The early development of sealing practices is reviewed in Dominique Collon, First Impressions: Cylinder Seals in the Ancient Near East (London: British Museum, 1995), and idem, 7000 Years of Seals (London: British Museum, 1997). The evolution of cuneiform writing from clay tokens and other miniature objects is the subject of an extensive study by Denise Schmandt-Besserat, Before Writing, 2 vols. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992). Her work on this topic has, however, been heavily criticized on points of both logic and detail; for which, see Paul E. Zimansky in the Journal of Field Archaeology 20 (1993): 513–17.
Other works referred to include V. Gordon Childe, The Bronze Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930); idem, Man Makes Himself (London: Watts, 1936); M. Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible (London: Rider, 1978); R. Redfield, The Primitive World and Its Transformations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1953).
Chapter 5. Origin of Cities
A translation of ‘The Sumerian King List’, and general discussion of Mesopotamian historiography, can be found in Jean-Jacques Glassner’s Mesopotamian Chronicles (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004). The story of Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta is translated, with commentary, in Herman L. J. Vanstiphout, Epics of Sumerian Kings: The Matter of Aratta (Leiden: Brill, 2004).
The ‘Uruk Expansion’ has been a subject of intense debate among archaeologists for the past two decades. The discussion was set in motion principally by salvage excavations along the upper courses of the Euphrates and Tigris, which revealed closer connections to the Mesopotamian alluvium than previously suspected. Guillermo Algaze, The Uruk World System: The Dynamics of Expansion of Early Mesopotamian Civilization (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1993) proposes an encompassing explanation for the wide distribution of Uruk-related material, drawing on Marxian analyses of the global spread of capitalism since the fifteenth century AD; and see now, idem, Ancient Mesopotamia at the Dawn of Civilization: The Evolution of an Urban Landscape (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2008). Other analyses of the transition to urban life in the fourth millennium BC emphasize local over trans-regional processes; see, for example, contributions in Mitchell S. Rothman (ed.), Uruk Mesopotamia and Its Neighbors: Cross-Cultural Interactions in the Era of State Formation (Oxford/Santa Fe, NM: James Currey; School of American Research, 2001). For an overview of the growth of urban life in the Indus Valley, see Gregory L. Possehl, The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective (Walnut Creek, CA/Oxford: AltaMira, 2002).
The Old Assyrian caravan trade with Kanesh is the subject of Klaas R. Veenhof, Aspects of Old Assyrian Trade and Its Terminology (Leiden: Brill, 1972). Innovations in traction and transport during the fourth millennium BC are discussed in Andrew G. Sherratt, Economy and Society in Prehistoric Europe: Changing Perspectives (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), and idem, ‘Animal traction and the Transformation of Europe’ (available at http://www.archatlas.dept.shef.ac.uk/). The development of rotary techniques for seal manufacture and ceramics is reviewed in Roger (P.R.S.) Moorey, Ancient Mesopotamian Materials and Industries: The Archaeological Evidence (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999). For a survey of the earliest Mesopotamian writing, and its administrative context, see Hans Nissen et al., Archaic Bookkeeping: Early Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East (Chicago/ London: University of Chicago Press, 1993). Changing relationships between sealing practices, commodities, and consumption in the transition from Neolithic to urban life are discussed in David Wengrow, ‘Prehistories of Commodity Branding’, Current Anthropology 49 (2008): 7–34, with further references, and drawing comparisons with societies closer to home.
Other works referred to include P. Ariès, Western Attitudes toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present, trans. Patricia M. Ranum (London: Marion Boyars, 1994); W. Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, in Illuminations (London: Pimlico, 1999 [1936]); B. R. Foster, The Epic of Gilgamesh (New York/London: Norton, 2001); A. McMahon and J. Oates, ‘Excavations at Tell Brak 2006–7’, Iraq 69 (2007): 145–71; D. Miller, ‘Ideology and the Harappan Civilization’, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 4 (1985): 34–71; N. Postgate, Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History (New York: Routledge, 1996); D. Wengrow, The Archaeology of Early Egypt: Social Transformations in North-East Africa, 10,000 to 2650 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
Chapter 6. From the Ganges to the Danube: The Bronze Age
The formation of the ‘Eurasian metallogenic belt’ is explained by Slobodan Janković, ‘The Copper Deposits and Geotectonic Setting of the Tethyan Eurasian Metallogenic Belt’, Mineralium Deposita 12 (1977): 37–47. For the origins of the Three-Age System, see Alain Schnapp, The Discovery of the Past: The Origins of Archaeology (London: British Museum Press, 1996).
For the growth of cities on the Iranian plateau, see Ali Hakemi, Shahdad: Archaeological Excavations of a Bronze Age Center in Iran, trans. S. M. S. Sajjadi (Rome: Ismeo, 1997); and Carl C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, Beyond the Tigris and Euphrates: Bronze Age Civilizations (Beer Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 1996). The ‘Oxus’ or ‘Bactria-Margiana’ civilization of Central Asia is discussed in Philip L. Kohl, The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); also Fredrik T. Hiebert, Origins of the Bronze Age Oasis Civilization in Central Asia (Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 1994). A survey of early urban development in the Persian Gulf is provided by Harriet Crawford, Dilmun and Its Gulf Neighbors (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Trade relations between these and adjacent areas are reviewed in Shereen Ratnagar, Trading Encounters: From the Euphrates to the Indus in the Bronze Age (New Delhi/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). For metrological standards, see Alfredo Mederos and Carl C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, ‘Converting Currencies in the Old World’, Nature 411 (2001): 437; and also Lorenz Rahmstorf, ‘The Concept of Weighing during the Bronze Age in the Aegean, the Near East and Europe’, in I. Morley and C. Renfrew (eds), The Archaeology of Measurement: Comprehending Heaven, Earth and Time in Ancient Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
The early development of bronze technology, and its selective adoption across the western Old World, is the subject of a study by Lloyd Weeks, Early Metallurgy of the Persian Gulf: Technology, Trade, and the Bronze Age World (Boston/Leiden: Brill, 2003). Ornamental uses of bronze, from Sumer to the Aegean, are illustrated and discussed in Joan Aruz (ed.), Art of the First Cities (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven, CT/ London: Yale University Press, 2003). Textual evidence for the stockpiling and circulation of silver in standard units is presented in Giovanni Pettinato, Ebla: A New Look at History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). For the importance of temples as repositories of wealth and guarantors of value, see Morris Silver, Economic Structures of the Ancient Near East (London: Croom Helm, 1985); and essays in Edward Lipinski (ed.), State and Temple Economy in the Ancient Near East (Leuven: Departement Oriëntalistiek, 1979). The role of private enterprise in Bronze Age economies is beyond the scope of this book, but see Michael Hudson and Baruch A. Levine, Privatization in the Ancient Near East and Classical World (Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 1996).
The significance of Bronze Age metal hoards in temperate Europe is considered in Anthony F. Harding, European Societies in the Bronze Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), and for the Ganges-Yamuna copper hoards, see Paul Yule, ‘The Copper Hoards of Northern India’, Expedition 39 (1997): 22–32. The deposition of metalwork within tombs and burials in Oman, Afghanistan, the Caucasus, and Luristan is documented largely in specialist sources, select examples of which are included below (‘other works’). Regrettably few of these finds were recovered during scientific excavations; many have entered the antiquities market from unknown or anecdotal sources, and their date and provenance remain a matter of supposition.
The temple deposi
ts at Byblos and Ugarit are illustrated in Claude Doumet-Serhal (ed.), Decade: A Decade of Archaeology and History in Lebanon (Beirut: Lebanese British Friends of the National Museum, 2004). For later Eurasian examples of metal-hoarding on the margins of urban expansion, see Joan Aruz (ed.), The Golden Deer of Eurasia: Scythian and Sarmatian Treasures from the Russian Steppes (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000); Peter Spufford, Money and Its Use in Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). The Potlatch ceremony is discussed by Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. from 1925 original by W. D. Halls (London: Routledge, 2002); and see also Maurice Godelier, The Enigma of the Gift, trans. Nora Scott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
Other works referred to include P. Beaujard, ‘The Indian Ocean in Eurasian and African World-Systems before the Sixteenth Century’, Journal of World History 16(4) (2005): 411–65; D. Boucher et al. (eds), (2005) The Philosophy of Enchantment: Studies in Folktale, Cultural Criticism, and Anthropology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); J. S. Cooper, Presargonic Inscriptions (New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1986); C. Edens, ‘Transcaucasia at the End of the Early Bronze Age’, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 299/300 (1995): 53–64; A. George, House Most High: The Temples of Ancient Mesopotamia (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1993); E. Haerinck and B. Overlaet, Bani Surmah: An Early Bronze Age Graveyard in Pusht-i Kuh, Luristan (Leuven: Peeters, 2006); S. Küchler, ‘Sacrificial Economy and Its Objects’, Journal of Material Culture 2 (1997): 39–60; G. Philip, ‘Cypriot Bronzework in the Levantine World: Conservatism, Innovation and Social Change’, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 4(1) (1991): 59–107; V. I. Sarianidi, Die Kunst des alten Afghanistan: Architektur, Keramik, Siegel: Kunstwerke aus Stein und Metall (Weinheim: VCH, 1986); C. F. A. Schaeffer, ‘Ex Occidente Ars’, in Ugaritica VII (Paris: Paul Geuthner; Leiden: Brill, 1978), 475–551; T. Stech and V. Pigott, ‘The Metals Trade in Southwest Asia in the Third Millennium BC’, Iraq 48 (1986): 39–64; C. P. Thornton, ‘The Emergence of Complex Metallurgy on the Iranian Plateau: Escaping the Levantine Paradigm’, Journal of World Prehistory 22 (2009): 301–27; G. Weisgerber and P. Yule, ‘The First Metal Hoard in Oman’, in K. Frifelt and P. Sørensen (eds.), South Asian Archaeology 1985 (London: Curzon Press, 1989), 60–1. Translations of the ‘Lament for Ur’ and other Sumerian texts are available in J. A. Black et al., The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (Oxford, 1998–2006; ).
Chapter 7. Cosmology and Commerce
Attitudes to divine images in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt (as well as other regions) are compared in Michael B. Dick (ed.), Born in Heaven, Made on Earth: The Making of the Cult Image in the Ancient Near East (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999); and see also Victor Hurowitz, ‘What Goes in Is What Comes out: Materials for Creating Cult Statues’, in Gary M. Beckman and Theodore J. Lewis (eds.), Text, Artifact, and Image: Revealing Ancient Israelite Religion (Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2006). Cult images from Egypt are illustrated and discussed in Marsha Hill (ed.), Gifts for the Gods: Images from Egyptian Temples (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven, CT/ London: Yale University Press, 2007).
‘Atrahasis’ and the ‘Epic of Creation’ are translated in Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); and for Egyptian cosmology, see James P. Allen, Genesis in Egypt: The Philosophy of Ancient Egyptian Creation Accounts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988). The Mesopotamian ‘Opening of the Mouth’ ritual is analysed in depth by Christopher Walker and Michael Dick, The Induction of the Cult Image in Ancient Mesopotamia (University of Helsinki: Institute for Asian and African Studies, 2001); and its Egyptian counterpart by Hans-W. Fischer-Elfert, Die Vision von der Statue im Stein: Studien zum altägyptischen Mundöffnungsritual (Heidelberg: Universitäts Verlag, 1998). A more accessible account can be found in John H. Taylor, Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt (London: British Museum, 2001). Illuminating comparisons are drawn by Irene Winter, ‘Opening the Eyes and Opening the Mouth: The Utility of Comparing Images in Worship in India and the Ancient Near East’, in M. W. Meister (ed.), Ethnography and Personhood: Notes from the Field (Jaipur/New Delhi: Rawat, 2000), 129–62.
For the feeding of cult statues, see contributions in Jan Quaegebeur, Ritual and Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East (Leuven: Peeters, 1993); and also Jean Bottéro, The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia, trans. T. L. Fagan (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Nicholas Postgate, Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History (New York: Routledge, 1996), 119–22; Ursula Verhoeven, Grillen, Kochen, Backen im Alltag und in Ritual Altägyptens: ein Lexikographischer Beitrag (Bruxelles: Fondation Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth, 1984). A. Leo Oppenheim’s ‘The Care and Feeding of the Gods’ in his Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1977), remains fundamental. And for wider Mediterranean comparisons, see Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1989).
Other works referred to include Maurice Godelier, The Enigma of the Gift, trans. Nora Scott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); S. N. Kramer, History Begins at Sumer (London: Thames and Hudson, 1961).
Chapter 8. The Labours of Kingship
For reasons of brevity, this book presents a normative view of Mesopotamian and Egyptian kingship. I have not, for instance, discussed exceptional cases of divine rulers in Mesopotamia, for which see the contributions by Piotr Michalwoski and Irene Winter in Nicole Brisch et al. (eds), Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond (Chicago: Oriental Institute Seminars, no. 4, 2008).
The ‘Amarna Letters, discovered in Egypt over a century ago, comprise diplomatic correspondence between the ruling houses of the ancient Near East, recorded in Akkadian cuneiform. They reveal a formalized pattern of interpalatial relationships extending between Egypt, Mesopotamia, and surrounding regions (see Raymond Cohen and Raymond Westbrook (eds), Amarna Diplomacy: The Beginnings of International Relations (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). For further discussion of Mesopotamian legal codes and their relationship to juridical practice, see Norman Yoffee, Myths of the Archaic State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 100–12. A detailed inventory of related sources is provided by Raymond Westbrook, A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law (Leiden: Brill, 2003).
For further discussion of early Mesopotamian sculpture, including the plaques of Ur-Nanshe, see Henri Frankfort, The Art and Architecture of the Ancient Orient, 5th edn. (New Haven, CT/London: Yale University Press, 1996); and for the monuments of Ur-Namma, Jeanny V. Canby, The Ur-nammu Stela (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2001). Dietz O. Edzard, Gudea and His Dynasty (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997) gives a full edition of Gudea’s temple hymn; and for further discussion, see Richard Averbeck, ‘Sumer, the Bible, and Comparative Method: Historiography and Temple Building’, in M. W. Chavalas and K. Lawson Younger Jr. (eds.), Mesopotamia and the Bible: Comparative Explorations (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 88–125. Detailed discussion of Mesopotamian temple architecture can be found in Henri Frankfort, Pre-Sargonid Temples in the Diyala Region (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942), and for a more accessible review see his Art and Architecture, op. cit., 42–5. Ritual uses of incense in Mesopotamia and Egypt are compared and contrasted in Kjeld Nielsen, Incense in Ancient Israel (Leiden: Brill, 1986).
The unification of the Egyptian kingdom and the role of interregional contacts in that process are the subject of David Wengrow, The Archaeology of Early Egypt: Social Transformations in North-East Africa, 10,000 to 2650 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). The development of pyramid complexes is traced into the Old Kingdom and beyond by I. E. S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egy
pt, rev. edn. (London: Penguin, 1993); and see also Mark Lehner’s The Complete Pyramids (London: Thames and Hudson, 1997). For ‘pyramid towns’ and associated mortuary cults, see Barry Kemp’s Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization, 2nd edn. (London: Routledge, 2006). The workings of the phyle system are analysed by Ann Macy Roth, Egyptian Phyles in the Old Kingdom: The Evolution of a System of Social Organization (Chicago: Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, 1991). Mummification, the role of cult statues, and the development of funerary texts in Egyptian tombs are conveniently reviewed in John H. Taylor’s Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt (London: British Museum Press, 2001); and see also Sue D’Auria et al., Mummies and Magic: The Funerary Arts of Ancient Egypt (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1988). Christopher Eyre, The Cannibal Hymn (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002), provides a detailed study of the role of meat sacrifice and consumption in the Pyramid Texts.
What Makes Civilization Page 16