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Bentresh t1_iu9yiob wrote

It's not uncommon to see literary texts from highly urbanized societies like Mesopotamia and Egypt mocking outside groups for their clothing, dietary habits, housing, perceived character traits, etc., but it cannot be emphasized enough that these are ideological statements and do not necessarily reflect how most people in those societies actually felt about outsiders.

We see many negative statements in Egyptian military inscriptions about "wretched Retjenu" (Canaan), for example, and yet kings like Thutmose III married Canaanite women. Similarly, Ramesses II was quite negative and dismissive about the Hittites in his Kadesh inscriptions, referring to the Hittite king as the "Enemy" and the "Fallen One," and yet he had few qualms about establishing a peace treaty with the Hittites, marrying Hittite princesses, exchanging gifts and technical experts with the Hittites, and so on.

The Egyptologist Thomas Schneider has used the terms topos (highly negative depictions of foreigners in ideological statements in monumental/royal inscriptions) and mimesis (more favorable and realistic depictions of foreigners in everyday texts) to differentiate between the contradictory attitudes we see in the Egyptian textual record.

I've written a few posts about this over on r/askhistorians.

Letters of the Great Kings of the Ancient Near East by Trevor Bryce and Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East by Amanda Podany are the best introductions to Bronze Age diplomacy. They're a bit more theoretical, but Mario Liverani's International Relations in the Ancient Near East and Amarna Diplomacy: The Beginnings of International Relations edited by Raymond Cohen and Raymond Westbrook are very interesting reads as well. The latter includes contributions not only by Egyptologists and ancient Near Eastern historians but also specialists in political science and international relations.

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3ayzamout OP t1_iudjx8h wrote

thank you very much this is all I wanted i really appreciate it

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rocky5q t1_iuh4u9f wrote

Too much to dig in . Good collection

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