Ebla: A Forgotten Kingdom and One of the World's Oldest Archives

Until the 1960s Ebla was known only from Mesopotamian and Egyptian texts, as a powerful city somewhere in northern Syria. Nobody knew where — until an Italian mission led by archaeologist Paolo Matthiae began digging at Tell Mardikh, south of Idlib, in 1964.

The great discovery

In 1968 a statue was found bearing the name of a king of Ebla, proving the mound was the lost city. Then in 1974 and 1975 came the find that shook archaeology: in rooms of the royal palace lay a complete archive of some seventeen thousand clay tablets and fragments from around 2400–2300 BC.

The tablets had stood on wooden shelves that burned when the palace was destroyed. But the fire that consumed the shelves baked the clay, preserving it for thousands of years.

What is in the archive?

• Administrative and economic records: grain, textiles and metals distributed, taxes and accounts.
• Treaties and letters with distant cities.
• Bilingual word lists in Sumerian and Eblaite — among the oldest "dictionaries" in history.
• Religious and literary texts.

The archive showed that Syria in the third millennium BC was not a margin of Mesopotamia and Egypt but a centre of civilisation with its own kings, administration, trade and written language.

The site today

Tell Mardikh lies in the southern Idlib countryside and, like many sites, was affected by the war years. A visit requires checking the current situation and going with a local guide. Objects from Ebla are shown in the museums of Idlib and Aleppo and the National Museum in Damascus — check which halls are open.

Read also about Ugarit and the oldest alphabet and the Syrians who shaped Rome.

Site

Tell Mardikh, about 55 km south-west of Aleppo

Date

c. 2400–2300 BC

Archive

About 17,000 tablets and fragments

Found by

Italian mission led by Paolo Matthiae