A little more than a century has passed since the discovery of the Amarna letters. At first virtually unique and so extraordinary that even their genuineness was seriously questioned, these letters over the years have gradually acquired context and perspective. As subsequent discoveries made clear, the Amarna letters reflect a cosmopolitan culture, a “cuneiform culture,” that throughout most of the second millennium B.C. extended from the mountains to the east of Assyria and Babylonia, across