Mesopotamia: The Home of the World's First Cities

Mesopotamia: The Home of the World’s First Cities

By Mr Ghaz, December 23, 2010

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Mesopotamia: The Home of the World’s First Cities

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Eridu lay on the plain of Sumer about 13 miles (20km) southwest of Ur. Archaeologists who have explored the site have traced its history back through many layers of occupation to the start of Sumer’s as Ubaid from a site 4 miles (6km) from Ur where its artefacts were first discovered in 1919.

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Historians today tend not to accord city status to anything built in the Ubaid period, which lasted from about 5900 to 4000 BCE. Villagers lived at the time in fragile reed huts rather like those built by the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq into modern times. Lacking metal and stone, they made most of their tools and utensils from fired clay. The evidence of graves suggests that they lived in an egalitarian society, with little distinction of class of rank. They fashioned bizarre terracotta statuettes of female figures with the heads of snakes or reptiles-no doubt representations of some local goddess.

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Most significantly of all, the Ubaid people built temples. At Eridu the remains of no fewer than twelve separate structures have been identified, each one built on top of its predecessor once the mudbrick walls started to crumble. The later examples were imposing structures with strong walls decorated with ornamental buttresses designed to relieve the monotony of the brickwork. Offerings of dried fish found even in the lower levels suggest that from early on the god worshipped there was Enki, a leading Sumerian deity who succeeded Apsu as the patron of fresh water. Significantly, Enki presided over irrigation, on which the whole civilization of Sumer was to be built.

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To modern eyes, Eridu looks more like a town than a city, for all its undoubted significance in Sumer’s early history. It extended over an area of only about 100 acres (40 hectares), and its population probably numbered in thousands rather than tens of thousands. By the time the Ubaid period came to an end it had been largely abandoned.

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Most authorities agree that the first real city was Uruk, 50 miles (80km) to the north. Its remains were first identified in 1850 by the English archaeologist W.K. Loftus, although the site was not scientifically explored until the 1920’s, when it was thoroughly investigated by a German team.

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Like Babylon (Babel) and Sumer (Shinar), Uruk won a mention in the Old Testament under the name of Erech, it features with Babel and Akkad as one of the cities ruled by Nimrod, the “mighty hunter before the Lord.” It may also have been the place referred to in the story of the Tower of Babel, as recounted in the Book of Genesis “And as men migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another. “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had bricks for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens ... .” Uruk was also the home of the legendary hero Gilgamesh and a real-life ruler of that name appears on the king-list for the city.

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Uruk is commonly considered to be the first substantial Sumerian city and archaeologists have used its name to denote one of the earliest periods of Sumerian civilization (running from 4000 to 3200BCE). Despite their age, these walls are remarkably well preserved.

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Uruk’s claim to pre-eminence rests partly on its size. Its outer wall, built early in the third millennium BCE, stretched for almost 6 miles (10 km), enclosing an area of more than 1,200 acres (500 hectares). By that time the city may have had as many as 50,000 inhabitants. It had grown partly at the expense of the surrounding villages; archaeologists have estimated that there were at least 146 separate settlements in its vicinity in 4000BCE, but that six centuries later the figure had fallen to just twenty-four.

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The newcomers were no doubts attracted by the extra economic opportunities that the city provided. While most villagers earned their living off the land, Uruk offered career openings for craftspeople-carpenters, sculptors, potters, metalsmiths, leatherworkers, weavers-as well as for trades people and merchants, administrators and priests. Prosperous citizens lived in two-story mudbrick houses, with wooden balconies on the upper floors. Even single-storey buildings sometimes had several rooms, organized around a central courtyard.

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Whatever their status, visitors to the city must have been awe-struck by its monumental buildings, which were unlike anything the world had ever seen before. As always in Sumer, the principal structures were temples. One was dedicated to Inana, goddess of love and sexuality; another, the White Temple, stood on an artificial mound 40 feet (12m) high.

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Yet it was the city wall itself that most impressed a Babylonian poet who, around the year 2000BCE, extolled Uruk in one of the many surviving versions of the ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’. “Look at it as it is today.” he wrote. “The outer wall, where the cornice runs, shines with the brilliance of copper, and the inner will has no equal. Touch the gateway – it is ancient. Climb on the walls of Uruk; walk along them, I say. Regards the foundation terrace and examine its construction – is it not burned brick and good?”