Amarna Letter: Biridiya of Megiddo to the Pharaoh
Unknown · Late Bronze Age II, reign of Amenhotep IV Akhenaten, circa 1353 to 1337 BC
A small clay tablet, six and a half centimetres high, written in Akkadian cuneiform by a scribe in the service of Biridiya, prince of Megiddo. The letter opens with the formula of a loyal vassal: to the king, my lord and my sun, thus speaks Biridiya, the faithful servant of the king; at the feet of the king, my lord and my sun, seven and seven times I fall. Then comes the business. Biridiya reports that he is carrying out work for the pharaoh, cultivating the royal fields at Shunama, and complains that he alone is supplying the forced labourers while the other city rulers are doing nothing.
The tablet belongs to the Amarna letters, the archive of Akhenaten's foreign correspondence found in Egypt, and the Louvre bought it in nineteen eighteen. Megiddo, the fortress city guarding the pass into the Jezreel valley, was one of the key Egyptian strongholds in Canaan, and Shunama is the biblical Shunem. Biridiya's grumbling about corvée labour is a rare written record of how Egypt exploited its Canaanite vassals: not only tribute but men, drafted to work the crown's estates.
Did You Know? Biridiya complains that he alone is sending forced labourers to farm the pharaoh's fields at Shunem while his fellow princes do nothing.
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