Amarna letter EA 153
Amarna letter EA 153, titled Ships on Hold, is a short-length clay tablet letter from Abimilku of the city-state of Tyre, an island at the time. The tablet is one of over three hundred Amarna letters.
EA 153 is approximately ×. It has a missing flaked, lower right corner on its obverse affecting two lines of text. One line repeats "...King, Lord-mine...", leaving only one line for more difficult restoration.
The letter shows a high-gloss surface on the clay tablet and, being a short letter, only has between five and nine cuneiform characters per line. It contains one special cuneiform sign for ship, MÁ, a sign used in both the Amarna letters and the Epic of Gilgamesh. The letter's scribe used mostly "very-short" stroked, and "fat-and-rounded" cuneiform strokes, instead of the more arrow-shaped, sharp, and linear strokes,. Since the letter also has distinct, medium-sized wedge strokes as well as L-shaped strokes, the scribe may have used two or more styluses.
The clay tablet letter is located in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, catalogued as object number 24.2.12.