Burna-Buriash II
Burna-Buriash II wrote to the pharaoh of Egypt complaining that the gold he had been sent was short weight, and the letter survives. He was a Kassite king of Babylon during the period covered by the Amarna archive, the diplomatic correspondence found in the ruins of Akhenaten's capital in Egypt. Nine of those letters are his. They are written in Akkadian, the diplomatic language of the age, and they show a system in which the great kings - Egypt, Babylon, Mitanni, Hatti, Assyria - addressed one another as brothers and exchanged gold, lapis lazuli, horses, chariots and daughters. The letters are startlingly direct. He complains that the pharaoh's messengers were kept waiting, that a gift of twenty minas of gold turned out to weigh far less when melted down, that his own envoys were robbed in Canaan under Egyptian protection, and that Egypt sent no proper escort for his bride. He also objects that the pharaoh has received an Assyrian embassy at all: Assyria, he writes, is his subject, and should not be dealt with directly. That complaint is the interesting one, because it was already untrue. Assyria under Ashur-uballit I was becoming an independent power and would shortly be strong enough to intervene in Babylonian successions. Burna-Buriash married an Assyrian princess, and the grandson of that marriage was killed in a revolt, giving Assyria the pretext to invade. His dates follow the middle chronology used elsewhere in this corpus and may be several decades out on another reckoning. What is not in doubt is that Babylon under him was one of perhaps five states that mattered on earth, and that its king thought the pharaoh was cheating him.
- Nationality: Babylonian
- Roles: head_of_state, royalty
