From Weighing Wool to Weaving Tools : Textile Manufacture at Ebla during the Early Syrian Period in the Light of Archaeological Evidence

The importance of textile industry at Ebla is well testified by the administrative texts of the Royal Palace G (c. 2400-2300 BC), which shed light on the great quantity of textiles manufactured and exchanged under the control of the public palatial organization. Texts inform on the quality of the products, the different types of textiles, the personnel involved in the production, although they are silent on the manufacture process and on many aspects of the economic system of textiles redistribution and/or gift exchange. However, combining archaeological and epigraphic data it is possible to reach a more detailed picture of this key-sector of the Eblaic economy, which played a decisive role in the wider supra-regional urban growth in the Levant. Textile tools found in the Royal Palace G at Ebla and from other EBA Syrian sites (above all spindle-whorls, bone implements and weighing devices) can be used to reconstruct the operational sequence and the general framework of textile technology to be compared with textual data, and the variability of iconographic representations of garments corresponds to the large number of textile products cited in the texts, although a precise correlation is very difficult. Finally, zooarchaeological information shows the change in the husbandry in relation with the wool production.