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A newly discovered ancient library which scholars say will rival the famous collections from Mari, Nuzi and Amarna has been found in northern Syria at the site of Tell Mardikh (modern Ebla).
More than 15,000 clay tablets written about 4500 years ago in cuneiform characters were excavated in two small rooms which apparently served as the King’s palace library.
The texts include reports from ambassadors, administrative documents, grammars, vocabularies, exercises to teach writing to young members of the royal family and even true encyclopedias.
Ebla flourished between about 2,400 B.C. and 2,250 B.C. Its prosperity was based on a thriving commerce. Dr. Paolo Mathiae, head of an Italian team of archeologists which is excavating Ebla, says the documents show that at its height the city had 262,000 inhabitants, including 10,700 civil servants. The city was destroyed about 2,250 B.C. by King Narumsin of Akkad, nephew of Sargon. Although Narumsin sacked and perhaps burned the city, the royal archives remained in tact beneath the ruins.
The language of the tablets is a Northwest Semitic tongue closely related to Hebrew. Dr. Mathiae has called the hitherto unknown language Eblait, after the site of Ebla.
Dr. Mathiae described the tablets as “one of the most sensational archaeological discoveries of this century.” The work of transcription and translation will take scholars many years to complete and publish. Only then will the full impact of the discovery be known.
A newly discovered ancient library which scholars say will rival the famous collections from Mari, Nuzi and Amarna has been found in northern Syria at the site of Tell Mardikh (modern Ebla).
More than 15,000 clay tablets written about 4500 years ago in cuneiform characters were excavated in two small rooms which apparently served as the King’s palace library.
