Kura was the city god of Ebla (Tell Mardikh) and, beside Hadabal, the foremost deity of the Eblaite pantheon attested in the palace archive of around 2400-2300 BCE. Worshipped, so far as is known, only at Ebla itself, he was bound closely to the institution of kingship: the great ritual of the renewal of kingship began at his temple by the city wall, and king and queen were treated as the earthly manifestation of Kura and his consort Barama. The meaning of his name is unknown and is generally ascribed to a pre-Semitic substrate. After the destruction of Ebla both Kura and Barama vanish from the record.