In 1887, an Egyptian woman found among the ruins of the heretic king Akhenaten’s capital city, a site now known as Amarna.

She found a cache of cuneiform tablets, nearly 400 in all, that included correspondence between the pharaohs and the powers of the day, such as the Hittites, Babylonians, and Assyrians.

“Love, War, and Diplomacy” tells the story of the Amarna Letters and the world of the Bronze Age they revealed.

Eric Cline describes the fierce competition among dealers and museums to acquire the tablets, and the race by British and German scholars to translate them.