campaigns towards the Upper Sea, as they called the Mediterranean (Matthiae 1989 a,
2008 a: 108 ).
The quality and quantity of data offered by the texts of the State Archives,
concerning the last fifty years of the town, and the remains of architecture, artistic and
material culture, allow us to fill more than one gap in the reconstruction of the history
of north inner Syria. They also allow us to draw a more precise picture of the history
of Syria, and in particular to focus on the relations of reciprocal contact and influence
between Syria and southern Mesopotamia. As a consequence, it is also possible to
define how and when the development of the cultures of northern Syria and northern
Mesopotamia took place. They had to interact with two regions, north inner Syria and
southern Mesopotamia and these two areas look increasingly like the joint poles for the
elaboration of the ideology of kingship, for the construction of economic and political
power and for the creation of architectural and artistic models.
URBAN PATTERNIf the short section of mud-brick wall, 6. 00 m thick (Figure 28. 1 ), in which a few sherds
of pottery dating from the Early Bronze IVB period were found, reproduces, as seems
quite likely, the line of the previous Early Bronze IVA wall, we could be led to believe
that, in the mature Early Syrian period, the town covered an area quite similar to that
of the Old Syrian period. This is also suggested by the distribution of several
architectural remains and ceramic fragments corresponding with almost every building
of Middle Bronze I–II thus far brought to light. The Acropolis was the seat of central
–– E b l a ––Figure 28.1The northeast rampart of Old Syrian Ebla, including a section of the
Early Bronze IVB mud-brick wall (© Missione Archeologica Italiana in Siria)