Ebla

Tell Mardikh

Syria · Idlib

Ancient cityIntermittent excavation
Approximate period3,500 BCE — 700 CEApproximately from the Early Bronze Age onward; especially the Early and Middle Bronze Age See on the map ↓

In brief

Ebla at Tell Mardikh was the capital of a kingdom with extensive connections in the third millennium BCE. The palace archive has provided detailed information about the state's administration, economy and diplomatic relations.

What was found?

  • 1Royal Palace G

    The palace's architectural remains, together with the royal archive, shed light on Ebla's administrative center. They are among the fundamental sources of evidence for studying the city's early state organization.

  • 2Royal tablet archive

    An archive consisting of 17,000 cuneiform tablets dating to approximately 2300 BCE was found. The documents provide information about state administration, diplomacy, military affairs, the economy and social relations.

  • 3İştar Temple

    One of the important buildings of the Middle Bronze Age city is the temple dedicated to the goddess İştar. It documents religious life at Ebla in later periods.

What does it point to?

The palace and archive show that Ebla was the center of a kingdom that maintained extensive relations and conducted its affairs through written records. The İştar Temple reveals that the city's history continued beyond the period to which the archive belongs.

What did it teach us?

  1. Documented that Ebla was an important actor in Syrian and Mesopotamian politics around 2300 BCE.
  2. Made it possible to study the administration and economic relations of early states through detailed written records.
  3. Showed that the city's importance was not confined to the Early Bronze Age but continued into the Middle Bronze Age.

Images

Ebla Palazzo Reale G - GAR - 1-01
Ilario Di Nardo · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Ebla Tempio di Ishtar - GAR - 5-01
Gianfranco Gazzetti · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Ebla
Inge at en.wikipedia · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Record

Culture
Eblaite; Amorite
First modern dig
1964
Team / historical
Davide Nadali; Sapienza University of Rome and Syria's Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums
Coordinates
35.7980°, 36.7980°

Sources

  1. dipantichita.web.uniroma1.it
  2. cordis.europa.eu
  3. en.wikipedia.org

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12.000

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