Amarna letter EA 367, titledFrom the Pharaoh to a Vassal,[1] is a medium-small, squareclay tabletAmarna letter toEndaruta ofAchshaph, (Akšapa of the letters), one of only about 10 letters of the el-Amarna corpus, that is from the Pharaoh of Egypt to his correspondent. (Two of the Pharaonic letters are lists, and not a 'letter' per se.)
The letter is distinctive in that, 1- there are basically no spaces between theAkkadian languagecuneiform signs, (lines 3, 4, 5 (end Para Iscribe-line), and lines 6, 7, and 8), on the letter, and, 2- only a fewsegue-spaces (sections with no signs, except at the end of some text lines – no segue spaces in the middle of the text, tablet obverse). And, some text extends to the right (the cuneiform starts at the left margin) into the right side of the clay tablet's pillow shaped thickness, and further into the reverse side, which would appear upside down in the text of the reverse. (See photo ofAmarna letter EA 9, bottom right of reverse, (line 6 from obverse, upside-down).)
EA 367 is about 3 in wide x 3.5 in tall, and is made of a dark clay. One trait of the letter is that thescribe uses some signs that have multiple alphabetic uses (um (cuneiform)-forumma ("message-thus"), alsoṭup (=to 'um') ofṭup-pa for "tablet"), andgáb, for theAkkadian language, "gabbu",all[2] ("everything"), and wheregáb is the same sign forkáb, in the spelling of some specific verbs.
Letter EA 367 is one of theAmarna letters, about 300, numbered up to EA 382, mid 14th century BC, about1350 BC and 25? years later,correspondence. The initial corpus of letters were found atAkhenaten's city Akhetaten, in the floor of theBureau of Correspondence of Pharaoh; others were later found, adding to the body of letters.
A recent historical overview book (Kerrigan, 2009),The Ancients in Their Own Words,[4] presents 104, steles, monuments, personal items, etc. (example theKilamuwa Stela ofKing Kilamuwa). Each bi-page, opens to the next item (208 pages for 104 items). The Amarna letters cover one of these bi-pages with a historical discussion of the Amarna letters'text corpus. One photo occurs, the obverse of EA 367, where the entire compact text can be seen; the onlysegue space, occurs at the end of Paragraph I (line 5), with the scribe line below separating Para I from Paragraph II. The photo sits next to a letter text, a 'free-form, non-linear translation' (2009?) of a letter from Gintikirmil's mayor, Tagi to the Pharaoh; the letter isAmarna letter EA 264, titledThe Ubiquitous King.[5]
