CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

EBLA



Frances Pinnock

INTRODUCTION

T

he excavations at Tell Mardikh/Ebla started in 1964 and are still going on under
the direction of P. Matthiae. After forty-seven years of systematic exploration, it
is possible to delineate the urban plan of the Old Syrian town of Middle Bronze I–II
(c. 1900 – 1600 BC) clearly. The city covers approximately 56 hectares in area. This area
includes the royal residence and Ishtar’s dynastic temple on the Acropolis; the belt of
public, cult and palatial buildings at the feet of the citadel; the quarters of private
houses, and the imposing earthen ramparts of the fortifications. These have a system
of postern gates and of forts and fortresses built on top (Matthiae 2010 a: 226 – 278 ). The
extended excavations made at the beginning of the second millennium BC, on the other
hand, almost completely removed the levels of the previous late Early Syrian period
(= Early Bronze IVB, c. 2200 – 2000 BC), and badly damaged the oldest layers of the
mature Early Syrian period (= Early Bronze IVA) (Matthiae 2010 a: 195 ).
We have thus to consider the whole late Early Syrian town completely lost, with
the exception of one section of the city wall, included in the Old Syrian rampart in
the northeast region, close to the Aleppo Gate (Pinnock 2009 : 69 ). On the other hand,
notwithstanding important gaps, the Early Bronze IVA town is preserved in limited
parts of the Lower Town, but most of all in a peripheral, yet quite large and func-
tionally meaningful sector of the Royal Palace, probably called SA.ZAxkiin the texts
of the State Archives found inside the building (Matthiae 2008 a: 42 ). Two other impor-
tant areas, located respectively on the Acropolis and in the Lower Town, preserved most
of two cult buildings, which probably were the two main sanctuaries of the Early
Syrian town.
The town, which is one of the main examples of secondary urban development in
north inner Syria, developed, apparently without important antecedents, from c. 2600
BC(Matthiae 2003 , 2010 a: 41 ), with a very important phase between 2400 and 2300
BCin Early Bronze IVA, a phase we may now call Age of the State Archives, because
of the presence of an astounding number of cuneiform documents of the palace central
administration. These are throwing an unexpected light on the social, economic, and
political life of the town. Ebla was destroyed, at the end of this period, either by Sargon
of Akkad, who boasts of the conquer of Mari, Yarmuti, and Ebla, in a votive inscrip-
tions of his, dedicated in the Ekur temple at Nippur (Matthiae 2008 a: 24 ), or as a con-
sequence of the political instability created in the region by the Mesopotamian king’s