A few generations after Thutmose III, his great-grandson Amenhotep III (c. 1390–1352 BC) inherited an empire at peace. His reign of nearly forty years was one of the richest in Egyptian history: vast temples, colossal statues, splendid festivals, and gifts of gold flowing out to foreign courts.
Key idea
His building
- The core of Luxor Temple, for Amun.
- A huge memorial temple on the west bank at Thebes, of which the two Colossi of Memnon still stand.
- A palace city at Malkata, on the west bank, with a great artificial harbor.
- Large commemorative scarabs announcing events such as his marriage to Queen Tiye and his hunts.
The Amarna letters
In 1887 a local woman digging at Amarna found a cache of clay tablets. About 380 are now known. They come from the archive of the foreign office at Akhetaten, the city of Akhenaten, and cover the last years of Amenhotep III and the reign of his son. They are written in cuneiform, the wedge-shaped script of Mesopotamia, and mostly in Akkadian, which scribes across the Near East learned for diplomacy.
| Writer | Kind of letter |
|---|---|
| Kings of Babylon and Mitanni | letters between "brothers": gifts, marriages, complaints about too little gold |
| The kings of Assyria and Hatti | new powers seeking recognition as equals |
| Rulers of Canaanite towns (Byblos, Jerusalem and others) | vassals reporting to "the king, my lord", often asking for troops and accusing their neighbors |
Why it works
Worked example: What language?
- The letters are on clay tablets, pressed with a stylus.
- Their script is cuneiform, wedge-shaped marks, not hieroglyphs.
- Their language is mostly Akkadian, the diplomatic language of the time.
Answer: They are in Akkadian cuneiform on clay, not Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Common mistake