Osservazioni sulla tipologia delle strade dai testi di Emar

Abstract

The article deals with the analysis of the different kinds of roads attested in the legal
documentation brought to light in the city of Emar, modern Meskene Qadime (Syria) - or
attributable to its cultural and geographical environment - dating to the Late Bronze age.
More than 2000 documents have been excavated in the site and a considerable quantity of
tablets from the Antiquity market has been edited. Among those texts, a number of sales of real
estate provides rich information on the ancient landscape. Roads are frequently mentioned as
adjoining features of both buildings and fields and, in the texts, they are identified with a peculiar
terminology differentiating main street axis from smaller lanes inside the urban context and roads
in the countryside. The present work relates the terminology of roads to the kind of estate they are
bordering and analyses the preserved names of roads.