Eblaite art

The aim of this new international journal is to contribute to developing the study of the interpretation and understanding of the ancient cultures of Syria, remaining as open as possible to the different methodologies and problems that characterize present-day research. Thanks to the generous policy of international collaboration pursued by the cultural authorities of the Syrian Arab Republic, the increase in archaeological research in Syria, particularly from the 1970s on, opened up a series of new perspectives on the study of ancient Syria. The discovery of the Royal Archives of Ebla was decisive in this renaissance, as well as the role that Ebla played in establishing the very foundations of cultural development in ancient Syria. This project originates at a time of serious crisis for Syria, whose plight does not even spare the country’s magnificent, thousand-year-old cultural heritage. It is also intended as the strongest of hopes for a not-too-distant future of peace, prosperity, harmony and justice for the whole of the Syrian people.

The aim of this new international journal is to contribute to developing the study of the interpretation and understanding of the ancient cultures of Syria, remaining as open as possible to the different methodologies and problems that characterize present-day research.
Thanks to the generous policy of international collaboration pursued by the cultural authorities of the Syrian Arab Republic, the increase in archaeological research in Syria, particularly from the 1970s on, opened up a series of new perspectives on the study of ancient Syria. The discovery of the Royal Archives of Ebla was decisive in this renaissance, as well as the role that Ebla played in establishing the very foundations of cultural development in ancient Syria.
This project originates at a time of serious crisis for Syria, whose plight does not even spare the country’s magnificent, thousand-year-old cultural heritage. It is also intended as the strongest of hopes for a not-too-distant future of peace, prosperity, harmony and justice for the whole of the Syrian people.

A synopsis of Syrian history from the 4th to the 3rd mil. B.C. The paper focuses on the influences that spread from neighboring Messopotamian states over the lands of today Syria, as well as the rise of the -mostly- independent city-state of Ebla.

The excavation of Building FF2 at Ebla provided new important data related to the tradition of wall paintings in Early Bronze Age Syria. This tradition still remains quite poorly known and understood, and the way to an interpretation of the relevant features, meanings and developments is thus mostly made of comparisons with findings from other regions and periods. The main difficulties are here represented by the lack of shared approaches in recording and publishing information on this kind of material witness, in particular in relation to technical and technological aspects. This contribution is based on efforts that point at collecting as many evidences as possible to outline a profile of the Early Syrian wall painting techniques. The main aim is here to find enough evidence supporting the placement of the Ebla wall painting findings within the Early Syrian tradition and its chronological developments, as well as in the context of the artistic and artisan cultures of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean regions.

Recent studies in the field of sensory archaeology – that encompasses the meaning and impact of senses in the past and in the comprehension of past phenomena – developed new theories and methods in the archaeological research starting from not only visible and tangible data but also envisioning no longer existing (visible, tangible and audible) information from the past. Sensory archaeology, in fact, looks at what we can label an experimental approach to the past and archaeological contexts assuming that the analysis of the perception through the senses can eventually disclose new possibility and attempts for a wider comprehension of the use of material culture, on the one hand, and architecture and landscape, on the other.
Recently, the definition of sensescape precisely points to the evaluation of not only the five senses but, more specifically, how the perception through senses affected the cognition of the space around (the peripersonal space) and the system of communication (interrelations with the space, the things and the people within): in this respect, this approach led to new affordances and perspectives on the different degrees of past interactions in the societies of the ancient Near East. Of course, a process of contextualization is necessary: the use of senses must be settled in the past and in a precise archaeological context so that general assumptions and too generic reconstructions can be avoided. Moreover, the evaluation of the senses must go through an emic process that takes into account the perspective and meaning that are given by the society under examination: the risk of flattening the sensory experience of the past on our modern perception and evaluation of the use and impact of senses is always round the corner.
In this respect, does a classification of senses exist? Based on contemporary society and forced by the nature of the archaeological evidence, it might be logic to give the sight the first rank of the classification. Does the result also reflect the reality of the past? Can we in fact infer that sight was the most exploited sense by the ancient societies in the Near East? It seems to me that since we still see the ruins of landscape, cities and buildings we are inevitably forced to cope with the sight assuming that what we see might in fact corresponds to what ancient people saw or, conversely, that what we no longer see was once clearly visible to the ancient people.
The present paper analyses the effect of sound speaking against the tyranny of sight in archaeological contexts: cities and architecture are not only spaces that can be seen but they also resound and this very specific quality will be presented starting from the example of the Temple of the Rock at Ebla. In particular, starting from the definition of “acoustemology” by Steven Fold, the present communication will try to disclose the knowledge of ancient space and architecture though and via the sonic quality of the environment and materiality of things and objects – where also people become in the end auditory elements of what we can label a soundscape. Recent studies of ancient acoustic places will be taken into consideration in the introduction to settle the field of the research and the methodology of investigation, whereas the systems of acoustic resonance will be investigated to point out the role and importance of the sound in the perception and as a cognitive instrument for the communication and shared participation of individual: it is time to give the past an ear, going beyond the exclusivity of the eye showing how sound (not exclusively music, but even the noise) affects the process of interactions and the construction of the self socially, in relations to the others and the neighbouring (un)built space.

When Western culture imagines the development of collections and the museum it goes back, at most, to the time of the Roman Empire, viewing however the input to the collection in the spirit of the Renaissance. Nevertheless if one arrives at the conception of the museum, first in Roman times and then in more recent times, this is due to a series of cultural passages which seem to find their roots, in an unexpected way, in the Near East. This fact surprises non-experts, since we hardly expect to find even the slightest indication of a taste in collection in Near Eastern cultures. There are two main reasons for this lack of understanding. First, the concept of the museum collection is inextricably linked to the western world, due to an age-old western-centric conceit. Secondly, because the Near East is the “other”, one that comes from outside of our culture, it is considered as the bearer of chaos with the ability to destroy what we are; and as such it can be culturally/socially tolerated if and only if it fits into stereotypical categories of complete socio-cultural submission. The other produces nothing that is worthy of attention or consideration. This is a normal defense mechanism of the cultural community.   
In fact, as the cultural community develops it identifies over the course of time, a set of common values that are perceived as something unique, individual and collective by members of the group who scrupulously protect and pass them on to future generations: lifestyle, laws, customs, art and religion . Therefore, one cannot “propagandistically” consider the cultures of others valuable. 
Yet, the near eastern region creates the requirements for which art, artifacts and high culture assume a privileged meaning which justifies the possibility of considering those objects worthy of transmitting cultural significance and their need to be collected. This mental shift takes place across 5,000 years of history: belonging to the chaos of other cultures, appreciation as spoils of war, an exchange of “prestigious” diplomatic gifts, objects of exotic taste; a cultural document on which to consider.
So for the first time in Mediterranean history, the Near East creates the same idea of collection and musealization.
Ex Oriente Lux, and from the east seeds of this magnificent institution spread all over the world.