Ebla: An empire rediscovered

by Paolo Matthiae

The rediscovery of Ebla in Northern Syria has been hailed as one of the great moments in modern archeology. It is an event that will revolutionize the study of the ancient Middle East and will have an impact on our understanding of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. What has been revealed is a startling previously unknown kingdom, dating from 2400 B.C., over one thousands years before King Solomon; the oldest known Semite script; and a vastly influential and totally unexpected center of early culture that now takes its place alongside those of Mesopotamia and Egypt. An Empire Rediscovered is the account of a brilliant young archeologist named Paolo Matthiae whose eleven-year excavations on Tell Mardikh, a mound forty miles from Aleppo, revealed the remains of a once great city burned down in 2000 B.C.. They found splendid architecture, finely crated furniture and ornaments, seals and other evidence of a royal capital, and in 1974 a unique cache of forty cuneiform tablets. In 1975 an entire state archive was found with over 15,000 tablets and fragments in an unknown, very archaic Semite language since called Eblaite. Ebla, as the city was known to be, and as these tablets showed, was a busy commercial empire, a producer and exporter of woolen cloth and fine furniture , a high kingdom with many tributary kings, in contact with places as distant as Kish in Mesopotamia, Kanesch in Antolia, and Jerusalem. Filled with photographs, maps and tables, An Empire Rediscovered is a lavishly illustrated and scholarly account of one of the greatest archaeological finds of the twentieth century.

Genres: Archaeology

Hardcover

First published August 1, 1980