Palaeographic and orthographic peculiarities of various subcorpora of
the Amarna letters, as well as the gloss phenomenon, have attracted the interest
of numerous scholars. Moreover, in recent decades a number of scholars have
contributed considerably to the study of Egyptian linguistic influence on the
phraseology (Egyptian calques) and morphosyntax of the Canaanite Amarna
letters. Nevertheless, the probable Egyptian background of the logogram use in
the Amarna Letters has scarcely been noticed. In my opinion, the logogram use
in the Amarna Letters in general, and in the Jerusalem letters in particular, may
be paralleled to some typical features of the Egyptian writing system. Three cases
of the use of logograms in the Amarna Letters comparable to Egyptian scribal
practice are presented here, using the Jerusalem Scribe letters as an example. My
observations are based on a number of scholarly works, and most of them are
cited throughout the article.