The Imperial Gaze in the Historiography of Amarna Politics

Abstract

The discovery of the Amarna letters in 1887 and their subsequent translation made it possible for ancient Near Eastern specialists of the time to shed new light on the sociopolitical conditions of Syria-Palestine during the Late Bronze Age. In reviewing the scholarly literature of the period and following decades, we may see that the situations of internal conflict described in the letters allowed researchers to draw a general picture of ancient indigenous political communities that was undoubtedly aligned with the imperial perceptions of non-European peoples current during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This article explores the conceptions and descriptions that several scholars expressed about Amarnian Syro-Palestinian or Canaanite societies from the discovery of the letters up to the 1970s. The analysis also seeks to contextualize the covert imperial gaze expressed by these scholars as well as their more overt orientalism within the geopolitical situations in the Middle East at the time. Finally, the article assesses a turning point, instigated by Mario Liverani, in the interpretation of Amarna politics and its relationship with the fading imperialist gaze in the historiography of the region since the 1980s.