The Amarna Letters; Suppiluliuma, king of Hatti (Mitanni)

EA41; From Suppiluliuma, king of Hatti to Akhenaten

The messages I sent to your father (Amenhotep III) and the wishes he expressed to me will certainly be renewed between us. O King, I did not reject anything your father asked for, and your father never neglected none of the wishes I expressed, but granted me everything. Why have you, my brother, refused to send me what your father during his lifetime has sent me?

Now, my brother, you have acceded to the throne of your father, and similarly as your father and I have sent each other gifts of friendship, I wish good friendship to exist between you and me. I have expressed a wish to your father. We certainly shall make it come true between us. Do no refuse, my brother, what I wished to receive from your father. It concerns two statues of gold, one standing, the other sitting, two silver statues of women, a chunk of lapis lazuli and some other things. They are not gifts in the true sense of the word, but rather, as in the majority of similar cases, objects of a commercial transaction. If my brother should decide to deliver these, may my brother deliver them. If my brother should not decide to deliver them, as soon as my chariots are ready to carry the cloth, I shall send it to my brother. What you, my brother may want, write to me and I shall send it to my brother.

Fragment from Suppiluliuma, king of Hatti to Akhenaten

And now, as to the tablet you have sent me, why have you put the name of my brother above my name? And who is it who troubles the good relations between us? Has such behaviour become custom? My brother, have you written to me thinking that we become allies? If you are my brother, why have you praised my name, when I am no better thought of than a cadaver? [ ] But your name [ ] I rub out [ ].

Amarna Letters

Copyright J Hill 2010