The Early History of the Ancient Near East (9000-2000 BC)

by Hans J Nissen

  The best example for such conflicts comes to us from the Gilgamesh epic, which, although it was put down in writing at a later date, surely contains a very much older tradition. It is highly probable that Gilgamesh was a ruler of Uruk in the period we call Early Dynastic I, so that some of the episodes recounted in the epic most likely belong historically to the last phase of the era of early high civilization. At the beginning of the poem, we are told how Gilgamesh had to suppress the people of Uruk in order to be able to erect the city wall (fig. 22b), which is described as a wondrous feat of building. This wall, the length of which was established as 9.5 kilometers, with at least nine hundred semicircular towers, has actually been identified in excavations as being a new structure in the Early Dynastic period because it was built out of plano-convex bricks.

  In addition to this there are other examples of the need for forced labor on the part of the population during the construction of larger-scale buildings. At the end of the Late Uruk period, an enormous terrace was constructed in the west of the holy district of Eanna, which completely covered up the more ancient shrine of the so-called Anu Ziggurat. The excavators of this terrace have calculated that its construction would have employed 1500 people working ten hours a day for five years. This must definitely have required strong centralistic measures.

  The organization of labor probably proved extremely useful in the solution of a problem that became increasingly urgent for Babylonia: the growing shortage of water. As we have already seen, in the beginning the recession of the waters, triggered by a mild change in climate, had nothing but beneficial effects. As the recession continued, however, it must finally have had a tremendous effect on an agricultural economy that relied exclusively on artificial irrigation, so that during the Early Dynastic I period settlements were no longer scattered over wide areas of the whole country, but assembled along a few water courses. In addition the river courses not only seem to run in a straightened line but, in some cases, water courses branch off from them that are so straight that they resemble, for the first time, lines of canals (fig. 20c).

  If we move on to further development, we see that, from the moment we have more comprehensive textual evidence, we find unequivocal proof that the land was now no longer supplied with water exclusively from natural water courses. There were also artificial canals bringing water to areas that would otherwise have remained waterless. It may be seen as a matter of luck in the development of this area that at the moment when it became necessary to build the sort of huge canal systems that could only be constructed by great collective effort, society had already developed suitable methods for the organization of labor.

  This precondition holds good, in a less unambiguous manner, for the construction of the other great works of the period of early high civilization. The enormous buildings of the precinct of Eanna in the Late Uruk period spring particularly to mind. Buildings with a surface area of 80 × 50 meters set the tone for the excavated part of this central area of the city of Uruk (fig. 38). Unfortunately, in spite of large-scale excavations, the organizational relationships between the different buildings in Eanna are not yet clear. Even for the buildings of the last phase of the Late Uruk period, which we know best, we can hardly say any more than that judging by their position, they were clearly related to one another in some significant way.

  The older the levels, the less it has been possible to uncover, so that we are inadequately informed about the beginnings of the central area. With some reservations we may assume that large public buildings already existed in Eanna at the beginning of the Late Uruk period. This is because extensive heaps containing color-coated clay cones were discovered in the deposits from this period. This type of cone was used in Eanna for fixing and decorating the external facades of public buildings.

  The first time we come across the ground plan of such a large building is in level V and even this is, unfortunately, incompletely preserved. Its foundations were constructed from limestone slabs, a building material unusual for Babylonia because it had to be transported a long way from subterranean limestone inliers sixty to seventy kilometers further west, like the one that can be seen today, for example, in the Euphrates bed near Samawa.

  However, the quality of this stone is so bad that it could not be used as a raw material for the many works of art or vessels made of stone that we know of from the period of early high civilization. For more demanding work in stone, the raw material was more likely to have been brought from the neighboring zone to the east, the central Zagros area, or, later, from the mountains of Oman.

  Figure 38. Plan of the level IVa buildings in the precinct of Eanna in Uruk. After H. J. Lenzen, Uruk Vorbericht 24 (1968), pl. 27, and Uruk Vorbericht 25 (1974), pl. 31.

  This “limestone temple” from Archaic Level V in Eanna reveals the same plan as that of “Temple C” reproduced in fig. 38. There was a “head” part of the building, whose long, central room lay at right angles to the longitudinal axis of the building and was surrounded by small rooms, and a main part that follows the same plan in its layout but that determines the main direction of the building with its very much larger central room. A few of the rooms surrounding the main part were used for stairwells. These buildings point to an overall concept that can be found again and again in almost all buildings of the Late Uruk period.

  Both this building and the buildings of the following level, Archaic IV, were clearly not destroyed by catastrophes, but had to give way to a new plan for the whole area. For this purpose, the walls of the buildings were removed until only a short stump was left and the rooms and courtyards were filled in with demolition material in such a way that a gigantic, flat area was produced.

  One consequence of this planned demolition was that not a single trace of the original furnishings of the buildings was to to be found in them. The only things that can be connected with the function of the buildings are specially shaped fireplaces in the middle of each of the large courtyards or central spaces. Thus we can find out next to nothing about the function of each of the buildings individually.

  Because of their monumental size and the fireplaces, these buildings have been designated “temples” by excavators, whereas another large building, which has a square ground plan, has been given the name of “Palace E” (fig. 38). However, since we know so little about the system of political leadership in this community and nothing can be said about the function of the buildings based on internal evidence, they really ought only to be designated “public buildings.” The results of excavations in a residential area in Syria from this period, discussed below, suggest caution. These buildings with the same ground plan and similar fireplaces to the so-called temples of Uruk were found to be the respective centers of residential complexes. Therefore, this type of building could quite clearly be a standard building unit, which was only endowed with its specific function through position, size, and other characteristics as yet unknown to us.

  During Archaic Level IVa—that is, the last level of the Late Uruk period—there are in the central area of Eanna, besides the buildings that correspond to the type of plan already mentioned, a number of buildings that were obviously based on different notions. For example, the enormous dimensions of the pillars of a building northwest of “Temple C” lead us to conclude that there must once have been a very high, perhaps vaulted, building here. The so-called Hall of Pillars was open on all sides, and on the individual pillars there was a complicated mosaic decoration of colored clay cones.

  The “Stone Cone Temple” seems to have been a very special building with its own perimeter wall inside the long perimeter wall that circled the whole precinct of Eanna. This can probably be traced back to the fact that it predates the period in which the perimeter wall round the precinct was built. Here, the mosaics on the walls of the building and on the wall itself were made of cones made out of different colored stones.

  To the southeast of this was a large, square sunken courtyard with a bank all around it in which, apart from the
remains of a water pipe, there is nothing that allows any conclusions to be drawn about the purpose it once served.

  Finally, in our catalogue of the different types of buildings, we must not forget “Palace E,” which has the largest central space, occupying 30 × 30 meters. All these buildings demonstrate such characteristic properties that we are forced to assume that they served specific purposes. Unfortunately, these functions cannot be defined. But the fact that they all appear to be related to one another, and their variety, makes it clear that all the activities in this area of Eanna obviously sprang from very differentiated concepts.

  Figure 39. The so-called Stone Mosaic Temple at Uruk. From E. Strommenger and M. Hirmer, 5 Jahrtausende Mesopotamia (Munich, 1975), pl. 13. Courtesy, Hirmer Photoarchiv, Munich.

  It is certain that the buildings that served the actual cult ceremonial were also in this central area. This can be inferred from the fact that the writing tablets of the time, which, in part, deal with matters connected with the cult, were all found in the precinct of Eanna. As noted, we are still not in possession of evidence that would enable us to determine the function of the buildings. If one does not wish to regard the buildings that have been excavated as belonging to the cult, it should be pointed out that large areas of Eanna have still not been investigated and that we can certainly expect to find other sorts of buildings there. On the one hand, this conclusion can be drawn from the fact that the area which later on was the midpoint of the central precinct has not been accessible to excavation because of the later building over, in the form of the temple on a stage tower, the Ziggurat. On the other hand, we feel justified in making this assumption because thus far we know of no structures that can unambiguously be identified as warehouses or commercial buildings. However, it is precisely this sort of building that we could expect to find in Eanna because the thousands upon thousands of broken clay tablets and sealed fastenings that ended up on the old garbage heaps of Eanna definitely came from the rubbish cleared out of such administrative buildings.

  For the time being we are also dependent on very few clues for our knowledge of the field of religion itself because, although the texts repeatedly quote the names of gods, and especially the name of the goddess Innin, who is later described as the city goddess of Uruk and the Lady of Eanna, these are hardly ever placed in a clear and unequivocal context. Numerous examples of well-defined local cult traditions in Babylonia may well support the thesis that Innin already played a role in Eanna in the early period, if not the dominant role.

  Unfortunately, the probability of cult traditions for other divinities cannot be shown in the same way. We would especially like to know more about the god of heaven, An, who played a very significant role in Uruk at a very much later period and seems even to have exceeded the old city goddess in importance then. During this late period, the main cult center of the god An was situated in a gigantic new temple complex rising up above the terrace whose construction in the Late Uruk period has already been mentioned. Because this terrace had buried the earlier high temple in the western part of the city, it was assumed for a time that there was a cultic tradition in this place, and, for this reason, the old, enclosed high temple was linked with the cult of the god An. This is why this high temple in the western part of the city of Uruk is called the Anu Ziggurat. (Ziggurat is the term for the stepped pyramidal mounds surmounted by a high temple that were the cultic centers of almost all Babylonian cities at a later period.) However, a bridge of almost three thousand years would have to be reckoned with because we have no remains from the area in question for such a long period.

  Excavations in this western area of Uruk, which we may perhaps call by the place name known to us from later texts—Kullaba—have unfortunately only extended a little way beyond the temple terrace itself. So we know nothing about its placement within a larger context. Research has, however, shown that a shrine in the form of a temple standing on a high terrace with steep sides, already existed during the Ubaid period, and that from that time on the terrace was always only repaired, given a new exterior, and raised. The remains of the old temple were sometimes included in the raising of the surface upon which the new temple was then constructed. Not only are the origins of this shrine considerably older than those of the larger buildings in Eanna, they are older than all other remains in Eanna which, lying at the foot of a deep shaft, turn out to be the remains of reed and mud huts. One may rightly regard the western area as the kernel of the whole great settlement of Uruk.

  Figure 40. Graphic restoration of the Anu Ziggurat in Uruk. From A. Nöldecke, Uruk Vorbericht 7 (1936), fig. 5.

  Whether or not An can be shown to be the god of the western temple area, we can, in any case, deduce from the completely different layout of the two shrines in the Late Uruk period that there must have been greater differences here than can be expressed merely by the assumption that we are dealing with different divinities.

  While in the western area, a terrace that was a good ten meters high, on which stood a high building visible from afar, the precinct of Eanna was completely differently organized. All the buildings were erected upon flat ground without the slightest elevation. Whereas in the western area it was already impossible, from the point of view of building, for there to be more than one cult building, the layout of Eanna does not exclude the possibility that several such cult buildings were in use simultaneously. This difference in external organization can definitely be traced back to differences in the organization of the cult and can thus also clearly be traced back to different basic religious concepts.

  The development into the following phase shows how far removed we still are from grasping these basic ideas. The whole of the central area, both the earlier western part and the eastern part, was now, at the end of the Late Uruk period or the beginning of the Jamdet Nasr period, so altered that no part remained untouched. For the last time, all the buildings standing in Eanna were razed, in the manner we have described above, and the stumps of the walls were covered over so that an expanse of enormous size was created. At the same time, the gigantic terrace to the west of Eanna, which was so high that it buried the high terrace, including the temple on top of it, within itself, was constructed. The former shrine in the west of the city was thus removed from view once and for all. Now, in place of the diverse buildings of the Late Uruk period, a high terrace, such as was formerly only to be found in the west, arose in Eanna. Presumably it also had a temple on top of it, the remains of which are, however, just barely accessible in outline under the dominating edifice that makes up the later Ziggurat of Eanna. From now on, instead of two cult areas, the city of Uruk had only one, which was laid out in the same way as the “buried one.”

  Figure 41. Find situation in the “Riemchen” building in Uruk. From H. J. Lenzen, Uruk Vorbericht 14 (1958), pl. 34a.

  Here, too, it is unfortunately impossible to trace the directions of the change that lay behind this building program. Possibly it happened as the result of a political consolidation. It is at the very least obvious that changes must have taken place that had a tremendous effect on the religious and political life of the city. This situation, in which the only central cult area in the city had as its focal point a terrace surmounted by a temple, remained from that moment—for almost three thousand years—the determining element in the city, until, finally, late in the first millennium B.C., two new temple complexes were built in the western part of the city.

  As we have said, all buildings, including the possible cult installations, were completely emptied before they were razed. In only one case has pure chance provided us with a small building that was constructed underground, the so-called Riemchen Building, made of the special kind of elongated bricks characteristic of the period. This was in the immediate neighborhood of the so-called Stone Mosaic Temple and was clearly designed to act as a repository for the former inventory of this or some other temples (fig. 38).

  Unfortunately, we cannot reconstruct the exact arrangement of the findings
at the original place, but we do at least get a good idea from the finds of the composition of such fittings. In addition to a great number of sometimes unusual pottery vessels and large containers made of colored stones, there were countless pieces of stone inlay that originally served as a decoration for furniture and—the most important find—fragments of a larger than life-sized human head made of stone. The latter are, of course, especially interesting, although they can no longer be pieced together because many pieces are missing. They must already have been fragments when they came into the building. Apart from the fact that these are the earliest remains of large human sculptures in Babylonia, there was a special interest in the observation that on a fragment of the hairline there seemed to be traces of a flat bump, possibly traces of a horn. If substantiated, the fragments could have belonged to a divine statue, as later horns always served as a mark of the gods in human form. Yet, neither could the observation be confirmed, nor can we be sure of the validity of that mark of distinction. Accordingly, we cannot be sure whether some figures on cylinder seals and on the “cult vase” from Uruk should be recognized as representing images of gods.

  The so-called cult vase, a large vessel made of limestone, decorated in relief, is one of the most splendid pieces from the period of early high civilization (fig. 42). In spite of a certain amount of damage, the thematic relations between the four friezes are sufficiently clear. In the lowest frieze, stylized plants or ears of grain are shown standing above water, which is represented as a wavy line; in the band above this one, goats and sheep looking to the right alternate with one another. In the next frieze, a row of naked men can be seen looking to the left, carrying in front of them gifts in baskets and in open and closed vessels. On the top frieze, the main direction of the figures is changed once more. In the left half of our figure, it is still possible to discern the remains of three human figures turning to the right. They are also carrying gifts in front of them, or something that has come to be referred to as a “cult fillet.” In front of them, and looking in their direction, stands what is probably a female figure in a long coat, who previously wore a tall headdress, of which, because of some ancient damage, unfortunately only a small part is still recognizable. Certain traces could suggest a pair of horns, which would identify the figure as a goddess. But even without the horns this figure can be designated the main personage in the whole composition, as may also be seen from the objects reproduced behind the figure. Among these, special note must be made of the two so-called reed-ring bundles, the original door posts in the traditional reed architecture of the country: in the loops on either side of the door opening hang the poles around which the rush mats that served as door curtains were wound. These can probably be interpreted here, as later, as symbols of the goddess Innin, the city goddess of Uruk (compare the second sign in the first box in the lefthand column of text in figure 34f). On two small tables shaped like rams there are small human figures, certainly statues, which, like the objects and vessels shown behind them, could have belonged to any cult inventory. The whole sequence on the cult vase represents a procession whose leaders are being received by the goddess or by a priestess. It is interesting that two of the vessels portrayed in the uppermost frieze have exactly the same shape as the cult vase itself, from which conclusions about the function of the relief vessel itself may perhaps be drawn.