À propos de l’histoire la plus ancienne du “bouc émissaire” d’après les données épigraphiques éblaïtes. Le cas du nídba <sup>d</sup>en<sup>(ki)</sup>

Abstract

This article tackles the question of the most ancient attestations of the scapegoat ritual in the Ebla texts of Third Millennium BC. Aim of this work is to provide new insights in this much debated question: in fact, according to me, the scapegoat is attested at Ebla not only in the kingship ritual texts, but also in some administrative tablets dealing with the offering ceremony for the denki, the cemetery of the royal ancestors and its tutelar divinity dra-sa-ab. The texts clearly tell us that during this ceremony a she-goat was adorned with a wool fabric. The scapegoat ritual is necessary in these contexts because of the “pollution” as a result of coming into contact with the royal deceased ancestors. Their spirits are evoked in order to obtain informations concerning the city and the members of the royal family and the sun deity played the role of psychopompos. Consequently, we can compare these very complex Ebla passages with some interesting necromantic ritual texts from Mesopotamia and Ugarit, but also with Omeric poems. Among the Hittite too the sun deity of the earth is responsible for ensuring direct connection between the alive and the dead ones. A new analysis of these passages allowed us to give new interpretations of some misunderstood Eblaite words: e.g. za-ni-tum,“harlot“, from the West Semitic root *zny, and gú-bù-rúm, “purification ritual”, being compared with the akkadian kuppurum, from the semtic root *kpr.