An enormous commercial network linking Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Aegean, and the Syrian coast is perhaps under the aegis of the kingdom of Ebla ("city of the white stones"), the chief site of which will be discovered in 1975 at Tall Mardikh, sixty-four kilometers south of Aleppo.

Numerous tablets give evidence of a sophisticated and powerful indigenous Syrian empire, which dominates northern Syria and portions of lower Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Iran.