Large fortified site in northern Mesopotamia, southwest of Aleppo, Syria, which was the ancient Ebla. Important Middle Bronze Age remains, including city gate, and fine sculpture have been found. Ebla was previously known from cuneiform texts, including inscriptions of kings of Akkad and Gudea of Lagash. Its large palace was destroyed by Naram-Sin c 2240 BC. The library of the palace contained c. 16,630 tablets and fragments with commercial, administrative, financial, lexical, historical, literary, and agricultural texts in cuneiform in a hitherto unknown northwest Semitic language called Eblaite. The discovery of the Eblaite tablets has aided comparative studies of Semitic languages and has also aided modern studies of the unrelated Sumerian language.