Amarna letter: Royal Letter from Ashur-uballit, the king of Assyria, to the king of Egypt

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This document was found in the late 1880s at the site of Amarna, the religious capital of Egypt under Akhenaten. It was likely originally stored in administrative offices that formed part of a palace complex in the central part of the city. It is written in cuneiform script on a clay tablet using a reed stylus. The language is an Assyrian dialect of Akkadian, the lingua franca of the time. In this letter the king of Assyria, Ashur-uballit, sends a personal messenger and offers gifts to the king of Egypt, most probably Akhenaten, in order to open communications with the major superpower of the region. For further discussion and translation, see the Curatorial Interpretation below.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 30,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from about 300,000 BCE to the 4th century CE. A signifcant percentage of the collection is derived from the Museum's three decades of archaeological work in Egypt, initiated in 1906 in response to increasing interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.

Metropolitan Museum of Art