Ebla's chief rival is Akkad in southern…

Ebla's chief rival is Akkad in southern Mesopotamia, which flourishes about 2300 BCE.

In addition to identifying another great cultural and political power for the period—and an independent Syrian kingdom at that—the discovery of Ebla has had other important ramifications.

The oldest Semitic language is thought to have been Amorite, but the newly found language of Ebla, a variant of Paleo-Canaanite, is considerably older.