Artatama I was a king of the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni in the late fifteenth century BC. His reign coincided with the reigns of Egyptian pharaohs

Amenhotep II Amenhotep II (sometimes called ''Amenophis II'' and meaning ''Amun is Satisfied'') was the seventh pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. Amenhotep inherited a vast kingdom from his father Thutmose III, and held it by means of a few militar ...

and Thutmose IV. He is believed to be the son of earlier Mitanni king

Shaushtatar Shaushtatar (also spelled Šauštatar) was a king of the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni in the fifteenth century BC. Two tablets of Shaushtatar (AIT 13 and AIT 14), legal decisions, were found at Alalakh. They mention Niqmepa, the king of Alalakh, p ...

. A tablet of Artatama was found at

Tall Bazi Tall Bazi, is an ancient Near East archaeological site in Raqqa Governorate of Syria in the same general area as Mari and Ebla. It is located on the Euphrates river in upper Syria, about 60 kilometers south of Turkey near the abandoned town of Ta ...

granting land. Tablets were also found at

Alalakh Alalakh (''Tell Atchana''; Hittite: Alalaḫ) is an ancient archaeological site approximately northeast of Antakya (historic Antioch) in what is now Turkey's Hatay Province. It flourished, as an urban settlement, in the Middle and Late Bronze Ag ...

. Artatama is referred to in the

Amarna letters The Amarna letters (; sometimes referred to as the Amarna correspondence or Amarna tablets, and cited with the abbreviation EA, for "El Amarna") are an archive, written on clay tablets, primarily consisting of diplomatic correspondence between t ...

(EA 29) as the grandfather of Tushratta and father of

Shuttarna II Shuttarna II (or Šuttarna) was a king of the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni in the early 14th century BC. Shuttarna was a descendant and probably a son of the great Mitannian king Artatama I. He was an ally of the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep III and t ...

, who established an alliance with Thutmose IV of Ancient Egypt. Facing the perils of fighting a war on two fronts, the Hittites in the north and Egypt in the south, Artatama approached Amenhotep II with an offer of peaceful division of contested lands in Syria. A peaceful resolution of an old conflict could grow into a political and military alliance, but the Egyptians suspected foul play and denied definite answer for years. At one point during the reign of Thutmose IV they proposed a marriage between Thutmose and Artatama's daughter, but for unknown reasons Artatama rejected the offer. The Egyptians had to make ''seven'' consecutive marriage proposals before Artatama finally agreed. Thus, Artatama may have been the father of Queen

Mutemwiya Mutemwiya (also written as Mutemwia, Mutemuya or Mutemweya) was a minor wife of the Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh Thutmose IV, and the mother of Pharaoh Amenhotep III. Mutemwiya's name means "Mut in the divine barque". While unconfirmed, it has be ...

and the maternal grandfather of

Amenhotep III Amenhotep III ( egy, jmn-ḥtp(.w), ''Amānəḥūtpū'' , "Amun is Satisfied"; Hellenized as Amenophis III), also known as Amenhotep the Magnificent or Amenhotep the Great, was the ninth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty. According to different ...

. Artatama was succeeded by his son

. He is mentioned in the later Šattiwaza treaty between the Hittite king Šuppiluliuma I and Mitanni vassal king Šattiwaza, for example "When king Tušratta died, the Storm-god decided the legal case of Artatama: his son (= Šuttarna) brought the dead Artatama back to life.".Devecchi, Elena. “Details That Make the Difference: The Akkadian Manuscripts of the ‘Šattiwaza Treaties.’” Die Welt Des Orients, vol. 48, no. 1, 2018, pp. 72–95

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Artatama 01 Hurrian kings 15th-century BC people