The ancient city of Ebla, whose 15 decades of fame came between 2400 and 2250 BC, when it was sacked by the Akkadians from Mesopotamia under Naram Sin. The site is not terribly well marked nor terribly impressive, just an archaeological dig in the middle a plain surrounded at middle distance by low lying hills with wheat fields sloping gently up --- until you realize that those distant hills are the remains of city walls thirty meters thick and 20 meters high, and the place where you are standing was the palace at the center of a city of hundreds of thousands of individuals who had independently come to the conclusion that the amber waves of grain beyond the walls were a special sign that God favored Ebla and always would. A real Ozymandias moment.