00:00In 1887, a woman digging in the Egyptian desert found
00:03hundreds of clay tablets buried in the sand.
00:07Archaeologists called them the Amarna letters.
00:09Most of them were royal diplomacy, trade agreements, military alliances.
00:14Political negotiations between the most powerful kingdoms in the ancient world,
00:18but buried deep inside the collection were letters that read nothing.
00:21Like official correspondence, a foreign queen writing to the Egyptian king,
00:25not about politics.
00:27Written around 1350 BCE,
00:30these tablets provide a rare record of international diplomacy in the ancient world.
00:34They reveal how Egypt built alliances and maintained its influence across the ancient world.
00:41Today, the Amarna letters remain a key source for understanding ancient diplomacy.
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