New Books Network Podcast — Eric H. Cline: "Love, War, and Diplomacy: The Discovery of the Amarna Letters and the Bronze Age World They Revealed"

Overview

In this episode, host Caleb Zakarin interviews Eric H. Cline, professor of Classics and Anthropology at George Washington University and acclaimed author of "1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed" and "After 1177 B.C." The conversation centers on Cline’s forthcoming book, "Love, War, and Diplomacy," focusing on the discovery, translation, and historical significance of the Amarna Letters—a cache of 14th century BCE diplomatic correspondence found in Egypt. The discussion navigates through the excitement of archaeological discovery, the human stories preserved in the tablets, the complexities of early translation efforts, and the lasting insights the letters provide into the interconnected Bronze Age world.

Eric H. Cline’s Background and Motivation

• Cline’s Path to the Bronze Age (01:45)
  • Originally interested in Greece (Mycenaeans and Minoans), then shifted to the Near East out of fascination with ancient international connections.
  • Childhood inspiration: “When I was 7 years old and my mother gave me a book on Troy and Heinrich Schliemann and I announced I was going to be an archaeologist.” (02:14, Cline)
  • Emphasis on public accessibility in his books—making complex scholarly topics understandable to general readers.

The Amarna Letters: Discovery and Aftermath

• The Origin Story & Controversy (05:50)
  • Standard lore: Discovered in 1887 by a local Egyptian woman searching for fertilizer in the ruins of Akhetaten (modern Tell el-Amarna).
  • Cline's take: “I think it's a made up story because the woman herself could never be located afterward ... it was actually an illegal excavation by an antiquities dealer who, to cover up his activities, made up the story...” (06:37, Cline)
  • Archive contents: about 400 clay tablets—split into 50 royal letters (kings), 300 from lesser Canaanite vassal kings, and about 50 school texts or fragments.
  • The dispersion of the tablets: Now scattered across 14 museums in 8 countries—“It is the absolute worst case scenario for splitting up an archive...” (11:20, Cline)
  • Losses: Potentially a third of the tablets destroyed before arriving in museums.

Notable Quote

• “So now if you want to go see these Amarna letters, you have to visit 14 different museums in eight different countries and 10 different cities on four continents. I mean, it is the absolute worst case scenario for splitting up an archive...” (11:20, Cline)

The Late-19th-Century Race to Translate

• Scholarly Competition and Challenges (14:21)
  • The excitement and competition among European scholars to read and publish the letters.
  • Akkadian, written in cuneiform, was the “lingua franca” of diplomacy, analogous to French in the 18th century.
  • Translating cuneiform: laborious, error-prone, highly competitive.
  • “His [Sayce’s] initial efforts were so off that I would say it's not even funny. Except it's funny ... he thought David was in these. King David. He thought King Solomon was in these. Spoiler alert: Neither of them are in here because these letters date from the 14th century BC...” (17:15, Cline)
  • British and German teams: E. A. Wallis Budge (British Museum) smuggled out the first letters, while young Berliners like Hugo Winckler led German efforts and produced the first major publication (1896).
  • Early translation errors, rivalry, and the colorful personalities involved made for a dramatic academic contest.
  • Humorous observation: “I kept thinking of ich bin ein Berliner and the famous I'm a jelly donut with JFK...” (22:47, Cline)

Notable Quotes

• “He [Budge] brazenly smuggled them out of Egypt and sent them back to the British Museum and just said, you know, no apology. If I hadn't done it, somebody else would have.” (19:14, Cline)
• On translation errors: “Sayce is a genius, but he was like a butterfly flitting in a garden, never staying long enough in any one place ... we have had reason to regret some of the things he has said recently.” (36:33, Cline)

Translation: Techniques, Trials, & RituaLized Communication

• Practicalities and Pitfalls (27:12)
  • Cuneiform is syllabic, not alphabetical—hundreds of signs, many with multiple meanings.
  • Standardized diplomatic formulae made some passages recognizable even with incomplete knowledge.
  • Example: Ritualistic greetings and honorifics—“to the king, my lord, my sun, I throw myself at your feet seven times and seven times over and again.” (See 30:01)
  • Early misreadings are inevitable—alternate readings of sign-strings could produce different geographical names.
  • Modern sympathies: “I now ... am utterly sympathetic for their efforts and much more admiring than I had been.” (37:54, Cline)

What the Letters Reveal about the Late Bronze Age World

• Golden Age Diplomacy and Sibling Rivalry (41:37 onward)
  • The royal letters (about 50) document high-level international diplomacy: “asking for gold and offering their daughters in return.” (43:07, Cline)
  • Exchange of goods and dynastic marriages, e.g., “Gold is like dust in your land ... send me some nuggets ... I'll send you my daughter.” (43:57, Cline)
  • Kings performing gift exchange instead of commerce, with elaborate justifications to maintain royal dignity.
  • Petty vassal king letters (about 300) are full of squabbling, complaints, requests for help—akin to children seeking parental mediation.
    • “They really sound like children squabbling and reporting to the pharaoh as if it's daddy or mommy...” (49:04, Cline)
  • Direct lineages, genealogy, and ongoing political crises can be traced in these texts, even though many are missing or fragmentary.
  • The letters provide insight almost solely into the political elite—not the daily life of ordinary people.

Notable Quotes

• “We've got letters from the ruler of Gaza, you know, so it's everything that's still in the political picture today. They were already fighting and squabbling 3,400 years ago ... The weapons change, the actual people change, the reasons for fighting change. The one constant is there's fighting.” (50:15, Cline)

Using Social Network Analysis on the Amarna Corpus

• Methodological Innovation (54:53)
  • Social Network Analysis (SNA) maps relationships by charting pairs—who writes to whom, who is connected via intermediaries.
    • “It's kind of like the Kevin Bacon ... Can you get from that movie star to another ... Right. So basically, social network analysis, you have pairs of people...” (55:07, Cline)
  • Cline’s wife, Diane Harris Cline, was a pioneer in applying SNA to the ancient world; together, they mapped Amarna’s diplomatic networks.
  • Analysis reveals brokers, connectors, and “bad boys” (troublemakers frequently mentioned).
  • “If you took one person out of the network, would everything fall apart? And the answer is yes, some of the diplomats and some of the merchants are the go between people, and you remove them from the network and everything collapses.” (56:57, Cline)
  • Tool helps confirm historical interpretation and reveals structural patterns hard to see otherwise.

Notable Quote

• “Sociograms ... confirm what we already thought. Sometimes it can show you new things that you never imagined, like, you know, patterns that you couldn’t see.” (61:03, Cline)

Reflections, Unsolved Mysteries, and Looking Ahead

• Lingering Questions and Ongoing Research (64:50)
  • Ongoing work: linguistic nuances (“Canaanite Akkadian”), reconstruction of lost letters, and hunt for more archives (e.g., from Luxor or future Egyptian discoveries).
  • “There must be more ... That’s in part how we’re going to shed more light on the late Bronze Age and ... find out how even more wonderful it was than we even suspect right now.” (65:42, Cline)
  • The Amarna Letters continue to offer lessons about diplomacy, international networks, and the persistence of human conflict and connection—insights both ancient and enduringly relevant.

Memorable Moments and Quotes with Timestamps

• “My interest in the Bronze Age goes back to when I was 7 years old and my mother gave me a book on Troy ... and I announced I was going to be an archaeologist.” (02:14, Cline)
• “It is the absolute worst case scenario for splitting up an archive, you know, when these should all have been kept together...” (11:20, Cline)
• “He [Sayce] thought David was in these. King David ... Spoiler alert. Neither of them are in here because these letters date from the 14th century BC” (17:15, Cline)
• “Kings can't do that. That's beneath kings. ... No, no, no, they're not trading. They're gift giving.” (45:49, Cline)
• “The weapons change, the actual people change, the reasons for fighting change. The one constant is there's fighting.” (50:55, Cline)
• “Social network analysis maps the relationships between people. It's a series of pairs, and you can use a couple of different software programs to generate the diagrams. They're called sociograms.” (54:59, Cline)

Key Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | Content/Highlights | |------------|------------------------------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:45 | Cline’s Background | Childhood inspiration, academic journey, writing for general public | | 05:50 | Discovery of Amarna Letters | Origin story, skepticism, contents, dispersion, archival loss | | 14:21 | Race to Translate | European competition, methods, humor, personalities | | 27:12 | Translation Techniques | Scribe rituals, linguistic challenges, formulaic openings, contextual translation | | 41:37 | What the Letters Reveal | International relations, royal marriages, minor king quarrels, limits of archive | | 54:53 | Social Network Analysis | SNA explained, practical application to Amarna corpus, identifying key network figures | | 64:50 | What Remains & The Future | Prospects for finding more archives, enduring historical questions |

Summary prepared to capture the tone, detail, and key themes of the conversation for those seeking an in-depth understanding of the episode’s content and significance.