Sumerian (Sumerian: 𒅴𒂠 , romanized: eme-gir 15 , lit. '' native language '' ) was the language of ancient Sumer . It is one of the oldest attested languages , dating back to at least 2900 BC. It is a local language isolate that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia , in the area that is modern-day Iraq .
193-454: Ebla ( Sumerian : 𒌈𒆷 eb₂-la , Arabic : إبلا , modern: تل مرديخ , Tell Mardikh ) was one of the earliest kingdoms in Syria . Its remains constitute a tell located about 55 km (34 mi) southwest of Aleppo near the village of Mardikh . Ebla was an important center throughout the 3rd millennium BC and in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC . Its discovery proved
386-488: A Semitic language , gradually replaced Sumerian as the primary spoken language in the area c. 2000 BC (the exact date is debated), but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary, and scientific language in Akkadian-speaking Mesopotamian states such as Assyria and Babylonia until the 1st century AD. Thereafter, it seems to have fallen into obscurity until
579-491: A logosyllabic script comprising several hundred signs. Rosengarten (1967) lists 468 signs used in Sumerian (pre- Sargonian ) Lagash . The cuneiform script was adapted to Akkadian writing beginning in the mid-third millennium. Over the long period of bi-lingual overlap of active Sumerian and Akkadian usage the two languages influenced each other, as reflected in numerous loanwords and even word order changes. Depending on
772-802: A nationalistic flavour. Attempts have been made without success to link Sumerian with a range of widely disparate groups such as Indo-European languages , the Austroasiatic languages , Dravidian languages , Uralic languages such as Hungarian and Finnish , Sino-Tibetan languages and Turkic languages (the last being promoted by Turkish nationalists as part of the Sun language theory ). Additionally, long-range proposals have attempted to include Sumerian in broad macrofamilies . Such proposals enjoy virtually no support among modern linguists, Sumerologists and Assyriologists and are typically seen as fringe theories . It has also been suggested that
965-642: A tell 11 kilometers north-west of Abu Kamal on the Euphrates River western bank, some 120 kilometers southeast of Deir ez-Zor . It flourished as a trade center and hegemonic state between 2900 BC and 1759 BC. The city was built in the middle of the Euphrates trade routes between Sumer in the south and the Eblaite kingdom and the Levant in the west. Mari was first abandoned in
1158-539: A bitter personal and academic conflict between the scholars involved, as well as what some described as political interference by the Syrian authorities. Ancient DNA analysis on 10 human remains dating to the Early and Middle Bronze Age from Ebla found that Eblaites were a mixture of Copper age Levantines and Mesopotamians, and were genetically similar to contemporaneous Levantines. Sumerian language Akkadian ,
1351-762: A campaign against the southern region of Ib'al – close to Qatna . In order to settle the war with Mari, Isar-Damu allied with Nagar and Kish . Some scholars have suggested that the Kish in question was not the Mesopotamian city but rather a town near Nagar in the Khabur area. The campaign was headed by the Eblaite vizier Ibbi-Sipish , who led the combined armies to victory in a battle near Terqa . The alliance also attacked Armi and occupied it, leaving Ibbi-Sipish's son Enzi-Malik as governor. Ebla suffered its first destruction
1544-483: A council of elders ( Abbu ) and the administration. The second kingdom was also a monarchy, but little is known about it because of a lack of written records. The third kingdom was a city-state monarchy with reduced importance under the authority of Yamhad. The queen shared the running of affairs of state with the king. The crown prince was involved in internal matters and the second prince was involved in foreign affairs. Most duties, including military ones, were handled by
1737-512: A defeat for Mari, and Yahdun-Lim was assassinated in c. 1798 BC by his possible son Sumu-Yamam , who himself got assassinated two years after ascending the throne while Shamshi-Adad advanced and annexed Mari. Shamshi-Adad (r. 1809-1775 BC) appointed his son Yasmah-Adad on the throne of Mari, the new king married Yahdun-Lim's daughter, while the rest of the Lim family took refuge in Yamhad, and
1930-524: A defensive circular internal rampart 6.7 m thick and 8 to 10 meters high, strengthened by defensive towers. Other findings include one of the city gates, a street beginning at the center and ending at the gate, and residential houses. Mari had a central mound, but no temple or palace has been unearthed there. A large building was however excavated (with dimensions of 32 m x 25 m), seemingly with an administrative function. It had stone foundations and rooms up to 12 meters long and 6 meters wide. The city
2123-430: A detailed and readable summary of the decipherment of Sumerian in his Sumerian Mythology . Friedrich Delitzsch published a learned Sumerian dictionary and grammar in the form of his Sumerisches Glossar and Grundzüge der sumerischen Grammatik , both appearing in 1914. Delitzsch's student, Arno Poebel , published a grammar with the same title, Grundzüge der sumerischen Grammatik , in 1923, and for 50 years it would be
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#17327658959582316-435: A detour in understanding the language – a Paris -based orientalist , Joseph Halévy , argued from 1874 onward that Sumerian was not a natural language, but rather a secret code (a cryptolect ), and for over a decade the leading Assyriologists battled over this issue. For a dozen years, starting in 1885, Friedrich Delitzsch accepted Halévy's arguments, not renouncing Halévy until 1897. François Thureau-Dangin working at
2509-465: A dialect similar to Eblaite . The Amorites were West Semites who began to settle the area before the 21st century BC; by the Lim dynasty (c. 1830 BC), they became the dominant population in the Fertile Crescent . Mari's discovery in 1933 provided an important insight into the geopolitical map of ancient Mesopotamia and Syria , due to the discovery of more than 25,000 tablets explicating
2702-481: A dispute over the city of Hīt that consumed much time in negotiations, during which a war against Elam involved both kingdoms in c. 1765 BC. Finally, the kingdom was invaded by Hammurabi who defeated Zimri-Lim in battle in c. 1761 BC and ended the Lim dynasty, while Terqa became the capital of a rump state named the Kingdom of Hana . In the south, the region of Suhum became a Babylonian province. Mari survived
2895-403: A few common graphic forms out of many that may occur. Spelling practices have also changed significantly in the course of the history of Sumerian: the examples in the article will use the most phonetically explicit spellings attested, which usually means Old Babylonian or Ur III period spellings. except where an authentic example from another period is used. Modern knowledge of Sumerian phonology
3088-475: A few years after Terqa in c. 2300 BC, during the reign of the Mariote king Hidar . According to Alfonso Archi [ de ] , Hidar was succeeded by Ishqi-Mari whose royal seal was discovered. It depicts battle scenes, causing Archi to suggest that he was responsible for the destruction of Ebla while still a general. Just a decade after Ebla's destruction (c. 2300 BC middle chronology), Mari itself
3281-399: A few years after the campaign, probably following Isar-Damu's death. The first destruction occurred c. 2300 BC ; palace "G" was burned, baking the clay tablets of the royal archives and preserving them. Many theories about the cause and the perpetrator have been posited: "Whereas, for all time since the creation of mankind, no king whosoever had destroyed Armanum and Ebla,
3474-422: A lower town and a raised acropolis in the center. During the first kingdom, the city had an area of 56 hectares and was protected by mud-brick fortifications. Ebla was divided into four districts – each with its own gate in the outer wall. The acropolis included the king's palace "G", and one of two temples in city dedicated to Kura (called the "Red Temple"). The lower city included the second temple of Kura in
3667-528: A non-Semitic language had preceded Akkadian in Mesopotamia, and that speakers of this language had developed the cuneiform script. In 1855 Rawlinson announced the discovery of non-Semitic inscriptions at the southern Babylonian sites of Nippur , Larsa , and Uruk . In 1856, Hincks argued that the untranslated language was agglutinative in character. The language was called "Scythic" by some, and, confusingly, "Akkadian" by others. In 1869, Oppert proposed
3860-453: A number of suffixes and enclitics consisting of /e/ or beginning in /e/ are also assimilated and reduced. In earlier scholarship, somewhat different views were expressed and attempts were made to formulate detailed rules for the effect of grammatical morphemes and compounding on stress, but with inconclusive results. Based predominantly on patterns of vowel elision, Adam Falkenstein argued that stress in monomorphemic words tended to be on
4053-489: A relation to the Sumerian language. Around 2600 BC, cuneiform symbols were developed using a wedge-shaped stylus to impress the shapes into wet clay. This cuneiform ("wedge-shaped") mode of writing co-existed with the proto-cuneiform archaic mode. Deimel (1922) lists 870 signs used in the Early Dynastic IIIa period (26th century). In the same period the large set of logographic signs had been simplified into
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#17327658959584246-520: A richer vowel inventory by some researchers. For example, we find forms like 𒂵𒁽 g a -kaš 4 "let me run", but, from the Neo-Sumerian period onwards, occasional spellings like 𒄘𒈬𒊏𒀊𒋧 g u 2 -mu-ra-ab-šum 2 "let me give it to you". According to Jagersma, these assimilations are limited to open syllables and, as with vowel harmony, Jagersma interprets their absence as the result of vowel length or of stress in at least some cases. There
4439-408: A second vowel harmony rule. There also appear to be many cases of partial or complete assimilation of the vowel of certain prefixes and suffixes to one in the adjacent syllable reflected in writing in some of the later periods, and there is a noticeable, albeit not absolute, tendency for disyllabic stems to have the same vowel in both syllables. These patterns, too, are interpreted as evidence for
4632-600: A small settlement under the rule of the Babylonians and the Assyrians before being abandoned and forgotten during the Hellenistic period . The Mariotes worshiped both Semitic and Sumerian deities and established their city as a major trading center. Although the pre-Amorite periods were characterized by heavy Sumerian cultural influence, Mari was not a city of Sumerian immigrants but a Semitic-speaking nation with
4825-436: A small settlement until the Hellenistic period before disappearing from records. By 2015, ISIS devastated and looted systematically the site and specially the royal palace . It was one of the first archaeological sites to be occupied by this group. The founders of the first city may have been Sumerians or more probably East Semitic speaking people from Terqa in the north. I. J. Gelb relates Mari's foundation with
5018-460: A spoken language in nearly all of its original territory, whereas Sumerian continued its existence as a liturgical and classical language for religious, artistic and scholarly purposes. In addition, it has been argued that Sumerian persisted as a spoken language at least in a small part of Southern Mesopotamia ( Nippur and its surroundings) at least until about 1900 BC and possibly until as late as 1700 BC. Nonetheless, it seems clear that by far
5211-604: A survey of the field could not be considered complete. The primary institutional lexical effort in Sumerian is the Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary project, begun in 1974. In 2004, the PSD was released on the Web as the ePSD. The project is currently supervised by Steve Tinney. It has not been updated online since 2006, but Tinney and colleagues are working on a new edition of the ePSD, a working draft of which
5404-422: A temple dedicated to her cult. The four city gates were named after the gods Dagan, Hadda, Rasap and Utu, but it is unknown which gate had which name. Overall, the offering list mentioned about 40 deities receiving sacrifices. During the third kingdom, Amorites worshiped common northern Semitic gods; the unique Eblaite deities disappeared. Hadad was the most important god, while Ishtar took Ishara's place and became
5597-407: A text may not even have been meant to be read in Sumerian; instead, it may have functioned as a prestigious way of "encoding" Akkadian via Sumerograms (cf. Japanese kanbun ). Nonetheless, the study of Sumerian and copying of Sumerian texts remained an integral part of scribal education and literary culture of Mesopotamia and surrounding societies influenced by it and it retained that role until
5790-467: A trading empire and later into an expansionist power that imposed its hegemony over much of northern and eastern Syria. Ebla was destroyed during the 23rd century BC . It was then rebuilt and was mentioned in the records of the Third Dynasty of Ur . The second Ebla was a continuation of the first, ruled by a new royal dynasty. It was destroyed at the end of the 3rd millennium BC , which paved
5983-454: A vassal to the Idrimi dynasty . "Mardikh V" (1200–535 BC ) was a rural, Early Iron Age settlement that grew in size during later periods. Further development occurred during "Mardikh VI", which lasted until c. 60 AD . "Mardikh VII" began in the 3rd century AD and lasted until the 7th century, after which the site was abandoned. Ebla consisted of
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6176-454: A vowel quality opposite to the one that would have been expected according to this rule, which has been variously interpreted as an indication either of the existence of additional vowel phonemes in Sumerian or simply of incorrectly reconstructed readings of individual lexemes. The 3rd person plural dimensional prefix 𒉈 -ne- is also unaffected, which Jagersma believes to be caused by the length of its vowel. In addition, some have argued for
6369-480: Is Ibbit-Lim , who described himself as the Mekim of Ebla. A basalt votive statue bearing Ibbit-Lim's inscription was discovered in 1968; this helped to identify the site of Tell-Mardikh with the ancient kingdom Ebla. The name of the king is Amorite in the view of Pettinato; it is therefore probable the inhabitants of third kingdom Ebla were predominantly Amorites, as were most of the inhabitants of Syria at that time. By
6562-481: Is 5.20 meters long, 4 meters wide and west–east oriented. Limestone was used to build the walls and few blocks protruding from the sides toward the middle of the rooms suggest the roof to have been a corbelled vault . The tombs were found under the floor of Building Q, which was built in the Isin-Larsa period. The first kingdom's government consisted of the king (styled Malikum ) and the grand vizier, who headed
6755-472: Is also relevant in this context that, as explained above , many morpheme-final consonants seem to have been elided unless followed by a vowel at various stages in the history of Sumerian. These are traditionally termed Auslauts in Sumerology and may or may not be expressed in transliteration: e.g. the logogram 𒊮 for /šag/ > /ša(g)/ "heart" may be transliterated as šag 4 or as ša 3 . Thus, when
6948-600: Is also the Old Akkadian period (c. 2350 BC – c. 2200 BC), during which Mesopotamia, including Sumer, was united under the rule of the Akkadian Empire . At this time Akkadian functioned as the primary official language, but texts in Sumerian (primarily administrative) did continue to be produced as well. The first phase of the Neo-Sumerian period corresponds to the time of Gutian rule in Mesopotamia ;
7141-459: Is available online. Assumed phonological and morphological forms will be between slashes // and curly brackets {}, respectively, with plain text used for the standard Assyriological transcription of Sumerian. Most of the following examples are unattested. Note also that, not unlike most other pre-modern orthographies, Sumerian cuneiform spelling is highly variable, so the transcriptions and the cuneiform examples will generally show only one or at most
7334-434: Is evidence of various cases of elision of vowels, apparently in unstressed syllables; in particular an initial vowel in a word of more than two syllables seems to have been elided in many cases. What appears to be vowel contraction in hiatus (*/aa/, */ia/, */ua/ > a , */ae/ > a , */ie/ > i or e , */ue/ > u or e , etc.) is also very common. There is some uncertainty and variance of opinion as to whether
7527-475: Is flawed and incomplete because of the lack of speakers, the transmission through the filter of Akkadian phonology and the difficulties posed by the cuneiform script. As I. M. Diakonoff observes, "when we try to find out the morphophonological structure of the Sumerian language, we must constantly bear in mind that we are not dealing with a language directly but are reconstructing it from a very imperfect mnemonic writing system which had not been basically aimed at
7720-473: Is little speculation as to the affinities of this hypothetical substratum language, or these languages, and it is thus best treated as unclassified . Other researchers disagree with the assumption of a single substratum language and argue that several languages are involved. A related proposal by Gordon Whittaker is that the language of the proto-literary texts from the Late Uruk period ( c. 3350–3100 BC)
7913-490: Is really an early extinct branch of Indo-European language which he terms "Euphratic" which somehow emerged long prior to the accepted timeline for the spread of Indo-European into West Asia, though this is rejected by mainstream opinion which accepts Sumerian as a language isolate . Pictographic proto-writing was used starting in c. 3300 BC. It is unclear what underlying language it encoded, if any. By c. 2800 BC, some tablets began using syllabic elements that clearly indicated
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8106-457: Is still uncertain and many interpretations have been presented by scholars. The earliest attested king in the letter of Enna-Dagan is Ansud , who is mentioned as attacking Ebla, the traditional rival of Mari with whom it had a long war, and conquering many of Ebla's cities, including the land of Belan . The next king mentioned in the letter is Saʿumu , who conquered the lands of Ra'ak and Nirum . King Kun-Damu of Ebla defeated Mari in
8299-601: Is the first one from which well-understood texts survive. It corresponds mostly to the last part of the Early Dynastic period (ED IIIb) and specifically to the First Dynasty of Lagash , from where the overwhelming majority of surviving texts come. The sources include important royal inscriptions with historical content as well as extensive administrative records. Sometimes included in the Old Sumerian stage
8492-485: Is the king's house" (compare liaison in French). Jagersma believes that the lack of expression of word-final consonants was originally mostly a graphic convention, but that in the late 3rd millennium voiceless aspirated stops and affricates ( /pʰ/ , /tʰ/ , /kʰ/ and /tsʰ/ were, indeed, gradually lost in syllable-final position, as were the unaspirated stops /d/ and /ɡ/ . The vowels that are clearly distinguished by
8685-414: Is widely accepted to be a local language isolate . Sumerian was at one time widely held to be an Indo-European language , but that view has been universally rejected. Since its decipherment in the early 20th century, scholars have tried to relate Sumerian to a wide variety of languages. Because Sumerian has prestige as the first attested written language, proposals for linguistic affinity sometimes have
8878-682: The Amorite language became the dominant tongue, Akkadian remained the language of writing. The pastoral Amorites in Mari were called the Haneans , a term that indicate nomads in general, those Haneans were split into the Yaminites (sons of the south) and Sim'alites (sons of the north), with the ruling house belonging to the Sim'al branch. The kingdom was also a home to tribes of Suteans who lived in
9071-590: The Behistun inscription , a trilingual cuneiform inscription written in Old Persian , Elamite and Akkadian . (In a similar manner, the key to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphs was the bilingual [Greek and Egyptian with the Egyptian text in two scripts] Rosetta stone and Jean-François Champollion's transcription in 1822.) In 1838 Henry Rawlinson , building on the 1802 work of Georg Friedrich Grotefend ,
9264-620: The Kish civilization , which was a cultural entity of East Semitic speaking populations, that stretched from the center of Mesopotamia to Ebla in the western Levant. At its height, the second city was the home of about 40,000 people. This population was East-Semitic speaking one, and used a dialect much similar to the language of Ebla (the Eblaite language ), while the Shakkanakku period had an East-Semitic Akkadian speaking population. West Semitic names started to be attested in Mari from
9457-413: The Kish civilization , which was a cultural entity of East Semitic -speaking populations that stretched from the center of Mesopotamia to the western Levant. During the first kingdom period between about 3000 and 2300 BC , Ebla was the most prominent kingdom among the Syrian states, especially during the second half of the 3rd millennium BC , which is known as "the age of the archives" after
9650-603: The Levant was a center of ancient, centralized civilization equal to Egypt and Mesopotamia and ruled out the view that the latter two were the only important centers in the Near East during the Early Bronze Age . The first Eblaite kingdom has been described as the first recorded world power. Starting as a small settlement in the Early Bronze Age ( c. 3500 BC ), Ebla developed into
9843-531: The Levant with the Sumerian south. The city was built about 1 to 2 kilometers from the Euphrates river to protect it from floods, and was connected to the river by an artificial canal 7 to 10 kilometers long whose route is hard to identify today. The city is difficult to excavate as it is buried deep under later layers of habitation. A circular flood embankment was unearthed, containing an area 300 meters in length for gardens and craftsmen's quarters, and
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#173276589595810036-725: The National Museum of Damascus , and the Deir ez-Zor Museum . In the latter, the southern façade of the Court of the Palms room from Zimri-Lim's palace has been reconstructed, including the wall paintings. Mari has been excavated in annual campaigns in 1933–1939, 1951–1956, and since 1960. André Parrot conducted the first 21 seasons up to 1974, and was followed by Jean-Claude Margueron [ fr ] (1979–2004), and Pascal Butterlin (starting in 2005). A journal devoted to
10229-554: The Old Persian alphabet which was used to write the eponymous language . The impact was perhaps the greatest on Akkadian, whose grammar and vocabulary were significantly influenced by Sumerian. The history of written Sumerian can be divided into several periods: The pictographic writing system used during the Proto-literate period (3200 BC – 3000 BC), corresponding to the Uruk III and Uruk IV periods in archeology,
10422-528: The Semitic Akkadian language , which were duly deciphered. By 1850, however, Edward Hincks came to suspect a non-Semitic origin for cuneiform. Semitic languages are structured according to consonantal forms , whereas cuneiform, when functioning phonetically, was a syllabary , binding consonants to particular vowels. Furthermore, no Semitic words could be found to explain the syllabic values given to particular signs. Julius Oppert suggested that
10615-480: The cuneiform , the archive has allowed a better understanding of the Sumerian language and provided important information over the political organization and social customs of the mid-3rd millennium BC 's Levant. The word "Ebla" means "white rock" and may refer to the limestone outcrop on which the city was built. In the central mound, finds from the Late Ubaid and Late Chalcolithic has been found. Ebla
10808-421: The high priest . The second kingdom appears to have been a powerful and prosperous political center, its kings held the title of Lugal , and many are attested in the city, the most important source being the letter of king Enna-Dagan c. 2350 BC, which was sent to Irkab-Damu of Ebla , . In it, the Mariote king mentions his predecessors and their military achievements. However, the reading of this letter
11001-477: The "temple of lions" (dedicated to Dagan ), was built by the Shakkanakku Ishtup-Ilum and attached to it, was a rectangular terrace that measured 40 x 20 meters for sacrifices. Akkad disintegrated during Shar-Kali-Sharri 's reign, and Mari gained its independence, but the use of the Shakkanakku title continued during the following Third Dynasty of Ur period. A princess of Mari married
11194-459: The 19th century, when Assyriologists began deciphering the cuneiform inscriptions and excavated tablets that had been left by its speakers. In spite of its extinction, Sumerian exerted a significant impact on the languages of the area. The cuneiform script , originally used for Sumerian, was widely adopted by numerous regional languages such as Akkadian , Elamite , Eblaite , Hittite , Hurrian , Luwian and Urartian ; it similarly inspired
11387-625: The 2000 BC dating being a mere formal date. The Akkadians under Sargon of Akkad and his descendant Naram-Sin invaded the northern borders of Ebla aiming for the forests of the Amanus Mountain ; the intrusions were separated by roughly 90 years and the areas attacked were not attached to Akkad. Archi accept that the Ibla mentioned in the annals of Sargon and Naram-Sin is the Syrian Ebla but do not consider them responsible for
11580-514: The 2004 The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages has also been recognized as a good modern grammatical sketch. There is relatively little consensus, even among reasonable Sumerologists, in comparison to the state of most modern or classical languages. Verbal morphology, in particular, is hotly disputed. In addition to the general grammars, there are many monographs and articles about particular areas of Sumerian grammar, without which
11773-428: The 21st century have switched to using readings from them. There is also variation in the degree to which so-called "Auslauts" or "amissable consonants" (morpheme-final consonants that stopped being pronounced at one point or another in the history of Sumerian) are reflected in the transliterations. This article generally used the versions with expressed Auslauts. The key to reading logosyllabic cuneiform came from
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#173276589595811966-478: The Babylonians. The new king directed his expansion policy toward the north in the Upper Khabur region, which was named Idamaraz [ ca ] , where he subjugated the local petty kingdoms in the region such as Urkesh , and Talhayum [ ca ] , forcing them into vassalage. The expansion was met by the resistance of Qarni-Lim , the king of Andarig , whom Zimri-Lim defeated, securing
12159-616: The Bible, based on preliminary guesses and speculations by Pettinato and others, is now widely discredited and the academic consensus is that Ebla "has no bearing on the Minor Prophets, the historical accuracy of the Biblical Patriarchs, Yahweh worship, or Sodom and Gomorrah". In Ebla studies, the focus has shifted away from comparisons with the Bible; Ebla is now studied as a civilization in its own right. The claims led to
12352-478: The Ebla tablets. Mardiikh IIA : The early period between 3000 and 2400 BC is designated "Mardikh IIA". General knowledge about the city's history prior to the written archives is obtained through excavations. The first stages of Mardikh IIA is identified with building "CC", and structures that form a part of building "G2", which was apparently a royal palace built c. 2700 BC . Toward
12545-722: The Louvre in Paris also made significant contributions to deciphering Sumerian with publications from 1898 to 1938, such as his 1905 publication of Les inscriptions de Sumer et d'Akkad . Charles Fossey at the Collège de France in Paris was another prolific and reliable scholar. His pioneering Contribution au Dictionnaire sumérien–assyrien , Paris 1905–1907, turns out to provide the foundation for P. Anton Deimel's 1934 Sumerisch-Akkadisches Glossar (vol. III of Deimel's 4-volume Sumerisches Lexikon ). In 1908, Stephen Herbert Langdon summarized
12738-536: The Mariote control over the region in c. 1771 BC, and the kingdom prospered as a trading center and entered a period of relative peace. Zimri-Lim's greatest heritage was the renovation of the Royal Palace , which was expanded greatly to contain 275 rooms, exquisite artifacts such as The Goddess of the Vase statue, and a royal archive that contained thousands of tablets. The relations with Babylon worsened with
12931-606: The Neo-Sumerian and especially in the Old Babylonian period. Conversely, an intervocalic consonant, especially at the end of a morpheme followed by a vowel-initial morpheme, was usually "repeated" by the use of a CV sign for the same consonant; e.g. 𒊬 sar "write" - 𒊬𒊏 sar-ra "written". This results in orthographic gemination that is usually reflected in Sumerological transliteration, but does not actually designate any phonological phenomenon such as length. It
13124-454: The Shakkanakku and the Amorite eras. Yaggid-Lim was the ruler of Suprum before establishing himself in Mari, he entered an alliance with Ila-kabkabu of Ekallatum , but the relations between the two monarchs changed to an open war. The conflict ended with Ila-kabkabu capturing Yaggid-Lim's heir Yahdun-Lim and according to a tablet found in Mari, Yaggid-Lim who survived Ila-kabkabu
13317-522: The Sumerian language descended from a late prehistoric creole language (Høyrup 1992). However, no conclusive evidence, only some typological features, can be found to support Høyrup's view. A more widespread hypothesis posits a Proto-Euphratean language family that preceded Sumerian in Mesopotamia and exerted an areal influence on it, especially in the form of polysyllabic words that appear "un-Sumerian"—making them suspect of being loanwords —and are not traceable to any other known language family. There
13510-444: The Sumerian site of Tello (ancient Girsu, capital of the state of Lagash ) in 1877, and published the first part of Découvertes en Chaldée with transcriptions of Sumerian tablets in 1884. The University of Pennsylvania began excavating Sumerian Nippur in 1888. A Classified List of Sumerian Ideographs by R. Brünnow appeared in 1889. The bewildering number and variety of phonetic values that signs could have in Sumerian led to
13703-414: The Syrian goddess Ishara , who was the goddess of the royal family. Ishtar was also worshiped but was mentioned only five times in one of the monthly offering lists, while Ishara was far more important, appearing 40 times. Other deities included Damu ; the Mesopotamian god Utu ; Ashtapi ; Dagan ; Hadad ( Hadda ) and his consort Halabatu ("she of Halab"); and Shipish , the goddess of the sun who had
13896-691: The Upper Land: Mari, Iarmuti, and Ebla , as far as the Cedar Forest and the Silver Mountains Mari was deserted for two generations before being restored by the Akkadian king Manishtushu . A governor was appointed to govern the city who held the title Shakkanakku (military governor). Akkad kept direct control over the city, which is evident by Naram-Sin of Akkad 's appointment of two of his daughters to priestly offices in
14089-550: The Yaminite nomads who were centered at Tuttul , and the rebels were supported by Yamhad 's king Sumu-Epuh , whose interests were threatened by the recently established alliance between Yahdun-Lim and Eshnunna . Yahdun-Lim defeated the Yaminites but an open war with Yamhad was avoided, as the Mariote king became occupied by his rivalry with Shamshi-Adad I of Shubat-Enlil , the son of the late Ila-kabkabu. The war ended in
14282-459: The above cases, another stress often seemed to be present as well: on the stem to which the suffixes/enclitics were added, on the second compound member in compounds, and possibly on the verbal stem that prefixes were added to or on following syllables. He also did not agree that the stress of monomorphemic words was typically initial and believed to have found evidence of words with initial as well as with final stress; in fact, he did not even exclude
14475-399: The acropolis. The reason for the destruction is not known; according to Astour, it could have been the result of a Hurrian invasion c. 2030 BC , led by the former Eblaite vassal city of Ikinkalis . The destruction of Ebla is mentioned in the fragmentary Hurro-Hittite legendary epic "Song of Release" discovered in 1983, which Astour considers as describing the destruction of
14668-399: The adaptation of Akkadian words of Sumerian origin seems to suggest that Sumerian stress tended to be on the last syllable of the word, at least in its citation form. The treatment of forms with grammatical morphemes is less clear. Many cases of apheresis in forms with enclitics have been interpreted as entailing that the same rule was true of the phonological word on many occasions, i.e. that
14861-428: The annexation was officially justified by what Shamshi-Adad considered sinful acts on the side of the Lim family. To strengthen his position against his new enemy Yamhad, Shamshi-Adad married Yasmah-Adad to Betlum, the daughter of Ishi-Addu of Qatna . However, Yasmah-Adad neglected his bride causing a crisis with Qatna, and he proved to be an unable leader causing the rage of his father who died in c. 1776 BC, while
15054-428: The armies of Yarim-Lim I of Yamhad were advancing in support of Zimri-Lim , the heir of the Lim dynasty. As Zimri-Lim advanced, a leader of the Sim'alites (Zimri-Lim's tribe) overthrew Yasmah-Adad, opening the road for Zimri-Lim who arrived a few months after Yasmah-Adad's escape, and married princess Shibtu the daughter of Yarim-Lim I a short time after his enthronement in c. 1776 BC. Zimri-Lim's ascension to
15247-485: The art was indistinguishable from Sumerian art, so was the architectural style. Mesopotamian influence continued to affect Mari's culture during the Amorite period, which is evident in the Babylonian scribal style used in the city. However, it was less influential than the former periods and a distinct Syrian style prevailed, which is noticeable in the seals of kings, which reflect a clear Syrian origin. The society
15440-576: The beginning of the 18th century BC , Ebla had become a vassal of Yamhad , an Amorite kingdom centered in Aleppo. Written records are not available for this period, but the city was still a vassal during Yarim-Lim III of Yamhad's reign. One of the known rulers of Ebla during this period was Immeya , who received gifts from the Egyptian Pharaoh Hotepibre , indicating the continuing wide connections and importance of Ebla. The city
15633-455: The burnt library of Zimri-Lim written in Akkadian from a period of 50 years between circa 1800 – 1750 BC. They give information about the kingdom, its customs, and the names of people who lived during that time. More than 3000 are letters, the remainder includes administrative, economic, and judicial texts. Almost all the tablets found were dated to the last 50 years of Mari's independence, and most have now been published. The language of
15826-412: The central authority were either ruled directly from the capital, or had appointed officials. The titles of the civil servants do not clearly define the bearer's responsibilities and authority as each town had its own political traditions. The regions under the direct control of the king that were economically vital for the capital are called the " chora " by archaeologists. Regions under direct control of
16019-399: The cities and villages where the king or his vizier had palaces, towns that included important sanctuaries of gods related to the royal institution, towns visited by the monarch during the different rituals he participated in (such as the renewal of royalty ritual), and other cities such as the ones where textiles were delivered. The chora spans around 3000 km; from west to east it includes
16212-487: The city's most important deity apart from Hadad. At the beginning of the process of deciphering the tablets, Giovanni Pettinato made claims about possible connections between Ebla and the Bible, citing alleged references in the tablets to the existence of Yahweh , the Patriarchs , Sodom and Gomorrah and other Biblical references. However, much of the initial media excitement about a supposed Eblaite connections with
16405-620: The city's palaces. The kingdom had its own language, Eblaite , and the political organization of Ebla had features different from the Sumerian model. Women enjoyed a special status, and the queen had major influence in the state and religious affairs. The pantheon of gods was mainly north Semitic and included deities exclusive to Ebla. The city was excavated from 1964 and became famous for the Ebla tablets , an archive of about 20,000 cuneiform tablets found there, dated to 2500 BC –2350 BC . Written in both Sumerian and Eblaite and using
16598-582: The city, including the temple called the Massif Rouge (unknown dedication), and temples dedicated to Ninni-Zaza [ it ] (INANA.ZA.ZA), Ishtarat , Ishtar , Ninhursag , and Shamash . All the temples were located in the center of the city except for the Ishtar temple; the area between the Enceinte Sacrée and the Massif Rouge is considered to have been the administrative center of
16791-417: The city. The first member of the Shakkanakku dynasty on the lists is Ididish , who was appointed in c. 2266 BC. According to the lists, Ididish ruled for 60 years and was succeeded by his son=, making the position hereditary. The third Mari followed the second city in terms of general structure, phase P0 of the old royal palace was replaced by a new palace for the Shakkanakku. Another smaller palace
16984-403: The city. Trade continued to be Ebla's main economic activity during the third kingdom; archaeological finds show there was an extensive exchange with Egypt and coastal Syrian cities such as Byblos . Ebla was a polytheistic state. During the first kingdom, Eblaites worshiped their dead kings. The pantheon of the first Ebla included pairs of deities and they can be separated into three genres; in
17177-505: The city; the last ten kings (ending with Irkab-Damu) were buried in Darib , while older kings were buried in a royal mausoleum located in Binas and only one royal tomb dating to the first kingdom was discovered in Ebla (Hypogeum "G4"). This first kingdom tomb was probably built during the reign of the last king and might be an indication of Eblaite adoption of Mesopotamian traditions to bury
17370-437: The context, a cuneiform sign can be read either as one of several possible logograms , each of which corresponds to a word in the Sumerian spoken language, as a phonetic syllable (V, VC, CV, or CVC), or as a determinative (a marker of semantic category, such as occupation or place). (See the article Cuneiform .) Some Sumerian logograms were written with multiple cuneiform signs. These logograms are called diri -spellings, after
17563-537: The critiques put forward by Pascal Attinger in his 1993 Eléments de linguistique sumérienne: La construction de du 11 /e/di 'dire ' ) is the starting point of most recent academic discussions of Sumerian grammar. More recent monograph-length grammars of Sumerian include Dietz-Otto Edzard 's 2003 Sumerian Grammar and Bram Jagersma's 2010 A Descriptive Grammar of Sumerian (currently digital, but soon to be printed in revised form by Oxford University Press). Piotr Michalowski's essay (entitled, simply, "Sumerian") in
17756-401: The cuneiform script are /a/ , /e/ , /i/ , and /u/ . Various researchers have posited the existence of more vowel phonemes such as /o/ and even /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ , which would have been concealed by the transmission through Akkadian, as that language does not distinguish them. That would explain the seeming existence of numerous homophones in transliterated Sumerian, as well as some details of
17949-548: The destruction and rebelled against Babylon in c. 1759 BC, causing Hammurabi to destroy the whole city. However, by an act of mercy Hammurabi may have allowed Mari to survive as a small village under Babylonian administration (according to Marc Van De Mieroop). Later, Mari became part of Assyria and was listed among the territories conquered by the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I (reigned 1243–1207 BC). Afterward, Mari constantly changed hands between Assyria and Babylon. In
18142-477: The destruction which ended the Archive period. By the time of Naram-Sin, Armi was the hegemonic city in northern Syria and was destroyed by the Akkadian king. A new local dynasty ruled the second kingdom of Ebla, but there was continuity with its first kingdom heritage. Ebla maintained its earliest features, including its architectural style and the sanctity of the first kingdom's religious sites. A new royal palace
18335-544: The disintegration of the Akkadian Empire, and rebuilt the city as a regional center of the Euphrates valley. The Shakkanakkus ruled Mari until the second half of the 19th century BC, when the dynasty collapsed for unknown reasons. A short time later, Mari became the capital of the Amorite Lim dynasty. The Amorite Mari lasted only a short time before it was destroyed by Babylonia in c. 1761 BC, but it survived as
18528-415: The district of Terqa . Mari was an absolute monarchy, with the king controlling every aspect of the administration, helped by the scribes who played the role of administrators. During the Lim era, Mari was divided into four provinces in addition to the capital, the provincial seats were located at Terqa, Saggaratum , Qattunan and Tuttul. Each province had its own bureaucracy, the government supplied
18721-548: The eclipse of the tradition of cuneiform literacy itself in the beginning of the Common Era . The most popular genres for Sumerian texts after the Old Babylonian period were incantations, liturgical texts and proverbs; among longer texts, the classics Lugal-e and An-gim were most commonly copied. Of the 29 royal inscriptions of the late second millennium BC 2nd dynasty of Isin about half were in Sumerian, described as "hypersophisticated classroom Sumerian". Sumerian
18914-458: The end of this period, a hundred years' war with Mari started. Mari gained the upper hand through the actions of its king Saʿumu , who conquered many of Ebla's cities. In the mid-25th century BC , king Kun-Damu defeated Mari, but the state's power declined following his reign. Mardikh IIB1 : The archive period, which is designated "Mardikh IIB1", lasted from c. 2400 BC until c. 2300 BC . The end of
19107-651: The entire kingdom. The Eblaites of Mardikh II were Semite-speakers close to their Northwestern Semitic neighbors, such as the Amorites. Giovanni Pettinato said the Eblaite language , one of the oldest attested Semitic languages, was a West Semitic language ; Gelb and others said it was an East Semitic dialect closer to the Akkadian language . Academic consensus considers Eblaite an East Semitic language which exhibits both West and East Semitic features. Ebla held several religious and social festivals, including rituals for
19300-471: The extremely detailed and meticulous administrative records, there are numerous royal inscriptions, legal documents, letters and incantations. In spite of the dominant position of written Sumerian during the Ur III dynasty, it is controversial to what extent it was actually spoken or had already gone extinct in most parts of its empire. Some facts have been interpreted as suggesting that many scribes and even
19493-524: The first and most common one, there were the couples, such as the deity and his female consort. The second type of pairs was the divine twosomes, such as the deities that cooperate to create the cosmos, like in the Egyptian and Mesopotamian pantheons. The third type included divine pairs who were actually a single deity that had two names. Eblaites worshiped few Mesopotamian deities, preferring North-Western Semitic gods, some of which were unique to Ebla. The first genre of pairs included Hadabal (NI- da -KUL), who
19686-426: The first syllable and that there was generally stress on the syllable preceding a (final) suffix/enclitic, on the penultimate syllable of a polysyllabic enclitic such as -/ani/, -/zunene/ etc., on the last syllable of the first member of a compound, and on the first syllable in a sequence of verbal prefixes. However, he found that single verbal prefixes received the stress just as prefix sequences did, and that in most of
19879-411: The first syllable, and that the same applied without exception to reduplicated stems, but that the stress shifted onto the last syllable in a first member of a compound or idiomatic phrase, onto the syllable preceding a (final) suffix/enclitic, and onto the first syllable of the possessive enclitic /-ani/. In his view, single verbal prefixes were unstressed, but longer sequences of verbal prefixes attracted
20072-461: The first to span a greater variety of genres, including not only administrative texts and sign lists, but also incantations , legal and literary texts (including proverbs and early versions of the famous works The Instructions of Shuruppak and The Kesh temple hymn ). However, the spelling of grammatical elements remains optional, making the interpretation and linguistic analysis of these texts difficult. The Old Sumerian period (2500-2350 BC)
20265-403: The following consonant appears in front of a vowel, it can be said to be expressed only by the next sign: for example, 𒊮𒂵 šag 4 -ga "in the heart" can also be interpreted as ša 3 -ga . Mari, Syria#Mari–Ebla war Mari ( Cuneiform : 𒈠𒌷𒆠 , ma-ri , modern Tell Hariri ; Arabic : تل حريري ) was an ancient Semitic city-state in modern-day Syria . Its remains form
20458-502: The glottal stop even serving as the first-person pronominal prefix. However, these unwritten consonants had been lost by the Ur III period according to Jagersma. Very often, a word-final consonant was not expressed in writing—and was possibly omitted in pronunciation—so it surfaced only when followed by a vowel: for example the /k/ of the genitive case ending -ak does not appear in 𒂍𒈗𒆷 e 2 lugal-la "the king's house", but it becomes obvious in 𒂍𒈗𒆷𒄰 e 2 lugal-la-kam "(it)
20651-720: The god Nergal, by means of (his) weapons opened the way for Naram-Sin, the mighty, and gave him Armanum and Ebla. Further, he gave to him the Amanus, the Cedar Mountain, and the Upper Sea. By means of the weapons of the god Dagan, who magnifies his kingship, Naram-Sin, the mighty, conquered Armanum and Ebla." The second kingdom's period is designated "Mardikh IIB2", and spans the period between 2300 and 2000 BC . The second kingdom lasted until Ebla's second destruction, which occurred anytime between 2050 and 1950 BC , with
20844-410: The king extended beyond the chora and it is difficult to determine the exact size of the kingdom and the chora due to the constant military expansion of Ebla which added new territories; some of those were ruled directly while others were allowed to retain their own rulers as vassals. Generally, the chora is the core region of Ebla that includes the economic hinterland supporting the capital. It includes
21037-415: The kings beneath their royal palaces. The third kingdom royal necropolis was discovered beneath palace "Q" (the western palace); it contains many hypogea but only three were excavated. Those tombs were natural caves in the bedrock of the palace's foundation; they all date to the 19th and 18th centuries BC and had a similar plan consisting of an entrance shaft, burial chambers and a dromos connecting
21230-447: The late Middle Babylonian period) and there are also grammatical texts - essentially bilingual paradigms listing Sumerian grammatical forms and their postulated Akkadian equivalents. After the Old Babylonian period or, according to some, as early as 1700 BC, the active use of Sumerian declined. Scribes did continue to produce texts in Sumerian at a more modest scale, but generally with interlinear Akkadian translations and only part of
21423-667: The length of the vowels in most Sumerian words. During the Old Sumerian period, the southern dialects (those used in the cities of Lagash , Umma , Ur and Uruk ), which also provide the overwhelming majority of material from that stage, exhibited a vowel harmony rule based on vowel height or advanced tongue root . Essentially, prefixes containing /e/ or /i/ appear to alternate between /e/ in front of syllables containing open vowels and /i/ in front of syllables containing close vowels; e.g. 𒂊𒁽 e-kaš 4 "he runs", but 𒉌𒁺 i 3 -gub "he stands". Certain verbs with stem vowels spelt with /u/ and /e/, however, seem to take prefixes with
21616-611: The literature known in the Old Babylonian period continued to be copied after its end around 1600 BC. During the Middle Babylonian period, approximately from 1600 to 1000 BC, the Kassite rulers continued to use Sumerian in many of their inscriptions, but Akkadian seems to have taken the place of Sumerian as the primary language of texts used for the training of scribes and their Sumerian itself acquires an increasingly artificial and Akkadian-influenced form. In some cases
21809-514: The logogram 𒋛𒀀 DIRI which is written with the signs 𒋛 SI and 𒀀 A . The text transliteration of a tablet will show just the logogram, such as the word dirig , not the separate component signs. Not all epigraphists are equally reliable, and before publication of an important treatment of a text, scholars will often arrange to collate the published transliteration against the actual tablet, to see if any signs, especially broken or damaged signs, should be represented differently. Our knowledge of
22002-444: The lord". Each year was given a name instead of a number. Women received salaries equal to those of men and could accede to important positions and head government agencies. The Eblaites imported Kungas from Nagar , and used them to draw the carriages of royalty and high officials, as well as diplomatic gifts for allied cities. Society was less centered around the palace and the temple than in Mesopotamian kingdoms. The Eblaite palace
22195-401: The majority of scribes writing in Sumerian in this point were not native speakers and errors resulting from their Akkadian mother tongue become apparent. For this reason, this period as well as the remaining time during which Sumerian was written are sometimes referred to as the "Post-Sumerian" period. The written language of administration, law and royal inscriptions continued to be Sumerian in
22388-434: The middle Euphrates region led by the Mariote king Iblul-Il . Ebla recovered under King Irkab-Damu in about 2340 BC ; becoming prosperous and launching a successful counter-offensive against Mari. Irkab-Damu concluded a peace and trading treaty with Abarsal ; it is one of the earliest-recorded treaties in history. At its greatest extent, Ebla controlled an area roughly half the size of modern Syria, from Ursa'um in
22581-458: The middle of the 25th century BC. The war continued with Išhtup-Išar of Mari's conquest of Emar at a time of Eblaite weakness in the mid-24th century BC. King Igrish-Halam of Ebla had to pay tribute to Iblul-Il of Mari, who is mentioned in the letter, conquering many of Ebla's cities and campaigning in the Burman region. Enna-Dagan also received tribute; his reign fell entirely within
22774-487: The middle of the 26th century BC but was rebuilt and became the capital of a hegemonic East Semitic state before 2500 BC. This second Mari engaged in a long war with its rival Ebla and is known for its strong affinity with Sumerian culture. It was destroyed in the 23rd century BC by the Akkadians , who allowed the city to be rebuilt and appointed a military governor ( Shakkanakku ). The governors became independent with
22967-664: The middle of the eleventh century BC, Mari became part of Hana whose king Tukulti-Mer took the title king of Mari and rebelled against Assyria, causing the Assyrian king Ashur-bel-kala (r. 1074-1056 BC) to attack the city. Mari came firmly under the authority of the Neo-Assyrian Empire , and was assigned in the first half of the 8th century BC to a certain Nergal-Erish to govern under the authority of king Adad-Nirari III (r. 810–783 BC). In c. 760 BC, Shamash-Risha-Usur , an autonomous governor ruling parts of
23160-458: The most important sources come from the autonomous Second Dynasty of Lagash, especially from the rule of Gudea , which has produced extensive royal inscriptions. The second phase corresponds to the unification of Mesopotamia under the Third Dynasty of Ur , which oversaw a "renaissance" in the use of Sumerian throughout Mesopotamia, using it as its sole official written language. There is a wealth of texts greater than from any preceding time – besides
23353-506: The mountains of Ebla, indicating Ebla's territory included Urshu north of Carchemish in modern-day Turkey. Texts that dates to the seventh year of Amar-Sin ( c. 2040 BC ), a ruler of the Ur III empire, mention a messenger of the Ensí ("Megum") of Ebla. The second kingdom was considered a vassal by the Ur III government, but the nature of the relation is unknown and it included
23546-477: The name "Sumerian", based on the known title "King of Sumer and Akkad", reasoning that if Akkad signified the Semitic portion of the kingdom, Sumer might describe the non-Semitic annex. Credit for being first to scientifically treat a bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian text belongs to Paul Haupt , who published Die sumerischen Familiengesetze (The Sumerian family laws) in 1879. Ernest de Sarzec began excavating
23739-536: The north, northwest and west. The main trade was metals and tin from the Iranian Plateau exported west as far as Crete . Other goods included copper from Cyprus , silver from Anatolia , wood from Lebanon , gold from Egypt , olive oil, wine, and textiles, and even precious stones from modern Afghanistan . Mari was discovered in 1933, on the eastern flank of Syria, near the Iraqi border. A Bedouin tribe
23932-535: The north, to the area around Damascus in the south, and from Phoenicia and the coastal mountains in the west, to Haddu in the east. Large parts of the kingdom were under the direct control of the king and were administered by governors; the rest consisted of vassal kingdoms. One of the most important of these vassals was Armi , which is the city most often mentioned in the Ebla tablets. Ebla had more than sixty vassal kingdoms and city-states, including Hazuwan , Burman , Emar , Halabitu and Salbatu . The vizier
24125-560: The overwhelming majority of surviving manuscripts of Sumerian literary texts in general can be dated to that time, and it is often seen as the "classical age" of Sumerian literature. Conversely, far more literary texts on tablets surviving from the Old Babylonian period are in Sumerian than in Akkadian, even though that time is viewed as the classical period of Babylonian culture and language. However, it has sometimes been suggested that many or most of these "Old Babylonian Sumerian" texts may be copies of works that were originally composed in
24318-450: The payment of tribute. A formal recognition of Ur's overlordship appears to be a condition for the right of trade with that empire. The second kingdom disintegrated toward the end of the 21st century BC , and ended with the destruction of the city by fire, although evidence for the event has only been found outside of the so-called "Temple of the Rock", and in the area around palace "E" on
24511-650: The period is known as the "first destruction", mainly referring to the destruction of the royal palace (called palace "G" and built over the earlier "G2"), and much of the acropolis. During the archive period, Ebla had political and military dominance over the other Syrian city-states of northern and eastern Syria, which are mentioned in the archives. Most of the tablets, which date from that period, are about economic matters but also include royal letters and diplomatic documents. The written archives do not date from before Igrish-Halam 's reign, which saw Ebla paying tribute to Mari, and an extensive invasion of Eblaite cities in
24704-444: The phenomena mentioned in the next paragraph. These hypotheses are not yet generally accepted. Phonemic vowel length has also been posited by many scholars based on vowel length in Sumerian loanwords in Akkadian, occasional so-called plene spellings with extra vowel signs, and some internal evidence from alternations. However, scholars who believe in the existence of phonemic vowel length do not consider it possible to reconstruct
24897-480: The place of stress. Sumerian writing expressed pronunciation only roughly. It was often morphophonemic , so much of the allomorphic variation could be ignored. Especially in earlier Sumerian, coda consonants were also often ignored in spelling; e.g. /mung̃areš/ 'they put it here' could be written 𒈬𒃻𒌷 mu-g̃ar-re 2 . The use of VC signs for that purpose, producing more elaborate spellings such as 𒈬𒌦𒃻𒌷𒌍 mu-un-g̃ar-re 2 -eš 3 , became more common only in
25090-480: The plains east of Jabal Zawiya , the Maṭkh swamp, al-Hass mountain and mount Shabīth. Areas directly on the borders of the chora such as al-Ghab , al-Rouge plain and al-Jabbul have close cultural affinity with the chora. Mardikh II's periods shared the same culture. the population of Ebla during Mardikh IIB1 (2400–2300 BC) is estimated to have numbered around 40,000 in the capital, and over 200,000 people in
25283-423: The port of Ugarit , but most of its trade seems to have been directed by river-boat towards Mesopotamia – chiefly Kish. The main palace G was found to contain artifacts dating from Ancient Egypt bearing the names of the pharaohs Khafre and Pepi I . Ebla continued to be a center of trade during the second kingdom, evidenced by the surrounding cities that appeared during its period and were destroyed along with
25476-412: The possibility that stress was normally stem-final. Pascal Attinger has partly concurred with Krecher, but doubts that the stress was always on the syllable preceding a suffix/enclitic and argues that in a prefix sequence, the stressed syllable wasn't the first one, but rather the last one if heavy and the next-to-the-last one in other cases. Attinger has also remarked that the patterns observed may be
25669-399: The preceding Ur III period or earlier, and some copies or fragments of known compositions or literary genres have indeed been found in tablets of Neo-Sumerian and Old Sumerian provenance. In addition, some of the first bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian lexical lists are preserved from that time (although the lists were still usually monolingual and Akkadian translations did not become common until
25862-520: The rapid expansion in knowledge of Sumerian and Akkadian vocabulary in the pages of Babyloniaca , a journal edited by Charles Virolleaud , in an article "Sumerian-Assyrian Vocabularies", which reviewed a valuable new book on rare logograms by Bruno Meissner. Subsequent scholars have found Langdon's work, including his tablet transcriptions, to be not entirely reliable. In 1944, the Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer provided
26055-544: The readings of Sumerian signs is based, to a great extent, on lexical lists made for Akkadian speakers, where they are expressed by means of syllabic signs. The established readings were originally based on lexical lists from the Neo-Babylonian Period , which were found in the 19th century; in the 20th century, earlier lists from the Old Babylonian Period were published and some researchers in
26248-457: The reign of Irkab-Damu of Ebla, who managed to defeat Mari and end the tribute. Mari defeated Ebla's ally Nagar in year seven of the Eblaite vizier Ibrium 's term, causing the blockage of trade routes between Ebla and southern Mesopotamia via upper Mesopotamia. The war reached a climax when the Eblaite vizier Ibbi-Sipish made an alliance with Nagar and Kish to defeat Mari in a battle near Terqa . Ebla itself suffered its first destruction
26441-586: The rendering of morphophonemics". Early Sumerian is conjectured to have had at least the consonants listed in the table below. The consonants in parentheses are reconstructed by some scholars based on indirect evidence; if they existed, they were lost around the Ur III period in the late 3rd millennium BC. The existence of various other consonants has been hypothesized based on graphic alternations and loans, though none have found wide acceptance. For example, Diakonoff lists evidence for two lateral phonemes, two rhotics, two back fricatives, and two g-sounds (excluding
26634-482: The result in each specific case is a long vowel or whether a vowel is simply replaced/deleted. Syllables could have any of the following structures: V, CV, VC, CVC. More complex syllables, if Sumerian had them, are not expressed as such by the cuneiform script. Sumerian stress is usually presumed to have been dynamic, since it seems to have caused vowel elisions on many occasions. Opinions vary on its placement. As argued by Bram Jagersma and confirmed by other scholars,
26827-400: The result of Akkadian influence - either due to linguistic convergence while Sumerian was still a living language or, since the data comes from the Old Babylonian period, a feature of Sumerian as pronounced by native speakers of Akkadian. The latter has also been pointed out by Jagersma, who is, in addition, sceptical about the very assumptions underlying the method used by Krecher to establish
27020-541: The royal court actually used Akkadian as their main spoken and native language. On the other hand, evidence has been adduced to the effect that Sumerian continued to be spoken natively and even remained dominant as an everyday language in Southern Babylonia, including Nippur and the area to its south By the Old Babylonian period (c. 2000 – c. 1600 BC), Akkadian had clearly supplanted Sumerian as
27213-523: The sanctity of the acropolis in the center of the city. The third kingdom's iconography and royal ideology were under the influence of Yamhad's culture; kingship was received from the Yamhadite deities instead of Ishtar of Ebla, which is evident by the Eblaite seals of Indilimma's period. During the first kingdom period, the palace controlled the economy, but wealthy families managed their financial affairs without government intervention. The economic system
27406-540: The second half of the 19th century BC. The second millennium BC in the Fertile Crescent was characterized by the expansion of the Amorites , which culminated with them dominating and ruling most of the region, including Mari which in c. 1830 BC, became the seat of the Amorite Lim dynasty under king Yaggid-Lim . However, the epigraphical and archaeological evidences showed a high degree of continuity between
27599-432: The second kingdom era, and by the middle Bronze-Age , the west Semitic Amorite tribes became the majority of the pastoral groups in the middle Euphrates and Khabur valleys. Amorite names started to be observed in the city toward the end of the Shakkanakku period, even among the ruling dynasty members. During the Lim era, the population became predominantly Amorite but also included Akkadian named people, and although
27792-435: The second kingdom's palace have been unearthed (the oldest is designated P3 , while the latest is P0 ). The last two levels are dated to the Akkadian period . The first two levels were excavated; the findings include a temple (Enceinte Sacrée or sacred enclosure ) dedicated to an unknown deity, a pillared throne room, and a hall with three double wood pillars leading to the temple. Six smaller temples were discovered in
27985-518: The second kingdom. In the epic, an Eblaite assembly led by a man called "Zazalla" prevents king Meki from showing mercy to prisoners from Ebla's former vassal Ikinkalis, provoking the wrath of the Hurrian storm god Teshub and causing him to destroy the city. The third kingdom is designated "Mardikh III"; it is divided into periods "A" ( c. 2000–1800 BC ) and "B" ( c. 1800–1600 BC ). In period "A", Ebla
28178-399: The shaft to the chamber. The royal tomb found in the royal palace "G" is designated hypogeum "G4"; it dates to the archive period, most probably the reign of Isar-Damu . The tomb is heavily damaged; most of its stones were sacked and nothing of the roof system remains. It also lacks any skeletal remains or funerary goods suggesting that it was either heavily pillaged, never used, or
28371-451: The site, released in 8 volumes between 1982 and 1997, was Mari: Annales de recherches interdisciplinaires . Archaeologists have tried to determine how many layers the site descends, according to French archaeologist André Parrot, "each time a vertical probe was commenced in order to trace the site's history down to virgin soil, such important discoveries were made that horizontal digging had to be resumed." Over 25,000 tablets were found in
28564-494: The society, temples included prophets, who gave council to the king and participated in the religious festivals. The first Mari provided the oldest wheel workshop yet discovered in Syria, and was a center of bronze metallurgy . The city also contained districts devoted to smelting , dyeing , and pottery manufacture, using charcoal brought by river boats from the upper Khabur and Euphrates area. The second kingdom's economy
28757-471: The son of king Ur-Nammu of Ur , and Mari was nominally under Ur hegemony. However, the vassalage did not impede the independence of Mari, and some Shakkanakkus used the royal title Lugal in their votive inscriptions, while using the title of Shakkanakku in their correspondence with the Ur's court. The dynasty ended for unknown reasons not long before the establishment of the next dynasty, which took place in
28950-400: The southeast called "Temple of the Rock". During the second kingdom, a royal palace (Archaic palace "P5") was built in the lower town northwest of the acropolis, in addition to temple "D" built over the destroyed "Red Temple". During the third kingdom, Ebla was a large city nearly 60 hectares in size, and was protected by a fortified rampart, with double chambered gates. The acropolis
29143-564: The standard for students studying Sumerian. Another highly influential figure in Sumerology during much of the 20th century was Adam Falkenstein , who produced a grammar of the language of Gudea 's inscriptions. Poebel's grammar was finally superseded in 1984 on the publication of The Sumerian Language: An Introduction to its History and Grammatical Structure , by Marie-Louise Thomsen . While there are various points in Sumerian grammar on which Thomsen's views are not shared by most Sumerologists today, Thomsen's grammar (often with express mention of
29336-643: The state administration in the 2nd millennium BC and the nature of diplomatic relations among the political powers of the region. They also revealed the wide trading networks of the 18th century BC, which connected areas as far as Afghanistan in Southern Asia and Crete in the Mediterranean . Written in Cuneiform 𒈠𒌷𒆠 ( ma-ri ), the name of the city can be traced to Itūr-Mēr , an ancient storm deity of northern Mesopotamia and Syria, who
29529-431: The stress could be shifted onto the enclitics; however, the fact that many of these same enclitics have allomorphs with apocopated final vowels (e.g. / ‑ še/ ~ /-š/) suggests that they were, on the contrary, unstressed when these allomorphs arose. It has also been conjectured that the frequent assimilation of the vowels of non-final syllables to the vowel of the final syllable of the word may be due to stress on it. However,
29722-531: The stress to their first syllable. Jagersma has objected that many of Falkenstein's examples of elision are medial and so, while the stress was obviously not on the medial syllable in question, the examples do not show where it was . Joachim Krecher attempted to find more clues in texts written phonetically by assuming that geminations, plene spellings and unexpected "stronger" consonant qualities were clues to stress placement. Using this method, he confirmed Falkenstein's views that reduplicated forms were stressed on
29915-427: The succession of a new king, which normally lasted for several weeks. The Eblaite calendars were based on a solar year divided into twelve months. Two calendars were discovered; the "old calendar" used during the reign of Igrish-Halam, and a "new calendar" introduced by vizier Ibbi-Sipish. Many months were named in honor of deities; in the new calendar, "Itu be-li" was the first month of the year, and meant "the month of
30108-564: The texts is official Akkadian , but proper names and hints in syntax show that the common language of Mari's inhabitants was Northwest Semitic . Six of the tablets found were in the Hurrian language . Excavations stopped from 2011 as a result of the Syrian Civil War and have not restarted. The site came under the control of armed gangs and suffered large scale looting. A 2014 official report revealed that robbers were focusing on
30301-438: The throne with the help of Yarim-Lim I affected Mari's status, Zimri-Lim referred to Yarim-Lim as his father, and the Yamhadite king was able to order Mari as the mediator between Yamhad's main deity Hadad and Zimri-Lim, who declared himself a servant of Hadad. Zimri-Lim started his reign with a campaign against the Yaminites , he also established alliances with Eshnunna and Hammurabi of Babylon , and sent his armies to aid
30494-410: The training of scribes. The next period, Archaic Sumerian (3000 BC – 2500 BC), is the first stage of inscriptions that indicate grammatical elements, so the identification of the language is certain. It includes some administrative texts and sign lists from Ur (c. 2800 BC). Texts from Shuruppak and Abu Salabikh from 2600 to 2500 BC (the so-called Fara period or Early Dynastic Period IIIa) are
30687-503: The undoubtedly Semitic-speaking successor states of Ur III during the so-called Isin-Larsa period (c. 2000 BC – c. 1750 BC). The Old Babylonian Empire , however, mostly used Akkadian in inscriptions, sometimes adding Sumerian versions. The Old Babylonian period, especially its early part, has produced extremely numerous and varied Sumerian literary texts: myths, epics, hymns, prayers, wisdom literature and letters. In fact, nearly all preserved Sumerian religious and wisdom literature and
30880-471: The upper middle Euphrates under the nominal authority of Ashur-dan III , styled himself the governor of the lands of Suhu and Mari, so did his son Ninurta-Kudurri-Usur . However, by that time, Mari was known to be located in the so-called Land of Laqe , making it unlikely that the Usur family actually controlled it, and suggesting that the title was employed out of historical reasons. The city continued as
31073-597: The velar nasal), and assumes a phonemic difference between consonants that are dropped word-finally (such as the g in 𒍠 zag > za 3 ) and consonants that remain (such as the g in 𒆷𒀝 lag ). Other "hidden" consonant phonemes that have been suggested include semivowels such as /j/ and /w/ , and a glottal fricative /h/ or a glottal stop that could explain the absence of vowel contraction in some words —though objections have been raised against that as well. A recent descriptive grammar by Bram Jagersma includes /j/ , /h/ , and /ʔ/ as unwritten consonants, with
31266-471: The villagers with ploughs and agricultural equipments, in return for a share in the harvest. The first and second kingdoms were heavily influenced by the Sumerian south. The society was led by an urban oligarchy , and the citizens were well known for elaborate hair styles and dress. The calendar was based on a solar year divided into twelve months, and was the same calendar used in Ebla "the old Eblaite calendar". Scribes wrote in Sumerian language and
31459-439: The vizier and the administration, which consisted of 13 court dignitaries – each of whom controlled between 400 and 800 men forming a bureaucracy with 11,700 people. Each of the four quarters of the lower city was governed by a chief inspector and many deputies. To oversee royal interest, the king employed agents (mashkim), collectors ( ur ) and messengers ( kas ). Many client kingdoms owed allegiance to Ebla and each
31652-403: The vizier palace, the western palace (in area "Q"), the temple of Shamash (temple "N"), the temple of Rasap (temple "B1") and the northern palace (built over the "Intermediate Palace"). In the north of the lower town, a second temple for Ishtar was built, while the former "Temple of the Rock" was replaced by a temple of Hadad . The kings of the first kingdom were buried outside
31845-504: The way for the Amorite tribes to settle in the city, forming the third Ebla. The third kingdom also flourished as a trade center; it became a subject and an ally of Yamhad (modern-day Aleppo) until its final destruction by the Hittite king Mursili I in c. 1600 BC . Ebla maintained its prosperity through a vast trading network. Artifacts from Sumer , Cyprus , Egypt and as far as Afghanistan were recovered from
32038-410: The western palace "Q". Alternatively, Maratewari could well be the last king according to Archi, who also argued that the "Song of Release" epic describes the destruction of the third kingdom and preserves older elements. Ebla never recovered from its third destruction. It was a small village in the phase designated "Mardikh IV" (1600–1200 BC ), and was mentioned in the records of Alalakh as
32231-507: Was Mari's head of the Pantheon, while Mer was the patron deity. Other deities included the Semitic deities; Ishtar the goddess of fertility, Athtar , and Shamash , the Sun god who was regarded among the city most important deities, and believed to be all-knowing and all-seeing. Sumerian deities included Ninhursag, Dumuzi , Enki , Anu , and Enlil . Prophecy had an important role for
32424-498: Was a tribal one, it consisted mostly of farmers and nomads (Haneans), and in contrast to Mesopotamia, the temple had a minor role in everyday life as the power was mostly invested in the palace. Women enjoyed a relative equality to men, queen Shibtu ruled in her husband's name while he was away, and had an extensive administrative role and authority over her husband's highest officials. The Pantheon included both Sumerian and Semitic deities, and throughout most of its history, Dagan
32617-463: Was abandoned c. 2550 BC at the end of the Early Dynastic period II , for unknown reasons. Around the beginning of Early Dynastic period III (earlier than 2500 BC) Mari was rebuilt and populated again. The new city kept many of the first city's exterior features, including the internal rampart and gate. Also kept was the outer circular embankment measuring 1.9 km in diameter, which
32810-591: Was able to decipher the Old Persian section of the Behistun inscriptions, using his knowledge of modern Persian. When he recovered the rest of the text in 1843, he and others were gradually able to translate the Elamite and Akkadian sections of it, starting with the 37 signs he had deciphered for the Old Persian. Meanwhile, many more cuneiform texts were coming to light from archaeological excavations, mostly in
33003-497: Was an important trading partner and rival, Mari's position made it an important trading center astride the road linking the Levant and Mesopotamia. The Amorite Mari maintained the older aspects of the economy, still largely based on irrigated agriculture along the Euphrates valley. The city remained a trading center for merchants from Babylonia and other kingdoms, with goods from the south and east transported on riverboats bound for
33196-421: Was based on both agriculture and trade. It was centralized and directed through a communal organization, with grain stored in communal granaries and distributed according to social status. The organization also controlled the animal herds in the kingdom. Some groups were direct beneficiaries of the palace instead of the communal organization, including the metal and textile producers and military officials. Ebla
33389-449: Was built as a cenotaph. Excavated between 1992 and 1995, it is located underneath the western sector of the palace at a depth of almost 6 meters. The tomb is composed of two rooms opened on each other's with lime plaster floors. Both rooms are rectangular in shape; the eastern room (L.6402) is 4 meters wide, more than 3,5 meters long (total length is unknown due to heavy damage) and west–east oriented. The western room (L.5762)
33582-401: Was built in the eastern part of the city, and contained royal burials that date to the former periods. The ramparts were rebuilt and strengthened while the embankment was turned into a defensive wall that reached 10 meters in width. The former sacred inclosure was maintained, so was the temple of Ninhursag. However, the temples of Ninni-Zaza and Ishtarat disappeared, while a new temple called
33775-426: Was built in the lower town, and the transition from the archive period is marked only by the destruction of palace "G". Little is known about the second kingdom because no written material have been discovered aside from one inscription dating to the end of the period. The second kingdom was attested to in contemporaneous sources; in an inscription, Gudea of Lagash asked for cedars to be brought from Urshu in
33968-555: Was considered the tutelary deity of the city, Georges Dossin noted that the name of the city was spelled identically to that of the storm god and concluded that Mari was named after him. It is believed that Mari did not grow from a small settlement, but was founded c. 2900 BC during the Mesopotamian Early Dynastic period I as a new city to control the waterways of the Euphrates trade routes connecting
34161-509: Was designed around the courtyard, which was open toward the city, thus making the administration approachable. This contrasts with Mesopotamian palaces, which resembled citadels with narrow entrances and limited access to the external courtyard. Music played an important part in the society and musicians were both locals, or hired from other cities such as Mari. Ebla also hired acrobats from Nagar, but later reduced their number and kept some to train local Eblaite acrobats. The Mardikh III population
34354-539: Was destroyed and burned by Sargon of Akkad , as shown by one of his year names (" Year in which Mari was destroyed "). Michael Astour proposed the date as c. 2265 BC ( short chronology ). Ishqi-Mari was probably the last king of Mari before the conquests by the Akkadian Empire . Sargon of Akkad collected tribute from Mari and Elam : Sargon the King bowed down to Dagan in Tuttul . He (Dagan) gave to him (Sargon)
34547-507: Was digging through a mound called Tell Hariri for a gravestone that would be used for a recently deceased tribesman, when they came across a headless statue. After the news reached the French authorities currently in control of Syria, the report was investigated, and digging on the site was started on December 14, 1933, by archaeologists from the Louvre in Paris. The location of the fragment
34740-452: Was equal to that of the most important Sumerian cities, and its main commercial rival was Mari. Ebla's main articles of trade were probably timber from the nearby mountains, and textiles. Handicrafts also appear to have been a major export, evidenced by the quantity of artifacts recovered from the palaces of the city. Ebla possessed a wide commercial network reaching as far as modern-day Afghanistan. It shipped textiles to Cyprus, possibly through
34933-418: Was excavated, revealing the temple of Ishtar, which led to the commencing of the full scale excavations. Mari was classified by the archaeologists as the "most westerly outpost of Sumerian culture". Since the beginning of excavations, over 25,000 clay tablets in Akkadian language written in cuneiform were discovered. Finds from the excavation are on display in the Louvre , the National Museum of Aleppo ,
35126-434: Was exclusive to Ebla, and his consort, Belatu ("his wife"); Rasap and his consort Adamma ; the patron gods of the city Kura , who was unique to Ebla, and his consort Barama . The third genre included the artisan god Kamish/Tit , Kothar-wa-Khasis and the planet Venus represented by twin mountain gods; Shahar as the morning star and Shalim as the evening star. The first Eblaites worshiped many other deities, such as
35319-581: Was first settled around 3500 BC ; its growth was supported by many satellite agricultural settlements. The city benefited from its role as an entrepôt of growing international trade, which probably began with an increased demand for wool in Sumer . Archaeologists designate this early habitation period "Mardikh I"; it ended around 3000 BC . Mardikh I is followed by the first and second kingdoms era between about 3000 and 2000 BC , designated "Mardikh II". I. J. Gelb considered Ebla as part of
35512-437: Was fortified and separated from the lower town. New royal palace "E" was built on the acropolis (during Mardikh IIIB), and a temple of Ishtar was constructed over the former "Red" and "D" temples (in area "D"). The lower town was also divided into four districts; palace "P5" was used during Mardikh IIIA, and replaced during Mardikh IIIB by the "Intermediate Palace". Other third kingdom buildings included
35705-413: Was killed by his servants. However, in c. 1820 BC Yahdun-Lim was firmly in control as king of Mari. Yahdun-Lim started his reign by subduing seven of his rebelling tribal leaders, and rebuilding the walls of Mari and Terqa in addition to building a new fort which he named Dur-Yahdun-Lim. He then expanded west and claimed to have reached the Mediterranean , however he later had to face a rebellion by
35898-472: Was mentioned in tablets from the Yamhadite vassal city of Alalakh in modern-day Turkey; an Eblaite princess married a son of King Ammitaqum of Alalakh, who belonged to a branch of the royal Yamhadite dynasty . Ebla was destroyed by the Hittite King Mursili I in about 1600 BC . Indilimma was probably the last king of Ebla; a seal of his crown prince Maratewari was discovered in
36091-538: Was predominately Semitic Amorite. The Amorites were mentioned in the first kingdom's tablets as neighbors and as rural subjects, and they came to dominate Ebla after the destruction of the second kingdom. The city witnessed a great increase in construction, and many palaces, temples and fortifications were built. The Amorite-speaking Eblaites worshiped many of the same deities as the Paleo-Syrian-speaking Eblaites of earlier periods, and maintained
36284-403: Was quickly rebuilt as a planned city. The foundations covered the remains of Mardikh II; new palaces and temples were built, and new fortifications were built in two circles – one for the low city and one for the acropolis. The city was laid out on regular lines and large public buildings were built. Further construction took place in period "B". The first known king of the third kingdom
36477-503: Was redistributive; the palace distributed food to its permanent and seasonal workers. It is estimated that around 40,000 persons contributed to this system, but in general, and unlike in Mesopotamia, land stayed in the hands of villages, which paid an annual share to the palace. Agriculture was mainly pastoral; large herds of cattle were managed by the palace. The city's inhabitants owned around 140,000 head of sheep and goats, and 9,000 cattle. Ebla derived its prosperity from trade; its wealth
36670-417: Was ruled by its own king (En); those vassal kings were highly autonomous, paying tribute and supplying military assistance to Ebla. The administrative center in the capital was named the "SA.ZA"; it included the royal palaces, storerooms and some temples. Regions beyond the walls of the capital were collectively named in Eblaite texts "uru-bar" (literally meaning outside of the city). The villages and towns under
36863-405: Was still so rudimentary that there remains some scholarly disagreement about whether the language written with it is Sumerian at all, although it has been argued that there are some, albeit still very rare, cases of phonetic indicators and spelling that show this to be the case. The texts from this period are mostly administrative; there are also a number of sign lists, which were apparently used for
37056-570: Was the king's chief official. The holder of the office possessed great authority; the most powerful vizier was Ibrium , who campaigned against Abarsal during the term of his predecessor Arrukum. Ibrium held office for 18 years with warfare occurring in all but one year. During the reign of Isar-Damu , Ebla continued the war against Mari, which defeated Ebla's ally Nagar , blocking trade routes between Ebla and southern Mesopotamia via upper Mesopotamia. Ebla conducted regular military campaigns against rebellious vassals, including several attacks on Armi, and
37249-431: Was topped by a wall two meters thick capable of protecting archers. However, the internal urban structure was completely changed and the new city was carefully planned. First to be built were the streets that descended from the elevated center into the gates, ensuring the drainage of rain water. At the heart of the city, a royal palace was built that also served as a temple. Four successive architectural levels from
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