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“Ideology and Nomenclature of Power in and Ebla” GIOVANNI PETTINATO

Published in Melammu Symposia 3: A. Panaino and G. Pettinato (eds.), Ideologies as Intercultural Phenomena. Proceedings of the Third Annual Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project. Held in Chicago, USA, October 27-31, 2000 (Milan: Università di Bologna & IsIao 2002), pp. 197-204. Publisher: http://www.mimesisedizioni.it/

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PETTINATO I DEOLOGY AND NOMENCLATURE OF POWER IN SUMER AND EBLA

GIOVANNI PETTINATO Roma

Ideology and Nomenclature of Power in Sumer and Ebla

he vastness and variety of the very man world was ruled by a sovereign who, rich epigraphic documentation in addition, was invested by the divine Tfound in the Royal Palace G of world, so that his sovereignty was, so to Ebla, from 16,000 to 20,000 documents, say, sacred. Furthermore, in , the might make us assume that we, scholars, Pharaoh was the incarnation of the god are in the most favourable condition to himself, while in the sov- go back to both political and social con- ereign was the earthly vicar of the god ceptions of the Eblaites and that we and could exercise his sovereignty with shouldn’t find it difficult at all to rebuild the gods’ consent, of which he could be both Ebla’s life and the relations with its deprived in any moment. Both peoples surrounding world. considered sovereignty as a gift of the Unfortunately, the reality is different. gods to the human beings, who otherwise The ancient peoples preceding the wouldn’t be able to get organized and Greeks, among whom there were Meso- ruled. potamians and Egyptians, did not hand As we will see further on, the Sumeri- down to us political treatises, therefore ans had a large range of terms to express we are entrusted with a difficult task, the State’s highest authority and the sov- that is to carefully read their historical ereigns themselves use them in their and economic documentation, and draw commemorative inscriptions in an inter- out of it that information which allows us esting way, so that we can not only re- to trace out a reliable outline of their in- construct the power map, but also under- stitutions. stand the difficult political balance be- As far as Egyptians, Sumerians and tween the various cities-states of that ep- Akkadians are concerned, we have to ac- och. It’s true that, especially for the most knowledge that our undertaking is not so ancient periods, there are many unan- desperate, also because their mythologi- swered questions due to the very little cal and epic texts and the historical in- epigraphic information, but we cannot scriptions of their sovereigns allow us to doubt at all on the fact that, already in get an approximate idea of their religious the 3rd millennium, the political struc- and political conceptions. As an exam- ture in force was based on the sacral ple, this way, now we know for a cer- monarchy with the differentiations above tainty that Egyptians and Sumerians had mentioned. created a state structure based on a mon- Now, as far as Ebla of the 3rd millen- archy reflecting the divine system: as the nium is concerned, the surprises started reign of the gods was ruled by the main right away in 1974: reading the recov- god of the crowded Pantheon in an ab- ered economic texts, I noticed, among solutistic way, at the same way the hu- the words comprehensible at that time,

A. Panaino & G. Pettinato (eds.) MELAMMU SYMPOSIA III (Milano 2002) ISBN 88-8483-107-5 197 PETTINATO I DEOLOGY AND NOMENCLATURE OF POWER IN SUMER AND EBLA

the fateful en- eb-la ki “lord of Ebla” differences of meaning, as it is also dif- which, if on one side it confirmed our ficult to establish the apparition chrono- proposal of identification of Mar- logical order of each term. Now, it’s a dikh with Ebla, just because of the an- general opinion that, in any case, the title cient Syrian city mentioned in economic designating the highest political author- texts, on the other side it rather per- ity is lugal which originally means “great plexed me: having a profound knowledge man” or, more exactly, “leader of men,” of the Mesopotamian civilization, I ex- while , which found favour espe- pected, in fact, that the head of the city, cially at during the first and sec- or better of the reign of Ebla, was desig- ond dynasties, assumed in a short time nated by the term lugal , just as it was the connotation of “governor of prov- used in the coeval Mesopotamia. ince” of the reign. Then, in the Sumerian But the repeated mention of en-eb-la ki literature, the term en has a double made me also understand that the expres- meaning, the first one of a political na- sion had not to be referred to a priest-en, ture and the second one of a religious but to the Eblaite state’s highest position nature: in fact, it designates the political who dealt as an equal with the sovereign leader of , but also a particular type of Assur, as we will shortly see, dis- of priest or priestess in the various Cit- cussing this wonderful document. At the ies-States. same time, it became evident that, if it We already mentioned the presence of was possible to compare Ebla’s royal ti- the expression en- eb-la ki in Ebla’s texts, tle with a corresponding one in Mesopo- and we outlined that it had to indicate, tamia, then we even had to go back to the unless there were mistakes, the State’s civilization of Uruk, the sovereigns of highest position. But here we have an- which are called, at least in the epic other surprise of our documentation: to- compositions, en-kul-ab ki “lord of Kul- gether with the term en, we often find lab.” evidence of the term lugal , and, what’s I spoke about these matters twice, ex- more, in the same document. But the actly in 1979 and 1986, that is in Ebla 1 latter cannot mean the State’s highest po- and Ebla 2 , and both times, although I sition, as it is contemporarily attributed met with a very remarkable success of to more than one person, on a average of audience, my arguments and conclusions 14. Now, unless we want to consider were not favourably accepted, at least Ebla a political confederation, that is a according to the two reviews of my sort of United States of America, we books by A. Archi and W. Heimpel, who have to conclude that lugal designates a were perhaps too much worried to outline different authority from the head of the the defects. state. And, in fact, as we will see further In the Sumerian and Assyro-Baby- on, the lugals in Ebla are the “governors lonian Mesopotamia, there are various of the reign,” who are submitted in some terms meaning the State’s highest autho- way to the supreme authority who sur- rity, such as lugal, ensi or en, where prisingly bear the title of en- eb-la ki , lugal has to be surely considered a des- “lord of Ebla.” Of course we cannot say ignation of princeps . The various titles I that in Ebla we find a reversed situation just mentioned are unlikely to appear compared with Mesopotamia, but only a contemporarily and, even when this oc- different situation as this occurs only for curs, it isn’t always easy to perceive the the title of lugal which here doesn’t indi-

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cate the supreme authority. feeling that in the State of Ebla the fig- In Ebla, the head of the State is de- ure of the personalized sovereign was not fined “ en ” just like in the Sumerian important, the important thing was only Mesopotamia, in Uruk, where the sover- the authority expressed by the title: this eigns are called, especially in the epic makes the institution of the rule or sov- poems, en-kul-ab ki , “lord of Kullab.” In ereignty in Ebla something of absolutely some of my previous works, I have al- abstract and at the same time full of po- ready outlined the extraordinary impor- litical meaning; if the document is signed tance of this connection between Ebla by So-and-so, king of Ebla, this has un- and Uruk, which gives us ground to hy- doubtedly a great importance, but it has a pothesize a close relation between the greater importance if it’s simply signed two Sumerian and Syrian cities also at an by the “sovereign of Ebla,” because in institutional level. This fact, the use of such a case Ebla itself undertakes to the same word to designate the highest abide by any agreement through the fig- authority, together with the finding of ure of its highest representative. Uruk’s protohistoric seals in the excava- I would like to go deeper into the tion of Ebla, convinces us more and more meaning and value of “ en ” in Ebla; we that Ebla was founded by the Sumerians have to inquire if there are such indica- or, at least, that it was in very close rela- tions in the Eblaite documentation. Now, tions with Uruk since the protohistoric this purely Sumerian title is never trans- periods, from where it probably imported lated in the administrative texts, even if not only the state model, but also the its institutional and political implication writing and the academic manuals for the is clear. The Bilingual study of the and of translating the Sumerian lexicon into the the technical and administrative termi- Eblaite language, on the other hand, in- nology. stead of helping us, place us in front of The fact that with the title of en- eb- unexpected difficulties. First of all, we la ki , “lord of Ebla,” our documents char- have to start by saying that the term acterize the supreme authority of the “king” sounds like šarrum in the Meso- Eblaite State is confirmed by the state potamian area, which we have denomi- official texts such as the “international nated Eastern-Semitic, while in the We- treatises,” the diplomatic correspon- stern-Semitic, corresponding to the Syro- dence, the orders to the officers, always Palestinian zone, it’s expressed with signed by the “sovereign of Ebla.” And, malik. here, another peculiarity of this new Hereupon it is obvious to conclude that civilization intervenes: unlike Mesopo- en , used in Ebla, corresponds to the tamia and Egypt, where the sovereigns in Western-Semitic malik . A support to their inscriptions compete with each such deduction could be found in the other to accumulate a flood of epithets administrative texts of Ebla, where, as a and where an almost exaggerated person- consequence, the sovereign’s wife is cal- ality cult is observed, in Ebla the func- led with the Western-Semitic name tion of en almost eclipses the person who maliktum , “queen,” which is the feminine exercises it; the official documents al- form of malik(um) . A further confirma- ways and only mention the “sovereign of tion could be given by the bilingual dic- Ebla,” very rarely accompanied by the tionaries themselves, where nam-en “so- name of the sovereign. We have the vereignty, royalty” is appropriately ex-

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pressed with mal kum “royalty, sover- way from that observed in Mesopotamia eignty” (the term is an infinitive form of and Egypt can be already understood the verbal root mlk which means “to from some peculiarities, noticed in the reign”). Availing myself of this datum, I documentation of Ebla, which are worth- had assumed that the Semitic equivalent while to be globally discussed here: of the Sumerian title en was precisely among the five kings documented in malik(um) , which had been accepted by Ebla, the first four of them are surely not all; and what’s more, once the colleague related to each other; they do not have Archi wrote that the Semitic correspon- any relation of father and son, but they dence of en is attested in the administra- even seem to belong to different fami- tive texts under the form of ma-lik ; this lies. Based on this, my first conclusion should cancel out any doubt. already drawn in my book Ebla 1: that is, But this is not how things are: I had Ebla’s sovereignty was not dynastic, at stumbled into a simple error and Archi least for most of the period covered by had not understood that the ma-lik, he the . Only Ebrium and Ibbi- had found, could not correspond to en , Sipish are respectively father and son, but to lugal “governor,” as fully con- therefore we can speak of dynastic prin- firmed by the documents when pub- ciple only in this case. The events occur- lished. After all, the Bilingual Diction- ring under Ebrium correspond, according aries which, besides nam-en , also regis- to my opinion, to a radical change of the ter en, offer an Eblaite translation com- institutions and it is certainly not by pletely different from the one we as- chance that under Ibbi-Sipish also the sumed and precisely sha shahinum , year datation system, I denominated nu- which I would propose to translate into merical, has changed: it was finally “he who is in charge,” an expression transformed from regressive into pro- which means everything and nothing. gressive. According to my opinion, until now no- And let’s go back to the datation sys- body had taken into consideration this tem of Ebla which, unlike all other state Semitic meaning of the Sumerian en , societies of the antiquity, is regressive even if, and I am firmly convinced of it, instead of progressive. This implies that this can help us to understand the nature it is not related to the period of reign of a itself of the royalty of Ebla in 2500 B.C. determined sovereign, or that Ebla’s sov- The epigraphist A. Archi seems con- ereignty is a function limited to a certain vinced that Ebla’s royalty is dynastic period of time. The hypothesis, I have and, what’s more, hereditary, then Ish’ar- already advanced in Ebla 1 , that the sov- Damu would be son of Irkab-Damu, even ereignty was elective and limited to a if not by his first marriage, and Irkab- fixed period of seven years, is based on Damu would be son of Igrish-Halam. incontrovertible arguments: first, that Then the Eblaites do not reveal anything Ebla’s sovereigns are not related to each new on the royal institution, as they fol- other; second, that some of the sover- low the purest Mesopotamian tradition, eigns are still alive when their successors even if meanwhile, as we will see herein- enter upon office (this is documented for after, the studies went on in this field Arennum and Ebrium); third, that the re- too. gressive datation system starts, as a rule, But the fact that Ebla’s sovereignty from the 7th year and ends up with the has to be intended in a totally different 1st year, respectively from the 8th year

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to the 1st year, and this led P. Mander to 34, i) and from the Ritual themselves, hypothesize that the septennate’s cycle from which we learn that Ebrium became was connected to the astronomic cycle of sovereign by marrying the queen and af- , of which we would even have ter having delivered the ritual wedding traces in the inscription of Ibbit-Lim, in presents – in the Middle-East societies, the famous sentence “in the eighth year, it’s a rule that the wedding presents have since Eshtar appeared in Ebla.” to be given to the newly-wed bride by the If, on top of this, we add that almost newly-wed bridegroom, and this applies all sovereigns of Ebla, before reaching both to the divine world and to the hu- the high position of en , are lugal of the man world –, we can not only reasonably state and that they, even after having be- suppose that the nomination as sovereign come sovereigns, are so much submitted was elective, but also that it was offi- to the Treasury that they are the first cialized, or more, realized through the ones to pay huge amounts to it, then we wedding with the queen. But if this ap- finally understand that Ebla’s sovereign plies to Ebrium, we have to admit the was a primus inter pares (=first among same thing for Arennum, as, in the Ritual equals) and that the authority was in the Formulas C, he plays the same role that hands of Ebla’s lugals , to whom actually Ebrium plays in B. all administrative processes were subject In a recent contribution, facing the and who controlled the sources of the age-old theme of the landed property in country’s wealth. Mesopotamia at the time of the Sumeri- But how did they choose the one who ans, I’ve been able to deny, I think once had to become sovereign in the list of and for all, the thesis that in each phase lugals ? In the conclusion to my work on of the Sumerian civilization, with the ex- the Ritual for the Succession to the ception of the 3rd dynasty of , the ru- Throne of Ebla , I take sides on this sub- ral lands were owned by the temples, ject too, after having specified that wherefore the expression city-temple Ebla’s royalty was firmly in the queen’s coined by A. Falkenstein. Recently, this hands, with a specific question: thesis was still defended by P. Steinkel- An evidence that the nomination of the ler, who sets up the temple economy of new sovereign was elective, which was Lower Mesopotamia against the state or already assumed in 1979, can be seen in palace economy of the Semitic or Semi- two economic texts recently published in tophone area. MEE 10. In the first one, we read about a Now, we do not understand our Ameri- present of fabrics just from Ebrium to Iti- can colleague at all: it’s a matter of fact Agu, his commissioner, with the follow- that the centralized economy is a peculi- ing reason: “for the good news commu- arity of the Sumerian civilization, in nicated to him (=to Ebrium) concerning contrast with the Semitic one which pre- (the election) as sovereign”; the second fers the private economy. Should it be passage speaks about presents to GI- possible to speak of a difference, then BIL.ZA-il, the Treasury’s superintendent recent studies make it evident that of the sovereign, “for having communi- Sumer’s centralized economy was not in cated the decision (concerning the elec- the hands of the priestly class, but in tion) as sovereign of Ebrium.” those of the sovereign since the begin- Now, putting these two statements to- ning, wherefore the expressions gána-en gether with those deduced from MEE 7, and gána-nì-en-na to designate the State

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property, also in those states with a po- cel the evidence only because it’s in litical system which differed from that of contrast with the models we have cre- Uruk, where the institution of the en was ated. Then, the fact that these models are used. applied to a whole millennium is some- Then, having found in Ebla the same thing that even an unprepared person royal institution of Uruk, I wondered at cannot avoid to refuse. what extent was it possible to propose This makes it necessary to go back to comparisons between these two cultures, the problem of the definition of the two facing the problem as follows: terms en and lugal in Mesopotamia, “By synthesizing, we can say, with no which, according to my opinion, has to fear of being given the lie, that in Ebla be approached all over again, also be- there was a leader above the lugals , who cause the Sumerian literature is not was first of all a co-ordinator of the for- lacking in indications for an exact eign politics, who was qualified as an en . evaluation. Since the Eblaites couldn’t have made all In one of his inscriptions, the king En- up, it’s natural for me to think that the shakushanna of Uruk defines himself en- same meaning found out in Ebla has to ki-en-gi lugal-kalam-ma , “lord of Kiengi, be attributed to the terms en and lugal in king of the country.” Now, I do not be- the Sumerian texts.” lieve that Kiengi and Kalam are two I agree with my colleagues that in the synonyms, but rather the expressions of royal inscriptions, included those coming two different geographic realities: Kiengi from Uruk, the sovereigns describe them- stands for the whole Lower Mesopotamia selves simply as lugals or in some cases and Kalam for the territorial State of they declare they exercise the nam-en of Uruk only. Uruk. Therefore it would seem that the Should this be true, they have a geo- problem does not exist, while actually all politic value, and the two terms en and discussions on this subject start from a lugal acquire a precise meaning: in other precise reality which has not been taken words, the title of en is higher than lugal . into consideration by any of the scholars: Then, compared to the inscription of Lu- that is, the scattered presence of en in the galkiginedudu, here we make a further economic texts which are usually consid- step forward in a larger delimitation of ered of a minor importance, just as it the political spheres expressed by the wouldn’t be worth-while to take them terms en and lugal : while nam-en was the into consideration. On the contrary, I am characterizing element of Uruk’s author- convinced that an exact evaluation of the ity only, here it acquires a larger mean- term en cannot prescind from its use in ing as it identifies a larger authority, the economic-administrative texts”: we above the whole Sumer. Furthermore, I have to mention the expressions nì-en-na am convinced that, in order to correctly in Lagash’s economic texts, and then the interpret the nì-en-na of Lagash’s texts, circumstance that living personages, as we have to relate it right with the mean- S.M. Chiodi could recently demonstrate, ing of en in the inscription of Enshaku- traditionally considered dead forefathers shanna. of the royal family, are called en-en , The model of Uruk’s royalty, called which is unconceivable in a culture nam-en , hasn’t been certainly productive where the term en wouldn’t be used. On in Mesopotamia, but it has found its heirs the other hand, I am not inclined to can- in the suburban areas, in Northern ,

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in Ghezira and in the countries of Oman, certainly dynastic. exactly those countries that had been In Uruk, the sovereign obtained the ti- reached by the great commercial expan- tle by marrying the goddess , rep- sion of the protohistoric Uruk, while in resented by her priestess who, as we Sumer the prevailing model was that of know, was chosen through divination, expressed by the lugal, which did more precisely, the extispice, that is the not certainly involve the concept of su- exam of the animal’s liver, usually a pranational State. sheep. In the history of the 3rd dynasty But the model of Uruk, just because of of Ur, all priestesses of the reign, but es- its peculiarity involving a concept of su- pecially of Ur and Uruk, were chosen pranational State, and because of its through this kind of divination, after all other as exacting characteristic of the already attested in the previous periods, close relation of the State concept with as during the 1st dynasty of Lagash. the figure of en , made it possible that the For Ebla, I didn’t have any hold. Actu- title of en was used by all the reigns, ally there was an evidence and it had when the person of the sovereign had to been published by A. Archi in 1988, be differentiated by the idea of State. without understanding it, because quot- Wherefore its almost constant and always ing the passage, obviously without coherent use to designate the State prop- translation, he added that it was “a pas- erty which didn’t belong to the king, but sage not easy from the syntactic point of to all citizens. view” (ARES I, p. 247): Then, the institution of the “city- (1 + 1 fabrics) ti-ti-nu mashkim eb-rí-um temple” disappears, and the other one of nì- dmul ama-gal-en the city-State, certainly more interesting, másh-sha 6 lú dingir-a-mu da-bur-da-mu takes over, but with the connotation of ma-lik-tum eb-la ki supranational-State; and this modifica- “(1 + 1 fabrics) for Tidinu, the commis- tion occurs in a period preceding the sioner of Ebrium, as an offer to the di- coming of Sargon of . vinity of the high sovereign’s mother, for Almost contemporarily with my work I the favourable extispice of the god of Sumeri (The Sumerians), where for the Tabur-Damu’s fathers (in order to be- first time I faced the problem of the royal come) queen of Ebla.” titles in the Sumerian texts, an interest- At this point, it becomes evident that ing article of W. Heimpel was published, the queen of Ebla, just as it happened in where for the first time a clear difference Uruk with the priestess of Inanna, was between en and lugal was explicitly es- chosen through a favourable extispice tablished, in which en involved an elec- guided by the divinity of the clan which tive royalty while lugal involved a dy- Taburdamu belonged to. The imaginative nastic hereditary royalty. reconstruction above proposed by A. Ar- I have previously confirmed that the chi on the presumed not mature age of data at my disposal make more then the future queen of Ebla, who cannot be plausible the hypothesis that the title of other than the bride of the very powerful en in Ebla was not hereditary. Should Ebrium, is a comment to itself. such hypothesis be valid now, we have a Meanwhile, we recover a very impor- further contact point between the Eblaite tant part for the knowledge of the destiny royalty and that of Uruk, where the en , as of the Eblaite royalty: in Ebla the royalty demonstrated by W. Heimpel, wasn’t was not dynastic, just like in Uruk; in

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Ebla, the future queen, bearer of royalty, that, while in Uruk it was Inanna who was chosen through extispice, just like in drove the extispice, here, in a familiar Uruk the sovereign obtained the title by society, it’s the god of the family’s fa- marrying Inanna, or better one of her thers who superintends the act deter- priestesses chosen through extispice. mining the destiny of the family and, at The only difference we can notice is the end, the destiny of the reign of Ebla.

LITERATURE

Chiodi, S. 1997 Offerte «funebri» nella Lagash Presargonica (=Materiali per il Vocabolario Sumerico, 5/1-2), Roma Pettinato, G. 1979 Ebla. Un impero inciso nell’argilla (= Ebla 1), Milano 1986 Ebla. Nuovi Orizzonti della storia (= Ebla 2), Milano 1992 Il Rituale per la Successione al trono ad Ebla (= Studi Semitici NS, 9), Roma 1999 La città sepolta. I misteri di Ebla , Milano

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