3000 BC to 1750 BC

Ebla and Mari

Ebla, near Aleppo, and Mari, on the Euphrates, are great cities of the third millennium BC, and Ebla's archive of thousands of clay tablets is one of the oldest ever found. Akkadian kings claim to have conquered Ebla in the twenty-third century BC, and Hammurabi of Babylon destroys Mari around 1760 BC.