Textos para una historia politica de Siria-Palestina I: El Bronce Antiguo y Medio.

• Author: Pfoh, Emanuel
• Position: Book review

Textos para una historia politica de Siria-Palestina I: El Bronce antiguo y Medio. Akal/Oriente, vol. 11. Edited by Juan Oliva. Madrid: Ediciones Akal, 2008. Pp. 507. [euro]34.

This is the first part of a two-volume set devoted to the political history of Syria-Palestine as seen in textual documents from the Early and Middle Bronze Ages. The second volume, edited by J. A. Belmonte, J. Oliva, and J. P. Vita and still to appear, will focus on the Late Bronze Age. The project presents an almost complete Spanish translation of the voluminous textual data on political matters available for these periods coming from this part of the Near East, overcoming the lack of textual anthologies in that language, for which the editors must indeed be congratulated.

A brief introduction (pp. 5-12) advances the main aspects of this work: it deals mainly with administrative texts from 2500 to 1650 B.C.E., providing relevant data for a political history of Syria-Palestine. Although Oliva himself recognizes that such a history is still to be written (p. 7; see however H. Klengel, Syria 3000 to 300 B.C.: A Handbook of Political History [Berlin 1992]), this selection of texts paves the way for eventually achieving this goal in a more comprehensive manner. This selection is based exclusively on the archives from the third millennium B.C.E. found in Mari, Ebla, and Tell Beydar, while for the first half of the second millennium the archives from Mari are the main focus of attention. No texts from other parts of the ancient Near East (e.g., Hatti) are included. This Spanish translation depends in parts on some other authoritative translations; however, the editor has advanced his own interpretation of some texts for which this work should be analyzed together with such previous studies (notably for Mari, J.-M. Durand, Documents epistolaires dupalais de Mari [Paris 1997-2000]).

The first part (pp. 13-97) deals with the Early Bronze Age (2600-2000 B.C.E.). Chapter 1 includes texts from Mari (2600-2350 B.C.E.): pre-Sargonic inscriptions, votive inscriptions, administrative texts. Chapter 2 deals with the kingdom of Ebla at its zenith ca. 2400 B.C.E. (of which we now have plenty of information on many aspects: see most recently P. Matthiae, Ebla, la citta del trono: Archeologia e storia [Rome 2010]), on issues of political epistolography, treaties between Ebla and lesser polities, diplomatic relations with the rest of Syria (e.g., Emar). Chapter 3 takes on Emar and...