The Tell el-Amarna Tablets in the British Museum, with Autotype Facsimiles

Abstract

DURING the summer of 1887, a woman belonging to the household of one of the “antica” dealers who live at or near Tell el-Amarna, in Upper Egypt, set out to follow her usual avocation of digging in the sand and loose earth at the foot of the hills for small antiquities. Every man, woman, and child in the neighbourhood spent, and probably still spends, a large portion of each day in this profitable pursuit, for in the winter season they were able to sell at good prices the scarabs, rings, fragments of beautifully glazed Egyptian porcelain, and other objects of this nature, of which there seemed to be an, endless supply in the ground round about. From the time when Wilkinson made his first journey to this place, until quite recently; every traveller who has visited the spot has been able to bring away with him interesting and important antiquities, which have either revealed new facts in Egyptian history, or have served to illustrate and explain processes in the technical arts known to the Egyptians. In the early years of this century, when the scientific staff attached to Napoleon's expedition to Egypt was compiling the materials for the splendid map of Egypt afterwards edited by Jacotin, it was noticed that the “ruins of a large town” existed at Tell el-Amarna, and it is said that a superficial search made over this part of the country resulted in the finding of a number of fine objects which have since filtered into several European collections of Egyptian antiquities. But whatever things have been dug out from these ruins, or from the ground round about them, or how-ever great their importance, nothing possessing the historical and scientific value of the antiquities discovered by the Tell el-Amarna woman in 1888 hath ever rewarded searcher before. The exact details of her search will never be known, neither can the exact spot where she made her great discovery be identified (for the Arabs took care to obliterate all traces of the diggings made by them on the spot after her “find”), but it is certain that in a small chamber at no great depth below the surface, she found a number of clay tablets the like of which had never been before dug up in Egypt. The number of these tablets and fragments is variously given, but it seems that the outside limit may be set at three hundred and thirty; in this matter, however, and indeed in making any statement which is based upon the word of many sellers of “anticas”in Egypt, the writer (and the reader) must protect himself by saying after the manner of the pious Muhammedan, “But God knoweth.” Of this “find” the Trustees of the British Museum secured eighty-two tablets, the Gîzeh Museum in Egypt about sixty, and the Berlin Museum about one hundred and sixty pieces, of which a large number are fragments which give no connected sense. The authorities of this last institution published the texts from their own collection together with those from the tablets at Gîzeh by lithography under the editorship of Drs. Abel and Winckler, but the results already gleaned by scholars from this edition appear to be meagre when compared with the quantity of material which the originals offer for study.

The Tell el-Amarna Tablets in the British Museum, with Autotype Facsimiles.

(London: Printed by order of the Trustees, 1892.)