Love, War, and Diplomacy

The Discovery of the Amarna Letters and the Bronze Age World They Revealed

By: Eric H. Cline

Narrated by: John Chancer

This audiobook narrated by John Chancer gives a spellbinding account of the archaeological find that opened a window onto the vibrant diplomatic world of the ancient Near East

In 1887, an Egyptian woman made an astonishing discovery among the ruins of the heretic king Akhenaten's capital city, a site now known as Amarna. She found a cache of cuneiform tablets, nearly four hundred in all, that included correspondence between the pharaohs and the mightiest powers of the day, such as the Hittites, Babylonians, and Assyrians. Love, War, and Diplomacy tells the story of the Amarna Letters and the dramatic world of the Bronze Age they revealed.

Blending scholarly expertise with painstaking detective work, Eric Cline describes the spectacular discovery, the fierce competition among dealers and museums to acquire the tablets, and the race by British and German scholars to translate them. Dating to the middle of the fourteenth century BCE and the time of Tutankhamun's immediate predecessors, Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaten, the Amarna Letters are the only royal archive from New Kingdom Egypt known to exist. In them, we learn of royal marriages, diplomatic negotiations, gift-giving, intrigue, and declarations of brotherly love between powerful rulers as well as demands made by the petty kings in Canaan who owed allegiance to Egypt's pharaohs.

A monumental achievement, Love, War, and Diplomacy transports listeners to the glorious age of the Amarna Letters and the colonial era that brought them to light and reveals how the politics, posturing, and international intrigues of the ancient Near East are not so unlike today's.

©2025 Eric H. Cline (P)2025 Princeton University Press

Great insights into the wood prior to the Bronze Age collapse

In addition to being an outstanding scholar, Eric Cline is a great storyteller In this book he shows the Amarna letters opened to us a world we didn’t understand before the discovery of the ancient texts. In addition, he opens up the world of scholastic competition that accompanied the acquisition and translation of these documents. For me it was a “Don’t put it down until I am finished “ reading experience.

Good book, bad reader

The Amarna letters attest to the diplomatic reach of New Kingdom Egypt during the case, 14th c BCE. This is an accessible account of the discovery and contents of these amazing historical sources. But the reader isn’t very good: bad breathing and astonishingly inaccurate pronunciation. I’m not expecting any audiobook reader to nail Akkadian names or ancient Egyptian pronunciation. But says the word Amarna as “Armana” for a good chunk of the book, then as “Armarna.” Drove me round the bend.