The Calendars of Ebla

Abstract

"Among the very first texts from the royal archive of ancient Ebla that Giovanni Pettinato of the University of Rome has published are several which provide us with information about the calendars that were used there. Two calendars are involved because the names of the months of the year were revised at the end of the dynasty that is now known from the Eblaite texts which date from the late third millennium B.C. From the reign of IgriS-Halam to that of Ebrium the calendar referred to by Pettinato as the Old Calendar wasused.' The New Calendar was then adopted during the reign of 1bbi-Sipi;, and it apparently continued in use until the end of his reign as the last king of the Eblaite dynasty of the Sargonic period in the second half of the third millennium B.c.~ Thus the following outline represents the way in which these calendars may be related to the rulers in the king-list of Ebla that Pettinato has compiled"