Yursa was a town from the

1350 Year 1350 ( MCCCL) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events January–December * January 9 – Giovanni II Valente becomes Doge of Genoa. * May 23 (possible date) &n ...

–

1335 BC Year 1335 ( MCCCXXXV) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events January–December * May 2 – Otto the Merry, Duke of Austria, becomes Duke of Carinthia. * July 30 ...

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 ...

correspondence. The site, a city/

city-state A city-state is an independent sovereign city which serves as the center of political, economic, and cultural life over its contiguous territory. They have existed in many parts of the world since the dawn of history, including cities such as ...

, is probably in the southern

Canaan Canaan (; Phoenician: 𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍 – ; he, כְּנַעַן – , in pausa – ; grc-bib, Χανααν – ;The current scholarly edition of the Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus T ...

close to Gaza. Some scholars identify it with

Tell Jemmeh Tell Jemmeh ( ar, تل جمه), also known in Hebrew as Tel Gamma (תל גמה) or Tel Re'im (תל רעים), is a prominent mound, or tell (archaeology), tell, located in the region of the northwestern Negev and the southern Israeli coastal plain ...

. In the 382–letter correspondence it is the location of its mayor/ruler,

Pu-Ba'lu Pu-Ba'lu, (another spelling, also Pu-Bahla) was ruler/mayor of Yursa, (a city/city-state in Canaan(?)), identified with Tell Jemmeh, of the 1350 BC, 1350–1335 BC Amarna letters Text corpus, correspondence. His name translates in west semitic as ...

, who authored 3 letters written to the

pharaoh Pharaoh (, ; Egyptian: ''pr ꜥꜣ''; cop, , Pǝrro; Biblical Hebrew: ''Parʿō'') is the vernacular term often used by modern authors for the kings of ancient Egypt who ruled as monarchs from the First Dynasty (c. 3150 BC) until the an ...

, namely EA , ( EA for 'el

Amarna Amarna (; ar, العمارنة, al-ʿamārnah) is an extensive Egyptian archaeological site containing the remains of what was the capital city of the late Eighteenth Dynasty. The city was established in 1346 BC, built at the direction of the Ph ...

'). The three letters to the pharaoh from Pu-Ba'lu of Yursa are: :EA 314—Title: "A shipment of

glass Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent, amorphous solid that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling (quenching) of ...

" :EA 315—Title: "Like a command of the

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

"–See:

Reanap Reanap, also Reanapa (cuneiform: ''ri-a-na-pa'') was an ancient Egyptian commissioner, of the 1350–1335 BC Amarna letters, written from a 15–20 year time period. Of the 382 El-Amarna letters correspondence, Reanapa is referenced in three: :* ...

:EA 316—Title: "

Postscript PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Br ...

to the royal

scribe A scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of automatic printing. The profession of the scribe, previously widespread across cultures, lost most of its promi ...

"–See:

Tahmašši Tahmašši, or ''Takhmašši'', and also known by his hypocoristicon or pet name: Tahmaya, or ''Atahmaya'' was an Egyptian official to pharaoh in the 1350 BC Amarna letters correspondence. His name comes from: 'Ptah-mes', meaning Ptah-Born, or ' ...

Of the entire Amarna letters 382–letter

corpus Corpus is Latin for "body". It may refer to: Linguistics * Text corpus, in linguistics, a large and structured set of texts * Speech corpus, in linguistics, a large set of speech audio files * Corpus linguistics, a branch of linguistics Music * ...

, Yursa is only referenced in letters 314, and 315, as: ''"..Pu-Ba'lu, the ruler of Yursa"''.

Example letter of ''Yursa''/Pu-Ba'lu

EA 314, title: "A shipment of glass"

:"To the king (i.e. Pharaoh), my lord, my god, my Sun, the Sun from the sky: Message of

, your servant, the ruler of ''Yursa''. I indeed prostrate myself at the feet of the king, my lord, my god, my Sun: the Sun from the sky. 7 times and 7 times, ''on the back and on the stomach.'' I am indeed guarding the place of the king, (my) lord, my Sun, the Sun from the sky. Who is the

dog The dog (''Canis familiaris'' or ''Canis lupus familiaris'') is a domesticated descendant of the wolf. Also called the domestic dog, it is derived from the extinct Pleistocene wolf, and the modern wolf is the dog's nearest living relative. Do ...

that would not o]be the orders of the king, the Sun from the sk? ince the king, my lord, has ord[ere[dsome

, I [s]end it to the king, my lord, my god, the Sun from the sk[y]." EA-314, lines 1-22 (with damaged cuneiform script, cuneiform characters) EA 235, entitled: "An order of glass", is of the same subject, a letter from

Satatna Satatna, or Sitatna, and also Šutatna/''Shutatna''-(of a Babylonian letter of Burna-Buriash), was a 'Mayor'/Ruler of Akka, or '' Acco'', modern Acre, Israel, during the 1350–1335 BC Amarna letters correspondence. Satatna was the author of thre ...

of ''Akka''-( Acco).

References

* Moran, William L. ''The Amarna Letters.'' Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987, 1992. (softcover, ) Amarna letters locations Canaanite cities Former populated places in Southwest Asia {{AncientEgypt-stub

Example letter of ''Yursa''/Pu-Ba'lu

EA 314, title: "A shipment of glass"

See also

References