The American title of this book is 'Ebla: A Revelation in Archaeology'. Bermant and Weitzman, who are erudite but not stuffy, published this well-written book on the city-state of Ebla in 1978, and have done an very good job of explaining an important archaeological site in north Syria. The city of Ebla (c.3500-1600BC) and located due east of Ugarit, has yielded a huge palace archive of good quality clay tablets written c.2300-2200BC. The languages found are Sumerian and a new ancient language which we now call Eblaite. Eblaite is related to Sumerian, Akkadian and ancient Hebrew and is helping us to understand these languages, and so has some relevance to Old Testament translation.
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Although this book is 230 pages long and it only directly grapples with Ebla itself from page 125, this is no great disadvantage. The writers do a first rate job of placing Ebla in its context: the politics, linguistics, history of writing and scribal schools, business and industry, technology and warfare are all handled with aplomb. The tablets intriguingly mention 'Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim and Bela/Zoar', towns recorded in Genesis 14:2 - in that same order - which is widely accepted as an important correlation with the bible. As this town cluster (not yet found), is mentioned with Damascus it opens up the possibility that they may be in or near Syria, and not south of the Dead Sea. There is also early evidence of names such as Abraham, Ishmael, and Israel being used at that time, although these are clearly too early to be the biblical Abraham and Ishmael.
The 89th Sura of the Koran names the cities of Shamatu, Ad, and Iram, which are also mentioned in the Ebla tablets. The authors note, with characteristic balance and fairness, 'that ubiquitous killjoy Wellhausen' is refuted by this discovery as he dismisses the existence of Ad as 'mythical' in his deconstructionist attack in his book 'Muhammed in Medina'.
Chapter 4, 'Cuneiform without tears', was something of a shock. The authors actually expect us learn some stick-writing. This excellent little primer taught me to leave well alone. In general, the book's references are copious and excellent. (Unfortunately they are a little out-of-date as they still think Abraham's camels are anachronistic - I suggest Coogan's Ugaritic 'Stories of Ancient Canaan' on this, as well as numerous websites such as the Smithsonian.) It seems that this book is currently not in print, perhaps we may reasonable hope for an updated re-issue soon.
The review of this Book prepared by Michael JR Jose
