The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire (77 page)

After a total of eight mythical rulers came a giant flood that covered the earth. Kingship then had to descend from heaven for a second time, and it now centered on Kish. They evidently were not making rulers the way they had before the flood, because the first king of Kish ruled for a mere 1,200 years.

Even the kings of Early Dynastic I remain shadowy figures. One monarch, Etana of Kish, is described as “he who stabilized all the lands,” implying that his influence extended beyond his own province. Finally, during Early Dynastic II, inscriptions from places as widely separated as Nippur, Adab, Girsu, and the Diyala River basin began to mention rulers of Kish who are likely to have been flesh and blood.

One of these Early Dynastic rulers was Mesalim of Kish. His inscriptions indicate that he controlled provinces beyond his own, and his political influence extended further still. As we shall see later, Mesalim was once called upon to mediate a border dispute between the rival provinces of Umma and Lagash.

Given the importance of the kings of Kish, it is no surprise that archaeologists have found two impressive palaces there. Palace A, built at no great distance from the city’s temples, consists of at least two architectural units covering an area 300 by 200 feet. The larger of the two units was surrounded by a massive, buttressed defensive wall. Its royal residential quarters were embedded deep in the western portion of the building. The monumental entrance to the palace lay to the southeast and led to offices and archives that had only indirect access to the royal apartments. The smaller of the two architectural units was separated from the larger by a narrow corridor and had the appearance of an annex. Deep in its interior was a decorated reception hall with columns.

A second Early Dynastic palace at Kish, known as the Plano-Convex Building, had a triangular ground plan like the well-known “flat iron building” in New York City. It lay more than a mile from Palace A, underscoring the fact that each Mesopotamian king preferred to build his palace in a new area, designed to his own specifications.

During Early Dynastic III, a greater number of Sumerian kings made the transition from legend to history. One such ruler was Mesannepadda, alleged founder of the first royal dynasty of Ur. This dynasty is of interest because the most spectacular Early Dynastic tombs ever discovered come from the city of Ur.

During the period 1927–1928, archaeologist C. Leonard Woolley discovered an Early Dynastic III cemetery at Tell al-Muqayyar, the ruins of the ancient city of Ur. The 1,800 graves he excavated almost certainly include the remains of well-to-do commoners, government officials, minor nobles, and members of royal families. The 16 graves Woolley considered royal provided a contrast to the graves of commoners. Many commoners were simply wrapped in matting or given a coffin of basketwork, wood, or clay. They were accompanied by their personal belongings, which in the case of some bureaucrats included their administrative seals.

The most spectacular pair of tombs (Graves 789 and 800) belonged to a king, possibly named A-bara-gi, and his queen, Pu-abi. The king’s tomb had been broken open and plundered, but the queen’s was intact (
Figure 67
).

The queen of Ur had been laid to rest on a raised platform, or bier, inside a limestone and mud-brick tomb measuring 14 by 9 feet. She wore an elaborate headdress of gold leaves and ribbons, carnelian rings, lapis lazuli beads, and a golden comb decorated with lapis lazuli flowers. A huge pair of crescent-shaped golden earrings adorned her ears, and the entire upper part of her body was covered with gold jewelry and semiprecious stones. Three lapis lazuli cylinder seals were found at the queen’s right shoulder. One was inscribed with the name Pu-abi and the title
nin,
“Lady.” Another seal bore the name A-bara-gi and is presumed to refer to her husband.

Two additional skeletons were found on the floor near the queen’s bier; their headdresses suggested that they had been ladies-in-waiting. A third skeleton is believed to have been that of a male attendant.

Just outside the queen’s tomb began Grave 1237, an associated chamber covering more than 500 square feet and described by Woolley as “the great Death Pit.” In it were the remains of an estimated 74 sacrificial victims, mostly young women. There were also two wagons, drawn by oxen and attended by drivers and grooms. All the animals, drivers, and grooms had apparently been sacrificed in place.

Along the wall of the Death Pit, closest to the king’s tomb, were the skeletons of nine women with headdresses of gold, carnelian, and lapis lazuli. These women were accompanied by the disintegrating remains of two harps; elsewhere Woolley found the remains of lyres. These musical instruments had likely been used to accompany the laments that we know were sung at Sumerian funerals.

FIGURE 67.
   During the Early Dynastic period, some funerals of kings and queens at the city of Ur included human sacrifice. This drawing shows the tombs of King A-bara-gi and Queen Pu-abi. More than 70 attendants, including soldiers, ladies-in-waiting, grooms, ox-cart drivers, and musicians, had apparently been sacrificed to accompany their rulers in the afterlife.

Between the skeletons of these women and the two wagons were the remains of men with bundles of spears. Leading upward from the Death Pit was the ramp down which the wagons had been led; this ramp was still guarded by the skeletons of six soldiers with helmets and spears.

Woolley saw no evidence for violent death in this part of the cemetery. In his scenario all the soldiers, musicians, grooms, attendants, and ladies-in-waiting went to their death willingly, perhaps by taking poison. Woolley’s scenario is plausible, but it is currently being reevaluated by Mesopotamian scholars.

What is intriguing about the royal tombs of Ur is that they show us a level of human sacrifice as great as that of Peru’s Moche tombs, or the burials of Panama’s Coclé chiefs. While these sacrifices allow us to compare Early Dynastic Sumer to Moche and Coclé societies, such behavior is considered atypical for the Sumerians and apparently did not continue into later periods.

CORRUPTION AND MALFEASANCE IN OFFICE

The Sumerians left the world an amazing legacy of urban civilization. Unfortunately, they also created a legacy of bureaucratic corruption that even today’s politicians must work hard to equal.

The chiefs of rank societies expected to receive tribute from their subjects. The “thigh-eating chiefs” of the Kachin, for example, accepted a hind limb from every animal sacrificed. Such tribute was rationalized by the belief that Kachin chiefs were descended from celestial spirits, who would consume the animal’s essence. In Sumer, however, even officials with no celestial ancestors began to demand exorbitant fees for every bureaucratic transaction. As for the rulers themselves, some began to covet the wealthy temple estates.

The Early Dynastic texts of Lagash describe growing corruption and malfeasance, interrupted by occasional reform. For some examples, let us look at the period covered by the reigns of Entemena, Enanatum II, Enentarzi, Lugalanda, and Urukagina, who ruled Lagash between 2404 and 2342
B.C.

We have seen that the two largest temple estates in Lagash were those of the city’s patron deity, Ningirsu, and his wife, Bau. Bau’s estate alone has been estimated at 25 square miles, some 17 of which consisted of agricultural fields.

Every temple estate, while considered the property of a deity, was run by a human overseer known as a
sanga.
Under the sanga the estate was treated like a profit-making corporation, producing a surplus, engaging in foreign trade, extending loans to private citizens, calculating the long-term impact of interest rates, and foreclosing on debts. At the start of the Early Dynastic period, there were checks on the avarice of the sanga; his accounts were kept by scribes, and he had to answer to his community.

Little by little, however, the ensís of Lagash began to confer the title of sanga on their eldest son and heir. The ruler Entemena, for example, made his son Enentarzi the sanga of the temple estate of Ningirsu. After the brief reign of his uncle, Enanatum II, Enentarzi acceded to the throne of Lagash.

What Enentarzi then did reveals two interesting changes in the logic of Lagash society. First, in the words of Diakonoff, “the temple estate [of Ningirsu] came to be regarded as the property of the ensí.” Enentarzi, who had overseen the estate for years, simply retained control of it when he left for the palace. Second, by logical extension, the temple estate of the god’s wife came to be regarded as the property of the ensí’s wife. Enentarzi’s wife, therefore, assumed control of the Bau estate. This privatization of what had been the gods’ land continued under the ruler Lugalanda and his wife, Barnamtarra.

Epigrapher A. I. Tyumenev’s description of the Bau estate makes it clear why a ruler’s wife might find the property desirable. At one point in time the estate employed an estimated 1,200 persons, 250 to 300 of whom were slaves. The products of its 17 square miles of fields were kept in 30 storehouses, one of which held 9,450 tons of barley. At least 205 female slaves worked in a centralized weaving establishment, while others brewed beer and cooked for the work gangs. Administrators and professional plowmen at Bau received rations, while other residents of the estate were sharecroppers. The temple estate of Ningirsu was presumably even larger than Bau’s, but we cannot estimate its size because fewer texts from its archives have come to light.

Other aristocrats, observing the embezzlement of the temple estates, used the ensís as role models. They possessed themselves of more and more land, often by making loans on which they eventually foreclosed. For their part, the commoners who held bureaucratic positions began to line their pockets as well.

Eventually the citizens of Lagash began to complain that the ensí and his wife had appropriated the temple estates. They also complained that the ensí was using the temple’s oxen to plow his personal onion fields. The sanga, they added, was raiding the orchards set aside to support indigent mothers. As if that were not enough, rich men were stealing fish from poor men’s ponds.

Corruption was rampant among appointed officials. The overseer of boatmen claimed the best boats for himself. The overseer of fisheries preempted the best fishing locations. The ensí’s officials hired blind men to draw water from wells and then fed them only table scraps.

When shepherds arrived at the shearing station with valuable white sheep, they were charged an exorbitant five shekels of silver to have them shorn. Men who wanted to divorce their wives also had to pay five shekels. The official whose job it was to deliver a corpse to the cemetery was charging the deceased’s family 420 loaves of bread and seven pitchers of beer. Priests were often shortchanged on their barley rations. The
gish-kin-ti,
or temple craftsmen, reported having to beg for the bread they were owed. Many of these abuses drove ordinary Sumerian families further into debt.

And finally, epigrapher Samuel Noah Kramer reports, there was this widespread complaint: “From the borders of [the estate of] Ningirsu to the sea, there was the tax collector.”

In this atmosphere of corruption, a noble named Urukagina began to curry favor with influential priests, promising reforms. Many other aristocrats, aware of the commoners’ complaints, agreed that reforms would be necessary.

Urukagina became ensí of Lagash in a coup in 2351
B.C.
, promising to return “the house of the ruler [Ningirsu],” “the house of the woman [Bau],” and “the house of the children [the divine offspring of Ningirsu and Bau]” to their rightful owners. Urukagina also freed priests from taxation and canceled many of the commoners’ outstanding debts. His may have been the first government bailout.

Urukagina claimed in his royal inscriptions that he had been given the kingship of Lagash by Ningirsu himself. He prohibited officials from shortchanging priests’ rations, seizing the best boats, and occupying the best fisheries. He prohibited bailiffs from charging five shekels to shear white sheep. He lowered the fee for delivering a corpse to 80 loaves of bread and three pitchers of beer. Aristocrats were forbidden to take fruit from the orchards set aside for indigent mothers. No longer would temple craftsmen have to beg for their rations. No longer would the wealthy take advantage of widows, orphans, and the blind.

Unfortunately, Urukagina’s return of the temple estates was largely cosmetic. Records from the Bau estate show that it was still being managed for Urukagina’s wife, Shag-Shag, by an overseer named Eniggal, who had previously managed it for Lugalanda’s wife, Barnamtarra.

Who knew that the politicians of 4,350 years ago would not fulfill their campaign promises?

CONFLICT BETWEEN PROVINCES

Along the border between the provinces of Umma and Lagash lay a 28-mile-long tract of land called Gu’edena, irrigated by a canal from the Euphrates. For 150 years, through the reigns of at least ten rulers of Lagash, both provinces quarreled over Gu’edena.

During the reign of Lugal-sha-engur of Lagash, the rulers of both provinces called upon the great Mesalim of Kish to adjudicate the dispute. Mesalim made the 90-mile trip and erected a stela, or freestanding stone monument, at the disputed border. According to epigrapher Jerrold Cooper, Mesalim’s version of events was that the god Enlil himself had established the boundary between Ningirsu (patron deity of Lagash) and Shara (patron deity of Umma). Mesalim was thus simply carrying out divine orders.