Syria - Mari & Europos-Dura sites of Euphrates Valley

Mari N34 33 1.11 E40 53 19.51 Europos-Dura N34 44 52.12 E40 43 48.53 The two cities of Mari and Europos-Dura were founded on the Euphrates river. The cities were at key location, where they controlled the road to the Euphrates that connected the Mediterranean world with Mesopotamia and Greater Asia. It is probably the most important site in the history of the world, and it is the second largest in the Syrian Mesopotamia. Its situation between the two seas, the "rising sun" and the "sun setting" - the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean - made Mari an almost-obligatory passage point. A part of the Euphrates, halfway between the Syrian world and Anatolia on one hand, and the Mesopotamian world backed by Iran and the Persian Gulf on the other hand, Mari played a key role for almost a millennium. Discovered in 1933, and regularly explored ever since (André Parrot, J. Cl. Margueron, Pascal Buterlin), Mari is the site of reference that makes it possible to understand the fundamental aspects of the Syro-Mesopotamian civilization of the Third Millennium (early Bronze and Bronze ages). After 42 excavation campaigns, it is one of the best-known cities of the Middle Eastern Antiquity.