Ebla, ancient city of northern Syria, discovered in 1968 by the Italian archaeologist Paolo Matthiae at Tell Mardìkh, a 56-hectare (140-acre) mound south of Aleppo. Excavating the site in 1975, Matthiae unearthed Ebla's royal archives, a collection of more than 14,000 inscriptions on clay tablets dating from 2500-2200 BC. Written in the cuneiform characters originated by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia, adapted to the language of Ebla's Semitic inhabitants, they show the city to have been an important commercial center ruled by a merchant aristocracy with an elected king. They also reveal the existence of a flourishing north Syrian civilization rivaling that of Egypt and Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BC.