Labaya of Shechem and the Politics of the Amarna Age

The Amarna Letters have been the object of many studies since their accidental discovery in 1887 at El-Amarna in Middle Egypt. Beginning with text copies and collations such as those by H. Winckler and L. Abel in 1889-90,1 C. Bezold and E. A. W. Budge in 1892,2 and Otto Schroeder in 1914-15,3 it was not long until what has come to be the definitive edition of these texts was published by J. A. Knudtzon in 1915.4 Since that time, another seven important tablets which were part of the original find at El-Amarna have been published by F. Thureau-Dangin and G. Dossin.5 The site yielded some dozen or so more tablets and fragments in the course of later excavations by German and British archaeologists.6 Similar documents have been added to the total Amarna corpus by discoveries at various locations in Palestine, including Tell el-Hesi, Taanach, Gezer, Shechem,7 Jericho,8 Megiddo,9 and Hazor.10