2. The political structure rested on the interaction of three component elements that (with the exception of the third) were never totally eliminated but continued to combine and overlap in fluctuating ways throughout Sumerian history:
- great households led by private
landowners/lineage heads,
- temple-run (and later temple/palace) economic systems that at times may have been dominated by the same private landowners.
- community councils leading territorial communities.
3. In the Ubaid we see the clear emergence of the multi-generational “manor” with great houses headed by influential landowners, containing their extended families and retainers. The origins of this pattern may well lie in the Samarran T-shaped houses of Tell-es Sawaan. These Ubaid/Uruk private domains co-existed with the emerging temple systems as central appurtenances of political authority in Sumerian society with both of them probably dominating, then replacing the “Council of elders” of an earlier pre-urban time (as noted in later Sumerian writings).
4. The earliest temples were probably purely religious, marking the emergence of the Sumerian pattern of city-gods. These divinities owned the city and its fields. This development also marked a major stage in the ideological shift from the relatively informal religious belief systems of the Early Neolithic Period (symbolized by figurines) to formal religious structure with well-defined priesthoods and personalized gods.
5. By the later Uruk period it is clear that the temple administration had incorporated many of the economic controls earlier seen in the private “manors” with large storage and residential areas appearing in the temple precinct (hence Lamberg-Karlovsky’s “temple-palace”). However, this is best understood as the cooption by great family households of the religious status of the temples to justify their own power NOT just a constant battle between distinct secular/religious or private/corporate interests. It is probable that this process marks the gradual elevation of an emerging, more exclusive, elite above the “commoners” and their assumption of the hierarchical administrative titles mentioned in early writings.
6. This may well explain this interesting Uruk situation. Here two temples in the central precinct of Eanna, one dedicated to Innana - goddess of love/queen of heaven/ goddess of war, the other to Anu the principal god/ sky god, each with associated “palaces,” alternated in importance. It is probable that such a situation was the manifestation of internal struggles by elites over political/economic power and using competing religious cults for their purposes.
7. Architecturally, the progressive enlargement of temple complexes and their supporting platforms marks this evolutionary process from government by a council to the early temple administration and on to the temple/palace government of the Early Dynastic Period. Their associated complexes of craft, residential, and storage facilities ultimately coalesced into the palaces of the Early Dynastic kings.
8. The emerging Late Uruk “temple-palace” elites, then, used religious temple affiliation, with the authority that this bestowed, to further their ambitions against unaffiliated landowners and each other. While this corporate temple/palace system seems to have prevailed in the succeeding Early Dynastic Period, it never completely eliminated private ownership independent of the central authority, and was itself subordinated by the rising “kings” of later period. At this point the highest political institution – kingship – combined the functions of the earlier “religious” foundations and the more “secular” ambitions and responsibilities of personalized rule.
9. [Note: Early Dynastic Kingship developed in a context of local city-state autonomy. Kings acted on behalf of the divine city owners – the gods. The continuing dual institutions of temple and palace (king) each controlled city lands with the king either taking over the largest share from the previously dominant temple administration or so dominating it that he de facto controlled its lands. However, it is important to note that the Mesopotamians themselves never made a clear distinction between secular and religious. Even the powerful later kings of Assyria viewed themselves as governors on behalf of the gods. Thus the division between temple and palace more properly indicates institutional evolution rather than change in the relative importance of religion and the gods.]
10. The texts explain this process by telling us that the increasing competition for land, water and political primacy between the city-states, led (probably in the Uruk period) to the election of temporary leaders who carried the earthly supreme powers, which on the divine level had been allocated, to Enlil/Marduk after the Creation to vanquish the forces of chaos. These lugals acted as “dictators” until the crisis was resolved, then relinquished power to the council of elders or temple authority. Ultimately such individuals either refused to give up their power or the state of inter-city competition became so embedded in Early Dynastic political life that the lugalship became institutionalized as kingship.
11. The coercive nature of Early Dynastic Kingship originated in war and was largely maintained by the threat of conquest. This, contrasts sharply with what we know through the texts of the Uruk situation where the less densely distributed cities of the early periods supported more egalitarian governments and cooperative relations under their early councils or temple administrations. By the later Early Dynastic period the now-dominant kings were able to levy impressive taxes and codified laws beneficial to their own interests. Indeed we read of a king of Mari who collected several thousand tons of silver from his subjects. This tax did not necessarily refer solely to the metal silver but to the value in silver of the great quantities of grain, imports, animals, textiles etc, that he acquired (silver was the standard “monetary” measure of the later Early Dynastic Period). Such oppressive measures essentially destroyed the private economic sector by 2000 BC.
12. In summary, the competition between temple and palace with all of its ideological connotations was at heart a struggle between centralized, individualized versus corporate government. This variously involved the conflict between regional autonomy and “empire,” and private versus corporate ownership. This struggle remained an embedded feature in the dynamics of the Sumerian politics experiencing many fluctuations through time.