Mari

One of the largest cities in Syria, on the right bank of the Euphrates, identified with Tell Hariri. Before the city had been identified, with the help of inscriptions found during the excavations, Mari was known from cuneiform texts found at Nippur and Kish, in southern Mesopotamia. It is also mentioned in the records of the campaigns of Sargon (middle of the 3rd millennium B.C.) and its capture is recorded in the letters of Hammurabi (c. 1792-1750 B.C.). This scanty evidence from external sources was much enriched by the large amount of information derived from documents found in the excavations.

The documents found in the archives of the palace of Zimrilim are of outstanding importance. They comprise some 25,000 cuneiform tablets inscribed with economic, legal and diplomatic texts. The diplomatic texts were letters sent to the Mari court by officials, neighboring kings, members of the royal family and ambassadors. These documents are dated to the first quarter of the 2nd millennium B.C. A number of the texts refer to the Habiru, and the tribe of the Benjamites also gets special mention. Both the Habiru and the Benjamites are linked by scholars with the early Hebrews. The economic documents relate mainly to foodstuffs supplied to the court or distributed by it, hundreds of them dealing with the daily menus of the king and his retinue. The legal texts deal mainly with sales and purchases, and loans of money and grain.

The Mari documents shed light not only on that flourishing kingdom, but also on the history of the ancient Near East and of the early Hebrews.