Perhaps the most effective way to “go back in time” is to read letters written in the past. Fortunately, personal letters survive written by Egyptians and Hittites during the Bronze Age.
Exploring Daily Life in Egypt via Letters
I enjoyed this article by Susan Thorpe in The Ancient Near East Today, “Aspects of Daily Life in Ancient Egyptian Letters.” She compares idealized images from funerary and temple contexts to actual conflicts described in letters. So, for example, one tomb depicted Sennofer and his family engaged in their proper occupations and observing codes of right behavior. Further, the accompanying inscription has Sennofer’s assertion “I was a man of virtue, patient and calm-tempered, free of falsehood”. But a papyrus letter from a scribe named Neb reveals a more realistic character. Neb is fighting with his wife and describes himself as “a man impatient to divorce the woman.” Not only that but he’s also hostile to another woman. In his letter he warns the priest to tell her “if she comes to me I will strike her.” Neb might have an anger management problem!
Thorpe’s article discusses letters about agriculture, forced labor, soldiers, sacrificial animals, and construction designing. Thus, she compares versions presented on walls and other “persuasive” contexts to details of real life from letters. Egyptian art depicting things like Pharaoh vanquishing his foes is notoriously propagandistic. The private letters serve dramatically different purposes.
Royal Hittite Letters
There are also surviving letters from the Hittite context of roughly the same period Thorpe discusses for Egypt. The letters of various military and bureaucratic officials come down to us. Of especial joy to me are the letters written by “my” queen, whose historical name is Puduhepa, Tesha in my fiction. From those letters I gained insight into her character.
Scolding a Pharaoh
One revealing passage occurs in a letter she composed to Ramses II. Over an extended period, she has been negotiating a marriage between one of the royal daughters and Pharaoh. However, Ramses has complained that the dowry is too small and slow in coming. Metaphorically speaking, the Hittite queen gives him quite a piece of her mind! At one point she says:
“Does my brother have nothing at all? Only if the Son of the Sun God, the Son of the Storm God, and the Sea have nothing, do you have nothing! Yet, my brother, you want to enrich yourself at my expense! It (i.e., such behavior) is unworthy of name and lordly status.”
translation from Letters from the Hittite Kingdom, Harry Hoffner, Jr.
In this letter she refers to Ramses as “my brother.” This title is an indication of their status as equals in the international ruler club in the ancient Near East. Those rulers who qualified addressed each other as “Great King” (or “Great Queen”). Similarly, they referred to each other as siblings. A conceit with interesting implications for how the most powerful of the Late Bronze Age thought of each other and interacted.
I am eternally grateful for the chance preservation of Hittite letters. There is so much we don’t know about the Hittites, but at least I can “hear” some scraps of genuine voices.
Here for a post about Puduhepa’s marriage arrangements for her daughter with Pharaoh Ramses.