The Amarna letters (sometimes “Amarna correspondence” or “Amarna tablets”) are an archive of correspondence on clay tablets, mostly diplomatic, between the Egyptian administration and its representatives in Canaan and Amurru during the New Kingdom.

The letters were found in Upper Egypt at Amarna, the modern name for the Egyptian capital of Akhetaten, founded by pharaoh Akhenaten (1350s - 1330s BC) during the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt.

The Amarna letters are unusual in Egyptological research, being mostly written in Akkadian cuneiform, the writing system of ancient Mesopotamia rather than ancient Egypt. The known tablets currently total 382 in number, with 24 further tablets having been recovered since the Norwegian Assyriologist Jorgen Alexander Knudtzon's landmark edition of the Amarna correspondence, *Die El-Amarna-Tafeln* in two volumes (1907 and 1915).

These letters, consisting of cuneiform tablets mostly written in Akkadian—the regional language of diplomacy for this period—were first discovered by local Egyptians around 1887. The tablets were secretly dug from the ruins of the city (originally stored in a building archaeologists have since called the Bureau of Correspondence of Pharaoh) and then sold on the antiquities market. Once the location was determined, the ruins were explored for more tablets.

The first archaeologist who successfully recovered more tablets was William Flinders Petrie in 1891-92, who found 21 fragments. Emile Chassinat, then director of the French Institute for Oriental Archaeology in Cairo, acquired two more tablets in 1903. Since Knudtzon's edition, about 24 more tablets or fragments have been found, either in Egypt or identified in the collections of various museums.

The tablets originally recovered by local Egyptians have been scattered among museums in Cairo, Europe, and the United States: - 202 or 203 at the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin - 80 in the British Museum - 49 or 50 at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo - 7 at the Louvre - 3 at the Pushkin Museum - 1 at the Oriental Institute in Chicago

The full archive, which includes correspondence from the preceding reign of Amenhotep III as well, contained over three hundred diplomatic letters. The remainder are a miscellany of literary or educational materials. These tablets shed much light on Egyptian relations with Babylonia, Assyria, the Mitanni, the Hittites, Syria, Canaan, and Alashiya (Cyprus).

They are important for establishing both the history and chronology of the period. Letters from the Babylonian king Kadashman-Enlil I anchor the timeframe of Akhenaten's reign to the mid-14th century BC. Here was also found the first mention of a Near Eastern group known as the Habiru, whose possible connection with the Hebrews remains debated. Other rulers mentioned include Tushratta of Mittani, Lib'ayu of Shechem, Abdi-Heba of Jerusalem, and the quarrelsome king Rib-Hadda of Byblos, who, in over 58 letters, continuously pleads for Egyptian military help.