Commensality and Political Nurture in the Amarna Letters

Abstract

The Amarna letters constitute a key record of data on inter-regional relations in Southwest Asia during the second half of the fourteenth century BCE, expanding its interpretive potentialities to the whole of the Late Bronze Age. They also convey a plethora of information about political performances in the Levant during that period. In particular, two clear aspects of these political performances, involving commensality (or the idea of commensality in its different manifestations), could be identified at first glance in the letters: (1) on an earthly level, eating and drinking, as part of a diplomatic contact; and (2) on a cosmological level, the symbolic nurture provided by the breath of the Egyptian king for the Canaanite petty kings, which was related to a complex of political expressions of alliance and expectations of protection as well. This paper analyses, from a socio-anthropological perspective, some textual examples concerning both of these aspects, demonstrating the different articulations of the political sociability and symbolism of sharing food and drink. In sum, situations of commensality and nurture constitute an important part of the socio-politics at work in the Levant in ancient times, including some aspects of these features that can indeed be traced as well in some biblical texts.