Bartonia: Backtracking - Post from 8 days ago

4 more days here in Syria, then 4 days in Jordan, then we will be on our way back to our Rock. There are many, so many, rocks here in Syria, and in Europe too, but the best rock is the rock you can call your own!

We had a traditional meal in a farmer's village today, which the boys have come to love... Nonno has bought computers for the farmers he works with and has been distributing them while we're here, so we've been in some truly remote and totally arid places and have had a rare glimpse of traditional Syrian village life. Today the boys got to cuddle a three-day old lamb!
Everyone has been in pretty good health, except for the odd (short-term) belly upset - Barney has put on weight and can't do up the top button of his jeans anymore!

After the Citadel there was Ebla:

Ebla (or Tell Mardikh) is 60km southwest of Aleppo. IN 1968, archaeologists from the University of Rome found a basalt votive statue with Akkadian inscriptions where the name Ebla was mentioned twice. Seven years later, the team announced the discovery of 16,500 cuneiform tablets in the archives of the royal palace of Ebla. The tablets date from 2400 B.C. and were written in Sumerian and Eblaite. The writings constitute the most ancient ‘vocabularies’’ ever found. According to translations, Ebla was the centre of a great political power and dominated northern Syria, parts of Iraq and lower Turkey. Ebla was finally destroyed by an Akkadian king Naram Sin in 2250 B>C> and later had another prosperous period between 18^th and 16^th Century B.C.

The interesting thing about this and other sites is the phenomenon of the “Tell”. Most old cities were fortified and had a wall around them. If it was abandoned or laid waste some of the buildings would still stand, and some of the walls. Over centuries of disuse the sand and wind-blown dirt gradually filled in the area inside the walls, and built up against the outside of the walls until all that remained was a flat topped hill, or Tell. Archaeologists had read about Ebla and went looking for a Tell in approximately the right location, of an appropriate size. Most old cities had a gate in the fortifications to each of the directions. The Ebla Tell was in the right place and an appropriate size, and it had slight deviations or depressions at each of the points of the compass, where the gates were, and were the sand and dirt had not built up as high. From the trig station at the top of the hill in the middle to the walls was approximately 500m. Within that city circle, with a radius of 500m, 25 000 people had been supported!

Ebla: The Tell is in the distance

looking down into one of the active ‘digs’ on the site.

tools of the trade: brooms and brushes, and buckets of bits recovered.

Looking back into the central mound of Ebla through the basalt flanked gate of Damascus, so called because it was the road to Damascus. White render has been placed over the excavated parts to protect them from weathering while they dig elsewhere.

excavated pot


grinding stones. The basalt would have been brought up especially from 400kms south.

The next day Peter stayed home because Tai had a bit of a fever (now fully recovered) and Dani Felix and Barney went with Nonno to visit Fawaz and his family. Nonno was handing over a computer for the farmer’s use in the plant breeding program.