Footnotes

1.

A hand copy duplicates the exact appearance of the text which often is easier to see in this form than in a photograph. A transliteration reproduces the text in a standard alphabet. Cuneiform texts are usually transliterated in Roman letters. Semitic texts may be transliterated in Roman letters or in Semitic (for example, Hebrew) letters.

2.

The raised d abbreviates the Sumerian word dingir which means “god.” It is used here as a determinative to indicate that the following set of signs represent the god Eden or Rasap.

Endnotes

1.

Ebla: un impero immortalato dall ’argilla (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1979). The book contains exactly seven photographs of tablets limited to one side of the tablet only. Aside from those already published elsewhere. I can be certain of only seven new texts provided in full transliteration, but many more in the book are clearly excerpts, some of them extensive.

2.

“Gli Archivi Reali Di Tell Mardikh-Ebla Refflessioni E Prospettivi,” See G. Pettinato, Rivista Biblica (Italian) 25 (July–Sept. 1977) 238–242; G. Garbini, “La Lingua di Ebla,” La Parola del Passato, fasc. 181 (1978) 241–259, esp. pp. 255ff. Pettinato believes the text is a copy of an actual letter. Garbini believes the document only gives record of a letter having been sent and which contains a summary of the letter’s actual contents.

3.

Giovanni Pettinato, “L’Atlante Geografico del Vicino Oriente Antico attestato ad Ebla e ad Abu Salabikh (I),” Orientalia 47/1 (1978) 50–73. 2136 is a commercial tablet and not a list as such. Only 18 of the 78 cities in this tablet constitute an actual list and may, in fact, be a merchant’s itinerary.

4.

Garbini, “La Lingua di Ebla,” p. 249.

5.

See W. F. Albright, “The Role of the Postdiluvian Patriarchs in Hebrew History,” Journal of Biblical Literature 43 (1924). I failed to catch an error which was published in my earlier article “Assessing Ebla,” BAR 04:01. My statement regarding Phaliga, Sanugi, Til-Turakhi, Nakbur, and Haran implied that these cities had already been found in the Ebla archives. The statement should have specified that these cities have thus far been referred to in previously discovered cuneiform documents of a much younger age than the Ebla texts.

6.

Genesis, Anchor Bible, vol. I, p. 16.

7.

“The Location of the Garden of Eden,” American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literature 39 (1922–23) 26.

8.

Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago E, p. 33.

9.

Cf. Anton Deimel, Sumerisches Lexikon, III:1, p. 90, edin.

10.

See Reallexikon der Assyriologie, vol. II, “Edin,” p. 273.

11.

Ibid., “Bit-Adini,” p. 33f.

12.

Albright, Recent Discoveries in Bible Lands. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1936, 1955, p. 73; see also Journal of Biblical Literature 43 (1924): 387f.

13.

See Rene Labat, Manuel d’epigraphie Akkadienne, no. 331.

14.

Pettinato, “Gli Archivi Reali Di Tell Mardikh-Ebla,” p. 236.