Syria’s archaeological sites between life and death

22 December 2024

On 8 December 2024, the Assad dictatorship fell. After almost fourteen years of civil war and nearly 500,000 deaths, what is left of Syria and its archaeological remains, from Palmyra to Ebla and Idlib?

Since the announcement of the fall of the Damascus regime, the Syrian population has been wavering between relief, jubilation and concern: what future does the coalition led by Islamist rebels hold for them? After taking stock of the dead and the urgent needs of the population, the time will come to assess the damage caused by the conflict to Syria's archaeological heritage.

During all the years of war, hundreds of Syrian sites were destroyed and looted, the most spectacular and famous of which, such as Palmyra, were targeted by Daesh jihadists. As an Assyriologist, I am particularly concerned about Syrian sites whose history has been reconstructed thanks to several thousand cuneiform tablets, such as Ebla, Mari and Ugarit. After the outbreak of war in March 2011, excavations were halted and, despite the presence of a guard on site for several years, some sites were extensively looted.

The site of Ebla (modern Tell Mardikh), in the governorate of Idlib, some 60 kilometres south of Aleppo, was a rich city-state in the 24th century BCE. Archaeological excavations carried out by an Italian team since the late 1960s have unearthed nearly 14,000 administrative and literary cuneiform tablets, mostly in the royal palace (Palace G), testifying to the importance of this vast capital far from the Sumerian cities of southern Iraq. Since the start of the war in 2011, the Idlib region has been the target of violent conflict. After falling into the hands of Daesh, Idlib was taken by the al-Nusra Front (later known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) in 2015, then bombed by Russia and the Syrian regime.

Inventory underway at the Idlib Museum

Satellite images of Ebla show numerous looting pits across its entire surface, as well as bomb craters and entire areas cleared by bulldozers. In addition, various military constructions have contributed significantly to the destruction of the site. The tablets and other treasures of Ebla were kept in the Idlib Museum, which opened in 1989. After being partially destroyed and looted, the museum reopened in August 2018, but the lengthy work of cataloguing the missing objects, particularly the tablets, is still ongoing.

Mari, excavated by a French team that started work on it in 1933, was a prosperous city from the middle of the 3rd millennium BCE. In the 18th century BCE, it was the capital of a powerful kingdom that was regularly at war with Babylon. Numerous archaeological remains have been unearthed in the temples and palaces, including nearly 15,000 cuneiform tablets forming the archives of the kings of Mari. The site has been largely destroyed since 2011, when archaeologists were forced to leave the area. Under Daesh control, tunnels were dug with bulldozers under the ancient walls, and the site is littered with holes dug by looters searching for antiquities to sell. All the archaeologists’ preservation and restoration efforts have been reduced to nothing.

Disappearance of the Mari tablets

During the French mandate in Syria, the Mari tablets were loaned to France for study. Preserved at the Louvre Museum, then in a château in the Loire Valley during the Second World War, they were subsequently transferred to the Collège de France and finally to premises provided by the City of Paris for the benefit of the group of researchers responsible for their publication. The entire collection was photographed and nearly 9,000 tablets were published before all the Mari tablets were returned to Syria between 1996 and 2004 to be kept at the Deir ez-Zor Museum. According to a report on the state of Syrian museums in 2020, the Deir ez-Zor Museum, founded in 1974 and expanded in 1996, was emptied of its most important collections, which were transferred to Damascus in 2014. Today, we do not know where the Mari tablets are.

Other Syrian sites, such as Ugarit on the Mediterranean coast, are said to have suffered less from the conflict. As Syrians discover, in shock, what remains of the Assad clan's prisons and torture chambers, the whole world is wondering about the future of the country's reconstruction. May the year 2025 bring peace and autonomy to the Syrian people and allow them to reconnect with their cultural heritage.