The Raw Material

When scholars speak of a document’s having been fully and formally published, they usually mean that the publication includes a readable photograph, a complete transliteration of the text, perhaps a hand copy of the text, and possibly a commentary on the readings.^a By this definition, I am aware of only 14 Ebla texts that have been published.

If, however, we count transliterations without photographs, we can raise the number of Ebla tablets which have been published to 24.

To a scholar who knows the language, a transliteration (in which each cuneiform sign is represented in Roman letters) is nearly as useful as a photograph. True, he cannot check whether the cuneiform signs have been correctly transliterated; a photograph is especially important when the actual cuneiform signs are in dispute. But in the case of the 14 Ebla tablets which have been published with photographs, the transliterations contain few really significant errors, so we can probably have considerable confidence in the accuracy of the transliterations which have been published without photographs. Scholars can offer alternate readings based on the transliterations themselves.