Basic HTML Version
NEWARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY
ILLUMINATES THE PAST
T
he normally se–
date world of an–
cient Near Eastern
archaeology is buzzing
with the excitement of
a new discovery- a dis–
covery which sorne
think will rival that of
tbe Dead Sea Scrolls.
Others are throwing
caution to the winds
and calling it the "fi nd
of the century."
Finds up t o the
presen t incl ude a p–
proximately 17,000
clay tablets written in a
language rela ted to the
Hebrew of the Old
Testament. Further–
rnore. these tablets de–
scribe a city and culture sorne
centuries older than the patriarch
Abraham but in his same general
area. The finds are too recent to do
more than whet one's appetite for the
moment. Only careful and lengthy
study will shów their precise value for
the research of language and history
ofthe Bible. Yet the tantaüzing data
already found and released to the
scholarly world suggest that sorne
excitement is not unfounded.
The archaeological site is Tell
Mardikh, a mound in northern
Syria about 45 miles south of
Aleppo. The mound (or "tell" in ar–
chaeological parlance) marks the re–
mains of the once flourishing city of
Ebla. (According to one text, the
ci ty had a population of 260,000.)
Ebla was destroyed about 1600 B.C.
Yet it had been a major city-state
and perhaps even the capital of an
empire for many centuries before its
final destruction. The tablets so far
discovered cover approximately the
period between 2500-2200 B.C., as
dated paleographically (from the
writing) and from th e archae–
ological stra ta.
Synopsis of the Excavation
1
first learned of the new finds in the
autumn of 1975. I was visiting a t
20
by
Lester
L.
Grabbe
Cambridge with J . A. Emerton, pro–
fessor of Hebrew. He asked whether
1
had heard of new cuneiform tab–
lets in a northwest Semi tic language.
1
had heard nothing; he had heard
only a few rumors. Much of the
mystery was dispelled by the publi–
cation of two articles in the journal
Orientalia.
Other announcements in
the popular press relayed sorne fur–
ther information along with a lot of
unverified claims and sorne rather
wild-sounding speculations.
The ñrst really clear account of
the situation carne on October 29,
1976, in St. Louis at the annual
meeting of the Society of Biblical
Literature together with sorne other
learned societics.
The SBL a rranged for the men
associated with the Ebla discovery
to be present and address the entire
group. These were the archaeologist,
Professor P. Matthiac, and the lan–
guage specia list. Professor G. Petti–
nato.
Professor Ma ttniae gave a history
ofthe dig.
lt
had actually begun more
than a decade ago in 1964. The size of
the mound has indicated it must ha ve
once been an importan! site.
It
cov–
ered about 140 acres, far larger than
many important tells excavated in
Israel. A statuette unearthed in 1968
gave the first definite
clue to the identity of
the ancie nt ci ty. lt
mentioned the word
Ebla
twice. Ebla was
already known from
other records to have
been an important city
in thesecond and third
millennia B.C. How–
ever, that id e nti –
fication was disputed
by sorne scholars.
The year 1974
b r o u ght the long–
awaited written arti–
facts. These were 42
c lay tablets in th e
cuneiform scri pt
(see
phoro)
commonly
used lo wri t e th e
Bab.ylonian, Assyrian and Sumerian
languages. Like most such lablets.
lhey were exlremely smaU. Even thc
larger oncs were only about 3 by
3 ~
inches. Ncvertheless, the ancient
scribes were able to sq ueeze quite a
bit of writing onto such sma l l
"pages."
The year 1975 brought the real
cache of approximately 16.000 tab–
ll!ts. Anolher thousand or so lurncd
up in 1976. The result is a library
which willtake many decades lo pub–
Lish, analyze and evaluate. Natural!y,
this says nothing of anything stilllefl
to be excavated in later seasons!
The big news was not just the
number of tablels, but the discovery
that many of thcm were written in
an hith erto unknown language.
However. this language has close af–
finities with such known languages
as Aramaic, Ugaritic and Hebrew.
Since there are few remains of the
early Hebrew language outside the
Old Testament, any early records
are of grea t interest to Bible schol–
ars, even if those records are in a
language only related to Hebrew
rather than in Hebrew itself.
A New Language
The Hebrew language is called "Ca–
naanite" in lhe Old Testament. lt
The
PLAIN TRUTH April 1977