Emar…Ancient Near East Portal (1)

The ancient near eastern town of Emar/Imar was situated on the middle Euphrates in northwest Syria, about 100 km east of Aleppo. Due to its geographical situation connecting Mesopotamia with the Mediterranean coast and with Anatolia, the town had a strategic function. Already the earliest mentioning in writing, namely in the palace archives of Ebla, ca. 2500 BC, and especially in the Mari texts from the 18th century BC, point to the town’s importance as traffic junction and contact zone between the Assyro-Babylonian and the Syro-Anatolian cultural spheres.

Contrary to its importance as a commercial center, Emar was never the center of a superregional power, but was rather awkwardly positioned between rivaling states.

The history of Emar can be followed down to the middle of the third millennium BC, or, in archeological terms, down to the Early Bronze Age, when the town came under the influence of the rulers of Ebla and was mentioned in their archives at several instances. Later news appear in the Mari texts (18th century BC, Middle Bronze Age) according to which Emar was under the influence of the neighboring state of Yamhad. For the 13th and the early 12th centuries BC (the Late Bronze Age), there is written documentation from Emar itself and also references in contemporaneous texts from Boazkoy/Hattuta, Ras Shamra/Ugarit and from Assyria. At that time, the town was part of the Hittite Empire, situated close to the frontier of the rivaling state of Assyria. Emar was subject to the king of Karkami, who represented the Hittite ruler in Syria, a member of the Hittite royal family and the connecting link between Hattua the Hittite capital in central Anatolia, and the Syrian (vassal states).

The Late Bronze Age town was excavated by a French team in the 1970s (see State of research).Occupation layers of the Middle and Early Bronze Ages were brought to light by recent Syrian- German excavations. Archeological as well as written documentation come to an end in the second third of the 12th century BC. The site was resettled on a larger scale in Byzantine times, only.

Up to now, we know of ca. 1,170 cuneiform texts from Emar. They are, with those from Ugarit, Mari and Ebla, among the most important tablet finds in Syria. About 800 texts come from the French excavations, the rest have turned up in the art market. The large majority is written in Akkadian. Besides, there are about 100 Hurrian texts (still unpublished) and two Hittite letters. Other than in the towns of Ugarit, Mari and Ebla, where most texts belong to the palace archives, the Emar texts have mainly been found in private houses.

They are, above all, judicial records – concerning, for example, dealings in real estate, marriages, last wills, adoptions – illustrating the private life of the population and, at the same time, showing the consequences of the Hittite conquest for the training of scribes and for society, in general. In the house of a priest, the so called Temple of Devin (M1), a library was found containing, besides literary and lexical texts in the Mesopotamian tradition, ritual texts for local cults. Particularly noteworthy is the ritual for the installation of the priestess of the weather god Ba’al of which there exist several copies.

State of research

In the 1970s, the Syrian Tabqa dam project was the reason for large-scale salvage operations in the middle Euphrates region. Salvage excavations on the site near modern Meskene, about 100 km east of Aleppo, were executed by two French teams between 1972 and 1976. Jean-Claude Margueron directed the excavation of the ancient near eastern town of Emar, while the exploration of Byzantine Barbalissos/Islamic Balis in the eastern part of the Tell was conducted by Andre Raymond. At Emar, the French archeologists discovered a temple area comprising the sanctuaries of the weather god Ba’al and – possibly of his consort Ashtarte as well as several dwelling-houses dating to the Late Bronze Age (13th and beginning of 12th century BC). From many excavation areas there came tablets, ca. 800 cuneiform texts, that were then published by the philologist Daniel Arnaud (Paris). Dominique Beyer (Strasbourg) examined the large amount of seal impressions on the tablets.

When the French excavations had come to an end, the site was left without a guardian. It was then systematically robbed leaving the place to look like a Swiss cheese and bringing new tablets onto the art market. In 1992, the Syrian Antiquities Department took charge of the site and began another round of scientific excavations under the direction of Shawki Sha’ath, archeologist, and Farouk Ismail, philologist. In 1996, a cooperation with the University of Tubingen was brought under way, resulting, up to 2001, in four excavation seasons under the direction of Uwe Finkbeiner. Since 1999, the Syrian Antiquities Department has been represented by Jamil Massouh. Beside Late Bronze Age findings, the Syrian-German excavations unearthed occupation layers from the Middle and Early Bronze Ages (that is, from the second half of the third and the first half of the second millennium BC).

The Syrian-German excavations aimed first of all at establishing a topographical plan of the site, which should include those architectural findings of the French excavations that were still visible after the closing of the dam. About two thirds of the town are flooded. Today, the site is a peninsula along the southern bank of Lake Assad. It slopes from west to east. In the west, where the site is highest, there is a temple area with sanctuaries of the weathergod Ba’al and, possibly of his consort Ashtarte. East of the temple area there is the so-called Upper Town with several excavated dwelling houses. Bordering on the Upper Town, but in a pronounced depression and reaching all the way to the town-wall of Byzantine Barbalissos, there lies the so-called Lower Town. That is where the French archeologists excavated a temple (Temple M2) and a priest’s house (Temple of Devin, M1), which served also as training center for the religious elite of Emar and which harbored a large library. The most exciting tablet finds were made in that house. Besides literary and lexical texts in the Mesopotamian tradition they included ritual texts stemming from the local, Syrian sphere. A further dwelling-quarter in the north has survived as a small island. According to the French director, Jean-Claude Margueron, it harbored the residence of the king of Emar (“Bit- Hilani”).

Fortunately, the destruction by looting that followed upon the end of the French excavations has only touched the uppermost, mainly Late Bronze Age layers. The earlier layers in that part of the Tell that has not been flooded have remained accessible to further research. They stand at the beginning of the chronological presentation of the newest excavation……….Be continued

Haifaa Mafalani