Some Methodological Requisites for the Study of the Amarna Jargon: Notes on the Essence of That Language

The text as it is presented here is essentially the same version as submitted for publication in the proceedings of the El-Amarna Centennial Symposium held in Chicago on February 1987. Although announced as scheduled to appear years ago [Barry J. Beitzel and Gordon D. Young (eds.), Tell el-Amarna, 1887-1987, Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns; publication deadline was initially set for mid-1988!], this book has not seen light yet(?)  :-( . Machine-typed(!) copies of this paper have been circulating and were occasionally referred to by some of my colleagues on various occasions (which I appreciate a lot!). Therefore, I felt it necessary to make the paper available to the public. As mentioned, the text presented below is a copy of the version I submitted for publication more than 16 years ago, only slightly edited (please excuse the cumbersome style!) and with some (very few) bibliographical additions. The impetus for finally making this paper available to the public has recently come when I was invited to contribute a paper to a volume of studies relating to cultural interrelations between Egypt and Canaan,being the outcome of a meeting (in Vienna in June 2003) of the team of an ongoing project headed by Manfred Bietak and Orly Goldwasser, which I was privileged to attend as a guest scholar.* My contribution to that volume will be an updated version of this unpublished paper. __________ *Volume 15 in the series Aegypten und Levante; tentative title: In the Footsteps of the Hyksos.