Administrative Texts: Allotments of Clothing for the Palace Personnel

Among several administrative sectors, the Archives of Ebla (Syria, ca. 2380–2330 B.C.) document month after month, over forty years, the expenditures of textile production (the first manufacture of the time) giving substance to an archaic society, also in relation with the neighboring states. An entire new province – northern Syria of the third millennium B.C. – is returned to the Ancient Near East studies, and, a unique case, on the basis of the complete documentation kept by a central administration. This volume includes 1 yearly text and 24 monthly documents selected because they present sections concerning groups of men ordered according to crafts, women employed in menial works, and men passed in review in relation with military expeditions. A concluding essay is the first attempt to give a reconstruction of the palace organization of Ebla and the forces of the recruited army. One text lists the gifts to the members of the court (fixing their rank in this way) on the occasion of the marriage of the only daughter of the royal couple with a prince of Kiš, the major power of the time; in another one the funerary gifts to a princess are registered. Detailed indices complete the volume.