to the town economy (Matthiae 1988 ). This territory is clearly identifiable on the base
of the distribution of the unified, and easily recognisable ceramic repertories, once
called ‘calciform’ culture, because of the presence of the typical goblets. Outside the
territory directly controlled by the town, a network of lesser settlements and villages,
perhaps of the kind of er-Rawda, was related with Ebla, and guaranteed the control of
the regions devoted to pastoralism and agriculture, but also of sectors of the long
distance, commercial routes particularly of those reaching the region coming from the
Euphrates, possibly from the region of Mari. Complex international treaties ruled
relations with other important centres, some of which not yet identified, such as
Abarsal, on the Euphrates course. On the other hand, royal letters reveal the existence
of ‘fraternal’ relations even with far away centres, such as Khamazi, on the Tigris. The
administrative texts, under the veil of bureaucratic language, are also bringing to light
the complex relations with some major centres, such as Mari: military tensions
alternated with bilateral trade interconnections, where the exchange of raw wool and
finished textiles were the main commodities. The amounts of raw lapis lazuli sent by
Mari to the Eblaic court are astounding, and confirm the role of the two towns in this
important sector of the trade for luxury goods.
The picture we are drawing, more and more clearly, is that of the existence of two
main centres in the ancient Near East in the late Early Dynastic period, southern
Mesopotamia and northern inner Syria, whose capital was Ebla. Both poles feature a
central organisation for the control and management of power which has already
reached a phase of full maturity, a strong organisation of the production processes, of
the mechanisms of centralisation and redistribution, and of the political and commer-
cial interconnections among city-states, which clearly appear in the written evidence.
The discovery of the important hoard of cuneiform texts at Ebla, with more than
17 , 000 inventory numbers, including complete texts and fragments, revealed the
existence of a fully developed scribal school, and is now allowing us to go deeper into
the analysis of the internal hierarchies in the palace power, and of the Eblaic society,
which certainly had structures and languages quite unlike southern Mesopotamian
ones. This resulted from the exploitation of an economic system based on rain-fed
agriculture, pastoralism, cattle breeding, and the cultivation of fruit trees over an
extended territory, rather than on the constraints of irrigation agriculture over a more
restricted territory.
The mature Early Syrian Ebla, the town destroyed by Sargon of Akkad, probably
in order to break its control over the main trade routes, was one of the main political,
cultural, and economic centres of the northern inner Syrian region, a Central Market
Place quite likely controlling the supplies of timber from the coastal mountain chains
of the Mediterranean, and of silver from Anatolia towards Mesopotamia, a capital
which elaborated an ideology of kingship, and a way to represent it of absolute
originality, and of great evocative strength. Thus, many creations of this period,
probably starting with the royal title malik, in the version meki, probably due to the
local way of pronouncing the consonant “l”, and including the strong presence of
female figures, became a part of the cultural heritage of the region in the following
periods (Pinnock 2004 ). Probably for this reason Ebla, in the bilingual Hurrian/Hittite
text from Boghazköy, called “Chant of Manumission” is called “Town of the Throne”.
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