Tell el-Amarna

A pioneering Egyptologist, Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853-1942) excavated over fifty sites and trained a generation of archaeologists. He also played a notable part in the preservation of a number of cuneiform tablets that became known collectively as the Tell el-Amarna letters. Petrie’s Syria and Egypt (1898), containing summaries, is also reissued in this series, along with many of his other publications. The present work, first published in 1894 and richly illustrated, gives an account of the work that Petrie carried out in 1891-2. It contains detailed information about both the technical aspects of the dig and the array of artefacts found, including the tablet fragments of diplomatic correspondence from the fourteenth century BCE. The chapter on the tablets is provided by Archibald Sayce, Francis Llewellyn Griffth discusses ceramic inscriptions, and the flint tools are examined by F. C. J. Spurrell.