Lecture 3

The Cities of Mesopotamia

The cities of Mesopotamia quickly developed many of the features that were the characterize cities throughout the ancient world.

A. Planning

1. Monumental organization and planning was carried out only in the centers and complexes of Mesopotamian cities.

2. These centers were laid out using axial planning (rectangular arrangements) often with solar or astronomical orientations.

3. These huge centers contrast strikingly with the "private" parts of the cities, which were not planned at all.

4. Housing areas grew from the inside out: the house was based on rooms around a central courtyard, and neighborhoods were based on the houses.

5. The normal building material was sun-dried mud brick--a very efficient and appropriate building material.

6. With population growth came crowding in the cities: open areas disappeared and thoroughfares became narrow, winding alleys.

B. Religion and the Ziggurat

1. The characteristic Mesopotamian temple was a ziggurat, a stepped platform made out of mud-bricks, with a temple at the summit.

2. Some have suggested that the ziggurat was contructed as a means to reconstruct the mountain "peak sanctuaries" that had been used when people lived in the mountains and hills around the valleys -- notice that this is the creation of an artificial urban landscape.

3. The ziggurat was not only a religious center but also an economic redistribution center--the temple base was a huge warehouse where grain and other valuable substances were stored.

4. Mesopotamian religion was essentially fatalistic--the gods were removed from people, who were basically the slaves of the gods: the most humans could hope for was that the gods would ignore them! To what degree was this fatalism a result of the harsh environment of Mesopotamia?

C. Palace and Royal Power

1. There is evidence (what do you suppose this was?) that the earliest political power in Mesopotamian cities was a kind of democracy, but this was replaced by absolutist (tyrannical) monarchy.

2. Theocracy--the kings generaly claimed that they were the representatives of the gods from whom they derived their power: to disobey the king was to disobey the god.

3. To a certain degree there was rivalry or even opposition between the king and the priests.

4. The king's palace provided another monumental focus in the Mesopotamian city.

5. The palace--like the ziggurat--was an economic as well as a political center--it had huge storehouses where foodstuff (as taxes) was stored and where artisans worked to produce things for the king.

D. Some Early Mesopotamian (Sumerian) Cities

1. Ubaid Culture (5300-3600 B.C.): main cities Eridu in the north, Tepe Gawra in the south. Tepe Gawra probably has the first example of monumental planning: three temples around a central courtyard. Each temple was carefully placed and there was concern for symmetry and balance around a central axis.

2. Uruk Culture (3600-3100 B.C.): main city Warka, ca. 65 km. northeast of Ur.

3. Ur (at its height ca. 2100 B.C.)

a. The inner city occuplied an irregularly-shaped mound, surrounded by a huge mud-brick fortification wall crowned by layers of fired bricks.

b. The city stood strategically on a promontory between an arm of the Euphrates River and a navigable canal, and it had two harbors.

c. On a terrace oriented to the cardinal points was the temple of Nannar, the moon god = the ziggurat of Ur. Only the platform survives. The temple was originally approached by a triple stairway, its base measured 62.5 x 43 m. and the height was ca. 20 m.; the core was solid mud brick, the exterior of fired brick, each stamped with an inscription: "Ur-nammu, king of Ur, who built the temple of Nanna." In the temple took place the Sacred Marriage between the king and a priestess, intended to maintain the fertility of the land. Falkenstein calculated that it would have taken 1500 men, working a ten-hour day, 5 years to build the ziggurat at Ur.

d. The city occupied ca. 89 hectares = 216 acres, and the population is estimated at some 34,000 people.

e. Henry Frankfort estimated that there were 120 to 200 people per acre, very dense.

 

E. Characteristics of the Mesopotamian City

 

1.      The three dominant characteristics of the Mesopotamian city were the ziggurat, the palace, and the city wall.

 

2.      There is reason to think that the ziggurat was the oldest of these.

 

a.      Besides the great ziggurat there were normally many small temples, giving an indication of the role of religion.

 

b.      In the words of  Lewis Mumford, "the inhabitants were subjects or serfs bound to their religious lord, not citizens" (The City in History 74).

 

3.      The ziggurat and the palace were often carefully laid out, commonly in a huge rectangular courtyard.

 

a. Palaces--royal residences--came to rival the temples, and indeed the kings came to take on many of the characteristics of thegods: the palace was in many ways the temple of the king.

 

b.      The palaces came to be elaborately decorated, often with enormous sculptures of fantastic animals and inscriptions describing the power of the king.

 

c.      Palaces were also often huge storage facilities: the kings (as the priests) collected grain and other valuable material (taxes) for themselves.

 

d.      The kings had workmen and artisans who worked in the palaces.

 

e.      The palaces were therefore distribution centers as well as political centers.

4.      Often a broad, at least partially straight street connected the temple and the palace or led from one of them to some other important part of the city.

 

5.      The great masses of the population, however, lived in tiny mud houses that were built along narrow winding alleyways.

 

a.       These areas must have been quite unpleasant: L. Wooley wrote, "the sweepings of the house floors and the contents of the rubbish bins were simply flung on the streets," so that the street levels rose and the floors of the houses were soon well below ground level.

 

b.      According to Mumford (p. 75): "For thousands of years city dwellers put up with defective, often quite vile, sanitary arrangements, wallowing in rubbish and filth they certainly had the power to remove, for the occasional task of removal could hardly have been more loathsome than walking and breathing in the constant presence of such odure."

 

6.      The city walls came to be enormous structures, normally made of mud brick.

 

a.       The wall made a clean break between the countryside and the city.

 

b.      It was supposedly for defensive purposes, but it also served as a means to ensure control of the people by the king and his government.

 

c.       The Epic of Gilgamesh (Mesopotamian epic) describes the great wall of Uruk as it was built by the hero:

 

Of ramparted Urkuk the wall he built,

Of hallowed Eanna [the temple] the pure sanctuary.

Behold its outer wall, which none can equal!

Seize upon the threshold, which is of old.

… Go up and walk on the walls of Uruk,

Inspect the base terrace, examine the brickwork:

Is not its brickwork of burnt brick?

Did not the Seven [Sages] lay its foundations?

 

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