The Amarna Age is the label given by archaeologists to a period of about fifty years—c1400-1350 BC—towards the end of the XVIII Dynasty in Egyptian history of internal convulsion and external weakness in the reign of Pharoah Armenhotep III (r.1406-1370) and especially of his son Armenhotep IV (otherwise aka Akhnaton) (r.1370-1353). Its end ushered in a period of renewal with the XIX Dynasty during which ancient Israel made her exodus for her journey to nationhood in Canaan.
The label for the period comes from Tell el-Amarna, the modern name of Akhetatan, capital city of Egypt during the reign of Amenophis IV (or Akhenatan) and his successors from about 1375-1360 BC. The importance of the city for biblical studies lie in the discovery of a large cache of documents written in cuneiform on clay tablets that were found by chance in the liberary of the capital in 1887. The documents include official letters written by various Asiatic rulers to the pharoahs of the time, of which nearly half were from rulers in Palestine and Syria. For historians and scholars these letters offer insights into the linguistic history and social and political geography of the region in the period just prior to Israel's entery into Palestine.
Three particular references have interested biblical scholars.
1) The first is the reference to a certain Yanhamu who attained the position of a high official in the pharoah's government as supervisor of grains supply to the pharaoh's Syrian subjects. His name is Semitic in form, which suggests that the fact of Joseph being appointed to his high office was not all that far-fetched an idea as is sometimes suggested.
2) The second is the reference to the Apiru, a group of people who were threatening the security of the region. Who the Apiru were remains an intriguing question but attempts have been made to identify them the the Hebrews; the identification, however, is quite unlikely.
3) The third is the reference to the city of Jerusalem, the oldest reference to the city after the Egyptian Execretion texts of the 19th-18th Cent BC.
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