Burra Buriya II

For those of you not in the know, the Amarna letters are a series of fourteenth century before Christ cuneiform clay tablets, mostly in the Akkadian lingua franca of the day.  There are letters between kings and letters between the Egyptian king and some of his lesser vassals.  

It was the letters between one particular Babylonian king of the Kassite dynasty – known as Burra Buriya the Second – and the Egyptian king of the eighteenth dynasty – known as Naphurureya or Amenhotep the Fourth or Amenhotep the Magnificent or Amana-Hapta – that particulary tickled my funny bone. 

This Amenhotep the Fourth changed his name to Akhenaten, which means 'effective for Aten,' who was a sun god.  If you still don't recognise him, his other names included Strong Bull of the Double Plumes, Strong Bull-Beloved of Aten, Great of Kingship in Karnak, Great of Kingship in Akhet-Aten, Crowned in Heliopolis of the South, Exalter of the Name of Aten, Beautiful are the Forms of Re-the Unique One of Re, and Amenhotep God-Ruler of Thebes.  He was the one who decided to implement a proto-monotheistic reform, which didn't really work out, but, hey, we still talk about it over three thousand years later.  Success?

Anyway, so I was reading this letter of his.  He'd gotten this letter from Burra Buriya the Second, one of a series of letters he'd gotten from this guy.  I mean, we can imagine he was writing him back, because we can't expect to find Naphurureya's responses still hanging around in Egypt, unless he never sent them – but then again, maybe not.  Burra Buriya seems like the kind of guy you just wish would stop writing.  He's always bugging Naphurureya about stuff.  It's a fascinating read, and I highly recommend it.  Reading the Amarna letters is like spying or eavesdropping, only respectable and impressive. 

And I think it opens a window on human communications.  It got me thinking about how they have and haven't changed over the course of about three thousand years.  So here's what I did: I wrote up a modern rendering of an excerpt from Burra and Naphu's conversation.  Let's consider it an attempt to bridge the gap and a celebration of thousands of years of communication.

Just so you know what's going on here, Burra's writing a letter to Naphu (which means, in his world, he was having someone else memorise his orally produced message and take some notes by imprinting some wedge-shapes into a clay tablet).  Burra's annoyed, because he's been sick, and it seems like Naphu didn't care one iota.  He basically recites an entire conversation between himself and Naphu's messenger.  I'm sure this was interesting reading (which means listening, in his world) for Naphu.  Here's how it went between Burra and Naphu's messenger:

               BURRA BURIYA, KING OF KARADUNIYAS:  Has my brother not heard that I am ill?  Why has he shown me no concern?  Why has he sent no messenger here and visited me?

                              tr.  wtf? didn't he see my fb status? why didn't he message me?

               MESSENGER OF KING NAPHURUREYA, KING OF EGYPT:  It is not a place close by so your brother can hear and send you greetings.  The country is far away.  Who is going to tell your brother so he can immediately send you greetings?  Would your brother hear that you are ill and still not send you his messenger?

                              tr. wi-fi was down at s-bux. 

               BURRA BURIYA:  For my brother, a Great King, is there really a far-away country and a close-by one?

                              tr.  yea right wi-fi was down at s-bux.

               EGYPTIAN MESSENGER:  Ask your own messenger whether the country is far away and as a result your brother did not hear and did not send to greet you.

                              tr. dude ask david, he works there.

               BURRA asks HIS OWN MESSENGER, who tells him that the journey is far.

                              tr. BURRA asks DAVID, who tells him wi-fi was down at Starbucks.

Wow.  So much has changed, and so much hasn't changed.  In case you're wondering how it turns out between Naphu and Burra, here's how it ended: after Burra figures out how far away Egypt is and how difficult the journey is, he sends him four minas of lapis lazuli and five teams of horses, which, as far as these things went, wasn't particularly generous. 

Others of my favourite lines from the Amarna letters include:

'Send me much gold.'

'And as to the gold I wrote you about, send me whatever is on hand, as much as possible, before your messenger comes to me, right now, in all haste, this summer.'

'So please send me the gold you feel prompted to.'

Oh, and then there's the part where Naphu sends Burra what looks like twenty minas of gold, but when they put it in the kiln, it ends up being only five minas that looks 'like ashes.'  Woops.

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I owe the English translations I'm using to William Moran.