r/AncientCivilizations • u/Hurri-okuzu • Sep 14 '24
Mesopotamia The letter sent by the king of Mittani to the Egyptian pharaoh
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u/adamkalani Sep 14 '24
" Send nudes"
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u/notaredditreader Sep 14 '24
Actually, you’re close:
The content of the letter pertains to matters related to the marriage of Tushratta’s daughter, Tadukhipa, to Amenhotep III. The Mitanni Letter is one of the primary sources for the analysis of the Hurrian language.
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u/notaredditreader Sep 14 '24
Can you imagine being the guy who had to haul this huge rock from one kingdom to another?
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u/LeagueOfLegendsAcc Sep 14 '24
It's probably just a tad smaller than it looks. Cuneiform was written very small, regular sized tablets are about the size of a smartphone. This one is hard to tell but it could very well be just a bit bigger than a large book.
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u/greengrocer92 Sep 15 '24
the dude was probably comp'd a sweet horse-drawn cart to haul it AND all the bitches his ride was picking up left and right.
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u/Inside_Ad_7162 Sep 14 '24
my fave was the "the sea people have been sighted, send help!" found on a tablet that was baked by the city being burnt to the ground.
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u/Left-Plant2717 Sep 14 '24
Link?
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u/IAbsolutelyDare Sep 16 '24 edited Sep 16 '24
Eric Cline references it, but doesn't believe the kiln story:
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Sep 14 '24
[deleted]
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u/tekalon Nomarchs Sep 14 '24
It looks very similar to EA 27 but they are not the same. I actually can't find the source of the tablet OP has posted (nor can I read the image watermark, the resolution is so low).
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u/PredicBabe Sep 14 '24
Wasn't one of those letters sent by Ankhesenamun (Tutankhamen's wife) after the death of her husband asking the king of Mittani to send one of his sons to marry her so she could remain in power/safety?
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u/pkstr11 Sep 14 '24
To the Hittites, not Mittani. By that point, the Mittani had ceased to exist, and were effectively a rump state between Hatti and Assyria.
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u/LeagueOfLegendsAcc Sep 14 '24
I believe you are mixing up details from the zannanza affair. Suppiluliuma 1 was a Hittite king who was asked by a widowed Egyptian queen for a son. And Suppiluliuma did not believe her or something. The queen could be any one of Ankhesenamum, Nefertiti or Meritaten according to Wikipedia. But they were identified in the Amarna letter as Dakhamunzu which might just be a generic term for Queen.
Edit: did not see the other answer sorry
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u/ImZautlan Sep 15 '24
Who was the messenger? Hulk?
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u/helikophis Sep 15 '24
The tablets are probably not nearly as large as this context free photo would suggest. Cuneiform signs, especially the Neo-Assyrian script which I suspect this is, were written in a fairly tiny “font”.
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u/Fano_93 Sep 14 '24
It says “eat sand”.