The Land of Sumer: Urban Revolution

Welcome to this first episode on the land of Sumer. Today we will be talking about the urban revolution. This was the development from small farming communities into the first large cities. An area known as Sumer has been referred to as the cradle of civilization. Now before we go any further it's important to note that city life was not the typical experience within the ancient world. In fact nine out of ten people continue to live their entire lives engaged in agriculture outside the city walls. That's a whopping 90 percent. However historians do tend to concentrate on the urban experience as most of the interesting topics revert around the cities, politics, society, warfare and so on. So let's take a look at the map. Sumer was in ancient Mesopotamia which is in modern-day Syria and Iraq. To the north we have the Zagros mountain ranges which runs from Turkey right the way across to Iran. On the Turkish border there is another set of mountain ranges called the Taurus. Both mountain ranges are a valuable water source for the two main rivers that flow through Mesopotamia. These two rivers are called the Tigris and the Euphrates. This is where Mesopotamia gets its name from for in ancient Greek it means the land between the two rivers. These two rivers flow from west to east and empty out into the Persian Gulf. To the south is the Arabian desert. Here it is dry and desolate and mostly inhabited by nomads, people with no permanent settlement. Mesopotamia is within what has been referred to as the Fertile Crescent, a large area through the Middle East with enough water sources to allow civilization to flourish. And it is along the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates that a collection of city-states emerged. There have been a number of civilizations that have lived in Mesopotamia throughout the ancient world. The Assyrians, Babylonians, Arcadians and the Sumerians. Although they did not always speak the same language they did share certain attributes within their cultures such as gods, myths, a view of the world as well as a shared history. The earliest Mesopotamian cultures however go back before the urban revolution like the Halaf and the Samara for example which remained in small farming communities. It was the Ubaid that first began to urbanize and traces of their culture have been found throughout Mesopotamia. This timeline starts in 6000 BC and ends in modern times 2000 AD, a total of 8000 years. At 6000 BC we have evidence of early farming communities in Mesopotamia. The Ubaid culture spans between 5900 to 4000 BC, just short of 2000 years. After the Ubaid the Sumerians inhabited the cities of Sumer. We don't know exactly where they came from or whether they took over by migration or invasion or maybe even a little bit of both and it is not clear what happened to the Ubaid but it has been suggested they were absorbed into the Sumerian culture. Under the Sumerians however the urban revolution really kicked into gear. This artifact is the Weld Blundell Prism, the source we will now turn to in order to see how the ancient Sumerians themselves saw the beginnings of their civilization. Written in the ancient language of the Sumerians it is essentially a king's list. They believed it goes back to the first king in the first city. It's a rather small artifact just 20 centimetres high and 9 centimetres wide. Writing did not occur in Mesopotamia till around 3000 BC and the prism dates back to old Babylonia to around 1800 BC. However the earliest copies go back as far as 2100 BC of which only fragments remain. So what does it tell us about the origins of their civilization? Well it begins like this. After the kingship was descended from heaven the kingship was in Iridu. In Iridu Elulim became king. He ruled for 28,800 years. So basically a king called Elulim ruled in a city called Eridu for a ridiculously long time. Now the early reigns on the list are unbelievably long but they do become more realistic as myth gives way to history. What is important to note however was that they believed Eridu was the first city. Now some may argue that myth is myth and not to be taken seriously whereas others say there is often a grain of truth behind the myth. Eridu was discovered in 1854. Excavations there have discovered habitation going back 7,000 years. And archaeologists also argue that it was the most prominent state in the Ubaid period. Furthermore Eridu is regarded by many archaeologists as a prime candidate for one of the earliest cities in Mesopotamia and even possibly the world. So in the case of Eridu maybe there is some truth behind the myth and this makes Eridu an ideal city to look at when studying the urban revolution. Today Eridu is a desolate and lifeless place. All that remains is a collection of rubble mounds where a great city once stood. 7,000 years ago this land would have been very different. The Persian Gulf came much further inland making it more marshy. The river Euphrates, now out of sight, would have come right by the city. There was also a freshwater lake nearby. It was known as the Apsu but that, like everything else around here, has turned to dust. 16 layers of habitation have allowed archaeologists to study the city's lifespan that lasted just over a thousand years. The remains of the oldest brick building discovered at this site was a small temple just 3.5 by 4.5 meters. So at the beginning of Eridu's history this small temple stood here when little else did. Could it be then that religion was the catalyst? Writing was not invented until much later on. So it is the archaeology that we have to look at to try and get a sense of what was going on during this early period. What was discovered at this first temple was mass quantities of ash along with fish bones. This seems to suggest that fish was sacrificed or ritually eaten here or maybe even a bit of both. Eventually the Mesopotamian scribes wrote down their myths so we can get a better understanding of their religion. Each city had its patron god or goddess and the god of Eridu was called Enki or later known as Ea. He was the god of freshwater and lived in the Apsu, that freshwater lake that once existed nearby. And even Eridu's temple was called the Apsu. He was the god of wisdom and incantations or spells. His signs were the fish and the goats. It was believed he gave rulers knowledge and understanding and that he brought forth abundance in agriculture. He was also the patron god of artisans and craftsmen and according to Mesopotamian mythology Enki created the seven sages and sent them to teach humans the skills needed to build cities. So who were these seven sages? They were demigods given the knowledge necessary to build city states. They were commonly represented as fishmen the first of which appeared in Eridu. Despite being in the fertile crescent Mesopotamia was not an easy place to tame. There were salt marshes in the south and it was more hilly to the east but generally it was a featureless flat mud plain lacking in almost every resource prone to unpredictable and violent thunderstorms that would cause the rivers to burst their banks creating flash floods. These floods could decimate the landscape washing away homes and destroying crops. Disasters such as these could very well cause starvation as well as destroyed property. It was believed that if you'd committed a sin or angered the gods in any way it could bring retribution upon yourself your community or even your descendants. These punishments took the form of natural disasters such as floods earthquakes disease and so on. In a hostile environment such as this particularly at the beginning of the settlement's history before large-scale ditches dams or intensive irrigation systems had been established to help protect from such disasters any opportunity to reduce the gods frequent tantrums must have felt important in an attempt to increase their chance of survival by appeasing the god's wrath. Therefore close proximity to the temple must have felt like an important factor when choosing a location. Mesopotamia had very little natural wood for timber barely any stone or even any basic metals precious or otherwise. In fact it was lacking on what we might consider the most essential resources for the development of civilization. What they did have however was mud and reeds both of which were exploited to the max. From reeds they made baskets boats reed houses and it was even burnt as a fuel. Mud was even more versatile by molding it and baking it hard it could be used to make dishes beakers storage containers lamps tools and more importantly for building cities mud bricks. The largest and grandest of these buildings constructed from mud brick were of course the temples. Although many historians can agree that Iridu is a possible candidate for one of the earliest cities and the most prominent states before 4000 BC they do on the other hand strongly disagree with the king's list itself and it's not just those ridiculously long reigns of the early kings. They point out that these early cities were not ruled by kings at all. In fact kingship did not appear in Mesopotamia until after almost 1000 years after the Ubaid period ended. These cities were ruled by temple leaders and this continued till about 3000 BC well into the Sumerian period. The religion was the basis for the people's cultural identity and the temples was the nucleus of the community in these early settlements. The process went a little like this. The surrounding communities were able to organise labour to dig ditches and dams for flood defences and also irrigation systems in order to practice a more intensive agriculture. Irrigation was the practice of digging channels inland from the river. Water would then run through these channels in the quantities needed for the crops to grow. This would then create vast areas of farmland that were previously too dry to cultivate. Irrigation systems allowed farmers to control the water needed for agriculture without dependency on rainfall, allowing them to grow far more than before. Farmers were then able to grow food not just for the needs of their own households but additional food creating a surplus quantity. The temple acted with the authority to tax and collect the surplus food therefore it became the administration and essentially the first government. The surplus could then be reorganised as payment for the labour needed for other projects such as buildings, canals or defensive walls. Another effect this surplus food had was that it could be used as payment allowing others to give up farming to engage in other full-time professions. This created industries such as the production of pottery, baskets or anything that could be manufactured. It also allowed people to become full-time traders who would bring in materials from outside the city or even outside Mesopotamia itself. These new materials would then stimulate new industries such as textiles, metalworking as well as a large number of other crafts. This episode has emphasised the importance the temples had in these early settlements and their role in forming the first governments as well as the process of urbanisation itself. By the Sumerian period we see numerous cities inhabited by large populations across the land of Sumer and this trend of city life was set to continue around the world throughout history to the present day and the foreseeable future.