Ziggurat Complex of Ebla

35.7999°N, 36.7981°E.

The ziggurat complex of Ebla — ancient Ibla, modern Tell Mardikh — in modern Idlib Governorate, Syria. Constructed during the Early Dynastic Mature phase of Eblaite civilisation between approximately 2400 and 2300 BCE, when Ebla was the political and commercial capital of a regional state controlling much of northwestern Syria. The structure is part of a religious precinct on the citadel rather than a single isolated ziggurat — a Syrian variant of the Mesopotamian platform-temple convention. Excavated by Paolo Matthiae for the Italian Archaeological Mission to Syria from 1964 onward. The Ebla Royal Archives — approximately 17,000 cuneiform tablets recovered from the palace in 1975 written in Eblaite, an early Semitic language related to but distinct from Akkadian — extended the documented history of writing in the Levant by 500 years and rewrote the early political geography of the region. The site was extensively damaged during the Syrian civil war between 2011 and 2017 and has been on UNESCO's at-risk list since.

A ziggurat-platform in the city whose archive proved Syria had been writing its own history before Akkad existed, in a country whose civil war put the entire site under direct military fire.