Rights of an Adoptee in Babylonia

Adoption is a topic that has long interested me and a while back I did some posts on adoption in Babylonia. The person who is adopted had certain responsibilities; but the adopting parents had responsibilities as well.

For instance, if the new father does not teach the adopted child a craft, the child could be returned to the household of his biological father (Hammurabi Law Code, Laws 188 - 189).

Additionally, if a child was adopted by a palace official or the family of a priestess, the child could not be reclaimed by the biological parents (Hammurabi #187). Is this because the child would be better off with the new parents?

Also, the original parents could re-claim the child, but only if they did so very shortly after the adoption took place (Hammurabi #186).

Overall, the Babylonians seemed to make a serious attempt to be fair to everyone involved. The adopted child could not renounce their new parents, but their new family had to provide them with the training needed to make a living.

Tushratta's Two Gold Statues

The Amarna Letters were written on clay tablets mostly in the Akkadian language. They were part of the diplomatic correspondence between the Egyptian Pharaoh and the kings of Assyria, Babylonia, Syria, Hatti (the Hittites) and Mittani.

These letters seldom provide information on important historical events, but they do enable us to get a fascinating view of the relationships between the members of ancient near eastern royalty. One of the main characters in these letters is Tushratta, King of Mittani.

Several letters were exchanged between the courts of Egypt and Mittani regarding two solid gold statues which Tushratta claimed had been promised to him by Amenhotep III. The earliest letter (EA 26 in Moran’s The Amarna Letters) was addressed to Queen Tiye, Wife of Amenhotep III and mother of Akhenaten. Tushratta reminds Tiye of his love for her deceased husband, Amenhotep, and says that he will “show 10 times – much, much - more love” to her son Akhenaten.

He then comes to the point, saying that he had asked Amenhotep for two solid gold statues, but that Akhenaten had sent him wooden statues covered in a thin coating of gold. “Is this love… my brother was going to treat me 10 times better than his father did. But now he has not [given me] even what his father was accustomed to give”. Tushratta asks Tiye to intervene so that two solid gold statues will be cast for him. After all, gold is “like dirt” in Egypt.

In letter EA 27 (addressed by Tushratta to Akhenaten) we find out that these statues in question were of Tushratta and of Tadu-Heba (a daughter of Tushratta’s, who had married Amenhotep III).  Tushratta claims that Amenhotep had said to him, “Don’t talk of giving statues just of solid gold. I will give you ones made also of Lapis Lazuli. I will give you, too, along with the statues, much additional gold…”. Tushratta asks Akhenaten to send the statues to him and repeats that gold is like dirt in Egypt.

Incredibly, Tushratta sent at least one more letter (EA 29), addressed to Akhenaten, in which these statues are mentioned. The letter starts off with Tushratta providing a long litany of all the gifts he has sent to Egypt (including has daughter Tadu-Heba) and how much love he has shown Amenhotep and how much he mourned Amenhotep’s passing. He then asks, again, that the statues be sent to him.

These letters make one wonder why these statues were so important to Tushratta. Given the problems that the newly resurgent Hittites were about to cause both Tushratta and Akhenaten, the statues in question seem to be small potatoes.

All quotes are from Moran, William L. The Amarna Letters, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1992)

Chaos, Murder, and Civil War in Ancient Egypt

Dr. Aidan Dodson’s Poisoned Legacy is a fascinating attempt to sort out the questions surrounding the end of the Nineteenth Dynasty, which is one of the most obscure periods in ancient Egyptian history.

The death of Ramesses II, arguably one of Egypt’s greatest Pharaohs, ushered in a period of intrigue within the members of the royal family that led to chaos, civil war, and (likely) regicide.

Dr. Dodson takes the tantalizing, fragmentary evidence available and paints plausible answers to some of the vexing questions of the period:

• Who was Amenemesses and how did he gain the throne?
• Was Siptah a child when he came to the throne? How did he get there and who backed him?
• Who as Chancellor Bay? Was he the kingmaker he claimed to be?  Was he a foreigner? How did he get the right to build a tomb in the royal valley and was he eventually murdered by a member of the royal family?
• Did Tawosret have Siptah murdered so that she could become Pharaoh?
• How did Sethnakht get to the throne and who was he? 

This book contains over 120 illustrations (black and white photos and line drawings), several useful appendices and an extensive bibliography. It is well researched and written by a recognized expert in the field. This book is sure to hold the interest of anyone interested in Egyptian history.

Met to Return Objects From Tutankhamen's Tomb

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will return nineteen objects that were taken from the tomb of Tutankhamen. The objects were willed to the museum by a niece of the tomb's excavator, Howard Carter.

The move of these objects from New York to Cairo was scheduled to take place today. Once in Egypt, the objects will be displayed in a new museum being constructed near the great pyramids at Giza.

Egyptian Inscription Found in Saudi Arabia

An ancient Egyptian inscriptian has been found in Saudi Arabia. The inscription bears the names and titles of Ranesses III, the last major Pharaoh of the Twentieth Dynasty.

A copy of the inscription can be found here. This is the first known ancient Egyptian inscription found in Saudi Arabia.

Brotherhood of Kings - a Fascinating History of the Near East

Brotherhood of Kings, by Amanda Podany, is one of the most interesting books on Near Eastern Archaeology that I have read in a long time.

This book tells the history of the Bronze Age Middle East through the eyes of Kings, Queens, Princes, Princesses and vassals who wrote letters found in archives preserved in Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt. These letters reveal the personalities of the writers in a very human way. Some of the Kings were greedy for gold; others constantly whined that the gifts that had been sent to them by other Kings were not sufficient. Amenhotep III of Egypt seemed to have an interest in marrying as many foreign princesses as possible and several letters reveal the size of the dowry and bridal gifts exchanged by the Pharaoh and his father-in-law.

Some of the stories are familiar to students of the Ancient Near East. For example, the letters between an Egyptian Queen (Ankhesenamen, the widow of Tutankhamen?) and the King of the Hittites, in which the Egyptian Queen asks for the Hittite King to send one of his sons to Egypt so that she can marry him (as her husband has died and she does not want to marry one of her subjects) is a well-known, and fascinating, story. One wonders how history would have changed if the Hittite Prince had married the Egyptian Queen (instead of being assassinated en route to Egypt).

Other sets of correspondence were not familiar to me. One of the most interesting of these, are the set of letters between Zimri-Lim (King of Mari) and a number of other Kings to whom he had married his daughters. One of the young ladies was very unhappily married and seems to have genuinely feared for her life. She was probably quite relieved when her husband divorced her and sent her home.

This book is well written and easy to read. It is full of fascinating information and tells numerous interesting tales in a very lively manner. I recommend it highly to anyone interested in ancient Near Eastern history.

The Good, the Bad and the Truly Ugly

If you ever visit the Metropolitan Museum in New York City you will find some spectacular artifacts in the Egyptian collection. Off to the side of the main exhibits, the Met has some groups of small and often rarely visited objects called study areas. One of these study areas contains objects from the Met’s excavations in the Seventeenth Dynasty cemetery at Thebes. The mummiform coffins found in these excavations are quite spectacular. Spectacularly ugly that is!

These coffins are called “rishi” from the Arabic word for feathered. This is because the primary decoration of these coffins is a feathered pattern which often shows a pair of wings extending down the length of the coffins’ lid. Rishi coffins are known from the Second Intermediate period through the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty, with the best known examples coming from the tomb of Tutankhamen.

The examples from the Seventeenth Dynasty are particularly unattractive, as the attached photos will show. The coffins are carved from sycamore logs rather than from high quality cedar wood imported from what is now Lebanon. They are poorly crafted, the faces are badly carved and the painted decoration is unattractive. Often, a line of text which runs from the waist of the coffin down to the feet, contains the names and titles of the deceased. Sometimes the name of the deceased does not appear in the inscription; there is a blank space for it but the “undertaker” never bothered to fill it in.

Other decorative devices include an overly large painted “collar” worn around the neck of the coffin's lid and extending down over the chest (for some nice examples of real collars of this sort you can again look at the ones found in the tomb of Tutankhamen). Above the inscription there is often a painted representation of the goddess Nekhbet (sometimes accompanied by Uadjet).

The Seventeenth Dynasty was a period of political unrest and of declining artistic standards. Thebes was a provincial center which was possibly paying tribute to the “Hyksos” pharaohs who ruled northern Egypt. These coffins display the declining artistic standards of the period quite clearly and serve to remind us that there is more to ancient Egyptian culture than the huge statues and golden jewellery of the Pharaohs.