| Ebla | |
|---|---|
Ruins of the outer wall and the "Damascus Gate"
| |
| Alternate name | Tell Mardikh (Arabic: تل مرديخ) |
| Location | Idlib Governorate, Syria |
| Coordinates | 35.798°N 36.798°E |
| Type | settlement |
| History | |
| Founded | c. 3500 BC |
| Abandoned | 7th century AD |
| Periods | Bronze Age |
| Site notes | |
| Excavation dates | 1964–present |
| Archaeologists | Paolo Matthiae |
| Ownership | Public |
| Public access | Yes |
The Ebla tablets are a collection of as many as 1800 complete clay tablets, 4700 fragments and many thousand minor chips found in the palace archives[1] of the ancient city of Ebla, Syria. The tablets were discovered by Italianarchaeologist Paolo Matthiae and his team in 1974–75[2] during their excavations at the ancient city of Tell Mardikh.[3] The tablets, which were found in situ on collapsed shelves, retained many of their contemporary clay tags to help reference them. They all date to the period between ca. 2500 BC and the destruction of the city ca. 2250 BC.[4] Today, the tablets are being held in the Syrian museums of Aleppo, Damascus, and Idlib.
Language[edit]
Two languages appeared in the writing on the tablets: Sumerian, and a previously unknown language that used the Sumerian cuneiform script (Sumerian logograms or "Sumerograms") as a phonetic representation of the locally spoken Ebla language.[citation needed] The latter script was initially identified asproto-Canaanite by professor Giovanni Pettinato, who first deciphered the tablets, because it predated the Semitic languages of Canaan, like Ugaritic andHebrew. Pettinato later retracted the designation and decided to call it simply "Eblaite", the name by which it is known today.[4]
The purely phonetic use of Sumerian logograms marks a momentous advance in the history of writing.[5] From the clumsier system developed by Sumerian scribes, employing a mixed use of logograms and phonetic signs, the scribes at Ebla employed a reduced number of signs from the existing systems entirely phonetically, both the earliest example of transcription (rendering sounds in a system invented for another language) and a major simplifying step towards "reader friendliness" that would enable a wider spread of literacy in palace, temple and merchant contexts.
Archaeological context[edit]
The tablets were discovered just where they had fallen when their wooden shelves burned in the final conflagration of "Palace G". The archive was kept in orderly fashion in two small rooms off a large audience hall (with a raised dais at one end); one repository contained only bureaucratic economic records on characteristic round tablets, the other, larger room held ritual and literary texts, including pedagogical texts for teaching young scribes. Many of the tablets had not previously been baked, but when all were preserved by the fire that destroyed the palace, their storage method served to fire them almost as thoroughly as if in a kiln: they had been stored upright in partly recessed wooden shelves, rectos facing outward, leaning backwards at an angle so that the incipit of each tablet could be seen at a glance, and separated from one another by fragments of baked clay. The burning shelving pancaked – collapsing in place and preserving the order of the tablets.[6]