From: eliedw@hedda.uio.no (Elie Dib Wardini)
Subject: Canaan, Ebla, Ugarit and other stories :-)
Organization: UiO
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 16:44:42 GMT

 

Ebla is the ancient name of a place called Tal Mardikh, a site situated in
Today's Syria (between Hama and Aleppo). In this ancient city which dates back
to the 4th and 3rd cent BC, were found many (30 000) clay tablets with texts.
These text were thought to be Sumerian (a non-semitic language used in Southern
Mesopotamia). Yet som forms of words and syntax indicated tha they should be
read as a Semitic language. Ebla is important in many ways, yet one special
importance is that in the texts found their were attested the names of the Old
Testament patriarchs, Abraham, Isaak, Jacob etc.

Another interesting element with these inscriptions is the number of names that
end in "ya" just as many Biblical names.

Ebla is also a source of some of our most ancient texts in the Middle East.

These texts have not yet been fully deciphered. THis means that there is very
much discussion on how to understand the texts, is the language West Semitic,
more closely related to Hebrew, Phoenician, Aramaic? or is it closer to
Akkadian, the ancient language of Mesopotamia?

The problem becomes more difficult, since we do not know how Hebrew,
Phoenician, Ugaritic, Aramaic looked like at such early dates 3rd. cent. BC.
Did they even exist then? What relation does Eblaitic (language of Ebla) has to
these languages? Were they at such an early date one language that later became
split to several dialects leading to our Hebrew, Ugaritic etc. or are they not
related at all?

Some even assume that Eblaitic is more closely related to Akkadian, and do not
place Ebla in the same group as Phoenician, Hebrew etc.

Note what B.W.W. Dombrowski says in his article in Zeitschrift der Deutschen
Morgenlandischen Geselschaft, vol. 138 1988, p.213:

    "Being bsaed on an intensive and extensive investigation of the published 
     written materials, as unearthed at Tell Mardikh, this paper, however, is 
     to draw attention to the true character of Eblaitic as the earliest well 
     attested Akkadian dialect.

    "Surely, the obviously native tongue of the poeple of Ebla has been subject

     to both the impact of Old Sumerian in layers being clearly older than 
     those well known prior to the discovery and evaluation of the archives of 
     Ebla and influences originating in this kingdom's geographical situation 
     [in the West as opposed to Akkadian in the East] and environment, yet its 
     genuine Akkadian character, especially, when compared with pre-Sargonic 
     [founder of Akkad] and Sargonic becomes more apparent the more one devotes
     oneself to careful scrutiny of both its morphology and its lexicon."

What Ebla should remind us, rather than using its material to prove unprovable
theories, is that the Middle EAst has an ancient and great history. THis
history is not uniform and that there existed very many peoples and kingdoms
that existed and became extinct. Some still live on. Ebla shows that once more,
all simplifications about the Middle East are countre productive and distort
the real picture. The Middle East was/ is very complex (like any other part of
the wrold by the way) and that our understanding of this complex area should
not be hampred by our limited scope and insight.


Elie Wardini