Burna-Buriash II

[i 8]: 8–42 In his correspondence with the Pharaohs, he did not hesitate to remind them of their obligations, quoting ancient loyalties: In the time of Kurgalzu, my ancestor, all the Canaanites wrote here to him saying, "Come to the border of the country so we can revolt and be allied with you."

[7]Posterity has not preserved any Egyptian response, however, Abdi-Heba, the Canaanite Mayor of Jerusalem, then a small hillside town, wrote in EA 287[i 9] that Kassite agents had attempted to break into his home and assassinate him.

May the king make an inquiry in their regard.One letter[i 10] preserves the apologetic response from a mārat šarri, or princess, to her mbé-lí-ia, or lord (Nefertiti to Burna-Buriaš?).

The letters present a playful, forthright and at times petulant repartee, but perhaps conceal a cunning interplay between them, to confirm their relative status, cajole the provision of desirable commodities and measure their respective threat, best exemplified by Burna-Buriaš' feigned ignorance of the distance between their countries, a four-month journey by caravan.

[8] A Neo-Babylonian copy of a literary text which takes the form of a letter,[i 12] now located in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin, is addressed to the Kassite court by an Elamite King.

[12] It is likely that Suppiluliuma I, king of the Hittites, married yet another of Burna Buriaš's daughters, his third and final wife, who thereafter was known under the traditional title Tawananna, and this may have been the cause of his neutrality in the face of the Mitanni succession crisis.

He refused asylum to the fleeing Shattiwaza, who received a more favorable response in Hatti, where Suppiluliuma I supported his reinstatement in a diminished vassal state.

Kara-Hardas: Later in his reign the emissaries of Assyrian king Aššur-uballiṭ I were received at the Egyptian court by Tutankhamen, who had by then ascended the throne.

[16] With the destruction of Mitanni by the Hittites, Assyria emerged as a great power during his reign, threatening the northern border of the Kassite kingdom.

Perhaps to cement relations, Muballiṭat-Šērūa, daughter of Aššur-uballiṭ, had been married to either Burna-Buriaš[17] or possibly his son,[18] Kara-ḫardaš; the historical sources do not agree.

Nazi-Bugas: According to an Assyrian chronicle this incited Aššur-uballiṭ to invade, depose the usurper installed by the army, one Nazi-Bugaš or Šuzigaš, described as "a Kassite, son of a nobody".

Building activity increased markedly in the latter half of the fourteenth century with Burna-Buriaš and his successors undertaking restoration work of sacred structures.

[22] Inscriptions from three door sockets and bricks, some of which are still in situ, bear witness to his restoration of the Ebabbar of the sun god Šamaš in Larsa.

Many of them are personnel rosters dealing with servile laborers, who were evidently working under duress as the terms ZÁḤ, "escapee", and ka-mu, "fettered", are used to classify some of them.

Reverse of clay cuneiform tablet, EA 9, letter from Burna-Buriaš II to Nibḫurrereya (Tutankhamun?) from Room 55 of the British Museum .
Bronze statue of Napir-asu [ i 11 ] in the Louvre .