期刊名称：British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan (BMSAES)
印刷版ISSN：2049-5021
电子版ISSN：2049-5021
出版年度：2009
卷号：14
出版社：The British Museum
摘要：The last twenty years have seen substantial developments in our knowledge of Hittite history
and political geography, and it is thus timely to review the context and signifcance of the
‘Arzawa Letters.’
1
These two tablets from the el-Amarna archive, EA 31 in the Egyptian
Museum (Cairo) and EA 32 in the Vorderasiatisches Museum (Berlin), are written in a
language unknown at the time of discovery, but were from the start partially intelligible in that
the introductory and greetings formulae, together with the logographic writings, indicated
the general content of the documents, such as arrangements for the dynastic marriage of
a daughter, exchange of envoys and list of dowry. EA 31 could be seen to be a letter from
‘Nimudria (later by emendation to wa read Nimuwaria) Great King, King of the land of Egypt,’
to ‘Tarhundaradu, King of the land of Arzawa.’ Nothing then was known of this man or his
country, but the elaborate greetings formulae contained suffcient indications to permit the
tentative identifcation of the language ‘Arzawan’ as being Indo-European (Knudtzon 1902;
Singer 2005). ‘Nimuwaria’ was, of course, recognised as the Cuneiform rendering of the
throne name of Amenophis III (nb-mAat-ra).
