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Our driver said we were heading straight to Palmyra this morning but we pointed out that we thought we should be going to Ebla en route.He was of the view that Ebla was dull and not interesting so we should just get on the road and save some time.However, bearing in mind that Ebla was an important city-state in two periods, first in the late third millennium BC, then again between 1800 and 1650 BC we said no, we have to go there.'No problem, no problem, it's close to road anyway', was his response.Ahmad was correct, in a way, as compared to the sights of Apamea or Baalbek, Ebla does not provide a feast for the eyes.Instead, the feast provided at Ebla is a 5 course banquet of history, archaeology, language, writing and civilisation so its significance, to us at least, was substantial.Without the knowledge of a guide, however, we wandered around with a curious ignorance about us (Lonely Planet guide where are you now) grateful for the snippets that Maria gleaned from the Italian group.So, thank goodness for the web which informed us that the name Ebla means 'White Rock' and refers to the limestone outcrop on which the city was built.The site is most famous for the Ebla tablets, an archive of about 15,000 cuneiform tablets found there, dated from around 2250 BC and written in the Sumerian script.About 80% of the tablets are written using the usual Sumerian combination of logograms and phonetic signs, while the others exhibited an innovative, purely phonetic representation using Sumerian cuneiform of a previously unknown Semitic language, which was called Eblait.
So having spent some time wandering around by ourselves, we at least felt privileged that we'd visited this incredibly historic and important site.I was also lucky enough to snap some pics of a goat and her kid whilst at the same time witnessing another kid being thoroughly beaten up by his older brother. It seems that the poor young lad had been given a tip by an Italian tourist and, reluctant to share his new found wealth with the family, shared instead his face with his brother's fist.
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