Ebla Scholarship à la Syrienne

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How the ancient history of Syria was “faked” was the subject of a recent symposium held in Damascus. The following article is based on an account of the symposium in the English-language Syria Times.

The Damascus symposium focused principally on the cuneiform archive found at Ebla in northwestern Syria in 1974 and 1975. The archive’s 16,000 tablets and fragments dating to the mid-third millennium B.C. are generally recognized as comprising one of the most astounding and important archaeological discoveries of the century. The tablets’ relationship and relevance to Biblical studies is a matter of fierce controversy.

The chief “faker” identified at the symposium was Professor Giovanni Pettinato, who served as the original epigrapher of the Italian Mission to Ebla. According to Pettinato, the Ebla tablets contain references to cities named Sodom and Gomorrah as well as references to names like Abraham, Israel, Ishmael, and David. Pettinato also believes the Eblaite language is closely related to the Northwest Semitic language group, which includes Hebrew. Shortly before Pettinato’s resignation during a bitter personal feud with Paolo Matthiae (the chief archaeologist of the Italian Mission), the Syrian Government asked Pettinato to sign an “official declaration” denying that the Ebla tablets had Biblical connections. (See “The Official ‘Declaration’ Submitted by Chief Ebla Epigrapher,” sidebar to “Syria Tries To Influence Ebla Scholarship,” BAR 05:02). The “official declaration,” signed by Pettinato, repudiated “pretended links with the biblical text.” Instead, said Pettinato in the official declaration, the Ebla tablets “always give us more evidence of the central role of Syria in the history of the third millennium.”

Apparently the “official declaration” was not enough to rehabilitate Pettinato, especially in light of his subsequent writings linking the Ebla tablets to the land and times of the Bible. Pettinato is now the object of Syrian scorn. At the recent Damascus symposium, Pettinato was identified as “an inexperienced Sumerologist.” (According to the Syria Times, “It is estimated that about 80% of the total tablets are in Sumerian, and 20% in the Eblaic language. “) Pettinato was accused of making “false claims … [which] were corrected by specialists, such as Professor Alfonso Archi.” Archi, who is referred to as a “foremost” Sumerologist, is Pettinato’s successor on the Italian Mission to Ebla. Archi and other scholars have proved that Pettinato’s conclusions were “fully wrong,” according to symposium participants, “regardless of the political motives which lay behind [Pettinato’s] storm in a teacup in the American papers.”

Qasem Tweir, Director of Archaeological Research at the Syrian Directorate of Antiquities, explained that scholars formerly compared ancient languages like Babylonian, Assyrian and Sumerian to Hebrew. “But recently,” said Tweir, “a large number of scholars began to realize that the Arabic language is deeply rooted in the ancient cultural heritage of this area, and it is richer than the Jewish language and closer to those [ancient] languages, because it has inherited their major elements and qualities through hundreds of generations. Scholars were astonished to find that a great deal of those ancient words still exist, wholly or partly, in Arabic—in syntax, derivation, conjugation and even in pronunciation.”

According to the Syria Times story, “All participants in the symposium emphasized that Hebrew, regardless of the suspect political purposes of Zionist allegations, is no more than a Canaanite dialect.”

Professor Muhammed Muhaffel, Professor of Ancient History at Damascus University, explained that various schools of western scholarship have “during the past 150 years attempted to deny the Arabs any kinship with the ancient civilizations of the area and to deprive them of their historical identity.” These western scholars associated “the history of the area with the Bible, particularly with Jewish history.”

According to Syria’s Director of Archaeological Research, Mr. Tweir, “The Zionists … call all studies concerning the ancient history of the whole Arab region ‘Biblical studies.’ They faked the archaeological, historical and cultural studies of the whole region and annexed them to the Jewish traditions.” The Bible, it was pointed out, was written down hundreds and even thousands of years after some of the ancient civilizations of the area. “Most Jewish linguists and historians … [ignore] this to enable Zionism to annex the history and civilization of the area to Jewish tradition.”

Pettinato, in interpreting the Ebla tablets, was “not free from Zionist influence,” said the article.

The Syria Times story concluded: “The Canaanite heritage was the real source of Jewish legends. The Jewish rabbis plagiarized that precious treasure. What else could they do?”

How the ancient history of Syria was “faked” was the subject of a recent symposium held in Damascus. The following article is based on an account of the symposium in the English-language Syria Times.