The Biblical Archaeologist - Vol.39, N.2

43 Pages·1976·10.58 MB·English

by  American Schools of Oriental Research

ISSN 0003-097X
BIBLICAL
OF
ARCHEOLOGIST
MAY 1976 Volume 39 Number 2
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The Royal Archives of Ebla
Biblical Archaeologist Reader, 1 Biblical Archeologist is published quarterly
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CREDITS
"Nothing Early and Nothing Late: Rewriting
Israel's Conquest" is Anson Rainey's revised
translation of an article by Y. Aharoni which
first appeared in Bible et Terre Sainte,
September-October, 1975. Special thanks are
accorded to the editors of Bible et TerreS ainte
Cover as well as to Prof. Rainey and to Miriam
Aharoni, the late archeologist's widow, for
Four of the Ebla tablets. The Ebla script is described as their assistance in preparing this issue
precise and "sophisticated," an indication of the mature and of Biblical Archeologist. Photographs
well-established culture of the ancient Syrian capital. accompanying "The Royal Archives of Tell
Mardikh-Ebla" c/o World Wide Photos.
Photograph accompanying "In Memoriam
Yohanan Aharoni" c/o Anson Rainey.
IF kg' BIBLICAL
ARCHEOLOGIST
GiovanniP ettinato 44 THE ROYAL ARCHIVES OF
TELL-MARDIKH-EBLA
It had a populationo f 260,000.I t
spoke a languagec lose to Hebrew.
Its greatestk ing bore a name cognate
with Eber,t he ancestoro f the Hebrews
(Gen 10:21).I t worshippeda god
named Ya. CanaaniteE bla-
broughtb ack to life in an extraordinary
find of 15,000t ablets-seems destinedt o
revolutionizet he historyo f the
ancientN ear East. One of its two
discovererso ffersa n earlyr eport.
YohananA haroni 55 NOTHING EARLY AND NOTHING LATE:
RE-WRITINGI SRAEL'SC ONQUEST
In Beer-shebaa, well with a shaft
two metersw ide and forty meters
deep would seemt o be the famous
well of Abrahama nd Isaac (Genesis
21 and 26). And yet Beer-shebas eems
to have been uninhabitedu ntil after
the traditionalp atriarchael ra. Aharoni
offers an ingeniouss olutiont o the
puzzlei n a tale of four tells in the
Negeb.
Departments: Reviews:
77 ASSYRIANP ALACER ELIEFS
IN THE BRITISHM USEUM
LETTERT O THE READERS 42 R. D. Barnetta nd W. Forman
77 QUMRANS TUDIES
ChaimR abin
OBITUARY 53 78 JERUSALEMT HE HOLY
MichaelA vi-Yonaha nd WernerB raun
78 WILLIAM FOXWELL ALBRIGHT:
A TWENTIETH CENTURY
GENIUS
COLOPHON 80 LeonaG liddenR unninga nd David Noel Freedman
78 THE HISTORYA ND LITERATURE
OF THE PALESTINIANJ EWS FROM
CYRUS TO HEROD, 550 B.C. TO 4 B.C.
W. StewartM cCullough
79 HAZOR:T HE REDISCOVERYO F A
GREATC ITADELO F THE BIBLE
YigaelY adin
A LETTER TO THE READERS
In The Way of All the Earth, theologian John Bronze Age and the start of the Iron Age - the
Dunne proposes a Gandhian "experiment in truth." One childhood of Israel - remains a period of compelling
is to "map"w orld history onto one's own life as if its awful interest. Whether through eruption or incursion or
crises and triumphs were one's own and then reverse the evolution or migration or conquest or conversion or
experiment, "mapping" one's own life onto history as if infiltration, there was at the end of that period an Israel
one's private struggles were of major historical moment. where before there had been none. Of what improbable
The results of such an experiment, as Dunne reports liaison was this new nation the issue? To the Peoples of
them, are that the Book, the question is of existential as well as historical
importance, but it has yet to receive an adequate answer.
A man comes to have plentyo f time when he ceasest o The waning of the Bronze Age and the waxing of
work againstt ime. "I have only one life to live,"h e may the Iron was, as nearly as can be known, was a period of
think as long as he is workinga gainsti t; he will hurryt o global violence. In his posthumously published Mankind
accomplish what he wants to accomplish in life, to
and Mother Earth, Arnold Toynbee writes:
experiencew hath e wantst o experiencet,o reacht heg oals
he has set his heartu pon, before death overtakesh im. In the courseo f the threec enturies1 250-950B .C.a, ll the
When he allies himself with them, though, all this regionalc ivilizationso f the Old Worldf romt he Minoan
changes.W henh e seesh is life as a recapitulationo f time, and Mycenaeanin the Aegeanb asint o the Shangi n the
he seest hat he has enought ime,t hat he has all timea t his YellowR iverb asinw erev iolentlya ssaultedb y relatively
disposal. barbarousp eoples, and these disturbancesr esultedi n
larges hiftso f population.E vena ssailantsw ho had been
Though not all readers will find Dunne's successfully repulsed eventually won by 'peaceful
experiment well-designed, there is a scripturalw arrant for penetrationt'h e groundt hat they had previoslyf ailedt o
his reciprocally historical and existential method in the win by force of arms. The ultimatec onsequencew as a
words of the Lord to Hosea, sweepingc hangei n the map of the Old World'sr egional
"When Israel was a child I loved him, civilizationsT. he oldesto f themw eree nfeebleds; omeo f
"And I called my son out of Egypt." the youngerd estroyeda; nds everaln ewc ivilizationsa rose
Whatever the scientific or historical status of such in the geographicailn tersticesb etweent he ruins.
analogies as the "childhood" of a nation, those analogies
have been extraordinarily fruitful for religion. The Such was the violence in the Aegean, for example, that
western religions - Judaism, Christianity, and writing itself - Michael Ventris' famous "Linear
Islam - have consciously anchored themselves in such B," - was completely forgotten. Further east, the wreck
analogies; and the secular faith of western political of civilization was less total; and yet it is not too much to
political communities is, if anything, even more say that Israel was born in "the interstices between the
dependent upon success in the struggle to discern some ruins," a child snatched from the wreckage, a survivor
root similarity between "my"s tory and "our"h istory. For against all odds.
all of us to recognize, in some snapshot of our past, the The question explored in this issue of Biblical
child who is father to the man we have become is to know Archeologist by the late Yohanan Aharoni is, in the first
ourselves legitimate: we are then not orphans or bastards instance, whether the Israelite conquest of Canaan was a
but sons and heirs. true conquest or whether it was part of that "peaceful
For such reasons as these, the close of the Late penetration" of which Toynbee speaks. Ultimately,
42 MAY 1976
however, the issue is that of religious militarism as was a battered child. Perhaps, as he was called out of
ideology. To what extent is warlike behavior ineluctably a Egypt to manhood in a new land, he remembered lessons
part of that national experience which has been taken as of war and peace, of cruelty and mercy, that a happier
paradigmatic by the West? Is the modern ideology of childhood could not have taught him. Dunne speaks of
Holy Peace, so to call it, hopelessly at odds with a biblical "an abyss which opens up like a narrow and bottomless
tradition of Holy War? crevice at crucial points in a human life." The turn of the
Aharoni reconstructs the "conquest" as a much Bronze Age in Palestine may have been one such abyss in
more pacific process than a cursory reading of the Bible the history of Israel. Whether in Aharoni's archeological
would suggest and relates the biblical account as we sounding of that abyss a new and more peacable
actually have it to special pleading by the Davidic revelation is to be heard, each reader may judge for
monarchy. He notes the absence of fortification in Early himself.
Iron Age Palestinian sites and infers that the Israelite ***
"conquest" must have been "extensive settlement in an
unpopulated area where the new settlements were not
subject to actual danger." The later representation of this Elsewhere in the current issue, we are pleased to
infiltration as a conquest under a king-like leader and of present an early report by Giovanni Pettinato on the
the era of the Judges as social chaos in which there was epoch-making discovery near Aleppo in Syria of the seat
"no king in Israel and every man did what was right in his of a lost third-millennium Canaanite empire. At Tell
own eyes" is, for him, "apologetics on the part of the Mardikh, now identified as Ebla, Paolo Matthiae of the
young monarchy against disintegrating tribal rule during University of Rome has unearthed an archive of some
the great struggle with the Philistines." The archeological fifteen thousand cuneiform tablets, eighty percent in
evidence itself does not suggest disorder but rather Sumerian, twenty percent in "Old Canaanite" or
tranquillity. "Eblaite," a language hitherto unknown but closely
If this tranquillity was the "peace of Yahweh," the related to classical Hebrew. Pettinato, as Matthiae's
war torn Early Iron Age might seem an unlikely matrix epigrapher, writes a chapter in what may well prove the
for it; but we must recall that "when Israel was a child," he archeological detective story of the century.
. . next time in
.
OF
BIBLICAL
ARCHEOLOGIST
Ebla wasn't built in a day .
. . or rediscovered in a day either.
.
Paolo Matthiae and Giovanni Pettinato's
epoch-making finds came at the end of ten years of sometimes unpromising
excavation. As a neophyte archeologist in his early twenties, Matthiae
chose the unidentified tell against the advice of his University of Rome
superiors. In September's Biblical Archeologist, he tells his own story as
well as the story of the find in an exclusive interview and a specially
commissioned article. The adventure of "the Dead Sea Scrolls of the
'70's" from the man who discovered them is a story no serious student
of the Bible can afford to miss.
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST 43
THE ROYAL ARCHIVES OF
TELL MARDIKH-EBLA
GIOVANNI PETTINATO
15,000 tablets, many in a previously unknown WestS emitic
languagea kin to Hebrew,r eveala lost 3rd-millenniumS yrian
empire as large as that of Sargon the Great. A stunning
challenge to the primacy of Mesopotamiai n ancient Near
Easternh istorya nd in the culturalg enesis of ancient Israel.
A very large mound covering about 140 acres and shortly after in 1975 with the discovery of the first room
50 feet high, Tell Mardikh is situated on the North Syrian containing the royal archives of Ebla of the 3rd
plateau about halfway between the modern cities of millennium B.C.
Hama and Aleppo. Since the beginning of the The historical importance of the three dates just
excavations in 1964 by the Italian Archeological Mission mentioned consists in the fact that these correspond to the
of the University of Rome under the direction of three fundamental stages of our knowledge of Tell
Professor Paolo Matthiae, Tell Mardikh has emerged as a Mardikh. The finding of the statue permitted the
very important center in antiquity.' identification of Tell Mardikh with the ancient city of
Surely no one expected or could have imagined Ebla;2t he recovery of the archive in 1974 enabled me to
that under the debris was hidden the capital of an identify a very ancient language of the Northwest Semitic
immense empire, the storied city of Ebla, that repeatedly group which I have labeled Paleo-canaanite, hitherto
came into conflict with the Mesopotamian empire of unknown.3 In addition to definitively proving the
Akkad and was finally destroyed by King Naram-Sin, identification of the site and the language, the 1975
who put it to the torch. discovery permits fuller evaluation of the role played by
The discovery of Ebla has been slow, just like most Ebla in the political, economic, and cultural history of
solid scientific acquisitions, and not without difficulties the Near East in the 3rd millennium B.C.
created by pseudoscientific skepticism. Of the twelve In this contribution to Biblical Archeologist,
campaigns completed to date, three events in particular graciously solicited by its editor, Professor D. N.
will be remembered whenever Tell Mardikh-Ebla is Freedman,4 I shall briefly describe the archives
talked about. The first occurred in 1968 with the finding discovered in 1974 and 1975, dwelling on those points of
of the statue bearing the dedicatory inscription of King history, religion and language of the Semitic peoples in
Ibbit-Lim, lord of the city of Ebla, to the goddess EBtar. the 3rd millennium B.C.t hat have most recently emerged
The second took place in 1974 with the unearthing in its from them. Since we barely have begun the study of the
original place of the first archive serving a common tablets, this report must necessarily be preliminary and
purpose, while the third exciting moment followed the interpretation of the findings tentative.
44 May 1976
A. Cuneiform Texts Found in 1974 and 1975 known; they began to compose their own in Paleo-
canaanite. One of the characteristics, moreover, of the
The 1974 archive consists of 42 tablets, for the
scientific texts of Ebla is that of being construed
most part of an administrative nature, dealing with
acrographically, that is, on the basis of the formative
metals, wood and textiles. Text TM.74.G.120 is an
elements, so that they may be duly considered as the
exception, being a school tablet listing personal names
precursors of the Babylonian series ni-ga, izi and kd-gal
attested at Ebla.5 In 1975 texts of two other rooms were
attested in Mesopotamia, but seven centuries later.6
brought to light. In the first, L. 2712, about 1000 texts
were preserved including the fragments, all of an III. The historical and historical-juridical texts
economic character. In the second room, L. 2769, were form one of the most pleasant surprises of Ebla. There are
discovered about 15,000 tablets of very varied types, as royal ordinances, edicts, state letters or letters of state
will be seen below. officials, lists of cities subject to Ebla, assignments of
There are three bases for dating the royal archives prebends, state marriages. Finally, there are some
of Ebla: archeological, epigraphic, and historical. The international treaties, among which should be mentioned
archeological context in which the tablets were unearthed the treaty between Ebla and Assur concerning the statutes
is clearly Early Bronze IV, i.e., 2400-2250 B.c. The of a commercial center. The juridical texts deal with
archeological date is fully sustained both by the purchase-sale contracts, the partition of goods, and
paleography and by some important synchronisms perhaps also with codices of law.
IV. Among the literary texts may be mentioned
stories with a mythological background, hymns to
Reconstruction of the entire dynasty of divinities, incantations and collections of proverbs. The
Ebla in the period 2400-2250 permits the mythological tablets, written as they are in Paleo-
precise dating of the documents by king... canaanite, deal with Mesopotamian deities such as Enki
and Enlil, as well as Utu and Inanna.
V. Last, but far from least, there are the
contained in the tablets themselves that permit the dating syllabaries, properly so-called, for learning Sumerian,
of both archives to Early Bronze IV. The satisfactory grammatical texts with verbal paradigms in Eblaite and
reconstruction of the entire dynasty of Ebla in this period 32 bilingual (Sumerian and Eblaite) vocabularies-the
further permits the precise dating of the documents by first in history. Among these, pride of place belongs
kings and hence their exact collacation in time. perhaps to that tablet, TM.75.G.2000 (with 18
Though it may appear premature to offer a duplicates), containing nearly a thousand translated
classification of the tablets discovered in 1975, a tentative words.
listing does not seem out of place.
I. The largest part of the documents is economic- B. Political History of Syria in the 3rd Millennium
administrative. There are lists of rations for the palace
personnel, for the messengers departing to friendly cities, The information of a historical nature supplied
offerings for the temples and the divinities, lists of tributes either by the strictly historical texts or by the economic
paid to Ebla, as well as rolls of functionaries and state tablets permits one to form a clearer and fuller picture of
personnel. Many tablets deal with agriculture, especially the political situation in the Near East during the second
half of the 3rd millennium B.c. Given the lack of written
with grain, with viticulture, the raising of cattle, and
above all with the metallurgical industry, textiles, wood,
and precious stones. Among these the international trade There are. . .32 Sumerian-Eblaite
tablets (textiles and metals) stand out for their immense vocabularies. One, with 18 duplicates,
size, in some cases containing 60 columns and about 3000 translates a thousand words.
lines per tablet. From all these texts one gathers how vast
was Ebla's commercial horizon in the 3rd millenium and
how refined its techniques. evidence till now, Syria and Palestine seemed to be
II. In second place belong the lexical texts. Over territories populated at best by nomadic tribes. Now,
and above the different school exercises, we possess however, thanks to the Ebla tablets, the existence of many
scientific lists of animals in general, of fishes and birds, states with their own kings and in close contact with each
lists which may properly be termed geographical atlases, other has come to light.
rolls of professions and personal names, lists of objects. The most important among these was doubtless
All these lists are closely bound to the Mesopotamian Ebla, around which revolved the smaller principalities as
tradition documented at Fara and Abu Salabikh. But the vassals. The geographical dimensions alone of the
Eblaites did not merely transmit Sumerian lists already state-empire would be a more accurate term- of Ebla
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST 45
Fig. 1. Some of the nearly1 5,000t abletsf ounda t Tell Mardikhin 1975.T he shelveso n whicht he tablets-a commercial
archive-were storedh ad long since given way beneatht hem. However,a s the photographs hows,t hey weref oundi n
place, still linedu p in the rows in whicht hey had originallyb een placed.
would convince us that we are looking at the greatest frontiers of Ebla's commercial sway, which often,
power in the ancient Near East during the 3rd however, coincided with strictly political boundaries. Of
millennium, a power that not only could stand up to the particular interest to students of Syro-palestinian
Mesopotamian empire of Akkad but at certain periods archeology, as well as of the Old Testament, is the 3rd
could also reduce it to vassalage. Ebla's sphere of millennium documentation at Ebla of cities hitherto
influence reached as far south as Sinai, including all of epigraphically attested in the 2nd-lst millennia B.C.,s uch
Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria of today. To the west it as Salim, the city of Melchizedech, Hazor, Lachish,
reached Cyprus, to the north it extended to Kani' and Megiddo, Gaza, Dor, Sinai, Ashtarot, Joppa, etc.7
possibly also Ijattu, while in the east it touched the The tablets further permit the reconstruction ot
highlands of Mesopotamia. Obviously, these are the the dynasty of Ebla at this period and even the structure
46 MAY 1976
itself of the state. The names of the following kings, in Stables
order of reign, have been preserved: Palace of the Servants
Igri~l-IJalam All four administrative centers are together called
Ar-Ennum &-MI+SITA, "Governorship." The lower city was
Ebrum subdivided into four quarters corresponding to the four
gates of the city:
IDbubbi-uSbipui-'A, da Quarter of the City = Gate of City
Irkab-Damu Quarter 2 = Gate of Dagan
The kinship of the first three kings is unfortunately Quarter 3 = Gate of Rasap
not very clear, but Ebrum and his two successors are Quarter 4 = Gate of Sipig
respectively father, son and grandson. Among these kings
the most interesting, also for his biblical reminiscences, is The above-cited text also lists the servants, the
surely Ebrum, whose name is written Eb-uru-um, with functionaries and the principal officials of the
two possible reading: Eb-ru9-um, whose resemblance to administrative centers as well as the quarters of the city.9
Eber, the father of the Semites according to Gen 10:21, is Three historical texts in particular furnish
truly surprising, or Eb-ri-um, which inevitably elicits information about foreign policy. The first is the report of
cibrj, "Hebrew."O f the two possibilities, I would choose the military campaign conducted by general Enna-Dagan
the second. It is not mere chance that precisely under of Ebla against Iblul-II, the sovereign of Mari, the city so
Ebrum the state of Ebla reached its greatest splendor, and well known from the excavations of A. Parrot. The
it was just during his reign that Akkad-so one of the account of the war, caused by Mari's refusal to pay tribute
tablets reports- paid tribute to Ebla. to Ebla, describes its various phases, among them the
The king bears the Sumerian title en, whose Paleo- decisive encounter between the army of Ebla and that of
canaanite equivalent according to the Eblaite vocab- Mari in the vicinity of Emar. Leading the triumphant
ularies is malik. The queen-maliktum--holds an
eminent position in the state hierarchy; in fact, she is Ebla, according to one text, had a
always mentioned together with the king. The internal population of 260,000.
affairs and administration were run by the crown prince,
while the second-born directed foreign affairs. The elders march, Enna-Dagan reaches Mari, but Iblul-Il flees
of the kingdom (abba) also exercised considerable before the close pursuit of the enemy forces and seeks
political powers, among them the management of the refuge in lUaSum. Here he is overtaken by Enna-Dagan
royal family.8 who forces him to pay the tribute due, then dethrones him
The kings considered of equal status in other states and makes himself king of Mari, but spares the life of
also are called en, while the vassals receive the Sumerian
The amount of tribute that Iblul-Il had to pay is
titles lugal, "king," or more commonly di-ku5, "judges." fIobrlutul-nIal.t'e0l y reported by a contemporary economic tablet
Both titles clearly show that the structure of the state was which places the sum at 11,000 pounds of silver and 880
Under Ehrum, whose resemblance to Eber, pounds of gold.1" This campaign against Mari, which ill
accords with the peaceful spirit of the Eblaites (see
the eponymous ancestor of the Hebrews below), gives the key to understanding the encounter
(Gen 10:21) is striking, Ebla achieves its between Akkad and Ebla. It is because of this campaign
greatest splendor, exacting tribute even that Sargon of Akkad decided on the sortie into Syria
which brought Mari back into Akkad's sphere of
from Akkad.
influence and in addition achieved the subjection of Ebla.
quite different from that in Mesopotamia. Of course, the This fact must also have caused the dismissal of the king
second title cannot but evoke the famous "judges"o f the Ar-Ennum and favored Ebrum'sa scent to the throne. But
Old Testament. it is precisely Ebrum, thought to be weaker than his
As regards the administrative division of the city predecessor, who was to create greater problems for the
of Ebla, which according to one text had a population of empire of Akkad. When Sargon withdrew, Ebrum re-
260,000-obviously referring to Greater Elba-we have annexed Mari and made one of his own sons king. As we
rather detailed information about the topography. learn from a dating formula, the son's name was Sura-
TM.75G.336 reports that the city was divided into two Damu.'2 Sargon's immediate successors and
sectors: the acropolis and the lower city. On the acropolis Mani'tusu stood helpless before Ebrum's expRanimsiuon, , and
are located the four administrative centers: only under Naram-Sin did Akkad recover well enough to
Palace of the City defeat the Eblaites and finally to destroy Ebla itself.
Palace of the King Naram-Sim could well boast of this exploit, whose
BIBLICAL ARCHEOLOGIST 47
significancec an only now be fully appreciated.13 C. The Religion of Ebla
The second historicalt ext is a statel etteri n which
Till now the information about the Semitic
the king of Ebla, Irkab-Damu,p etitions the king of pantheon in Syria-Palestine during the 3rd millennium
UIamazti o send him some good soldiers.14T his letter, has been laboriously gleaned from the Sumerian-
which shortlya ntedatesN aram-Sin'so nslaught,r eveals Akkadian onomastica of Mesopotamia. Now, however,
on the one hand how far-reaching were Ebla's the Ebla tablets supply surprisingly rich data about the
connectionsa nd explainso n the other hand the why of principal divinities and the bearing of their cult. Here
Ebla'sd efeat.O n the basiso f the portionso f textsw hichI three aspects of the religion as it appears in the economic
have read, Eblas eemsn ot to have had its own armyb ut
hiredm ercenariesC. learlya n empirec annotb e defended
.. .the Massoretes had very ancient
by mercenarieas lone and hereinl ies, it would seem, the
reasonw hy Akkadf inally prevailedo ver Ebla. documents at their disposal.
Besidesc onfirmingw hath as beens et fortha bove,
the third text helps to understandt he foreignp olicy of texts and in the onomastica will claim our attention; we
Ebla, which aimed to form a network of close
shall also touch upon what may be termed an attempt at
relationshipsw ith other cities and states based on syncretism between the Sumerian-Akkadian deities and
commercial considerations rather than on military
the West Semitic gods.
factors. This text contains in fact the treaty between
I. The gods attested at Ebla number around 500.
Ebruma nd the legendaryk ingo f AHur,D u-ud-ja(iw hom First, we must obviously deal with the problem of II and
rI oayma illn isctl,i Tneuddt oij iad,o ennet oiffy wt hieth 1t 7hk eif nirgsstw k ihnog lo ivf ethdie n A tessnytrs)ia.' 5n bYuat (awls):o T ah sep teecrimfic I 1dd ivoiunbittyle, stsh ein gdoidca It1es/E "lg oofd t"hi en Ugegnaerriatilc,
The document begins with an introductionl isting the tablets. Ya is still considered a crux interpretum so far as
leadingc itizens of Ebla; then follow 20 paragraphsi n it could be rather understood as a hypocoristicon, i.e., a
which the problemsi nherenti n the foundationa nd the shortened form. But the alternation in the personal names
such as Mi-k&-Il / En-na-Il / En-na-Y&,
May you have no stable abode! Mi-k&-Y&t,
I?-ra-ll/ I-ra- Yi amply demonstrates that at Ebla at least
May you undertake a trip of perdition! Ya had the same value as II and points to a specific deity.
Now the new fact revealed by the Ebla tablets is this: while
statutes of a commercial center are casuistically faced. till the reign of Ebrum all personal names contained the
Among the cases envisioned may be cited the problem of theophorous element II, from Ebrum on II was substitued
entry tax into the kdrum, the treatment of merchants, as for by Ya. Here I merely note the fact, but it appears
well as problems of a penal character, such as injuries to evident that under Ebrum a new development in West
persons, trials, etc. The treaty closes with a curse formula Semitic religious concepts took place that permitted the
addressed to the Assyrian king: "The moment that he rise of Ya. The form Ya may be considered a shortened
does not respect the treaty, may the god Sun, the god form of Yaw, as may be inferred from such personal
Adad, and his own personal god disperse his decision in names as Su-mi-a-ut.
the steppe; for his messengers who set out on a journey Passing now to other divinities, we may mention
may there be no water; may you have no stable abode, "Dagan of Tuttul," "Dagan of Sivad," etc. Noteworthy is
may you undertake a trip of perdition!" From this curse the mention of "Dagan of Canaan," a title recalling the
formula it is difficult not to conclude that this is a vassal well-known "Dagan of the Philistines,"w hose temple was
treaty. Unfortunately we do not know which commercial pulled down by Samson. This reference to Canaan neatly
center it has in mind, but the mention of as demonstrates the antiquity of this term and how sound
well as of Uattu in the introduction warrantKst ahrec chaeumtiio, us the hypothesis that the ethnic label "Canaanite"i s much
hypothesis that it is dealing with the founding of Kdrum older than generally believed. In the second position in
Kanig, so famous some centuries later as an Assyrian the pantheon appears Rasap, the Regef of later
commercial colony. The frequent mention in the documents. Then follow the god (Samag), AMtara,
economic texts of Kar-kai-ni-ikLsu stains this hypothesis. masculine divinity at Ebla, unliSkiep ih, is Mesopotamian
These few details about some historic events counterpart, Atarte, Adad, Malik, Ka'alu (Ko'ar of the
during this period of the third millennium oblige us, as Ugaritic tablets, Aera, and finally the god Kamig, surely
observed elsewhere, thoroughly to re-examine our the of posterior texts. From the reading of the
knowledge and reconstructions of power relationships in divinKea mnaom, e Kamig, one may again marvel at the
the ancient Near East. Be it in the field of political history reliability of the biblical text which on one occasion
or in the area of economic relationships, one can no preserves the unusual form kemis; this suggests that the
longer prescind from the ample epigraphic finds at Ebla. Masoretes had very ancient documents at their disposal.
48 MAY 1976