URBAN SOCIETY IN MESOPOTAMIA
(SUMER)
1. The Uruk and Jemdet Nasr Periods (3600-2900
BC) marked the appearance of Sumerian Civilization and transition from the
still small southern alluvium villages of the Ubaid to the large cities and
intensive settlement systems subsisting on the products of irrigation
agriculture.
3. Epitomized by the best-known city Uruk which
grew from a small Ubaid town to a city of several thousand during a two-century
period in the mid-4th millennium.
4. The
rise of urbanism was accompanied by the progressive rise to importance of the
temple. From its Ubaid origins the Sumerian temple was elaborated into the
early temple-mound/ziggurat dedicated to the city god and located at the center
of its precinct. At Uruk the Limestone
Temple of 3500 BC expanded to the platform that held the White Temple of 3000
BC.
5. The increasing size of temple was equaled by
its political importance. The temple integrated
religious worship, storerooms for agricultural surplus, administrative centers
for the redistribution of food from the city (God) fields and subsidiary
villages.
6.
Increasing social status differentiation with elite rulers emerging at
the apex of society and a range of officials and wealth groups intervening
between them and the common workers - stratified society.
7. Conclusion of the move from carefully decorated
ceramics of the Halaf/Samarran to vessels mass-produced by mold or on the potter’s
wheel for utilitarian purposes. Pottery
seen more as an adjunct of economic and utilitarian life, so elite status craft
work shifts to stone and metal with impressive sculpture and jewelry. A mix of formal corporate workshops and
specialists who worked from their homes part-time for government and part-time
for themselves - "cottage industry."
In fact private production and property was always an important
component of Sumerian society.
8. Also
Uruk demonstrates the emergence of codified signs and writing. Cylinder seals were used for marking property
(see Nissen 1988 comments on public versus private property seals). Progressive move from simple notational
signs enclosed in clay bullae to combinations of representational and simple
tokens to early writing on baked clay tablets with pictographic signs. Writing was only used for economic
tabulations at first showing the importance of administrative management in the
Sumerian Uruk cities.
THE ORGANIZING STRUCTURE OF URUK/JEMDET
NASR PERIOD SUMERIAN SOCIETY
A. Corporate v Private Authority and
the Political System
1. We used to simplistically think in social
evolutionary schemes of the early Middle East that property ownership moved
from an egalitarian, communal form to theocratic control under the Uruk temple
system and then to state control of the palace with the emergence of Early
Dynastic “City States” and empires.
This masks the persisting importance of private property especially in
the periods of our interest. In fact
there seem always have been a dynamic interplay of private and corporate
property interests whose institutions regularly contested for domination of the
political sphere.
2. The political structure rested on the interaction
of the three component elements that (with the possible 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 economic systems that may well have been dominated by the same magnates at times
- 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.
Earliest temples were probably purely religious, marking the emergence
of the Sumerian pattern of city-gods who owned the city and its fields. Also marked a move from informal Neolithic
religious beliefs (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 has 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.
6. This
marks the elevation of the emerging elite above the "commoners" and
their assumption of the hierarchical administrative titles mentioned in early
writings.
7. This
may well explain the Uruk situation where two temples of Eanna (dedicated to
Innana- goddess of love/queen of heaven and Anu the principal god/ sky god)
with associated "palaces" alternating in importance within the
central precinct - as much internal struggles by elites over political/
economic power as competing religious cults.
8. These
emerging "temple-palace" elites, then, used temple affiliation with
the authority that this bestowed to further their ambitions against
unaffiliated landowners and each other.
While this corporate temple system seems to have prevailed by the
succeeding Early Dynastic Period, it never eliminated non-temple private
ownership and was itself subordinated by the rising "kings" of later
period who were in one sense super-landowners who tried (without permanent
success) to combine the authority of secular leader and religious
priest/divinity in themselves.
9. Thus
private property rights versus control by central (corporate) authority
remained an embedded feature in the dynamics of the Sumerian politics
experiencing many fluctuations through time.
B. The Economic Sphere
1. Much
evidence to support the rising ability of Sumerian society of the Uruk/Jemdet
Nasr period to create an economic management system adequate to support the
needs of the emerging "temple-palace" elite.
2. Invention of writing was closely connected
with this need to record and manage the accounting associated with the control
of people, animal herds, and commodities.
This explains the rapid evolution of the small tokens of Ubaid and
earlier through earliest pictographic writing to the more versatile cuneiform
style. All of the earliest writing was
used for economic purposes - mostly bookkeeping.
3. This development of written economic records
was very closely associated with the need to document individual or
institutional property or economic transactions. Thus cylinder seals of individualized (personal) and generalized
(corporate) nature as noted by Nissen (1988:4 ff).
4.
Emergence of corporate workshops like the smelting facility described by
Nissen (1988). Note that this did not
replace "cottage industry" in which domestic craftsmen worked part
time for the city administration but were also free to sell their own goods on
the open market.
5. Ability to bring large quantities of valued
commodities from afar. The Limestone
Temple of Uruk is made of stone from the Central Zagros - no stone in the
southern alluvium:formal trading networks and specialists.
6. Streamlining of crafts associated directly
with economic activity. Thus small "bevel-rimmed"
bowls were mold made in a standardized size, probably to serve as the container
for corporate labourers food rations.
Their capacity conforms to the grain ration noted in early texts. Later the fast potters wheel permitted the
mass production of similar type of bowls.
Invention of the grinding/cutting wheel and belt driven drill allowed
rapid production of stone cylinder seals, also vital for economy. Introduction of the plano-convex brick
allowed rapid construction of the progressively more elaborate architectural
centers of political/economic authority (see Nissen 83f, 90ff, 92f).
C. The Uruk Expansion
1. In the Late Uruk period we see expansion of
Sumerian urban society throughout Mesopotamia and even as far as deltaic Egypt
with the "exportation" of walled cities showing the exact features of
Sumer.
2. This widespread "colonization" has
been ascribed to the needs to control trade.
However, some of the Uruk colonies were not strategically placed for
this purpose. Also it is difficult to
believe that, at this early period, centralized administrative institutions
sufficient to control a region-wide complex of colonies could have
existed. Thus, economics is probably
insufficient to explain the Uruk Expansion.
3. The
Uruk expansion comprised completely new towns of Sumerian form with cylinder
seals and writing (administrative structure), bevel-rim bowls (organization of
labor) Sumerian temples and art, intruded into the northern lands with their
small-scale rural character, and walled enclaves set into existing foreign
settlements. The walls suggest that tension and conflict were part of the
process.
4. After
about 150 years all of the Uruk colonies were abandoned and the north reverted
to their non-urban, illiterate status for over 500 years more.
5.
Probably a factor of the emergence of the political processes underlying
urbanism. This was a process that
involved social coercion, conflict, population increase and hierarchical,
centralized administration. While
economic control is part of this, the driving force is equally centered in the
need to establish the institution of legitimated (religion) and effective
(administration and coercion) authority over people, not just commodities. In
order to prevent its erosion, this is facilitated by establishing the new order
as widely and deeply as possible. Hence expansion in the context of an emerging
and coalescing political system is conducive of success as in the Uruk
Expansion.
6. Thus
while the control over areas outside of Sumer itself did not last the system
succeeded in establishing its priority in the south and was never seriously
threatened there.