Map - Yumurtalık (Earth)

Yumurtalık (meaning "egg nest") is a resort town and a district in the Adana Province of Turkey. It was formerly called Aegeae, Ayas, Lyeys or Laiazzo. It is a Mediterranean port at a distance of about 40 km from Adana city. Yumurtalık's population does not exceed 5,000 in winter, but in summer, it rises to 30 to 40,000 people since many inhabitants of Adana have holiday homes here. There are also many daily visitors during the holiday season.

Yumurtalık has a large free economic zone housing the production units of up to thirty companies presently in operation or in phase of being built. Fields of activities include industries ranging from petrochemicals, synthetic fibers and steel industry, and there are also plans for establishing a major shipyard.

The port has a long history, at least to 2000BC. Hittite pottery of the 17th century BC has been found in the mound of Zeytinbeli Höyük.

This Cilician port city is mentioned by Pausanias under the name Aegeae (Αἰγέαι). a name that appears also in its coinage, It was located on the Gulf of Issus (modern Gulf of İskenderun). Tacitus' Annals XIII:8 also mentions it in its account of the war between Armenia/Rome and Iberia/Parthia. Apollonius of Tyana (c. 15 – c. 100) made his early studies at Aegeae, when the city was at its cultural height.

Under Rome, it was in the Roman province of Cilicia. The Saints Cosmas and Damian are mentioned in Christian hagiography to have been twin brothers, physicians who practiced their profession in Aegeae, accepting no payment for their services, and who eventually suffered martyrdom under Diocletian.

In the Middle Ages, and particularly in the 13th century, Aegeae grew to become an important harbour city of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia. The Venetians called Aegeae Aiazzo or (incorporating the initial of the definite article) Laiazzo, and it became known locally as Ayas (Այաս). The fall of Acre and the silting up of the harbour of Tarsus, together with the advantage of Ayas's good roads eastward, led to the city's becoming the principal centre of trade between West and East. Numerous treaties were negotiated in which the Armenian kings granted various trade privileges to several Italian city-states.

Between 1266 and 1322 raids by Mamluks and Turkmen in the area caused only minor disruptions in mercantile activities. Marco Polo disembarked here to begin his trip to China in 1271, he reportedly described it as a “city good for good trade,” adding that “all spices, silk, gold and wool from inland were carried to this town.”

The Battle of Laiazzo in 1294, in which the navy of the Republic of Genoa overcame that of the Republic of Venice, is thought by some to be that in which Marco Polo later became a prisoner of the Genoese. Within the city a quarter and trading post belonging to another of the Italian maritime republics, Pisa, was also established.

The city was increasingly oppressed by the Mamluks and fell definitively into their hands in 1347, and when European trade routes with the East moved away from the Mediterranean, the city and its harbour lost importance. Later, it was ruled by the Anatolian beylik of Ramadanids and in the 16th century, by the Ottoman Empire - eventually becoming part of the Turkish Republic.

In 1974, actor and film director Yılmaz Güney was arrested at Yumurtalık after a shooting incident that involved the murder of a Yumurtalık judge.