Ebla

Ebla is an archaeological site and ancient city located at Tell Mardikh in the Idlib Governorate of Syria, about 60 kilometers southwest of Aleppo. It rose to prominence in the Early Bronze Age as the capital of a powerful Eblaite kingdom. The site was excavated from 1964 to 1974 by an Italian team led by Paolo Matthiae, and the discovery of an extensive archive of clay tablets transformed knowledge of the period.

The Ebla tablets date to roughly 2500–2250 BCE and comprise administrative, economic, and literary texts. They were written in Eblaite, a Northwest Semitic language, using the cuneiform script borrowed from Mesopotamia. The tablets provide the first large corpus of documents preserved from a single city-state in this region.

The texts indicate a centralized bureaucratic administration with a king, viziers, and managers who controlled taxation and distribution. The tablets reveal an active economy with records of goods such as grain, oil, wool, and crafts, as well as labor and consignment records. They also show extensive contact with neighboring regions and Mesopotamian cities, reflecting a broad trade and diplomatic network.

The archives also include references to treaties, legal statutes, and religious offerings, giving insight into the political culture of Ebla and its interactions with other states. The city was apparently destroyed in a major event around 2300 BCE, after which it was largely abandoned; a later, smaller settlement occupied the site in subsequent periods.

Ebla's tablets are a cornerstone of Near Eastern archaeology and linguistics. They have informed understanding of early Semitic languages, urban administration, and the network of Levantine intercity relations, influencing interpretations of the development of writing, state formation, and international diplomacy in the ancient world.