The discovery of Ebla gave us a wealth of information on the Near East in the 3rd millennium BCE but its greatest contribution is to our understanding of the complex and economic relationships between the cities of Mesopotamia and Syria. Ebla was a diplomatic based empire and due to its unique geographical location, it had a key role in managing and conducting relations between early North-West Syria and Upper Mesopotamia (Matthiae 1976, 112). Due to these active relations with other cities it was stimulated to absorb cultural elements from the Sumerian and Mesopotamian worlds (Matthiae 1980a, 161). Ebla’s political structure, language, religion and art all reflect evidence of intensive cross-cultural relations and our analysis of these reveals the extensive network active in the Near East in the 3rd millennium BCE.
The first question that needs to be addressed if I am going to take this approach to the importance of Ebla, is whether there is evidence of contact between Ebla and other cities and states. Our most useful and plentiful supply of evidence comes from with the discovery of the two small chambers, L.2712 and L.2769 (Matthiae 1980a, 153). In the first room over 1000 tablets and fragments of tablets were found and in the second chamber around 14,000 tablets and 600 fragments of tablets (Matthiae 1980a, 153). This has become known as the state archives with the tablets grouped in categories and detailing the administration of the city (Matthiae 1980a, 179). It records extensive trade relations with the surrounding cites, with the organised documentation of the dispatching and arrival of goods, tributes, taxes, and payments (Matthiae 1980a, 179). Judging by the number of tablets relating to the production of cloth, the clot...
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