Ebla was an ancient city located in northern Syria, about 55 km southwest of Aleppo. It was an important city-state in two periods, first in the late third millennium BC, then again between 1800 and 1650 BC. The site is known today as Tell Mardikh, and is famous mainly for archives with more than 20,000 cuneiform tablets, dated from around 2250 BC, in Sumerian and in Eblaite — a previously unknown Semitic language similar to Akkadian.
1 Discovery and excavation
In 1964, Italian archaeologists from the University of Rome La Sapienza directed by Paolo Matthiae began excavating at Tell Mardikh. In 1968 they recovered a statue dedicated to the goddess Ishtar bearing the name of Ibbit-Lim, a king of Ebla. That identified the city, long known from Egyptian and AkkadAkkad (or Agade was a city and its region of northern Mesopotamia, (located in present-day Iraq) between Assyria to the northwest and Sumer to the south. It reached the height of its power between the 22nd and 18th centuries BC, before the rise of Babylonian inscriptions. In the next decade the team discovered a palace dating approximately from 2500– 2000 BC. About 20,000 well-preserved cuneiform tablets were discovered in the ruins. The tablets are written in a SemiticSemitic is a controversial adjective which in common parlance refers either to specifically Jewish things or to things originating among speakers of Semitic languages or people descended from them, and in a linguistic context to the northeastern subfamily dialect that is being called ' Eblaite ', as well as in Sumerian, demonstrating Ebla's close links to southern Mesopotamia, where the script had developed. Vocabulary lists were found with the tablets, allowing them to be translated.
It now appears that this was not the palace library, which may yet be uncovered, but an archive of provisions and tribute, law cases and diplomatic and trade contacts, and a scriptorium where apprentices copied texts. The larger tablets had originally been stored on shelves, but had fallen onto the floor when the palace was destroyed. The find spots of the tablets allowed the excavators to reconstruct their original position: it soon appeared that they were originally shelved according to subject.
2 Ebla in the third millennium BC
The name "Ebla" means "White Rock", and refers to the limestone outcrop on which the city was built. Although the site shows signs of continuous occupation since before 3000 BC, its power grew and reached its apogee in the second half of the next millennium. Ebla's first apogee was between 2400 and 2240 BC ; its name is mentioned in texts from Akkad around 2300 BC.
Most of the Ebla palace tablets, which date from that period, are about economic matters; they provide a good look into the everyday life of the inhabitants, as well as many important insights into the cultural, economic, and political life of northern Syria and Near East around the middle of the third millennium B.C. The texts are accounts of the state revenues, but they also include royal letters, Sumerian-Eblaite dictionaries, school texts and diplomatic documents, like treaties between Ebla and other towns of the region.
2.1 Economy
At that time, Ebla was a major commercial center. The tablets reveal that the city's inhabitants owned about 200,000 head of mixed cattle (sheep, goats, and cows). The city's main articles of trade were probably timber from the nearby mountains (and perhaps from Lebanon), and textiles (mentioned in Sumerian texts from the city-state of Lagash). Most of its trade seems to have been directed towards Mesopotamia (chiefly Kish), and contacts with Egypt are attested by gifts from pharaohs Khafra and Pepi I. Handicrafts may also have been a major export: exquisite artifacts have been recovered from the ruins, including wood furniture inlaid with mother-of-pearl and composite statues created from different colored stones. The artistic style at Ebla may have influenced the quality work of the following Akkadian empire (ca. 2350 – 2150 BC ).
