Authors: Kent Flannery,Joyce Marcus
The rulers of emerging cities were evidently willing to accept as many refugees as they could get. The larger their labor pool and military force, the grander their buildings and the smaller the likelihood that they would lose their autonomy to another urban society.
For every commoner who found security and employment in the Uruk city, however, there were probably several who considered it the lesser of two evils. Many Mesopotamian commoners had traded village life in Mayberry, where people never lock their doors, for life behind three deadbolts in a South Bronx tenement.
THE DYNAMICS OF COMPETITIVE INTERACTION
Previous generations of Mesopotamian archaeologists left us a legacy of brilliant, large-scale excavations. They also left us a lot of folkloric beliefs. One is the notion that “civilization” began in one spot, like an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and spread until it was washing up on distant shores. Another is the notion that the first city was the creation of visionaries who somehow knew in advance that urban life would be superior, a more efficient way to organize crafts and labor, a more exciting place to live, and a magnet for rural people. How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Uruk?
The fact is that there is nothing inherently superior about urbanization. In Mesopotamia it was all about power building and responding to real or perceived threats. The khan of Chogha Mish did not want his house burned by his rival at Susa. The leaders of Uruk did not want to see Umma grow at their expense, drawing away the rural populations that grew barley for them. Tell Hamoukar did not want to be taken over by people from the south. One way to prevent those things from happening was to get bigger.
Competitive interaction is one of the most important forces driving social and biological evolution. It determines which species leaves behind more offspring; which chimpanzee becomes the troop’s alpha; which of the chief’s sons succeeds in unifying Hawai’i; which company gets the biggest market share; and which team wins the World Cup.
Many of the ingredients of Mesopotamian city life preceded the Uruk period. Tell Maghzaliyah had a defensive wall 8,500 years ago. Tell es-Sawwan had walls, ditches, sling missiles, and irrigated fields 7,300 years ago. During roughly the same period, Chogha Mami had residential wards walled off from the rest of the village. Samarran pottery was produced by artisans who signed their work. Arpachiyah had streets 7,000 years ago and, like many Halaf sites, monitored shipments of goods by pressing seals into clay.
As early as the ‘Ubaid 1 period, Eridu had created a ritual precinct where temples would be built for centuries. Between 6,000 and 5,600 years ago, Tells ‘Oueili and Uqair had secular public buildings, one of which had the capacity to store tons of grain. Tell Abada had two-story houses for highly ranked families; Eridu had reed-and-clay houses for fishermen. By ‘Ubaid 4 times, there were already trade enclaves embedded in the Euphrates headwaters.
Whatever its timing, we doubt that city life began at one community and spread like an oil slick. It likely grew out of long-term competitive interaction, not only between neighbors such as Susa and Chogha Mish but among regions such as Susiana, Southern Mesopotamia, and Northern Mesopotamia. Competitive interaction drives ambitious leaders to take unprecedented measures. In addition to transforming whole societies, of course, it produces winners and losers. We flock to the winners like paparazzi, forgetting that the competition itself was the real engine of change.
TWENTY-TWO
They called themselves “the black-headed people,” a likely reference to raven hair. During the Early Dynastic period, 5,000 to 4,350 years ago, they dominated Southern Mesopotamia. For two centuries, 4,350 to 4,150 years ago, they lost their autonomy to people speaking a different language. During the Third Dynasty of Ur, 4,150 to 4,000 years ago, they returned to power, only to be ravaged by invaders and internal revolt.
We call the land of the black-headed people Sumer. While that land has seen extensive archaeological survey and excavation, much of what we know about the Sumerians is the product of epigraphy, the meticulous translation of their own written texts. Some of these texts allow us to assign the reigns of Sumerian rulers to specific years in our twenty-first century calendars.
Sumerian society was, in the words of epigrapher Igor Diakonoff, an aristocratic oligarchy in which both the ruler and the oligarchs struggled for supremacy. The Sumerians may have been the first people on earth to privatize land. The relentless purchase of land by noble families, combined with the charging of high interest on loans, created both private wealth and a body of landless serfs.
THE BUREAUCRATIC STATE
While the Sumerians are usually credited with creating the first bureaucratic state, a great deal of the groundwork was laid by their Late Uruk/Jemdet Nasr ancestors. We know a lot about inequality in the Early Dynastic state because the Sumerians wrote so much, and because the writing of that period, referred to as cuneiform because of its wedge-shaped stylus marks, is easier to read than that of the Uruk period.
Many early states had strong, highly centralized governments with a professional ruling class. Politically based social units began to replace the clans and ancestor-based descent groups of earlier societies. One can still detect clanlike units in Sumerian society, but many people in the cities were beginning to live in residential wards based on shared occupation or social class.
One of the most dramatic innovations of states is that the central government monopolizes the use of force, dispensing justice according to rules of law. Achievement-based and rank societies tended to respond to theft or assault at the level of the individual, family, clan, or village. For the Sumerians, most crimes were treated as crimes against the state. It then became the state’s responsibility to implement one of a series of punishments, which were codified in order to give the appearance of fairness. This required a system of judges and bailiffs, who were also called upon to decide disputes.
While individuals in Sumerian society were constrained from violence and revenge, the state had the right to draft soldiers and wage war. During the Early Dynastic period, commoners were rounded up to serve as foot soldiers when needed. The artists of that time depicted rulers driving war chariots, followed by soldiers with helmets, spears, and bows and arrows. By the time of the Third Dynasty of Ur, the horse, first domesticated on the steppes of central Asia, was replacing the donkey as a puller of chariots.
Bureaucracies are expensive to maintain, and one Sumerian solution was to levy taxes. Every official transaction had to be witnessed and archived, and an official took his cut. While rations of barley, wool, and beer were still supplied to state employees, the Sumerians turned to standardized units of silver for many taxes, fees, and fines.
A lot of lower-level officials were commoners, and as we will see later, some abused their offices. The distinction between officials and nonofficials enhanced inequality within the commoner stratum: I can now overcharge you, and your only recourse is to bitch.
Finally, the Sumerian state supported what amounted to an official religion. Each city had a patron deity whose temple was larger than that of any other. Temple activities and staff were supported by an estate on which crops were grown, livestock was raised, and artisans labored. The wealth of the largest estates was staggering.
Many economic historians see in the temple estates the germ of a capitalist society. Early Dynastic temples were profit-making, surplus-accumulating, money-lending, interest-charging corporations, and foreclosure on loans may have driven thousands of needy farmers into servitude. Temple managers unwittingly showed the Sumerian aristocrats how to do the same thing.
One other aspect of Sumerian religion deserves mention. On a continuum from tolerant to authoritarian, Sumer lay toward the authoritarian end. Hundreds of rules of social behavior had allegedly been established by the gods; human priests, judges, and bailiffs were there to make sure that they were followed. The state decided what men were allowed to do, what women were allowed to do, who could marry, who could divorce, who could strike whom, and so on. The penalties included fines, corporal punishment, and even death by stoning.
COSMOLOGY
The Sumerians themselves, of course, did not know that their state had been created out of less complex societies, because for them the world had begun in the chaos of a mythological past. Out of the clouds and mist of the cosmos appeared Ki, the earth, floating on a great freshwater sea called Abzu, the Mesopotamian counterpart to Egypt’s Nun. The mating of Abzu with Ti’amat, the ocean, produced the high god Anu (Sky). Celestial bodies such as Utu (Sun) and Nanna (Moon), as well as powerful forces such as Enlil (Lord Wind), crossed the sky from horizon to horizon.
The mating of these high gods, some of which were incestuous, gave rise to other deities. Among these were Enki (Lord Earth), Ninhursaga (Mother Earth), and Inanna (Queen of Heaven). For his part, Enlil gave rise to
enten,
the farmer, and
emesh,
the shepherd, the workhorses of Sumerian society.
Obedience was a prime Sumerian virtue. The human ruler obeyed his city’s patron deity. In the case of Eridu, that was Enki; at Nippur, Enlil; at Ur of the Chaldees, Nanna; at Larsa, Utu; and at Uruk, Anu and Inanna. The rest of human society obeyed the ruler. Only a ruler was powerful enough to have a direct relationship with his city’s patron deity. A commoner interacted only with his tutelary god, a lesser deity who had taken an interest in him. As with the Big Man of Bougainville, who benefited from the love of a demon, a Sumerian’s success was explained by his having acquired a deity who would intervene on his behalf.
Deities loved gifts, and a lot of rituals called for pouring libations of beer and making offerings of food. Wealthy citizens could commission small statues that portrayed them praying. Each statue would be stored at the temple and, for a fee, brought out at the right time to stand in for the worshipper.
The gods were the alphas of two dominance hierarchies, one human and one divine. In the city of Lagash, for example, there was a great temple called Eninnu, considered the manor house of the god Ningirsu. It had two temple staffs: one visible and one invisible.
The invisible staff began with a doorkeeper and butler, both minor deities. Below them were a divine chamberlain, counselor, and bailiff, and still further down the list a divine charioteer, gamekeeper, inspector of fisheries, and goatherd, as well as musicians, singers, and errand boys.
The visible staff began with a high priest and continued with human counterparts for all the divine officials. The city’s ruler was ex officio head of the church and determined what Ningirsu wanted by having his dreams interpreted. For example, a long narrative poem from Lagash tells us that Gudea, who ruled that city from 2141 to 2122
B.C.
, was troubled by a vivid dream. He knew that the goddess Nanshe, patron deity of Nina (a Level 2 center in the hierarchy below Lagash), was skilled at interpreting dreams.
Gudea made a pilgrimage to Nina, praying for guidance at other temples along the way. Nanshe revealed the dream to be a sign that Ningirsu wanted Eninnu rebuilt. Upon his return to Lagash, Gudea ordered the work done. This act of piety was described hyperbolically in the aforementioned poem, which was inscribed on two clay cylinders found at Lagash.
SOCIAL CLASS AND LAND
So closely tied were land and people in Sumer that social classes can almost be inferred from the archives of land use. Rulers, upper-level administrators, high priests, and judges of the supreme court were drawn from the hereditary aristocracy. Individual aristocrats (or their families) owned large estates whose fields were worked for them by commoners and slaves. Considerable land had been privatized, and wealthy families could acquire more over time, leaving less and less for everyone else.
Many free commoners still belonged to corporate social units called
im-ru-a
(“clans”). These units owned communal land that was supposedly inalienable, but it appears that parts of it could be sold, as long as everyone in the unit agreed.
Robert McC. Adams has concluded that most free commoners lived in nuclear family households. There are suggestions, however, that families might have been grouped into larger units called
dumu-dumu
(extended families or lineages?), which in turn were grouped into the “clans” mentioned earlier.
For example, one Early Dynastic text mentions 539 dumu-dumu grouped into seven im-ru-a, some of which were named for deities, animals, or professions. It appears that, over time, these traditional clanlike segments gave way to politically organized units, based on residence or profession within the city.
Sumerian descent was reckoned in the male line, although elite women were mentioned in the genealogies of aristocrats, and women could hold high office. Sumerian kings, like the monarchs of other societies, were allowed multiple wives. Royal polygamy was not just a perquisite of office but a diplomatic strategy, allowing rulers to forge marriage alliances with the aristocracy of other cities.
Commoner marriage, with few exceptions, was limited to one man and one woman. Divorce was allowed, but bigamy and adultery were punished, often severely. One inscription discovered at Lagash states that “the women of former days used to take two husbands, [but] the women of today [if they attempted this] were stoned with stones [upon which was inscribed their evil] intent.”
What evil intent? Most of the societies discussed in earlier chapters saw no harm in polygamous marriage. For societies that believed in reincarnation, paternity was not a concern. Babies were seen as recycled ancestors, and all children born into a polygamous marriage were considered full siblings.
The logic of Sumer was different. Men were seen as “planting a seed” in the woman, and because of the male-oriented system of inheritance, the origin of this seed was a major concern. A woman who lost her virginity before marriage, committed adultery, or took two husbands had created intolerable doubt about paternity. The state intervened to protect what it saw as a husband’s rights but phrased it in terms of good and evil to make it appear that it was carrying out the will of a deity.