Ebla

This essay descriptively presents the treaty tradition at Ebla through an organic discourse analysis of the treaty between Ebla and Abarsal (ARET 13:5) and several other treaty-related documents. The study first engages the notions of “treaty” and “treaty tradition,” and summarizes the “oil oath” as a significant treaty-based idiom. An outline of the discourse methodology implemented in the analysis follows, which focuses on distinguishing unique discourse varieties found in the Eblaite treaty materials, identifies all clause-level connectors in ARET 13:5, and identifies all Eblaic predicate structures in this treaty.

Starting from 2003, several archaeobotanical campaigns have been carried out on the Ebla site, NW Syria, in order to shed light on the use of plants between the Early Bronze Age IIIa and Middle-Late Bronze Age. The results of the anthracological analysis,  here  presented  for  the  first  time,  following  a  continuous  chronological  pattern,  reveal  changes  in  plants  exploitation according  to  cultural  aspects,  functions  of  use  and  climate.  Several  contexts  were  investigated  and  the  anthracological  analysis
shows changes in the use of wood between the Early and Middle-Late Bronze Age. Wood species found in the EBA Royal palace G
were,  for  the  major  part,  beams  and  poles  of  Cedrus  and  Abies  employed  as  carpentry.  In  the  same  layers  luxury  artefacts  of
Pomoideae, Fraxinus sp. and Olea wood were found. More complex is the picture that results from the study of material coming from
M/LBA phases due to the variety of contexts investigated. The anthracological analysis, carried out on private houses, cooking ovens (type  tannurs),  dumps  and  ritual  wells,  has  revealed,  indeed,  a  complex  pattern  of  wood  exploitation  which  varied  according  to cultural habits and natural resources.

ABSTRACT: This lecture continues from lecture 6 (which focused on Early Dynastic Sumer & Akkad), and examines various geographic and cultural areas beyond southern Mesopotamia, ca, 2,900 - 2,350 BC. Brief overviews are provided starting with Southwest Iran (Proto-Elamite culture), the Zagros Mountains and Iranian Plateau to the east, and links with the Indus Valley (Harappan Culture: ancient Meluha) via the Persian/Arabian Gulf (e.g., ancient Dilmun & Magan).  The focus switches to northern Mesopotamia (e.g., Ninevite 5 and Metallic greay ware cultures), the Transcaucasian region (Kura-Araxes culture), east Central Anatolia (e.g., Arslantepe; Norsuntepe), and Southeast Anatolia (i.e., northern fringe of Syria), and Cilicia. An overview is then provided regarding the kingdoms of Mari (Euphrates) and Ebla in western Syria, plus an overview of Palestine during the Early Bronze Age, with a more specific summary of the interconnections between these regions and Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt.  The lecture ends with a summation of the collapse of the Early Bronze Age III in the Levant in particular, ca. 2,300 - 2,200 BCE. The end-of-lecture summary has yet to be completed, but may await the second offering of this course in Spring 2020. UPDATED: 2022 Spring offering.

ABSTRACT:  This lecture proceeds with covering the Akkadian through Neo-Sumerian periods (ca. 2,334/2,288 - 2,000 BCE). It starts with a brief reminder regarding the wide range in absolute dates for 3rd  through 2nd millennium BCE Mesopotamia and a quick overview of the foundations of the Akkadian Empire. The lecture turns to the Akkadian Empire, beginning with Sargon, and continuing with the reigns of Rimush, Manishtushu, Naram-Sin, and Shar-Kali-Sharri, and then concludes with a summary of trends for the last kings of Agade/Akkad. The next section incorporates some discussion of the "Gutian Period," during which Gudea of Lagash is covered briefly (but to be expanded in future). The next section concerns the Third Dynasty of Ur (also termed the Neo-Sumerian period), and concentrates on Ur-Nammu, Shulgi, Amar-Sin / Amar-Suen, Shu-Sin, and Ibbi-Sin. Other aspects of the preceding Akkadian through Ur III periods are dealt with in several overviews, including the rise of Elam & the Elamites, the Amorites (including references to an attempt to prevent their infiltration by creating a huge ditch and earthworks), the Hurrians, the Kingdom of Mari, and the Kingdom of Ebla. The lecture concludes with an examination of Southeast Anatolia and Palestine during the late EB Age (EB IV/MB I), with a particular focus upon interactions with and influences from Mesopotamia. UPDATED: 2022 Spring offering.

As the first comprehensive study of fortification systems and defensive strategies in the Levant during the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1900 to 1500 B.C.E.), Walled up to Heaven is an indispensable contribution to the study of this period and of early warfare in the ancient Near East. Although archaeologists and ancient historians alike have discussed a variety of theories regarding the origin and cultural significance of the construction of earthen ramparts during the Middle Bronze Age, only this work addresses these questions in detail. In a tour de force, Burke traces the diachronic evolution and geographic distribution of the architectural features and settlement strategies connected with the emergence of Middle Bronze Age defenses in the Levant. By synthesizing historical and archaeological data from Mesopotamia and Egypt as well as the Levant, he reveals the interconnectedness of the Near Eastern world during the first half of the second millennium to an extent not recently considered. The result is a detailed employment of cognitive, social, and dirt archaeology to reconstruct the political, social, military, and cultural implications of the construction of monumental defenses and the development of defensive networks during the period of Amorite hegemony in the Levant.

Based on author's Ph.D. dissertation: The Architecture of Defense: Fortified Settlements of the Levant during the Middle Bronze Age (2004). Ph.D. Dissertation. Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago.

The paper analyzes the iconography of the bone talisman, discovered in the Tomb of the Lord of the Goats, the hypogeum attributed to king Immeya (1750 BC) and excavated below the Western Palace of Ebia. Each symbol and image carved on the talisman, part of two ritual scenes concerning the royal ancestors' cult, were studied in relation to the nearby figures. Moreover, other similar human and animal figures, discovered scattered in the same tomb, were related to the talisman, in order to reconstruct the entire scene depicted on it. The small animal figurines, applied at the top and bottom of the object, were also analyzed, in order to understand their ideological meaning, possibly connected to the ideology of death of the Old Syrian dynasties of Tell Mardikh. I propose to interpret Immeya's bone talisman as a ritual object, perhaps used during the Eblaic royal funerary ritual. In this hypothesis, the talisman had the magical function to help the dead king in his travel through the netherworld, ending with his assumption among the celestial deified ancestors. The shape and suggested purpose of the object might allow a parallel with talismans used in the contemporary funerary rituals of the Egyptian pharaonic dynasties during the Middle Kingdom.

The Quweiq and Matkh plains, in north inland Syria, were densely settled areas during the Early Bronze Age, crossed by the River Quweiq, flowing north-south from the plateau of Gaziantep to disappear into the Matkh paleolake. The northern sector of the Nahr el-Quweiq was surveyed in 1970s, providing information on the 3rd millennium BC occupation of the Aleppo's hinterland. However, to date, only little evidence is available from archaeological excavations carried out in the area, hampering to crosscheck the ceramic periodisation derived from the Nahr el-Quweiq survey, which has therefore been used, or referred to, for general comparisons only. The article aims at revising the chronology and connections of the Aleppo region during the EB I-IVA period in the light of recent excavations and surveys carried out in neighbouring areas (the Ebla region, the Middle Euphrates, the Sajur and Jabbul plains), ultimately exploring the role of the Aleppo region as a 'bridge area' , which provided access to important commercial routes towards the Euphrates Valley, the 'Amuq plain and the area of Gaziantep. The north-south axis-linking the Ebla region with Aleppo-had to be particularly important during EB IVA, when ḫalab appears to belong to the Ebla kingdom and was the seat of the cult of the Storm God as we learn from cuneiform texts from Palace G archives.

In the well-researched archaeological landscape of Northern Mesopotamia, there exists a large region of little-to-no previous investigation: the Greater Western Jazira (GWJ) of northeastern Syria. This thesis takes a geographically holistic approach to investigating the GWJ, focussed on the crucial time of the late 5th to 3rd millennium BC. This period saw an initial abandonment of sedentism in the steppe during the Late Chalcolithic, and subsequent rapid settlement growth with large urban centres in the Early Bronze Age. These dynamics are examined by collating diverse ground truth data from four excavations, three surveys, and several other investigations. These are integrated with extensive remote sensing research, involving the systematic analysis of all areas of the GWJ using satellite imagery and elevation data, processed through a GIS database. During the course of this research, a refined categorisation of heterogeneous varieties of the large fortified tell settlement type commonly termed “Kranzhügel” is developed and implemented.

The evidence gathered shows a complex system of sedentary habitation in the steppe, with a total of 302 sites likely dating to the period in question, 160 of which were newly identified by this thesis. Analyses carried out on site densities, settlement sizes, grain production, supporting settlements for centres, and site alignments allow several economic systems to be proposed. These show that various areas of the GWJ not only underwent very different sedentarisation (and possibly nomadisation) processes, but also owed their existence to both indigenous developments and external forces; and their survival to diverse interdependent practices including agro-pastoralism and trade. Specifically, two distinct trajectories of early and mid-EBA settlement are identified in the north and the centre-south of the region, respectively. Placing this in a wider context, it is shown that the GWJ was an integral part of the Northern Mesopotamian economic and political landscape, belying its reputation as a “marginal” area. Thus it becomes evident that this region demands greater integration into analyses and theories concerning Near Eastern archaeology.

The paper provides an overview of the digital tools developed as part of the Ebla Digital Archives Project, which aims to offer a digital edition of roughly 3,000 cuneiform tablets from ancient Ebla (modern Tell Mardikh, in western Syria), dated to the middle of the third millennium BCE. The Ebla archive is the oldest one in the history of mankind, for which extensive information concerning the primary setting of the documents is available. The archaicity of the writing system, combined with the inherent difficulties in reconstructing languages from the remote past (Sumerian, Akkadian, Eblaite), pushes us to rethink the strategies to properly digitally capture the complexity of these sources, of invaluable historical significance: administrative documents, literary texts, vocabularies, letters, etc. We tackled the problem through the development of a PostgreSQL database, which is populated by ad hoc Python scripts that parse input transliteration files, which in turn are encoded using a shallow mark-up language. The individual steps in such workflow are discussed, as well as the benefits in terms of advanced queries for information retrieval that such approach offers.

The article analyses the birth and development of the secondary urbanization in north inner Syria and the elaboration of the systems of territorial control and related symbolic imagery, with special concern for the period between Early Bronze IVA and Middle Bronze II in north inner Syria. One focus of the research is the relations between sedentary and mobile segments of the population and their strategies of adaptation to political and climatic challenges. The changes in the languages of architecture and visual art are also taken into account, with special concern for Ebla.

Recent studies in the field of sensory archaeology – that encompasses the meaning and impact of senses in the past and in the comprehension of past phenomena – developed new theories and methods in the archaeological research starting from not only visible and tangible data but also envisioning no longer existing (visible, tangible and audible) information from the past. Sensory archaeology, in fact, looks at what we can label an experimental approach to the past and archaeological contexts assuming that the analysis of the perception through the senses can eventually disclose new possibility and attempts for a wider comprehension of the use of material culture, on the one hand, and architecture and landscape, on the other.
Recently, the definition of sensescape precisely points to the evaluation of not only the five senses but, more specifically, how the perception through senses affected the cognition of the space around (the peripersonal space) and the system of communication (interrelations with the space, the things and the people within): in this respect, this approach led to new affordances and perspectives on the different degrees of past interactions in the societies of the ancient Near East. Of course, a process of contextualization is necessary: the use of senses must be settled in the past and in a precise archaeological context so that general assumptions and too generic reconstructions can be avoided. Moreover, the evaluation of the senses must go through an emic process that takes into account the perspective and meaning that are given by the society under examination: the risk of flattening the sensory experience of the past on our modern perception and evaluation of the use and impact of senses is always round the corner.
In this respect, does a classification of senses exist? Based on contemporary society and forced by the nature of the archaeological evidence, it might be logic to give the sight the first rank of the classification. Does the result also reflect the reality of the past? Can we in fact infer that sight was the most exploited sense by the ancient societies in the Near East? It seems to me that since we still see the ruins of landscape, cities and buildings we are inevitably forced to cope with the sight assuming that what we see might in fact corresponds to what ancient people saw or, conversely, that what we no longer see was once clearly visible to the ancient people.
The present paper analyses the effect of sound speaking against the tyranny of sight in archaeological contexts: cities and architecture are not only spaces that can be seen but they also resound and this very specific quality will be presented starting from the example of the Temple of the Rock at Ebla. In particular, starting from the definition of “acoustemology” by Steven Fold, the present communication will try to disclose the knowledge of ancient space and architecture though and via the sonic quality of the environment and materiality of things and objects – where also people become in the end auditory elements of what we can label a soundscape. Recent studies of ancient acoustic places will be taken into consideration in the introduction to settle the field of the research and the methodology of investigation, whereas the systems of acoustic resonance will be investigated to point out the role and importance of the sound in the perception and as a cognitive instrument for the communication and shared participation of individual: it is time to give the past an ear, going beyond the exclusivity of the eye showing how sound (not exclusively music, but even the noise) affects the process of interactions and the construction of the self socially, in relations to the others and the neighbouring (un)built space.

This is a study on the architecture of the Palace of the Middle Kingdom in Bubastis. It served the mayors of the town as the office of administration. In the northern part, however, seems to have been used by the king as a residence during visits in the eastern Delta. This can be concluded by the double-bladed doors which indicated a direction from the north, while the doors from the south are single-bladed. The mayors had also an installation for their cult with their statues set up in the central columned hall looking westwards in the direction of their necropolis which was built in a rectangular block just west of the palace.

This is a proof version of a contribution in honour of the late renowned Harvard Professor Lawrence E. Stager (1943-2017). Contents: In an architectural study at the example of the Giparu in Ur it is attempted to show that specific temple types in the Ancient Near East were gender-related. Bent-Axis Temples were mainly dedicated to female divinities while Broad-Room Temples were mainly devoted to male gods. Of special interest is when these two temple types occur side by side. As this combination turns up at the capital of the Hyksos site of Avaris/Tell el-Dab‘a in northernmost Syria and Mesopotamia, but not in the rest of the Levant the question arises from where the elite of the Hyksos drew its spiritual sources and from where did they come from

Corrections: In the citation of illustrations within the text the number of the figs. should be increased by 1 from Fig. 2 onwards.

In the great sacred area of Ish tar, dating from Middle Bronze 11, recently brought to light in the Lower Town north of Ebla, in the square stretching between the great Temple P2 and the imposing Monument P3, 1 a favissa excavated in the rock was identified, and almost completely excavated, whose presence was indicated by some big squared limestone blocks, only in part found in place (Fig. 1). 2 This favissa opened almost exactly in the point of intersection of the central axes of the two buildings, nearly 35 m away from their facrades. There they had thrown a large amount of bowls and small size vases, among which some small jars decorated with clay naked female figurines, lions and birds applied on the shoulders and to the necks. With the pottery we found some votive offeri ngs including clay naked female figurines and bronze serpents and toggle pins, several stone and gold beads, fragments of different precious materials, among which lapis lazuli, and a miniature camelian figurine of a crouching lion of an excellent workmanship (Fig. 2). 3

During the Early Bronze Age (EBA), an area of Northern Mesopotamia including northern Syria and the western Jezireh played host to an unprecedented degree of urbanization and population growth.  Emerging models of EBA society stress that this urbanization was made possible by the expansion of intensive regimens of specialized agro-pastoral production into arid zones near to and ostensibly beyond the conventional zone of reliable rainfall agricultural.  While it is clear that a certain amount of pastoral production was directed by hierarchical political organizations based in urban centers, the degree to which this characterized all pastoral production is not yet a subject of consensus.  Many scholars have assumed the presence of mobile pastoral groups were present in the Syrian countryside at various points during the EBA, with various sociopolitical characteristics and to differing historical effects.  This dissertation is aimed at assessing material and historical evidence relevant to the question of whether or not such groups did exist, to what effect, and also at assessing the extent to which these questions can be answered.

To this end, this study has been divided into two volumes.  The first volume involves a critical analogical review of the ethnographic record.  There it is argued that this review suggests a specific sociopolitical character to mobile pastoral societies.  Specifically, mobile pastoralism is associated with a sociopolitical system characterized by a segmentary political structure operating on a principle of balanced opposition and without institutions of political hierarchy.  This can be termed a ‘segmentary lineage system’.  This system is not simply a revival of segmentary lineage theory.  That theory has been routinely criticized for perceived faults, foremost among them the observation that no society has a segmentary lineage system in practice, only as a discursive model of action.  Furthermore, it is argued confusion resulting from the use of the term ‘tribe’ to refer both to mobile pastoral groups in the Middle East and North Africa with other specialized meanings has served to obscure the relevance of this segmentary lineage model.  By reference to a diachronic perspective of culture change provided by Anthony Giddens’ theory of structuration, it is argued that this situation obtains in so-called ‘tribal’ societies in the Middle East and North Africa as a result of sudden and drastic changes to their material existence resulting in the modern period.  At the end of this volume, a material model of mobile pastoral societies is developed from these sociopolitical traits, as well as its correlated material traits and is adapted for an ancient context.

The second volume of this dissertation involves the application of the sociopolitical and material model of segmentary lineage systems to the historical and material record of EBA Syria and other material and historical records with potential relevance to it.  The application of the models to these records reveals that no material or historical evidence exists to indicate the presence of mobile pastoral communities until the very end of the EBA, near the time of its transition to the Middle Bronze Age (MBA).  Previous arguments to the contrary, both historical and archaeological, have either been built upon indirect evidence or supposition regarding the sociopolitical nature of mobile pastoral communities that is simply not unique to them.  While absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence, it is argued by comparison to the MBA, when the material and historical record unambiguously confirms the presence of such groups, that in the case of the EBA, the absence of evidence is indeed absence in fact.

The results of this study support the emerging model of Syrian society at this time as being characterized by an unprecedented amount of subsistence specialization, regional integration, and sedentarization.  It suggests that the vast majority, if not all pastoral production was unified within a single sociocultural framework.  The results of this study also highlight the centuries surrounding the EBA/MBA transition as particularly significant for the introduction of mobile pastoralism and the development of segmentary lineage systems in Syria.  Finally, although the sociopolitical and material models of mobile pastoralism and segmentary lineage systems were ultimately not found to be directly relevant to most of the EBA in Syria, it was nevertheless a necessary step to addressing the existence of such groups.  It serves also to contribute a new paradigm against which future research results may be compared to further refine or revise the understanding of EBA Syria offered here.  It also offers a paradigm for the study of mobile pastoral communities in the archaeological and historical records of the ancient Near East beyond the EBA.