56 Friday, February 25, 1977

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

New Discoveries in the Ancient Kingdom of Eblct,'
Are Illuminating the Middle East's 'Dark Ages'

JERUSALEM — The
site 50 kilometers south of
Aleppo, Syria, was known
as Tel-Mardikh when Dr.
Paolo Matthiae of the
University of Rome
began digging there in
1964.
Four years later he un-
covered the site's ancient
name when he found a
statue identified by in-
scription as that of a king
of Ebla, the Jerusalem
Post reported.
The existence of an an-
cient kingdom named
Ebla had been known to
scholars from a few in-
scriptions found else-
where; but so little im-
portance had been at-
tributed to it that there is
,hardly any history text or
reference work on the
Near East which bothers
to mention it.
•From the size of the tel,
some 140 acres, it was evi-
dent that Ebla had been an
important city in the an-
cient world. And ancient it
was.
Scholars believe that
Abraham, if he were an
individual rather than a
composite figure, lived in
the 18th Century BCE.
The upper level of Ebla
dated from the 16th Cen-
tury BCE; but Matthiae
soon dug his way past the
.patriarchal period into
the third millennium.
As the city grew
younger, so to speak, it
was revealed not as more
--primitive but as more
grand.
In 1973, Matthiae found
his first written tablets.
There were 42 and the
writing on them identified
the period as that of Sar-
gon, king of Akkad — an-
cient Babylonia — the first
great emperor of the Near
East (2300-2230).
A year ago, in the outer
rooms of ancient palace

Akkadians to their own
rupted.
outright skepticism.
"You can sometimes ask Semitic tongue.
A number of them at-
Akkadian
Written
tended the first public in an Arab village about
presentation of their find- some antiquity nearby and (Babylonian) was to serve
as the lingua franca of the
they'll tell you it was a fort
ings by Matthiae and Pet-
ancient Near East for
tinato at a convention of built by the great Arab
close to two millennia. (It
emperor Napoleon."
Assyriologists last July in
All this having been was to be replaced as the
Birmingham, England.
Among them was Dr. said, the Israeli scholars lingua franca by simpler
Aramaic script around:
Aharon Kempinski, an are extremely excited the
8th-7th Centuries
archaeologist and about the. Ebla finds and BCE.)
teacher of ancient Near their impact on Near
In the ruins of the
Eastern history at Tel Eastern history.
While the ancient his- Canaanite cities con-
Aviv University. •
tories of Mesopotamia quered by the Israelites in
The Ebla tablets, he and Egypt from about about the 12th Century
notes, are written in a 3000 BCE are fairly well BCE, archaeologists have
newly discovered lan- outlined by cuneiform found tablets written by
Black Sea
. )
guage — Eblaite — but in and hieroglyphic writing scribes in Babylon; --
cuneiform script bor- respectively, the area be- cuneiform.
rowed from Sumer.
Now, Matthiae
tween — Syria and Pales-
Although an Eblaite- tine — remained outside Pettinato have shown
609" s
cats] Hiiyilk
Sumerian lexicon was the ken of written history that the Eblaites not only
•
found at Ebla, Kem- for more than 1,000 years .used cuneiform script 500
pinsky says this in itself after that, except for ob- years earlier than had
• F.J;
does not indicate with lique references in Egyp- been
but
thought,
certainty how those tian or Mesopotamian in- adapted it to their own
Byblos
words were pronounced.
Beirut
Mediterranean Sea
Eblaite language instead
scriptions.
4Baghdad
The same cuneiform
• Jerusalem
This area of darkness of borrowing the Sume-
sign can have as many as
Babylon∎\:.-- "N
has suddenly been lit at rian ar Akkadian lan-
15 pronunciations and
Ebla, and what scholars guages for their writing
CairoM
meanings, depending on
see has left them blinking as other cuneiform-
Ur•
writing nations would do
the context, and this con-
in astonishment.
for another millennium..
text has not•yet been pub-
Most astonishing is that
They adopted the script
lished by the Italian ar-
writing existed at all in
Red
straight from Sumer at
chaeologists.
this third millennium city the
remote end of the
It will take two or three
— indeed not just writing, Fertile
Crescent; perhaps
years of solid work, says
but a highly literate soci- through
traders dealing
Kempinsky, before
ety.
in textiles and other Eb-
goods to "Sargon, king of said to contain the ear- phonetic ,values can be
"It's like suddenly dis- laite goods.
assigned with any cer-
Agade (Akkad)."
liest references yet tainty to Eblaite.
covering an English arc-
"This is totally new and
But the tablets also known to numerous other
hive showing a highly de- revolutionary," says
Until then, he suggests,
opened to view the cultural biblical sites, including
veloped
stage
of
literacy
Tadmor. "We see that an-
and political life of Ebla. It Hazor, Megiddo, Jaffa, the scholarly world will
500 years before cient civilization was
refrain
from
accepting
was seen to be not just Gaza and Sinai.
readings like Ibrum or Chaucer," says Prof. much more widespread
another petty city-state
It was Dr. Freedman, Ursalem.
Hayim Tadmor of the He- than we presumed. We
tossed about by the shift- who is also president of
brew University, one of should have thought this
Says
another
Israeli
ing tides of ancient em- the American Society of
Israel's leading As- way before, but we hardly
pires, but a vigorous, in- Biblical Literature, who authority: "Beliefs are of syriologists.
dared to."
no
importance
in
dependent kingdom with spread the news of the
The begihning of writ-
The fact that the Eb-
trade ties and military Ebla finds in the United scholarship. We work
ing — and with it history laites wrote in their own
agreements extending States beyond a narrow with evidence."
--:-;
through most of the Near professional circle.
East.
After hearing of the dis-
One tablet records de- coveries, he flew to Rome
tails of a detente worked
to meet Matthiae and Pet-
out between the kings of tinato.
Ebla and distant Assyria.
A 15-page memoran-
There are tablets deal- dum he wrote upon his re-
ing with legal codes, and
turn to the U.S. was circu-
epic literature, which in-
lated widely, and extracts
cluded a recounting of the were published as a front
Deluge akin to that re- page story in the Los
corded in the Bible and in ,Angeles Times last June.
Babylonian writing.
Freedman
accom-
For many, the most
panied Matthiae and Pet-
sensational finds re-
tinato on a lecture tour in
ported by the Italians
the U.S.
Shown at left is the throne platform in the royal palace at Ebla, which dates back to
were some of the names
The discovery of Ebla 2400 BCE. At right are shown some of the 15,000 stone tablets found intact in the Ebla
listed in the tablets —
was as if archaeologists royal archives. Some of the tablets display Sumerian characters in a form adopted to
names like ab-ra-mu (Ab-
had just dug up evidence the Ebla language, which appears to be an early Semitic language.
raham), da-'u'dum
of the Roman Empire for
(David), is-ra-ilu (Israel)
Even if Pettinato's — is as much a turning- old Canaanite tongue also
the first time, according
and ib-rum (Eber).
readings turn out to be point in ancient civiliza- permits modern scholars
to Freedman.
The last is particularly
correct, Ursalem and tions as the discovery of to study what appears to
The biblical implications other place names need how to make fire or the be the oldest antecedent to
intriguing, since Eber is
listed in the book of ofthe tablets, he says, may not necessarily refer to beginning of toolmaking.
Hebrew yet known —
rank them with the Dead sites we know.
In the Syria-Palestine pre-dating by a millen-
Genesis as the great -
Sea Scrolls.
great - great - great -
There is already a area, a literate society nium the time of Moses.
"If the patriarchs and
Are other such ancient
grandfather of Abraham.
prima facie case against was not presumed to have
archives likely to be
"We always thought of their descendants did not some of the supposedly existed until the 19th-
actually live in Ebla," he
found at Megiddo or some
ancestors like Eber as
biblical place names re- 18th Centuries BCE.
wrote in his memoran- ferring to sites bearing
symbolic," says Dr. David
The Ebla tablets show other city in the Syria-
dum, "they clearly be- those names today.
Palestine region?
Noel Freedman, current
this virtually unknown city
F•
"Absolutely,"
director of the Albright longed to the same cul-
"Pettinato said that to have been as literate
Institute for Archaeolog- tural tradition and came Jaffa is mentioned," says and cultured in 2300 BCE Tadmor. "It would be-
from the area in which Kempinsky. "We know as Babylon was to be 500 ficult to think that this
ical Research in
that tradition survived
phenomenon of literacy
Jerusalem. "Nobody ever
that Jaffa didn't exist years later.
and exerted a powerful until 500 years after the
regarded them as his-
Babylonia (or Akkad as was restricted to Ebla."
influence."
Although the sensa-
toric."
Ebla archive." Likewise, it was known in its earlier
Pettinato was recently he says, the name Sinai is stages) has always been tional reports about,
It was under Ibrum,
quoted in the New York not known before the first considered a foun- Ebla's historical connec-
say the Italian ar-
Times as saying that "the millennium BCE.
tainhead of culture in the tion may prove exagger-
chaeologists, that Ebla
Ebla tablets establish the
ated, the decipherment of
reached the pinnacle of
As for King Ibrum ancient world.
patriarchs and their (Eber), says Kempinsky,
its power, its influence
Cuneiform writing was the tablets will undoub-
names as historical even if a person by that invented in about 3100 tedly reveal a milieu,
extending to the borders
realities."
with Egypt, present-day
name existed, it does not BCE in Sumer at the head however remote; Which
The reaction of Israeli mean that he was the bi- of the Persian Gulf helped shape the H&.:
Turkey and Mesopo-
scholars to Ebla's alleged
tamia.
blical ancestor of Ab- (present-day southern brew civilization whieh
biblical connection raham. Traditions, he
The mention of the
Iraq) and was adapted by
emerged 1,000 years la-
ranges from caution to notes, are often cor- the powerful neighboring ter.
name David too, is sig-

ruins, Matthiae came
upon neatly stacked clay
tablets inscribed with
writing. There were some
15,000 of them.
The task of decipher-
ment went to Dr.
Giovanni Pettinato, an
Assyriologist from the
University of Rome.
Most of the tablets,
written in a Semitic lan-
guage Petinato called Eb-
laite, concerned commer-
cial transactions, includ-
ing a consignment of

nificant, since there is
only one figure in the
Bible with that name and
no other mention of it in
antiquity.
Among the place names
mentioned, say the Ita-
lians, is Ursalima, an al-
most certain reference to
Jerusalem.
This would pre-date by
500 years the earliest ref-
erence to Jerusalem thus
far known — in the Egyp-
tian Execration Texts.
The tablets are also

