Umm el-Marra
| Arabic: أم المرى | |
 Shown within Syria
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| Location | Syria |
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| Region | Aleppo Governorate |
| Coordinates | 36°08′02″N 37°41′38″E / 36.133791°N 37.693819°ECoordinates: 36°08′02″N 37°41′38″E / 36.133791°N 37.693819°E |
Umm el-Marra, Arabic: 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.
Umm el-Marra probably had three to five thousand inhabitants between 2800 BCE and about 2100/2000 BCE, when Tuba and other cities in the Jabbul Plain experienced a mysterious collapse of central authority that lasted about 200 years. 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." Simple daily life went on in Tuba, for the site was never completely abandoned, but at the renaissance of the city in 1800 BCE, Amoritic names were now in control. Tuba went on to enjoy a second period of prosperity and power, as a "subsidiary capital" of the still shadowy kingdom of Yamkhad.
After a long period of abandonment, the site was re-occupied in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.
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. Since 1995, a joint archaeological team from the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Amsterdam have been working at Umm el-Marra.
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Wikipedia