Ebla and Its Archives

Texts, History, and Society

Alfonso Archi

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781614517160
• eBook ISBN: 9781614519386
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

The cuneiform tablets from Ebla (3rd millenium BC) attest to the most ancient Semitic language and provide insight into a period in the history and religion of Syria that was previously unknown. The restoration, interpretation, and classification of these tablets has taken more than thirty years. This volume presents a collection of 49 essays from one of the foremost experts on Ebla and its broader ancient context and includes important studies on the language, society, political relations, and religion of this ancient Near Eastern city-state.

Part I. History, Language, and Texts

1 Syria and Mesopotamia Before the Akkadian Dynasty: Geopolitical Relations

1 Commemorative inscriptions and administrative documents

In giving a picture of Syria before “the time of the kings of Agade” for the third edition of the Cambridge Ancient History, J. Bottéro was compelled by the sources at his disposal to state that “to the great powers of the Near East, Syria was no-man’s-land”. The Egyptian Execration Texts of the early second millennium, which contain a large number of indisputably Semitic personal names, showed that the habitants of Palestine and Syria were at that time predominantly Semites. The place-names (particularly in Northern Syria) were on the contrary of unknown linguistic affiliation. Notwithstanding this, one had to assume (on the basis of few god and personal names) the presence of Semites in Northern Syria from at least the middle of the third millennium BC (Bottéro 1971: 319–21).

The scarce data in the commemorative inscriptions of the kings of Akkad (about 2335–2193 BC) depict Syria, in fact, as a land beyond the horizon of their usual relations. Mari, on the Euphrates, to the west, and Elam, in the mountains to the east of the alluvial plain of Mesopotamia, delimited that part of the world consistent with Sumer and Akkad: “The god Enlil gave to him (Sargon) [the Upper Sea and] the [Low]er (Sea), so that from the Lower Sea citizens of Agade [h]eld governorships (of the land). Mari and Elam stood (in obedience) before Sargon, lord of the land” (Frayne 1993: 11–12; E2.1.1.1., ll.73–93). In another terse inscription, Sargon boasts first that he, “king of the world (KIŠ), was victorious (in) 34 battles”, and then he mentions only two exploits as proof of his dominion over the world: that “he moored the ships of Melu

a, Magan, and Tilmun (i.e. the lands of the Lower Sea) at the quay of Agade”, and led an expedition in the regions towards the Upper Sea: “Sargon, the king, bowed down to the god Dagan in Tuttul. He (the god Dagan) gave to him the Upper Land: Mari, Iarmuti, and Ebla as far as the Cedar Forest and the Silver Mountains (the Amanus)” (Frayne 1993: 28–29). In order to proceed west of Mari, following the river upstream, Sargon therefore had to ask permission of Dagan, the god of that region, in his sanctuary at Tuttul, where the Bali

flows into the Euphrates.

The report of Narām-Sîn, Sargon’s nephew, on his campaign in Northern Syria has even a stunned tone between epic and fable:

“Whereas, for all time since the creation of mankind, no king whosoever had destroyed Armānum and Ebla, the god Nergal, by means of (his) weapons opened the way for Nar-ām-Sîn, the mighty, and gave him Armānum and Ebla. Further, he gave to him the Ama-nus, the Cedar Mountain, and the Upper Sea. By means of the weapons of the god Dagan, who magnifies his kingship, Narām-Sîn, the mighty, conquered Armānum and Ebla. Further, from the side of the Euphrates river as far as (the city of) Ulišum, he smote the people whom the god Dagan had given to him for the first time … Thus says Narām-Sîn, the mighty, king of the four quarters: ‘The god Dagan gave me Armānum and Ebla and I captured Rīd-Adda, king of Armānum” (Frayne 1993: 132–34).

The city of Armānum has been identified with Samsat, the only huge tell on the banks of the Euphrates, upstream of Mari, which could correspond to a well fortified “high hill”, close to the quay, as Nāram-Sîn’s inscription says. The siege and conquest of this city was considered a major enterprise by this king because it is the only war action described in detail in his inscriptions. Armānum must be the Armi(um) of the Ebla archives, which lay at the northern border of the Semitized regions according to an analysis of the personal names. This is exactly the area where Samsat is placed. Because the only important city state between Ebla and Armi(um) was Uršaum, the Ulišum of the Narām-Sîn’s scribes (= Ur(i)šum, because /r/ can be expressed by l in the Ebla texts) must be Uršaum, the Uršum of Gudea and the documents of Ur III and the 2nd millennium (Archi 2011: 29–30). This identification explains the Akkadian expression: iš-tum-ma pu-ti BURANUN.I7 “from the side of the Euphrates” (ll. 9–11), because the best candidate for Uršum is Gaziantep, 65 km west of the Euphrates, which presents a morphology quite similar to that of

alab, with the citadel on a natural hill (the Islamic structures make it difficult to recover earlier, preserved levels), and the lower city completely covered by recent settlements.1

The fragmentary Nasiriyah stele, with Akkadian warriors in the lower register bringing as booty belts with daggers of non-Mesopotamian type and some depas amphikypellon (a two-handled goblet: an Anatolian typology diffused also in the Euphrates valley), is probably the depiction of this king’s achievements in Northern Syria and Eastern Anatolia (Archi 2011: 30–32).

Reaching Armānum/Samsat, Narām-Sîn went therefore upriver the Euphrates to the same height as he did in the Tigris valley, where he left a stele at the large tell of Pir Hussein by Dyarbakır.

The discovery of Ebla and its archives has radically changed the picture given by the Akkadian royal inscriptions, to the point of even providing evidence of a dynastic marriage: that of a daughter of the last king of Ebla with a son of the king of Kiš, therefore a predecessor of Sargon, if not of the same generation as Sargon himself. Kiš was at that time the most important centre of Babylonia, and it was from Kiš that Sargon moved his capital to Akkad, according to tradition.

The document concerning the dowry of precious objects for princess Kešdut upon her going to Kiš is very fragmentary; well preserved is instea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Publications of Alfonso Archi concerning Ebla
• Part I. History, Language, and Texts
• Part II. Society and Economy
• Part III. Political Relations
• Part IV. Religion
• Part V. Silver and Gold
• Bibliography
• Indexes of discussed names, terms and texts
• Endnotes