Rob:
1. Maya
Maya’s tomb was built in Year 9 of Akhenaten, being about the same time
that Ai’s tomb was built there. Ai outlived Akhenaten, Smenkhkare and Tut and
became pharaoh on his own many years after Akhenaten’s death. The fact that
Maya’s tomb may have been built in Year 9 is fully consistent with the
Amarna Letters concerning Maya relating mostly to Years 14 and 16, near or at
the end of Akhenaten’s reign. There is damage to Maya’s tomb, but we don’t
know whether (i) such damage may have occurred after Akhenaten’s death (when
virtually everything was damaged), or (ii) if the damage did indicate a fall
from grace during Akhenaten’s reign, whether Maya made a comeback later in
Akhenaten’s reign. [Ai likewise may have had a temporary fall from grace
when his daughter Nefertiti suddenly disappeared without a trace and was never
heard from again.] Most of the Amarna Letters regarding Maya seem to come
from Year 14 or 16, and Maya played an important role in King Tut’s reign.
EA 216, EA 217, EA 218 and EA 337 all fit Year 16. As you know, the third
mayor of Gezer, after both Milk-Ilu and Yapaxu are gone, is Adda-danu, who
writes at EA 292: 26-40: “Maya has just taken it away from me and placed his
commissioner in it.” Yapaxu had previously mentioned Maya at EA 300: 23-28.
It seems unlikely that there would be “Amarna” letters from three
successive rulers of Gezer written to Amenhotep III many years before
Amarna/Akhetaton was built, and not a single letter from a ruler of Gezer after
Amarna
had been built and was receiving foreign correspondence. Yabni-Ilu may be the
third mayor of Lachish that we hear from, and he refers to Maya at EA 328:
17-26. In a word, every single Amarna Letter that mentions Maya appears to
be late, likely dating to Years 14 and 16. The strange claim that a-l-l
the “Amarna” Letters from quarrelsome princelings in southern Canaan long
pre-date the building of Amarna/Akhetaton is not sustainable on the basis of
the Amarna Letters that mention Maya, every one of which seems to have been
written long after Amarna was built -- which is why these letters are in the
Amarna archive in the first place.
2. Cyril Aldred vs. Nadav Na’aman
Nadav Na’aman (whom I greatly admire) has changed his mind on a number of
issues a number of times. To me he seems largely neutral on the issue of a
long co-regency. In his article “Economic Aspects of the Egyptian Occupation
of Canaan”, available here,
_http://www.ericlevy.com/Revel/Intro2/Naaman%20-%20Economic%20Aspects%20of%2
0the%20Egyptian%20Occupation%20of%20Canaan.PDF_
(http://www.ericlevy.com/Revel/Intro2/Naaman%20-%20Economic%20Aspects%20of%20the%20Egyptian%20Occupation
%20of%20Canaan.PDF)
he writes at p. 174: “The time-span of the archive [of the Amarna Letters]…
depends on whether there was coregency between Amenhotep III and Akhenaten
or not. The maximum period covered by the archive is 28 years (8 + 17 + 3)
and the minimal is 17 years (8 + 6 + 3).” A no-co-regency partisan like
Donald Redford would never have made a neutral, objective statement like that.
Although Cyril Aldred’s 11-year co-regency view may be a minority view,
nevertheless I stand by my statement that overall, he remains the most
respected biographer of Akhenaten.
4. Mr. Campbell’s 1964 Book
It’s obvious that Mr. Campbell’s 1964 book was not very convincing,
because the controversy still rages as to whether or not Akhenaten had an
11-year
nominal co-regency with his father, Amenhotep III. Rob, don’t you think it’
s suspicious that no Amarna Letter has a hieratic docket date of Years 1-9?
If EA 254 is Year 32, as you would have it, then the “Amarna” archive is
full of tablets from the height of the reign of the “King of Kings”,
Amenhotep III, long before Amarna was built, while having not a single tablet
from
quarrelsome princelings in southern Canaan in Years 12-14, a time period
when Amarna was receiving foreign correspondence. Is that a believable theory
of the case?
4. You wrote: “Scholars such as Campbell, Leverani, Na'aman, etc agree
Lab'ayu died before the death of Amenophis lll.”
On that view, here is what you are asking us to believe. At the absolute
height of the power of the “King of Kings”, Amenhotep III, Lab’ayu decided
to stop helping Pharaoh with caravans going to Naharim/Mitanni and instead
picked that moment to create an independent state of Greater Shechem, against
Amenhotep III’s strong objections. Moreover, although Surata of Akko had
previously been showered with “400 men and 30 pairs of horses, as were given
to Surata [by Amenhotep III]”, EA 85: 1-5, 16-22, Surata nevertheless
picked that moment to double-cross the richest human being the world has ever
seen, Amenhotep III, in order to receive a bribe from the small-time strongman
Lab’ayu (EA 245: 24-47), whom Surata had promised to send to Egypt as a
prisoner. Does that make any sense at all? By stark contrast, Lab’ayu’s and
Surata’s actions make perfect sense in the context of the very beginning of
the sole reign of a much weaker Pharaoh, Akhenaten: Years 12-13.
5. When confronted with the portrait of an old, fat, ill Amenhotep III at
Amarna, the scholars you cite say, believe it or not, that he was not
visiting Amarna in Year 11, but rather that long-dead Amenhotep III visited
Amarna
“in spirit only”. Likewise, when confronted with pottery scraps at Amarna
saying that Amenhotep III was there, those scholars similarly claim that
long-dead Amenhotep III was at Amarna “in spirit only”.
6. Though you don’t seem to realize it, the a-c-t-u-a-l argument of the
Redford group is this: there is insufficient evidence to prove beyond a
reasonable doubt that there was a long co-regency, in that no document
explicitly pairs an Amenhotep III Year date with an Akhenaten Year date. As to
any
positive evidence that would knock out the long co-regency view, none
exists. If you would re-read the letters from quarrelsome princelings in
southern
Canaan, I think you would see that they all make sense in the first few
years of Akhenaten’s sole reign, Years 12-14, whereas nothing like that would
have happened during the very height of the reign of the “King of Kings”,
Amenhotep III.
7. In sum:
(a) There’s no way that letters from dead princelings that pre-date the
building of Amarna by 15 years would have ended up in the Amarna archive in
the first place.
(b) There’s no way that Lab’ayu and Surata would have defied Amenhotep
III at the height of his power and wealth, with Surata taking a bribe from Lab’
ayu instead of delivering Lab’ayu to Amenhotep III for a much handsomer
reward. So Lab’ayu cannot have died in Year 33 of Amenhotep III, but rather
must have died in Year 13 of Akhenaten.
(c) And there’s no way that it’s a mere “coincidence” that everything in
chapters 12-15 of Genesis matches up with the Amarna Letters perfectly if
the hieratic docket date that Knudzon first read for EA 254 is correct: Year
12.
Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois
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