“Since 1988, several articles have been published focusing on rituals performed in the ancient city of Ebla/Tell Mardikh. […] All these works, directly or indirectly, deal with religious ceremonies. Thus, the question arises concerning which kinds of festivals are recorded in the administrative texts, which rituals^{Note 1} routinely took place at Ebla, and, finally, whether listed items used for a sacred purpose refer to the same ritual or describe common elements occurring in different liturgies. […] This paper has the very restricted goal of studying a number of those rituals registered in the administrative records” (p. 215).

The author presents in this paper some ritual texts from the Archives of the Royal Palace G at Ebla: the Purification Ritual, Palace G main Archives, L. 2679 (pp. 215-219), rituals of Regular Offerings (dug₄-ga i-sa-rí / i-sa-i, and other terms, see infra) (pp. 219-221), and the so-called ‘a:tu₅ ritual’^{Note 2} (p. 221), the last one occurring in texts like TM 1502 and TM 1399.

The first ritual presents four key-elements (p. 216), already investigated in Bonechi 1989:

1. the presence of a 'purification priest', called A:NAGA = a:tu₅, contra Viganò, interpreting this term as referring not to the priest but to the ritual itself, concerning the purification of the king's household (pp. 216-217);
2. the offering to the god ^dKU-ra; according to Viganò, this offering was performed by a priest carrying the title 'pa₄:šeš (= pašišu) ^dKU-ra';
3. its association with dug₄-ga i-sa-rí (and its variants), probably offering consisting of garments and wool (defined in other texts as 'níg-ba a-du-lu', 'gift of Adulu');
4. the spelling of da-mi-mu (and its variants).

The Regular Offerings-ritual is then discussed, starting with the different spelling of the term (cf. Bonechi 1989): ‘KA.DI-2 = sá.dug₄-2’, ‘KA-GÁ-2’, and ‘dug₄-ga‘, always appearing with the same gloss ‘i-sa-rí / i-sa-i’, i.e. ‘regular’. From the first of these terms, ‘KA.DI-2 = sá.dug₄-2’, it derived the regular form ‘sá.dug₄-ga’ (attested on L. 2712), glossed ‘zi-gi-nu’ in other texts and interpreted by Milano (ARET 9, p. 402) as deriving from the Semitic škn, ‘to provide’ (et al.).

Eventually, as for the ‘a:tu₅ ritual’, the author stresses how “the presentation of the main elements of the so-called a:tu₅ ritual prompts the legitimate question of whether all these segments belong to one ceremony, even though they are registered in the MAT reports as separate items. […] I think it would not be wrong to join Bonechi (see Bonechi 1989) in stating that they are parts of the same ceremony and that it probably took place in the temple of the Ebla patron deities” (p. 221).

The author discusses in this paper the actual realisations of religious practices at Ebla/Tell Mardikh, analysing the textual sources with a strict philological approach. This is a clear exemplification of how ancient religious practices can be reconstructed on the base of ancient texts. On the same topic, cf. Viganò 2000.

• Note 1: On rituals and worship in Ancient Near East and the Bible, see e.g. Achtemeier 1996.
• Note 2: The interpretation of the term a:tu₅ is questioned if as referring to a priest or to a lustration ritual; the same term could both mean "an 'atua' priest" or "an 'atua' purification ritual").