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Mitologa y religin del oriente antiguo II/1: Semitas occidentales (Ebla, Mari) by P. Mander;J. M. DurandReview by: Robert D. BiggsJournal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 59, No. 2 (Apr., 2000), pp. 127-128Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/545617 .

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APRIL 000 BOOKREVIEWS 127Built on Solid Rock: Studies in Honour of Pro-fessor Ebbe Egede Knudsenon the Occasionof His 65th Birthday,April 11th, 1997. Edited

by ELIEWARDINI.nstitute for ComparativeResearch in Human Culture, Oslo, Serie B:Skrifter.Oslo: Novus Forlag, 1997. Pp. vi +308. N.Kr. 375.Most of the papers in this Festschrift reflectthe honoree's interest in Semitic languages. Sev-eral deal specifically with Hebrew and Syriacgrammar.Others deal with Arabic. Cyrus Gor-don, surely the doyen of Semitic language stud-ies in North America, chronicles his studies andcontributions to the subject in his "Philology ofthe Ancient Near East: My Seventy Years inSemitic Linguistics." Bo Isaksson, in "TheMonasteryof St. Catherine and the New Find,"describes in some detail the discovery of manu-scripts in 1975 that consisted of more than sev-enty boxes of discardedmanuscript fragments.Most sensationalwas the discoveryof additionalleaves of Codex Sinaiticus. The several pagesof references are valuable for the bibliography,which includes studies published in Greek inAthens. In "Wie arabisch ist Uzbekistan-Ara-bisch?" Otto Jastrowinvestigates the character-istics of these dialects and the influenceon themby other languages of the area.In "Straw in theNeo-Assyrian Period," Edward Lipinski dis-cusses the uses of strawand refers to a numberof contracts for the deliveryof strawboth in As-syrianandAramaicdocuments. Onp. 187,in thecontext of manure, he says: "Yet, this agricul-turaluse of strawis not mentionedexplicitly inearlier texts." In view of doubts about the useof manurefor fertilizer in ancienttimes, I wouldbe inclined to think that the straw/manureasso-ciation is for use as fuel, especially for bread-making, as is common in ruralIraq.In the onlyarticlein thevolume devotedto pharaonicEgypt,Saphinaz-AmalNaguib discusses autobiographyand identity. Heikki Palva's article "LinguisticObservations of the Explorersof Arabia in the19thCentury" s very interestingfor the sugges-tions on how the explorers and travelersheardspoken Arabic and how it was that they oftenwroteof the "purity"of the dialects in Arabia.Itis pointed out that Palgrave's comment, "herethe smallest and raggedest child that toddlesabout the street lisps in the correctest book-

Arabicthat ever De Sacy studiedor Sibawee'yahprofessed" is certainlynot true. The editor, ElieWardini, ends the volume with "An AssyrianLetter, Christiania Anno 1872," in which hepublishes a letter written in Assyrian (ModernEast Aramaic) by a visitor to Christiania(mod-ern Oslo), Norway fromUrmia.He mentionsthatthe letter is "beautifullyhandwritten"but pub-lishes only a renditionin Syriac type.This is an altogetherworthyvolume honoringan Assyriologist who has also made consider-able contributionsto the study of a wide rangeof Semitic languages.

ROBERTD. BIGGSThe University of Chicago

Mitologia y religi6n del oriente antiguo II/1:Semitas occidentales (Ebla, Mari). ByP. MANDERnd J. M. DURAND.Colecci6n:Estudios Orientales 8. Barcelona: EditorialAUSA, 1995. Pp. 576.The first part of the volume (by PietroMander, written in 1991 and translatedfor thisvolume by G. del Olmo Lete) is entitled "Losdioses y el culto de Ebla."By now, a great dealhas been written on Ebla, its language, its reli-gion, and its culture.By necessity, much of whatMander has to say is not new. Nevertheless, itreflects the latest thinkingof a scholarwho hasdevoted considerable energies to the study ofEbla. He is one of the dwindling number ofscholarswho still writeIbbi-Sipi' instead of thewidely accepted Ibbi-zikir.In discussion of thehistorical texts, he writes of the "treaty"be-tween Ebla and Assur but does not mentionthatmany scholars do not accept the interpretationof the second partyas Assur. He points out (onp. 19) that i-li-lu is the earliest syllabic writingof the name of the god Enlil, but furtheron heobserves that apparently en-lil in personalnames is to be read rul2-"D. He also points out(on p. 76) that Dahood interpreted i-li-lu as"god of gods,"but adds thatpeople arefar fromconcurringwith the proposedinterpretations.

Mandercomments extensively on variousde-ities. He cites approvinglyLipinski'setymologyof Da-mu as dcm, "support."He discusses at

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128 JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES VOL. 59 No. 2length the question of whether there is a deityYa at Ebla.In a much longer contribution, Jean-MarieDurand (whose manuscript dates from 1994,also translatedby G. del Olmo Lete) writes onreligion in Syria duringthe period of the Amor-ite kings according to documents from Mari. Itconstitutes a thoroughdiscussion of the panthe-ons of Mari and the other areas that occur oftenin the Mari texts. He also has considerable dis-cussion of prophecy at Mari (well known fromhis own publicationsandthepublicationsof oth-ers in French).He likewise has a detaileddiscus-sion of divination, which, as is well known, wehave more information on for the second millen-nium fromMari thananywhereelse.The volume ends with a very thoroughindexcovering both partsof the volume. This is espe-cially valuable for locatingdiscussions of divinenames.Both authors and the editor of the series,G. del Olmo Lete, deserve our thanks for thisfine volume.

ROBERTD. BIGGSThe Universityof Chicago

Aramaic Ostraca of the Fourth Century BCfrom Idumaea. By ISRAELEPHCALnd JOSEPHNAVEH. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, TheHebrew University, Israel Exploration Soci-ety, 1996. Pp. 100 + 201 figs. $20.Nouvelles inscriptions aramdennes d'Idumde auMusde d'Isracl. By A. LEMAIRE.Transeu-phratine Suppl., no. 3. Paris:Gabalda, 1996.Pp. 169 + 48 pls. 260 francs.A total of 419 inscriptions are published inthese volumes, 201 by Ephcal and Naveh, allAramaic, all but two from the fourth century(these two are dated by their script to the fifthcentury); 218 by Lemaire, of which 199 areAramaic, 3 Hebrew, 1 Phoenician,and 15 "dou-teuses," most dated to the fourth century (theHebrew ostraca are dated to ca. 600 B.c. andthus, like the Phoenician text, do not belong tothe same corpus as the Aramaic texts, thoughthat does not preclude a common geographicalorigin). Significantnumbersof Aramaicostraca

have been discovered during excavations inIsrael, particularlyfrom Tel Arad and Tel Beer-sheba, but this is by far the largest group. Thenew texts come from clandestinedigging, but allmay be judged by prosopography to originatefrom the same site or group of closely relatedsites. The illegal excavators sold the ostraca tovariouscollectors,who have either returned hemto the State of Israel (the ostraca published byLemairearenow in the IsraelMuseum) or madethemavailable forpublication thepresentwhere-abouts of 28 of those published by EphcalandNaveh are indicated,the rest are in unidentifiedprivate collections-presumably for these latterthe editorssaw only photographs).One senses abit of pique on the part of the Israeli editorswhen they remarkthat the ostraca in the IsraelMuseum "were, for some odd reason, entrustedfor publicationto a non-Israeli scholar"(p. 7).Questions of 'turf' aside, they need not havefeared, for Lemaireseems to have done a credit-able job on the texts assigned to him-thoughthere will undoubtedlybe some sniping going onregardingrelatively minor differences in read-ings and/or interpretations.The editors of bothvolumes workedvery rapidly:EphCal/Navehayexplicitly that they first saw photographs ofthese texts five years before publication (p. 7),while Lemaireobserves that the last groupof histexts enteredthe IsraelMuseum in 1994 (p. 7).The format of the Israeli publication is themore pleasing, for the photographsappearfac-ing the transliteration and translation, but thecommentary s in the formof notes at the bottomof the latterpage;Lemaire'sorganization s moretraditional,withtransliterationollowed by trans-lation followed by commentary,with the platesboundtogetherat the end of the volume.Both publications contain a section where ageneral interpretation f the corpus is presented.Lemaire'ss longerandmorediscursive(pp. 127-56), with sections on paleography,vocabulary(includingpropernames),dating, presumedfind-spot, andthe data n thetexts forpoliticalhistory;the introduction o the Israelipublication(pp. 9-18) treatsessentially the same topics, with lessemphasison paleographyandmoreon the topicsdealt with in the ostracathemselves as visible inthe vocabulary and structure of the texts. Bothvolumes also have complete indexes of attested

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