The Value of Food. Historical, Prosopographical and Quantitative Aspects of the Final Letters and Related Texts from Ebla Palace G (3rd Millennium BC)

In this paper we will focus on a specific part of our ongoing research within the framework of the PRIN 2017 “Big Data. Measuring Settlement Dynamics and Environmental Exploitation in the Ebla Region during the 3rd Millennium BC: Archaeological Record, Cuneiform Texts, and Remote Sensing”. The recent publication of the volume ARET XVIII1 makes the entire Ebla epistolary corpusavailable, part of which was previously published in ARET XVI. Among the new features that have already been noted in these two volumes, those concerning problems in the food supply are of particular relevance. The information on this topic is scattered throughout many letters, and therefore the compilation of a coherent thematic dossier is rather complex, also considering the general difficulties in interpreting the Ebla letters. We are cross-referencing data from letters with those from administrative texts of comparable chronology, with a particular focus on prosopography and the morpho-syntactic analysis of numbers and units of measure. The paper is divided into sections, with each section authored by a different contributor: 1) by Catagnoti, focusing on issues related to hunger; 2) by Cianfanelli, discussing complaints found in the letters; 3) by Gori, examining seasonality problems; 4) by Bonechi, analyzing natural contingencies and related topics. The study shows that issues like hunger, shortages, complaints, and natural disasters, which are commonly found in cuneiform letters from the Ancient Near East, also appear in the Ebla letters. This documentation provides valuable insight into the environmental and socio-economic conditions of the time. The materials discussed in the paper date back to the period just before the fire that destroyed Palace G.