Archaeology Magazine - July 1977 - 35

knowledge of the State Archives has grown
measurably over the past few years, although we
have only been able to initiate the study of about
16,500 cuneiform tablets and fragments. Of
these texts more than 14,500 tablets of
commercial, administrative, financial, economic,
lexical, historical and literary character come
from the Archives Room; nearly four hundred
and fifty tablets of commercial, historical and
administrative character come from the vestibule
of the Administrative Quarter; nearly five
hundred tablets of agricultural character from
the north room of the Administrative complex;
nearly one thousand administrative tablets from
the storage area in the eastern façade of the
court; twenty commercial tablets from the area
of the court itself; and from the southern room
of the Northwestern wing, come forty-two
administrative tablets.
The one thousand tablets found in the
storage area were originally preserved on shelves
fixed to the mud-brick walls, the holes for which
are clearly visible. In the Archives Room the
cuneiform documents were found on two or
three levels formed by the fall of the tablets
from their original positions during the fire that
caused the final destruction of the palace. Along
the walls were wooden shelves supported by
small wooden columns fixed in the floor at
regular intervals and by horizontal supports
fixed to the walls. On the shelves the tablets,
nearly square in shape and quite large in size,
were mostly arranged next to each other with
their faces parallel to the wall, so as to form
series, partially separated by large wedges made
of broken tablets. Under the shelves on the floor
we found a lot of smaller roundish tablets;
nearby, especially along the northern wall, were
some particularly large (0.04 meters) rectangular
documents, covered with a very thin
writing - about thirty columns of nearly fifty
lines on each face, for a total of three thousand
lines.

^Vll the texts of Ebla's Royal Archives were
written in Eblaite, a Semitic language previously
unknown from texts and one that can be defined
as archaic northwestern Semitic. So far only a
preliminary catalogue of the documents has been
possible, and establishing the position of Eblaite
in the family of Semitic languages would
naturally be premature. One can, however, take

a look at some outstanding characteristics of the
writing and language. The documents at Ebla
use the Mesopotamian cuneiform system of
writing in the tradition of the texts of Fara and
Abu Salabikh, both near Nippur. The oldest of
Ebla's tablets seem to be older according to
paleography than documents contemporary with
Sargon, the founder of the Akkad dynasty
(2340-2284 b.c.); while in the latest documents
from the library one can observe characters
typical of old Akkadian writing, before
Naram-Sin.
Eblaite is a northwestern Semitic language
that seems to be particularly characterized by a
verbal system with important analogies to
Ugaritic and Phoenician, and by a lexicon, the
elements of which, when they are not common
Semitic, find parallels in other northwestern
Semitic dialects. The texts of the Royal Archives
have revealed, therefore, an early language that,
in the sphere of northwestern Semitic, occupies
for its archaic character, a position comparable to
that of Old Akkadian for the later eastern
Semitic languages. But until further study of the
Eblaite language is concluded, only such
preliminary observations can be made. However,
considered in the light of the conditions of
Syrian society in the second half of the third
millennium b.c., Eblaite can be seen as a
cultivated written language of a Syrian urban
culture, probably connected with dialects of
other even geographically distant, contemporary
urban cultures in Syria.
Long reports of international trade of textiles
and clothes constitute the most important part of
the Royal Archives. These tablets register the
delivery of products to certain personages of
Ebla, mostly members of the royal family,
dignitaries, officials and priests, and often to
cities both under, and outside of, the political
influence of Ebla. Ebla's taxes are recorded in a
group of administrative tablets, and payments
are associated with the names of officials who
were probably appointed to control sectors of the
state administration or of the provincial
governments. The text found in the storage area
(L 2712) report the delivery of rations of food
and drink to dignitaries and officials in support
of the normal activity of their commercial or
diplomatic missions in distant cities.
Texts from the Archives Room are of a more
specific historical interest, in political activity,
diplomatic relations and juridical rulings.
Particularly interesting are abstracts of
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Archaeology Magazine - July 1977

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