In 1887 a peasant woman at el-Amarna in Egypt
discovered 379 clay tablets in the ruins of the Pharaoh Ikhnaton's palace.
These included letters in Akkadian from princes of city-states in the land of
the Bible, such as Megiddo and
Jerusalem,
as well as some from Babylonia and Assyria.
Written in the 14th century BC, they convey an impression of unstable
conditions in the land at that time.