estudos internacionais • Belo Horizonte, ISSN 2317-773X, v.6 n.2 (2018), p.9 - 29
The Amarna diplomacy in IR perspective:
a system of states in the making
A diplomacia de Amarna e as Relações Internacionais:
um sistema de estados em construção
DOI: 10.5752/P.2317-773X.2017v6.n2.p9
Alex Aissaoui1
1. PhD Candidate at the Department of
Political and Economic Studies, University of Helsinki.
ORCID: 0000-0002-4971-4114.
Submitted in january 31, 2017
Accepted in november 28,2017
Abstract:
The Amarna diplomacy (ca. 1365-1330 BCE) has been of interest for specialists
ever since the discovery of the Amarna letter collection in the late 19th century.
While it can be considered as one of the great archaeological discoveries
of all time, it has largely remained out of academic purview in the field of
International Relations (IR). IR scholarship continues to turn to the GrecoRoman experience in its attempt to delineate the chronological framework of
the discipline. Far from being an anecdote in international history, this article
aims to analyze what the letters convey for a student of world politics. What
comes out of these missives through textual analysis of the primary sources
is not only the various demands, wishes and security concerns of the actors
involved but also classical IR themes such as power balancing, security dilemma
and international anarchy. While there are question marks and lacunas, this
paper asserts that the ancient Near Eastern world constituted an international
arena where we see the makings of a genuine system of states more than a
millennium before the writings of Thucydides. The Amarna letters, although
incomplete, are a gateway to gain deeper synergy between IR theory and
international history.
Key-words: Amarna diplomacy; power balancing; security dilemma;
international anarchy; system of states
Resumo
A diplomacia de Amarna (a.C 1365-1330) vem atraindo o interesse de
especialistas desde a descoberta da coleção das cartas de Amarna ao fim
do Século 19. Apesar de ser considerada uma das grandes descobertas
arqueológicas de todos os tempos, em grande parte elas permanecem fora do
escopo das Relações Internacionais (RI). Acadêmicos da disciplina continuam a
delinear a cronologia das relações internacionais a partir da experiência grecoromana. Para além de um episódio da história, este artigo objetiva analisar a
valia das cartas para estudantes de política internacional. A partir de análise
textual primária das missivas pode-se retirar não só as demandas, os desejos e as
preocupações em matéria de segurança dos atores envolvidos, como também
indícios de temas clássicos da RI como balanço de poder, dilemas de segurança
e anarquia internacional. Apesar de ainda haver questões e lacunas a serem
preenchidas o texto argumenta que o Oriente Próximo antigo se constituiu
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como arena internacional onde podemos observar a construção de um genuíno
Sistema de Estados mais de um milênio antes dos escritos de Thucydides. As
cartas de Amarna, apesar de sua ainda incompletude, são uma porta de entrada
para a estruturação de uma maior sinergia entre as Teorias de RI e a História
das relações internacionais.
Palavras chave: Diplomacia de Amarna; balanço de poder; dilema de segurança;
anarquia internacional; sistema de Estados
Introduction – Putting the ancient near eastern diplomacy on the map
2. Although lower chronologies have
gained some ground over the years,
the majority of scholars have been
using for more than half a century the
Middle Chronology as a compromise
solution. It should be clear, however,
that the chronology of ancient history
is inherently approximate (for more
reference, see e.g. BRYCE, 2003, p.6;
CRYER,2006, p.655–56; KUHRT, 1997,
p.11–12, 317; LIVERANI, 1990, p.13,
fn. 1; LIVERANI, 1994, p.280, fn. 1;
PODANI, 2014b, p.49−50, 70; ROAF,
2012, p.147−48, 170−71; SNELL, 2005,
p.xix; VAN DE MIEROOP,Van De Mieroop
2010, p.13–16).
10
The ancient Near East during the Late Bronze Age (1600–1200
BCE) has been described as “the first great international era in world
history” (MONROE, 2009, p.297). Accordingly, the second millennium
provides one of the best textual evidence for studying a genuinely cosmopolitan culture where the states, from western Iran to the Aegean
Sea and from Anatolia to Nubia, became fully integrated in an international system based on interdependence. It is in this international arena
that we encounter the for the first-time elaborate treaty-making, power
balancing strategies, precise battle descriptions, sovereignty and the formation of a number of territorial states – precursors to contemporary
great powers. The above puts into a questionable light the claim that “the
Greeks invented politics”, whether domestic or international (ROBERTS,
1996, p.27). The term ‘politics’ can certainly be derived from the Greek
word ‘polis’ meaning ‘city-state’ but the phenomenon itself can hardly
be narrowed down to a particular spatiotemporal area. In recent years,
diplomacy’s ancient Near Eastern roots have been recognized to go back
at least to the second millennium BCE (FRÉCHETTE, 2013, xxx; COOPER; HEINE; THAKUR, 2013, p.3-4; ROBERTS, 2009, p.6). Admittedly,
we cannot talk about complex interdependence in the modern sense of
multiple connections between societies in interstate relations as was put
forth by Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye (1997, p.122–32). Nevertheless,
the Late Bronze Age Near East constitutes a complex milieu where there
was “a web of interconnectedness”, a milieu where the “deeds of one state
had an impact on the faiths of others” to borrow a British archaeologist
and anthropologist Brian Fagan (2003, 24;27:06 –28:32).
An older generation of scholars outside the Ancient Near East Studies (ANES) have regarded the political landscape of the ancient Near East
as profoundly theocratic in nature so as to not really constitute an international political arena properly speaking but instead an environment
where the divine forces rather than human agency were at the center.
Richard G. Collingwood (1994, p.11–12), philosopher and historian, did
not consider the Sumerian ‘historiography’ historical in respect of its object (divine not human), nor in respect of its method (no interpretation
of evidence). This assessment is increasingly outdated, however. Already
in the 1950’s there were scholars who recognized that there was finality
and plurality in the historical thinking of ancient Mesopotamians where
the local theocracy did not pose an insurmountable barrier to research
and inquiry (SPEISER,1955, p.55–56, fn. 50). Various literary genres like
king lists, royal inscriptions and chronicles that existed in Egypt, Syro2
Aissaoui, Alex
The Amarna diplomacy in IR perspective...
Palestine, and Mesopotamia put the deeds of human, rather than divine,
actors at the forefront. Even though it would be somewhat anachronistic
to qualify these texts as historiographical, they nevertheless demonstrate
that the peoples of ancient Near East had a keen interest in recent as well
as more remote past and wanted to explain them in terms of historical
realities (VAN SETERS, 2006, p.2433–443; BULL, 1955, p.3). Theocratic
and mystical elements obviously were central features of the societies in
question. However, underneath the religious rhetoric cynic motives of
power politics time and again surface. This becomes abundantly clear in
the diplomatic correspondence of the Amarna letters as they vividly describe the complex international arena of the Near East during the second
millennium with all the twists and turns related to commercial relations,
prestige, political ambition, alliance politics, balance of power and warfare but also yearning for brotherhood. More than a century after its discovery, it remains the most valuable single diplomatic document archive
to survive from the ancient Near East and can be considered as one of the
great archaeological findings of all time (e.g. MYNÁROVÁ, 2012, p.551;
PETRIE, 1894, p.23−24). While this paper focuses largely on the Amarna collection, we should bear in mind that it is only one type of source
under scrutiny besides administrative memos, royal letters and international treaties – in the early 21st century it is estimated that between half
a million and two million cuneiform tablets, the primary sources of the
ancient Near East, have been discovered out of which only a small fraction has been published (SASSON, 2015, p.4; HALLO, 2005, p.39; BOTTÉRO, 1995, p.20). Nevertheless, the letter collection provides an invaluable
source for analyzing the way the Near Eastern political arena functioned
as a system.
The somewhat anecdotal approach of the IR toward the ancient
Near East has started to change in the beginning of the 21st century.
Adam Watson’s The Evolution of International Society: A Comparative, Historical Analysis (1992) was an important attempt to combine the English
School approach with historical analysis in an effort to elucidate international states-systems in Eurasia and throughout the globe starting from
the early Mesopotamia and ending with the contemporary international
society. Despite its ambitious goal and scope, Watson’s treatment of the
ancient Near East was somewhat cursory – this becomes clear in the way
he alludes to the mid-fourteenth century BCE Amarna diplomacy by erroneously attributing Aramaic as the diplomatic language of the region
instead of Akkadian. Nevertheless, Watson (1992, p.121) rightly recognizes the intricate Egyptian-Hittite relationship of the period. Raymond
Cohen’s contribution in a series of articles (1996, 1999, 2000, 2001) marks
out as perhaps the most serious attempt to bring the Late Bronze Age
world in Western Asia to the research agenda of IR. Despite their vast
chrono-logical coverage in International Systems in World History, Barry
Buzan and Richard Little (2000, p.163−240) only in somewhat vague
terms allude to the existence of complex alliance system in the ancient
Near East. Richard Little’s (2007, p.148−49) more recent The Balance of
Power in International Relations: Metaphors, Myths, and Models, although an
original way of approaching the balance of power theory by treating it as
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3. For a critical assessment of Little’s
(2007) work, see Zhang (2011, p.641-51)
a metaphor, does not really tackle the question of power balancing in the
ancient world3. Finally, Wohlforth et al. (2007b) wanted to analyze how
the balance of power theory could be studied in the context of ancient history – including ancient Near East during the first millennium. Together
with the Wohlforth team (2007a, p.177−79; 2007b, p.228), which examined eight historical case studies, their main findings were that there is a)
a tendency within the system at some point to tilt towards the unipolar
phase due to various reasons such as administrative capacity of the hegemon and bandwagoning of the weaker states; b) bids for hegemony
fail in most cases rather than succeed and c) ultimately, each attempt at
hegemony is counter-balanced to restore the equilibrium (EILSTRUPGIOVANNI, 2009, p.365). However, both Kaufman and Wohlforth concentrated mainly on the first millennium, which is somewhat less interesting from the IR perspective.
After having put the ancient Near East in the proper perspective, the
second section will briefly focus on the way the cosmopolitan culture of
diplomacy evolved in Western Asia before the emergence of the polycentric
phase of the Bronze Age. The last section will highlight some of the salient
features of the Amarna diplomacy while trying to elucidate in what way
the mid-second millennium matters in the annals of diplomacy.
Ebla and Mari Ages: Precursors to the Amarna Diplomacy
4. The concept of ‘inter-polity’ refers
here to the interaction of political
communities that predate the age of
nation-states – the all-encompassing
nature of the term describes the reciprocal action between different kinds of
entities whether city-states, states or
other type of political community (GAT,
2006, p.234, 253, 278, 302, 304, 451).
The ‘inter-polity’ relations enables us
to bypass the issue of ‘international’,
a concept coined by Jeremy Bentham
(1781), which relates to the nation-state
building process of the 17th century
Europe (NARDIN, 2013, p.316–17;
OSIANDER, 1994, p.1−2).
5. The treaty between Ebla and Abarsal
(its exact location in Syria is unknown)
dating back to ca. 2400 BCE is considered to be the oldest surviving treaty that
stipulates in great detail the commercial
and territorial relations between two
independent major states, the former of
which was a regional power (KITCHEN;
LAWRENCE, 2012, p. 9, 12; MILANO,
2006, p.1227).
12
Before entering into the world of Amarna diplomacy, it is worthwhile taking a brief look at what preceded it. In substance, we can divide
the dynamics of the Near Eastern political landscape into three different
chronological phases: a) formation of large territorial states in the Middle
and Late Bronze Age (ca. 2300–1600); b) shifting balances of power in the
Syro-Palestinian area (ca. 1600/1550–1200); c) systemic collapse of intense
interaction between regional entities (ca. 1200–900) (end of a polycentric
states-system). The Middle Bronze Age (2100–1600 BCE), in particular, included two important antecedents to the polycentric environment of the
Late Bronze Age – they are known as the Ebla and Mari Age respectively.
These epochs left an important precedent and a tradition of diplomatic
practices, which set rules for the international arena that came about during the Amarna age.
The Ebla age dating back to the 24th century BCE refers to the ancient city of Ebla (some 55 kilometers southwest of Aleppo) where a rich
archive of cuneiform tablets was found in the mid-1960s by a group of Italian archaeologists. The tablets evoke a sophisticated political scene of interpolity4 relations in ‘Eblaite’, a Semitic language closely related but distinct
from the Northwest (Hebrew, Phoenician, Ugaritic) and East Semitic (Akkadian) languages. The Ebla archive have deepened our knowledge of the
state formation process in Syria during the third millennium and discarded
the view that only Egypt and Mesopotamia were the great cultural centers
in the Near East during the Early Bronze Age (3300− 2100 BCE) (GARFINKLE, 2016, p.103; KUHRT, 1997, p.41, 49–50, 317). One of the oldest surviving diplomatic documents – such as the treaty between Ebla and Abarsal5
– originate from this period (SOLLBERGER, 1980, p.29–55). Before Ebla
Aissaoui, Alex
The Amarna diplomacy in IR perspective...
was destroyed by Sargon of Akkad around 2350 BCE, it was a regional
power with a population of about 15, 000 to 20, 000 people (LIVERANI,
2014, p.121; MILANO, 2006, p.1226). The city-state wielded political power
over an area between Hama in the west and Euphrates in the east while
conducting trade relations with maritime cities on the Mediterranean littoral coast as well as with southeastern Anatolia (PODANY, 2010, p.26−32).
Interestingly, there were cities some distance away from the center of the
kingdom that belonged to Ebla. Having pockets of territory outside of the
core area of a territorial state was widely practiced in the ancient Near East
and can be seen as a way of expanding the control of a given city-state in the
surrounding areas. These cities on the outer limits also served as a buffer
zone for a regional power but they often lead to conflicts with rival polities
(Tignor et al., 2011, p.93). In the case of Ebla, this caused territorial disputes
with Mari taking the form of a prolonged war. From a letter dubbed “letter of Enna-Dagan” we know that the clash was over land east of the Euphrates while, however, dragging in some independent cities, such as Imar
(Emar) located on the opposite side of the river (LIVERANI, 2014, p.117,
119, 124−26; PODANY, 2010, p.26, 315, fn.33−34). From the point of view
of power balancing the protagonists had to maintain delicate diplomacy in
order to guarantee the favor of neighboring city-states who could tilt the
precarious balance in favor of the adversary. Although we don’t know the
details of the conflict between Ebla and Mari, the city-states whose political
fates were tied to the ebb and flow of their opponents’ fortunes, winning
the loyalty of the small buffer kingdoms became a pattern not just during
the third millennium but especially during the second (TIGNOR et al, 2011,
p.100−01). Ultimately, the heyday of the kingdom of Ebla came to an end
when the first territorial state that can be characterized as truly a great
state in history, the Akkadian empire, put an end to this regional powerhouse although in what manner Ebla was incorporated into Sargon’s realm
is difficult to establish with certainty (MILANO, 2006, p.1227−228). Ebla
would rise again few centuries later, only to face a final destruction around
1600 BCE by the Hittites.
Mari was a Mesopotamian city on the west bank of the middle
Euphrates in Syria (close to the border of modern Iraq). A middle-rank
power with an estimated population of 40, 000 at its zenith, the kingdom of Mari reached the peak of its power under Zimri-Lim (1776−
1761) (CHARPIN, 2006, p.816−17; SASSON, 2015, p.1–2). The history
of this wealthy trading city-state – controlling strategically important
trade lanes between different regions and cultures such as Iran, Mesopotamia, and parts of Anatolia – extends from the early third millennium to the Middle Bronze Age period when it faced destruction by Hammurabi, the king of Babylon in 1759 BCE. Despite its relative affluence,
the kingdom of Mari faced two problems, one related to the shortage
of human, technological and economic resources, the other related to
the constant conflict caused by the expansionistic ambitions of several
kings like Naram-Sin of Eshnunna, Shamshi-Adad of Assyria, and Hammurabi of Babylonia (LIVERANI, 2014, p.227–29). To some extent the
technological and economic challenges are understandable when dealing with premodern societies. The scarcity of human resources, how13
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6. The document appears in Dossin
(1938, p.117−18), which is the first modern translation in French. The excerpt
in question is a translation by Charpin
(2006, p.816); see also the translation
given in Munn-Rankin (1956, p.74).
14
ever, was probably linked to the dual structure of Mari society where
large parts of the population practiced a nomadic lifestyle, which led
to the lack of specialized workforce (KUHRT, 1997, p.104; LIVERANI,
2014, p.222). The geopolitical dilemma was more pressing, however.
Mari was caught between foes both in the east and in the west, tried to
accommodate its powerful neighbors, Babylon and Yamhad, ultimately
failing in this. The strategically blessed location of the kingdom of Mari
controlling crucial commercial routes, which gave the royal house significant income, only increased the external threat (BRYCE, 2009, p.
xliii–xliv, 450−53). The anarchical environment also explains why the
Mari rulers placed particular emphasis on military conscriptions, and
those failing to register to them risked the death penalty (SASSON,
p.125–26, fn. 13, 16). The Babylonian cultural influence was, however,
ever-present in the cultural practices of Mari as Akkadian became the
preferred language for diplomatic relations even as the main spoken
language was Hurrian or Amorite. The best-known figure of the Mari
Age is Hammurabi who was famous for his law code although among
modern scholars there’s a growing consensus that it was not so much a
code of law but rather a monument to prop up Hammurabi’s prestige
as a ruler of a Mesopotamian empire and perhaps a piece of political
propaganda to win the hearts and minds of citizens of formerly autonomous city-states (VAN DE MIEROOP, 2004, p.96–98; LEVIN, 2009, p.15;
YOFFEE, 2004, p.104−09). Hammurabi, like Sargon more than a half
millennium before him, then, was the one who effectively put an end
to the kingdom of Mari under Zimri-Lim by conquering in 1761 BCE
(PODANY, 2010, p.65). However, Hammurabi’s success in uniting and
expanding Babylonia’s sphere of influence in Syro-Mesopotamia was
the result of clever and complex set of diplomatic maneuvers.
From the two examples raised above, Mari is better-known and
more extensively studied than the Ebla case because of the rich archive
that has survived to posterity: an estimated 9,000 tablets out of 17,000 excavated cuneiform tablets were already published by 2014 with the letter
correspondence constituting a quarter of that amount (SASSON, 2015,
p.4). Nevertheless, despite the scope of the findings, we have to be careful
not to read too much into the tablets, which on occasion included fabricated information, exaggeration and outright lies, at times admitted by
the protagonists themselves like king Samsi-Addu who warned his son of
the traffic of false information (SASSON, 2015, p.7). In the end, however,
the correspondence offers a precious source of information, for it enables
to develop an intimate knowledge of life in the kingdom on thematic issues like culture, kingship, administration, society, religion and warfare
(CHARPIN,2006, p.816; SASSON, 2015, p.20). Overall, the Mari archive
constitutes an interesting case study because the Mari Age, like the Amarna period few centuries later, essentially constituted a polycentric international arena. We get a glimpse of this from a fragment in below:
…There is no king who, just by himself, is truly powerful. Ten or fifteen kings
follow Hammurabi, lord of Babylon, as many do Rim-Sin, lord of Larsa, as many
Ibal-pi-el, lord of Eshnunna, as many Amut-pi-el, lord of Qatna. Twenty kings
follow Yarim-Lim, the lord of Yamkhad (Aleppo)6 (CHARPIN, 2006, p.816)
Aissaoui, Alex
The diplomatic practices and inter-polity relations we witness during
the Late Bronze Age did not come about all of a sudden but rather seem
to have followed a formula preceding at least a millennium the Near East
of the mid-second millennium. Half a dozen of territorial states alongside
Mari, namely Babylon, Larsa, Eshnunna, Qatna, and Yamhad vied for power and served as overlord to a number of vassal kings who governed from
cities within their realms (PODANY, 2014a, p.74–75). Unlike the third or
first millennium, the one characterized by lacunas in our literary sources
and the other by a hegemonic phase, the second millennium saw a fertile
ground for a relative equilibrium that favored the development of a genuine
states-system leading the way for the “international age” we witness during the Late Bronze Age (GARFINKLE, 2016, p.104−05; LAFONT, 2001).
The above excerpt – a letter sent by Itûr-Asdu, an official of Zimri-Lim from
Mari (18th century) – is one manifest example of this fact as it reflects the ancient tradition of diplomatic relations and the interdependence of the region
where the deeds of one state had an impact on the fates of others. Although
the larger context of the letter is unknown, we are hardly witnessing here
a stereotypical eastern despotic monarchy but rather a landscape of minor
powers jostling for an advantage where control of territory was never permanent or guaranteed (FLEMING, 2004, p.238−39; SASSON,2015, p.344).
The letter, while clearly showing the early signs of the rise of larger political
communities, also tells us that the basic political unit in the ancient Near
East, before large territorial states came into being, was a city-state, if we
exclude tribal formations. One contributing factor for the existence of numerous city-states was the varied topography, particularly in the Levant,
with its mountainous regions and separated river valleys and forests, which
favored the formation of smaller political entities rather than large transregional states (BRYCE, 2003, p.137; GARFINKLE, 2016, p.105; LEMCHE,
2006, p.1197, 1205).
Importantly, with the coming of the city-state culture, organized
political violence became more intense. Yet this also meant more subtle diplomacy, i.e. willingness to influence neighboring poleis by other
means than coercive violence thus setting the stage for the formation
of more familiar interstate environment. Indeed, rivalry between citystates is a constant theme in the history of the region, and it was to
outlast the rise of territorial states and empires (GARFINKLE, 2016,
p.97−105). In fact, we can agree with Joyce Marcus (1998, p.92) who argues convincingly that territorial and city-states “were often different
stages in the dynamic cycles of the same states rather than two contrasting sociopolitical types” and that “clusters of city-states were invariably
the breakdown product of earlier unitary states”. In other words, we
can see an ebb and flow process or a swing movement between unitary
and city-states polities, which are by no means mutually exclusive – this
theme is strongly present in the state formation process in the ancient
Near East (EIDEM, 2003, p.745; LIVERANI, 2005, p.4). Not surprisingly,
then, the oldest surviving interstate treaty between two independent
polities was signed by two city-states – Eanna-tum of Lagash and the
Ruler7 of Umma – ca. 2500 (KITCHEN; LAWRENCE, 2012, p.1, 5, 9).
Lagash and Umma were Sumerian city-states in southern Mesopo-
The Amarna diplomacy in IR perspective...
7. While there is uncertainty with whom
Eannatum made the treaty with, some
scholars have suggested the name
Enakale, others Urluma (KITCHEN;
LAWRENCE, 2012, p.5, fn. 7; WILCKE,
2007, p.73−75).
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tamia, which were in conflict over territorial issues. After a century
and a half of warfare over the stretch of a river called Gu’edena, which
ran between the two cities, Lagash and Umma reached an agreement
and signed a treaty described above (DUHAIME, 2012; GARFINKLE,
2016, p.103, 115). It cannot be classified as a parity nor a vassal treaty,
overwhelmingly the two most common types of treaty between ancient Near Eastern polities, but rather a superiority treaty in the sense
that Lagash as a more powerful side of the two dictated the terms of
the settlement, without nevertheless subjugating Umma (KITCHEN;
LAWRENCE, 2012, p.9). The city-states are relevant here because they
created a multi-centric environment where ever-shifting alliance strategies – including power balancing – could emerge as the above letter
from the Mari archives vividly reminds us (LIVERANI, 2005, p.10−14).
Although the treaty-making was based on commitments between
individuals rather than between states, it is safe to say the pacts were
so extensive a phenomenon in the ancient Near East that it gave the inter-polity interaction a structured nature resembling a system of states.
Between 60 and 70 inter-polity treaties now known from Western Asia
exist, the oldest dating back to the mid-third millennium (BECKMAN,
1999, p.1; LAFONT, 2001, p.53). The treaties structured not only the power relations between polities but were an attribute of independence as the
signing of a parity treaty was the prerogative of a truly sovereign state,
the most important documentation of which comes from Hattusha (Asia
Minor), Ugarit (Levant), Mari (Syria), and Amarna (Egypt) (BECKMAN,
2003, p.754; BRIEND; LEBRUN; PUECH, 1992; BRYCE, 2006, p.5). The
abundant corpus of treaties emanating from the ancient Near East offers
us novel ways to approach sovereignty and shows that we are far from
the traditional image of empire building. This widely theorized concept
remains controversial and interpretations of it vary greatly in the IR literature (e.g. GLANVILLE, 2013; OSIANDER, 2001). The treaty-making, especially the existence of alliance treaties, bears witness to the fact that the
entities involved were territorial in that they wanted to regularize and
demarcate their relations. The transformation to a modern territorial system can thus be seen as much older than the medieval and early modern
experience suggest, as is commonly seen in IR theory (BUZAN; HANSEN, 2009, p.22−24). Accordingly, the ancient world provides a number of
examples where power was organized in a polycentric framework rather
than in imperial fashion, which is often the stereotypical assumption.
What is not sufficiently taken into account in the traditional explanations
examining sovereignty relates to the external sovereignty, which is too
often taken as a sign of maintaining the international anarchy in the field
of IR (AALBERTS, 2016, p.185–87; WALTZ, 1979). Furthermore, less attention has received the idea according to which external sovereignty is
historically anterior to internal sovereignty. One of the reasons for the
prevalence of internal sovereignty relates to the fact that the concept
of sovereignty has been theorized in the early modern European context when the feudalist medieval world was starting to give away to the
emerging nation-state – this shift received an explicit expression when
Jean Bodin (1986, p. 74−87, 99−105) invented the term ‘souveraineté’ to
16
Aissaoui, Alex
describe the absolute and perpetual power of a republic to command.
Although for Bodin this meant first and foremost that a prince had to
possess the ultimate power over the nobility and the estates, in actual
practice, sovereignty started to manifest itself as the reconfiguration of
rule from papal and feudal authority to more centralized modern societies (AALBERTS, 2016, p.186). It is the external sovereignty, above all, i.e.
the capacity for a political community whatever it’s form, be it a citystate, vassal, kingdom, or large territorial state, to conduct independently
its external relations and decide whether to wage wars, what makes the
interstate relations possible (for a discussion on the various ways of defining domestic/international sovereignty) (SUGANAMI, 2007, p.512,
517; WALTZ, 1979, p.96). Another important attribute of sovereignty, i.e.
recognition, is an age-old feature bypassing the last five hundred years,
which some scholars see as sufficient for the understanding of a modern
states system (EILSTRUP-GIOVANNI, 2009, p.347–48, 369–71; BULL,
2002, p.35). Consequently, not only is sovereignty a much older phenomenon than what is usually the consensus in the field of IR, which... tends
to emphasize the formation of nation-states, it has also, has been reified
as somehow naturally given instead of being historically contingent.8
To be sure, the Westphalian model of sovereignty has started to lose its
explanatory power, but it still affects the way IR theorists think about
the interstate relations (e.g. GAT, 2006, p.648; HOLSTI, 1992, p.35, 38, 40,
42–43; OSIANDER, 2007, p.247; SUGANAMI, 2007).
Amarna diplomacy (1365-1330 BCE):
tetrarchy or great power cooperation and rivalry among vassals
“Between the kings there are brotherhood, amity and [good] relations…”9
“Don’t you know Amurru, that they follow the strong one?”
10
“The Tell el-Amarna letters – numbering a few hundred and belonging to a period near to 1400 B.C. – have acquired great fame as early documents of foreign
policy. They no doubt deserve their fame; but one can brood over them at dead
of night without finding a trace of the diplomatic craft, though there were occasions when diplomacy was sorely needed…But the reaction of the complaints
was never particularly diplomatic; they would resort to straight bleating or begging, would withhold the return gift, or would detain the unfortunate messenger, perhaps for years.”11
The Amarna diplomacy in IR perspective...
8. In recent years, critical interpretation of the traditional readings of
sovereignty are becoming more current
in the field of IR (GLANVILLE, 2013, p.
80); on the use of the concept in political theory see Osiander (2001, p.284);
for a criticism on the way the concept
of state is defined in Political Science,
see Scheidel (2016, p.7–9).
9. EA 11: 22–23, translation after
Rainey (2015, p.105).
10. EA 71: 11–16, translation after
Rainey (2015, p.452).
11. Butterfield (1970, p.357–58).
The above excerpts refer to the Amarna letter collection found in
the late 19th century CE. In the first citation above (letter EA 11) the king
of Babylon, Burna-Buriash II, writing to the Egyptian pharaoh, Amenhotep IV, declares to the neighboring kings of the region that ‘between
them there are brotherhood and good relations’. Although frictions did
arise between the great kings, the letter epitomizes the ideal toward
which the rulers aimed at – harmony and mutual respect. In the second
excerpt (letter EA 73) the ruler of Tyros, Rib-Hadda, states cynically to
the pharaoh Amenhotep IV that the Amurru people go with whoever is
stronger. This is the most explicit allusion to the alternating and unstable
process of changing alliances linked both to bandwagoning and to power
balancing behavior we find in the letter archive and will be addressed
further ahead (LIVERANI, 2004, p.104). In the third quotation the British
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12. Great powerhood is used here as a
generic term to designate the criteria for
a great power stature. In the IR literature (see e.g. DANILOVIC, 2002, p.225−27;
NEUMANN,2008, p.130−31) a major
state is usually defined as having three
elements: a) power (military, political,
economic); b) space (geographic scope
of interests, power projection); and c)
status or prestige (an acknowledgement
of major power status). Historians and
earlier generation of social scientists,
on their part, have stressed military
strength and staying power as a distinguishing feature of great power habitus
(TAYLOR, 1954, p. xxiv; WRIGHT,1942:
268; MANDELBAUM,1998−99, p.29).
18
historian and English School scholar Herbert Butterfield, while recognizing the Amarna letters as early documents of foreign policy, dismisses
the significance of the Amarna diplomacy as a whole on the grounds that
there was supposedly no proper diplomatic immunity nor comparative
advantage in the economic exchange. Butterfield’s assessment, although
not utterly unfounded, reflects a professional historian’s predilection for
the hard facts and narrative, which are largely missing in the letter archive. However, in spite of its shortcomings, the Amarna archive conveys
us a rather multi-faceted international arena where the polities involved
were fully aware of the regional complexities. Indeed, despite its temporal brevity of just few decades, the letter collection gives us in-direct hints
as regards the way the regional power balance started to change both on
a local and a general level.
As we have seen, by the time of the Amarna letters, the Near Eastern great states were already well-established powers. The international
arena can best be described as a tetrarchy of great power cooperation
and rivalry, a situation unseen before the mid-second millennium. Unlike
under Thutmose I and III who led more than a century before the Amarna period – numerous military campaigns in Western Asia almost unopposed, including the battle of Megiddo, by the time we reach the turn of
the 14th century, Egypt was joined by other great powers stretching from
Mesopotamia to Asia Minor and to the Levant. Hayim Tadmor popularized this political landscape by the appellation of “club of the great powers” in 1979. Since then, the expression and especially the term ‘club’ has
drawn some criticism for being anachronistic while the term ‘brotherhood’ is more in tune with the usage of the age (PODANY, 2010, p.192,
343, fn. 2). In the end, both terms can be problematic. If we accept the concept of brotherhood, which undoubtedly was part of the terminology of
the Amarna letters and the diplomatic ‘protocol’ of the ancient Near East
more generally, we have to be careful not to see the inter-polity relations
as too harmonious for clashes of interest and conflict were ever-present.
Nevertheless, the club of the great powers, while undoubtedly sounding
too modern, for both ‘great power’12 and ‘club’ as colloquial terms have a
history of just few hundred years, they nonetheless carry the meaning of
a restricted community reserved for few selected members.
There are obvious differences between these polities – Egypt for
one had a tradition of being a continuous great power dating back to
the early third millennium with the exception of the Hyksos occupation
while the Near Eastern major states knew both periods of imperial expansion and political fragmentation. When Egypt at the beginning of the
New Kingdom campaigned in Western Asia, she did not have to face a
group of rival great powers except for Mitanni. This development was
in stark contrast to the 17th and 16th centuries, time period known as the
Dark Age and characterized by scarce textual documentation, political
fragmentation and the decline of the city-states at the expense of seminomadic groups. The Dark Age period was followed by a gradual and
dynamic change, however, which transformed the small and weak states
into a system of territorial states (KUHRT, 1997, p. 185−380; VAN DE MIEROOP, 2004, p.125; VAN DE MIEROOP, 2010, p. 226−34). It is somewhat
Aissaoui, Alex
difficult to establish with exactitude the precise reasons for the formation
of this great powers’ club – no doubt, it was a process involving internal
and external forces in the state formation. The international arena that
came as a result of multitude of coexisting states both small and great
was unprecedented in its geographic scope, multipolarity and relative
stability when compared to the Middle Bronze Age period of the ancient
Near East (LIVERANI, 2014, p.106, 271, 278−80). So far, there are no other
ancient Near Eastern sources available to us that would describe this regional system as comprehensively as the Amarna archive.
The Amarna letter collection dating back to the mid-14th century,
probably the most important source of its kind in terms of describing the
inter-polity relations in the late Bronze Age, portrays an international
arena where the interaction in variety of forms – spheres of influence,
deterrence, prestige, alliance formation, trade and survival of small citystates as well as the rise and decline of major states – were at the center
of the missives exchanged between the great states and the vassals. The
Amarna period describes the logic of international anarchy almost a millennium before Thucydides’ classic study of the causes of the Peloponnesian War (431−404). Unlike within the Greek poleis, however, the world
of the ancient Near East during this period was less Hobbesian – military clashes were followed by relative peace and stability, which were upheld by peace treaties, exchange of precious gifts, marital arrangements
between sovereigns, by the notion of ‘brotherhood’ depicting equality
between great states, and diplomatic envoys and letters (e.g. COHEN,
1996a, p.13; MORRIS, 2010, p.197; PODANY, 2014a, p.87−88, 91−94). Although hardly a unique collection, for there must have been other similar
cuneiform tablets before the discovery of the Amarna archive, the crucial
difference between the two is the multi-centered environment the letters
depict. Before the Hellenistic period and the Roman conquest, the Greek
city-states – while at times both fighting and cooperating with each other
and with the Persian empire – were never part of a broader multiethnic
states-system although they maintained trade links and colonies in the
wider Mediterranean world13 (ECKSTEIN, 2006, p.37−48).
In the ancient Near East, by contrast, there were several smaller
and larger political units interacting with each other and using a common language in order to overcome linguistic barriers, which included
Akkadian, Amorite, Egyptian, Elamite, Hittite, Hurrian and Sumerian,
each belonging to separate, and in some cases to unknown, language
groups. During the Hellenistic period until the battle of Pydna (146 BCE),
which marked the end of Alexandrian empires and paved the way for Roman dominance over much of the eastern Mediterranean and Near East,
the interstate relations became more complex and cosmopolitan but this
does not change the fact that a coherent system of states, in the sense we
see in the ancient Near East, was lacking in the Greek world (DAVIS,
1999, p.51−55; TUCKER, 2011, p.63−64). Hence, the ancient Greece of the
Classical Age (ca. 500−323 BCE) was predominantly what the historian
Herodotus (Book VIII, 144) called to hellēnikon, “the Greek thing”, i.e.
peer polity interaction14 amongst the Greeks, rather than a multicultural inter-state arena as such (BUZAN,1993, p.333−34; BUZAN; LITTLE,
The Amarna diplomacy in IR perspective...
13. For a take on the cultural and ethnic
homogeneity of ancient Greece, see
MORRIS, 2009, p.99, 132, 159−60.
14. Western Asia, by the time of mid-second millennium, was enough tightly
knit an area to constitute what the British archaeologists have called the ‘Peer
Polity Interaction’ (MA, 2003, p.12−14,
19, 32−35; RENFREW, 1986, p.1−18;
VAN DE MIEROOP, 2010, p.30–31;
YOFFEE, 2005, p.1774). The Peer Polity
Interaction is a concept to explain the
close social co-existence and contacts
between the different polities beyond
a specified spatial-temporal context. It
included the use of common diplomatic
language, a nascent diplomatic protocol,
international treaties, and
long-distance commerce.
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15. For a brief contextual analysis of the
letters, see Moran (1992, p.xiii−xxxiv).
20
1994, p.240). Overall, this state of affairs sums up the case for the Roman
world as well especially after the Punic Wars, which ultimately led to the
Pax Romana in the classical world and lasted for several hundred years
(GOLDSWORTHY, 2003, p.357−65). One clear indication of this relative
cultural insularity is the fact the there is no evidence of a systematic attempt to gather anything resembling a diplomatic archive in the Roman
world – Rome like China were hegemonic entities which saw themselves
as universal empires instead of being part of a system of great states interacting with each other on the basis of equality (COHEN, 1999 , p.10).
In all, the Amarna letters include 382 cuneiform tablets which
describe the diplomatic correspondence under the Egyptian pharaohs
Amenophis III (ca. 1390−1353) and Amenophis IV (better-known as
Akhenaten) (ca. 1352−1336)15. The documents had been buried in a room
of the palace when the court moved from Akhetaten back to Thebes,
to mark the return to ‘normalcy’, soon after the death of Akhenaten
(DROWER, 1973, p.483). However, to keep things in perspective, it is
worthwhile remembering that the Amarna period does not constitute a
culmination of the ancient Near Eastern diplomacy per se. The exchange
of ambassadors, the attention paid to the protocol, the princely marriages, the conclusion of treaties, the rhetoric of negotiations were highly
structured already at least by a millennium before as the Ebla and Mari
ages testify (LAFONT,2001, p.56; PODANY, 2010: p.19−32). Nevertheless, the Amarna letter collection, with the sort of ‘still image’ precision
and width, constitutes, despite its shortcomings, one of the key elements
to understand the inter-polity relations in the ancient Near East during
the 14th century. The correspondence was primarily conducted between
Amenhotep IV and his vassals in Syria-Palestine, but some forty of them
were from or to the kings that were considered as ‘Great Kings’. As the
title of this section suggests, the interplay took place between four great
powers as one fell (Mitanni) and the other (Elam) was not really an integral member of the regional system. Besides Egypt, those were the rulers
of Babylonia, Mitanni, and Hatti and, after the collapse of Mitanni, Assyria would enter the international scene as well. In the letters, the kings
mainly discussed diplomatic matters related to the exchange of precious
goods and of royal women. The language of most of the letters was Akkadian (a dialect of Babylonian), the lingua franca of interstate diplomacy
in the region.
Through the Amarna letter collection, we can witness how the
great power relations changed in the Near East. Each state’s status was
carefully demarcated, but as the relative power of the great powers sometimes changed quickly, frictions were bound to arise. The collapse of Mitanni as a great state – a unique event in the 300 years of the Late Bronze
Age – as a result of Hittite aggression and internal power struggle is not
explicitly addressed in the letters except for a one single letter written
in Hurrian, where the Mitannian king Tushratta mentions the Hittites
as “the enemy of the Hurrian king” (EA 24: 8−15 apud RAINEY, 2015,
p.189). Indirectly, however, this debacle in the political landscape of the
Near East is conveyed to us in the exchange of letters between Egypt,
Babylonia, and Assyria. The great beneficiary of the fall of Mitanni was
Aissaoui, Alex
The Amarna diplomacy in IR perspective...
Assyria which was able to liberate herself of the Mitannian tutelage. Assyria’s urge for emancipation had wider implications, however, as it was
also under the control of Babylonia. The rise of Assyria under Ashuruballit is thus indicative of the dramatic change in the balance of power
in Near East during the Late Bronze Age. Fortunately, Assyria’s return to
the international scene as a great state is rather well documented in the
Amarna archive. Consequently, Ashur-uballit sent two letters (ca. 1350)
to the king of Egypt Amenophis IV. In the first letter (EA 15: 7–22) his approach was visibly tentative:
…I have sent my envoy to you to see and to see your land. Up to now, my fathers
have not written. Today, I have written to you. [I] have sent to you an excellent
chariot, two horses and one date-stone of genuine lapis lazuli as your greeting
gift. Do not delay the envoy whom I have sent to you for a visit. May he see and
may he depart. May he see your behavior (nature) and the behavior (nature) of
your land and may he depart (RAINEY, 2015, p.129)
The letter gives us several clues as to the way the Near Eastern
states-system functioned. From it we learn that it was not a custom for
messenger-diplomats to stay long periods of time in foreign courts – this
has sometimes rather excessively been interpreted as a sign of the relative
crudeness of the pre-modern states-systems (ANDERSON, 1993, p.6–7,
11, 43; BERRIDGE, 2000, p.214, 222; ECKSTEIN, 2006, p.97; FUBINI,
2000, p.29, 41; JÖNSSON, 2000, p.214–15; MATTINGLY, 1988). More importantly, Ashur-uballit is not making any claims to brotherhood that
was one of the defining features of the Near Eastern system – Assyria
still considered herself as an aspiring power. In the second letter (EA 16:
22–33), however, the tone is clearly more assertive reflecting military success and power:
When I saw your ambassadors, I rejoiced greatly. May your envoys dwell in
my presence in great solicitude…When the Hanigalbatian (Assyrian term of for
Mitanni) king sent to your father, to the land of Egypt, they sent to him twenty
talents of gold. I’m equal to a Hanigalbatian king but you send to me x minas
gold. It is not sufficient for the going and returning and the wages of my envoys.
If your intention is truly genuine, send much gold and as for that house of yours,
send to me so that they may bring what you need (RAINEY, 2015, p.131, 133).
The letter is astonishingly sure, almost arrogant, marking the formal entry of Assyria into the “club of the great powers” (LIVERANI,
1990, p.71–72). While Assyria became a truly established power only in
the following century after having beaten Hatti in the battle of Nihriya, already the Amarna archive bears witness to her nascent rise which
became possible as Mitanni, Assyria’s former overlord, collapsed. Meanwhile, Burna-Buriash II, king of Babylon, who wanted to show his loyalty
to Egypt by hinting at a Canaanite plot against Egypt in the past, was
enraged by the Assyrian rapprochement with the latter, which made him
send an angry letter (EA 9: 19–38) to pharaoh Akhenaten as he considered
Assyria to be part of his vassal states:
In (the time of) Kurigalzu, my father, all the Canaanites wrote to him, saying:
Come to the border of the land; let us revolt and let us be allied with you. My
father wrote this to them, saying: Leave being allied with me! If you become
estranged from the king of Egypt, my brother, and become allied with another,
will I not come and will I not plunder you? How can there be an alliance with
me?...Now, as for the Assyrian, my vassal, it was not I who sent him to you. Why
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on their own initiative have they come to your country? If you love me, they will
conduct no business whatsoever. Send them off to me empty handed (RAINEY,
2015, p.93, 95).
Egypt, however, did receive the Assyrian messengers and recognized Assyria’s new position as great power as is attested in the Amarna
letter EA 16 (COHEN; WESTBROOK, 2007, p.7; KUHRT, 1997 p.352; RAGIONIERI, 2000, p.48; VAN DE MIEROOP, 2004, p.127–28). We cannot
ascertain with certainty Egypt’s motives for recognizing Assyria, yet circumstantial evidence points to the threat posed by the other rising power
Hatti suggesting that Egypt considered Assyria, at this stage, a potential
counterweight to the Hittite power. Ultimately, even Babylonia had to
adapt to the new realities and ultimately Burna-Buriash agreed to a royal
marriage with Assyria (GILES, 2001, p.131−32). It is suggestive that the
royal title šar māt Aššur “king of Assyria”, was first used by Ashur-uballit
on his own seal thus demonstrating the shift from a “city of Ashur” or ālu
Aššur into a regional polity māt Aššur or “land of Ashur” (LIVERANI,
2011, p.257). What remains unclear, however, is the question of when exactly did the process of ‘emancipation’ from Mitannian and Babylonian
yoke start for Assyria. We know that already before Ashur-uballit, the
Assyrian kings (GILES, 1997, p.87−98, GRAYSON, 1972; MAIDAN, 2011,
p.107−14) were making Assyria a serious contender on the international
scene. At stake was Assyria’s yearning to be recognized as an independent great state whereas the other powers, mainly Babylonia, felt that this
would weaken their relative position in the region. Indeed, a preoccupation with recognition, which is one of the central themes in the Amarna
archive, connects the Amarna period to a wider framework of international and diplomatic history. The letter also emphasizes the special position Egypt enjoyed as the central power among the great powers – the
other great states constantly sought her approval. However, it is possible
that Egypt’s motives can be partly explained by a genuine willingness to
appease the rising power of Assyria or to see the rising power as a useful
ally against the Hittites. Be that as it may, from the point of view of power
balancing the crucial factor here is the interdependence, i.e. action–reaction -like relationship that we equate to be a central modern feature of
interstate relations. While Assyria would not yet be that hegemonic state
we witness in the first millennium, its liberation from the Mitannian and
Babylonian yoke meant that its westward expansion was putting pressure
on Hatti territory.
The vast majority of the Amarna letters – almost nine out of ten
– revolved around the relationship of the vassals (ardu) with their great
power lords (bēlu), and with Egypt in particular. Unlike in the missives
of the Great Kings where the primary interest was in the diplomatic exchange of messengers, goods, and women, the contents of the vassal letters reveal a greater inter-polity dynamism. From these letters, one sees
that the main purpose of the king’s writing was to acquire personnel and
other goods, to introduce Egyptian officials and secure obedience to their
orders, and to arrange for supplies for his troops (MORAN, 1992, p.xxviii).
Yet there’s no clear evidence to suggest that Egypt pursued a deliberate
policy of divide and rule. Rather we see an attempt to maintain a fragile
22
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The Amarna diplomacy in IR perspective...
status quo (SEVERAL, 1972, p.129; ALDRED, 1975, p.85). Nevertheless,
the relations among vassals seem to have been in a chronic state of unrest where inter-city conflict, problems with nomads called the Hapiru,
disruptions to trade and communication and disregard of imperial orders
were a constant (SEVERAL, 1972, p.123−25). The Amarna archive paints
a picture of an imbroglio over competing vassal states ostensibly trying to
protect the interest of their overlord, while in actual fact advancing their
own ambitions and ever-ready to change their loyalties (ALDRED, 1975,
p. 82, 104−05; EA 289, EA 292, EA 294, EA 333 apud SCHNIEDEWIND,
2015). In this environment, political calculations based on power balancing were never far away (DROWER, 1973, p. 559−67).
One of the most interesting aspects of the vassal correspondence
relates to a local ruler in Amurru by the name of Abdi-Ashirta as this
highlights a sudden challenge to the regional balance of power. AbdiAshirta managed to unite the disparate population of Amurru, a region
located roughly between the Mediterranean coast and the Orontes River
(north-western Syria and northern Lebanon). In doing so, he created a
powerful buffer between the spheres of influence of the rising new Hittite empire and fledgling kingdom of Mittani to the north and the Egyptian kingdom to the south. In the Amarna letters, we learn how he tried
to conceal his ambitious expansionist plans by exploiting the unsettled
situation concomitant with the Hittite incursion into Amurru. While
claiming to be a loyal servant of Egypt (EA 60, p.19−29; EA 62, p.34−49
apud SCHNIEDEWIND, 2015) by asserting to be “guarding the city of
Sumur and the city of Ullassa and all the territories of my king, my son
god, my lord” and regretting being denigrated by other vassals, AbdiAshirta didn’t mind intimidating and attacking fellow vassal rulers in the
region, seizing their cities and lands in the process (RAINEY, 2015, p.425).
It seems that Abdi-Ashirta wanted to expand his own powerbase at the
expense of Egypt, perhaps looking for a vassalage with Hatti, and while
doing it, overplayed his card. Meanwhile, the Hittite king Suppiluliuma
I had forged relations with Amurru and with the king of Kadesh in view
of entangling in Syrian affairs (LIVERANI, 2014, p.304). The instability
in Amurru was a test case for Egypt, which was not keen to intervene
unless really necessary – in this case, she had been warned on several
occasions by a loyal vassal Rib-Hadda of Byblos (EA 108, p.20−58; EA
117, p.6−52 apud SCHNIEDEWIND, 2015). Although slow to react, the
way Egypt dealt with Abdi-Ashirta left no room for hesitation: after having occupied the Egyptian garrison in Sumur, the Amurru ruler was
called to Egypt and apparently killed there even if the Amarna archive
is not very clear on this fact (EA 101, p.18–33 apud SCHNIEDEWIND,
2015; COHEN; WESTBROOK, 2000, p.8). The action taken by Akhenaten demonstrates that Egypt was not facing a general state of anarchy
in Palestine as sometimes purported, rather she had quite a firm presence in the Levant despite lingering problems there (SEVERAL, 1972,
p.123, 132−33; ALDRED, 1975, p.85). However, Abdi-Ashirta’s son, Aziru,
did not acquiesce to being an Egyptian vassal and ultimately defected to
the Hittite camp (BECKMAN, 1999, p.36). This against the background
when the great power of Mitanni collapsed, the expansion of the Hit23
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tites in central Syria posed a threat to Egyptian interests, and when other
vassals such as Aitakkama (also known as Aitaggama or Etaka-ma) was
involved in subversive activities in the city of Kadesh (LIVERANI, 1998,
p.46; SCHNIEDEWIND, 2015, p.21).
Overall, in bringing the quotidian of everyday diplomacy of the
ancient Near East out in the open, the Amarna letter collection as a primary source is unlike no other. What sets the Amarna period apart from
the earlier eras in the Near East, is the fact that the inter-polity relations
became more formalized as the political units became more fully integrated into a region-wide system. During the few decades, two significant changes took place in the great power relations of the region. The
diplomatic letters exchanged between great states and vassals draw a
picture of transitional phase in the inter-polity relations where we see a
move from a tetrarchy to a trierarchy of relations. First, Mitanni, Egypt’s
ally and a buffer state, was conquered by the rising power of the Hittite
state. Second, the gradual rise of Assyria and its acceptance into the club
of the great powers, despite some protests on the part of Babylonia, is
clearly witnessed in the letter archive. These developments had obvious
implications for the carefully maintained balance of power in Syria-Palestine. There is little doubt that the 14th century stands out in the whole
period of the Late Bronze Age insofar as the rich primary sources bring
the Near Eastern world much closer to a modern reader than earlier periods. Although we have to avoid putting the Amarna period in a pedestal,
it is fair to say that in certain important ways the diplomatic relations we
encounter from the mid- to the late second millennium was more cosmopolitan in the region than before. By cosmopolitan we mean that polities
of different sizes and cultural backgrounds all interacted with one another with the help of a common diplomatic language, Akkadian, and an
urge to be recognized by peers and vassal states alike. Brief, we can see
the formation of a genuinely systemic international environment where
all the ingredients of the international anarchy problematic the students
of world politics tend to equate as more recent phenomena saw their birth
in the ancient Near Eastern world.
Conclusions
The Near Eastern diplomatic practices were firmly established
long before the emergence of Amarna diplomacy. If we look at the limitations of the missives, the inadequate background information, the lack
of diplomatic immunity or the noninstitutionalized nature of diplomatic
presentation, then we are not able to read much into this diplomatic correspondence and as a result we can be as dismissive as Herbert Butterfield raised above. Indeed, the very term ‘diplomacy’ does not emerge in
the ancient documents even in the Greco-Roman world, let alone in the
ancient Near East, not until 1796 CE when Edmund Burke first uses the
word. The same is true of the expression ‘great power’, which became a
colloquial term only after the Napoleonic Wars. If we want to continue
the list from a IR perspective, we have to add concepts like ‘empire’ and
‘balance of power’, both of which found written expressions only in the
24
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The Amarna diplomacy in IR perspective...
Roman context and in the early modern Europe respectively. However,
in the words of Bertrand Lafont (2001: 41), an Assyriologist, we can ask:
“…is it necessary to conceptualize diplomacy to make diplomacy?”
British historian Paul Kennedy (1987, p.21) has noted that what stood
in the way of gaining the mastery of Europe after 1500 CE was the fact
that each of the rival forces had access to the new military techniques, so
that no single power ever possessed the decisive edge. The dynamics of
the Amarna diplomacy and its precedents in the Near East were surprisingly similar in the sense that no area in the region was technologically
superior to the other. The reason for this lies in the close coexistence and
contacts that existed between the polities. This resulted in fierce competition and imitation that led to the so-called peer polity interaction.
The Amarna letters not only depict the power change of the territorial states in question – the rise of Hatti and Assyria, and the fall of Mitanni – relatively closely but they also show the nature of the diplomacy
and the systemic level of inter-polity interaction with a precision, which
is rare at this point in time. This development sets the Late Bronze Age
apart from the earlier and later periods in Near Eastern history where
we see imperial hegemonic tendencies. The Amarna diplomacy and its
precedents in the ancient Near East challenge traditional views held dear
in IR theory about the contemporary and Eurocentric nature of concepts
such as sovereignty, great powerhood and statehood altogether, as well as
power balancing. These questions inevitably lead us to ask how far back
in time can we apply the idea of an international system. By reaching out
to the complex political landscape of the ancient Near East, IR scholars
can include large chunks of international history into their research agendas, and, subsequently, contribute to the mutually beneficial dialogue between IR theory and world history.
References
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