527 - The Archives of Ebla: An Empire Inscribed in Clay

The Archives of Ebla:
An Empire Inscribed in Clay
By Giovanni Pettinato
With an Afterword by Mitchell Dahood
New York, Doubleday, 1981. 243 pp. $15.95.

Without the afterword, this book was first published in Italian under the title Ebla Un Impero Inciso nell' Argilla in 1979. This English edition also discusses some 84 points in the Ebla documents that illuminate the biblical text, the original ten chapters, a bibliography of works by Pettinato, and indexes of personal and place names, Ebla texts cited, biblical texts cited, subjects, and illustrations.

The brief first chapter introduces some of the author's conclusions from his study of the cuneiform documents: Ebla, the "imperial" city, had a population of 260,000 in 3000 B.C.; it was ruled by an oligarchy whose operation "calls to mind the commune of the Italian Renaissance or of the Hanseatic League"; its ruler (king?) was elected every seven years, and with him "the head of the administration," both assisted by a senate of elders. The people spoke Eblaite, an archaic, Northwest Semitic language. The form of cuneiform writing in their newly discovered documents closely resembles that of Tell Fara (Shuruppak) and Abu Salabikh of the 26th century B.C., thus written during the same period.

The second chapter relates the "finding" of Ebla, beginning with its earliest mention in Akkadian texts from the 24th to the 22nd centuries B.C., and the latest reference to "an Eblaite" in a still unpublished 13th

528 - The Archives of Ebla: An Empire Inscribed in Clay

century B.C. text from Emar (Meskene on the Euphrates River). Earlier scholarly theories about the location of Ebla, before recounting the archaeological discovery and identification of Tell Mardikh as Ebla, are then listed.

Chapters 3 and 4 discuss the tablets, their writing and the language it represents; chapter 5 the city's administrative history; chapter 6 Eblaite society, the administrative division of the city and its reckoning of time; chapter 7 the economy; chapter 8 the culture; chapter 9 the religion; and chapter 10 in brief conclusion, "Problems and Prospects raised by the Discovery of Ebla."

This discussion, based on the author's own study of the documents, lively and interesting as it is, is premature. His transliteration and translation of the tablets have not been tested by his peers. No consensus yet exists about the structure of the Eblaite language, and proper reading of the personal and place names is largely matter of conjecture. Until these tasks are accomplished, chapters about Ebla's history, administration, economy, culture, and religion are only tentative (as Pettinato himself occasionally admits).

The opportunity for calling world-wide attention to the contents of this extraordinary archive of ancient Syrian texts is, of course, overwhelming, and Pettinato's zeal to evaluate the treasure should be understood and appreciated. Unfortunately, the day for single-handed translations is over. Adequate evaluation of the texts will be the work of a generation of scholars to clarify the linguistic and historical relationships between the people of Ebla and those in other cities of the third millennium in the Near East. Some of our customary ideas about the origins and diffusion of cultures will no doubt be greatly modified in the process, but that is part of the excitement generated by this extraordinary discovery.

John H. Marks
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey