5. Ancient Nuzi is located modern Yorghan
Tepe in northern Iraq
It is a Late Bronze Age town/city
belonging to the kingdom of Hurrian
kingdom.
Nuzi was an agricultural town, which now
lie buried under the modern day Iraqi city
of Kirkuk. To the south of Nuzi was
Babylon.
6. The discovery of this ancient Hurrian city
has produced the most substantial amount
of information concerning the Hurrians.
These tablets were discovered in and
around the palace, as well as in residential
houses.
The number of tablets is between 6,500
and 7,000 legal, economic, and
administrative documents (ca. 1475–1350
B.C.E.)
One quarter of the documents follow the
business transactions of a single Nuzi
family.
7.
8. They shed light on some of the
customs found in the Old Testament.
For example, in the case of a childless
couple, the wife could locate another
wife for the husband.
◦ "If Gilimninu (the wife) will not bear
children,
Gilimninu shall take a woman of
Lulluland as a wife for Shennma (the
husband)."
9. Sarah provided Hagar for Abraham
(Genesis 16:3) for the purposes of
bearing children. Should the first wife
later bear a son, he would rank over a
son born to the second wife. Such was
the case when Isaac was born (Genesis
21:1-10)
10.
11.
12. The site of Amarna (commonly known as el-
Amarna) is located on the east bank of the
Nile River.
The area contains an extensive Egyptian
archaeological site that represents the
remains of the capital city newly–established
and built by Akhenaten (king of Egypt, 1352-
1336 B.C.).
The name for the city employed by the
ancient Egyptians is written as Akhetaten
which translates literally as "the Horizon of
the Aten.”
13. It is discovered in 1887 by a village
woman digging ancient mud-brick for
use as fertilizer.
They are an important record of Egypt in
the 14th century B.C.
382 tablets are known, but many others
were probably destroyed, or may even be
a part of unknown private collections. 44
were written by rulers of foreign states
not under Egyptian control, e.g. Mitanni,
Assyria, Babylonia, and etc.
Others are from Palestine and southern
or central Syria, sent by vassal kings
15. It is written in Akkadian, the
Mesopotamian tongue; the international
language of that day;
It became the primary source about the
Canaanite language during late Bronze
Age through the letters sent from Syria
and Canaan.
Several detailed studies of the grammars
of the various letters have shed light on
the prehistory of Hebrew
16. It gives information about the structure of the
city-states ruled by kings who spent much of
their time contending their neighbors.
Also, the Amarna Letters discovery is highly
important because they refer to the Hebrews
(ca. 14th-15th centuries B.C.). They give
evidence to the trustworthiness of the book of
Judges. The tablets mention a lot about
Canaan, the half of Israel to the west of the
Jordan. This name "Canaan" has been found in
Egyptian inscriptions of the New Kingdom. The
king of Babylon used the word Canaan to
designate the entire Egyptian province of
Canaan when he wrote to Pharaoh: "Canaan is
thy land and its kings are thy servants" (El-
Amarna 8, 25)
17. The original name of Jerusalem was
Babylonian, Uru-Salim, "the city of Salim,"
shortened into Salem in Gen 14:18 and in
the inscriptions of the Egyptian kings
Ramses II and Ramses III. In the Tell el-
Amarna Letters (1400 BC), Jerusalem is still
known as Uru-Salim, and its king bears a
Hittite name, implying that it was at the
time in the possession of the Hittites.
18.
19.
20. The Egyptians had traditionally worshipped
a whole pantheon of gods who were
represented in human or animal form or as
animal-headed humans.
From early periods solar gods such as Re
had played an important role in Egyptian
state religion because the distant but
universal power of the sun fitted well with
prevailing ideas of the supreme power of the
king both within Egypt and beyond its
borders.
21. Akhenaten raised the Aten (sun god)
to the position of 'sole god',
represented as a disk with rays of
light terminating in hands which reach
out to the royal family, sometimes
offering the hieroglyphic sign for life.
