Amarna letter EA 367, titled From the Pharaoh to a Vassal,[1] is a medium-small, square clay tabletAmarna letter to Endaruta of Achshaph, (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 the Akkadian languagecuneiform signs, (lines 3, 4, 5 (end Para I scribe-line), and lines 6, 7, and 8), on the letter, and, 2- only a few segue-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 of Amarna 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 the scribe uses some signs that have multiple alphabetic uses (um (cuneiform)-for umma ("message-thus"), also ṭup (=to 'um') of ṭup-pa for "tablet"), and gáb, for the Akkadian language, "gabbu", all[2] ("everything"), and where gáb is the same sign for káb, in the spelling of some specific verbs.
Letter EA 367 is one of the Amarna letters, about 300, numbered up to EA 382, mid 14th century BC, about 1350 BC and 25? years later, correspondence. The initial corpus of letters were found at Akhenaten's city Akhetaten, in the floor of the Bureau of Correspondence of Pharaoh; others were later found, adding to the body of letters.
Obverse photo, EA 367, The Ancients in Their Own Words
A recent historical overview book (Kerrigan, 2009), The Ancients in Their Own Words,[4] presents 104, steles, monuments, personal items, etc. (example the Kilamuwa Stela of King 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 only segue 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 is Amarna letter EA 264, titled The Ubiquitous King.[5]
