. Fi- Aten (thereby replacing the traditional divine triads nally, note that because the work is essentially an essay, associated with Thebes, Memphis, etc.). it is not encumbered with footnotes; instead, the au- In light of this evidence, Hornung concludes: “Like thor has included a very useful annotated bibliogra- so many concepts, monotheism cannot be de˜ned phy at the end. with absolute strictness or eˆectuated in reality. But with its relentless rigor, this religion of light was the Gary A. Rendsburg simplest and clearest religion that had ever been de- Cornell University vised!” (p. 94). One can agree with the second sen- tence, certainly a truism for the 14th century B.C.E., but one must issue a strong demurral vis-à-vis the Amarna Diplomacy: The Beginnings of International Rela- ˜rst sentence, especially when Hornung adds that tions. By RAYMOND COHEN and RAYMOND WEST- “Akhenaten’s thinking is more radical than that of BROOK (eds.). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Deutero-Isaiah (‘Besides me there is no god,’ Isaiah University Press, 2000. Pp. xvi + 307. 44:6) or that of Islam. Not until Christianity was there a renewed attempt to eliminate the plethora In the one hundred plus years since their discovery of deities in favor of the One!” (ibid). Clearly, mono- in 1887, the Amarna letters have served as a crucial 146 JARCE XXXVIII (2001) resource for scholars of the Semitic languages. As is Cohen and Westbrook provide two jointly written well known, the numerous departures from the norms essays which serve as bookends for the collection: of Akkadian grammar, along with the glosses in the “Introduction: The Amarna System” and “Conclusion: native language of the scribes, provide Semitists with The Beginnings of International Relations.” Between an important window to the Canaanite language of these two articles are sixteen contributions from the the Late Bronze Age. Clearly, this has been the most academics involved in the conference (the editors signi˜cant contribution of the Amarna letters to inform us that the academics bene˜ted greatly from scholarly research. the presence of the two diplomats at the conference, At the same time, the Amarna letters are an im- but that the latter did not contribute articles to the portant source for historical research, though clearly volume), divided into ˜ve categories. They are as they have been underutilized in this regard, espe- follows: cially, I think one may safely say, among Egyptolo- I. The International System: M. Liverani, “The Great gists. The prime reason for this underutilization has Powers’ Club”; Westbrook, “International Law in the been the relative inaccessibility of the material. First, Amarna Age”; R. Ragionieri, “The Amarna Age: An the letters are written in Akkadian, a language that International Society in the Making”; S. R. David, few Egyptologists know. Secondly, the classic edition “Realism, Constructivism, and the Amarna Letters.” of the texts by J. Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna Tafeln II. Foreign Policy: B. M. Bryan, “The Egyptian Per- (Leipzig, 1915) has been sorely out-of-date for several spective on Mittani”; Cohen, “Intelligence in the generations. The latter situation is due to two factors: Amarna Letters.” a) our knowledge of Akkadian in general and Amarna III. Imperial Policy: W. J. Murname, “Imperial Egypt Akkadian in particular has advanced by leaps and and the Limits of Power”; A. James, “Egypt and Her bounds in the intervening years, and b) new Amarna Vassals: The Geopolitical Dimension”; N. Na’aman, texts were published in the years since Knudtzon’s “The Egyptian-Canaanite Correspondence.” volume. IV. International Transactions: C. Zaccagnini, “The The wider study of the Amarna letters received a Interdependence of the Great Powers”; K. Avruch, great boost with William L. Moran’s Les Lettres d’El- “Reciprocity, Equality, and Status-Anxiety in the Amarna (Paris, 1987) = The Amarna Letters (Baltimore, Amarna Letters”; S. A. Meier, “Diplomacy and Inter- 1992), exemplary works presenting fresh translations national Marriages”; D. Druckman and S. Güner, “A of all the texts. Raymond Cohen and Raymond West- Social-Psychological Analysis of Amarna Diplomacy.” brook, the editors of the book under review, note this V. Diplomacy: C. Jönsson, “Diplomatic Signaling in fact and inform the reader that Moran’s volume “pro- the Amarna Letters”; P. Artzi, “The Diplomatic Ser- vided the key stimulus to the present project” (p. 1). vice in Action: The Mittani File”; G. Berridge, “Amarna With the Amarna letters now available to a broad Diplomacy: A Full-˘edged Diplomatic System?” audience, the editors conceived of a unique confer- The contributors all recognize that international ence, held at the Bellagio Study and Conference Cen- relations existed for at least a thousand years before ter of the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio, Italy, the Amarna Age, especially in Western Asia, from on September 17–19, 1996. In attendance were “eight which we possess two 3rd millennium treaties, one historians of the ancient Near East, eight scholars between Ebla and Abar-SAL, and the other between from the social sciences specializing in contemporary Akkad and Elam. But these are isolated cases, with no international relations, and two working diplomats” long-range (either over time or space) consequences. (p. 2). The primary goal was “to shed new light on By contrast, the Amarna period re˘ects a full-˘edged in- the documents themselves and on the system of di- ternational system, with great powers (Egypt, Mittani, plomacy they depict, to reconstruct the international Babylonia, Hatti, Assyria), independent states (Ar- relations of the ancient Near East, and to identify uni- zawa, Alashiya), and vassal states (Amurru, Byblos, versal features of international politics (ibid.). The re- Ugarit, etc.) all interacting, covering a vast area and sult is a most successful volume, unique, I believe, in lasting for about two centuries. the annals of ancient Near Eastern scholarship. Read- The main goal of this volume is to explain how and ers of this journal will no doubt be attracted to the why this remarkable system was able to sustain itself.
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