Rib-Hadda of Byblos and the Egyptian State: Cultural and Political Contacts and Conflicts in the Late Bronze Age Levant

EMANUEL PFOH

Mainz

Congreso; 66e Rencontre Assyriologique ?Cultural Contact ? Cultures of Contact?, Frankfurt am Main & Mainz, 25-29 July 2022; 2022

IAA

In the corpus of the Amarna letters, the dossier of Rib-Hadda, ruler of Byblos, stands out for its size (around 70 letters) and for its value for chronological anchoring and its historical and political notices. Yet these documents also present us with precious evidence of ideological and political conceptions proper of Levantine societies which clash, in the letters, with those conceptions behind the Egyptian administration of the territory during the Late Bronze Age. These clashes (and also misunderstandings in the diplomatic communication) were initially detected by Mario Liverani already in 1967. This paper builds on and evaluates the legacy of Liverani’s seminal analysis after more than half a century, concerning the patterns of political contacts between the Levantine rulers and the Egyptian officials (in particular, the person-to-person communication between a local ruler and an Egyptian state representative or the Pharaoh himself) and the interaction between different cultural worldviews (Levantine, Egyptian) mediated by diplomatic contacts. A perspective from political anthropology may indeed contribute to enhance our understanding of the deeds expressed in the letters. Finally, we also find some room for commenting on the impact of social-science methods and approaches on the interpretation of ancient historical sources.