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

by Hans J Nissen

  We find a similarly divergent picture to that of the earlier period when we turn to northern Mesopotamia, because complexes clearly rooted in the Babylonian tradition seem to alternate with those in the local tradition and are found in some kind of spatial relationship to the latter, although the connection is unclear. On the one hand, a strong, local element is represented in the tradition of the so-called Nineveh 5 pottery, whose chronological distribution has not yet been adequately explained, although it definitely embraces the Early Dynastic period and the period of the Akkad Dynasty. In contrast to this local component, there are numerous individual finds that provide clear evidence for the continuation of contacts with southern Mesopotamia. This evidence consists, for one thing, of written finds, such as the ones known to us, for example, from Tell Brak in northern Syria. A large building, which, judging by its layout, must have been an administrative center, obviously indicates an outpost of Babylonia since Naram-Sin of Akkad is named as its builder. On the foundation inscription it is called é-gal, the normal term for a palace. A votive inscription to Rimush from the same place and a site, probably lying to the north of Nineveh, that was named after Rimush have already been mentioned.

  One of the most beautiful examples of ancient Near Eastern sculpture, which by all criteria must be dated to the period of the Akkad Dynasty, comes from Nineveh itself. However, to try to identify this bronze head as the portrayal of a specific ruler would surely be stretching the resources we have for interpreting ancient Near Eastern art too far. Finally, just as there were for the previous period, there are important finds in both architecture and art from Assur that similarly prompt us to assume that there must have been very close relations with Babylonia.

  Figure 69. Finds from the tombs at Alaca Hüyük (Turkey): (a) staff ornament; (b) female figures made of bronze and (c) of silver; (d, e) “standards”; (h) gold jug. From E. Akurgal and M. Hirmer, Die Kunst der Hethiter (Munich, 1961), figs. 2, 8, 12, 21. Courtesy, Hirmer Photoarchiv. Munich.

  Figure 70. Bronze head of the Akkadian period, from Nineveh (Iraq). From E. Strommenger and M. Hirmer, 5 Jahrtausende Mesopotamien (Munich, 1962), pl. 22. Courtesy, Hirmer Photoarchiv, Munich.

  The attempts made by Akkadian rulers to exert an influence in the neighboring regions and the creation of more direct and indirect relationships seem to have been restricted to the reigns from Sargon to Naram-Sin. At least there is no information to this effect from the following period, a situation that may be connected to the fact that we have hardly any texts either from the period of the last rulers of the Akkad Dynasty or, especially, from the years following the end of the dynasty. So far without historical context is an inscription by Shudurul, one of the later rulers of Akkad, which was found recently in southeast Anatolia. Unfortunately, our understanding of this phase is limited. This is very regrettable, because the small amount of information we have managed, with tremendous effort, to put together points to the fact that the territory of the central state of Akkad gradually disintegrated into ever smaller units toward the end, until finally a situation had been created that corresponded, at least externally, to that in the Early Dynastic III period: a fairly large number of independent political units assembled around some of the centers known from the earlier period. The end of the Akkad Dynasty was surely desired and brought about by many people for many and varied reasons. Considering the development just mentioned, it must definitely be assumed that the principle of particularism had forced its way into the foreground again.

  Although we can only draw rough conclusions from the small amount of evidence available, it is clear that we can definitely rule out the official version, which both the so-called Sumerian King List and the poem “A Curse of Akkad” seek to convince us of: the claim that the Guti were solely responsible for the fall of the dynasty of Akkad.

  Most of the information we have referred to about the last years of the dynasty of Akkad and the time that followed first comes from the beginning of the next phase, the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur, numbered according to the order of the dynasties in the Sumerian King List. Thus, at the end of what is mostly a “dark” age, we hear that in Ur, in the extreme south of the country, a “general” named Ur-Nammu, who had clearly only established himself there a short time before, was able to become independent and succeeded in bringing the whole of Babylonia under his control within a very short space of time.

  The political situation in the country is illuminated by the facts that Ur-Nammu probably received his post in Ur from the local ruler, Utuhengal of Uruk; that according to his own reports, Ur-Nammu first had to conquer a ruler of Lagash before he could add that area to his territory; and that shortly before this Utuhengal, his former overlord, had fought and won a decisive victory over the last leader of a “dynasty” of the Guti. According to this, shortly before Ur-Nammu began his reign, there were at least three independent political units in Babylonia: the city-states of Uruk and Lagash and territory ruled by the Guti. The Akkadian central state had therefore clearly been broken up into smaller units, of which we can certainly name only the smallest. We can be almost certain that a further unit can be added to the three mentioned: the territory centering on the city of Akkad, which was in that period ruled over by two rulers called Dudu and Shudurul, who are in fact listed in the Sumerian King List as belonging to the Akkadian Dynasty, separated by a one-year interregnum from the earlier rulers of this dynasty, although they definitely no longer belonged to the same family.

  Hardly anything is known about the reigns of Dudu and Shudurul. An inscription in southeastern Anatolia bearing the name of Shudurul should probably be taken less as a sign of the sort of actions Sargon and Naram-Sin engaged in in these distant regions than as a parallel to assertions made by Gudea of Lagash. In his temple-building hymns, Gudea shows off with reports of distant regions he brought the materials from to build a new main temple for the city god. The northern Syrian—southeastern Anatolian region played a very prominent role in this.

  However, information about this period between the restriction of Akkad’s power in the years under or after Sharkalisharri and the reinforcement of central political power under Ur-Nammu of Ur is not only limited in scope; it is also contradictory. On the one hand, we repeatedly hear what a great plague the Guti were. Obviously, this group originally came from the eastern border mountains. In the texts they are represented as barbarians who steal cattle and do not enjoy the best of reputations in other respects either. Thus it is also significant that in the poem “A Curse of Akkad,” the task of carrying out the revenge of Enlil should fall to the Guti. They are described, in a not very flattering way, as people “who know no ties of affection and whose speech is like the barking of a dog.” In Utuhengal’s victory inscription, they are called “the snake, the scorpion of the mountains who does violence to the gods, who dragged the monarchy away from Sumer to far distant lands and allowed injustice and violence to set foot in the land.” However, they were probably a far less stable political power than the Sumerian King List which places a Guti dynasty on the same level as the other dynasties, would have us believe. Their power probably rested more on the fear their widespread raids created. The main area they occupied seems to have lain in the vicinity of Adab. Situated as it was on the eastern fringe of the cultivated land, it probably served as a bridge into Babylonia from their easterly possessions.

  Although, as noted earlier, this period is on the whole very poorly documented, there is one important exception. The reign of Gudea of Lagash must be included in the period after the end of the Akkad Dynasty. According to his numerous inscriptions, Gudea reigned, for the most part, independently; he was certainly not subject to any sort of overlordship. At the time of Gudea, the area of Lagash could clearly be counted among the small successors of the state of Akkad. However, in spite of the numerous inscriptions, opportunities for making a more exact evaluation of the area are limited. This is because, although Gudea’s inscriptions report the erection of temples and the car
rying out of every conceivable religious duty in great detail, they contain next to nothing that can be utilized for a political history. If we were to accept these inscriptions as representative, we would have a picture of a thoroughly peaceful period, notwithstanding the political fragmentation mentioned. This is supported by the fact that Gudea clearly exploited widespread trade relations in order to acquire building and furnishing materials for his cult buildings. Elam and the lands around the Gulf to the south of Babylonia, as well as the Lebanese forests in the west, are named as the countries of origin for these goods. The inscription referring to Shudurul of Akkad in what is nowadays the southeastern Anatolian area could also point to similar contacts. The “reign of terror” of the Guti thus hardly seems to have had the totally disruptive effect described in some sources. At the same time, this example can also serve as a warning against seeing the end of the phase of political centralization as a “collapse” and regarding the phase during which a once-unified area was split up into smaller parts as a politically troubled period.

  Even if Gudea’s inscriptions do not offer us much help in our reconstruction of political conditions, they do provide us with significant evidence from another point of view. There is hardly any other group of inscriptions by a ruler as saturated with the ideology of the “temple city” as Gudea’s. Reports about his numerous temple buildings and continuing care for the different gods are not only to be found in his official inscriptions and on stelae and statues set up beside the temples, where the exclusive use of this theme would be quite comprehensible. They are also confirmed in the great number of building inscriptions, as well as in the fact that the sixteen year names handed down to us from his reign report exclusively on the building of temples, the appointment of specific priests, or the production of emblems of gods. As far as we can see, this was the first time that the custom which lasted for a very long time afterward of calling each year after the most important event of the previous year was put into operation. This year name was then used for dating all sorts of documents.

  Gudea saw himself so much in the role of the representative of his city god, Ningirsu, that he never tired of stressing over and over again in his inscriptions that everything he had done was only by order of the different gods. There can hardly be a clearer illustration of what was seen as the idealized antithesis of the central rule of the recently defunct Akkad Dynasty.

  The situation during Gudea’s reign has in fact been explained as the reintroduction of the political and economic forms identified in the Lagash texts of the late Early Dynastic III period. The term “Sumerian Renaissance,” which has been applied to the Third Dynasty of Ur, is—in the light of what we have already said—simultaneously right and wrong. It is wrong insofar as this term implies that the civilization of this period was a conscious reaction by Sumerians against Akkadian tutelage. It is right insofar as here, just as in the Early Dynastic III period, we can see the close affinity between particularism and the principle of the city god. In a milder form, we can even observe how this backward swing of the pendulum once again brought about changes in artistic practice.

  Figure 71. Clay cylinders A and B containing temple hymns of Gudea of Lagash from Tello (Iraq). Courtesy, Musée du Louvre, Paris.

  These changes are, however, considerably less noticeable than during the transition from the Early Dynastic period to the period of the Akkad Dynasty. It may well be that the ever more frequent appearance of the so-called introduction scenes on cylinder seals at least partly mirrors the emphasis on the religious element. But the human form is represented with the same thoroughness and individual detail as it had previously been. Differences are, above all, perceptible in works of plastic art, of which we possess a great number from the time of Gudea. If we compare these numerous portrayals of Gudea seated and standing with the statues from the period of the Akkad Dynasty, we see that technical skill was used in the same way to convey anatomical details. These skills had been developed even further, so that when it comes to the shaping of details such as, for example, the arm muscles, the tradition of the previous period is directly continued. On the whole, the statues of Gudea can, however, be clearly distinguished from works of the previous period on account of their greater bulkiness, lack of proportion, and, along with this, a certain monotony. Although this is not simply a reabsorption of the preindividualistic character as epitomized by the people of the Early Dynastic period, the more modest, more uniform style of representation seems to fit in very well with the humbler attitude of this ruler to the gods. This attitude emerges over and over again in his inscriptions and belongs to the theocratic model of organization once more being emphasized.

  In other spheres, too, attitudes and forms that had grown up during the period of the Akkad Dynasty continued to exist, but were transformed. However, the often-quoted assertion that the civilization of the Gudea period was a combination of old “Sumerian” trains of thought and new “Akkadian” ideas is a very inadequate way of describing the new quality. The right way of evaluating it would probably be to say that the basic concepts of local rule and the Temple City of the city-states of the Early Dynastic III period, which during the centralizing period of the Akkad Dynasty had been forced into the background, were restored to first place, together with the new (old) form of government. They were, however, indirectly influenced by the fact that, in spite of all the parallelism, forms of organization obviously could not be exactly the same as they had been during the Early Dynastic period. And they were directly influenced by aspects that had evolved during the period of the centralized state and had proved to be generally valid.

  Figure 72. Statues (a) of the Akkadian period and (b) of Gudea of Lagash. From W. Orthmann, Propyläen Kunstgeschichte 14 (Berlin, 1975), figs. 42, 54. Courtesy, Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin.

  Unfortunately we are in a situation parallel to the late Early Dynastic III period from another point of view as well, in the sense that almost all the information about the period between the end of the Akkad Dynasty and the beginning of the reign of the Third Dynasty of Ur, comes from the area of Lagash. This is why, for the time being, it is difficult to assess conditions during this post-Akkadian period. In the meantime, we remain in the dark above all about the events that finally led to what was clearly a very rapid political unification of the country under Ur-Nammu, who once again ushered in a very short period of central government for the whole of Babylonia with the foundation of the Third Dynasty of Ur. A total of five rulers from this dynasty ruled for a total of 109 years. Unfortunately, information about the 18 years of Urnammu’s reign is once again very sparse. However, we do gain the impression, from various sources, that the new political entity must have achieved stability after a short time.

  The most striking witness to the period of Ur-Nammu are the ziggurats, stepped towers with several stages that probably had temples on their highest levels. None of these temples are, however, extant. Even if these structures can be traced back to the different types of high terraces that had been a part of many central cult areas in Babylonian cities since the Ubaid period, the now-obligatory form, with its central stairs and two side flights of steps, seems to have been an innovation under the Third Dynasty of Ur, especially from the time of Ur-Nammu. It is possible that this form could date back to prototypes from the period of the Akkad Dynasty, but unfortunately we do not yet know anything about the architecture of that period. Incidentally, the ziggurat from the Babylon of the sixth century B.C., which we know as the “Tower of Babel,” conformed exactly to this scheme of building.

  A large number of the bricks used for these buildings bear stamped inscriptions. Apart from telling us the name of the builder, Ur-Nammu, they also tell us the name of the city in which the temple was erected, the name of the god who was worshipped there, and the name of the temple. The fact that such labor-intensive building works were erected in many of the larger cities of southern Babylonia (fig. 73) allows us to conclude that there was obviously comprehensive control
through a central body. In addition, in the light of the conflict between central government and local priesthood, the fact that the central ruler began with such an unusual building program in the former local centers soon after establishing his rule, thus making it clear that he was concerned with the local deities, seems extremely important. However, at the same time, Ur-Nammu made it unmistakably apparent where the actual power lay by central planning of building and organization, by his building inscriptions, and probably in other ways of which we know nothing. There are two further pieces of evidence for a high degree of central administration; on the one hand, we observe that the system of year names used in Ur was used almost without exception throughout the whole of Babylonia, and on the other hand, a lengthy text, something like a state land register, lists the administrative districts of Ur-Nammu’s kingdom.

  Figure 73. Babylonia in the time of the Third Dynasty of Ur. Sites of ziggurat construction by the first ruler of the Dynasty, Ur-Nammu, are marked by triangles. Author’s original.

  Figure 74. The ziggurat of Ur, partly restored. Author’s photograph.

  We are considerably better informed about the 48-year reign of Shulgi, Urnammu’s son and successor. Even though we are not able to draw a complete picture of his period either, one innovation of this period is of decisive help in extending our knowledge. We know of only very few economic texts each year dating from the reign of Ur-Nammu and the first years of Shulgi’s rule. But from the twenty-second year of Shulgi’s reign on, this number suddenly leaps to thousands per annum. Because we also have other evidence as to changes on a large scale during these years of Shulgi’s reign, we may assume that this sudden increase in texts is not the result of an imbalance in the finds—although this can never be ruled out—but the result of an intentional change.