Umm el-Marra

Umm el-Marra, (أم المرى), east of modern Aleppo in the Jabbul Plain of northern Syria, was one of the ancient Near East's oldest cities, located on a crossroads of two trade routes northwest of Ebla, in a landscape that was much more fertile than it is today. Possibly this is the city of Tuba mentioned in Egyptian inscriptions listing cities that were defeated or destroyed in the Pharaoh Thutmose III's north Syrian campaign. The city of Tuba is also mentioned in epigraphic remains from Ebla, Mari, and Alalakh.

Early Bronze
Umm el-Marra VI: In the Early Bronze III (c. 2750/2700-2350 BC), Umm el-Marra was an important hub with about 3000-5000 inhabitants. At the beginning of this period, the region was wetter than today, but by 2500 BC climate became gradually drier.

Ebla Period
Umm el-Marra V-IV: In the Early Bronze IV (c. 2350-2000 BC), the dry climate accelerated and led to the cities on the Jabbul Plain experience a collapse of central authority between 2200-2000 BC (4.2 ka event). Partial answers to the question, why these early centers were so brittle, may lie in the effects of sustained drought on overstressed primitive agriculture. Dr. Glenn Schwartz of Johns Hopkins, who has been doing field archaeology at Umm el-Marra, suggested in 1994 that "they placed extensive demands on their environments, continually intensifying their agriculture to feed more people. The added stress from a few dry years may have been the straw that broke the camel's back." Level V contains Tomb 1 with pottery similar to Mardikh IIB1 Ebla Palace G.

Middle Bronze
Umm el-Marra Level IIId: In the Transitional EB IV-MB I, the site was never completely abandoned. Thus, this region saw some continuation as opposed to a collapse following the severe drought conditions that had prevailed. In the MB I (c. 2000-1820 BC) it gradually recovered.

Yamhad Period
Umm el-Marra Levels IIIa-c: In the MB IIA (c. 1820 BC), the city saw a renaissance and controlled by the Amorites. At this time, it became a regional capital subject to the Great Kingdom of Yamkhad centered on Aleppo. A series of public works saw the construction of ramparts with a mudbrick city-wall.

Mitanni Period
During the Late Bronze, the site was under the control of various powers. It would at one point have been under the Mitanni Empire, and Thutmose III of Egypt might have campaigned in the area.

Hittite Period
Following the military campaigns of Suppiluliuma I, it became part of the Hittite Empire following the Fall of Carchemish and death of Tushratta of Mitanni around 1345 BC. The site was destroyed in the 14th century BC.

The Late Bronze Age collapse saw the city completely abandoned by 1200/1190 BC.

Classical Period
After a long period of abandonment, the site was re-occupied in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

Archaeology
The site covers around 25 hectares. It was surrounded with a city wall with 3 gates and a defensive ditch. Excavation of Umm el-Marra began in the late 1970s and early 1980s with soundings by a Belgian team led by Roland Tefnin. From 1994 until 2010, a joint archaeological team from the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Amsterdam worked at Umm el-Marra.

A rare intact, unlooted tomb, ca. 2300 BCE, uncovered by Dr. Schwartz's team in 2000 at the site, made science press headlines, for it contained five richly-adorned adults and three babies, some of whom were ornamented head-to-toe in gold and silver.

It may be the oldest intact possibly royal tomb yet to be found in Syria. Dr. Schwartz noted of peculiar aspects in the burial that they 'may hint at ritual characteristics, rather than a tomb simply reserved for royalty or elite individuals.' The interment, which was above ground in ancient times, included three layers of skeletons in wooden coffins lined with textiles. The top layer includes traces of two coffins, each containing a young woman in her twenties and a baby. The women were the most richly ornamented of all the occupants of the tomb, with jewelry of silver, gold and lapis lazuli. Also of interest on this level was an accompanying lump of iron, possibly from a meteorite. Geochemical analysis of the iron, based on the ratio of iron to nickel and cobalt, confirms that the iron was meteoritic in origin. One of the babies appeared to be wearing a bronze torque, or collar.

In the layer below were coffins of two adult males and the remains of a baby at some distance from both men, close to the entrance of the tomb. This differs from the placement of the babies in the upper layer, where they were placed next to the women's bodies. Crowning the older man was a silver diadem decorated with a disk bearing a rosette motif, while the man opposite had a bronze dagger. The third and lowest layer held an adult male with a silver cup and silver pins.

All the individuals were accompanied by scores of ceramic vessels, some of which contained animal bones that may have been part of funerary animal offerings. Outside the tomb to the south, against the tomb wall, was a jar containing the remains of a baby, a spouted jar, and two skulls, horselike but apparently belonging neither to horses or donkeys. These equids were subsequently identified as kunga, a hybrid of domestic donkey and wild ass.

Incisions on four clay cylinders have been hypothesized to be Early Alphabetic Semitic writing, which would make them the oldest such examples.

The ceramics in the tomb date to around 2300 B.C., the latter part of Egypt's pyramid age.

Modern village
In 2004, Umm el-Marra had a population of 1,878.