THE
ARCHIVE OF MARI
G. Herbert Livingstona
Like Ebla, the earliest settlement of Mari dates back to the last half of the fourth millennium (3500 to 3000) BC. The ruins of Mari are located on the south bank of the Euphrates River, about 15 miles north of the present-day Syrian/Iraqi border. The Arabic name for the site is Tell Hariri. The cities of Ebla and Mari were trade and political rivals during the Early Bronze (ca 3100–2100 BC) and the Middle Bronze (ca 2100–1550 BC) ages. The ruins of Mari cover about 280 acres.
Mari dignitary, early third millennium BC, Allepo Museum.
The Discovery
In August 1933, a local Bedouin nomad discovered by chance a headless statue on which was an inscription. Local officials of the French Mandate had the inscription translated and, believing the site to be important, notified authorities in France. The authorities were impressed and sent an arehaeological team headed by Andre Parrot. In December of 1933 the excavation of Mari was started and within a month another inscribed statue was brought to light. The translation of the inscription revealed the statue was a gift to the goddess Ishtar presented by one of the kings of Mari. This information strongly suggested the ruins might belong to the ancient city of Mari. More inscriptions were found in the ruins, some dating from the third millennium BC. They provided clues that an ancient Semitic civilization had existed in the upper Euphrates Valley, but the clues were not taken seriously until the discovery of the Ebla tablets almost 40 years later.
The Golden Age of Mari dated from about 1860 to 1760 BC. The excavation
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team, over several decades, uncovered a number of buildings and artifacts which showed that Mari was a wealthy city, with a culturally advanced society in that time.
The royal palace of King Zimri Lim was the most significant building excavated at Mari. It was a brick structure, covering nine acres and possessing some 300 rooms. Thus the palace was one of the largest that existed during the Middle Bronze Age. One of the most striking features of this palace was the use of some rooms as bathrooms—they had hard clay bathtubs, lavatories and a functional plumbing system. Scribes did their work in other rooms where they copied ancient tablets and wrote trade and political information on other clay tablets. Near where the scribes worked were libraries in which tablets were stored. These libraries, or archives, yielded about 25,000 tablets.
Mari goddess, 18th century BC, Aleppo Museum.
Mari dignitary, early 3rd millennium BC, Aleppo Museum
The Archive
The Mari inscriptions show that King Zimri Lim reigned about 18 years, during which he fought many wars. He was able to dominate the territory between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, and garnered into his palace a great deal of wealth. He was challenged by the aggressive King Hammurabi who controlled the lower part of the Mesopotamian Valley. These territories are essentially modern Iraq. Hammurabi eventually conquered Mari and destroyed it.
The tablets of Mari preserve information about a wide range of subjects which includes: commercial transactions involving farm and textile products, trade documents, correspondence between kings and other government officials, international treaties, diplomatic letters, irrigation practices, laws, court actions, cargo of caravans, the products of many kinds of crafts, and religious literature. Some tablets contain chronological data which has helped scholars put various kings in relationship to each other in the same time period. These data have been a great aid in reconstructing a connected history of the period.
The tablets containing religious information have helped Old Testament scholars gain a clearer understanding of the religious beliefs of the people who lived in the area around Harran where Abraham and his family lived about 200 years earlier. The way of life of the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was that of migrants and nomads and even the economic and political tablets provide important insights about this kind of life. Seemingly, the meaning of the word “Hebrew” is clarified by the Amorite verb habuaru which means “to immigrate” or “to seek refuge.”
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Clay tablets from the Mari archive.
Some documents preserved on the clay tablets detail practices such as adoption and inheritance similar to those found in the narratives of Genesis. Other inscriptions describe the practice of slaughtering animals when covenants were made between kings or ethnic groups. Some of the judges mentioned on the tablets were not officials of the court, but were governors of regional or tribal groups, as was the case in the Old Testament.
Dagon was the main god of Mari. Other gods are listed which are known as Canaanite deities in the Old Testament: Baal, Istar (Asherah), El, and Adad (Hadad). Temples were named after these deities and many personal names had divine elements in them.
Unique Prophetic Messages
Among the thousands of tablets are 30 of special interest to Old Testament scholars. These tablets are damaged, but enough of the inscriptions remain to indicate that they contain messages of a prophetic nature. People who claimed they received messages from deities would appear, without invitation, before the governor of their region or city and verbally deliver their message. These people were men or women of various ages and occupations. They claimed that idols of Baal, Ishtar or Adad had spoken to them while in a trance, seeing a vision or dreaming. Their purpose for coming to the governor was to request that their message be inscribed on a tablet and delivered to King Zimri Lim. The governor would respond by ordering that this be done.
A study of the tablets bearing these messages shows that they usually contained an accusation, a warning, an exhortation, or a promise of victory, if certain demands were met. The accusations had to do with royal neglect of providing adequate offerings for the temple rituals, or neglect of the proper maintenance of the temple and its staff. Some messages claimed that the king had been unjust in his dealings with the priesthood. Other tablets state that the messenger was sending a piece of the hem of a garment or a lock of hair to be tested by some method of divination, perhaps to establish the authenticity of the message.
In all the other non-Hebrew literature preserved on various kinds of materials, in a variety of languages and in many lands, there is no collection of messages
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given by idols to individuals to deliver to important people. Nor do any other inscriptions provide information about the act of receiving or delivering such messages.
The 30 Mari tablets demonstrate that this practice existed in ancient Semitic societies. The claim of receiving and delivering a message, marked by accusation or promise from a deity to a royal person, is somewhat similar to the claims of Old Testament prophets, but there are marked differences.
Contrast with the Old Testament
The most obvious difference has to do with the source of such messages. The “prophets” at Mari said they obtained the message from one of the many deities worshiped by the people of Mari. The divine voice came from an idol that represented a revered object in nature, such as the sun, moon, sky, or stars, or some power in nature such as a storm, the processes of reproduction, or fate.
The Old Testament prophets, on the other hand, testified that they received their messages from the Creator of all nature, the one true God who had no rivals. The true God could not be represented by idols, but did speak personally to the prophets in understandable words.
The one true God came down to the level of the prophet and couched the revelatory message in a person-to-person structure called a covenant, marked by supreme, divine authority The prophet was called to be God’s messenger and had to deliver the divine word faithfully and courageously. No divination or induced trances were associated with the giving and receiving of the messages.
The content of the Old Testament prophetic messages was concerned with royal recognition and acceptance of the true God’s supreme authority and the keeping of divine laws. Accusations in the messages centered on the king’s rejection of divine authority and law. Warnings of divine judgment in the form of historical acts such as defeat, destruction of the kingdom and land, were based on rebellious and immoral activity. The king was accountable to God and was promised mercy and success if obedient, or punishment if disobedient.
Statue head, third-second Millenium BC.
God used the prophets to perform miracles, but forbade the practices of divination to discover God’s will, and the practices of magic to carry out God’s will.
Names at Mari
The tablets of Mari contain names similar to names in the Old Testament. Names of places are limited to the cities of Hazor and Laish (later renamed Dan, Jgs 18). Only a few personal names are like Biblical names: Noah, Abram, Laban and Jacob are clearly alike, but do not identify the same people. The names Benjamin and David are clouded by a controversy over correct translation of certain words in the Mari tablets.
Over all, the Mari tablets provide background information related to the politics, social structure, religious beliefs, legal system and economic practices in Patriarchal times.