Eric Cline

It had really only been deciphered 30 years earlier.

There was a very famous contest where they gave the same newly discovered inscription to four scholars and had them independently translated.

And it worked.

So, I mean, but you would have had to have books with you and all that.

I just don't believe.

Sure.

So they were incredibly important.

In fact, Sais at one point said that they were the most important things that we knew about the ancient Near East at that time, apart from the Bible.

And indeed, they did shed light.

But the light was really only shed when the German scholars came into play.

There are five of them.

They're all young.

They all live in Berlins.

So I called them the Young Berliners.

Some of them might be known to some of your listeners.

Hugo Winkler, for example, is the man who discovered the capital city of Hattusass and the archives there.

But he doesn't do that until 1906.

So a good 20 years earlier, he's one of these Young Berliners who are working on these Amarna letters today.

They are the ones that said it's Amenhotep III, it's Akhenaten, it's the middle of the 14th century BC.

And these are letters to and from the other great kings, as well as petty vassal kings.