The Canaanite Amarna Letters and the Scribes Who Wrote Them

Chapter 3 outlines the historical and scribal context of the Canaanite Amarna Letters against the broader backdrop of the use of cuneiform in the Late Bronze Age. The overview of scribal education sets the stage for analysis of the scribal communities in both the southern Levant and Egypt who engaged in written diplomacy using the cuneiform script. The chapter also provides an overview of the political context in which the scribes worked, as intermediaries between Canaanite elites and Egyptian officials and the distant pharaoh.