The Digitization of the Spatial Data on the Epigraphic Discoveries from the Central Archive L.2769 (Ebla, Syria): A Data-based Approach to Archival-keeping, Leiden (18 July 2023)
Overview
Between September 30 and October 8, 1975, the Italian Archaeological Expedition in Syria (MAIS) discovered the Central Archive L.2769, one of the very few cuneiform archives found in situ. During those nine days the archaeologists recovered more than 15,000 inscribed objects: hundreds of tablets, and thousands of fragments and chips. In order to preserve the information referring to their location within the archival room, the archaeologists established a set of coordinates to register the position of each item. Thanks to such a system, they gathered information referring to the location of almost all 15,000 items. The inventory of the material, which began in 1975, lasted until 1978. Thanks to the collaboration between the Ebla Digital Archives project (EbDA, Ca’ Foscari University Venice and the CNR – ISMed) and the Italian Archaeological Expedition to Syria (MAIS, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’), all the field notes data referring to the findspots of the 15,000 objects have been digitized: the scouring of this archival material revealed a wealth of information on the distribution of the documents in Central Archive L.2769 as well as on the physical characteristics of most inventoried objects. This paper aims at offering for the first time a comprehensive overview of the findspots, as well as of the digitization process of this material: such process represented the opportunity to critically assess the transition from handwritten field notes to a digital data collection referring to thousands of items, with a particular focus on the integration of the data in EbDA’s infrastructure and its importance for the philological and historical research on the Ebla tablets. The findspot dataset obtained from this archival survey covers all 15,000 tablets, fragments and chips found in L.2769: it is now possible to pursue a quantitative and statistical approach to the epigraphic findings of L.2769, as well as a qualitative investigation. The field notes data offer new avenues for the identification of joins and the tracing of past ones, but also constitutes a solid starting point for a comprehensive data-based assessment of archival-keeping principles and methods adopted by the scribes of Central Archive L.2769.