ABSTRACT
The archives left in the palace of Mari by the Babylonians when they destroyedit in 1759 BC cover a period of some twenty-five years, during which the throne was occupied first by Yasmah-Addu and then by Zimri-Lim.2 Alongside the very numerous administrative documents they contain several thousand letters, of which some 2,500 have been published in their entirety. Many studies have been devoted to their content but not to the way in which the letters were actually written by, or on behalf of, the sender, conveyed to the addressee, and then read by or to the latter. Yet this is something that historians need to know if they are to properly understand the correspondence. The well-known advantage of the Mari archives is that they offer documentation on a number of different kingdoms, some even outside the Middle Euphrates region. This chapter will be essentially concerned with the writing and reading of royal correspondence, that is to say, with letters sent or received by kings, but I shall on occasion also consider letters that do not form part of the royal correspondence so defined.2
