No archaeological find since the Dead Sea Scrolls has so excited the public imagination as the recently-discovered and already famous Ebla tablets.
Newspapers like the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post, national magazines like Time and Newsweek, archaeological journals like the Biblical Archaeologist and Archaeology have all devoted major space to the discoveries at Ebla and their implications for Near Eastern history, especially Biblical history. The Biblical Archaeology Review, the first in the field to take note of the findsa, has already published three, albeit short, reports on the thousands of cuneiform tablets unearthed at Tell Mardikh in northern Syria between 1974 and 1976.
The young University of Rome archaeologist who heads the expedition at Ebla, Paolo Matthiae, and his University colleague, epigrapher Giovanni Pettinato, have made several international tours to report their finds to scholars. The Italian pair’s lectures at scholarly meetings drew audiences of thousands and taxed the capacity of large convention centers.
A bibliography of articles I am compiling which mention or discuss Ebla or its tablets beginning with the discovery of the name in 1882 already numbers more than 200 entries. And it is clear that this is barely the beginning.
Although nearly 17,000 tablets have been discovered, the inventory numbers in published articles 005go up only to 2644. (And this inventory includes noninscriptional artifacts as well.) This only serves to emphasize how little of the material is yet available. While the number of articles about Ebla exceeds 200, only seven of these are based directly on the tablets themselves—and report on only 115 of the inscriptions.
In these circumstances, how does one assess the overall significance of the archive?
The matter is especially perplexing because even before the discoveries at Ebla, scholars were just beginning to make some sense—or thought they were—out of the mass of materials available to reconstruct ancient Mesopotamian civilization.
It is as if the scholars were working on a giant puzzle. The pieces were in hundreds of crates from all over the Near East. As a picture began to emerge and the scholars thought they were beginning to discern patterns with some degree of reliability, pallets of new crates were brought in and dumped on the floor before the astonished scholars—all from Ebla. The picture puzzle now becomes more tentative and obscure. New patterns now seem to present themselves. But the effort to discern the new picture in the puzzle is frustrating because from the new Ebla crates, the scholars have only looked at a piece here and there.
When they began their excavations in 1964, the archaeologists had no idea that Ebla was the ancient identification of Tell Mardikh. The identification of the site was first suggested only in 1968 when the expedition uncovered a statue of King Ibbit-Lim with an inscription on his torso. The inscription identified Ibbit-Lim as of Eblaite origin and stated that Ibbit-Lim was presenting a basin to “his mistress” the goddess Ishtar, the goddess who “shines brightly in Ebla.”1
When Matthiae first suggested that the site was ancient Ebla, several scholars roundly rejected the identification. Writing in the prestigious German publication Ugarit-Forschungen, Michael C. Astour argued: “It is obvious that Ebla was a mountainous and wooded country, which alone is enough to rule out Tell Mardikh, located in a plain near low and treeless hills.”2
Professor Astour based his contention on ancient inscriptional references to Ebla (and other geographical locations associated with it) from other sites. These references seemed to suggest, as Astour argued, that Ebla was located in a mountainous, wooded area. For example, in 1882 an inscribed statue of Gudea, King of Lagash, was uncovered which told how the king had gotten wood from a city “in the mountains of Ibla”3 to build a temple.
However plausible Astour’s argument seemed at the time, it became untenable after the discovery in 1974 of the first 42 tablets, followed in 1975 by the discovery of a library of almost 15,000 tablets. By the end of the 1976 season, the tablets, and fragments totalled nearly 17,000. The inscriptions made clear that the site was ancient Ebla, center of a far-flung and powerful empire.
Does it really matter whether the site was Ebla or some other ancient city? In one sense, no. Whatever its ancient identification, the site would be of immense significance. The architectural remains alone attest that the ancient city was a major center of civilization in its day. This conclusion is abundantly confirmed by the enormous archive. From all of this evidence, we get a picture of an important political and cultural center of the third millennium which was between 200 and 500 miles west of previously known foci of Mesopotamian civilization like Sumer, Akkad, Nuzi, Mari, and Ashur. Until the discoveries at Tell Mardikh, northern Syria was considered a political and cultural backwater. The Italian excavations at Tell Mardikh have now uncovered a vast new civilization and this discovery would have been of immense historical significance regardless of the ancient name of the site.
But from another viewpoint, the identification of Tell Mardikh as ancient Ebla is important. For Ebla is not simply the name of a city that popped up for the first time at Tell Mardikh. It and other geographical locations associated with it appear frequently in ancient inscriptions—from Lagash, from Ur in southern Mesopotamia, from Umma, from Nippur, Mari, Alalakh, as well as from Egypt. As recently as 1975 a reference to Ebla was published from a Hittite source in modern Turkey.4
Evidence that Ebla was of some importance in the ancient world is shown by its presence on the oldest map ever discovered, dating from the late third millennium B.C. which was found at Nuzi (ancient Gasur). This map, on a clay tablet, depicts the world as divided into four parts. Each of the compass points are marked (south, however, is broken off). Within a circle placed near some mountains on the western portion of the map are the words “Mashgan-Dúur-Ibla”, that is “Settlement of the Fortress of Ibla”.5 Nuzi was located nearly 400 miles to the east of Ebla.
A similar conclusion about Ebla’s importance may be drawn from the fact that in another ancient source Sargon the Great (2340–2284 B.C.) praises the god Dagan for delivering the province of the 006upper sea, including Ebla, into his hands.6
A number of ancient texts record the fact that Sargon the Great’s grandson Naram-Sin (2254–2218 B.C.) destroyed Ebla. Two identical inscriptions from Lagash refer to Naram-Sin as “ … the mighty, king of the four regions, conqueror of Arman and Ibla.”7 Naram-Sin was the first ruler, so far as is known, to take the title “King of the four regions”; significantly, he did this only after conquering Ebla in the West. Ebla was thus important enough to have been referred to by a boastful Naram-Sin, and his conquest of Ebla enabled him to proclaim himself “King of the four regions.”
Scholars have suspected Ebla’s buried existence and importance.8
The discoveries at Tell Mardikh allay any lingering doubt as to the significance of Ebla and its empire. The picture we get is of an important commercial center which had a radiating influence in the area around it—at least until its conquest by Naram-Sin of Akkad.
One text from Tell Mardikh which is surely destined for lasting fame—tablet TM. 75.G. 2379—indicates that Ebla even ruled Mari—more than 200 miles distant—for a time.10 The tablet is a war communique from Ebla’s General Enna-Dagan to an unnamed king of Ebla (probably Ar-Ennum) summarizing the course of his battles against Iblul-Il, king of Mari, already known from early Mari texts. Iblul-Il, according to the Ebla text, was resoundingly defeated and Mari was made vassal to Ebla’s expanding empire. Another text tells us that Mari had to pay 2193 minas of silver (approximately 39,394 ounces) and 134 minas of gold (about 2,212 ounces) in tribute to Ebla.11 (Silver, of course, was the standard exchange throughout most of Mesopotamian history. Note that Abraham paid for the cave of Machpelah in silver (Genesis 23:15f.).)
Eventually, Sura-Damu, the son of Ebrium, king of Ebla, was installed as king of Mari, as we know from yet a third tablet whose end date reads: “Year when Shura-Damu became king of Mari.”12
Another tablet dates itself by reference to Shura-Damu’s investiture ceremony; the tablet was written in the “Year of the feast of [his] anointing at Mari.”13 Probably from this reference to investiture by anointing, Pettinato has concluded that the ancient Eblaite kings were anointed in the same manner as later Israelite kings.
After the destruction of Ebla by Naram-Sin, the city naturally lost much of its international importance, although it continued to exist. Indeed, it appears that Ebla achieved something of a second life during the early part of the second millennium. But the second phase of Ebla’s existence is attested mostly by architecture and artifacts, and only by a few inscriptional finds including the torso of King Ibbit-Lim referred to above. The archives and the tablets all date from the period of the empire destroyed by Naram-Sin.
007
A disagreement has arisen as to the exact dates of the empire of the Ebla tablets. Archaeologist Matthiae, on the basis of archaeological and stratigraphical evidence from the palace in which the tablets were found, dates them to the period 2400–2250 B.C., the so-called Sargonic period. Epigrapher Pettinato, on the basis of epigraphic evidence, dates the tablets between 2580–2450 B.C.
Since it is not possible that the archives preceded the palace by 130 years, something is obviously wrong with the interpretation of either the ceramic or epigraphic data. Did the scribes carry on a time-honored handwriting tradition long after it had fallen into disuse elsewhere? Pettinato believes this may be the case, but that would bring the tablets down to about 2500 B.C. as opposed to a date about 2700 B.C. that the epigraphy might otherwise support, but it would not bring the tablets down to Matthiae’s suggested dates. On the other hand, the ceramic dates synchronize with ceramic typology elsewhere and ultimately to stratigraphy. Is it possible that the ceramic types we have been dating to the Sargonic period (2400–2250 B.C.) will have to be re-evaluated and pushed back in time? It seems very difficult at present to do that. Complicating the matter is the fact that Iblul-Il, King of Mari, mentioned earlier, has also been dated to pre-Sargonic times. On that and epigraphic bases, I. J. Gelb, the University of Chicago’s distinguished Sumerologist, would push the date of the palace and archives to a time earlier than either Pettinato or Matthiae.
One of the most intriguing questions about the tablets is what language they are written in. Most of the cuneiform signs are Sumerian signs and Pettinato initially thought the language might be Sumerian, a non-Semitic language widely used in third millennium Mesopotamia. However, Pettinato quickly noticed many irregularities from the standard literary Sumerian with which he was so familiar. Ultimately he concluded that, although the tablets were mostly in Sumerian cuneiform signs, another language was involved. On the basis of vocabulary, grammatical signals, and sentence structure, Pettinato concluded that this heretofore unknown language was more closely related to Hebrew than any of the other principal Semitic languages. This new ancient language he called “Paleo-Canaanite”—possibly the granddaddy of the native language spoken more than 1300 years later in Canaan when Israel entered the land.
Pettinato’s assessment of the language has not been universally accepted. I. J. Gelb, has argued that the Eblaite language is simply another Semitic language not directly related to the other eight principal Semitic languages.14 The settlement of this crucial question will affect how scholars reconstruct the prehistory of the Northwest Semitic languages of which Hebrew is a part.
The relationship of Ebla to the world of the Bible is as obscure as it is intriguing.
If we date the age of the Patriarchs to the early second millennium B.C., the Ebla tablets were written some 400+ years before. On the other hand, the milieu of the tablets bears many similarities to the world of the Bible. While on the one hand some aspects of the culture reflected in the Bible may be traced to Ebla or to a similar cultural entity, on the other hand it is equally likely that the relationship between the world of Ebla and the world of the Bible is an indirect rather than a direct one. How that relationship was mediated is likely to remain obscure for decades to come—at least.
Important cities in Palestine such as Jerusalem and Hazor as well as cities east of the Jordan are mentioned in the tablets. Even more startling, Pettinato believes that towns near the Dead Sea such as the five “cities of the plain” (Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, Bela = Zoar) mentioned in Genesis 14:2, 8 are also referred to in the Ebla archives. Indeed, these five cities are given in one tablet in exactly the same sequence, according to Pettinato, as found in Genesis 14. One is tempted to assume some kind of direct contact between Genesis 14, and the Ebla Archives. However, the fine article by Stan Rummel in the September 1977 BAR15 has reminded us of the dangers of parallelism. The striking similarity between the Ebla tablet and Genesis 14 may mean nothing more than that these five cities were located east of the Dead Sea in exactly the sequence given in the tablets and in the Bible.
Moreover, Gelb even questions Pettinato’s 008reading of some of these allegedly Biblical names.16 We shall have to await further publication and scholarly debate before any critical judgments can be made. Perhaps some day these cities will be discovered and explored. Walter Rast and R. Thomas Schaub have recently written:
In 1973 we conducted a survey of the southeast plain of the Dead Sea and discovered a number of sites similar to Bab edh-Dhra‘. Today they are known as Numeira, es-Sag, Feifeh, and Khanazir, but these Arabic place-names could have a long history behind them. All of these impressive Early Bronze Age settlements—dating between 2900 and 2200 B.C.—might have been the sites mentioned by Josephus and connected with the “cities of the plain.”17
The similarity between the names of towns mentioned in the Ebla archives and the names of Abraham’s relatives mentioned in Genesis 11:10–26 is striking. These towns included Phaliga, Sarugi, Til-Turakbi, Nakbur, and Haran. They are parallel to Abraham’s ancestors and collateral relatives Peleg, Serug, Terah, Nahor and Haran. Indeed, another town mentioned in the tablets is Abrum, an obvious parallel to Abram himself. Moreover, these Biblical names may also be geographical locations: In Genesis 24:10, we learn that Abram’s relatives come the “City of Nahor.”
Yet it is difficult to draw any clear conclusions from these parallels.
If other cities parallel to Abraham’s relatives continue to appear in the Ebla archives, however, this would be strong evidence that Abraham’s family was well established in the Haran region long before Abram lived (assuming that the second millennium dates for Abraham are maintained) and would strongly indicate that Terah’s move from Ur to Haran was from a small northern Ur into the larger city of Haran.
This conclusion is buttressed by another Ebla tablet which refers to a town of Ur near Haran. Cyrus Gordon has recently argued in these pages that Abraham’s Ur is probably not the famous southern urban center of Ur.18
Matthiae has suggested that, “If something of the ancient splendor of Ebla has remained in the tradition of the Syro-Palestinian area, it is perhaps only the name of the great king Ebrum [a variant spelling of Ebrium], which probably became Eber in Biblical tradition and was inserted in Shem’s genealogy [Genesis 11:14].”19
While this is a possibility, it remains highly tenuous. There is no internal textual reason to question the Biblical genealogy in which Eber is followed by Peleg and Reu (Genesis 11:14–17). King Ebrium of Ebla, however, is followed by his son Ibbi-Sipish, and his grandson Dubukhu-Ada.
The concentration of such seeming Biblical type names in the Ebla tablets as Ab-ra-mu (Abram), Da-’u-dum (David), E-sa-um (Esau), Ish-ra-ilu (Israel), Mi-ka-ilu (Michael), Sha-u-lum (Saul) and Ish-ma-ilum (Ishmael), imply nothing more than that for the first time we stand clearly in the immediate world through which the patriarch’s ancestors moved. We know that papponomy (naming a grandson after his grandfather) was practiced here. Thus, while the Abram of the Ebla texts is very likely not the Abram of Genesis, there seems to be no reason why he could not have been an ancestor somewhere in the Patriarch’s past. But if he is, we have no reference to him in the Bible. Moreover, such Biblical-type names—although not all—have been found throughout the Near East in many texts from many different periods.
009
David Noel Freedman on the basis of the parallel between Ebrium and Eber has boldly suggested in a recent article that Ebrium was Abram’s Biblical ancestor Eber and that Abraham should be dated approximately to 2500 B.C.!20 This suggestion will surely raise a storm among scholars who are committed to the second millennium dates—the Middle Bronze, 2000–1600 B.C.—as the age of the Patriarchs.
Another issue which is likely to be disputed for some time is Pettinato’s suggestion that the cuneiform syllable “-ia” at the end of some Eblaite names represents the divine name Ya. Ya is a contraction of Yahweh, the Biblical God of the Hebrews.
Anson Rainey was quick to point out in print21 (as others have in private) that a “-ia” name is merely an abbreviated form of a name which was originally much longer.
Pettinato, of course, knows this, but based his case that the “-ia” element represented Ya (or an abbreviated form of Yahweh) on a curious change in name forms. A survey of Eblaite names revealed that those containing the divine element “-ilu” (god) prior to the elevation of Ebrium as king of Ebla, were changed from “-ilu” to “-ia” after Ebrium’s accession. For example, Mika-ilu (Michael) became Mika-Ya (Michiah).22 We do not know who Ebrium’s own personal god was, but it could have been Ya, and people with names containing the more general divine element “ilu” might well have changed their names in honor of Ebrium and his own personal god—if Ya it was.
Plausibility, however, does not make it so, and arguments against Pettinato’s position seem weightier—at least at this time. Abbreviated name forms including “-ia” are found throughout the Near East. What is to prevent us from assuming, as Pettinato does in the case of Ebla, that all the “-ia” forms refer to Ya? Certainly the weight of scholarly tradition is against this.
In a private communication, Professor Gelb has reminded me that the cuneiform sign which Pettinato reads “-ia” and interprets as “Ya” can also be read as “-ni”. Gelb states that “-ia” names are “rather rare in [the] 3rd millennium” and that the “-ni” form is supported by such previously known names as Akbuni (“My brother”) and Abuni (“My father”).23 Therefore, if Gelb’s view prevails we must read “me/my/us/our” instead of “Ya”.
Thus far, of the thousands of names in the Ebla tablets, only approximately 165 have been referred to in scattered articles. Of these, only 14 can be classed as “Ya” names. The verbal elements of some of the allegedly “-ia” names are poorly understood and yield no sense whatever. Of those that are understood, we may consider the following:24
Pettinato’s Position
Gelb’s Position
1. Dubukhu-Ya “Feast of Ya” (My translation)
2. Ebdu-Ya “Servant of Ya”
Ib-du-ni “Our slave”
3. Enna-Ya “Please, O Ya” or “Behold, O Ya” (My translation)
4. Ipkhur-Ya “Ya has gathered” (My translation)
Ipkbur-ni “He has gathered me/us.” (Gelb’s position)
5. Iptur-Ya “Ya has redeemed” (My translation)
Iptur-ni “He has redeemed me/us.” (Gelb’s position)
6. Ennani-Ya “Ya has mercy on me” (My translation)
7. Isa-Ya “Ya has gone forth” (My translation)
8. Mika-Ya “Who is like Ya?”
The “Ya” translations are viable only if the question of the deity can be settled. Perhaps new material from additional tablets will give us the answer. This could happen in a number of ways: Deities are often indicated in cuneiform by the addition of a non-phonetic or unpronounced sign called a determinative, which is included with the phonetic signs that make up the word. The phonetic signs indicate the way the name is pronounced; the determinative indicates that the name is the name of a god. Perhaps such a determinative will be found in connection with a Ya name. And herein lies the reason why modern scholarship remains skeptical about Pettinato’s interpretation of the so-called “Ya” names. To this point, no name has been found in ancient documents which acknowledge Ya as a deity by using the divine determinative.
Perhaps a godlist containing the name Ya will be found and thereby clinch his existence at Ebla. (A godlist has been found at Ebla, but, Gelb informs me, it does not contain any reference to Ya.)25
Even if a clear reference to Ya would prove his existence at Ebla, however, it would not refer to the elevated conception of God reflected in the Bible. Even if we assume that Ya was Ebrium’s own personal god, we must also bear in mind that he named one of his sons in honor of the solar deity Sipish and another son in honor of the god Damu. Even if Ya were known at Ebla, he would only be one deity among some 500 gods already attested at Ebla by Pettinato.26
010
Until the discoveries at Ebla, scholars have looked principally to Mari to illuminate the background of Biblical prophecy. (However, despite all the semantic similarities between the supposed prophets of Mari and Biblical prophets, the word nabhi (prophet) has never appeared at Mari.) At Ebla, however, a cognate word is used for the first time referring to a group of prophets.27 We can be certain that Ebla will make a significant contribution to the vexed question of prophetic origins. Pettinato himself has promised to address himself to this question in a future article.
There is so much to be done. Before Biblical historians can take a new look at their scholarly puzzles, Near Eastern historians must review the already growing information beginning to pour from the Ebla archives. Gelb’s contribution, from which I have drawn heavily, is only the first of what will surely be a progression of reactions and responses to the materials and interpretations of the Royal Library of Ebla.
It will be an exciting time for scholars. The rest of us must be content to wait—impatiently.28
No archaeological find since the Dead Sea Scrolls has so excited the public imagination as the recently-discovered and already famous Ebla tablets.
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See “Ancient Royal Library Found,”BAR 02:02; Queries & Comments, BAR 02:03; and “The Promise of Ebla,”BAR 02:04. History may not record that these articles appeared earlier than other publications, but scholarly journals, unlike BAR, frequently appear much later than they are dated. For example, as of this writing (January 1978), the most recent issue of the Biblical Archaeologist to appear is September 1976. When the next issue appears, it will be dated December 1976!
Endnotes
1.
G. Pettinato, “Inscription de Ibbit-Lim Roi de Ebla”, Annales Archeologiquès Arabes Syriennes, Vol. 20, p. 75 (1970).
2.
M. C. Astour, “Tell Mardikh and Ebla”, Ugarit-Forschungen, Vol. 3, p. 12 (1971).
3.
F. T.-Dangin, Sumer et D’Akkad: Gudea, Statue B, V:53f., p. 108f., Paris, (1905), E. de Sarzec and Leon Heuzey, Decouterres en Chaldee, Vol. II, Paris, pls. 14–19; Partie Epigraphique, pl. X, (1884–1912). “Ibla” is but another pronunciation of the name “Ebla”. Scholars have long known that the cuneiform sign known to them as IB could be pronounced “ib”. Thus when Statue B of Gudea was uncovered at ancient Lagash and its inscription translated, the name “Ibla” first came to scholarly attention. While other documents used a different IB sign which could also be read “eb” it did not affect the pronunciation of “Ibla” until 1936 when Arthur Ungnad in his book Subartu showed that “Ibla” was written “e-eb-laa-pa” in a Hurrian text found at Boghazkoy (no. 409). The initial “e” indicated that to the writer of that document “Ibla” was pronounced “Ebla” (p. 51, no. 2). Albrecht Goetze underscored that pronunciation in 1953 and most scholars have used that form since.
On the other hand, I. J. Gelb of the University of Chicago has preferred to retain the older form “Ibla”: “In line with the trend for simple primary syllabic values which I have followed for years I read Ib-laKI (and Ibla), and do not feel obliged to transliterate the name as Eb-laKI (and Ebla) in conformance with the spelling URUE-eb-la-a-pa which occurs a thousand years later … ” (See his “Thoughts about Ibla”, Syro-Mesopotamian Studies Vol. I no. 1 p. 5, (1977)).
4.
Mirjo Salvini, Keilschrifturkunden Aus Boghazkoi, Heft XLV, Berlin, no. 84, (1975). Here at last is the Hittite text (Bo. 409) referred to by A. Ungnad in his work Subartu, p. 51.
5.
T. J. Meek, “Some Gleanings from the Last Excavations at Nuzi.”, Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research Vol. XIII, pp. 1–12, New Haven (1933).
6.
L. Legrain, Royal Inscriptions and Fragments from Nippur and Babylon, P.B.S. vol. XV, p. 14 (1926); A. Poebel, Historical Texts, P.B.S. vol. IV, p. 177f. (1914).
7.
Sarzec & Heuzy, op. cit. Partie Epigraphique, pl. LVII. H. de Genouillac, “Inscriptions Diverses”, Revue D’Assyriologie, Vol. 10, pp. 101f., (1913); G. A. Barton, Royal Inscriptions of Sumer and Akkad, pp. 138f., no. 8, New Haven (1929).
8.
In 1966, before Ebla was identified, U. Bahadir Alkim made the following remark:
We see the Gaziantep and Islahiye areas as having been the scene of an uninterrupted settlement in the Third Millennium B.C., and representing an important regional culture. As has become apparent, this regional culture belonged to the people of a country (Ebla-Ursum? Hashshum?) who were masters in the use of metal and who had close relations with Southern Mesopotamia. [Italics in original] [U. Bahadir Alkim, “Excavations at Gedikli (Karahuyuk), First Preliminary Report”, Turk Tarih Kurumu Belleten, Vol. XXX, no. 117 Oct. 1966, p. 53].
The area Alkim was discussing (Islahiye) is located now in modern Turkey ancient eastern Anatolia, whose general area is now known from the Ebla archives to have been under Eblaite influence. So prophetic were those words that nothing need be changed including the italics. The discovery of the first 42 tablets revealed that Ebla’s industries involved not only textiles, ceramics, and wood carving (remarkably well preserved despite the fire which destroyed Royal Palace G), but also metal working. [Pettinato, “Testi Cuneiformi del 3 Millennio in Paleo-Cananeo Rinvenuti nella Campagna 1974 a Tell Mardikh-Ebla”, Orientalia, Vol. 44, fasc. 3, p. 365, (1975)].
9.
G. Pettinato, “Relations Entre les Royaumes d’Ebla et de Mari au Troisieme Millenaire, d’apres les Archives Royales de Tell Mardikh-Ebla.”, Akkadica, Vol. I:2, pp. 24–27, (March–April, 1977).
10.
The lone tablet discovered very recently at Terqa and published in 1977 by G. Buccellati (G. Buccellati, “A Cuneiform Tablet of the Early Second Millennium B.C.”, Syro-Mesopotamian Studies, Vol. I:4, pp. 135–142, (1977)) shows that Ebla may have administered other cities sometime in the past as well. On the basis of this single discovery and the impetus provided by the Ebla finds, the Terqa team will no doubt make every effort to discover the Terqa Archives.
11.
Pettinato, Ibid., p. 27.
12.
Ibid., p. 23.
13.
Ibid.
14.
The eight are Akkadian, Amorite, Ugaritic, Canaanite, Aramaic, (Classical) Arabic, South Arabic, and Ethiopic.
See Gelb, Materials for the Assyrian Dictionary, no. 2, Old Akkadian Writing and Grammar, p. 129, note 14, Chicago (1952, 1961). The translations are my own.
24.
The names will be found scattered throughout numerous publications. The main sources are as follows: Pettinato, “Testi Cuneiformi del 3 Millennio in Paleo-Cananeo Rinvenuti nella campagna 1974 a Tell Mardikh = Ebla”, Orientalia, Vol. 44, fasc. 3, pp. 369–372, (1975), “Aspetti Amministrativi e Topografici di Ebla nel III Millennio Av. Cr.: A. Documentazione Epigrafica.”, Rivista degli Studi Orientali, Vol. L, fasc. I–II, pp. 1–14 (1976); “The Royal Archives of Tell Mardikh-Ebla”, Biblical Archeologist, Vol. 39:2, p. 49 (May, 1976), Gelb, op cit. p. 20. I have reconstructed some forms. For example, Pettinato gives the first name (in the first reference here, p. 370) under the form “du-bu-hu-ia”.
25.
Private communication.
26.
Pettinato, “The Royal Archives of Tell Mardikh-Ebla”, p. 48.
27.
Pettinato, Akkadica [Vol. I] no. 2, p. 21, (1977).
28.
My warmest thanks go to Dr. I. J. Gelb, Hershel Shanks and Professor Barry Ross of United Wesleyan College, each of whom read early copies of this paper and made numerous suggestions and corrections. I am deeply indebted to Dr. Gelb for his extensive and constructive remarks relating to the entire issue of the reading of the tablets and their interpretation. I alone remain responsible for any inaccuracies I may have retained.
