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“Gli Archivi Reali Di Tell Mardikh-Ebla Refflessioni E Prospettivi,” See G. Pettinato, Rivista Biblica (Italian) 25 (July–Sept. 1977) 238–242; G. Garbini, “La Lingua di Ebla,” La Parola del Passato, fasc. 181 (1978) 241–259, esp. pp. 255ff. Pettinato believes the text is a copy of an actual letter. Garbini believes the document only gives record of a letter having been sent and which contains a summary of the letter’s actual contents.
Ebla: un impero immortalato dall ’argilla (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1979). The book contains exactly seven photographs of tablets limited to one side of the tablet only. Aside from those already published elsewhere. I can be certain of only seven new texts provided in full transliteration, but many more in the book are clearly excerpts, some of them extensive.
Alternately, the upper shaft may have been a grain silo. A silo of similar shape, complete with spiraling steps, is preserved at Iron Age Megiddo The installation at Megiddo, however, only entailed cutting through earlier earthen debris layers and then lining the silo walls with small stones. It seems unnecessarily ambitious of the Gibeonites to have hewn through solid bedrock merely for grain storage.
If the pool had been used originally as a cistern, we should not necessarily find traces today at the top of the shaft of the channels which led water into the reservoir. When it was converted to its later use the channel endings would have been dismantled to prevent water from flowing into the cavity.
The same general concept (stepped tunnel through bedrock to already-known spring source) is exhibited in modified form in “Warren’s Shaft” at Jerusalem. An even closer analogy may be the tunnel at Khirbet Bel ‘ameh (ancient Ibleam) near Jenin, but it has not been fully exposed or dated (see G. Schumacher in Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 1910, 107–112, Pl. 2).
