Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2021
Abstract
The Amarna letters represent a rich source of information on the political, social and economic reality of the ancient Near East in the mid 14th century BC. Given the large geographical area covered by these letters, this set of documents also offers an opportunity to understand the relationships between individual rulers and their people and to study the practices and background of their interactions.
Today, an attitudinal or unreasonable hostility towards or dislike of strangers is largely identified as "xenophobia". It is the aim of this article to provide evidence for the existence or absence of this phenomenon in official written correspondence from the ancient Near East and to set it into a broader socio-political context.