Ebla Religion

Ebla was one of the earliest kingdoms in Syria and an important center of trade throughout the 3rd millennium BCE and in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Its discovery proved that the Levant possessed an ancient civilization that rivaled those of Egypt and Mesopotamia. The first Eblaite kingdom is regarded as the first documented world power. The city of Ebla began to be excavated in 1964. An archive of about 20,000 informative cuneiform tablets was discovered. This 4000-year-old plus collection of tablets constitute the oldest library ever discovered. Archeologists deduced that the tablets had originally been shelved according to subject, several millennia prior to the 1876 advent of the Dewey Decimal System. Ebla was polytheistic. During the first kingdom they worshiped their dead kings. The pantheon of first kingdom Ebla included three catagories of paired deities. First, there were the couples, a god and his female consort such as Hadabal (a deity exclusive to Ebla) and consort Belatu. Second, there were pairs of deities similar to many in the Egyptian and Mesopotamian pantheons, divine duos which, among other exploits, cooperated to create the cosmos. A third category included paired deities who were actually a single deity with two names. Examples are artisan god Kamish/Tit (a Moabite god) and artisan god Kothar-wa-Khasis (also of Semitic origin). The four city gates of Elba bore the names of gods Dagan (Dagon, national god of the Philistines), Hadda (Hadad, storm and rain god of the Canaanite and ancient Mesopotamian religions), Rasap (Resheph, native Eblaite god of war and plague), and Utu (ancient Mesopotamian sun god Shamash). An offering list stamped upon a cuneiform tablet includes about 40 deities to which the Eblaites regularly offered sacrifices.