Around 1400 BCE, Hittite scribes recorded a Hurrian epic poem entitled "Song of Liberation" in a bilingual edition, fragments of which were discovered in 1983 (CE) in Hattusha, capital city of Hatti. The poem tells a mythohistorical tale turning on the gods' demand that the city of Ebla release the people of another city, Igingallish, whom they have subjected. But the senate of Ebla refuses to grant release, exercising their liberty as a body of free men to deny liberty to those who serve them. The city of Ebla was indeed destroyed around 1600 BCE, and this poem explains why. What was the condition of liberty to which the gods demanded that the subjected people be released, and why did this interest the scribes of Hatti two centuries later?

Eva M. Von Dassow is the National Endowment for the Humanities Post-Doctoral Rome Prize Fellow in Ancient Studies at the American Academy in Rome and associate professor of classics and Near Eastern studies at the University of Minnesota.