Tel-el-Amarna

Tel-el-Amarna, or TELL-EL-AMARINA, the modern name of a mass of ruins representing the capital of the heretic Egyptian king, Amenhotep IV. (see EGYPT, Vol. IV. p. 240), a little to the north of Assiout, on the eastern bank of the Nile. Here was found in 1887 a collection of tablets in Babylonian cuneiform, at that period—some time before the exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt—used as a kind of lingua franca for all western Asia. These tablets were mainly reports from the Egyptian governors of Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Babylonia, some of which implored help against the Hittites (q.v.), then pressing southwards. Of about 230 tablets 160 went to the Berlin Museum and 82 to the British Museum.