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1. Bronze Age Clay Tablets Uncover Diplomacy Eric H. Cline, author of Love, War, and Diplomacy: The Discovery -ERIC-CLINE-LOVE-WAR-DIPLOMACY
13 September 2026

1. Bronze Age Clay Tablets Uncover Diplomacy Eric H. Cline, author of Love, War, and Diplomacy: The Discovery -ERIC-CLINE-LOVE-WAR-DIPLOMACY

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Bronze Age Clay Tablets Uncover Diplomacy
Eric H. Cline, author of Love, War, and Diplomacy: The Discovery of the Amarna Letters and the Bronze Age World They Revealed, Part One: Discovered in 1886 at Amarna, Egypt, the Amarna letters consist of roughly 380 clay tablets written in Akkadian cuneiform from the 14th century BCE. British Egyptologists Archibald Henry Sayce and E. A. Wallis Budge compete to acquire these artifacts for the British Museum. German scholar Hugo Winckler and the "Young Berliners" lead the scientific breakthrough in translating and categorizing the archives. The correspondence reveals complex diplomatic exchanges between Pharaohs Amenhotep III and Akhenaten and rival great powers in Babylon, Assyria, and the Hittite Empire. Significantly, the archives contain the earliest non-biblical references to CanaaniteJerusalem under King Abdi-Heba. (1)