EBLA Amalia Catagnoti Tell Mardikh (About 60 Km South of Aleppo, Syria)
EBLA
Amalia Catagnoti
Tell Mardikh (about 60 km south of Aleppo, Syria) is the site of ancient Ebla, excavated from 1964 by P. Matthiae.1 The remains date from the Chalcolithic period to the last part of the Middle Bronze Age.
1. S L
1.1 More than three thousand cuneiform tablets have been recov- ered from archives within the main excavated building, Palace G,2 which was the residence of the local ruler and his wife. They are usually dated to the second half of the twenty-fourth century.
1.2 The royal archives are mainly administrative in nature,3 but they also contain official acts dealing with the royal and elite fami- lies, in particular “decrees” (en-ma), “verdicts” (di-ku5) and interna- tional treaties.4 Lexical lists, chancery documents, and literary texts were also stored in the main archive, L. 2769. Bilingual lexical lists (VE), not always in the Mesopotamian tradition, help to explain the legal terminology. The local language (written with extensive use of logograms from the Mesopotamian tradition) appears to be a Syrian variant of Archaic Semitic.5
1 Matthiae, Ebla ... 2 Archi, “The Archives of Ebla,” and “Gli archivi di Ebla . . .” 3 Archi, “About the Organization . . .,” “Ebla: La formazione di uno stato...,” “Fifteen Years of Studies . . .,” and “Trade and Administrative Practice . . .”; Pettinato, La città sepolta; Bonechi, “Lexique...” 4 Archi, Ebla du III è millénaire ... 5 Fronzaroli, “La lingua...” 228
2. C A L
2.1 The rulers of Ebla Palace G are referred to by terms deriving from *mlk : malkum, “king,” always written with the Sumerogram en, and malkatum, “queen,” always written with the Akkadogram ma-lik- tum. Furthermore, the lexical lists (VE 1088–89) give the terms for “kingship,” nam-en = malìkum, and for “exercise of the kingship,” nam-nam-en = tumtallikum. During the short span of time covered by the archives, Palace G was in the hands of kings Yigri“-›alab, Yirkab-damu and Yi∆©ar-damu. Two texts (ARET VII 150 and 74.120) offer a list, in reverse order, of previous Eblaite rulers: the dynasty, probably founded by one Kulbànum, may include twenty- six kings, and the date of the establishment at Ebla of this dynasty could coincide with the presumed date of the building of Palace G, approximately the twenty-sixth century.6
2.2 The real nature of Early Syrian kingship is not yet fully deter- mined, but it must lie within the notions expressed by West Semitic *mlk, “to possess, to dominate, to own, to rule, to be master.” Nonethe- less, the general impression is that Eblaite kingship was not the auto- cratic type of urbanized central Mesopotamia but rather a palace-based oligarchy ruling over dry farming areas and constantly negotiating with tribal groups.7
2.3 Palace G was called “house of the king,” bayt malkim (é en). ARET IX 104 shows that king Yi∆©ar-damu frequently traveled far from Ebla (this may have been common also for previous kings). It may be supposed that during his absence Queen Tabùr-damu remained at Ebla, taking care of the palace together with Yi“sî (Íl-zi), their “master of the king’s house,” ba'al bayti malkim (BAD é en), also known, late in the reign, as responsible for huge building works in the palace itself.8
2.4 Palace G was probably populated, at least during the working day, by hundreds of lower rank men (including guards, craftsmen,
6 Archi, “The King-Lists from Ebla”; Bonechi, “The Dynastic Past...” 7 Analysis based on Steinkeller, “Early Political Development . . .,” 120. 8 Bonechi, “Studies on the Architectonic and Topographic Terms...”