Mari Letters
The Mari Letters are a collection of royal correspondence from Mari, an ancient city state on the Euphrates that rivalled the power of Babylon until its destruction by Hammurabi in 1760 BC.
About 2320 BC Lugalzaggisi, the Sumerian ruler of Erech (Uruk), claimed an empire that stretched to the Mediterranean. He was defeated by Sargon of Akkad. Ebla was destroyed either by Sargon at this time or perhaps by his grandson, Naram-sin (c. 2275 BC), and the region of Syria became part of the Akkadian empire. The dynasty of Akkad was overthrown at its centre and superseded by dynasties first of Guti and then Ur. The end of these dynasties was brought about chiefly by a new migration from Syria, this time of the Amorites. Between about 2000 and 1800 BC they covered both Syria and Mesopotamia with a multitude of small principalities and cities, mostly governed by individual rulers.
The period of the Amorites is vividly mirrored in the Mari Letters, a great archive of royal correspondence found at the site of Mari, near the modern frontier with Iraq. Among the principal figures mentioned are the lawgiver Hammurabi of Babylon (himself an Amorite) and a ruler of Aleppo, part of whose kingdom was the city of Alalakh, on the Orontes near what was later Antioch. Around 1600 BC northern Syria, including the cities of Alalakh, Aleppo, and Ebla in its Amorite phase, suffered destruction at the hands of the aggressive Hittite kings, Hattusilis I or Mursilis I, from central Anatolia.
The tablets were written in Akkadian and they give information about the kingdom, its customs, and the names of people who lived during that time. More than 3000 are letters, the remainder includes administrative, economic, and judicial texts. Almost all the tablets found were dated to the last 50 years of Mari's independence (c. 1800 – 1750 BC), and most have now been published.
Letters From Mesopotamia PDF Official, Business, and Private Letters on Clay Tablets from Two Millennia, Translated and with an Introduction by A. Leo Oppenheim