Ebla: A New Look at History by Giovanni Pettinato; C.

Faith Richardson
Review by: Prescott H. Williams, Jr.
Libraries & Culture, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Winter, 1995), pp. 98-99
Published by: University of Texas Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25542715 .
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 98 L&C/Book Reviews

well worth perusing by all historians of the book, of literate culture generally, in

eighteenth-century France and the United States.

James Smith Allen, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale

Ebla: A New Look at History. By Giovanni Pettinato (translated by C. Faith

Richardson). Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. x, 290 pp.
$36.95. ISBN 0-8-18-4150-X.

This is a genuinely new look at ancient Near Eastern It presents

history. the
of the life and times of Ebla, an It
maturing interpretation Syrian metropolis.
early
reports, translates, and interprets many of the more than eight thousand cuneiform
tablets (about two thousand found in the archives/library of Tell
complete)
Mardikh, Syria. The careful excavations sponsored by the University of Rome and
directed by Paolo Matthiae during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s unearthed signifi
cant sections of the 150-acre
site. Preliminary reports and both articles and books
in several languages have reported and classified the data produced by the archae
ologists. Lively debates have ensued regarding the dating and reconstructions of
the areas excavated, the linguistic affiliation(s) of "Eblaite," the new language in
the tablets, and the social and historical constructs offered by the excavators and
their colleagues.
This book by the onetime epigrapher of the expedition is a sequel to The Archives
in conversation with that volume. are clearly
of Ebla (1981); it is best read Both

fully indexed, and carefully cross-referenced, to each other and to re

organized,
lated publications. Reading this 1991 treatment is first informative, then educa

tional, as well as reassuring, because Pettinato respects and reports fairly the work
of others. He treats others' interpretations and his own earlier ones both carefully
and critically. He presents his current interpretations with becoming modesty and

circumspection.
His translations in Appendix IV of selected, texts augment his
representative
in the body of the main discussion. He provides also carefully or
interpretations
of tables, royal family identifications, town and
ganized appendices chronological
names, and foreign kingdoms. The latter offers support for his distinctions
village
between and among the various nations' forms of leadership.
Ebla's elective, term kingship and other features of the governance of this early
to the "newness" that Pettinato claims for the life of early Ebla: a
city contribute
council of elders, a queen with administrative and duties, a orga
authority highly
nized guild of scribes. These features of his description of Ebla's distinctiveness are
based on translations of the huge corpus of texts and bal
generally agreed-upon
anced of the non-written archaeological data.
interpretations
The cautious reader may to question the frequency with which earliest,
begin
and related are used by the author when analyzing and describing
first, adjectives
Ebla's architecture, crafts, organization, geographical interrelations, and
policies,
widespread international influence. But as the evidence is presented and compara
tive interpretations are made, even a skeptical reader begins to be open to these
assertions. The title of Part III: 3, is an example of what seems like overstatement:
"Revelations from the Ebla Tablets." But the presentation of "Administration:
and State," "Economics and Government Policy," and "Commerce and
Society

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 99

Culture" soon involves the reader in reassessing and in

previous general personal
terpretations of "the way things were" back then and there.
Pettinato chooses his carefully. He must, may, might, can be,
language employs
probably to differentiate the levels of (un)certainty he finds in either/both the cur
rent body of evidence or the current range of interpretations, his own.
including
This invites the reader to engage reflectively and expectantly in silent conversation
with him. And to be for the self-investment and dedication that have en
grateful
abled him to continue his commitment to the study and of Ebla.
interpretation

Prescott H. Williams fr., Austin, Texas

Scribes, Scripts, and Readers: Studies in the Communication, Presentation, and Dissemination

ofMedieval Texts. By M. B. Parkes. London: Hambledon Press, 1991. xxii, 325 pp.
$65.00. ISBN 1-85285-050-7.

Texts and Their Traditions in theMedieval Library of Rochester Cathedral Priory. By Mary
P. Richards. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1988. xii, 129 pp. $20.
ISSN 00685-9746.

The essays by Malcolm Parkes collected under the title of Scribes, Scripts, and
Readers: Studies in the Communication, Presentation, and Dissemination ofMedieval Texts
were written over a of thirty years and for a variety of scholarly
period (1958-1989)
audiences. They have been literally, in this volume, with the pages and
reprinted,
plates renumbered consecutively through the volume and bibliographical notes
added at the end of individual essays to update them. Several result: the
problems
are different of audience
varying typefaces visually disrupting, degrees familiarity
with the material are assumed in different essays, and the lack of transition from
essay to essay is emphasized the retention of original titles unindicative of the
by
scope of the accompanying essays.
These awkwardnesses should not readers, however. Malcolm Parkes
discourage
is one of the great figures of modern studies in England),
manuscript (particularly
author of the definitive English Cursive Book Hands, 1250-1550 and Los An
(Berkeley
geles: University of California Press, 1979) and the more recent and felicitously
titled Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the in theWest
History of Punctuation (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993). The present collection con
tains Parkes's classic essays on "The of the Laity" in late medieval En
Literacy
gland (1973) and "The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on the
of the Book" (1976), as well as more recent contributions of broad
Development
interest coupled with mature scholarship and insight: "The Contribution of Insu
"
lar Scribes of the Seventh and Eighth Centuries to the 'Grammar of Legibility'
(1987), "Book Provision and Libraries at the Medieval at Oxford"
University
(1987-1988), and "Tachygraphy in the Middle Ages: Writing Techniques Em
ployed for Reportationes of Lectures and Sermons" (1989).
The other essays are on of more such as individual
topics specialized interest,
scribes (St. Boniface, Mere), authors
Henry (Boethius), scriptoria (Wearmouth
or
Jarrow), manuscripts (the Oxford Manuscript of La Chanson de Roland, the
Parker Manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Laws and Sedulius, Pepys' frag
ment of an early-tenth-century the manuscript of the
Anglo-Saxon manuscript,

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