Abstract
Recent excavations carried out in Area HH at Tell Mardikh/Ebla identified a huge sacred area in use from the middle of the 3rd millennium BC until the final destruction of the Middle Bronze Age city. The first building erected in this area in the Early Bronze IVA (2400–2300 BC) was the monumental Temple of the Rock, which was ritually sealed and abandoned at the beginning of the Early Bronze IVB (around 2300–2250 BC). Two of the pits inside the cavity in the cella of the Temple were found to have been filled with a large quantity of fine vessels, as part of a purification ritual carried out before their definitive sealing with superimposed courses of mud-brick. These provide the first coherent ceramic pottery assemblage for the initial stage of the EB IVB Period, and accordingly shed new light on the ceramic horizon of North-West Inner Syria during the last third of the 3rd millennium BC.
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