The multiplicity of cultural links between the 5th century Aramaic milieu of Elephantine and the earlier horizon of the Neo-Assyrian empire is evident in the Ahiqar narrative, as well as in the juridical formulae and onomastics of the Aramaic colony. However, no comparative investigation regarding the epistolography of these two historical settings has been hitherto effected. In this article, numerous formulaic and topical-literary parallels in letter-writing between Elephantine and Neo-Assyrian Nineveh are brought forth and illustrated with the aid of a mixed philological and semiological approach. Among the results is a new "reading-out" of the well-known plea of the Jews, AP 30, which yields a group of totally original utterances, set out against the decidedly topical compositional framework of the text itself-as shown by parallels from the Nineveh archives. The obscure term klby' is also explained as an Assyrian loanword into Aramaic.