4. Starting at Ebla: The City and Its Music

The cuneiform texts of Ebla (Tell Mardikh) have now yielded the word kinnārum, nearly a millennium and a half before King David. By ca. 2400, Ebla controlled a sizeable area of upper inland Syria; its dependencies included Karkemish, Alalakh, Hamath, Emar, and Harran. [1] Ebla’s political and commercial interests were quite wide-ranging, extending into Mesopotamia (including Kish and Mari) and the Levant (Ugarit, Byblos). [2] Its pantheon included early forms of WS deities (Dagan, Hadda, Rašap) and others from a non-Semitic substrate, most importantly the city-god Kura and his consort Barama. [3] With the possible exception of Ea/Haya, [4] the pantheon is essentially independent of Mesopotamia, and while Ebla was in the orbit of Sumerian scribal culture, the few Mesopotamian hymns and other literary texts found there probably had no cultic use. [5] A possible exception is a collection of Sumerian and Akkadian incantations, which may have stimulated the formation of a comparable local genre. [6]

Publication of the royal archives, spanning some forty-five years and at least three kings—Yigriš-Halab, Yirkab-Damu, and Yiš’ar-Damu—is incomplete. [7] Yet they already reveal a vibrant, cosmopolitan musical world. [8] Numerous singer-musicians (NAR), dancers (NE.DI), and acrobats or ‘cult dancers’ (ḪÚB) came from other palaces to perform for royal occasions like feasts, wedding celebrations, and religious festivals (temple-musicians per se remain elusive, as no temple archive has been found). [9] Mari, Nirar, Kish, Emar, Tuttul, Nagar, and Aleppo are all attested as sources of musical exchange, with performers often travelling in the train of royal or aristocratic visitors. [10] Local Eblaite musicians active in and about the palace are revealed by repeated appearances in distribution lists. [11] Some have names that suggest an origin outside of Ebla itself. [12] That singer-musicians can be named individually shows the relative prestige that members of this profession might achieve when steadily visible to the world of kings and notables. [13] Some singer-musicians must have traveled in their turn to foreign centers, but such movements remain invisible, not involving palace disbursements on the home end.

A group of some twenty female singers (NAR.MÍ), and a number of dancers, were apparently housed among the royal women, presumably performing within the palace, and perhaps at festivals involving women. There is no evidence to show that they were also concubines, as commonly at OB Mari; but this would hardly be surprising. [14] As to the female mourners who are attested for the funeral of a royal princess, [15] we do not know if this involved more than raw ululation, nor whether there was some overlap with the palace musiciennes.

While Sumerian musical titles were regularly used by the scribes of Ebla, it is unclear how far this reflects actual Sumerian musical influence, rather than mere orthographic convention. Still, the regular distinction in the palace archives between ‘senior’ and ‘junior’ singers (NAR.MAḪ and NAR.TUR, literally ‘big’ and ‘small’ singers) reveals a stratified professional environment comparable to that of Mari and various sites in Babylonia. Clearly defined ranks would have been very practical in a world where regular allocations had to be made to visiting artists, and there was periodic relocation and reintegration of musicians through conquest and gift-exchange. At Ebla it is sometimes possible to follow the promotions, demotions, re-promotions, arrivals, departures, transfers, and deaths of singers over many years. [16] The careers of around fifty Eblaite male singer-musicians (NAR) can be so traced, with clear correspondence between position in list and length of service. One can even observe a nearly 200 percent corporate growth over the period covered by the archives, probably connected with an overall increase in the prosperity of the palace—prior to its destruction by Sargon or Naram-Sin. [17] It also seems that this management structure operated, on a smaller scale, throughout the kingdom. [18]

Ebla thus represents a sophisticated, regionally interconnected music-culture prevailing throughout North Syria. It is appropriate that the first attestation of kinnārum should come from such an environment. It is found in the so-called Ebla Vocabulary, a massive bilingual lexical collection developed during several generations following the introduction of cuneiform to the city. [19] The scribes glossed kinnārum with Sum. BALAĜ, quite decisive evidence that, at least in third millennium Babylonia, the Sumerian word could refer to a stringed instrument. [20] This equation cannot be dismissed as scribal confusion. [21] After all, the kinnārum was equally known, we saw, to the scribes of ED Mesopotamia, where it was also associated with the balang. [22] Nor can performance context be made the sole basis of these connections, so that the lamenting lyre of the west becomes the functional equivalent of the Mesopotamian lamenting drum. For BALAĜ appears in another Eblaite text where there is clearly no question of lamentation—a ‘BALAĜ-man’ (LÚ.BALAĜ) who appears in company with a group of cult-dancers/acrobats (ḪÚB) as recipients of textile disbursements. [23] Elsewhere the instrument of a NAR is a BALAĜ. [24] These designations recall the NAR.BALAĜ of Sumerian texts, and Ušumgal-kalama, Ningirsu’s balang-god who was not a lamenter but a nar. [25] So the scribes’ equation of BALAĜ and kinnārum was clearly not based on ‘genre’ alone: they must have seen some organological similarity between the two instruments. [26] At Ebla, therefore, the expressions LÚ.BALAĜ and NAR.BALAĜ will mean simply ‘kinnārum-singer’.

Besides the many NAR known at Ebla, palace records attest to the maintenance of another musical class, the BALAĜ.DI. In some texts, they appear as a group of nine. [27] Elsewhere, four BALAĜ.DI are specified in connection with a kind of ‘cultic chapel’ (É.NUN), presumably a dedicated location in which they often operated. [28] These BALAĜ.DI are usually interpreted as lamentation-priests, on the basis of early Sumerian usage. [29] They are indeed known to have performed in such a context (see below), and this function helps account for the otherwise conspicuous absence from Ebla of Sum. GALA. [30] Although the comparative evidence is good as far as it goes, it should not dictate too rigid an interpretation of the BALAĜ.DI’s musical character at Ebla itself. It is intrinsically likely, first, that the city’s lamentation practices were rather distinct from those of contemporary southern Mesopotamia. Moreover, Sumerian BALAĜ.DI meant originally merely a player of the balang; its application to lamentation-singers is thus a specialized development, [31] and it is unclear where the Eblaite usage falls along, or branches from, this continuum.

Now the scribes equated BALAĜ.DI with na-ti-lu-(um) in their own language. [32] This has been plausibly derived from the root *nṭl, ‘raise up’, so that BALAĜ.DI/nāṭilū(m) is “he who lifts [sc. the voice]”; a comparable semantic development is noted for the Hebrew cognate nś’, where the context is lamentation. [33] From here, and the equation BALAĜ = kinnārum, it is an easy inference that the BALAĜ.DI of Ebla performed to the lyre; the two entries in the Ebla Vocabulary are in fact adjacent. We shall see further evidence in Chapter 12 of lyric lamentation to the knr. But since the BALAĜ-kinnārum of Ebla was definitely used for more than lamentation-singing, clearly the distinction between NAR and BALAĜ.DI relates to their respective functions more than the instruments used. And the BALAĜ.DI of Ebla probably had some broader purview than lamentation alone, to judge from their association with the ‘cultic chapel’ (É.NUN). Obviously this professional ‘segregation’ of the BALAĜ.DI from the NAR equally implies some social difference. While it would be rash to draw a hard line between secular and sacred—since NAR could perform at religious festivals, royal weddings, and so on—it does seem likely that the BALAĜ.DI were responsible for the main liturgical functions required by the palace. As such, their range would not have been limited to lamentation.

The one context for which there is any information about BALAĜ.DI performance is a complex series of royal rites attested in three versions. One is evidently a kind of prescriptive template for the other two, which describe specific and slightly varied manifestations relating to the city’s last two kings. [34] These two are semi-narrative accounts of what actually transpired, although they equally follow a more-or-less fixed sequence. [35] The occasion and purpose have been variously interpreted, most often as a royal wedding and/or enthronement. [36] The latter idea, at least, is now ruled out by correlations with the textile and metal-distribution tablets, whose chronology, having been established, is incompatible with an accession; nor do these texts give any support to the wedding hypothesis. Biga and Capomacchia have now argued convincingly that, while the ritual sequence may have been executed on, and adapted to, various occasions, the unifying purpose of all three texts is the renovation of royal authority through veneration of the royal ancestors and the regular maintenance of their cult. It may still be, however, that the ritual could be coordinated with such occasions as wedding and enthronement, and that such royal themes partially contributed to the ritual’s symbolism. [37]

The ritual called for the royal couple to travel to different stations within the kingdom, executing rites and making offerings to various gods and certain of the royal ancestors’ divinized shades. [38] The centerpiece was three seven-day ritual cycles undertaken at the mausoleum at Nenaš, where the king and queen took up temporary residence. [39] The actions are enumerated in considerable detail, although the precise timing is not always clear. Included were acts of purification, investment, washing, anointing, and benediction, accompanied at every stage by abundant animal and material offerings, notably to royal ancestors, the Sun, and Kura and Barama—of whom the king and queen were the terrestrial counterparts. [40] Offerings on the seventh day of each cycle were themselves sevenfold. [41]

It is during this long sequence that the BALAĜ.DI lamenters, indispensable to the rites, were called upon to perform. [42] It must have been dramatic. The royal couple, after braving a spooky night in the mausoleum, emerged to sit “upon the two thrones of their fathers” and await the dawn: The text appears to preserve the incipit of an actual lamentation. [46] The song’s character is confirmed by the rite’s outcome, since the ‘angered’ goddess is induced to “make shine” the royal couple. In Sumerian tradition, Nintu was a goddess of childbirth whose powers became associated specifically with the begetting of kings. [47] So this was evidently a kind of symbolic rebirth.

The lamenters are mentioned again soon afterwards, following another series of rites. This time the action is presented in the past tense, apparently indicating not a second performance, but the completion of a sequence that began with the song just discussed: [48] The importance of this passage lies in the word translated here as “sounds” (i-a¹ba-ad). Fronzaroli would read this as /yilappat/ and derive it from the root *lpt (‘touch’), pointing to Akk. lapātu, which can be used to describe the playing of a stringed instrument (compare Greek psállein). [51] If this is right, [52] it corroborates the argument above that the kinnārum was employed in lamentation-singing at Ebla. Admittedly the present performance configuration is hardly clear. With the standing group of BALAĜ.DI apparently excluded, the possibilities envisioned by Fronzaroli are that “the man of Harugu” accompanies either himself in reciting the lament, or the king and queen as they do so. [53] Unfortunately the identity and role of “the man of Harugu” is entirely obscure. And the passage is so laconic that one should not rule out the further involvement of the BALAĜ.DI. They may have completed the former sequence, but are now employed in a further lament for which only the three key new participants are specified.

What kind of music would be involved in such a mortuary ritual? [54] The appropriateness of lamentation at a funeral is self-evident, and is the earliest documented function of the Sumerian GALA. [55] But if the ritual was related to the long-term maintenance of mortuary cult, we need not envision only acute grief and continuous ululation. If the kinnārum was indeed employed, something more musical—more lyrical—should also be supposed. [56] Probably the lamentation-­singing served here, as often in Mesopotamia, a prophylactic function—perhaps securing the good will of the divinized ancestors towards the kingdom’s continued prosperity. [57]

The template format of the ritual indicates that this was a traditional procedure, insulated from rapid change by being set down in clay. The ritual was executed for two consecutive kings, and something analogous, if slowly evolving, must have been practiced for many generations. After all, the Ebla King List goes back twenty-six generations or more, conceivably to the twenty-eighth century. [58] This list must be associated with eleven further cultic texts in which various divinized kings are named in the contexts of offerings and rituals. [59] Such a royal ancestor cult, enacted by a very small and socially/historically self-conscious group, and limited to occasional but regular performances, might very well enjoy great longevity—on the order of many centuries. [60] Ebla thus evokes a deep historical background for the kinnāru’s connections with the royal mortuary cult of Ugarit, a millennium later. [61]

No offerings to musical instruments have yet been found in Ebla’s economic records. [62] Yet the documents do attest to the veneration of other cult-objects: two sheep were offered for the provisioning of the sheath or spear of Rašap of Atanni; sheep for the head and feet of the same god’s statue; sheep for the scepters of several gods; and one sheep for a throne (god not specified). Although such objects are not written with divine determinatives at Ebla, [63] the very fact that they received such offerings indicates that Ebla shared with Mesopotamia some conceptions about their potential divinity. Another text apparently relates to bad omens that were believed to result from the improper worship of a divine statue. [64] So one may at least say that the conditions for a divinized kinnārum were in place at Ebla, especially given bilateral scribal familiarity with BALAĜ and kinnārum between Mesopotamia and Ebla. [65]

It seems quite certain, at least, that the instrument was already considered to possess special powers. This is well illustrated by a cylinder seal in the Bible Lands Museum (Figure 6), apparently from North Syria to judge from stylistic parallels, which also indicate a third millennium date. [66] A seated, perhaps enthroned, figure (male?) plays an instrument not dissimilar in shape to contemporary Sumerian lyres, but lacking a bull’s-head. In motion before the musician are two animals, perhaps a dog and a lion (or equid). It is a very early example of a motif—lyrist facing or surrounded by animals—which had a long history in the Syro-Levantine sphere. [67] Later parallels suggest that the seal may reflect wisdom traditions associated with lyre-playing and/or the use of lyre-music to symbolize a harmonious realm—the wise and powerful ruler prevailing over the wild forces that threaten social and political stability. [68] Whatever the precise interpretation, the importance of the lyre itself is suggested by its careful rendering and central placement. Well out in front of the musician, in an impossible playing position, the lyre is fully represented, practically independent of its player—an object of interest and significance in its own right.