Kurigalzu I rebuilds the temple at Ur

Kurigalzu I rebuilds the temple at Ur, and constructs a new capital city, named Dur-Kurigalzu, 'fortress of Kurigalzu', in the far north of Babylonia

(modern Agar Quf).

Wooden figure of a jackal-headed deity from the Valley of the Kings, Nineteenth or Twentieth Dynasty, representing either Anubis or Duamutef,

one of the four sons of Horus

1213 - 1203 BC

1225 - 1215 BC

Merneptah Son.

1208 BC In his fifth year, Merneptah claims to successfully repel an attack by Libyans and an assortment of people from the north (including

a detachment of the Lukka), whom he calls 'of the countries of the sea', or Sea Peoples. They try to enter Egypt by force, but also

bring their families and cattle, clearly intending to stay.1203 -

1200 BCAmenemses

c.1200 BC Egypt gains overlordship of Canaan, and perhaps the Israelites and Philistines, both of which are only just settling in the region.

872 - 837 BC

Osorkon II Son of Takelot.

853 BC Osorkon is a member of an alliance of states which also includes Ammon, Arvad, Byblos, Damascus, Edom, Hamath, Kedar, and

Samaria. Together they fight against Shalmaneser III of Assyria at the battle of Qarqar.

Piye / Piankhi King of Nubia (747-721 BC).

Kurigalzu I

Kadašman-Enlil’s sister

Chapter in Book: Text Messages, Tablets, and Social ...www.academia.edu/.../Chapter_in_Book_Text_Messages_...

1. CachedAcademia.edu

Loading...These include Aššur- uballit of Assyria; Kadašman-Enlil and Burna-Buriaš II

of ... We also know the names of the vassal rulers in Canaan with whom they were in ..... EA 1, 2, 3 Kadašman-Enlil Enlil Amenhotep III Egyptian

Sister of Kadašman ...Thus, in Amarna letter EA 31, Amenhotep III sends a marriage proposal for the daughter of Tarhundaradu of Arzawa, and we see the beginnings of the

de- tailed negotiations that will take place and the gifts that are already being ex- changed. Furthermore, we know that Amenhotep III also married

two Babylonian princesses—i.e., the daughters of Kurigalzu and of Kadašman-Enlil—and that he married two Mitannian princesses, i.e., the

daughters of Šuttarna and Tušratta. In arranging such marriages, he may have been attempting to hem in the growing power of Šuppiluliuma and the

Hittites through a series of treaties that were ce- mented by these royal marriages (E.H. Cline 1998), but there is no actual proof that those were his

ulterior motives. For his part, we know that Akhenaten inherited as a wife the daughter of Tušratta, Tadu-Heba of Mitanni, who was the widow of

Amenhotep III (EA 27– 29). He also negotiated to marry the daughter of Burna-Buriaš II of Babylon (EA 11), although we do not know whether he was successful. We also have evidence that at least some of these letters were concerned with diplomatic alliances, such as Amarna letter EA 17, sent by

Tušratta of Mitanni to Amenhotep III. In it, he recounted the history of relations between their two countries and sought a continuation of their

alliance, pointing out in particular that “my father [g]ave you my sister. [And w]ho els[e] stood with my father [a]s you did?” He also specifically named

two men whom he had sent as his messengers— Keliya and Tunip-ibri—and is at pains to spell out the “greeting-gifts” that he has sent, including “1 chariot, 2 horses, 1 male attendant, [and] 1 female attendant, from the

booty from the land of Hatti,” as well as “1 set of gold toggle-pins, 1 set of gold (earrings), and a scent container that is full of sweet oil” for Kelu-Heba, his sister who had previously been given to Amenhotep III. Social Network

Analysis and NodeXL As shown above, we can find and harvest social information from both the meta- data and the content of the Amarna letters.

However, since we have almost 400 Amarna letters, it can be difficult to keep all of the social ties in mind at once, including who wrote to whom,

traded with whom, sent gifts to whom, intermarried Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna Letters 20 with

whom, got in quarrels with whom, and complained to the King about whom. It is a complex web of interactions, to say the least, especially if we think of

the trade routes and roads between them as communication channels. Social Network Analysis (or SNA) provides a way to keep track of and display these social relations, allowing us to think about how the people mentioned in the tablets, and the people who sent and received them, form a network. It is, quite specifically, a method to map relationships and transactions between

people or groups, understanding them collectively through data visualization (Brugh- mans 2013). We can measure a person’s centrality or position

relative to others in the network, for instance, and describe who should be seen as part of the core and who is peripheral. We can explore and even

measure the accumulation and distribution of social capital (Borgatti et al. 2009; Brass 2009; id. 2012: 669). We can also note that social networks are

not necessarily local or geographically bound, for people who live a long distance apart can be very close, and people who live close by can be quite distant or even absent from one’s social network. Social Network Analysis

has its roots in the combination of mathematics and graph theory with sociology. In particular, sociograms (or network diagrams) are created and

used to look for patterns. Researchers in dozens of fields use it, and there is a shared language with common tools and methods, as well as annual

meetings, including the International Network for Social Network Analysis Sun- belt conferences. It is also beginning to be applied in many fields in the humanities, including archaeology and history (for a brief discussion, see

previously D. H. Cline 2012). One should note, however, that discussing hypothetical networks and apply- ing network thinking without using a SNA program is not the same as actually doing a Social Network Analysis (see,

e.g., Broodbank 2002; Knappett 2011; Tar- taron 2013; for this realization, see now Leidwanger et al. 2014). One can concep- tualize a group as a

network, but to call it specifically a “Social Network Analysis,” one must use a computer program such as UCInet, Pajek, NodeXL, or Gephi to render the

sociograms and produce the Centrality measures that include the cal- culations of diameter that can lead us to call a social network a “Small

World” —or not. Calling it one does not make it so. Three of the most popular programs— NodeXL, Gephi, and UCInet—have excellent introductory

handbooks for users of all levels (Hansen et al. 2011; Cherven 2013; Borgatti et al. 2013). These introduce basic concepts and provide step-by-step

guidance for constructing social networks. (To adapt the technique for ancient texts, see D. H. Cline 2012 and the method described below.) Here

we will be using NodeXL in order to apply Social Network Analysis to the data set found in the Amarna letters. Our goal is to map the social relationships

mentioned in the tablets from the mid-14 th century BCE. Once we have the model, we can then look for structural bridges, brokers, and hubs, using

measures of cen- Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna Letters 21 trality and degree, as commonly applied in SNA studies. We also want to measure the network as a whole to discover whether or not the network exhibits Small World properties. Methodology: Building the Data Set from the Amarna Tablets We can begin to build the

database by looking at the translations of the Amarna letters, as published in 1992 by William Moran, and creating a spreadsheet (see Fig. 1). Going letter

by letter, from Amarna letter EA 1 to EA 382, we put the first relationship that we note on the first line of the spreadsheet, with Participant #1 in one column and Participant #2 in another column. Inserting additional columns,

we note also their nationalities, type of relationship, by whom they are mentioned, and the relevant Amarna letter number(s). In this way, we are

able to capture their relationship, usually referred to in SNA as a tie, link, or edge. We then add in the other relationships mentioned within the letter on

subsequent rows, with one relationship per row. We note all the relationships that are mentioned, whether positive or negative (including someone

complaining about someone else). Thus, for instance, we begin by recording the relationships found in Amarna letter EA 1, which is sent by Amenhotep III of Egypt to Kadašman-Enlil of Baby- lon. On Row #1 of the spreadsheet, we

put Amenhotep III in one column (as the sender) and Kadašman-Enlil in another column (as the recipient). In additional columns, we note that

Amenhotep III is Egyptian; Kadašman-Enlil is Babylonian; the relationship is that of Great Kings of approximately equal social status; and that this

relationship is found in Amarna letter EA 1 (as well as in letters EA 2, 3, and

5). We then go on to document, in subsequent rows, the other relationships mentioned, including the marriage of Amenhotep III to Kadašman-Enlil’s

sister (i.e., the daughter of Kurigalzu) as well as his marriage to Kadašman-Enlil’s own daughter, along with the implied familial relationships between

Kadašman-Enlil and his father Kurigalzu, and so on, so that every relationship is captured. As we go through each letter, we are looking for evidence of

social relationships of all kinds—family, friendships, trading partners, allies, employees, messengers, enemies, and so on. We then move to Amarna

letter EA 2, which is a letter sent by Kadašman-Enlil and received by Amenhotep III. However, since we already have all of the relationships that are mentioned in this letter on our spreadsheet, we simply add “EA 2” to the “EA 1” that we already have in the source column to document the fact that

they are found in both letters (as well as elsewhere). The same goes for Amarna letter EA 3, which is also a letter sent by Kadaš- man-Enlil and received by Amenhotep III. However, this third letter also mentions an

Egyptian envoy/messenger named Kasi who was sent by Amenhotep III to Babylon. Thus, we add a row to the spreadsheet, with Amenhotep III in one col- Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna Letters 22 umn and Kasi in the next column, as well as additional

columns noting that they are both Egyptian and that Kasi is an envoy/messenger who answers to Amen- hotep III; the final column notes

that this information comes from Amarna letter EA 3. In the following row, we put Kasi in one column and Kadašman-Enlil in another, since it is clear from the letter that they too also have a relationship and are known to each other;

subsequent columns give their nationalities (Egyptian and Babylonian, respectively), record the fact that Kasi was an envoy/messenger sent to

Kadašman-Enlil, and that the information comes from Amarna letter EA 3. In this manner, one can proceed through the letters. Some will also mention

fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, wives, husbands, enemies, friends, messengers, envoys, and so on; others will only have the sender and

recipient. Afew will be too fragmentary to even include in the database, if none of the names are present. In the full spreadsheet that we created for

the Amarna letters, we ended up with 464 rows, with each row documenting a different relationship, or tie, between two individuals. Each relationship is only noted once, for we were concerned in this exercise only with the fact

that there was a relationship, rather than the direction of the relationship or how many times the relationship is attested (though we could easily

document that in a separate spreadsheet as well). Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna Letters 23 Participant 1 Nationality Participant 2 Nationality Relationship Mentioned By Source(s) of

#1 of #2 of #2 to #1 Amenhotep III Egyptian Kadašman-Enlil Babylonian fellow ruler; Amenhotep III EA 1, 2, also brother-in 3, 5 -law and father- in-law

Amenhotep III Egyptian Daughter of Babylonian wife Kadašman- EA 1, 2, 3 Kadašman-Enlil Enlil Kadašman-Enlil Babylonian Daughter of Babylonian

daughter Kadašman- EA 1, 2, 3 Kadašman-Enlil Enlil Amenhotep III Egyptian Sister of Kadašman Babylonian wife Amenhotep III EA 1, 2 -Enlil Kadašman-

Enlil Babylonian Sister of Kadašman Babylonian sister Amenhotep III EA 1, 2 -Enlil Kurigalzu Babylonian Daughter of Babylonian daughter Kadašman- EA 1,

2 Kurigalzu Enlil Amenhotep III Egyptian Daughter of Babylonian wife Amenhotep III EA 1, 2 Kurigalzu Kurigalzu Babylonian Kadašman-Enlil

Babylonian father Kadašman- EA 1, 2 Enlil Amenhotep III Egyptian Kasi Egyptian Egyptian envoy/ Amenhotep III EA 3 messenger sent to Babylon Kasi Egyptian Kadašman-Enlil Babylonian recipient of Amenhotep III EA 3

envoy/messenger from Egypt Fig. 1 Beginning of the database created for the Amarna letters, using Microsoft Excel. After building this full database,

which will be useful for future reference and will allow others to replicate our findings, we now will be using just two columns, which contain only the

names of the two people who are in the social relationship, setting aside the other data for the time being (Fig. 2). In other words, we will be copying and pasting the names of the two people who share a relationship or tie based upon the evidence in the Amarna letters to insert into the Social Network Analysis tool. The two columns are labeled Vertex 1 and Vertex 2, since individuals in social network analysis are sometimes called vertices, or

nodes, or simply actors.

This is known in SNA as the “Edge List.” In this case, we used NodeXL (http://nodexl.codeplex.com/; see Smith et al. 2010; Hansen et al. 2011). Using Social Network Analysis on the Royal Amarna Letters For the first

experiment, we started with the relationships or ties to be found just in the royal letters (EA 1–49), as opposed to the vassal letters that make up the larger part of the archive. Using NodeXL, we created our first sociogram,

using the Clauset-Newman-Moore algorithm in this case, documenting the relationships that are apparent from these letters (Fig. 3). Each node

(triangle, square, or circle) represents a person (actor), while each line or “edge” represents a relationship of some sort between the two members of the network. Note that the size of the node reflects the number of ties each actor has. Data visualization is an important output from a social network analysis. We learn about the structure of the network; identify the subsets within the whole, including neighborhoods, cliques, and clusters; and can

also see the role individuals play within the whole. In Fig. 3, we can see that the four people who have the most ties and who serve as hubs of the

clusters are Amenhotep III, Akhenaten, Burna-Buriaš II and Tušratta. This is

perhaps not surprising, since they are the ones writing most of the royal letters. However, what is notable is that the analysis shows a significant relationship between Akhenaten and Burna-Buriaš II. Although at initial

glance this relationship looks about equal in terms of lines between them as does both Akhenaten’s and Amenhotep III’s relationship with Tušratta, a

quick count of the edges shows Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna Letters 24 Vertex 1 Vertex 2 Kurigalzu Daughter of Kurigalzu Kurigalzu Kadašman-Enlil Amenhotep III

Daughter of Kurigalzu Amenhotep III Sister of Kadašman-Enlil Kadašman-Enlil Sister of Kadašman-Enlil Amenhotep III Kadašman-Enlil Fig. 2 First few rows of the Edge List for the Amarna letters, using NodeXL. that Akhenaten and Burna-Buriaš II have more friends/actors in common than they have with anyone else, and more than any other pair of actors, for that matter. The

letters sent back and forth, and their content, tie them together in a way that is significantly more cohesive than those two men’s relations with others in

the network. For example, in looking at the sociogram, one sees many people whom these two kings have in common, forming elbow-like patterns that connect them (including Satatna and his son Surata, who both served

as mayor of Akko, and Ahutabu and Salmu, who were Babylonian envoys/messengers sent to Akhen- aten by Burna-Buriaš II). These

individuals are part of a shared social network, whom both kings knew, wrote about, met with, or sent as messengers. This close- ness between the King of

Egypt and a king of Babylon is quite remarkable, given the physical distances between them. It is also of interest to note that Tušratta, the king of Mitanni, knows both Egyptian pharaohs, Amenhotep III and Akhen- aten, but is not so close to either one that he gets absorbed into either cluster. Much of Amenhotep III’s cluster is made up of the Babylonian king Kadaš- man-Enlil and his family, including his sister and his father Kurigalzu. This

gives us a good idea of the content of those letters, especially the marriages arranged between Amenhotep III and the daughters of these two Babylonian kings. On the other hand, we can see that Tušratta, king of Mitanni, has ties to both Amenhotep III and Akhenaten, as just mentioned, but it is with his father, Ar- tatama, and his sister (i.e. Artatama’s daughter) that we see a

“kite formation” (i.e. a clique consisting of a closed set of relationships) with Thutmose IV, as the result of a previous dynastic marriage mentioned in the letters. From the combination of the sociogram and the actual contents of

the letters, we get the idea that Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna Letters 25 Fig. 3 The network of the royal letters in the Amarna archive (EA 1–49). the social network here, at

least among the royals, concerns marriage proposals and fathers trading their own daughters for either gold or a chance to be socially closer to a king of Egypt. This is not surprising, of course, for royal marriages are frequently

arranged in an effort to create tighter relations between families or even states at a social level. The sending of gold, and gift exchange in general, as

seen especially in the Amarna letters (e.g., EA 1, 3, 4, 7, 10, 16; see previously E. H. Cline 1995), is also part of an effort to strengthen social ties

at the same time as acquiring much- needed raw material. Using Social Network Analysis on the entire Amarna Archive After having demonstrated

that SNA works with the royal letters, we expanded the sample size and added in the vassal correspondence (EA 50–382), in order to get a look at

the entire archive. This resulted in a much more interesting, and complex, picture. In Fig. 4, we can see the overall view; namely, the structure of the

entire social network of the Amarna letters. We have 246 actors (or people), with 464 ties between them—or for every pair of actors, there exists a

social relationship of some kind. In the sociogram, the actors are the points (or “nodes”) in the chart, and the lines (“ties” or “edges” in SNA terms) are the relationships between them. Inside such a large network, there are of course smaller units. Identifying these groups and mapping their relations with each other is an essential part of what social network analysis can do (Hansen et al. 2011: 91–102). This particular network has as many as ten

subsets or clusters, but some of those are just families who have ties to each other, making a dense little unit or “clique.” So, for example, one cluster that the program identified consisted just of Manya, his wives, his son- in-law, and

the sons of Manya. Manya’s family is also a clique, which is defined as a subset of at least three nodes that are all adjacent to each other; families are good examples of cliques, since everyone knows everyone else (Wasserman

– Faust 1994: 254). However, while Manya’s family is both a cluster and a clique, it is hardly equivalent to the other clusters that can be seen in the royal letters, and basically should be treated as one node. So to begin our study, we chose to consolidate the little clusters into the closest adjacent

group and lumped them together into the fewest possible basic units. It soon became clear that we have at least five large clusters of relationships in this particular network, as determined by the Clauset-Newman-Moore automatic clustering function in NodeXL and as depicted in the sociogram in Figure 4.

Different shapes are used to represent members of each cluster: disk, triangle, square, open circle, open diamond. Of the five clusters, one has all the royals (those represented by solid squares towards the upper left of the

chart); one is centered around Rib- Hadda (those represented by triangles on the right side of the chart); one is cen- Text Messages, Tablets, and Social

Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna Letters 26 tered on the unnamed King of Egypt (those represented by disks in the lower part of the chart); a smaller cluster centered on Aziru represented by open circles, and the last one consists of a group of in-betweeners, which is a fascinating list

unto itself (those represented by open diamonds on the chart, filling the spaces and bridging the other clusters). Our first observation is that the

royals are all together, at the top of the chart in an umbrella-like shape. If one were to try to find pathways from the royal cluster down to the other clusters, there are only two main gateways, Amenhotep III and Akhenaten. The people below them in the network diagram serve as con- necters, tying the royals to the vassals. We can see in particular Akizzi of Qatna directly

beneath Amenhotep III; Satatna and Surata of Akko for Akhenaten. People in the “open diamond cluster” like Satatna and Abi-Milku occupy structurally

similar positions along these pathways and therefore have become a cluster unto themselves. The unnamed King of Egypt is the focal point of the graph, with the most ties of all, and is the principal of the disks cluster. The fourth

cluster, the triangles on the far right, has as its focal point Rib-Hadda of Byblos, and the fifth is centered on Aziru (open circles). This is where it can

get interesting, for frequently the SNA computer program will cluster the relationships differently than might have been anticipated, which in turn can sometimes lead to new observations. The same data can also be visu- alized

or laid out in many other ways via the SNA computer program, by using different algorithms, for example, and arranging the results in different

shapes, Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna Letters 27 Fig. 4 The entire Social Network of the Amarna letters with four clusters. such as a circle, sine wave, or spiral (for examples, see D. H. Cline 2012). These can also lead to new observations. Clusters-in-a-box If we want to break down the network into as many clusters as we can, to see all of the sub-communities, we can ask NodeXL to automatically put each

cluster in its own box (Fig. 5). In this experiment, we essentially split the data into its smallest possible denominators. Since, in the sociogram, the

relative size of the nodes corresponds to the number of ties each individual has, we can quickly see that the largest nodes appear in four of the ten

clusters. The sociogram that we looked at above with just the royal letters (Fig. 3) now can be seen in its larger context, fitting almost entirely into the lower left cluster of this new sociogram (Fig. 5). Inside the royals cluster, we find four large nodes— Amenhotep III, Akhenaten, Tušratta, Burna-Buriaš II—followed by a number of smaller ones in decreasing size. The largest node of

all, however, is found in the upper left box. This is the unnamed “King of Egypt” of the vassal letters, which is perhaps not surprising, since many of the Amarna letters are not addressed specifically to either Amenhotep III or Akhenaten, but instead to the “King of Egypt” without a name being given. This box contains many people who only have ties to the king and to no one else. In this box, the other larger nodes include Surata of Akko, Abdi-Heba of Jerusalem, Lab’ayu of Šechem, Milk-ilu of Gezer, and Šuwardata of Gath or Qiltu, all of whom are figures from the vassal territories in Canaan. Many of these men are mentioned in letters requesting help from the Egyptian king.

Asking an ally or an overlord for military assistance against one’s enemies is, of course, evidence as well for a social tie or relationship, even at the vassal level. For instance, Biridiya of Megiddo wrote to the Egyptian Pharaoh: “May

the king, my lord, know that since the return (to Egypt) of the archers, Lab’ayu has waged war against me. …So may the king give a garrison of 100

men to guard his city lest Lab’ayu seize it” (EA 244), while Abdi-Heba of Jerusalem wrote: “...message of Abdi-Heba, your servant...May the king give thought to his land; the land of the king is lost. All of it has attacked me.... I am situated like a ship in the midst of the sea” (EA 288). Thus, each of our discrete examples is actually part of a larger context, namely all of their

social relationships. Moving to the right, and looking at the box in the center of the upper row, we see that the program’s algorithm has discovered a

cluster that has Rib-Hadda, the mayor of Byblos, as the largest node. Abdi-Aširta, the ruler of Amurru (a polity located to the south of Ugarit in what is now coastal Syria and modern Lebanon), is the second largest node. Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna

Letters 28 It is no surprise that this sociogram (Fig. 5) shows that the Amarna letters record lively social exchanges between the Egyptian pharaohs and

local Canaanite rulers, as well as with kings of more distant lands and capital cities like Babylon, Hattuša, and Mitanni. However, it is surprising that the

pharaohs dominate only two of the ten clusters in the network. Although all of the letters were excavated in Egypt in the royal archive at Amarna, the

contents of these letters indicate that eight of the ten clusters in the Amarna social network were not intimately tied to the pharaoh. Centrality Measures

Once one has the nodes and edges in a network, there are many useful measures that one can extract from it, by using a program such as NodeXL.

We have just looked very briefly at the structure of the whole network and its clusters. At the individual actor’s level, we can measure their position in terms of importance. At a minimum, there are three main vertex-specific

centrality measures that a social network analysis usually produces: Degree Centrality; Betweenness Centrality; and Eigenvector Centrality. Vertex-

specific metrics focus on the value of a person’s position in the structure of the whole network (Hansen et al. 2011: 40–41, 71–73), so that “centrality” is a property of an actor’s position in a network, or the contribu- tion an actor

makes to the structure of the network (Borgatti et al. 2013: 164; Brass 2012: 669–672). Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna Letters 29 Fig. 5 The Social Network of the Amarna letters

separated into ten clusters. Degree Centrality The simplest centrality measure to understand is Degree, which simply counts up the number of ties, or relationships, that an actor has (Wasserman – Faust 1994: 178,

Borgatti et al. 2013: 165, Newman 2010: 168, Hansen et al. 2011: 40). As one might imagine, this doesn’t always mean that the person is the most

important (think of Rib-Hadda, the mayor of Byblos, for example, who wrote nearly 60 of the letters found in the Amarna archive and may have been

more prolific than important), but it will be useful as a first step in our analysis. In these visualizations we have made the node size proportional to Degree Centrality, so that one may easily discover the actors with the largest number of ties simply by looking. As we can see in Fig. 6, the unnamed King of Egypt has the highest number— nearly 100—of ties or relationships with

other individuals; more than double that of the next closest person, Rib-Hadda of Byblos. If we knew who that unnamed king was, we could add this

number, or a portion of it, to either Amenhotep III or his son, Akhenaten, who have 38 and 32 ties, respectively. The fourth-place ranking of Aziru, the ruler

of Amurru, and the ninth-place ranking of Biryawaza, the mayor of Damascus, might initially come as a surprise, since they are both

troublemakers who cause disruption in Egyptian-controlled Canaan. However, their high ranking comes from being written about frequently and

repeatedly by other Canaanite vassal rulers who are complaining about

them. Their notoriety makes them infamous—everyone knows them, so they are in many social networks, albeit negatively (Labianca – Brass 2006).

Aziru’s family members are mentioned (his father Abdi-Aširta, one brother Baaluya, and two unnamed brothers, who are mentioned only as “sons of

Abdi-Aširta”), which also enhances his scores. Other actors with high numbers of ties include Tušratta, king of Mitanni, and Burna-Buriaš II, king of

Babylon, which comes as no surprise, but also Abdi-Heba, the king of Jerusalem, Abdi-Aširta of Amurru, and other Canaan- ite rulers. Eigenvector

Centrality The Eigenvector Centrality score measures a person’s proximity to other people with high scores. That is to say, people become important

because of being connected to other actors who have lots of connections. Ahigh score means this person is connected to central, rather than

peripheral, people. It measures not just how many people the actor knows, as Degree Centrality does, but important people he or she knows. It is a

way of identifying highly connected individuals within highly interconnected clusters. Thus, it is often thought of as a measure of influ- ence or prestige

for identifying strategically connected people (Borgatti 1995: 112– 115; Hansen et al. 2011: 41; Brass 2012: 672). Being linked to a highly connected

person increases one’s Eigenvector Centrality. In most cases, it may be simply another way of saying that important people usually know other

important people Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna Letters 30 (Newman 2010: 169), but in some

circumstances the score can indicate an actor’s importance that might not otherwise be so obvious. This can be seen in Fig. 7, which shows that the

people around Amenhotep III and Akhenaten have higher Eigenvector Centrality scores than they do; the two kings do not even rank in the top twenty people within the social network and are not shown in this figure.

With scores of .009 and .007 respectively, Amen- hotep III ranks 25 th and Akhenaten 48 th . On the other hand, with an Eigenvector Centrality score

of .060, the unnamed King of Egypt is first on the list, and if either Amenhotep III or Akhenaten could be identified as that king, their numbers

would merge and their ranking would rise accordingly. How can we interpret the puzzlingly low Eigenvector Centrality scores for these two pharaohs in

this network? If we look at the data visualization, we find our answer. As we have seen above, the pharaohs named in the royal Amarna letters are

represented in just one cluster out of the ten shown in Fig. 5, in the lower left corner, as well as at the very top in Fig. 4. While that cluster has some

cohesion and density, it is not well connected or integrated with any of the other nine clus- Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The “Small

World” of the Amarna Letters 31 Vertex Degree King of Egypt 97 Rib-Hadda 41 Amenhotep III 38 Aziru 36 Akhenaten 32 Tušratta 23 Burna-Buriaš II 18

Baaluya 14 Biryawaza 13 Abdi-Aširta 13 Aitukama 12 Abi-Milku 12 Abdi-Heba 12 Yanhamu 11 Akizzi 10 Lab’ayu 9 Milk-ilu 9 Mut-Bahli 9 Surata 8 Šuwardata

8 Satatna 7 Vertex Eigenvector Centrality King of Egypt 0.060 Aziru 0.028 Rib-Hadda 0.021 Biryawaza 0.014 Abdi-Aširta 0.013 Aitukama 0.013 Abi-Milku 0.012 Baaluya 0.012 Pu-Bahla1 0.011 Lab’ayu 0.011 Milk-ilu 0.011

Surata 0.011 Abdi-Heba 0.010 Zimr-Edda1 0.010 Šuwardata 0.010 Manya 0.010 wives of Manya 0.010 Han’i 0.009 Yanhamu 0.009 son-in-law of Manya 0.009 sons of Manya 0.009 Fig. 6 The top actors in the social network of the

Amarna letters in terms of Degree Centrality. Fig. 7 The top actors in the social network of the Amarna letters in terms of Eigenvector Centrality. ters. In viewing the network as a whole, it seems that the two pharaohs are actually relatively peripheral figures in terms of overall activity and connections with others in the network. Notice in Fig. 4 how they are perched on the top edge of the whole social network, rather than being centrally located. It is

the Canaanite vassals who dominate the data set of the Amarna letters and it is this fact that is reflected in these Eigenvector scores. Betweenness

Centrality In contrast, Betweenness Centrality is a measure of how often a given actor lies along the shortest path connecting otherwise disconnected nodes (Wasserman – Faust 1994: 189; Newman 2010: 185; Borgatti et al.

2013: 174). That is to say, it measures the relative importance of a person’s position in the overall structure of the network, especially in terms of being positioned on the shortest pathway for others to get to other parts of the

network. It thus measures the extent to which the actor can connect or mediate between any two other actors. Do people have to pass information through him to get it to others? Would a branch of the network be cut off if he weren’t there? Ahigh Betweenness Centrality score is an indicator that the individual might have a role that involves gatekeeping, brokering, con- trolling the flow, or liaising otherwise separate parts of the network. In the world of the Amarna letters, they might be messengers, traders, raiders, or

diplomats. Actors with high Betweenness Centrality tend to behave as brokers, bridges, hubs, connectors, liaisons, and mavens. In ancient social

networks, women often have high Betweenness Centrality scores, since they bring together two families through marriage and frequently communicate

through back channels with others (D. H. Cline 2012: 66). However, few women are mentioned in the Amarna letters, and therefore the actors with

the highest Betweenness Centrality scores listed in Fig. 8 are all men. These include the kings of Egypt, along with Burna-Buriaš II of Babylon and Tušratta

of Mitanni, but also some rebels like Aziru of Amurru and Biryawaza of Damascus. These, as we have seen above, are on the list in a negative way; they are both people who link many nodes to each other because they are so

troublesome to so many, including a number who report their nefarious activities to the Egyptian pharaohs. However, a comparison can be made with Haya, who also appears near the top of the list. Though there may be more than one person named Haya among those mentioned in the Amarna letters, it is fairly clear that he served as an am- bassador and emissary of the Egyptian king, and thus served as a connector or bridge in a positive

way. The Betweenness Centrality scores depicted in Fig. 8 show Haya ranked in 14 th place out of 264, and reinforces the observation that it is an

indicator of the manner in which the individual behaves in bringing the network together, either positively as in the case of ambassadors and wives or

negatively as a common threat. Text Messages, Tablets, and Social

Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna Letters 32 Rib-Hadda, the mayor of Byblos, scores even higher than Amenhotep III and Akhenaten in

Betweenness Centrality, because in his 60 letters he mentions people who otherwise would not be in our database, and thus in the social network, if it

weren’t for him alluding to them. They each have one tie or relationship, which is to Rib-Hadda alone. Each of them is dependent upon him and must go through him to reach any other part of the network. However, this brings us to a known problem in Social Network Analysis; namely, the issue of the

nature of our evidence. If we had additional tablets written by those individuals, and we were able to more closely examine their social networks, it might well transpire that Rib-Hadda played only a marginal or peripheral role in their lives. But given the data set that we have, he is

everything to them, and that raises his score. The Amarna Letters Network as a Small World Above, we defined a “Small World” as a network of social

relationships in place such that it took only a few “hops” for one individual to reach another, via connections with people who can provide short cuts

because they know a lot of peo- Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna Letters 33 Vertex Betweenness

Centrality King of Egypt 19696.013 Rib-Hadda 6574.707 Amenhotep III 4798.716 Akhenaten 3609.507 Aziru 3063.697 Surata 1857.723 Tušratta

1748.936 Burna-Buriaš II 1549.281 Baaluya 1489.025 Akiya 1379.457 Aitukama 1327.613 Akizzi 1305.232 Biryawaza 1299.165 Haya 1244.337

Abdi-Aširta 1242.219 Satatna 1235.608 Abi-Milku 952.366 Mut-Bahli 886.696 Adda-danu 729.000 Abdi-Heba 710.469 Fig. 8 The top actors in the social

network of the Amarna letters, in terms of Betweenness Centrality. ple. Small Worlds consist of dense clusters connected by a small number of bridges

that are quantifiable (Brass 2012: 671). All Small Worlds have three properties in common: a small average path length or Average Geodesic

Distance; a “power law” distribution; and a high clustering coefficient that is greater than a random network (Newman 2000: 819; Humphries – Gurney 2008; Newman 2010: 55–56; Zaidi 2013). As we shall see in a moment, all

three must be present in a network or else one ought not call it a Small World. The network of social relationships found in the Amarna letters has all three properties, which is why we can identify the Eastern Mediterranean in

the 14 th century BCE as a Small World. The first measure that must be present is a small average path length or Av- erage Geodesic Distance (Humphries – Gurney 2008; Newman 2010: 55–56). The length of the

average path is an important measure of how efficient the network is, since it is directly correlated with how different parts of the network commu-

nicate, and exchange information. If we look at the metrics for the Amarna network as a whole (Fig. 9), we can see that there are 246 actors or

individuals in the social network of the Amarna letters and 464 edges or ties between these individuals. The average path length between these

individuals is 3.2, consistent with the properties of a Small World (Newman 2000: 819). This means that on average it takes just a little over three hops for one person to reach any other person within the network, because there

are enough people who have a high Betweenness Centrality, or who know a lot of other people in other clusters, which allows shortcuts to be made

across the network. If the many less well-connected actors can make it to one of these few more-connected people, it should be just one or two more hops from them to reach their ultimate target or destination. In this way, within the social network of the Amarna letters, the suggested Egyptian

consulates perhaps located at Sumur, Beth Shean, and Gaza in Bronze Age Canaan (Goren – Finkelstein – Na’aman 2004) could have served as

geographical short cuts, so that the ruler of each little town didn’t have to reach the king of Egypt all by himself. We should note that besides the

“Average Geodesic Distance,“ there is also something called the “Maximum Geodesic Distance,” which we can see has a value of 8 in our network (Fig. 9). This is sometimes called the “Diameter” of the network, since it is the

length of the shortest path from the two points that are furthest from each other in the network (Newman 2010: 140, Hansen et al. 2011: 73–74). This means that one or a few actors in the Amarna network might have to make

eight hops to reach a distant target, two more than the proverbial “six degrees of separation.” It is the presence of people with high Betweenness

Centrality in the social network of the Amarna letters that reduces the number of hops along the path from one specific person to another from the

maximum of eight to an average of three (i.e., lowering the “Maximum Geodesic Distance” to the “Average Geodesic Dis- Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna Letters 34 tance“).

The more short cuts there are across the circle, the smaller the world. While the familiar phrase “six degrees of separation” might seem to imply that an Average Geodesic Distance of 6 gives us a Small World effect, that is for an

enormous network of all people on the entire face of the planet. Healthy networks tend to have average path lengths under 6, and more often around 3 (Barmpoutis – Murray 2010). Small networks like the Amarna letters should have a consider- ably smaller Average Geodesic path, and it does; i.e., 3.2. Typically in Small World networks, we also find that there are a few actors

with a lot of links and a whole lot of others with only a few or even just one. This is called a “power law distribution.” To find the power law distribution, we study the Degree centrality measurements and determine if all nodes have a relatively even number of ties, as would be the case for a random

assemblage, or if it follows a power law distribution. That is, does everyone in the network have just about the same number of ties as everyone else or are there some people who have many more relationships than others? This

“power law distribution” is measureable and present in the Amarna network. In the circle configuration shown in Fig. 10, we see a few nodes that

have ties to many people, reducing the number of hops on the path to create the small world. In Fig. 11, we see that the maximum Degree is 97, but the

average Degree is 3. In other words, the largest number of relationships that anyone in the Amarna network has with other people is 97, but there are

only a few people with so many connections; most have only three contacts. The king of Egypt has the 97 ties just mentioned, followed by Rib-Hadda

(41), Amenhotep (38), Akhenaten (31), Tušratta (23), Burna-Buriaš II (18), and then it’s sharply downhill from there. Those Text Messages, Tablets, and

Social Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna Letters 35 Graph Type Undirected Vertices 246 Unique Edges 464 Edges With Duplicates 0 Total

Edges 464 Self-Loops 0 Connected Components 1 Single-Vertex Connected Components 0 Maximum Vertices in a Connected Component 246 Maximum

Edges in a Connected Component 464 Maximum Geodesic Distance (Diameter) 8 Average Geodesic Distance 3.204871 Graph Density

0.015397378 Modularity 0.550405 NodeXL Version 1.0.1.215 Fig. 9 Overall Metrics for the Social Network of the Amarna letters. are all the examples

from the head of the curve; the rest of the people, i.e., those with just a few contacts, are all examples from the long tail. Thus, we have a small head and long tail in agreement with a power law distribution curve. Another property

that is present in a Small World is a high “clustering coefficient” that is greater than it would be in a random network. Clustering coefficients are

calculated based on how many triads (three people who all know each other) exist in the network. This is known as the “fraction of transitive triples.” In a Small World social network, that number should be much higher than if one measured a random group of people, for instance all of the people in New

York City’s Times Square at a given moment on a Thursday afternoon in the middle of September. One way to calculate the clustering coefficient of a

random group is to use the formula C=2/N, where N is the number of nodes or individuals present (Newman 2000: 819–820). Arandom network with 246

individuals or nodes like ours would have a clustering coefficient of 0.008 (i.e., 2 divided by 246). However, in our case, Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna Letters 36 Fig. 10 The

“Small World” of the Amarna letters. the clustering coefficient of the Amarna letters network is 0.391 (as calculated by the NodeXL program; see Fig. 12), which is nearly fifty times higher (48.75, to be precise) than it would be if it were simply a random network. In short, it is easy to call something a Small

World, but to actually prove that it is one is more difficult. Only networks that have a power law distribution with short average path lengths and higher than random clustering coefficients are considered Small World networks (Watts 2003: 83–100). As we have seen, the world of the Amarna letters

meets these criteria. Such networks are characterized by multiple clusters connected by a few actors with high Degree Centrality, for Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna Letters 37

Minimum Clustering Coefficient 0.000 Maximum Clustering Coefficient 1.000 Average Clustering Coefficient 0.391 Median Clustering Coefficient 0.152 Fig. 11 Power Law Distribution for the Amarna letters network. Fig. 12 Clustering Coefficient for the Amarna letters network. 300 200 100 0 F r e q u e n c y

Degree 150 100 50 0 F r e q u e n c y Clustering Coefcient Minimum Degree 1 Maximum Degree 97 Average Degree 3.772 Median Degree 2.000 one only needs a few such people serving as brokers or bridges between clusters to make it so. In other words, a few individuals are able to make introductions

between strangers from different clusters; such would have been the case in

the Eastern Mediterranean during the 14 th century BCE. The Role of the Vassals in the Amarna Period, according to SNA Let us now look specifically at a few vassals to examine their various Centrality scores. These measures can help us to understand the positions that actors hold in the structure of the network, for people who fill equivalent structural roles often hold the

same jobs in real life or behave in similar ways (Wasserman – Faust 1994: 347–374, 466–468). In many cases, it can be interesting to look at the less

well- known actors, because their scores can lead us to look in directions that we might not normally have gone or get us to pay more attention to people

that we might not have usually thought about. If we turn first to Aziru and his ties in the upper right-hand box of Fig. 5, we can see that he is connected to

many actors—Biryawaza of Damascus, Abi-Milku of Tyre, the King of the Hittites, Ili-Rapih of Byblos, and Yanhanu (an Egyptian commissioner), among

others. He is one of the two principle actors in the square cluster, second only to Rib-Hadda in Fig. 4. 2 He is also second in Eigenvector Cen- trality, behind only the unnamed King of Egypt. He comes in fourth (out of 248) in Degree Centrality, with 33 ties or relationships, and fifth in Betweenness

Cen- trality. So who was Aziru? We know from the texts that Aziru was the Canaanite ruler of Amurru, the polity in what is now modern Lebanon and

coastal Syria, as mentioned above. He was the son of Abdi-Aširta, the previous ruler of Amurru, and was a direct contemporary of Akhenaten. Aziru

took over the city/area of Sumur (Tell Kezel) and caused much alarm in northern Canaan while expanding his ter- ritory. The person who complained most often and loudly about it was the ruler of Byblos (Gubla), namely Rib-

Hadda. And what about Biryawaza, seen in the center box of the lower row in Fig. 5? He was a powerful figure, usually identified as the mayor of

Damascus. He scores fourth in Eigenvector Centrality, ninth in Degree Centrality, with 13 ties, and thir- teenth in Betweenness Centrality. It is clear,

from reading the texts, that he was a troublemaker, for numerous people wrote to the king of Egypt, asking him to do something about Biryawaza. One

letter from Burna-Buriaš to Akhenaten (EA 7) even names Biryawaza specifically as having robbed a caravan sent from Babylon by one of Burna-

Buriaš’ messengers: “Furthermore, twice has a caravan Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna Letters 38 2 To find Aziru in Fig. 4, the network diagram as a whole, locate the node of the unnamed King of Egypt and then look to the right. Aziru is the closest

large node. of Salmu, my messenger whom I sent to you, been robbed. The first one Biriyawaza robbed, and his second caravan Pamahu, a governor of yours in a vas- salage, robbed. When is my brother going to adjudicate this case?” Here we see an example of someone who figures prominently in a

social network, but in a negative way. Biryawaza is positioned at the very center of the entire network, with connections to Rib-Hadda of Byblos, Aziru

of Amurru, and many other vassal rulers, but only because all of them are complaining about his aggressive and uncollegial behavior. 3 Individuals with

similar scores are thought of as performing similar roles in the network, which is a principle called regular equivalence, or structural equivalence

when they share the same neighbors in the network (Newman 2010: 211– 212). If one looks closely at Aziru and Biryawaza, one can certainly detect a similarity in their position and roles within the structure of the network. Both

are tied to actors from different clusters, spread like an octopus across clusters. What they have in common besides their structural similarities

becomes only clear from the texts, however—they are two of the “bad boys” of the Amarna letters (there are others as well). Let’s now consider Rib-

Hadda of Byblos, who is represented by the largest triangle on the right side of Figure 4. He is, of course, over-represented in the Amarna letters relative to his actual status, since he is responsible for 60 of them. He has a Degree

Centrality score of 41, meaning that he has ties with 41 unique people, which puts him in second place, sandwiched between the unnamed King of Egypt and Amenhotep III. His Betweenness Centrality score takes second place as well, again between the unnamed King of Egypt and Amenhotep III. And at 0.021, his Eigenvector Centrality score is also very high, in third place, this

time just below the unnamed King of Egypt (0.060) and Aziru of Amurru (0.028). So, we should expect to see numerous lines emanating out in a star pattern around him for the 41 ties (high Degree), and expect him to be quite centrally located and to connect one or more clusters in the network to each

other (high Betweenness), as well as to know important people (high Eigenvector), all of which can be seen and confirmed in Fig. 4. Just for

interest, let’s look at one last vassal with slightly higher than average scores. This is Akizzi, who is featured in Amarna letters EA 52–56 (Mynářová 2006). 4

Akizzi was the ruler of Qatna, a Syrian city north of Damascus, at a time when Hittite raids were common and tensions in the region were high, in part because Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The “Small World” of

the Amarna Letters 39 3 To find Biryawaza on the network chart in Fig. 4, locate Aziru and follow an arc in the direction up towards Akhenaten;

Biryawaza is between them. 4 To find him in the whole network sociogram, Fig. 4, find Amenhotep III near the top and look straight below. Akizzi is the fifth largest square node. of the actions of Aziru of Amurru. In one letter (EA 55), Akizzi wrote to Amen- hotep III: “let my lord send this year his troops

and his chariots so that they may come out here and all of Nuhašše belong to my lord. … If the troops and chariots of my lord do not come forth this

year and do not fight, the country will be in fear of Aziru.” Akizzi has 10 ties (Degree Centrality), which puts him in 15 th place; a high Be- tweenness Centrality score of 1305.232, which puts him in 12 th place; and a pretty

good but not great Eigenvector Centrality score of 0.009, which puts him in 22 nd place. From a purely social network perspective, we can observe that

he is em- bedded inside the “Royals” cluster in the lower left-hand box within Fig. 5. It is in Fig. 4 that we see his role within the network, however, insofar as it is clear that he serves as a hub or bridge on a number of paths leading to both the unnamed King of Egypt and Amenhotep III. In fact, as Mynářová

(2006) has noted, he is the only Canaanite vassal ruler to address the Egyptian pharaoh directly by his prenomen (Amarna letters EA 53 and 55). Whereas the other people who have structurally equivalent roles belong to

the open diamonds cluster, he is one of the few that far “south” in the network to still belong to the Royals cluster, represented by a square.

Anumber of his fellow actors would have to go through him to get a message either to the unnamed king, to Amenhotep III, or to other important people

outside their immediate neighborhood within the network. However, we would stress that we can learn from every one of the 246 nodes, or actors

within the network—working to understand who they are connected to; which clusters they are assigned to; what structural roles they play inside

their neighborhoods, both within the clusters and within the structure of the network as a whole; and then looking at their ranking in the Centrality

measures to learn more about them. Akizzi is just one example among many in the Amarna letters whom future researchers might profitably investigate

at greater length using Social Network Analysis. The Problem of the Unnamed Egyptian King Many of the Amarna letters are simply addressed to “the King of Egypt” without actually naming him. In most of these cases, it is

impossible to decide whether the letter was meant for Amenhotep III or Akhenaten, if not Tutankhamun or some other pharaoh, like Ay. We began to wonder, however, what the network would look like if we experimented with making either Amenhotep III or Akhenaten be the generic unnamed King of

Egypt, which is the most likely scenario. We therefore made a global change in the spreadsheets, substituting first one, then the other name—

Amenhotep III and Akhenaten—for the unnamed king of Egypt, and then ran the SNA software using the new data. Making such changes impacts the

overall network data. For example, if we combine Akhenaten and the unnamed King of Egypt into a single node, we find Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna Letters 40 that the

Diameter or Maximum Geodesic Distance drops to 7 hops between the most distant individuals (instead of the previous 8), and the Average Geodesic

Distance or average path length between individuals comes down from 3.21 to a very healthy and respectable 2.84. Given that we still have a power law

in the Degree distribution, a short average path length (2.84), and a clustering coefficient greater than random (0.390), in this situation, again we

feel comfortable declaring that it is a Small World after all. In Fig. 13, we show the network diagram for the hypothetical situation that would result if Akhenaten were the unnamed King of Egypt, simply as an experiment. We

see a tight core for the first-degree associates of the king, with a clear periphery emerging as an outer ring of second and even third degree relations. There are several prominent hubs visible in the graph—the

unnamed King of Egypt/Akhenaten is in the center, while Tušratta and Amenhotep III are at the top left. Down and to the right of the

King/Akhenaten are two noticeable hubs; the larger one is Rib-Hadda, while slightly below and to the left of him is Aziru. Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna Letters 41 Fig. 13 The Amarna Network if Akhenaten is the Unnamed King. Unfortunately, we

cannot determine whether the unnamed King of Egypt in the various Amarna letters is actually Amenhotep III or Akhenaten in each case. It may be that

some letters were written and sent without the sender knowing precisely to whom they were sending their letter(s); i.e., simply sending them to whoever was in charge in Egypt at the time. It also may be the case, as in the single letter (EA 9) apparently sent to Tutankhamun by Burna-Buriaš II, that the

recipient was neither Amenhotep III nor Akhenaten. What the Social Network Analysis in- dicates is that conflation of the unnamed King of Egypt with one

of the known pharaohs makes the network look more realistic and draws attention away from Canaanite interrelations and back towards Egypt.

Conclusion As we study ancient lives, we tend to label and categorize people with attributes. As we describe them, we pigeonhole them and put them into boxes and discrete groups. The SNA charts remind us that group boundaries

are actually fluid, and that humans tend to live in social neighborhoods inside networks; that is, we live in clusters connected by ties to other

clusters (Rainie – Wellman 2012: 122). Thus, rather than thinking of a trade route between Amarna and Babylon, perhaps we should think of it instead as the way two individuals like Akhenaten and Burna-Buriaš II might be able

to reach each other. If they can’t travel personally, they will send a messenger with a tablet and gifts. The roads carry the diplomats, the trade embassies, and the activities that tie people to each other in a social way.

These roads or trade routes are thus also the conduits or flows for social ties; they are the edges that link nodes. We have examined such social ties here, as seen through the lens of the Amarna letters and NodeXL, by generating

sociograms that allow us to graphi- cally depict such relationships. Data visualization is one part of the digital humanities that involves seeing our data sets in new ways. Such visualizations, like the sociograms presented

here, can sometimes point researchers in unanticipated directions, perhaps towards uncovering relationships or individuals that seem unusual or

unexpected, and can launch whole new directions of research, simply by providing a new way to see old and familiar data, such as the Amarna letters.

Viewing our data through the sociological framework of SNA reframes the research focus to look at relationships and the structure of communities that

we study. This paper has hopefully demonstrated that Social Network Analysis can be a useful tool for mapping and analyzing social relationships

in the Bronze Age world of the Eastern Mediterranean. And, just as the writing on tablets facilitated social relations in their lives 3,400 years ago, so can the digital humanities enhance our understanding of them today. Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna

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Small World Networks with Random Connectivity.” Social Network Analysis and Mining 3, 51–63. Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The

“Small World” of the Amarna Letters 44http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?

q=cache:NcAG7J3F4SYJ:www.academia.edu/19324931/Chapter_in_Book_Text_Messages_Tablets_and_Social_Networks_in_the_Late_Bronze_Age_Eastern_Mediterranean_The_Small_World_of_the_Amarna_Letter

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Although at initial glance this relationship looks about equal in terms of lines between them as does both Akhenaten’s and Amenhotep III’s

relationship with Tušratta, a quick count of the edges shows Text Messages, Tablets, and Social Networks: The “Small World” of the Amarna Letters 24

Vertex 1 Vertex 2 Kurigalzu Daughter of Kurigalzu Kurigalzu Kadašman-Enlil Amenhotep III Daughter of Kurigalzu Amenhotep III Sister of Kadašman-Enlil

Kadašman-Enlil Sister of Kadašman-Enlil Amenhotep III Kadašman-Enlil

Sister of Kadašman-Enlil

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Kurigalzu I rebuilds the temple at Ur