The Ebla archives
Seventeen thousand tablets in a burned Syrian palace record a kingdom nobody knew existed.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 50 years
- Known to
- ± 50 years
- Era
- Bronze Age, Holocene
Excavation at Tell Mardikh from 1974 uncovered the state archive of Ebla, baked hard and preserved by the fire that destroyed the palace around 2300 BCE. The tablets record treaties, tribute, trade in textiles and metals, and a Semitic language previously unknown. They demonstrated that northern Syria held a major literate power contemporary with Sumer, rather than being a periphery of it.