Bertman-Handbook_to_Life_in_Ancient_Mesopotamia.pdf

HANDBOOK TO LIFE

IN ANCIENTMESOPOTAMIA

HANDBOOK TO LIFE

IN ANCIENTMESOPOTAMIA

STEPHEN BERTMANUniversity of Windsor

Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia

Copyright © 2003 by Stephen Bertman

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Bertman, Stephen.Handbook to life in ancient Mesopotamia / Stephen Bertman.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8160-4346-91. Iraq—Civilization—To 634. I. Title.DS69.5 .B47 2002935—dc21

2002003516

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CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS viii

INTRODUCTION x

LIST OF MAPS xi

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi

1 GEOGRAPHY OF MESOPOTAMIA 1The Land and Its Rivers 2Natural Resources 4Surrounding Countries 5Gazetteer 6Reading 37

2 ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY 39The Discoverers 40Dating the Past 49Digging for History 51Ancient Narratives 54Survey of History 54Key Rulers of Mesopotamia 58Reading 59

3 GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY 61The Structure of Civilization 62The Stratification of Society 62The Beginnings 63Kingship 63Taxation 67Justice and Law 68

Biographies of Political Leaders 72Reading 111

4 RELIGION AND MYTH 113The Multiplicity of the Gods 114The Governance of the World 115The Names and Functions of the Gods 115Myths 126Places of Public Worship 127Priests and Priestesses 128Holy Days and Festivals 130Divination and Exorcism 132Personal Piety 133The Concept of Immortality 134Reading 135

5 LANGUAGE, WRITING, ANDLITERATURE 137Language 138The Great Decipherments 138Major Languages 142Writing 144Literature 149Reading 182

6 ARCHITECTURE AND ENGINEERING 185Building Materials and Houses 186Domestic Architecture 188Techniques of Construction 190From Village to City 191

Temples 191Ziggurats 194Palaces 198City Planning 201Walls 202Canals and Aqueducts 203Bridges 207Roads 209Reading 210

7 SCULPTURE AND OTHER ARTS 213The Role of the Artist 214Materials 214Sculpture 214Pottery 223Painting 224Mosaic 226Glass 229Cylinder Seals 231Carved Ivory 236Jewelry 237Reading 241

8 ECONOMY 243Definition and Structure 244Significance 244Farming and Animal Husbandry 244Fishing and Hunting 247Crafts 248Professions 248Wages and Prices 248Reading 250

9 TRANSPORTATION AND TRADE 251Transportation by Water 252Transportation by Land 253Trade 255Weights and Measures 257Reading 258

10 MILITARY AFFAIRS 261The Influence of Geography 262Evidence 262Fortifications 262Weapons and Equipment 263The Organization of the Army 265

Siege Warfare 267Psychological Warfare 267The Art of War 268Ancient Monuments and Modern Warfare 270Reading 271

11 EVERYDAY LIFE 273Work 274Slavery 274Marriage and Family 275Birth, Death, and the Belief in an Afterlife 281Homes 285Clothing 288Cosmetics and Perfume 291Food and Drink 291Music 294Toys and Games 298Sports 300Education 300Health and Medicine 304Reading 309

12 MESOPOTAMIA AND SACRED SCRIPTURE 311The Old Testament 312Mesopotamia and the Apocrypha 322Mesopotamia and the New Testament 322Mesopotamia and the Koran 323Reading 323

13 THE LEGACY OF MESOPOTAMIA 325Continuity and Change 326Inspiration and Imagination 332An Enduring Legacy 334Detroit of the Chaldees 335Twin Legacies 336Reading 337

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 339

LIST OF MUSEUMS WITH MAJORMESOPOTAMIAN COLLECTIONS 342

BIBLIOGRAPHY 343

INDEX 377

“Y’ know—Babylon once had two million people

in it, and all we know about ’em is the names of

the kings and some copies of wheat contracts

and . . . the sales of slaves. Yes, every night all those

families sat down to supper, and the father came

home from his work, and the smoke went up

the chimney, —same as here.”

— Thornton Wilder, Our Town

H A N D B O O K T O L I F E I N A N C I E N T M E S O P O T A M I A

viii

For rescuing the ancient civilizations ofMesopotamia from oblivion we are

indebted to generations of travelers andexplorers, archaeologists and philologists,whose love of the past gave that past new lifeand whose words and work inspired and shapedthis book. I remain personally indebted toLeonard Cottrell and others whose popularbooks on archaeological discovery pointed theway for me when I was young, and to theteachers—Jotham Johnson, Casper J. KraemerJr., Lionel Casson, and Cyrus Gordon—I waslater lucky to find as guides.

For this project, special thanks for biblio-graphical help go to Elaine Bertman, William

W. Hallo, Angeline Sturam, and Dr. FredWassermann, and to Diana Wu, Margie Prytu-lak, and Biljana Barisic for giving my manu-script electronic form. I am also indebted tothe following individuals for assisting me inobtaining photographic illustrations: CarlaHosein, Sylvia Inwood, Tory James, RyanJensen, Ulla Kasten, and Charles Kline.

Ultimately, my greatest debt is to those whoare now nameless but were human like our-selves, those whose long-ago hopes and dreamsstill swirl in the dust of Iraq. In writing thisbook, it is with those ancient ghosts I seek tokeep faith, for to be remembered is to be alive.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In Memory of

Cyrus H. Gordon(1909–2001)

who looked across artificial borders and bravely reported a wider truth


x

Along with Egypt, ancient Mesopotamiawas the birthplace of civilization. But,

unlike Egypt, Mesopotamia was the home ofnot one but a succession of glorious civiliza-tions—the civilizations of Sumer, Babylonia,and Assyria—that together flourished formore than three millennia from about 3500 to500 B.C.E.

It was Sumerian mathematicians who devisedthe 60-minute hour that still rules our lives. Itwas Babylonian architects who designed thefabled Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gar-dens of Babylon, one of the “Seven Wonders ofthe Ancient World.” And it was Assyrian kingsand generals who, in the name of imperialism,conducted some of the most ruthless militarycampaigns in recorded history.

The civilizations of Mesopotamia are unitedby many common denominators: the land ofthe twin rivers—the Tigris and Euphrates—andthe resources it possessed; the gods and god-desses that lorded over it; the cities—theworld’s first—that rose and fell with their tow-ers and temples; the lawmakers and empire-

builders; the farmers, merchants, and artisanswho lived out their daily lives; the scribes whotold their story in the world’s oldest writing;and the works of literature that still survive thatspeak of a search for meaning in a land that sooften saw the hopes of humankind frustrated bynature’s raw power or man’s voracious greed.

Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia pre-sents a panorama of human striving painted ona broad geographical and historical canvas, astory of the struggle to create civilized life in afertile land racked by brutal conquest, a tale ofuniversal human aspirations written in the dustand recaptured by archaeology. In retelling thistale the author has produced English versionsof ancient texts designed to convey theirunderlying humanity.

In the main, yesterday’s Mesopotamia istoday’s Iraq, a war-torn land where people stillstruggle to eke out their daily lives as did theirancestors thousands of years ago. Yet buried inIraq’s barren desert there also lie the ruins of anearlier glory and splendor that once shone forall to see.

INTRODUCTION

L I S T O F M A P S A N D I L L U S T R A T I O N S

xi

Euphrates River 2Excavations at Babylon 11Excavations at Babylon 12Reconstruction of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate 14Babylon’s Ishtar Gate (façade) 14Arch at Ctesiphon 16Ziggurat at Dur-Kurigalzu 17Sargon’s Palace at Dur-Sharrukin 18Restored View of Kalhu (Nimrud) 23View of Ur 34Ziggurat at Ur 35Ruins of Borsippa 40Sketching sculptures at Nineveh 41Workmen at Nineveh 41Temple entrance at Kalhu (Nimrud) 42Passageway at Nineveh 43Excavation at Kuyunjik 44Tunnel at Kuyunjik 44Portrait of Layard 45Transporting a winged bull 46

Arrival of an Assyrian lion 46Portrait of Ashurnasirpal II 64Assyrian king 67Code of Hammurabi 69Code of Hammurabi (closeup) 69Coin of Alexander the Great 75Ashurbanipal and his queen 78Portrait of Ashurnasirpal 79Inscribed cylinder of Cyrus the Great 82Stele of Esarhaddon 85Portrait of Gudea 86Boundary stone 93Relief portraying Naram-Sin 98Portrait of Sargon the Great 101Sennacherib on his throne 102Chariot of Tiglathpileser III 106Relief of Tiglathpileser III 107Ur-Nanshe the builder 109Ninurta opposes a monster 114Marduk as a dragon 121

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Ancient Near East 3Cities of Mesopotamia 9Babylon 13

LIST OF MAPS


xii

Reconstruction of the ziggurat at Ur 127Model of a sheep’s liver 133Portrait of Grotefend 139The Behistun Rock 140Portrait of Rawlinson 141Development of cuneiform 146Clay tablet and stylus 147Cuneiform tablet and envelope 147The hero Gilgamesh 154Code of Hammurabi 167Brickmaking 187Reed houses 189Portrait of Gudea as builder 193Restored view of Babylon 194Ziggurat at Ur 195Restored view of Sennacherib’s palace 199Interior of Assyrian palace 200Exterior of Assyrian palace 200Votive statuettes from Tell Asmar 217Statue of Gudea 218Sumerian assault 219Assault on an enemy city 220Attack on fortifications 221Wounded lions 221Winged lion 222Transporting a stone bull 222Pawprints of a dog 223Glazed tile 227Bull from the Ishtar Gate 228Dragon from the Ishtar Gate 228Seal-stones 232Cylinder seal impression 234Ivory heads 236Woman in a window 236Man mauled by a lioness 237Jewelry of Queen Puabi 240Royal cup-bearer 240

Assyrian delicacies 245A sow and her young 246Lion hunt 247Lion gnawing a chariot wheel 248Transporting cargo by kelek 253Groom and horses 255The metropolis of Babylon 263Assyrian soldiers and equipment 263Armed Assyrian soldiers 264Soldiers in a chariot 266Archers and a battering ram 267Scribes tallying heads 268Royal Standard of Ur (battle) 269Royal Standard of Ur (celebration) 269Assyrian homecoming 270Couple in bed 279Sumerian husband and wife 280Infant burial 282Child beside sarcophagus 282Burial ceremony at Ur 283Reed hut 286Brick home 287Assyrian sandals 291Courtiers drinking 292Assyrian orchestra 295Assyrian musician 296Great Lyre from Ur 296Great Lyre from Ur (detail) 297Children’s toys 298Game-board from Ur 300Flood tablet 315Flood Pit at Ur 316Black Obelisk 318Black Obelisk (detail) 319Jewish captives from Lachish 319Bull of Nineveh 331Architectural fragments 337

GEOGRAPHY OFMESOPOTAMIA

1

THE LAND ANDITS RIVERS

It was ancient Greek travelers and historianswho first gave the land the name by which weknow it: Mesopotamia. The name means “theland between the rivers” (from mesos, the Greekword for “between” or “in the middle”; pota-mos, the Greek word for “river”; and ia, a suffixthat the Greeks attached to the names ofplaces). The ancient Mesopotamians did nothave a name for the whole land; instead, their

mental horizons were limited to the names ofthe cities and kingdoms where they lived.Today, most of ancient Mesopotamia lieswithin the borders of modern Iraq, with someparts—to the west and north—in Syrian andTurkish territory.

The rivers that defined Mesopotamia werethe Tigris and the Euphrates. Like the nameMesopotamia itself, the spelling of the rivers’names is something we owe to the Greeks. Theoriginal name of the Tigris was the Idiglat; theoriginal name of the Euphrates, the Buranum—names that were first used by the inhabitants ofthe land in prehistoric times and which survivein their earliest records.

In the Bible, the Tigris was called the Hid-dekel, the Hebrew pronunciation of the river’sauthentic name, while the Euphrates was sim-ply called the Prat. The book of Genesisdescribes them as two of the four rivers thatflowed out of Eden and watered its famousgarden. Biblical tradition thus connectsMesopotamian geography with the beginningsof the human race.

The river valleys of Mesopotamia areframed by the desert, the mountains, and thesea. To the west is the Syrian Desert; to thenorth and east, the mountains of Turkey andIran; to the south, the Persian Gulf.

Rising in the mountains, the rivers descendthrough foothills and steppe and flow towardthe southeast through a flat, alluvial plain untilthey empty through marshes into the sea.

Reading as we do from left to right, uponhearing the phrase “Tigris and Euphrates,”we may think of the Tigris as the one fartherwest. In actually, the Euphrates lies to thewest and the Tigris to the east. Of the tworivers the Euphrates is the longer (about1,740 miles in length) compared to the Tigris(about 1,180 miles). Each is fed by tributaries:the Euphrates by the Balikh and KhaburRivers; the Tigris, by the Great Zab, the Lit-tle Zab, and the Diyala.


2

1.1 A century-ago view of the Euphrates Riverfrom a point south of the site of ancient Babylon.(Robert William Rogers, A History of Babylonia andAssyria, 6th ed. [New York: Abingdon Press, 1915])

Today, in the south, the Tigris andEuphrates merge into the Shatt al-Arab beforejointly emptying into the sea; but in ancienttimes they flowed into the Persian Gulf sepa-rately. In those days (during the fourth andthird millennia B.C.E.) the Gulf extended asmuch as 150 miles farther inland than it doestoday, making ancient cities like Ur and Eridu(inland today) virtual seaports. Over the cen-turies, heavy accumulations of silt deposited by

the rivers along with the sea’s own retreatpushed the coastline south.

When the winter snows in the mountainsmelted (sometime between April and earlyJune), the rivers flooded unpredictably andoften violently, destroying everything in theirpath. Their propensity for destructive furyand the uncertainty of their will, it is argued,draped much of Mesopotamian thought inpessimism. On the other hand, it was their

G E O G R A P H Y O F M E S O P O T A M I A

3

300 Kilometers 1500

300 Miles 1500

N

Tigris R.

Euphrates R.

PHRYGIA

HITTITE

KINGDOM

MITANNI

EGYPT

CYPRUS

URARTU

ASSYRIAASSYRIAPERSIA

LURISTAN

BABYLONIA

ISRAELISRAEL

JUDAHJUDAHAKKADAKKAD

SUMERSUMER

ELAM

SYRIA

Me s o p o t a m

i a

A n a t o l i a

P a l e s t i n e

Ph

oe

ni c

i a

Black Sea

CaspianSea

MediterraneanSea

PersianGulf

Nineveh

Ur

Babylon

Baghdad

Map 1. The Ancient Near East

life-giving waters—channeled by the technol-ogy of irrigation—that made urban civiliza-tion possible in the flood-prone plain. Yeteven when the rivers were not guilty of short-term caprice, their long-term behavior couldundermine everything that civilization hadbuilt: an otherwise vital city could literally beleft high and dry economically when a mean-dering river altered its course and cut it offfrom trade and transportation.

In the steppe to the north, life was lesserratic. There the rivers coursed through arocky terrain that made their paths more per-manent. Unlike the subtropical south wheresummer temperatures could average 120°F.,the climate in the north was temperate. Thererainfall, rather than artificial irrigation,watered farmers’ fields and sustained their live-stock. Indeed, from the wild grains that grew inthe north, agriculture itself may have begun.Yet the south was the more fertile land, thanksto the richness of its alluvial soil, a richnessthat—when watered—could support largepopulation centers and material prosperity.

The geographic differences between northand south—between Assyria in the north andBabylonia in the south—bred differences intemperament between their peoples and gener-ated political division and tension. At times,greed or vindictiveness ignited war.

Meanwhile, there were also ethnic differ-ences within the south. In the deepest southlived the Sumerians, who created the world’sfirst civilization. Though the Sumerians wereunited by a common language and common tra-ditions, the control of the lands and waterwaysinspired intercity rivalries and war. To theirnorth dwelt the Semitic Akkadians, who covetedwhat the Sumerians possessed and conqueredthem, joining Sumer to Akkad. With the rise ofthe city and kingdom of Babylon, the whole ofthe south came to be called Babylonia.

Babylon, Babylonia’s largest city, lay on theEuphrates; Nineveh, Assyria’s largest city, on

the Tigris. Baghdad, Iraq’s modern capital, issituated midway down the Tigris at the pointwhere it veers closest to the Euphrates.

The name “Mesopotamia” is, in fact, a mis-nomer: many of the land’s ancient cities werelocated not between the two rivers but just out-side the edge of the irregular spearpoint theyform as they aim southeast to the sea.

NATURAL RESOURCES

Mesopotamia’s major resources were its waterand fertile soil. If, as the ancient Greek histo-rian Herodotus claimed, Egypt was the gift ofthe Nile, Mesopotamia was the gift of theTigris and Euphrates. This was especially trueof the alluvial plain to the south, where thewell-watered fertility of the land nurturedsuch staples of the people’s diet as barley,sesame, and dates.

From riverine clay the Mesopotamians notonly made bricks but also fashioned clay tabletsto write on with the help of pens cut from thereeds that grew along the rivers’ banks.

A unique resource of the land was bitumen, anatural asphalt that seeped from beds in theground, especially in the area around Hit on theEuphrates. Bitumen had many uses: as an adhe-sive for bricks, as a waterproof coating in con-struction, and as a cement to create works of art.

The critical resources that Mesopotamialargely lacked were building stone (except inAssyria where gypsum was available), construc-tion-grade timber, and minerals, includingcopper and tin (needed to make bronze), iron,silver, and gold.

Combined with the demands of an increas-ingly affluent society and the desires of itsrulers for splendor, the scarcity of theseresources encouraged foreign trade and therise of a merchant class as the Mesopotamians


4

exchanged agricultural produce and textilesfor the commodities they lacked. As a result,caravans plied regular overland trade routesthroughout the Middle East and ships sailedup and down the Persian Gulf. Timber washauled in from the Zagros Mountains andLebanon; copper and tin from Anatolia, theCaucasus, and Iran; silver from the TaurusMountains; and gold from Egypt and evenIndia. From Afghanistan came a precious bluemineral called lapis lazuli. Ships were sailingas early as the fifth millennium B.C.E. betweenMesopotamia and ports in Bahrain and Oman,and as early as the third millennium B.C.E.between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley.So great was the influence of Babylonian mer-chants that their Akkadian language andcuneiform script became tools for interna-tional commercial and diplomatic correspon-dence throughout the ancient Near East.

SURROUNDINGCOUNTRIES

As we have seen, commerce brought Meso-potamia into contact with other lands, bothnear and far.

At almost the same time that civilization wasborn in Sumer (near the end of the fourth mil-lennium B.C.E.), it also was born to the west inEgypt, land of the Nile. Indeed, scholars stilldebate where it was born first. And whenSumer’s monarchs were later laid in their gravessurrounded by their royal retinues and splendor,the pyramids of Egypt’s pharaohs were just beingbuilt. How much these two classic eras of civi-lization knew of each other’s existence is likewisea subject for debate. Striking cultural parallelsbetween them exist (their nearly simultaneousinvention of writing and monumental architec-

ture, for example), but are offset by equally strik-ing differences in style and intent.

About five centuries after the earliest civi-lizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia arose, yetanother civilization was born, the civilizationof the Indus Valley, represented by the ruinedcities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa. Arti-facts and inscriptions point to commercialcontact between Mesopotamia and this land,which the Mesopotamians called Meluhha.Whether the contact was more than commer-cial we cannot yet say.

In the second and first millennia B.C.E.,the imperialistic ambitions of the Assyriansand Babylonians brought them into militaryconflict with an array of other nations thatvied for the control of the lands known todayas Syria and Israel. These lands were impor-tant because of the trade routes that passedthrough them and the tribute that could beexacted from their cities.

During the second millennium B.C.E. Egyptfought for the control of this region againsttwo other superpowers: the Hittites, who werebased in Turkey, and the Mitanni, who occu-pied northwestern Mesopotamia.

By the first millennium B.C.E. direct strikeswere made against cities in ancient Israel byAssyrian and Babylonian armies. Assyrianarmies went so far as to invade Egypt, and aBabylonian army under Nebuchadnezzar cap-tured Jerusalem and took Jewish prisoners ofwar back to Babylon. The emotional turmoil ofthese times resonates in the writings of theHebrew prophets and the biblical book ofLamentations.

By the sixth century B.C.E., the armies ofBabylon were defeated by a new player that hadstepped on the stage of world politics, the Per-sians, who were to amass the largest empire theworld had ever seen, one that stretched fromTurkey in the west to India in the east andsouth into Egypt. The kings of Persia eveninvaded Greece, but they were valiantly


5

rebuffed there in a series of battles fought inthe early fifth century B.C.E.

In the late fourth century B.C.E. a charis-matic leader named Alexander the Great led anarmy of Macedonian and Greek soldiers in awar against Persia fought for revenge andgreater glory. After defeating the Persians,Alexander made Babylon the capital of his newempire, seeking to create a new multiculturalsociety on a global scale, one in which theEuropean heritage of Greece would be blendedwith the legacy of the Orient. Though Alexan-der died before he could see his dream fulfilled,the forces he set into motion brought West andEast closer together than they had ever beenbefore, or would ever be again.

Evidence of over three millennia of culturaldevelopment and change lie buried in the citiesof the ancient Tigris and Euphrates. It is time

we visited each of these cities and listened totheir tales.

GAZETTEER

Names of Cities

Listed below in alphabetical order are thenames of ancient sites in Mesopotamia thathave special archaeological and historical sig-nificance. Where the original name of a site isknown, it is listed alphabetically; where onlythe modern name of its ruins survive, themodern name appears in its stead. In caseswhere a Mesopotamian city is mentioned inthe Bible, the biblical spelling of its name isprovided as well.


6

Original Name Modern Name Biblical Name

Abu SalabikhAdab Tell BismayaAgade AkkadAkshak Tell MujeilatArbil ErbilAshur Qalat Shergat Asshur

(=Assyria)Babil(a) Babylon BabelBad-tibira Tell MadainBorsippa Birs NimrudCarchemish Jerablus Carchemish

Chagar BazarChoga Mami

Ctesiphon Tell al-Ma’aridh (?)Dilbat Tell DulaimDur-Katlimmu Sheikh HamidDur-Kurigalzu Aqar Quf & Tell al-AbyadDur-Sharrukin Khorsabad


7


Dura-EuroposEridu Abu ShahrainEshnunna Tell AsmarGirsu TelloGuzana Tell HalafHatra Al-HadrImgur-Enlil BalawatIsin Ishan Bahriyat

Jemdet NasrKalhu Nimrud CalahKar-Tukulti-Ninurta Telul al-AqarKish Tell Ingharra & Tell UhaimirKutha Tell IbrahimLagash Tell al-HibaLarakLarsa Tell SenkerehMari Tell HaririNeribtum Tell IshchaliNina-Sirara ZurghulNinua Kuyunjik & Tell Nebi Yunus NinevehNippur NuffarNuzu (Nuzi) Yorghun TepePuzrish-Dagan Drehem

Qalat JarmoSamarra

Shaduppum Tell HarmalShubat-Enlil Tell LeilanShuruppak FaraSippar Tell Abu HabaSippar-Amnanum (Sippar-Anunitu) Tell ed-Der

Tell ArpachiyehTell BrakTell FakhariyehTell HassunaTell al-OueiliTell Qalinj Agha (continues)

Descriptions of Cities

Abu Salabikh Abu Salabikh contains theremains of a city that flourished in the fourthand third millennia B.C.E. In antiquity, the citywas situated on a branch of the Euphrates, abouthalfway between the ancient cities of Kish andNippur in the southern part of Mesopotamiaknown as Sumer. Its original name may havebeen Kesh, a Sumerian city whose patron god-dess was Nisaba, the goddess of the reeds thatgrew abundantly in the riverbanks and marshes.Because the reeds were used by scribes to maketheir pens, Nisaba was their patron deity as well.Today, the ruins of the city lie about 75 milessoutheast of Baghdad.

Abu Salabikh was first excavated in the1960s. The excavations uncovered the oldestcity walls that have ever been found in south-ern Mesopotamia, the land where the world’sfirst cities arose. In what may have once been a

temple complex, the archaeologists unearthedsome 500 fragments of clay tablets inscribed incuneiform. Among them were portions of liter-ary works: the character-building advice of afather to his son (called “The Instructions ofShuruppak”) and a hymn praising the temple ofthe Sumerian mother-goddess Ninhursag.

Adab This Sumerian city once lay on theancient path of the Euphrates River, 25 milessoutheast of Nippur. When the river changedits course, the city began to die. Today its ruinsare called Tell Bismaya.

Agade Around 2300 B.C.E., the Semitic kingSargon conquered Sumer and made the city ofAgade his capital. There he built his palaceand erected temples to honor the gods of war,Ishtar and Zababa. For over a century, Agadeserved as the seat of an empire whose reachextended to Iran in the east and Syria in the

(continued)


8


(Karana or Qatara?) Tell al-RimahTell es-SawwanTell TayaTell al-UbaidTell UqairTepe Gawra

Terqa Tell AsharaTil Barsip Tell AhmarTuttul Tell Bi’aTutub Khafaje

Umm DabaghiyahUmmaUr Tell MuquayyarUruk Warka Erech

Yarim Tepe


9

N

100 Kilometers 500

100 Miles 500

Modern cities

Ancient cities

Dur-Katlimmu

Dura-Europos

Shubat-Enlil

Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta

Dur-Kurigalzu

Baghdad

PersianGulf

RedSea

Black Sea

MediterraneanSea

CaspianSea

SYRIA

IRANIRAQ

Kalhu

Tell Qalinj Agha

TellHassuna

Mosul

TellTaya

TellArpachiyah

Tigris R.

TepeGawra

Dur-Sharrukin

Nineveh

Great Zab

R.

Imgur-Enlil

SINJAR MTS.

Z A G R OS

MT S.

HAMRIN

MTS.

Lake Van

Tigris R.

Euphrates R.

LittleZab R.

Great Zab R.

Khab

urR

.

Diyala

R.

Dur-Katlimmu

Tuttul

MariDura-Europos

Terqa

Carchemish

Til Barsip

Guzana

TellFakhariyeh

ChagarBazar

Tell BrakShubat-Enlil

Yarim Tepe

Tell al-RimahUmm Dabaghiyah

HatraAshur

Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta

Arbil

Nuzu

Qalat JarmoKirkuk

Samarra

Tell es-Sawwan Choga Mami

EshunnaDur-Kurigalzu

Isin Adab

Nippur

Baghdad

Shaduppum

Sippar-AmnanumAkshak

SipparBabylon Kutha

TutubNeribtum

CtesiphonJemdet Nasr

Borsippa

DilbatTell Uqair

Kish Abu Salabikh

UrEridu

Tell al-Ubaid

Lagash

Umma

LarsaTell al-Oueili

Shuruppak

Uruk

Girsu

Nina-Sirara

Puzrish-Dagan

Bad-tibira

Mosul

Basra

SYRIA

IRAN

IRAQ

PersianGulf

Map 2. Cities of Mesopotamia

west. Agade prospered from imperialism, andforeign ships bearing exotic cargo docked inits harbor.

Historians call Sargon’s native land Akkad,from the Hebrew spelling of the city’s name(Genesis 10:10). Likewise, the Semitic lan-guage of its people is called Akkadian. A laterform of this language was spoken by theBabylonians and Assyrians, and for a timebecame an international language of com-merce and diplomacy.

About 2200 B.C.E. the city and its empire fellto an invading horde called the Guti, whoswept in from the Zagros Mountains of Iran.According to a poem entitled “The Curse ofAgade,” the city’s destruction was the conse-quence of divine vengeance because Sargon theGreat’s grandson, King Naram-Sin, had dese-crated a temple. In fulfillment of the divinecurse, the city’s freshwater turned to salt, andits lands were abandoned.

The gods must have been forgiving, however,if Babylonian inscriptions are to be believed, forBabylon’s kings were constructing buildingsthere as late as the sixth century B.C.E.

To the frustration of archaeologists and his-torians, the ruins of Agade have never beenlocated. Perhaps the curse of the gods is still ineffect after all.

Akshak Forty miles north of Babylon lay thenorthern Akkadian city of Akshak, later calledOpis. In 539 B.C.E., Cyrus, king of Persia, metand defeated the Babylonian army here beforegoing on to capture Babylon itself. The Greekhistorian Herodotus reports that when a whitehorse belonging to Cyrus drowned in thenearby Tigris, Cyrus punished the river bydraining off its water. Today the remains ofAkshak are known by the name of Tell Mujeilat.

Arbil Arbil was a major Assyrian city locatedin the country’s heartland between the Greatand Little Zab Rivers, tributaries of the Tigris.

A canal, partly underground, was engineeredby King Sennacherib in the seventh centuryB.C.E. to supply the city with more water.Ishtar, the goddess of love and war, was reveredhere from early times. In later times, Arbilbecame famous because of a battle that wasfought in 331 B.C.E. at nearby Gaugamela,when Alexander the Great defeated Darius III,king of the Persians. Alexander’s decisive vic-tory there (in the so-called Battle of Arbela)marked the end of the Persian Empire and thebeginning of the Hellenistic Age.

Ashur Called Qalat Sherqat today, the ruinsof Ashur lie on a plateau high above the Tigrisin northern Iraq, about 60 miles south of themodern city of Mosul. In ancient times it layon a caravan route that connected the Levantwith Iran, and prospered from its location.

Though the site had been explored by Euro-peans as early as 1821, scientific excavation didnot commence until the beginning of the 20thcentury under the direction of the Germanarchaeologist, Walter Andrae.

In the second millennium B.C.E., Ashurbecame the first royal capital of the Assyriannation. Its name was the same as the country’sname as well as the name of the country’sdivine protector, the god Ashur. The names“Assyria” and “Syria” still echo this name. Evenwhen the Assyrian Empire’s political capitalwas moved (to Kalhu, Dur-Sharrukin, andNineveh), Ashur remained its religious capitaland the last resting place of its kings. In 614B.C.E., the city was sacked by the Medes andBabylonians, who simultaneously brought toan end Assyria’s dreams of imperial glory.

At its height, Ashur boasted 34 temples.The oldest, indeed the oldest public buildingin the entire city, was the temple of Ishtar,goddess of both war and love. In its ruins,archaeologists found a carving of a nakedwoman on a bed, and erotic images fashionedfrom lead and dedicated by worshipers whose


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sexual powers had been restored by the god-dess’ intervention. The city’s patron god Ashurwas also honored with a temple as well as witha nearby ziggurat, a lofty stepped platform sur-mounted by a shrine.

In addition to religious structures, the citycontained two palaces, an old and a new. Intheir basements in vaulted tombs, the mon-archs were laid to rest in stone sarcophagitogether with their treasure. None of theirriches were to escape the hands of plunderers.

Babil(a) See Babylon

Babylon Babylon is the most renowned cityof ancient Mesopotamia and one of the mostfamous urban centers of antiquity. Despite itsruined state, Babylon retained a permanentplace in Western consciousness because of itsrole in the Bible. It was the site of the Tower ofBabel, scriptural symbol of humanity’s hubris,as well as the internment site for the piousHebrew captives who were marched into exileby King Nebuchadnezzar II in the sixth cen-tury B.C.E. In addition, it was described witheyewitness detail by the “father of history,”Herodotus, and it was home to the “HangingGardens,” one of the legendary Seven Won-ders of the Ancient World.

Today, the remains of Babylon are spreadout over a cluster of mounds, or tells, locatedon the Euphrates about 59 miles southwest ofBaghdad. Early European travelers were drawnto the locale by accounts of the city’s formerglory, by the extent of its ruins, and by thepresence—there and nearby—of architecturalremains that suggested the fabled tower. Somereturned to Europe in the 17th and 18th cen-turies with artifacts, including the very firstsamples of cuneiform writing. Excavations didnot begin in earnest, however, until the 19thcentury. The major expedition, which lastedfrom 1899 to 1914, was directed by Germanarchaeologist Robert Koldewey.

The name Babylon is itself a bit of a mys-tery. The biblical Hebrews traced its origins toa word in their own language (bavel) that meant“confusion,” deriving the name of the towerfrom the linguistic confusion God visited uponits builders so they could no longer communi-cate to complete their work (an explanation,incidentally, for how the world’s many lan-guages came into being). In the Semitic lan-guage of the Babylonians themselves, the nameof their city may have meant “Gate of God” or“Gate of the Gods” (bav il or bav ilim). But thereal root and its true meaning may even ante-date the Babylonians, and perhaps theirSumerian predecessors as well.


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1.2 During Koldewey’s excavation of Babylon, abasket brigade clears rubble from the site. (Rogers,A History of Babylonia and Assyria, 1915)

Sumerian inscriptions tell us the city existedin the third millennium B.C.E. Its first age ofglory, however, was in the 17th century B.C.E.,when it was ruled by the conqueror and lawgiverHammurabi. After a thousand years duringwhich it suffered decline and destruction, it roseagain in the sixth century B.C.E. to become thecapital of Nebuchadnezzar and the Neo-Baby-lonian Empire. Liberated from the Persians inthe fourth century B.C.E. by the charismaticAlexander the Great, Babylon went on tobecome the capital of Alexander’s worldwidekingdom and the city where in 323 B.C.E. hedied. By the days of the Roman Empire, Baby-lon was deserted, an urban memory in the dust.

However, with the help of archaeological dis-coveries and ancient literary accounts, it is possi-ble to resurrect Babylon, at least in ourimaginations. Besides Herodotus’s fifth centuryB.C.E. account (whose complete accuracy somedoubt), we possess a detailed cuneiform guide tothe city as it looked in the 12th century B.C.E.,complete with the names of its major buildings.Though the high level of groundwater hasinhibited archaeologists from excavating thisdeeply into Babylon’s past, a reliable picture ofthe later sixth century B.C.E. city has emerged asit might have looked in the days of Nebuchad-nezzar, a century or so before Herodotus’s visit.

The shape of the city was delineated by theEuphrates, which in ancient times divided itinto two unequal parts: an “old city” to the eastand a smaller “new city” to the west. Betweenthem flowed the Euphrates from north tosouth, and the river fed main canals thatwatered each half.

In the eastern half of the city stood the king’spalace and the city’s main religious buildings.

Called by Nebuchadnezzar “the marvel ofmankind, the center of the land, the shining res-idence, the dwelling of majesty,” the royal palacewas located at the northern edge of the old citybeside a fortress. Rising from the palace’s north-eastern corner may have been the Hanging Gar-dens of Babylon, a series of earthen terraces thatsupported a forest of trees—supposedly anarchitectural gift from Nebuchadnezzar to hisPersian wife who pined for the landscape of hermountainous homeland.

South of the palace and adjoining theEuphrates were two structures dedicated to thegods. The first was a mighty ziggurat, a 300-foot-tall stepped platform on a square base thatmeasured about 300 feet on each side. The coreof the structure was made of sun-dried brickencased in a 49-foot-thick layer of oven-bakedbrick. The platform ascended in seven stages orstories of diminishing size and was crowned by ashrine approached by a broad staircase. On the


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1.3 Excavations at Babylon uncover the brickedpavement of the audience hall of NebuchadnezzarII’s royal palace. An inscribed brick can be seen inthe foreground. (Rogers, A History of Babyloniaand Assyria, 1915)

heights of the ziggurat, priests performed ritu-als and uttered prayers on behalf of the multi-tudes assembled below. The ziggurat’s namewas Etemenanki, “the House of the Foundationof Heaven and Earth.”

Just south of the ziggurat was a temple com-plex dedicated to Babylon’s patron god Mardukand his divine consort. Called Esagila, “The

House That Lifts Its Head,” its sanctuary hadwalls and a ceiling plated in gold.

Throughout the city were hundreds uponhundreds of altars and shrines so that the Baby-lonians might serve their gods, who in turnwould show them favor.

Girding the entire city was a defensive moatand a brick wall 85 feet thick surmounted by


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N 1000 feet5000

Adad St.

Shamash St.

Zababa St.

processional way

Enlil St.

Marduk St.Sin St.

Nabu St.

“NEW”

CITY

“OLD”

CITY

Northern Fortress

museumSouthern Fortress

Ishtar

Gate

New Year FestivalTemple

TempleofIshtar

royalpalace

Temple of

Marduk

ziggurat

gate

gate

inner wall

outer wall

Nebuchadnezzar's Outer W

all

Nebuchadnezzar’s Outer W

all

gate

gate

gate

gate

canal

gate

gate

canal

Temple ofShamash

Temple ofShamash

bridge

canal

Euphrates R

.

Map 3. Babylon

towers at 65-foot intervals. The wall was aboutfive miles long and, according to Herodotus,was wide enough to permit a four-horse chariotto make a U-turn on its elevated roadway. Sep-arate walls lined the banks of the Euphrates asit wound its way through the city.

Nine stoutly fortified gateways, each namedfor a god, gave pedestrians access to the city’sgrid-pattern of streets and neighborhoods andto the countryside beyond. Recovered byKoldewey, the Ishtar Gate now stands recon-structed in the Berlin Museum, resplendentwith sculpted bulls and dragons gleaming incolorful glazed brick.

Outside the city walls to the northeast lay aspecial temple used to celebrate the New Year’sFestival. Connecting it with the city was an

avenue for celebrants called the ProcessionalWay, which passed through the Ishtar Gate andalongside the palace and ziggurat before turn-ing west to cross over the Euphrates by bridgeto the residential quarters of the new city.

Before his death, Alexander the Greatordered the superstructure of Babylon’s ziggu-rat pulled down in order that it might berebuilt with greater splendor. But he neverlived to bring his project to completion. Overthe centuries, its scattered bricks have beencannibalized by peasants to fulfill humblerdreams. All that is left of the fabled Tower ofBabel is the bed of a swampy pond.

Bad-tibira Before the days of the GreatFlood, Sumerian tradition recounted, Bad-tibira


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1.4 An artist’s rendering of Babylon’s Ishtar Gateas it would have appeared in the sixth century B.C.E.(Oriental Institute, University of Chicago)

1.5 Façade of the Ishtar Gate, built byNebuchadnezzar II and housed in a museum in Berlin. (Bildarchiv Foto Marburg/ArtResource, N.Y.)

was one of the five most important cities in theland. According to the literary record, the othermajor cities of earliest Sumer were Eridu, Larak,Shuruppak, and Sippar. Today, the ruins of Bad-tibira go by the name of Tell Madain.

Balawat See Imgur-Enlil.

Borsippa Seven miles southwest of Baby-lon lie the remains of ancient Borsippa,referred to today as Birs Nimrud. Occupiedfrom the late third millennium B.C.E., Bor-sippa was the sacred home of the god Nabuand the site of his most renowned temple, theEzida, or “Enduring House.” At first a patrongod of scribes, over the course of time Naburose in preeminence to stand beside Mardukand to be thought of as his son. At the time ofthe New Year’s Festival, the cult statue ofNabu was transported from Borsippa toBabylon so that he might visit his divinefather. From the Ezida temple the statue trav-eled down the Processional Way of Borsippa,through its Lapis Lazuli Gate, and onto theroad toward Babylon.

Because of its nearness to Babylon andbecause the core of its brick ziggurat still tow-ers 150 feet above the surrounding plain, manyearly visitors believed that Borsippa, ratherthan Babylon, was the true location of the bib-lical Tower of Babel.

Excavations at Borsippa were carried outsporadically during the 19th century and, mostrecently, by an Austrian expedition in the1980s. Besides the remains of the ziggurat andthe temple precinct, the ruins of a palace builtby Nebuchadnezzar have been found.

Carchemish Strategically situated on a busyNear Eastern overland trade route at a vitalcrossing on the Euphrates and fortified in thesecond millennium B.C.E., Carchemish playedan important role for more than a thousandyears and profited from its location. Its wealth,

however, attracted the covetous eye of itsimperialistic neighbors, and it was successivelydominated by the Mitanni, the Hittites, andthe Assyrians. Carchemish was also the settingfor a key battle in 605 B.C.E. that marked theend of the Assyrian Empire, when Nebuchad-nezzar of Babylon triumphed over the Assyrianarmy and its Egyptian allies.

Today, the ruins of Carchemish lie about 280miles west of Mosul in Turkish territory acrossthe border from the Syrian village of Jerablus.

The first to identify their archaeological sig-nificance was George Smith in 1876. Smith hadearlier found fragments of the Babylonian FloodStory in the ruins of Nineveh. After surveyingthe site of Carchemish and sketching some of itssurviving monuments, Smith died en route toAleppo. Further explorations and excavationsfollowed under the leadership of the BritishMuseum, where Smith had worked. Assisting inthe digging for five seasons was T. E. Lawrence(“of Arabia”). Archaeological discoveriesincluded the citadel, the temple of the stormgod, and an elaborate series of sculptural reliefs,most of which are now on exhibit at theMuseum of Anatolian Civilization in Ankara.

Chagar Bazar The ruins known as ChagarBazar lie in the northern part of present-daySyria in the basin of the Khabur River, one ofthe tributaries of the Euphrates. In the burntremains of a second millennium B.C.E. admin-istrative building, an archive was uncovered.One tablet recorded how a potentate namedYasmah-Addu showed up in the city with 3,000soldiers and draft animals and demanded food.Elsewhere in the city ruins, a clay pendant hasbeen found impressed with a banqueting sceneshowing diners entertained by a musician. Oneof the most curious objects discovered in Cha-gar Bazar was a knife from a third millenniumB.C.E. grave deposit. The knife-blade was madeof smelted iron, one of the earliest artifacts ofman-made iron ever found.


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Choga Mami About 70 miles northeast ofBaghdad in the foothills of the Zagros Moun-tains lie the remains of Choga Mami. The pre-historic site may be as old as the sixthmillennium B.C.E. and was a thriving villagebefore the emergence of complex urban life.The site offers some of the oldest evidence ofirrigation canals. Scattered among the remainsof the village were baked clay figurines ofwomen, their bodies tattooed with paint andtheir elongated eyes shaped and split like coffeebeans. Prehistoric means preliterate, and so wehave no inscribed words to give these women(goddesses?) voice or to describe their life inthis long-ago time. Foundations of houses, reg-ularly planned with as many as 12 rooms, sur-vive, but no walls that reverberate with thesounds of everyday activity. Broken pottery lit-ters the ruins.

Ctesiphon Ctesiphon was founded by theParthians on the Tigris when they wrestedMesopotamia from the Hellenistic Seleuciddynasty in the second century B.C.E. It thenbecame their capital, the place where their trea-sures were kept and their kings were crowned.Successively sacked by the legions of Rome, itwas finally taken in the second century C.E. bythe Sassanians, who replaced the Parthians asmasters of Mesopotamia. Under Sassanian rule,Ctesiphon retained its place as a capital andcenter of culture. Plagued by malaria and mos-quitoes, it eventually fell in the seventh centuryto an Arab army whose soldiers were dazzled bythe splendor of its palace. In chapter 51 of hismonumental history of the Roman Empire,Edward Gibbon re-creates the scene:

The naked robbers of the desert were suddenlyenriched beyond the measure of their hope or


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1.6 Pictured by a 19th-century artist, this 120-foot-tall arch still soars over the site of ancient Ctesiphon.(George Rawlinson, The Seven Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World [New York: Alden, 1884])


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knowledge. Each chamber revealed a new trea-sure secreted with art, or ostentatiously dis-played; the gold and silver, the variouswardrobes and precious furniture surpassed . . .the estimate of fancy or numbers . . . One ofthe apartments of the palace was decoratedwith a carpet of silk, sixty cubits [90 feet] inlength, and as many in breadth: a paradise orgarden was depictured on the ground: theflowers, fruits, and shrubs were imitated by thefigures of the gold embroidery, and the coloursof the precious stones; and the ample squarewas encircled by a variegated and verdant bor-der. (Gibbon 1845: 4, 409–10)

As a new city called Baghdad arose 22 milesto the north, the buildings of Ctesiphon weredemolished and their bricks hauled away forreuse. No one, however, dared to dismantlethe grand arch covering the palace’s great hall,a brick-built arch over 80 feet wide and 120feet high, in Seton Lloyd’s words “the widestsingle-span vault of unreinforced brickwork inthe world.”

Dilbat Located about 27 miles south ofBabylon, Dilbat was the home of a Sumerianearth-goddess named Urash. Today, the city’sfruitless ruins are named Tell Dulaim.

Drehem See Puzrish-Dagan.

Dur Katlimmu At a point 140 miles south-west of Mosul stand the remains of DurKatlimmu, a provincial capital of the AssyrianEmpire. Called Sheikh Hamid today, theremains lie in Syria on the river Khabur, themain tributary of the Euphrates. The site wasfirst investigated in 1879, but no systematicexcavations were undertaken until another hun-dred years had passed. Some 500 cuneiformtablets have been found, some of which showthat Assyrian laws were being obeyed even afterthe collapse of the Assyrian Empire.

Dur-Kurigalzu In the late 15th or early 14thcentury B.C.E., a Kassite king, Kurigalzu,named this city for himself and made it his cap-ital. With the fall of his dynasty two centurieslater, the city was soon abandoned and its soilused for a cemetery. Today, the remains of Dur-Kurigalzu occupy two mounds—Aqar Quf andTell al-Abyad—located 18 miles west of Bagh-dad. On one mound, Tell al-Abyad, are theruins of a palace. One room features a paintedprocession of officials. Running along a corri-dor are the pillaged chambers of a treasury.Elsewhere, a terra-cotta hyena silently howls.Towering over desolate Aqar Quf is the 187-foot-tall twisted and eroding hulk of a ziggurat

1.7 This mud-brick hulk is all that remains ofDur-Kurigalzu’s once-proud ziggurat. (Rogers,A History of Babylonia and Assyria, 1915)

once dedicated to Enlil, chief god of the Sumer-ian pantheon. All that is left is the mud-brickcore, the reed mats that were laid between thelayers of brick still visible in the sun.

Dur-Sharrukin Near the end of the eighthcentury B.C.E., the Assyrian king Sargon IIfounded Dur-Sharrukin (“The Fortress of Sar-gon”) as his new capital city. Located about sevenmiles northeast of the northern Iraqi city ofMosul and more commonly called Khorsabad,the site of Dur-Sharrukin witnessed the firstlarge-scale excavations in the history of NearEastern archaeology. Initiated in 1843 by Paul-Émile Botta and renewed a decade later by Vic-tor Place, these excavations yielded the first

examples of monumental Assyrian sculpture. Asthe discoveries were unearthed they weremeticulously sketched by Eugène Flandin and,later, Félix Thomas before being shipped to theLouvre. The drawings proved invaluablebecause of the fragile nature of the stone and anattack (by hostile Bedouin tribesmen) on twobarges transporting the works of art, workswhich as a result still lie sunk in the muddy bot-tom of the Tigris. The Place expedition alsoemployed photography, possibly its first use inthe service of archaeology.

Sargon’s capital city was over a mile squareand its design became his preoccupation. Thecity’s dimensions, for example, were based onthe numerological value of Sargon’s name.


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1.8 Bird’s-eye view of Sargon’s palace at Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad) as it might have once looked. (GastonMaspero, The Passing of the Empires, ed. A. H. Sayce [New York: Appleton, 1900])

Tablets describing the story of the palace’s con-struction were deposited in its cornerstone withthe identical text repeated on individual tabletsof copper, lead, silver, gold, limestone, magne-site, and lapis lazuli, while paintings illustratedhow cedarwood was imported from Lebanon toprovide needed timber. Colossal stone bullswith wings and human heads guarded itsentranceways. And the walls of the palace weredecorated with so much sculpture that the pan-els, if laid end to end, would stretch for a mile.

Besides having a “palace without rival” (asSargon dubbed it), the city also included tem-ples dedicated to the gods of the sun and moonand to Nabu, god of writing and wisdom. Inaddition, a four-story ziggurat was erected thatfeatured on the outside a spiral staircase forpriests, with each of the four levels of thebuilding painted a different color: white, black,red, and blue.

A later expedition by the University ofChicago’s Oriental Institute recovered a docu-ment prized by historians, namely, the“Khorsabad King List,” a list naming the rulersof Assyria from early antiquity down to Sar-gon’s day, including the lengths of their reigns.Numbered among other significant finds werecarved ivories (like those discovered in Nim-rud), embossed bronze bands for door decora-tion (like those found in Balawat), curiousweights in the shape of ducks, and small cor-roded bronze bells.

In his annals (that were also found), Sargondeclared himself “Lord of the Four Quarters ofthe Earth” and bragged he had turned his ene-mies’ cities into forgotten ruins. Today, his owncity is a ruin, his winged bulls are corralled inParis, and the bronze bells no longer ring.

Dura-Europos In 1921 while taking cover ina deserted ruin and digging in for a firefightwith local Arabs, a company of British soldiersstationed in Syria hit upon some buried wallpaintings. Subsequent investigations by the

British, French, and Americans revealed theremains of an ancient city known to the nativesas Dura and to the Hellenistic Greeks as Euro-pos. The city was founded around 300 B.C.E. bya successor of Alexander the Great namedSeleucus I. Located on a promontory overlook-ing the upper Euphrates, Dura-Europos becamean important caravan station that was succes-sively ruled by the Greeks, Parthians, Romans,and Persians. In the fourth century C.E., tradi-tion tells, the Roman emperor Julian huntedlions among its otherwise lifeless remains.

Although archaeologists uncovered theremains of a typical Near Eastern city fromGreco-Roman times—houses and temples, amarketplace, and public baths—their most sen-sational discoveries were a Jewish synagogueand a Christian church. Both date to the thirdcentury C.E. and are among the oldest everfound. Both are also decorated in murals suchas those unearthed by the British army. Thethemes of the synagogue murals are drawnfrom the Old Testament and depict Abrahampreparing to sacrifice Isaac, Moses standingbefore the burning bush, and King David play-ing on his harp, as well as other biblical scenes.The themes of the church murals come fromboth the Old and the New Testament: the sin-ful story of Adam and Eve, the image of Jesusas Savior and the Good Shepherd, and thestory of the Good Samaritan.

The finds from Dura-Europos are now inthe collections of the Yale University ArtGallery and the Damascus Museum.

Eridu Set in the marshes of the lowerEuphrates, Eridu was Sumeria’s most southerncity and possibly its first. Tradition made it theearliest city to have a king before the days ofthe mythical Great Flood. Eridu’s archaeologi-cal story can be traced back to at least the sixthmillennium B.C.E. If the tradition of its antiq-uity is true, Eridu may well have been the firstcity on earth.


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Eridu was a religious center sacred to Enki(or Ea, as he was known in Akkadian), the godof underground freshwater. A benefactor ofhumanity, Enki warned Ziusudra, the Sumer-ian equivalent of Noah, of the coming flood.The god’s temple has been found and showsthat it was rebuilt over the course of thousandsof years. In its earliest phase (dating back toabout 5500 B.C.E.), it measured about 12 by 15feet, was made of mud brick, and featured asimple podium or altar for sacrifices and aniche meant to hold a statue of the god. Tojudge by evidence found in a later niche—fishbones and ashes scattered on the floor aroundthe altar—the god’s favorite meal was freshwa-ter fish. The temple’s antiquity makes it theoldest in Mesopotamian architectural and reli-gious history.

The citizens of ancient Eridu were alsoproud of another structure: a mighty zigguratdedicated around 2100 B.C.E. by Ur-Nammu,king of Ur, and his son. Though its erodedplatform stands only about 30 feet high today,its base of oven-baked brick measures over 150by 200 feet and once supported a far moreimposing superstructure.

The exploration of Eridu began with dig-gings by J. E. Taylor in 1854 and continuedbriefly after World War I and World War II.The site consists of a cluster of seven mounds,the largest of which is called Abu Shahrain, andlies about 14.5 miles southwest of the ancientcity of Ur.

Eshnunna In the middle of Mesopotamiaon the Diyala River, a tributary of the Tigris,the city of Eshnunna prospered during thethird and second millennia B.C.E. Today itsdeserted remains lie about 48 miles northeastof modern Baghdad.

The excavations of Eshnunna were carriedout in the 1930s under the auspices of the Uni-versity of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. Theexpedition was led by Henri Frankfort.

The major discovery was that of a temple,possibly dedicated to Abu, a god of vegetation.Buried in its floor was a cache of gypsum fig-urines, representing how the Sumerians sawthemselves when in the presence of a god.With large round eyes wide open, they standattentively, their hands clasped over theirchests. The statues may have functioned asvotive figurines or miniature sculptural surro-gates for actual worshipers, which by theireternal presence in the temple would symbol-ize the perpetual piety of the Sumerian menand women they portrayed. The largest statue,some 30 inches tall, may in fact represent thegod Abu himself, and another his divine wife,though this is by no means certain.

In another temple lay pottery vessels deco-rated with images of serpents. These vesselsmay have once held real serpents that figuredin ritual.

Other discoveries at Eshnunna include ahorde of artifacts of silver and lapis lazuliburied under the floor of a palace (to safeguardthem from vandals?). Elsewhere seal-stoneswere found that suggest trade betweenMesopotamia and the Indus Valley: the sealsare carved in the Indian style and depict ele-phants and other animals like the crocodileand rhinoceros, not native to Iraq. Less exoticbut no less illuminating are some small chil-dren’s toys that remind us that the ancientMesopotamians were not artifacts in amuseum but human like ourselves. In thestreets of Eshnunna 5,000 years ago the soundof children playing could be heard.

Girsu Called Tello today, the ruins of ancientGirsu were the first in Mesopotamia to offerevidence of Sumerian civilization. In addition,Girsu became the first Sumerian site to bethoroughly investigated by archaeologists.Exploration by the French began in 1877 andcontinued for a total of 20 seasons. Sadly, thesite was also persistently raided by looters.


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Girsu is located in southern Mesopotamiamidway between the Tigris and Euphrates. Inthe third millennium B.C.E. it was allied withtwo nearby cities connected by waterway: Nina-Sirara (modern Zurghul) and Lagash (modernAl-Hiba), the latter of which served as leader.

Girsa’s patron god was Ningirsu (“Lord ofGirsu”), whose temple was lavishly renovatedby Lagash’s leader, Gudea. The exact locationof the temple has not been identified, but itsornate construction—employing cedar wood,gold, and precious stones—is described in detailby Gudea in a surviving celebratory inscription.Besides the inscription, the city yielded a grandtotal of over 40,000 cuneiform tablets.

Two striking works of sculptural art havealso been found: a stone relief portraying Ur-Nanshe, ruler of Lagash, piously carrying abasket on his head filled with clay to makebricks for a new temple; and the Stele of theVultures, depicting his son’s military triumph.The stele gets its name from a section thatshows the heads and limbs of dead enemy sol-diers being carried off by hungry vultures.

Today’s Tello is a desolate heap picked overby archaeologist and looter alike, hardly atemptation to the contemporary bird of prey.

Guzana Situated at the headwaters of theKhabur River near the foothills of the TaurusMountains and close to the modern borderbetween Syria and Turkey, Guzana was firstsettled in the sixth millennium B.C.E. Itsinhabitants produced a distinctive style of pot-tery marked by lustrous geometric designspainted in red, black, and white. The style iscalled Halaf from Tell Halaf, the Arabic namefor the settlement’s ruins. Samples of this pot-tery have been found widely distributed insites in northern Syria and northern Iraq, theresult either of trade or of multiple settlementsby a common culture.

By the first millennium B.C.E., Guzana hadbecome the capital city of an independent Ara-

maean state but was soon absorbed into theAssyrian Empire. Dating to these historicaltimes are the remains of a palace elaboratelydecorated by sculpted panels of stone andadorned with full-scale figures. Alternatingbetween black basalt and white limestone, theslabs show a variety of action scenes depictinghunting and war. Mythological images alsoappear. The desert scorpion was a specialsource of inspiration: one of the panels featuresa fantastic creature half-scorpion, half-man;while at the entrance to the palace stands ahuman-headed bird with a scorpion stinger.

The Aleppo Museum now houses thismythic menagerie.

Hatra The people of the desert city of Hatraworshiped the sun, to whom they erected a glo-rious temple, a god who watched over them intimes of siege. Under the protection of theParthians, the city grew rich between 100 and300 C.E. In the second century it was twicebesieged by Roman armies that endured theblistering heat and suffered from swarms of fliesthat attacked their food and drink. The defend-ers were also adept at using the ancient equiva-lent of napalm, pouring down from their wallsflaming bitumen or naphtha on the enemytroops below. Roman determination motivatedby greed, however, eventually won the day, andthe temple of the mighty sun was sacked.

The city was captured again in the thirdcentury C.E. by the Sassanians. According tothe story, the daughter of Hatra’s king revealedto the king of the Sassanians the talisman thatmagically protected her father’s city. AfterHatra’s capture, the Sassanian king—who hadfirst intended to marry the princess—had sec-ond thoughts when he reflected on how readilyshe had betrayed her own father. So instead ofmarrying her, he killed her by tying her hair tothe tail of a wild stallion.

It still takes a trek across the desert to reachHatra, or Al-Hadr as its ruins are known today.


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Imgur-Enlil Imgur-Enlil, or Balawat as it isbetter known, lies in northern Iraq about ninemiles northeast of ancient Nimrud and about20 miles southeast of modern Mosul. In 1878,following a chance discovery by a localgravedigger, archaeologist Hormuzd Rassamunearthed a series of bronze bands that oncedecorated two sets of monumental doors froma ninth-century B.C.E. Assyrian palace.According to their inscriptions, the bandsfrom one set date to the days of AshurnasirpalII; the bands of the other, to the time of hisson, Shalmaneser III. Embossed and incisedon the bands are detailed scenes from themonarchs’ military campaigns. A further set ofbronze-banded doors was found by archaeolo-gist Max Mallowan digging in the 1950s in theruins of a Balawat temple dedicated to the godMamu. Ashurnasirpal had piously installedthem in the god’s honor.

Isin Beginning in 2017 B.C.E. and continuingfor two centuries, Isin was one of the leadingimperialistic states of southern Mesopotamia,until its conquest by Hammurabi in 1787B.C.E. Dating to its Golden Age is the Sumer-ian law code of its 19th-century B.C.E. ruler,Lipit-Ishtar. Almost every one of the survivingstatutes of Lipit-Ishtar’s code is echoed in thelater, but more famous, code of Hammurabi.Today the ruins of Isin lie about 124 milessouth-southeast of Baghdad.

The city of Isin was home to the goddessGula, the Mesopotamian goddess of healing.Archaeologists have found her temple, whichstood at the highest point of the city. Like Epi-daurus in ancient Greece and Lourdes inFrance, the city attracted individuals in searchof miraculous cures. A figurine was found nearthe temple that showed a man kneeling andholding his back. The statuette may have beena gift to the goddess given in gratitude for herdivine intervention in alleviating his pain.Some skeletons found at the site bear signs of

stroke and of traumatic injuries to the skull. Adeliberate opening in the right parietal bone ofone skull points to an operation called trepana-tion that may have optimistically been per-formed to cure a persistent and severeheadache.

One of the most curious discoveries at Isin isa whale bone, reminiscent of the story ofJonah, whose missionary activity took place inMesopotamia.

Eventually, the ruins of Isin were swallowednot by a whale but by a marsh, and they werecalled Ishan Bahriyat, “The MonumentDrowned by the Sea.”

Jemdet Nasr The last cultural era of south-ern Mesopotamia prior to the full flowering ofurban life is called the Jemdet Nasr period(about 3500–3000 B.C.E.). The term stemsfrom the Arabic name for a two-mound sitelocated about 62 miles south of Baghdad andfirst explored in 1925.

At the site there were discovered some ofthe earliest inscribed tablets ever found inMesopotamia, second in age only to tabletsuncovered at Uruk. The style of writing iscalled proto-cuneiform, the world’s oldest writ-ing system and the ancestor of the more devel-oped style that came to dominate theMideastern world for three millennia. A mono-gram found on many Jemdet Nasr artifacts—afive-pointed star with the phonetic value“UB”—may point to the original name of thesite. The tablets are administrative in natureand concern the management of agriculturalproperty, probably by temple officials. Differ-ent counting systems are used, including thesexigesimal (based on the number 60) thatbecame fundamental to Sumerian mathematicsand is the origin of our 60-minute hour and360-degree circle. On some tablets, a seal-stone impression gives a list of southernMesopotamian cities (including Larsa, Nippur,Ur, and Uruk), evidence of economic coopera-


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tion among urban centers, reinforced by theprevalence of a common style of pottery onceused by the people who lived in the area.

Kalhu Better known by its Arabic nameNimrud, Kalhu was founded in the 13th cen-tury B.C.E. and in the ninth became the capitalof the Assyrian Empire, a position it held for150 years. Even when the capital was eventu-ally moved, Kalhu on the Tigris remained acity of prominence, covering 16 square milesand girded by a wall over 4.5 miles long com-posed of 70 million bricks. It is still one of thelargest ancient cities in Iraq.

Austen Henry Layard was the first Euro-pean to recognize the historic importance ofthe city’s ruins. Excavations commenced in themid 1800s and were renewed by a British expe-dition between 1949 and 1963 under the leader-ship of Max Mallowan. Digging and restoration

has continued under the auspices of the IraqDepartment of Antiquities.

After Ashurnasirpal II chose Kalhu as hiscapital, he lavished great attention upon thecity, building the defensive walls and a magnif-icent canal. The construction of his palace (theso-called Northwest Palace) took 15 years andwas celebrated by a 10-day party. As Ashur-nasirpal himself tells in an inscription, heinvited from all corners of the land 69,754guests who consumed 2,200 oxen, 16,000sheep, 10,000 skins of wine, and 10,000 barrelsof beer. The palace was occupied by laterAssyrian kings and, until recently, still heldtheir queens, buried beneath the floor in tombsalong with 1,500 pieces of golden jewelryweighing a total of 100 pounds. Later kingsalso built separate palaces in Kalhu. Amongthem was Shalmaneser III who built one to thesoutheast. Dubbed “Fort Shalmaneser” by the


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1.9 A view of the Assyrian capital of Kalhu (Nimrud) in the days of its splendor, as conceived in areconstruction by artist James Fergusson. (Austen Henry Layard, A Second Series of the Monuments ofNineveh [London: John Murray, 1853])

British, it featured an armory and a paradeground for reviewing troops as well as a resi-dence for the royal harem.

Temples at Kalhu include a ziggurat and atemple dedicated to the hero Ninurta, and aseparate temple dedicated to the god Nabu andhis consort built by Queen Sammu-ramat, theinspiration for the legendary Semiramis.

Recovered from the bottoms of wells wherethey were mysteriously hurled were panels ofmasterfully carved ivory that once decoratedwooden furniture. One portrays a woman’s facewith a Mona Lisa smile.

Numbered among miscellaneous but fasci-nating discoveries are wooden “writing boards”that were once coated with wax and inscribedwith a stylus (the ancient equivalent of areusable “magic slate”), bronze fittings from ahorse’s bridle, and a miniature bronze and ironfortress (a toy for a prince?) fashioned with tur-rets and wheels like the portable machineryused in a siege.

Real soldiers, not toy ones, however, wereresponsible for Kalhu’s fall when the city wascaptured and destroyed by the Medes in 612B.C.E.

Today, the ruins known as Nimrud standon a bluff 21 miles southeast of Mosul. By akind of poetic justice, this former capital ofarmed Assyrian might now goes by the nameof a mighty hunter who once roamed theearth and whose fame is recalled in the Bibleand Koran: Nimrod.

Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta When the 13th-cen-tury B.C.E. Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta tri-umphed over Babylon, he built a new city onthe Tigris and named it for himself. To thankAssyria’s national god, Ashur, for giving himvictory, he built the god a great temple andziggurat, but he also took time out to buildhimself a palace on an imposing terrace, apalace resplendent with mythological friezesand frescos painted in red, white, blue, and

black. The city was abandoned when he died.The Tigris still flows nearby, 85 miles southof Mosul.

Khorsabad See Dur-Sharrukin.

Kish In Mesopotamian memory, the firstkings who ruled after the primordial flood werethe kings of Kish. That there was a devastatingflood early in the city’s history is demonstratedin the depths of the mound by a 1.5-foot-thicklayer of river mud. Such layers are indeed foundat other sites in Mesopotamia but, because theydate to different time periods, they point tolocalized floods rather than a universal one suchas is described in Mesopotamian literature andthe Bible.

About 85 miles south of the present-day cityof Baghdad, ancient Kish rose from its flood tobecome one of the leading city-states of earlySumer. Graves have been found like those at Urin which the dead were interred with chariots,garaged for their enjoyment in the afterlife.

A temple and ziggurat dating to the first halfof the second millennium B.C.E. honoredKish’s patron deity, the warrior god Zababa.Dating to the same period also are the remainsof a school for scribes.

Kutha Situated 25 miles northeast of ancientBabylon, Kutha was one of Babylonia’s mostimportant religious centers. Home of the cultof the dead, its chief temple honored thenetherworld god Nergal. Today the city’s ruinsgo by the name of Tell Ibrahim.

Lagash Covering over two square miles, themound known as Tell al-Hiba constitutes oneof the largest ghost towns of the ancient NearEast. Located approximately 120 miles north-west of Basra, the site was once the Sumeriancity of Lagash. Through wars of conquestwaged during the second half of the third mil-lennium B.C.E., the state of Lagash held sway


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over most of Sumer. Among the leaders of itsimperialistic adventures were Ur-Nanshe, hisgrandson Eannatum, and the “photogenic” andego-driven Gudea, whose sculptured portraitsabound. Appropriately, the patron deity ofLagash was Ningirsu, the war god. Theremains of his temple as well as those of thetemple of Inanna were found in excavationsbegun by German archaeologists in 1887 andrenewed by an American expedition in the1960s. Lagash was allied with the nearby citiesof Girsu (Tello) and Nina-Sirara (Zurghul).

Larak Along with Bad-tibira, Eridu, Shurup-pak, and Sippar, Larak was one of the greatcities of Sumer before the days of the floodrecalled in Mesopotamian legend. The city wasalso the earthly home of Pabilsag, divine hus-band of Ninisina, the Sumerian goddess ofhealing.

Larsa Ancient Larsa was located near theEuphrates between Uruk and Ur. Followingthe fall of Ur’s Third Dynasty, the city-statesof Larsa and Isin vied for control of southernMesopotamia, a rivalry that occupied the firsttwo centuries of the second millennium B.C.E.Larsa finally conquered Isin but was in turnconquered by Hammurabi of Babylon. Ham-murabi’s siege of Larsa lasted six months untilthe city fell. Its king, Rim-Sin, had ruled for60 years.

The rising and setting of Larsa’s power wasironically presaged by its largest sanctuary, thetemple of Shamash, god of the sun. The tran-sience of its glory is also symbolized by the19th-century B.C.E. palace of King Nur-Adad,a palace that was built but never occupied.

Today the ruins of Larsa go by the name ofTell Senkereh. Excavations by the French endedin 1991 with the outbreak of the Gulf War.

Mari In 1933, Syrian peasants digging agrave in a deserted mound found a headless

statue. The mound where the peasants dug thatfirst fortuitous grave is today called Tell Hariri,almost midway between Damascus and Bagh-dad. Probing the mound for more artifacts,French archaeologists later found the remainsof an ancient city called Mari, the capital of akingdom that had flourished between thebeginning of the third millennium B.C.E. andthe beginning of the second. Situated on theupper Euphrates, it had grown rich by exactingtaxes from caravans and river traffic that flowedbetween Syria and Babylonia.

At its height, its king was Zimri-Lim, whoresided in an elaborate two-story palace thatcontained more than 250 rooms on the groundfloor alone. Decorated with wall paintingsshowing scenes of royal investiture and ritualsacrifice, the building featured an open court-yard with a symbol of fertility and abundanceas its centerpiece: an artificial palm tree fash-ioned of bronze and silver plates attached to anarmature of natural wood. In one room stood astone statue of a robed goddess holding a vase.Hidden within the statue was a channel thatpermitted piped-in water to cascade downfrom the vase, emblematic of water’s life-givingblessings and the favor of the gods that made itavailable. A special chapel was reserved forIshtar as was another sanctuary dedicated to adivine champion whose identity is lost but whowas represented by an almost life-sized war-rior’s head carved from alabaster, dressed forbattle with a tight-fitting helmet and chin-strap. In the palace archives, more than 20,000cuneiform tablets were found, revealing detailsof everyday life in the kingdom and includingcorrespondence between Zimri-Lim and hisself-styled “brother,” Hammurabi of Babylon.

In unbrotherly fashion, Hammurabi cap-tured the city in 1760 B.C.E. and destroyed thepalace after first looting it. Ironically, the wallshe knocked down buried and preserved manypaintings and other artifacts the archaeologistswould later find.


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Nevertheless, despite the ravages of manand nature, the palace is—in the words of itslatest excavator, Jean-Claude Margueron—“the best known, the best preserved, and therichest . . . of all the palaces . . . of the entireBronze Age” in the Near East (Margueron1995: 885), affording us a vision not only ofZimri-Lim’s world but also the world of hiscontemporary rival, Hammurabi, whose ownpalace suffered far more at the hands of time.Indeed, as Margueron noted of Mari, “no othersite has been so rich in evidence of a millen-nium of Mesopotamian civilization” (Mar-gueron 1997: 416).

Neribtum Tell Ishchali, 10 miles east ofBaghdad on the Diyala River, bears theremains of ancient Neribtum. Excavations inthe 1930s by the University of Chicago’s Ori-ental Institute uncovered the ruins of the tem-ple of Ishtar-Kititum. Ishtar, called Inanna inSumerian, was the goddess of sexuality and warand the most important goddess in Meso-potamian religion. The name Kititum mayconnect her worship with another city inMesopotamia. An alternative is that it echoesthe name of Kition, a city on Cyprus, the islandthat was the home to the cult of Aphrodite, theGreek goddess of the erotic and the Hellenicequivalent of Ishtar/Inanna.

Discovered in the temple was a curiousthree-inch-tall figurine of a monkey carvedout of alabaster. Monkeys were not native toMesopotamia, so the artist either saw onewhen he was traveling (in India or Egypt,where monkeys existed, or in the Aegean,where they are pictured in Minoan art) or sawone that had been imported as an exotic pet.The statuette dates to sometime between 2000and 1800 B.C.E.

Another work of art traceable to Neribtumis a 6.5-inch-tall bronze figurine of anunknown god. He had four bearded faces andstands with his foot on a sacrificial ram.

Nimrud See Kalhu.

Nina-Sirara Nina-Sirara (or, more simply,Nina) together with the nearby Sumerian citiesof Girsu and Lagash formed the city-state ofLagash, which played a dominant role in thepolitics of southern Mesopotamia during theearly third millennium B.C.E. The ruins ofNina, now called Zurghul, lie about 114 milesnorthwest of Basra. Digging there in 1887,German archaeologist Robert Koldewey foundthe remains of a temple to Nanshe. Sumerianhymns tell us Nanshe was a goddess who caredpassionately about social justice. She lookedout for the helpless, especially poor widowsand orphans, and she hated those who stole andcheated others. Though her temple was ulti-mately abandoned, the ethical principles shestood for were eventually incorporated intoMesopotamian law.

Nineveh See Ninua.

Ninua Encroached upon by the urban sprawlof modern Mosul, the remains of ancient Nin-eveh (or Ninua, as it was originally named) liejust east of the Tigris. There are two promi-nent mounds: Tell Kuyunjik to the north andTell Nebi Yunus to the south. Since the earliestexcavations in the 1840s and 1850s (by Botta,Layard, Rassam, and Loftus), digging hasfocused on Kuyunjik and uncovered twopalaces. Probes have shown that Nebi Yunuswas very likely the site of a royal arsenal, butfull-scale excavation has been precludedbecause the site is revered by Muslims (as itsArabic name denotes) as the tomb of Jonah, thereluctant biblical prophet who came to save theNinevites from their sins.

At the end of the eighth century B.C.E., Sen-nacherib chose Nineveh to be the new capitalof the Assyrian Empire. He proceeded to sur-round it with a seven-mile-long wall designedto terrify and deter any enemy. Within, he con-


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structed a palace “without rival.” The build-ing’s main axis was one-third of a mile inlength. It featured a portico consisting of solidbronze columns resting on the backs of solidbronze lions and bulls, each of which weighed43 tons. Inside, the palace was adorned withcarved reliefs showing the king in the processof erecting colossal monuments or waging waragainst Assyria’s enemies (including a depictionof his siege of the Judaean city of Lachish,replete with a gory portrait of Jewish captivesimpaled on stakes). Because of exposure to theelements and the depredations of modern loot-ers, many panels still at the site have crumbledbeyond recognition or have been broken intoprofitable pieces for sale on the illicit antiqui-ties market. The sculptures of Sennacherib’sthrone-room suite have been violated in thisway. Indeed, in lieu of tight on-site security, thebest way to safeguard pieces not already inmuseums is, paradoxically, to rebury them.

North of Sennacherib’s palace, his grand-son, Ashurnasirpal, built another. It too wasdecorated with sculptural reliefs, including apowerful series that shows the monarch hunt-ing lions from his chariot and, with his sword,stabbing one in hand-to-paw combat. Ashur-nasirpal’s royal library was also discovered.Comprised of 24,000 cuneiform tablets, it is apriceless compendium of Assyrian diplomacy,science, and literature. Transported to theBritish Museum, some of the tablets were deci-phered by a specialist named George Smith,who found an epic account of a great flood thatstrikingly paralleled the flood story in Genesis.Regrettably, because of a cracked tablet, theend of the story was missing. Sponsored by aLondon newspaper, Smith traveled to Ninevehand within days recovered the missing piece—aneedle in a Nineveh haystack.

Ancient Nineveh must have been a wonderto behold. The biblical book of Jonah says thecity took three days to cross on foot. And theannals of Nineveh’s kings tell how they

enriched the city with marvelous botanical andzoological gardens and parks.

But in the summer of 612 B.C.E. despite itssplendor and wealth (or perhaps because ofthem), the city was attacked by the Babyloniansand Medes. Despite its “terrifying” wall, it fellafter a three months’ siege and was sacked. Inits ransacked palace, the victorious Babylonianking held court, before ordering the cityflooded by river water to pay back the Assyri-ans for what Sennacherib himself had done toBabylon decades before. He then marchedproudly home with an urn of Nineveh’s ashesin his luggage.

The fall of Nineveh teaches how tenuous,despite all outward signs, a nation’s power is, andhow brutal its end can be. The biblical prophetNahum (3:1–3) visualized the final scene:

The whip cracks and the wheel rattles,The horse bolts and the chariot bounds,The driver soars through air.The sword flashes and the spearpoint gleams.The body count rises and the cadaver heap

mounts.There is no end to corpses.They stumble on the pile.

Skeletons still lay tangled in the dust beside ayawning gate 26 centuries later.

Nippur Unlike other cities that were guidedby rulers who often had imperialistic ambitions,the Sumerian city of Nippur never possessed aruling dynasty of its own. Instead, Nippur main-tained a position of political neutrality while act-ing as a religious center to which other cities andrulers turned. Nippur enjoyed this preeminencebecause it served as the site of the most impor-tant temple of the god Enlil, regarded from thethird millennium B.C.E. as the head of theSumerian pantheon. Enlil’s temple was calledthe Ekur, or “Mountain House,” a name thatsuggests the god’s worship emanated from themountainous region north and east of Sumer’s


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alluvial plain. Indeed, of the major cities ofSumer, Nippur was the farthest north. A moun-tain-like ziggurat stood near Enlil’s temple. Inaddition, Nippur contained a temple to Enlil’sdivine daughter, Inanna.

Besides finding the remains of these sacredstructures, archaeologists unearthed a campusfor student scribes and their teachers. Called“Tablet Hill” by its discoverers, this scribalquarter has yielded 60,000 cuneiform tabletsthat contain extracts from every major work ofSumerian literature, including a Sumerian ver-sion of the Great Flood story. Another remark-able document is a map (in clay) of the city ofNippur itself, marking the locations of variousmonuments.

Founded as a settlement in the early sixthmillennium B.C.E., Nippur’s longevity extendedto 800 C.E. Because of its lengthy habitationand the buildup of occupational debris, theruins of Nippur now rise up almost 70 feetabove the surrounding plain, some 100 milessouthwest of Baghdad. Longevity made the cityitself a minor mountain of civilization’s past.

Nuzu Today a cluster of tells set among theoil fields of northeastern Iraq, the communityof Nuzu (also spelled Nuzi) was once a flour-ishing town in the empire of the Mitanni, animperialistic people who vied with the Egyp-tians for the riches of the Levant. Its popula-tion was mostly Hurrian.

As a center for provincial administration, itboasted an impressive government house,adorned with frescoes and paved in marble. Inaddition, the building had a system of drainageand plumbing advanced for its time, includingflush toilets with marble seats. Doors werestudded with copper nails plated in silver.

Metalwork found elsewhere at the siteincludes bronze scales that comprised armorfor the men and horses of Nuzu’s chariot corps,and a bronze dagger with a hilt inlaid with iron,in those days a rare and precious metal.

The most notable finds, however, proved tobe cuneiform tablets. Numbering more than20,000, these tablets revealed the public and pri-vate life of the community over the course offive or six generations, from the mid-15th to themid-14th centuries B.C.E. They encompassinformation about workers and salaries, com-modities and taxes, and the active role of free-born women in business. The customs thatthese tablets shed light on also illuminate thesocial milieu of the world in which the Hebrewpatriarchs lived.

One of the most poignant discoveries comesfrom a private home: the burial of an infantbeneath a jar shaped like a mother’s breast.

Puzrish-Dagan Known to archaeologists asDrehem, this Sumerian city served as a live-stock depot for nearby Nippur. Some 100,000cuneiform tablets have been unearthed record-ing orders, sales, and shipments of animals.

Qalat Jarmo The principles of agriculturemay have been discovered not in the alluvialplains of the southern Tigris and Euphrates butin the hill country, well watered by rain, to thenorth where cereal grain grew wild. Just such asite was investigated by Robert and LindaBraidwood between 1948 and 1955. At Jarmo,located in the foothills of the Zagros Moun-tains east of Kirkuk, they found evidence of anearly agricultural community that had beenfounded in the seventh millennium B.C.E. Thevillage was small, measuring only about 300 by450 feet. There the inhabitants had cultivatedemmer wheat, barley, peas, and lentils, andthey raised domesticated sheep and goats.They lived in multiroom houses with pre-brickwalls of packed mud (known as tauf or pisé )supported on stone foundations. By the sixthmillennium B.C.E. they were making pottery;before that, they had waterproofed basketswith sticky bitumen and decorated them withcolored stones.


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Among the most intriguing discoveries weresmall pieces of clay fashioned into geometricshapes. The villagers of Jarmo may have usedthem as tokens for the purpose of primitiveaccounting. Some scholars believe that fromthe shapes of such early tokens came the sym-bols that became the basis of writing some2,500 years later.

Samarra Like Jarmo, Samarra began as aprehistoric farming community in the seventhmillennium B.C.E. But because it was located incentral Mesopotamia where rainfall was tooscant to grow crops, Samarra used irrigationcanals to draw upon the adjacent waters of theTigris. Samarra ware is its most distinctive arti-fact: pottery with precisely painted geometricbands on the outside, and animate figures onthe inside, including human beings (somedancing) and insects such as spiders and scorpi-ons arranged in bands.

Samarra’s Golden Age, however, would haveto wait another 8,000 years. It became a majorurban center in Islamic times, serving in theninth century C.E. as the capital of the Abbasidcaliphs, a distinction it held for over 50 years.Today the ruins of that city are still impressive,covering 35 square miles and stretching for 31miles along the Tigris. For a time Samarra wasthe proud home of what was then the largestmosque in Islam, marked by a 170-foot-tallminaret wrapped in a spiral ramp. Thisminaret’s inspiration may have been the ziggu-rat of ancient Dur-Sharrukin, which also fea-tured a spiral ramp. The minaret, in turn,became a source of inspiration for later Euro-pean painters, who, in the absence of a tower-ing structure at Babylon, modeled Babel’sTower on Samarra’s.

The mosque and minaret still stand 60 milesnorth of Baghdad, and they constitute anenduring symbol of both aesthetic continuityand spiritual evolution.

Shaduppum Founded during the days ofSargon of Akkad in the late third millenniumB.C.E., the city of Shaduppum rose to promi-nence during the second. A twin temple withan entrance flanked by terra-cotta lions stoodjust inside the city’s main gate. The temple wasdedicated to Nidaba, the Sumerian patron god-dess of writing and recordkeeping, and herdivine consort, Haia. Fittingly, numerouscuneiform tablets have been found in thehouses of the city. Among them are two thatcontain the text of a law code promulgated byBilalama, the ruler of Eshnunna, who livedduring the first half of the 18th century B.C.E.,two centuries before the great Hammurabi.Notwithstanding its earlier date, Bilalama’scode is the more progressive, accepting mone-tary compensation for violent acts rather thanHammurabi’s “eye for an eye.” Today, the ruinsof ancient Shaduppum, called Tell Harmal, lieon the outskirts of Baghdad.

Shubat-Enlil Called Shekhna when theAkkadians used to administer the upper Tigris,the city was later chosen as capital by theAmorite empire-builder Shamshi-Adad Iaround 1800 B.C.E. He then renamed it Shu-bat-Enlil. According to the archives at Mari, hebeautified this and other cities in his kingdomwith transplanted palms, cypresses, and myr-tles. The archives of Shubat-Enlil containtablets concerned not with trees but withbeer—specifically, the maintenance of an ade-quate stock of royal beer for the king’s pleasure.When Shamshi-Adad was not drinking, he wasconquering, and boasted of having set up astele with his name on it in far-off Lebanon onthe shore of the Mediterranean Sea. About 50years after his death, his capital city wasdestroyed by another man of ambition, theBabylonian king Samsuiluna. Shubat-Enlilwould remain deserted until the early 20thcentury C.E., when a Kurdish village, TellLeilan, grew up on its ruins.


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Shuruppak In the Sumerian version of theflood story, the role of Noah is played by aprince named Ziusudra. According to a Sumer-ian chronicle, Ziusudra’s father was the last kingto rule Shuruppak before the deluge came. Evi-dence of such a deluge was found by archaeolo-gists digging at the site: a two-foot-thick layerof mud dating to about 2750 B.C.E. that oncecovered the entire city—though not all ofSumer, let alone the world. The memory of theShuruppak flood, however, may have been vividenough to cause a poet to cast a Shuruppaker inthe starring role in that diluvian drama.

Besides mud, the archaeologists found post-disaster real estate documents and grain-stor-age silos, showing that life went on.

The remains of Shuruppak are today calledFara, situated about halfway between Baghdadand Basra.

Sippar The worship of the sun gave ancientSippar its claim to fame, for the city was thehome of the most revered temple to the sun-god(Utu in Sumerian, and Shamash in Akkadian).Called the “White Temple” because of the exte-rior whitewashing that reflected the sun’s gleam-ing rays, it was linked to a convent for thepriestesses who served the god. Archaeologistshave found rows of two-room houses on parallelstreets in the city’s religious quarter that maywell be the remains of their residence. Traditionrecords that wealthy Mesopotamian families andeven kings sent their daughters to serve the god.The everyday spiritual and commercial activitiesof the temple are illustrated by tens of thousandsof cuneiform tablets that have been uncovered,many still stacked in the brick wall-cabinetswhere they were stored. Thousands more crum-bled when they were unearthed, partly becausethe early methods used to excavate them werecrude but also partly because the scribes of Sip-par had never baked them in ovens to makethem hard. Instead, ironically, they had relied onShamash to dry them.

Before the Great Flood, Sumerian chroniclestell us, Sippar was one of five cities chosen bydivine providence to rule the land of Sumer.The city was strategically located on theEuphrates where it comes closest to the Tigris;indeed, the Euphrates was often called “the Sip-par River.” To better fortify his capital city ofBabylon, Nebuchadnezzar constructed an east-west wall from river to river just north of Sippar.Today, the remains of this city of the sun bleachin its rays at a place called Tell Abu Habah, 16miles or so south of modern Baghdad.

Sippar-Amnanum Close by Sippar was itstwin city, Sippar-Amnanum (modern Tell ed-Der), where a goddess named Annunitum wasworshiped. Though no convent was found,archaeologists did discover the home of the god-dess’ chief singer of dirges, one Ur-Utu. Twothousand tablets from the house detail the reli-gious duties and lucrative business dealings ofthis cleric. The building was destroyed by fire in1629 B.C.E. to judge by the latest date on thedocuments. By a twist of fate, the heat of the firebaked the tablets and thus preserved them. Wemay not have a CD of Ur-Utu’s plaintive dron-ing, but at least we have his diary written in clay.

Tell Arpachiyeh Near ancient Nineveh is asmall prehistoric site that flourished between6000 and 5000 B.C.E. Its people lived in iglooor keyhole-shaped huts that were made of clay.The villagers were adept at making a fine typeof pottery with multicolored linear decoration.On the floor of what seems to have been acraftsman’s shop were found bone tools usedfor sculpting clay, palettes for mixing colors, apiece of red ochre, and fragments of shatteredbowls, some of which were adorned withpainted flowers and dancing girls. Theseremains were intermingled with the ashes of afire that had destroyed the shop and caused itsabandonment. As at another prehistoric site,Yarim Tepe, some of the graves at Tell


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Arpachiyeh are puzzling because the buriedskeletons were found headless.

Tell Brak On the upper Khabur 120 mileswest of modern Mosul, Tell Brak prosperedfrom its location on the ancient trade route formetals. Its main temple featured an altar deco-rated with alternating bands of colored stoneand gold. The gold bands were attached withsilver nails with gold-plated heads. The templeitself has been dubbed the “Eye” Templebecause of the votive figurines it contained.Sculpted from clay or stone and measuring oneto four inches tall, these hauntingly abstractstatuettes have heads dominated by large hol-low-pupiled eyes. Though 300 of these figureshave been unearthed intact, there are enoughfragments to suggest some 20,000 may haveonce stood in the shrine. The temple and itscontents have been dated to the fourth millen-nium B.C.E., but what god or goddess theyhonored we do not know. Even the ancientname of Tell Brak is a mystery.

Tell Fakhariyeh Tell Fakhariyeh is locatedin present-day Syria near the springs that feedthe Khabur River, in what was once northernMesopotamia. For a time, archaeologistsbelieved that the ruins might be the site ofWashukanni, the capital of the empire of theMitanni, a people who were once the imperial-istic rivals of the Egyptians for the control ofthe Levant. In 1979, however, a tractor plow-ing near the edge of the tell dislodged a 5.5-foot-tall basalt statue of an Aramaean king. Onthe statue was an inscription stating that it hadbeen dedicated to the god Hadad of Sikani.Sikani was thus very probably the ancient nameof the tell. Where the lost city of Washukanniis remains a mystery.

Tell Hassuna Situated 22 miles south ofMosul, Tell Hassuna is typical of small farmingcommunities that existed in northern

Mesopotamia and, indeed, much of the NearEast during the late seventh and early sixthmillennia B.C.E. In an age before metal, toolsand weapons were made from stone. Grain wasstored in bins, ground between flat rubbingstones, and baked into bread in clay ovens.

Like their contemporaries, the inhabitantsof Tell Hassuna had learned how to constructhigh-temperature kilns. They found that pot-tery baked at higher temperatures lost itsporosity and so could hold liquids, somethingnot possible before.

Simple graves have been found in which thebodies of infants were interred in pottery jars,with other jars of food and drink set nearby toserve their childhood needs in the afterlife.

Tell al-Oueili Like Tell Hassuna, this sitelocated near Larsa offers evidence of Neolithiclife before the emergence of urban centers.But, unlike most Mesopotamian sites, peoplestopped living at Tell al-Oueili before theurban revolution began. As a result, archaeolo-gists do not face the formidable task of havingto dig down through the superimposed debrisof later eras in order to reach the remains ofNeolithic times. Besides evidence of the com-munity’s agricultural lifestyle, excavators havediscovered bricks that amazingly bear theimprints of the ancient brickmakers’ fingers.The earliest remains of Tell al-Oueili’s life,however, lie submerged below the river valley’spresent water table.

Tell Qalinj Agha The northern Mesopotam-ian city now known as Tell Qalinj Agha pros-pered during the late fourth millennium B.C.E.The man-made terrace that supports its templemay be the north’s earliest. One of the city’s res-idential streets featured houses with outdoorovens, a practical precaution against fire.

Tell al-Rimah Thirty-nine miles west of Nin-eveh lay a small city that thrived on trade in the


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late third and second millennia B.C.E. Its origi-nal name may have been Qatara or Karana. Itsmost prominent feature was a religious complexset atop a walled terrace, including an elaboratetemple and an adjoining ziggurat. The exteriorwall of the temple was enlivened with engagedcolumns of mud brick sculpted to resemble thetrunks of palm trees. The braid-like columns ofa temple at Shubat-Enlil (Tell Leilan) are in thesame style. Inside Tell al-Rimah’s temple arereliefs, including one with the grimacing Gor-gon-like face of the monster Humbaba.

The remains of a small palace were also dis-covered at the site, and within it a cuneiformlist enumerating the stores of wine in the royalwine cellar.

Tell es-Sawwan This agricultural commu-nity on the Tigris north of Baghdad was con-temporary with the Neolithic villages of Jarmoand Hassuna. A total of 130 graves was foundbeneath the floor of one building, containing adisproportionately high number of children’sburials. The building may have had specialspiritual significance, but the high rate of infantmortality is unexplained.

Tell Taya Terra-cotta figurines of chariots,wheels, a horse’s head, and a naked charioteerhave been unearthed at this northern Iraqi site,which served as an important center for sur-rounding villages during the third millenniumB.C.E. Its vitality continued into the next mil-lennium as well, and on into Parthian and Sas-sanian times. Though part of the wall of itscitadel collapsed into a dry river-bed and thesite itself was deserted, the mound was reset-tled by villagers around 1000 C.E., but laterabandoned. About 1940, a homesteader built asolitary house on top of the ruins, but when hedied, it too was abandoned, and ownership ofthe site reverted to the descendants of thesnakes and scorpions, which still slither acrossTaya’s ancient potsherds.

Tell al-Ubaid Tell al-Ubaid was once aprosperous Sumerian city on the Euphrates3.5 miles west of Ur. Like ancient Tutub(modern Khafaje), Tell Ubaid possessed atemple set on a terrace enclosed within anoval wall. The temple was dedicated in 2500B.C.E. to Ninhursag, the Sumerian goddess ofchildbirth. Guarding the entranceway wereeight fierce copper-skinned lions with shin-ing, inlaid eyes. On the façade of the templeover its door hung an eight-foot-wide friezehammered out of copper that showed a lion-headed eagle with wings outspread andflanked by antlered stags. Columns stood toeither side, coated with black bitumen andinlaid with contrasting triangles of red lime-stone and mother-of-pearl, while the wallsbloomed with an appliqué of flowers made ofclay—altogether the most elaborate decora-tion to survive from any Sumerian temple.Less imposing but no less informative isanother frieze, inlaid with shells, that showsthe milking of cows, one of the mainstays ofthe community’s economy.

From the early pottery of Tell al-Ubaid,which resembles the pottery of other sites ofthe same era, archaeologists developed theterm “Ubaid” to describe the art and culture ofMesopotamia during the millennium and a halfbefore 4000 B.C.E.

Tell Uqair Tell Uqair, northwest of ancientNippur, is significant because of its “PaintedTemple.” Dating to the fourth millenniumB.C.E., the temple gets its name from the wallpaintings it contains. Especially striking are thepictures of powerful animals that decorate itsaltar: a bull, a leopard, and possibly a lion. Ele-vated on a high platform approached by steps,the temple was later demolished and filled inwith mud brick so it could serve as the founda-tion for a still higher structure. Paradoxically,the bricks that it was packed with helped topreserve the colors on its interior walls and the


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endangered species in its sanctuary. Leopards,incidentally, still prowl the mountains ofnearby Iran.

Tepe Gawra Tepe Gawra is located in thefoothills of Kurdistan about 15 miles northeastof Mosul on a tributary of the Khosr River.The term “tepe” means mound in Kurdish orTurkish just as “tell” does in Arabic.

Tepe Gawra arose as a farming communityaround 6000 B.C.E. and was continuallyinhabited until about 1800 B.C.E. Thus itsmaterial remains provide archaeologists withan unbroken story of cultural development innorthern Mesopotamia from the beginningsof agriculture down through the middle ofthe Bronze Age.

It is the dead who are the principal witnessesand their wordless testimony comes from theirgraves. Tepe Gawra’s affluence is evident in thejewelry found on skeletons, worn on theirheads and necks, their wrists and hands, theirankles and even knees. Unstrung by the disin-tegration of their strands, the beads lie in scat-tered heaps—25,000 beads in one tomb alone,shaped from turquoise, jadeite, and carnelian;from white faience, ivory, and shell; and fromgold and electrum, an alloy of silver and gold.Five hundred of the beads are carved from pre-cious blue lapis lazuli, a mineral imported fromAfghanistan across a distance of 1,200 miles.Also notable among the grave goods is a minia-ture wolf’s head fashioned from electrum, withears attached by copper pins and a movablelower jaw jointed with pins of electrum.

A massive “Round House” may have servedas a community center and grain storage bin aswell as a storage depot for weapons: the pear-shaped mace-heads found on the floor date tothe early fourth millennium B.C.E. and areamong the earliest tools of war ever discoveredin Mesopotamia. They lay among the embersof a fire that destroyed the structure, evidenceperhaps of wartime conflagration.

Terqa Tell Ashara, the ruins of ancientTerqa, lie on the Euphrates in present-daySyria west of the Iraqi border. Politically sub-ject to Mari, 42 miles to the southeast, Terqabecame the capital of an independent kingdomafter Mari’s fall in 1761 B.C.E.

When Terqa was struck by a horde of locusts,the city’s governor scooped them up and sentthem to Mari’s king as a gastronomic delight.

Terqa owed much of its fame to its templeto Dagan, the god of grain. Ninkarrak, thegoddess of good health, also had a templethere. The goddess’ pet was a dog, and a dogwas found fittingly buried beside the altar ofher sanctuary.

A school for scribes was also unearthed inthe city. It featured a brick platform where thescribes knelt to shape tablets from the claystored in an adjacent jar. A jar found in a pri-vate home was filled not with clay but withcloves, proof of trade between Mesopotamiaand the Far East, where cloves were grown.Alas, the aroma of that household’s cooking haslong since vanished.

Til Barsip Many cities of Mesopotamia pos-sessed palaces, but very few had wall paintingswhich survive. Til Barsip is just such an excep-tion. The city was located about 70 milesnortheast of Aleppo, Syria. Originally the capi-tal of an Aramaean state, it was conquered bythe Assyrians in the ninth century B.C.E. Theconqueror, Shalmaneser III, then built an elab-orate palace on the city’s acropolis and orderedit decorated with murals. We can still see theking receiving tribute from his subjects orhunting lions from his chariot. Other scenesshow prisoners of war being led to execution.The pictures are lent immediacy by vigoroussketching and colors that retain their vividnessdespite the passage of almost 3,000 years.

Tuttul Northwest of Terqa at the confluenceof the Euphrates and the Balikh Rivers lay


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ancient Tuttul, called Tell Bi’a today. Here Sar-gon of Akkad (2334–2279 B.C.E.) worshipedDagan and thanked him for giving him victoryin his western campaigns. A later king,Shamshi-Adad I of Assyria (1809–1766 B.C.E.),built a palace here. His archives have beenfound along with scores of unburied skeletons,victims of war or epidemic. One tablet in thearchives contained a Hurrian magic spell, butneither the right one to save the victims norone potent enough to save the city itself:almost half of Tuttul has been washed away bythe Euphrates.

Tutub Better known as Khafaje, the ancientcity of Tutub lies nine miles east of Baghdadon the Diyala River, a tributary of the Tigris.The city is notable because its temple (oncethought to be dedicated to the moon-god Sin)was constructed atop a double terrace, eachlevel of which was enclosed within an oval wall.The “Temple Oval” dates to the fourth millen-nium B.C.E.

Umm Dabaghiyah At this site some 55miles south-southwest of Mosul lie theremains of a Neolithic village dating to thelate seventh and early sixth millennia B.C.E.From the large quantity of bones found there,the villagers seemed to have made a livingslaughtering and processing onagers for theirhides, sinews, and tail-hair. The animals arealso pictured on the walls of the villager’shouses. Judging by the hundreds upon hun-dreds of sling-shot pellets uncovered, the vil-lagers also kept an ample store of weapons onhand in case of attack.

Umma The Sumerian cities of Umma andnearby Lagash clashed over territory in thethird millennium B.C.E. Lagash’s triumph isdepicted on the Stele of the Vultures, where itssoldiers tread over the corpses of Umma’s men.Thousands of clay tablets have been unearthed

at Umma, including one of the earliest ofMesopotamian calendars.

Ur Located along the Euphrates River inwhat is now southern Iraq, Ur was the settingfor the most sensational discovery in the his-tory of Mesopotamian archaeology, the dis-covery of “the Royal Graves of Ur” by SirLeonard Woolley. Ranking in importance withthe discovery of King Tut’s tomb by HowardCarter in Egypt, the revelations at Ur were theresult of meticulous excavations that began in1922 (the year of Carter’s achievement) andcontinued through 1934 under the joint spon-sorship of the British Museum and the Uni-


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1.10 Arab tribesmen sit before the remains ofancient Ur prior to its excavation by Woolley.(Rogers, A History of Babylonia and Assyria, 1915)

versity of Pennsylvania Museum, institutionsthat today, along with the Iraq Museum, sharethe treasures.

Digging in a 2,000-grave cemetery that hadbeen turned into a rubbish heap in antiquity,Woolley unearthed the last resting place of aSumerian warlord, Mes-kalam-dug. On hishead was a gold helmet fashioned in the formof a wig backed by a golden chignon, a helmetfitted with earholes so the warlord could hearas well as command. At his waist lay a goldendagger and a lapis lazuli whetstone to keep itsharp. His vanity in the afterlife was served bya skin care kit that included golden tweezers.

Nearby rested the skeleton of a kingguarded by spear-carrying sentries whose

skulls were crushed by the weight of the earththat had borne upon them. Nine women(members of his harem?) lay there too withornate headdresses of golden beech-leaves ontheir heads, and earrings like huge crescentmoons. On the buried ramp that once led intothe collapsed tomb were the remains of twofour-wheeled wagons, the oldest wheeledvehicles in history ever found, along withtheir leather tires.

A later tomb had allowed Queen Puabi (orShub-ad, as an earlier decipherment spelled it)to be interred near her husband. Inside was agame board for her eternal amusement and adisintegrating lyre held by a court musician.The lyre, its deep-toned sound box fashioned


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1.11 Workmen stand on the stairways of Ur’s ziggurat at the end of the second season of excavations.(University of Pennsylvania Museum Archives)


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with a wooden bull’s head covered in gold foil,was like two others found in her husband’stomb. The queen had a golden straw buriedwith her so she could sip a cooling drink whilethe music played.

In the largest burial pit of all, called the“Great Death Pit,” Woolley found six armedguards and 68 serving women. They wore rib-bons of gold or silver in their hair, except onewoman who still held in her hand the coiled-upsilver ribbon she was unable to fasten before thesleeping potion took hold that painlessly carriedher away to the afterworld with her master.

More historically revealing than any othersingle artifact from Ur was the “Royal Stan-dard of Ur,” a pair of two inlaid panels set backto back that illustrated a battle in progress andthe victory celebration that followed it. On oneside, donkey-drawn chariots rumble over thebodies of the enemy dead; on the other, Ur’sleaders drink beer and listen to music as cap-tured livestock and prisoners of war areparaded by.

Altogether, Woolley uncovered the gravesof 16 kings and queens who ruled Ur and itsempire in the middle of the third millenniumB.C.E. when the pyramids at Giza were beingbuilt. Though some scholars, given the absenceof royal inscriptions, doubt they were reallykings and queens, the magnificence of theirwealth and the power radiating from it areundeniable.

Though Ur did not possess a pyramid tomatch Giza’s, it did possess a ziggurat, the bestpreserved in Mesopotamia. Rebuilt at the endof the third millennium B.C.E. and again in thesixth century B.C.E. by later rulers, it rose inseven stages to a total height of 240 feet (halfthe height of Egypt’s Great Pyramid) and fea-tured a triple staircase at the front that enabledpriests to ascend and honor Ur’s patron deity,Nanna, the god of the moon.

In the course of his excavations, Woolleyfound an eight-foot-thick layer of mud sand-

wiched between layers of occupational debris.Woolley first thought it might be evidence ofthe biblical flood, but later studies revealedother flood layers at other Mesopotamian sitesdating to different time periods—proof of dev-astating local floods but not a simultaneous anduniversal one.

Another possible biblical tie-in is Ur’s iden-tification as the patriarch Abraham’s home-town, called “Ur of the Chaldees” (i.e., theChaldaeans) in Genesis. Other scholars, how-ever, argue for a location of this city in north-ern Mesopotamia closer to Abraham’s ancestralcity of Harran; indeed, such an ancient city,called Ura, did once exist.

Even if stripped of its biblical claims tofame, Woolley’s Ur is still a glittering exampleof Sumeria’s golden age. Though its originallyres no longer sound, with our inner ear wecan still hear their melodies.

Uruk Situated about 50 miles northwest ofancient Ur, the southern Mesopotamian city ofUruk is the home of a number of “firsts” in thecountry’s archaeological story: the oldest exam-ples of monumental stone architecture (madeof imported limestone), the earliest cylinderseals, and the oldest examples of writing (a pic-tographic script that was the ancestor of latercuneiform)—all dating to the fourth millen-nium B.C.E. In addition, Uruk was the home-town of mythic heroes including Gilgamesh,who, tradition said, built its mighty walls thatmeasured six miles in length. In the Old Testa-ment the city is called Erech.

Founded in the late fifth millennium B.C.E.,Uruk became Sumeria’s most important urbancenter during the next millennium, exertingpolitical and economic influence that reachedthroughout Mesopotamia. Its religious life wascentered in two areas: the temple complex ofInanna, the goddess of love and war and thecity’s renowned patron; and the temple com-plex of the sky-god Anu, each with its own zig-


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gurat. Sanctuaries to other gods have beenfound as well.

Discoveries in sculpture include the WarkaVase, carved with a procession of offerings toInanna, and a life-size limestone “mask” por-traying the now wigless head of a now eyelessgoddess (perhaps Inanna herself).

Abandoned in the seventh century C.E.,Uruk had a life-span of 5,000 years. Its oldestlayers lie virtually unexplored, submerged deepin the mud of the alluvial plain from which itslife once sprouted.

Yarim Tepe Southwest of Mosul lie a clus-ter of mounds called Yarim Tepe containingprehistoric remains dating between 7000 to4500 B.C.E. Most striking are the graves. As inthe graves of Tell Arpachiyeh, some 75 milesaway, there is evidence that corpses were dis-membered with the heads sometimes buriedseparately. One grave seems to be that of ahunter, judging by the buffalo skull and mace-heads that were laid beside his body. As atArpachiyeh, the inhabitants lived in igloo- orkeyhole-shaped dwellings made of mud, brick,or stone.

Besides the many archaeological sites whoseancient names are known, many others stand inanonymous desolation. At the same time,ancient hymns celebrate the names of numer-ous cities whose locations have never beenidentified. It will remain for a future edition ofthis gazetteer to find these urban orphans aname and geographic home.

Indeed, archaeologists have uncovered onlya tiny fraction of what still lies buried. As emi-nent archaeologist Robert McC. Adamspoints out: “We probably have some knowl-edge, other than having walked over the sur-face, of less than one percent and it may beone-tenth of one percent of existing sites. Imyself must have mapped 5,000 mounds or

something in that neighborhood. So the trea-sures to be unearthed over thousands of yearsto come are enormous.”

READING

The Land and Its Rivers

Boiy 1999, Rowton 1969: watercourses; Butzer1995: environmental change; Jacobsen 1982:agriculture and salinity; Lloyd 1955: landscape;Roaf 1990: geology and topography; Roux1992: geographical setting.

Natural Resources

Forbes 1955–58: raw materials and their uses;Landsberger 1960, 1962: fauna; Oppenheim1977: economic facts; Postgate and Powell1992: timber; Potts 1997: material resources;Roaf 1990: agricultural resources.

Surrounding Countries

Cottrell 1957, Gordon and Rendsburg 1997:historical perspective; David 1998: Egypt;Ghirshman 1954: Iran; Roaf 1990: maps; Sas-son 1995: historical, archaeological, and cul-tural studies of major nations of the ancientNear East.

Gazetteer

Amiet 1980: detailed descriptions of selectedsites with plans and bibliography; Beek 1962:


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atlas; Bienkowski and Millard 2000: concisedescriptions of selected sites with bibliography;Lloyd 1978 and 1980: narrative description ofselected sites; Meyer 1997: detailed descrip-tions of selected sites and bibliography; Pfeiffer

1966: descriptions of selected sites; Ravn 1942:Herodotus’s description of Babylon; Roaf1990: maps and precise locations; Sasson 1995:cultural studies of various sites and indexed ref-erences to those and others.

2

ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY

THE DISCOVERERS

The lost world of Mesopotamia would nothave been found had it not been for the curios-ity of travelers, the zeal of archaeologists, andthe diligence of philologists. Without theirefforts and writings, the ruined sites, buriedtreasures, and dead languages of the Sumeri-ans, Babylonians, and Assyrians would haveremained forgotten.

In the 19th century the field of archaeologi-cal exploration was dominated by the British

and French because of the diplomatic influenceand commercial interests they had in the area.In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Ger-man and American archaeologists began to dig,inspired—as had been the British and Frenchbefore them—by the prospect of unearthingimpressive works of art and written recordsfrom the days of the Old Testament. In stilllater decades, the Iraqis themselves came to thefore, both to safeguard their national heritagefrom being carried off to foreign lands and touncover for themselves the glories of their cul-tural past.

Listed below in alphabetical order are thenames of some of the major explorers ofancient Mesopotamia to whom we are indebtedfor our present knowledge. However, becauseso much lies yet undiscovered or still awaitsinterpretation, it is a list that will need to beexpanded by future generations.

Robert McC. Adams 20th-century Americanarchaeologist. Adams pioneered the art of sur-face reconnaissance in Mesopotamia, painstak-ingly identifying ancient settlement andirrigation patterns from their abovegroundfeatures and remains. In 2002, he was awardedthe Archaeological Institute of America’s GoldMedal for his lifelong work in exploring theevolution of civilization.

Walter Andrae 19th-century German archaeol-ogist. With the assistance of Julius Jordan andArnold Noldeke, Andrae excavated the royalcity of Ashur. Then, through his talent as anartist, he recaptured its original splendor in aseries of drawings and paintings.

Ibn-Battuta 14th-century Berber geographerand traveler. A contemporary of Marco Polo,Ibn-Battuta traveled to the far-flung corners ofthe world. In the course of his travels, he vis-ited the ruins of Nineveh and in his writingsdescribed its walls and gates.


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2.1 An early 20th-century view of the ruins ofBorsippa. (Rogers, A History of Babylonia andAssyria, 1915)

Abbé de Beauchamp 18th-century French cleric.While serving in Babylonia, he visited the ruinsnear Al-Hillah and reported that villagers hadfound buried reliefs and carved “idols.”

Gertrude Bell 19th- and 20th-century Britishscholar and administrator. Bell professionalizedarchaeological activities in Iraq followingWorld War I. She established an Iraqi Antiqui-ties Service to supervise excavations by foreign-ers and to insure the sharing of all finds. Shealso laid plans for a national museum to housethe country’s archaeological treasures.

Benjamin of Tudela 12th-century Spanish rabbiand traveler. He was the first European trav-eler we know of to visit Iraq. During his visit tothe Jewish community at Mosul, he describedseeing the ruins of Nineveh.

A R C H A E O L O G Y A N D H I S T O R Y

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2.2 Sketching the palatial sculptures of Nineveh.(Austen Henry Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins ofNineveh and Babylon [London: John Murray, 1853])

2.3 Workmen uncover colossal winged beasts guarding an entranceway at Nineveh. (John P. Newman,The Thrones and Palaces of Babylon and Nineveh from Sea to Sea [New York: Harper, 1876])

Berossus Fourth- and third-century B.C.E. Baby-lonian priest and scholar. Drawing upon thearchives of the Babylonian temple where heserved as priest, Berossus wrote the earliestknown comprehensive history of Mesopotamiastarting from the time of creation and continuingdown to the days of Alexander the Great. Writ-ten in Greek, the lingua franca of the Hellenisticworld, his three-volume history survives only infragments quoted by later classical authors.

Paul Émile Botta 19th-century French natural-ist, diplomat, and archaeologist. His discoveriesat the royal city of Khorsabad beginning in 1843mark him as the world’s first Assyriologist. Thedramatic sculptural panels and colossal statueshe unearthed are now on display in the Louvre.

Robert J. Braidwood 20th-century Americanarchaeologist. With his wife, Linda, Braidwoodinvestigated the beginnings of farming in theancient Near East, digging at Jarmo and othersites in the Kurdish hills. He was among thefirst archaeologists to use carbon-14 analysis todate organic remains such as charcoal and bone.

Jean Chardin 17th- and 18th-century Frenchtraveler. Chardin visited Persepolis and otherPersian sites. Believing cuneiform inscriptionsto be writing rather than mere decoration, hebecame the first European to study them andpublish his research.

Edward Chiera 19th- and 20th-century archae-ologist and philologist. After excavating for theUniversity of Chicago’s Oriental Institute,Chiera headed its Assyrian Dictionary project,while specializing in Sumerian.

Frederic Cooper 19th-century British artist.Cooper accompanied Austen Henry Layard(see below) on Layard’s second expedition toMesopotamia. Cooper’s drawings and paint-ings illustrated Layard’s discoveries.

Friedrich Delitzsch 19th- and 20th-centuryGerman philologist. Delitzsch argued in 1902that the Old Testament was not the world’soldest book but had in fact been influenced byeven earlier works of Mesopotamian literature.

John Eldred 16th-century English merchantand traveler. Eldred visited Baghdad duringthe reign of Queen Elizabeth. In his memoirshe mentioned seeing the “Tower of Babel.”

Henri Frankfort 20th-century Dutch archaeolo-gist and historian. Prior to World War II,


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2.4 The entrance to an Assyrian temple at Kalhu(Nimrud) at the time of its exploration by Layard.(Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh andBabylon, 1853)

Frankfort organized and directed excavationsin Iraq for almost a decade under the auspicesof the University of Chicago, where he servedas research professor.

Albrecht Goetze 20th-century American philol-ogist. Goetze founded and edited the Journal ofCuneiform Studies and for many years served asdirector of the American School of OrientalResearch at Baghdad.

Cyrus Herzl Gordon 20th-century Americanphilologist. Gordon authored the first gram-mar of the Ugaritic language, and he investi-

gated the literary remains discovered at Ebla.His writings stressed the cultural connectionsbetween and among the peoples of the EastMediterranean world.

Georg Friedrich Grotefend 18th- and 19th-century German philologist. Grotefend becamethe first scholar to decipher part of the BehistunRock inscription, and thus the first modernscholar to read cuneiform. His 1802 decipher-ment of words from the Old Persian portion ofthe inscription was based on an earlier copymade by Karsten Niebuhr (see below).

Herodotus Fifth-century B.C.E. Greek travelerand historian. Herodotus, “the father of his-tory,” discussed the customs of the Babyloniansand described the city of Babylon in the firstchapter of his global account of the warsbetween the Persian Empire and Greece.

Herman Volrath Hilprecht 19th- and 20th-century German philologist. Hilprecht servedas curator of the Mesopotamian collection ofthe University of Pennsylvania Museum andparticipated in its excavations at Nippur, wheresome 30,000 cuneiform tablets were discoveredthat documented Sumerian civilization.

Edward Hincks 19th-century Irish clergymanand philologist. A pioneer in the deciphermentof cuneiform, Hincks proposed that the scripthad been adapted by the Babylonians from anearlier system of writing devised by a peoplewhose language was not Semitic.

Mazahim Mahmud Hussein 20th-centuryIraqi archaeologist. Digging in 1989 beneaththe floor of the palace at Nimrud, Husseinfound the entombed remains of three Assyrianqueens draped with golden jewelry.

Engelbert Kämpfer 17th- and 18th-centuryGerman traveler. Noting in 1686 how the


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2.5 An entrance passageway at the buried site ofNineveh. (Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins ofNineveh and Babylon, 1853)

characters in inscriptions at Persepolis lookedlike wedges or nails, Kämpfer called them“cuneatae,” from the Latin word cuneus, or“wedge.” Kämpfer’s observation became thesource for the word “cuneiform.”

Robert Koldewey 19th- and 20th-centuryGerman archaeologist. A leader in bringingGermany into the field of Mesopotamianarchaeology, Koldewey dug at Babylon for 14seasons, applying a keen eye to the stratigraphy

of the site and the information it could be madeto disclose.

Samuel Noah Kramer 20th-century Americanphilologist. The leading Sumerologist of the20th century, Kramer classified and decipheredneglected cuneiform tablets in museumsaround the world. Through his translationsand the cultural synthesis he constructed,Kramer gave the Sumerians their rightful placeas the creators of what may have been theworld’s first civilization.

Austen Henry Layard 19th-century Britisharchaeologist. One of the giants of Assyriology,


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2.6 Excavating in the interior of the mound atKuyunjik where ancient Nineveh once stood. Asnative laborers send a basket of debris up to thesurface, a god—half man, half scaly fish—acts asoverseer. (Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins ofNineveh and Babylon, 1853)

2.7 A tunnel at Kuyunjik is strewn withAssyrian sculptures. (Layard, Discoveries in theRuins of Nineveh and Babylon, 1853)

Layard made major discoveries at both Nim-rud and Nineveh. At Nimrud, he unearthedalmost two miles of sculptural reliefs depictingbattles and the hunt together with colossal stat-ues of bulls and lions that guarded the palace’sportals. At Nineveh, he uncovered the royallibrary of Ashurbanipal, totaling 24,000 tablets.Both sets of discoveries now enrich London’sBritish Museum.

Seton Lloyd 20th-century British archaeolo-gist. Under the auspices of the University ofChicago’s Oriental Institute, Lloyd served asfield supervisor for excavations at Tell Asmar,Tell Agrab, and Khafajah. Later, he acted asadviser to Iraqi archaeologists in the large-scale excavations they undertook at Eridu andHassuna.

William Kennet Loftus 20th-century Ameri-can geologist and archaeologist. Loftus dug atancient Uruk, the largest archaeological site inwhat was once Sumer.

Lucian Second-century C.E. Greek writer. Bornin Samosata on the Euphrates, Lucian wrotesatires in Greek in the days of the RomanEmpire. In one, he describes the barrenremains of Nineveh.

Agatha Christie Mallowan 19th- and 20th-century British mystery writer. As the wife ofMax Mallowan (see below), Agatha Christiespent several seasons accompanying her hus-band on archaeological expeditions. Her visitsto the Middle East inspired Murder inMesopotamia (1936), and the memoirs of heradventures, Come, Tell Me How You Live(1946). Though she claimed never to havesaid it, Ms. Christie was quoted as having saidthe one advantage of being married to anarchaeologist is that he gets more interestedin you the older you look.

Max E. L. Mallowan 20th-century Britisharchaeologist. After excavating at Ur and else-where, Mallowan spent 12 seasons at Nimrud.Among his sensational finds were delicatesculpted ivories from the palace of Ashurnasir-pal and cuneiform inscriptions on wax.

Al-Masudi 10th-century Arab geographer. Al-Masudi visited the ruins of Nineveh in 943 C.E.and described seeing statues covered withinscriptions.

Jacques de Morgan 19th-century Frenchexplorer. While exploring the ruins of thePersian city of Susa, de Morgan unearthed alarge black diorite slab sculpted with a pictureand inscribed in cuneiform—the Code ofHammurabi—probably carried to Susa asplunder from Babylonia.


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2.8 A youthful portrait of Austen Henry Layard(in Albanian dress). (Rogers, A History of Babyloniaand Assyria, 1915)


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2.9 Lowering a colossal winged bull onto a pallet for transport from the ruins of Nineveh tothe British Museum. (Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, 1849

2.10 A colossal Assyrian lion arrives on the steps of the British Museum. (The Illustrated LondonNews, 1852)

Friedrich Münter 18th- and 19th-centuryDanish philologist. Münter recognized thatroyal Persian inscriptions in cuneiform werewritten in three different scripts and languagesthat reiterated the same message. He also iden-tified the signs for “king” and “king of kings” in1802, the same year that they were spotted byGeorge Friedrich Grotefend (see above).

Nabonidus Sixth-century B.C.E. Babylonian king.King Nabonidus was an antiquarian whorestored buildings that were ancient in his time,and he searched foundations of temples forantique remains. He can lay claim to being theworld’s first archaeologist.

Karsten Niebuhr 18th-century Danish mathe-matician and geographer. Under the sponsor-ship of the king of Denmark, Niebuhr led anexpedition to the Persian capital of Persepolis.His careful copying and publication of theinscriptions he found there led to the decipher-ment of cuneiform.

A. Leo Oppenheim 20th-century Americanphilologist. Oppenheim was one of the mostproductive scholars of the University ofChicago’s Oriental Institute, exploring themultiple facets of Mesopotamian culture in hisresearch and writing.

Jules Oppert 19th-century French philologist.Oppert postulated that a pre-Babylonian civiliza-tion had once inhabited southern Mesopotamiaand had invented cuneiform. Their land, heargued, was the land known in the Bible as Shi-nar—the land we now call Sumer.

Jean d’Outremeuse 14th-century French writer.Under the pseudonym Sir John Mandeville,d’Outremeuse wrote a popular guidebook forpilgrims heading to the Holy Land. Though hehad never visited the Middle East himself, hedrew upon earlier sources that had described thewalls and ziggurat of Babylon.

André Parrot 19th- and 20th-century Frencharchaeologist. In the 1930s, Parrot excavatedthe site of Tell Hariri in Syria, the remains ofthe capital of the ancient kingdom of Mari.

John P. Peters 19th-century American philolo-gist. While professor of Hebrew at the Uni-versity of Pennsylvania, Peters in 1887 initiatedthe first American archaeological expedition toIraq, an expedition based at the site of theSumerian city of Nippur.

Pethahiah of Regensburg 12th-century Jew-ish traveler. He visited Jewish communities inthe Middle East, including Iraq, and he wroteof his travels, describing the ruins he had seen.

Thomas Victor Place 19th-century Frencharchaeologist. Place dug at Khorsabad andsystematically uncovered remains of thepalace of Sargon.

Arno Poebel 19th- and 20th-century Germanphilologist. In 1923 Poebel published a land-mark grammar of the Sumerian language.

Robert Ker Porter 19th-century Englishpainter. Porter’s evocative paintings of Meso-potamia’s ruins inspired increased interest in itsburied civilization.

Hormuzd Rassam 19th-century Chaldaeanarchaeologist. An assistant to Austen HenryLayard (see above), Rassam excavated fromNineveh the Creation and Deluge tablets laterdeciphered by George Smith (see below), aswell as the lion-hunt relief from the palace ofAshurbanipal.

Leonhart Rauwolff 16th-century Germanphysician and explorer. Rauwolff was one of thefirst Europeans to explore the mounds thatheld Nineveh’s remains.


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Henry Creswicke Rawlinson 19th-centuryEnglish adventurer and philologist. At great riskto his life, Rawlinson scaled the cliff at Behis-tun to inspect and copy its 1,200-line inscrip-tion, transcribing the characters by hand orusing papier-mâché “squeezes” obtained by aKurdish boy who acted as his death-defyingassistant. Rawlinson then succeeded in deci-phering the Old Persian portion of the inscrip-tion, paving the way for cuneiform’s fulldecipherment. Stored in the British Museum,the historic squeezes were later nibbled awayby mice.

Claudius James Rich 18th- and 19th-centuryEnglish diplomat, explorer, linguist, and archaeolo-gist. Rich was the first to survey and scientifi-cally excavate the remains of Babylon. Hismemoirs, published in 1813 and 1818, awak-ened public interest among other Europeans.In 1820 he also explored the ruins of Nineveh.

Sayid Fuad Safar 20th-century Iraqi archaeolo-gist. With the guidance of Seton Lloyd (seeabove), Safar became the first Iraqi archaeolo-gist to conduct large-scale excavations in hisown country. He helped found the Universityof Baghdad’s faculty of archaeology, and forover two decades he served as his nation’sinspector general of excavations.

Ernest de Sarzac 19th-century French archae-ologist. De Sarzac’s excavations at Telloh pro-vided physical evidence for the existence of apre-Babylonian civilization. His discoveries,including a portrait statue of Gudea and theStele of the Vultures, became the first works ofSumerian art seen in Europe. They are now inthe collection of the Louvre.

Denise Schmandt-Besserat 20th-centuryFrench-American archaeologist. Schmandt-Besserat proposed a theory that writing origi-nated not with drawings but with small clay

tokens that were pressed into clay to documentexchanges of commodities. She argued thatthe tokens, many of which have been exca-vated, lent their shapes to the first Mesopo-tamian pictographs.

George Smith 19th-century English philologist.A bank-note engraver by trade who was lateremployed by the British Museum to piecetogether broken cuneiform tablets, Smithtaught himself to read the script. One day hechanced upon a cuneiform story that resem-bled the biblical story of the Great Flood.Sponsored by the London Daily Telegraph tosearch for the rest of the story at Nineveh, hefound the tablet’s missing 17 lines. Later, hefound and translated the remains of an Akka-dian story of the Creation.

E. A. Speiser 19th- and 20th-century Americanarchaeologist and philologist. Speiser directed aUniversity of Pennsylvania expedition to TepeGawra, 10 miles northeast of Nineveh. Inlater years, he served as editor of the Journal ofthe American Oriental Society and also pro-duced translations of major Akkadian mythsand legends.

Strabo First-century B.C.E./C.E. Greek geogra-pher. His surviving writings, the result ofextensive travels and research, offer us vividvignettes of ancient Babylon and Babylonianculture and history.

William Henry Fox Talbot 19th-century Britishphilologist. In 1857, Talbot suggested thatBritain’s Royal Asiatic Society challenge fourscholars including himself to decipher a previ-ously untranslated passage of cuneiform whileworking independently. When they all arrived atessentially the same translation, the decipher-ment of cuneiform was scientifically confirmed.

J. E. Taylor 19th-century British diplomat andarchaeologist. Taylor became the first archae-


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ologist to excavate a Sumerian ruin. Tunnelinginto the ziggurat at Tell Muqayyar, Taylorfound an inscription that, when deciphered,proved the city was ancient Ur.

François Thureau-Dangin 19th- and 20th-century French philologist. His study of cunei-form established Sumerology as a separate andimportant field for scholarly investigation.

Pietro della Valle 16th- and 17th-century Ital-ian traveler. From his travels to Persepolis,della Valle was among the first to return toEurope with samples of cuneiform writing.Soon after setting out on his journey to theEast, his new bride died. Della Valle had herbody embalmed and took it with him on histravels, burying it only when he returned hometo Italy 10 years later.

Charles Leonard Woolley 19th- and 20th-century British archaeologist. Working between1922 and 1934 under the joint auspices of theBritish Museum and the University of Pennsyl-vania Museum, Woolley unearthed the Sumer-ian city of Ur, including its astoundingly richroyal graves. Woolley’s discoveries confirmedthe ancient splendor and importance of Sumer-ian civilization. Earlier, Woolley had exca-vated at Carchemish on the Euphrates in thecompany of T. E. Lawrence, later “Lawrenceof Arabia.”

Xenophon Fifth- and fourth-century B.C.E.Greek writer. While serving as a mercenary inan aborted Persian coup, Xenophon marchedthrough Mesopotamia with 10,000 fellowGreek soldiers. The account of their expedi-tion and the story of their perilous escape istold in Xenophon’s Anabasis.

Juris Zarins 20th-century American geologist.From satellite photographs and topographicalevidence, Zarins identified the location of the

rivers Gihon and Pishon, which, along with theTigris and Euphrates, defined the location ofthe Garden of Eden, an area currently under-water beneath the Persian Gulf.

DATING THE PAST

Geography is easier to survey than the land-scape of time. Past events are invisible exceptfor the imprint they leave on matter or mind,and time itself erases evidence and memory. Itis one thing to measure how many miles frommodern Baghdad lie the ruins of ancient Ur; itis something altogether different to count howmany years from today ancient Ur once flour-ished. How many suns have risen and set sincethat day? Was it a thousand, ten thousand, ahundred thousand, or more?

Historians would owe a deep debt of grati-tude to the ancients if they had only dated theirtimes in terms of “B.C.E.” (“Before the Com-mon Era”) and “C.E.” (“Common Era”). Alas,the ancient Mesopotamians did not use aChristian calendar, nor were they prescientenough to anticipate Jesus’ birth and backdatetheir doings accordingly! Most of their culturalhistory, after all, transpired long before theStar of Bethlehem was ever sighted, and evenlonger before the prophet Muhammed leftMecca on his hegira, the starting point of theMuslim calendar. Indeed, Mesopotamia didnot even possess a uniform dating system untilit was imposed on the land by its Hellenisticconquerors in 311 B.C.E. For a long time, infact, even the names of Mesopotamian monthsdiffered from city to city!

How then did the ancient Mesopotamiansdate their past, and by what means can wereconstruct it chronologically? As we will see,our chronological understanding of Mesopo-tamian history is a complex jigsaw puzzle that


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has been pieced together by many decades ofpersistent effort, not unlike the investigation ofthe human genome. And, like the structure ofour DNA, many of the components and theircorrelations have yet to be fully understood.

To track the passage of time, the ancientMesopotamians used not one but three differ-ent dating systems over the long course of theirhistory. The first and the simplest was to namea year after the king who was then ruling, andto number it according to the year of his reign:for example, “the fifth year of King Shulgi.”The second system—far richer in the historicaldata it can provide us with—was to name a yearafter an important event that had occurred: forexample, “the year the temple of Ishtar wasbuilt” or “the year the Guti were defeated.”The third system, introduced by the Assyrians,was to name a year after the personal name of aroyal official, called the limmu. In this datingsystem, the first year was named for the king,and then each successive year for a differentlimmu, the honorary title being passed onannually from one high official to another.

To make sequential sense out of their past,Mesopotamian scribes kept running lists ofkings and dynasties and officials as well aschronicles of historical events of major signifi-cance. Thanks to the discovery of thesecuneiform records and their decipherment, wepossess Babylonian and Assyrian King Lists,and even Synchronistic Lists giving the namesof the Kings who ruled the south and the northas contemporaries. Copies also survive of acomprehensive Sumerian King List that beginsin the mythic days before the legendary GreatFlood and continues to the end of the FirstDynasty of Isin (about 1800 B.C.E.), enumerat-ing the many rulers of Sumer and the lengthsof their reigns. The farther back into the pastwe go, however, the more history morphs intomyth: thus, the eight kings who ruled beforethe flood are each assigned an average reign of30,150 years. In attributing the greatest

longevity to its earliest leaders, the SumerianKing List parallels the biblical book of Genesis,where Adam is said to have lived 930 years andMethuselah 969—mere youngsters comparedto their antediluvian Sumerian peers.

To their credit as scientific historians, someof the Sumerian chroniclers omitted thesemythical kings from their list or attached thedetails of their reigns as an addendum. Unfor-tunately for our purposes, however, the variousMesopotamian King Lists are rife with scribalerrors and chronological gaps. In addition,dynasties are presented as though they all cameone after the other, whereas some may haveactually overlapped or functioned simultane-ously in different cities and regions.

On the positive side, the Lists give us a firmgrasp of Mesopotamia’s relative chronology:which kings came first, which next, and whichlast, including how many years each ruled(with all due allowance for mythic exaggera-tion and clerical discrepancy). What we lack,however, is an equally firm grasp of absolutechronology: the actual and precise years whena given king ruled or particular events tookplace in terms of our own calendar—that is,how many years ago “B.C.E.”

It is at this point that heaven can come toour aid. Because the ancient Mesopotamiansstood in awe of the sky and its mysteries, celes-tial phenomena such as lunar and solar eclipseswere among the special events they cited intheir chronicles. Due to their meticulousobservations, today’s astronomers can calcu-late exactly when these events would havetaken place. Since the ancient astronomer alsonoted who was then sitting on the throne,modern calculations can help us date not onlyheavenly events but terrestrial ones as well.Astronomy thus provides us with the very keyswe need to unlock the absolute chronology ofthe Mesopotamian past.

An Assyrian limmu list, for example, recordsthat a complete eclipse of the sun took place in


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the month of June in the tenth year of KingAshur-dan III’s reign. Just such an eclipse wouldhave been visible in the Assyrian capital of Nin-eveh between 9:33 A.M. and 12:19 P.M. on June15, 763 B.C.E. Pegging the tenth year of Ashur-dan’s reign to 763 B.C.E. generates “B.C.E.”dates for all the other kings in the list as well,spanning almost three centuries of Assyrian his-tory. Our chronological chart can be unrolledeven farther thanks to the work of the second-century C.E. Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy,who drew up a list of over four centuries ofunusual heavenly phenomena arranged insequence according to the kings who then gov-erned the Near East, from Nabonassar of Baby-lon to Alexander the Great. Because theseevents can be precisely dated by modernastronomers, the kings who then ruled can bedated too. And because the Assyrian limmu list(stretching from 911 to 627 B.C.E.) andPtolemy’s “Canon” (stretching from 747 to 323B.C.E.) overlap, six centuries of Mesopotamianhistory are covered. In fact, with the additionalhelp of Greek and Roman historians, absolutedates can be assigned to most of the first millen-nium B.C.E.

If we head farther back to the second mil-lennium B.C.E., it’s a planet that comes to ouraid—Venus, one of the most important heav-enly bodies in antiquity because it was associ-ated (as its Roman name shows) with thegoddess of love. During the eighth year in thereign of a Babylonian king named Ammisduqa,an ancient astronomer who had been keepinghis eye on Venus for years recorded his obser-vations, including the dates in the Babyloniancalendar when she first poked her head outfrom behind the sun and then later withdrew(her heliacal rising and setting). The “VenusTablets,” as they’ve come to be called, allowastro-historians to date Ammisduqa’s reign—with one wrinkle: because Venus has a 60-yearorbital cycle, there are three possible dates forAmmisduqa’s accession to the throne—1702

B.C.E., 1646 B.C.E., or 1582 B.C.E.—all ofwhich fit the celestial data. This means thatthere are also three possible dates for all theother kings of the era! Thus, the problem forhistorians is to decide which of the three is cor-rect: the so-called High Chronology (whichpushes events farther back into the past), theMiddle Chronology, or the Low Chronology(which views events as more recent). Ancientrecords of lunar eclipses seem to support thevalidity of the High Chronology, though manyscholars (including this writer) still abide by themore “middle of the road” Middle one. Today,the Low is least favored.

Though Shakespeare claimed our destinylies “not in the stars, but in ourselves,” it hasbeen the stars—the Sun and the evening star—that have pointed our way to a sharper vision ofthe Mesopotamian past.

DIGGING FORHISTORY

The greatest biblical mandate for archaeolo-gists is found in the book of Job (12:8): “Speakto the earth and it shall teach thee.” The his-tory of Mesopotamia ultimately resides in theearth, and it is to the earth that the historianmust turn, not only to the surviving records ofthe past that lie among the ruins but to the veryruins themselves that wordlessly but faithfullytestify to the passage of time.

Places that are inhabited for a long timegrow vertically. As houses, especially thosebuilt of impermanent materials like reeds orsun-dried bricks, crumble or are destroyed byfire or war, new ones are built over their leveledremains. As dwelling-places rise, the streetsthey front are repaved with dirt. When, fromtime to time, villages are abandoned, wind-


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blown soil covers their remains; and, when set-tlers return, new homes are built on top. Theincreased altitude even gives the villages astrategic advantage—from the ravaging tor-rents of flood or the assaults of armed invaders,or from the smell of the garbage that they cannow conveniently toss off the edge of theirtown. Finally, when a community is deserted(especially when the wandering course of ariver has left it literally high and dry andremote from transport), the mound formed byits accumulated remains becomes what theArabs call a “tell,” its profile silhouetted like arough-hewn ziggurat against the horizon.

To invite a “tell” to tell its story, thearchaeologist must approach it with gentle-ness, patiently peeling away its layeredremains as though turning the fragile pages ofan antique book. Each layer that signifies aperiod of history is known as a stratum (pluralstrata), and the process of peeling them away,stratigraphic excavation.

But unlike a book, which we begin to readstarting at chapter 1, the archaeologist mustbegin with the final chapter, for strata aresuperimposed chronologically with the last,and the newest, remains on top, where theywere deposited by the settlement’s final inhabi-tants. A tell, then, is a book, but one with itsback cover facing up. The archaeologist muststart at the end of the story and deliberatelywork back to its beginning, carefully turningeach page and meticulously noting each word.But, unlike a book, which remains after thereading is done, an excavated tell ceases to existonce it has been dug up. Therefore the archae-ologist must take detailed notes as he reads,and then publish the result of his findings afterhe has reconstructed the buried tale. For if hedoes not, the tale will be lost forever. Thearchaeologist’s true mission, after all, is notgold but history.

Within each stratum, or layer of debris, thearchaeologist will almost inevitably find arti-

facts. Taken collectively, they convey a com-posite portrait of everyday life, framed by con-temporary architectural remains. Of course,much will be missing because, as an ancientpoet once said, “time devours all things.” Butto the practiced eye, much will abide.

Because strata are deposited sequentially,they provide the basis for developing the rela-tive chronology of a site. Simply put: what islowest is oldest and what is highest is newest,and everything else in between represents aseries of progressive stages. In similar fashion,the artifacts at a site represent a progressionalso, from earlier forms at the bottom to laterstylistic forms (of bricks, pottery, weaponry,jewelry, sculpture, and architecture) at the top.After organizing this data, the archaeologistcan construct a “typology,” or outline of devel-opment, for each type of artifact, with somestyles notably older and others newer, eachdenoting the cultural period to which itbelongs. And if a particular style of artifact islikewise found at another site, the strata inwhich both are found can be chronologicallylinked even though the sites may be manymiles apart.

In this effort, pottery becomes the archaeol-ogist’s best friend because as an article of dailylife it is commonly found and widely dispersed,with a history that begins in the late Stone Ageand persists through classical (and later) times.Though a work of pottery is fragile, the brokenpieces of a shattered vessel are virtually inde-structible and therefore become durable wit-nesses to changing styles and times.

But, granting that one specimen of potteryor sculpture is older than another, how old is“old”? Are they separated by a year, a century, amillennium? And how far are they—and thecultural periods their strata signify—distantfrom our own day? Relative chronology may beinformative, but for a true understanding ofhistory we need absolute chronology, the mea-surement of age in years. In short, the archae-


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ologist asks, to what century B.C.E. does myfind belong?

Uncovering a dateable inscription would becertain to answer his needs, an inscription—forexample—attributable to a ruler whose regnalyears have already been established by othermeans. Such inscriptions do occur (cut intostone or stamped onto brick), but they are rare.More common—from Persian, Greek, andRoman times—are coins, but they need to befound in sufficient quantity to show they werein circulation during the period in question.Second to inscriptions on the archaeologist’s“wish list” would be physical evidence of adateable event—the destruction of a city or theconstruction of a building—that can be con-nected to a known figure in history.

But, failing this evidence, the archaeologistcan turn to techniques developed by other sci-ences. Three techniques in particular, all devel-oped in the latter half of the 20th century, haveproved valuable for dating the kinds of materi-als archaeologists unearth. These techniquesare carbon-14 analysis, dendrochronology, andthermoluminescence.

Carbon-14 analysis is based upon the factthat all organic material contains carbon, notonly regular carbon but a special radioactiveisotope of carbon called carbon-14. These twocarbons coexist proportionately, with one atomof radioactive carbon for every billion atoms ofnonradioactive. As long as a plant or animal isalive, that proportion is maintained. But oncean organic being dies, the radioactivity in itbegins to degenerate, decaying at a fixed andmeasurable rate until half of it is gone after5,730 years. After another 5,730 years, anotherhalf disappears. By burning an organic sampleand measuring the residual radioactivity left ina gram of its carbon, scientists can determinehow long ago the plant or animal died. Thus byanalyzing an ancient piece of wood, scientistscan tell how long ago the tree from which itcame was felled, and thus how old the wood

itself is; or how old charcoal is, or reeds, orbone, or anything else organic.

Carbon-14 analysis can yield dates within a300-year range of accuracy, useful for comingup with a rough estimate of an object’s age and,by extension, the age of its archaeological con-text, but not useful enough to provide precisehistorical dates. Another limitation is that—inorder to determine the age of a sample—theancient sample itself must be incinerated! Asthe technique has been perfected, though,smaller and smaller samples have been requiredas sacrifices on the altar of chronology.

Another scientific dating technique is den-drochronogy, based on the fact that tree ringsvary in width. These variations reflect thechanging climatic conditions of annual grow-ing seasons—wider for more growth and nar-rower for less. The unique patterns formed bythe rings constitute “fingerprints” that can beused to identify the years during which a giventree grew. Some long-lived trees like the bris-tle-cone pine have given scientists a tree-ringlifeline that extends for centuries, enablingthem to adjust for the variations in atmosphericradiation that for a long time made carbon-14analysis less than accurate.

A third technique is thermoluminescence,based on the fact that over the course of timethe electrons in baked clay are displaced fromtheir atomic orbits and become trapped in theclay’s crystalline structure. The longer potteryhas been exposed to cosmic radiation, the moreof its electrons are displaced. However, if thebaked clay is suddenly heated to 500°C, theelectrons “break out of jail” and return to theiratomic homes. In the process, they give off afaint burst of light that can be measured. Themore light, the more electrons that are escap-ing, the longer their term of past imprison-ment, and the older the pot! Not only canpottery be dated this way, but so can any bakedclay, including ancient bricks and evencuneiform tablets as long as they were once


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fired, whether deliberately by a scribe or acci-dentally by a marauder’s torch.

ANCIENT NARRATIVES

Whether they offer firsthand accounts or pre-serve still older traditions, ancient narrativesare the past’s own testimony about itself and anauthentic witness to history.

To the first category—firsthand accounts—belong the self-congratulatory utterances ofmonarchs proud of their military victories anddomestic accomplishments, which were cele-brated on tablets of clay and stelae of stone. Tothe same category belong the lamentations ofthose whose cities and homes were destroyedby those very same kings. Such accounts,whether by the victors or the vanquished, areinevitably biased, but taken together convey acomposite truth.

To the second category belong works byancient historians whose writings survive inwhole or in part. After the anonymous chroni-clers of the Babylonians and Assyrians, twoauthors come to the fore whose personalitiesare distinct: Berossus, the third-century B.C.E.Babylonian scholar-priest, and Herodotus, thefifth-century B.C.E. peripatetic Greek traveler.Berossus’s multivolume Babyloniaca trackedBabylonian history from the Deluge to Alexan-der. Berossus was a native Babylonian and hadaccess to temple archives, but his history is pre-served only in fragments cited by classicalauthors. Herodotus, on the other hand, was aGreek, and a tourist at that, but an intelligentone, handicapped by language but impelled bya curiosity that still radiates from the first bookof his History that describes his visit to Babylo-nia. Nevertheless, he lacked access to the valu-able documentary sources Berossus wasintimate with. Yet chronological beggars can’t

be choosers, and we must remain grateful evenfor the crumbs from history’s banquet table.

It is time now to survey that table andreconstruct from the menu the grand order ofthe banquet’s historic courses.

SURVEY OF HISTORY

Presented below is an overview of Mesopo-tamian history based on the present state of ourknowledge. As more ancient sites are explored,more discoveries made, and more texts deci-phered, our knowledge will grow in breadth anddepth. The majority of dates below are approxi-mate, especially for those periods most remotein time when historical records were not keptbecause writing itself had not been invented,and from which other physical evidence is slight.

More details about places can be found inchapter 1, and personalities in chapter 3. Dis-cussions about the literary and artistic evidencefor historical periods occur in chapters 5, 6,and 7. For a handy reference, a chronologicaltable is located near the book’s end.

The account below has been deliberatelykept simple in order to provide readers with aneasy-to-comprehend road map across histori-cally complex terrain. Readers desiring a moredetailed account should turn to Georges Roux’sexcellent study, Ancient Iraq, or to the more spe-cialized studies included in the bibliography.

The Stone Age (ca. 70,000–5800 B.C.E.)The longest chapter in humanity’s story, theStone Age is also the sparest in documentationbecause of the original poverty of man’s mater-ial culture and the protracted ravages of time.The very name “Stone Age” is an admission ofour ignorance, since it is but stones (handlessimplements) and bones (speechless skeletons)that survive.


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For clerical convenience, the Stone Age isdivided into a beginning, a middle, and an end:the Palaeolithic (“Old Stone”) Period (ca.70,000–9000 B.C.E.), the transitional Mesolithic(“Middle Stone”) Period (ca. 9000–7000 B.C.E.),and finally the Neolithic (“New Stone”) Period(ca. 7000–5800 B.C.E.) The hallmark changes inthe style of Stone Age tools and weaponsdemonstrate a progressive sophistication indesign. During this era, the only advanced tech-nology was literally “cutting edge.”

But the movement from period to periodwas also marked by an evolution in lifestyle.While the Palaeolithic economy was based onfood gathering (through hunting, fishing, andpicking wild edible plants), the Neolithic econ-omy was primarily based on food production(through farming and animal husbandry).While Palaeolithic existence was more mobile,the Neolithic was more settled, for agricultureand the domestication of animals went hand inhand with village life. Technologically, theNeolithic also witnessed the birth of domesticarchitecture (in place of seeking the shelter ofcaves) and the beginnings of pottery, a boon toarchaeologists because ceramics offer abundantevidence of the character of everyday life.

Among the most notable Stone Age sites arePalaeolithic Shanidar Cave and NeolithicJarmo. both in northern Iraq.

The Chalcolithic Period (ca. 5800–3750B.C.E.)The Chalcolithic (“Copper/Bronze-Stone”)Period constitutes—as the name suggests—atransition from a time when the principalmaterial for man’s tools and weapons was stoneto a time when it became copper and (later)bronze. Just as the Stone Age saw the earlyMesopotamians move from cave to farm so didthe Chalcolithic Period see their descendants’primitive villages grow into nascent cities.

The subperiods of the Chalcolithic derivetheir names from archaeological sites that have

yielded evidence of progressive developmentsin communal life. These developments weredue to the Agricultural Revolution of Neolithictimes, for as the food supply increased, popula-tion size grew, and settlements became larger.The names of these Chalcolithic communitiesare Tell Hassuna, Samarra, Tell Halaf, and al-Ubaid, and the progressive subperiods namedfor them—Hassuna, Samarra, Halaf, andUbaid—extend chronologically from the earlysixth millennium B.C.E. to the early fourth.

From these Chalcolithic sites come the ear-liest examples of Mesopotamian temples andstatuettes, as well as stamp seals (to mark per-sonal property) and intricately painted pottery.

The Beginning of the Bronze Age (ca.3750–2900 B.C.E.)By the middle of the fourth millennium B.C.E.,the climate of northern Mesopotamia began togrow cooler and drier, and less hospitable tofarming that depended upon rain. As a result,settlers from the north migrated to the south,where, in fertile alluvial plains, water was moreplentiful and accessible.

The cultural developments that took placethen are named for two early urban sites in thesouth, Uruk and Jemdet Nasr. Urbanizationtook place first in Uruk (ca. 3750–3150 B.C.E.)and then in Jemdet Nasr (ca. 3150–2900 B.C.E.),and subperiods are accordingly named for thecharacteristic finds made at each. But these twosites are not isolated instances of urbanization,but rather merely examples of a profoundchange that simultaneously took place else-where in the south: the birth of civilization, theemergence of a complex form of society charac-terized by large population centers, the special-ization and interdependence of labor, and thegrowth and concentration of wealth.

Technologically, these changes were accom-panied by advances in metallurgy (hence, the“Bronze” Age) and a number of specific andmomentous inventions: the plough and thewheel, the chariot and the sailboat, and the


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cylinder-seal, the single most distinctive artform of ancient Mesopotamia and a pervasivedemonstration of the importance of propertyownership and business in the country’s dailylife. But the most important invention of all—not only for our understanding of Meso-potamia but also for its impact on theworld—was writing, which first appears in pic-tographic form at Uruk around 3300 B.C.E.

The Early Dynastic Period (ca. 2900–2334B.C.E.)The climatic changes that had begun in themiddle of the fourth millennium B.C.E. and hadoriginally affected only the north persisted andnow began to affect the south, drying up riversand streams and making arable land scarce. Theenvironmental problem was solved by buildingextensive networks of irrigation canals, but theirexcavation and maintenance demanded a newlevel of cooperative effort, centralized authority,and governmental control. Cities vied for waterrights and quarreled over the borders that setlimits to their lands. Some disputes, in fact, ledto armed conflict, and to the rise of hegemoniesunder the leadership of one city-state oranother. Nevertheless, southern Mesopotamiawas generally blessed with sufficient water andfertile soil for a good life, reason enough tothank the gods and honor civic leaders. Sur-pluses of agricultural produce, moreover, andmanufactured products like textiles enabledsouthern cities to grow rich through trade andto acquire the raw materials they lacked. Fromsuch wealth and such materials, glorious worksof art were created to celebrate the splendor ofthe southern land we call Sumer.

Among the cities that flourished during thisera were Kish, Isin, Nippur, Shuruppak,Lagash, Uruk, Larsa, Ur, and Eridu. Becausemost of these cities were governed by royaldynasties, the period as a whole is called theEarly Dynastic Period. Its golden glory is mostevident in the discoveries made by Sir LeonardWoolley at the Royal Cemetery of Ur.

The Akkadian Empire (ca. 2334–2193 B.C.E.)The affluence of the south inspired covetous-ness among the Semites who lived just north ofSumer. In 2334 B.C.E., a Semitic king namedSargon (Sharru-kin) began a career of militaryconquest that won him the south and made himthe master of the first empire in Mesopotamianhistory. Sargon ruled it from a city he foundedcalled Agade. From “Agade” comes the name“Akkadian,” a descriptive term for the Semiticlanguage of Sargon and his people. ThoughSargon respected Sumerian culture andretained Sumerian as the language of his officialinscriptions, the Akkadian tongue would even-tually become the dominant language ofMesopotamia and much of the Near East.

After reigning for 55 years, Sargon died. Fol-lowing his death, a general revolt broke out thatwas quelled by Sargon’s grandson, Naram-Sin,who ruled for another 37 years, all the while bat-tling rapacious tribes at his kingdom’s frontiers.Soon after his death, the Akkadian empire col-lapsed, but it had set a precedent for imperialis-tic expansion that would never be absent fromthe thoughts of Mesopotamia’s future leaders.

The Third Dynasty of Ur (ca. 2112–2004B.C.E.)One of the tribes that Naram-Sin had battledwas the fierce Guti, who succeeded in dominat-ing Mesopotamia for almost a century follow-ing the Akkadian Empire’s collapse. Eventually,however, the Guti were driven out by a coali-tion of Sumerian kings.

In the aftermath, two Sumerian rulersassumed leading roles in the life of their coun-try: Gudea of Lagash, famous for his manypious portraits carved in stone, and Ur-Nammu of Ur, the founder of his city-state’sThird Dynasty. Both Gudea and Ur-Nammuwere prolific builders, who thanked the godswith temples and ziggurats for the divine favorsthey had bestowed. It is to Ur-Nammu that wemust attribute the ziggurat of Ur, the best pre-


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served of such monuments in all of ancientMesopotamia.

Ur-Nammu’s imperialistic dreams were ful-filled by his son Shulgi and grandson Amar-Sin. Under pressure, however, from theElamites to the northeast and the SemiticAmorites to the northwest, Ur and its empirefell. A golden age of Sumerian civilizationcame to an end, as Ur lay in smoldering ruins.

The Era of Isin and Larsa (ca. 2000–1800B.C.E.)After the fall of Ur, two city-states rose toascendancy in southern Mesopotamia—Isinand Larsa—and fought with each other for ter-ritorial control. Meanwhile, in northernMesopotamia, two other states—Ashur andEshnunna—vied with each other for control oftrade routes. During this same period, Amoritetribesmen exercised power in northern Meso-potamia, and ruled the kingdom of Mari.

The First Dynasty of Babylon (ca. 1900–1595B.C.E.)A century after the fall of Ur, the Amoritesfounded the so-called First Dynasty of Babylon.It would endure for three centuries. The sixthand greatest king of the dynasty was Hammurabi(1792–1750 B.C.E.), who rose from being a merelocal ruler to becoming the undisputed master ofall Mesopotamia, embracing Sumer and Akkad,Mari, and Assyria. Conqueror, statesman, andlawgiver, Hammurabi reigned for 43 years. Just acentury and a half after his death, his dynastyended when the city of Babylon was capturedand looted by a Hittite army.

The Dynasty of the Sea-Land (ca. 1730–1460B.C.E.)In the aftermath of Hammurabi’s death, themarshland of southern Sumer seceded underthe leadership of a usurper named Iluma-ilum,who established a dynasty dubbed the SecondDynasty of Babylon. As an independent state,the Sea-Land lasted for almost three centuries.

The Kassite Dynasty (1595–1157 B.C.E.)With the withdrawal of the Hittites from Baby-lon, an Iranian tribe known as the Kassites occu-pied the city. Kassite kings went on to ruleMesopotamia for almost four and a half cen-turies. Their circumspect policy was to honorand respect the revered literary and religious tra-ditions of the land they now governed. The Kas-sites were eventually defeated by the Elamites.

The Second Dynasty of Isin (1156–1025B.C.E.)After Elamite forces withdrew from Babylonia,leaders from the city-state of Isin founded thisdynasty, also known as the Fourth Dynasty ofBabylon. When it ended, a succession of for-eigners sat on Babylon’s throne and the cityitself was cut off from the countryside by hos-tile Aramaeans.

The Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–612 B.C.E.)With the lands she once occupied and her traderoutes held by foreigners, Assyria near the 10thcentury’s end was, as Georges Roux puts it, “ather lowest ebb.” But she rallied and rose underthe leadership of Adad-nirari II to wage a suc-cessful war of national liberation against herenemies. Her multiple successes spawnedrepeated campaigns of imperialistic expansionunder a succession of merciless warrior-kings:Ashurnasirpal, Shalmaneser III. TiglathpileserIII, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Ashurbani-pal, monarchs who extended Assyria’s conquestsacross the entire Near East and made Ninevehone of the richest cities of the ancient world.The Assyrian Empire, however, became the vic-tim of its own overvaunting ambition and thejealous resentment of those it had crushed andrepressed. In 612 B.C.E., Nineveh fell to a com-bined military force of Babylonians and Medes.

The Neo-Babylonian Period (625–539 B.C.E.)Thirteen years before the fall of Nineveh, aChaldaean dynasty assumed the throne of Baby-


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lon. The Chaldaeans, or Kaldu, were an Ara-maean tribe that had settled in southernMesopotamia some three centuries earlier.Under Chaldaean leadership, Babylon filled theimperialistic vacuum left by the collapse of theAssyrian Empire. Babylon’s most energetic kingwas Nebuchadnezzar II (604–562 B.C.E.), whosearmies destroyed Jerusalem and whose own cap-ital city, Babylon, became legendary for its mag-nificence. Under less single-minded and lessruthless successors, however, Babylon’s powerwaned until the city and its remaining empirewere conquered by the Persians in 539 B.C.E.

The Persian Period (539–331 B.C.E.)Under the leadership of the AchaemenianDynasty, ancient Iran (later called Persia)would become the master of the largest empirein the history of the world, an empire whoseterritory would stretch from Egypt in the westto India in the east. With Cyrus’s conquest ofBabylon in 539 B.C.E., the territory formerlyruled by Chaldaean kings was absorbed intothe kingdom of the Persians.

During two centuries of Persian domination,the economy and civilization of Mesopotamiadeclined. During this time, Akkadian wasreduced to a language of the learned few (a fateSumerian had previously suffered), and wasreplaced by Aramaic as the lingua franca of theNear East. Ironically, it would be an inscriptioncelebrating Persian victories (in the Old Per-sian, Babylonian, and Elamite languages) thatwould become the key to the later decipher-ment of cuneiform.

The Hellenistic Period (331–126 B.C.E.)In 331 B.C.E., the charismatic Macedonianleader Alexander marched to greatness on theplain of Gaugamela by defeating the army ofthe Persian king Darius III. Alexander thenproceeded to Babylon, where he liberated thecity and was hailed as the land’s new king. Fol-lowing the death of Darius and the burning of

the royal palace at Persepolis, Alexander madeBabylon the capital of his new empire, strivingfor geographic unity by fostering a culturalfusion of Eastern and Western races and values.His political agenda ended when he died in 323B.C.E. at the age of 32, but his dream of multi-culturalism lived on as the spirit of Hellenisticcivilization, the culture of later Greece and theworld it transformed.

With Alexander’s death, his empire wasdivided up among the generals who had foughtby his side. One of these generals, Seleucus,received Mesopotamia as his share of the spoilsand founded a dynasty, the Seleucid, that ruledthe country until 126 B.C.E., when it was con-quered by the Parthians.

The Parthian Period (126 B.C.E.–227 C.E.)The Parthians were a Scythian tribe fromTurkestan that had migrated and settled inIran. The Parthians ruled Iran and Iraq(except for two brief incursions into Meso-potamia by the Romans) until 227 C.E., whenthey were in turn defeated by the Sassanians, apeople who traced their ancestry to Persia’sAchaemenian kings.

The Sassanian Period (227–651 C.E.)Under Sassanian domination, Mesopotamia layin ruins, its fields dried out or turned into aswampy morass, its once great cities madeghost towns. With the Islamic conquest of 651C.E. the history of ancient Mesopotamia ends.

KEY RULERS OFMESOPOTAMIA

The dates below are the dates of the rulers’reigns. For details about the rulers’ careers, seechapter 3.


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Akkadian and Sumerian RulersSargon the Great (2334–2279 B.C.E.)Naram-Sin (2254–2218 B.C.E.)Gudea (2141–2122 B.C.E.)Ur-Nammu (2112–2095 B.C.E.)Shulgi (2094–2047 B.C.E.)

Babylonian RulersHammurabi (1792–1750 B.C.E.)Nebuchadnezzar I (1124–1103 B.C.E.)Nebuchadnezzar II (604–562 B.C.E.)Nabonidus (555–539 B.C.E.)

Assyrian RulersTukulti-Ninurta I (1244–1208 B.C.E.)Tiglathpileser I (1115–1077 B.C.E.)Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 B.C.E.)Tiglathpileser III (744–727 B.C.E.)Sargon II (721–705 B.C.E.)Sennacherib (704–681 B.C.E.)Esarhaddon (680–669 B.C.E.)Ashurbanipal (668–627 B.C.E.)

Foreign RulersCyrus the Great of Persia (549–529 B.C.E.)Alexander the Great of Macedonia (336–323

B.C.E.)Artabanus II of Parthia (128–124 B.C.E.)

READING

The Discoverers

Fagan 1979, Kuklick 1996, Lloyd 1955, Mirsky1977, Moorey 1991, and Oates and Curtis1982: history of Mesopotamian archaeology.

Dating the Past

Aström 1987–89, Brinkman 1977, Cryer 1995,Ehrich 1992, Roux 1992, Rowton 1970:

chronology; Gasche 1998: fall of Babylon;Grayson 1980: historiography; Jacobsen 1937,Vincente 1995: Sumerian King List; Millard1997: Babylonian King Lists.

Digging for History

Aitkens 1974: carbon-14 analysis; Bertman1986, McIntosh 1999, Renfrew 1991, Wheeler1954: archaeological method; Hole and Heizer1977: laboratory dating methods; Russell 1998:destruction and looting.

Ancient Narratives

Burstein 1978, Kuhrt and Sherwin-White1987: Berossus; Hornblower and Spawforth1996: Herodotus.

Survey of History

Crawford 1991, Kramer 1963: Sumer;Edwards 1975–, Roaf 1990, Roux 1992, Saggs1995, Snell 1997: general survey; Ghirshman1954: Persia; Hallo and Simpson 1998, VonSoden 1994 (1985): historical survey of ancientNear East; Kuhrt 1995: detailed survey; Kuhrtand Sherwin-White 1987, Peters 1970: Hel-lenism; Postgate 1992: early Mesopotamia;Saggs 1962: Babylonia and Assyria.

Key Rulers of Mesopotamia

Bienkowski and Millard 2000, Leick 1999, Sas-son 1995: biographies.

3

GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY

THE STRUCTUREOF CIVILIZATION

Civilization is a social entity defined by itsstructure, a structure more complex than ear-lier forms of society.

It is not simply the size of a population or itsconcentration into large settlements thatdefines a civilization, but rather the specializedfunctions of its people and their interdepen-dence and collaboration. Civilization is capableof doing more than earlier forms of societybecause it represents an amassing of energythat, with leadership, can be directed towardspecific ends not feasible, or even conceivable,before. As a by-product of that capability, theindividual may, through the use of his or hertalents in labor or leisure, achieve a level ofproductivity or find a degree of fulfillment oth-erwise not possible.

In exchange, however, for the benefitsit bestows, a civilization requires the individualto surrender a portion of his or her freedomand autonomy. As rewards, the civilizationprovides security, instills purpose, and prom-ises happiness.

All of these essential characteristics can befound in the history of the earliest civiliza-tions, including that of Mesopotamia. Yet,in the process of development, each civiliza-tion acquired its own distinctive and uniquepersonality.

THE STRATIFICATIONOF SOCIETY

In the same way that the watered soil ofMesopotamia produced its wealth, the land ofMesopotamia generated its class structure.

Though social stratification seems to havebeen less pronounced during the early cen-turies of Sumerian civilization, by the time ofthe Babylonian Empire under Hammurabi(1792–1750 B.C.E.) it was sharply drawn. Withthe passage of time, the ownership of land—and, with it, the possession of political power—came to be concentrated more and more in thehands of the few.

Social Classes

Our clearest and most detailed picture of thesocial structure of Mesopotamian civilization isto be found in the Babylonian Code of Ham-murabi, dating to the first half of the 18th cen-tury B.C.E. According to the code, there werethree types of persons in society: the awilum, orpatrician (a member of one of the landholdingfamilies), the mushkenum, or plebeian (a citizenwho was free but did not possess land), and thewardum, or slave (a member of society who nei-ther owned land nor was free). Significantly,the most privileged were also held to the high-est standard of responsibility under the law,while those who were less privileged werepenalized less for breaking it, unless it hap-pened that their offense was committed againsta member of a higher class.

The three classes, however, were not rigidlyseparated. Were he compelled to surrender hisland because of debt, an awilum could becomea mushkenum. Conversely, were a mushkenumto acquire land, he would become an awilum.Furthermore, a slave could be granted his free-dom, and a free citizen in dire financial straitscould lose his.

SOCIAL MOBILITY

Significantly, Babylonian law tended to fosterupward social mobility. If, for example, a mem-ber of one class married a member of another,


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the children born of their marriage wouldbelong to the higher of the two classes.

PRIESTS AND KINGS

Notwithstanding the real estate holdings offamilies or individuals, the largest parcels ofland were always in the hands of the priests(who were the servants of the gods) and thekings (who were the gods’ surrogates onearth). Thus those who held supreme author-ity also controlled the most property and thewealth it produced.

THE BEGINNINGS

Thanks to the Constitution of the UnitedStates, students of America’s history can readilyunderstand the main features of its govern-ment. Alas, students of Mesopotamian historyare not so fortunate. Unlike the United States,Mesopotamia did not become a political entityall at once. Instead, its governmental structureevolved slowly and underwent significant meta-morphoses. These events occurred, moreover,not a couple of centuries or so ago but thou-sands of years earlier, making their reconstruc-tion immensely more difficult. In addition,Mesopotamian government was not defined bya single document crafted by “founding fathers,”but rather it is reflected in scattered records sur-viving from assorted periods, the oldest of whichoffer only scant testimony.

There is no doubt that Mesopotamia waseventually and for most of its history governedby rulers we might call “kings.” Indeed, weeven know their names and can catalogue theircareers. But exactly when kingship first cameinto being, under what circumstances it arose,and precisely what its nature was remain mat-ters of scholarly contention. Theories abound,but facts are few.

By comparison, Egyptologists have it easy.The Egyptian nation was born of a single act ofunification performed by a single man, and—except for two periods of interregnum—it wasruled by absolute monarchs called pharaohsduring the course of its 3,000-year-long his-tory. Each pharaoh was regarded as divine: inlife the incarnation of the god Horus and upondeath the simulacrum of Osiris, sovereign ofthe netherworld.

To reconstruct Mesopotamia’s constitu-tional history, however, we must step onto thefog-shrouded landscape of myth and from themisty shapes on the horizon attempt to discernthe outlines of historical fact. It won’t be easy.But the journey must be undertaken, for atstake is our understanding of how one of theearliest of human civilizations assumed anorganizational form that enabled it to achievegreat things, some of which—like urban life,law, and imperialism—became for better orworse its legacy to our times.

KINGSHIP

The most prominent mythic document thatsheds light, albeit indirect, on the Mesopotamianinstitution of kingship is the Babylonian Epic ofCreation. The oldest versions of the Epic date tothe first millennium B.C.E., but the originalstory may go back to the early second, whenthe city of Babylon assumed great power andwould have wanted its glory celebrated in song.

The action of the Epic revolves around atitanic battle among the gods, a battle thatensued in the primordial days before mankindwas created. There were two main deities then:Apsu (the male god of freshwater) and Tiamat(the goddess of salt water). According to thestory, Apsu became annoyed at the noise his

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progeny were making, and he proposed todestroy them. His plans, however, werethwarted by his great-grandson, Ea, renownedfor his cleverness. Employing a magic spell, Eahypnotized both Apsu and his minister, seizedApsu’s crown, executed him, and put the primeminister under arrest. Enraged, Tiamat quicklytook steps to counter the coup. She convenedan assembly of the gods and, with their coun-cil’s approval, raised an army and appointed acommander in chief to lead them in battle. Assoon as Ea heard what was going on, hereported the news to his divine grandfatherAnu, who was revered for his wisdom. Anutried to negotiate with Tiamat to forestall all-out war, but when that failed he called uponEa’s son, Marduk, to stand as champion againstTiamat and her forces. Marduk agreed to fight,but only if the other gods granted him absolutepower then and thereafter. Anu agreed to Mar-duk’s terms and invited the other gods to agreat banquet. With their consent, Marduk wasgiven kingship over the universe and went onto defeat Tiamat and her minions, establishinghis sovereignty forever. In the politics ofheaven, the triumph of Marduk over Tiamatvalidated his father Ea’s earlier efforts to endthe despotism of Apsu, the universe’s formerking. In the politics of earth, the ascendancy ofBabylon’s patron god Marduk as ruler of theuniverse symbolized and theologically justifiedBabylon’s own ascendancy over the other citiesof Mesopotamia and their local gods.

Even earlier than the Babylonian Epic of Cre-ation is a Sumerian epic tale about the hero Bil-games (later known as Gilgamesh), a tale called“Bilgames and Agga,” or “The Envoys ofAgga.” According to the story, Agga, ruler ofthe city of Kish, sent an ultimatum to the cityof Uruk demanding its submission. Bilgames,Uruk’s ruler, turned to his city’s council ofelders for advice, and they recommendedacceding to Kish’s demands. Dissatisfied, how-ever, Bilgames decided to take the matter one

step further and turned to the city’s popularassembly composed of all men of fighting age.Rejecting the idea of surrender, the assemblyurged armed resistance—exactly the answerBilgames had been waiting to hear. Leading hispeople into battle, Bilgames defeated theenemy. As we see from the story, the will ofUruk’s council of elders was not binding uponits king, who was free to turn to the popularassembly and ask its opinion as well. Whetherthe assembly’s expressed will was then binding,or again merely advisory, we are not told.

Both mythic accounts—one describingdivine affairs and the other human—speak of agovernmental structure that included asupreme ruler, on one hand, and a legislative


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3.1 Portrait of an Assyrian king, AshurnasirpalII, dressed in his ceremonial robe and holding aweapon in each hand. The statue is now in theBritish Museum. (Franz von Reber, History ofAncient Art [New York: Harper, 1882])

body, on the other. The legislature, in turn,consisted of a smaller council and a largerassembly. Collectively, such structural elementscomprise what Thorkild Jacobsen termed a“primitive democracy” that existed in ancientMesopotamia some 4,000 or more years ago.

Of course, the kind of government attrib-uted to heaven may have simply been a divineversion of the kind of government theMesopotamians were already familiar with onearth. In envisioning the world of the gods,human beings are often wont to project imagesfrom their own earthly experience onto a largerheavenly screen. In just such a way, the gods ofmythology can take on human characteristicsin their physical appearance and emotionalmakeup. Thus the ancient Greeks imaginedtheir gods dwelling as a family in a palace onMt. Olympus just as royal families in theMycenaean era inhabited palatial citadels onearthly heights.

It is likely, however, that the ancientMesopotamians took a less rationalistic view ofthings, believing instead that the gods weregenuine and had instituted government onearth as a terrestrial extension of their ownadministration of the cosmos. In such a view,the earth was a divine estate and man its care-taker, tending the land on the gods’ behalfmuch as did Adam when he worked as Eden’sgardener. Indeed, they would have believed—and their priests would have instructed them—that the service of the gods was humanity’sprime function, indeed its raison d’être. AsThorkild Jacobsen observed in Before Philosophy:

The only truly sovereign state, independentof all external control, is the state which theuniverse itself constitutes, the state governedby the assembly of the gods. This state, more-over, is the state which dominates the terri-tory of Mesopotamia; the gods own the land,the big estates, in the country. Lastly, sinceman was created especially for the benefit ofthe gods, his purpose is to serve the gods.

Therefore no human institution can have itsprimary aim in the welfare of its own humanmembers; it must seek primarily the welfare ofthe gods. (Frankfort 1949: 200)

It is for this reason that “kingship descendedfrom heaven,” first (before the legendary GreatFlood) to the city of Eridu and then later (afterthe Great Flood) to the city of Kish. So pro-claims the “Sumerian King List,” a documentthat purports to list all of Sumer’s monarchsfrom the dawn of civilization, and implies thatcertain monarchs—those of Eridu and Kish—once exercised sovereignty over the whole land.

Each city-state—the city and the cultivatedfields surrounding and supporting it—alsoneeded to be administered on the behalf of itsown local god. For this reason there also had tobe local government.

In the beginning, sacred and secularauthority may have rested in the hands of oneindividual—a natural enough developmentsince the people of Mesopotamia saw nodichotomy between the two. Thus the earliestruler of a city-state may have been the en, aSumerian word for “high priest.” The enwould have thus been the local god’s represen-tative on earth, managing the temple lands andthe people who worked them. At a later stageof development, when the population hadgrown and society had become more complex,a second office may have arisen, that of ensi, or“governor,” whose duty it became to managecivic affairs (law and order, commerce andtrade, and military matters) white the en con-tinued to manage the business of the temple(the supervision of temple lands and the per-formance of religious rituals). In special timesof crisis, a lugal (literally, “great man”) mightbe appointed by the people through a councilor a popular assembly (much as Marduk hadbeen appointed in the Epic of Creation). Indeed,the office of lugal seems to have emerged atabout the same time as Sumerian cities beganto construct defensive walls to protect them


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from their enemies, and thus needed leaders intime of special emergency. Initially, the lugalmight have been entrusted with authority onlyso long as an emergency existed; but if the cir-sis persisted or repeated crises occurred, thelugal’s supreme authority may have becomepermanent, especially if, like Marduk, he rel-ished power and exercised it with verve. Asindividual city-states coalesced into alliancesor were conquered by their neighbors, the ensior lugal of the dominant city might hold widersway and govern as king.

To justify this greater power, however, theking would require a divine mandate, especiallysince he was no longer just the leader of a singlecommunity serving a local god but the master ofa wider domain. One solution would be to claimhe had been chosen by heaven, a claim thatcould be affirmed by the high priest of a nation-ally venerated temple such as the temple of thegod Enlil at Nippur. Indeed, the king’s evidentsuccess was the most convincing proof of hisdivine selection. Both that success and hischoice by the gods would then be celebrated inpoetry and song. Another solution would be toelevate the king’s divine patron from local tohigher, national stature. Thus Marduk andAshur, both originally the gods of specific cities,rose from relative obscurity to become thepatron gods of imperial states. Just as was thecase with the kings, the success of the gods onthe battlefield was the most persuasive evidencethat their political majesty was deserved.

Divinity

Though the kings of Mesopotamia soughtdivine approval, they did not necessarily regardthemselves as divine. In inscriptions, only somekings’ names are prefixed with the sign DIN-GIR, that meant “god.” Sargon of Akkad’sgrandson, Naram-Sin, was in the late thirdmillennium B.C.E. the first to use the honorific

title. Shulgi, king of Ur, adopted it during themiddle of his reign about two centuries later.Thereafter, it was employed sporadically,though never by Hammurabi of Babylon norby the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian kings.

Other means, however, were used to suggestdivinity: references to the king’s radiant aura orto his being the god’s “son”; grand epithets,such as “king of the four quarters [of heavenand earth]”; and artistic devices, such as por-traying the king standing in a god’s presence (asHammurabi stands before Shamash on thestela of his famous code, basking in divinelight) or making the king taller than the peoplearound him (as Naram-Sin’s sculpted stela ofvictory depicts him, superhuman in size). As aSumerian proverb put it: “Man is the shadowof god, but the king is god’s reflection.”

Though royal dynasties flourished, directdescent was not a requirement for succession(though usurpers were quick to call themselves“legitimate”). A king, for example, might befollowed to the throne by a brother or by a sonother than his first born.

Symbols and Duties

The symbols of kingship in Mesopotamia werethree—the crown, the throne, and the scepter—and each had a ceremonial function when a newking was installed, just as such objects haveplayed a role in the institution of kingship inalmost every land where it has existed, includingancient Egypt. The duties of the Mesopotamianking were also analogous to the responsibilitiesof other kings: he participated in religious ritu-als, guided the administration of justice, anddirected the affairs of state in both peace andwar. In carrying out these responsibilities heacted as the earthly representative of the godsand, in particular, of the chief god of his city-state or nation, manifesting in the process theroyal virtues of strength and wisdom.


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Officials

A variety of officials assisted the king in theexercise of his powers. These included thepriestly hierarchy of the temples, includingthe high priest of the state’s principal god; ajudiciary to administer the laws; a commanderin chief of the army and his subordinates; aprime minister to tender advice and conductthe business of diplomacy; a large staff tomaintain the day-to-day operations of thepalace, including a chief of staff, or chamber-lain, and a royal cup-bearer, as well as servantsaplenty; a ready corps of scribes; and the occa-sional architect or sculptor to execute com-missions with the aid of their apprentices.

As the territory of the kingdom grew—espe-cially when it attained the size of empire—theking needed governors—likely drawn from thenobility—to administer its parts, as well as acadre of royal messengers to transmit reportsand deliver his commands.

The Substitute King

One of the most peculiar of Mesopotamianroyal customs was that of the “substitute king.”If dire omens predicted the king’s death, a tem-porary substitute for him would be chosen.The substitute would be dressed in royal robes,given a “queen,” and permitted to live in thepalace in the hope that destiny would strikehim rather than the real king (who stayed inhiding). Once the danger was passed, the sub-stitute “went to his fate”—an expression thatimplied death. In this way the Mesopotamianshoped to trick fate. Becoming substitute kingwas not exactly a career move unless you weredying to sit on the throne.

TAXATION

Nominally, all the lands and waters of aMesopotamian city-state belonged to its godsand were managed by their surrogates, therulers and priests. Individuals who used thelands and waters and derived economic benefitfrom them were, in turn, subject to taxation.

Because coinage had not yet been invented(see Chapter 9), taxes were paid in the form ofgoods and services. Normally the goods repre-sented a share of what had been produced (suchas grain, dates, fish, wool, or livestock) or a per-centage of its worth in silver. Services could berendered through military service or by labor-ing on communal projects (the excavation and


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3.2 The standing figure of an Assyrian king,carved on the wall of his palace at Kalhu (Nimrud).(Austen Henry Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains[London: John Murray, 1849])

maintenance of irrigation canals; the harvest-ing of crops grown on communal land; or theconstruction of temples and palaces). Mer-chants were also subject to special taxes whenthey shipped or received goods, or when theypassed through cities along trade routes orcrossed rivers.

With the growth of cities and the rise ofempires, tax collection became a major govern-ment activity, employing a corps of civil ser-vants, some of whom regularly traveled tomake collections. Those who refused to com-ply (including subject states) would be threat-ened with military reprisal. Mesopotamiankings—except for those of Assyria—often soldthe right to collect taxes to the highest privatebidder, who then reaped a fortune by extortinga far greater sum from the taxpayers than hehimself had paid. Occasionally, a king mightalso grant tax exemption to a favorite inexchange for some past or future service.

As an ancient proverb notes (see chapter 5),the Mesopotamian man most to be feared wasthe tax collector.

JUSTICE AND LAW

In the Mesopotamian mind, the divine wasconceived of as a force that brought order outof chaos. Maintaining cosmic order was thechief responsibility of heaven’s sovereign, thesky-god Anu.

The king, in turn, was the representative ofAnu on earth. His chief responsibility was tomake the divine will manifest on earth by bring-ing order to human society. This he did by gov-erning firmly and justly: issuing decrees,enacting laws, and administering their enforce-ment. The divine mandate implicit in a Meso-potamian king’s actions enhanced his authorityand inspired compliance. It is therefore no acci-dent that kings, as a practical matter, emphasizedthat they were acting on god’s behalf. Their own

divine status, when assumed, only served to rein-force their spiritual mandate. And, despite theexistence of “primitive democracy,” it was not alegislature but a king who enacted the laws.

Law Codes

We are fortunate to possess, in whole or inpart, law codes promulgated by Mesopotamia’sancient kings. Not only are they the world’soldest legal codes; they also contain the world’soldest surviving laws. Three of the codesbelong to the rulers of Sumer: Urukagina (ca.2350 B.C.E.), Ur-Nammu (ca. 2100 B.C.E.), andLipit-Ishtar (ca. 1930 B.C.E.). The others werewritten in Akkadian: the laws of the city of Esh-nunna dating to the 19th century B.C.E.; theearly 18th-century B.C.E. laws of Hammurabiof Babylon; 12th-century B.C.E. Middle Assyr-ian laws; and even later laws of Neo-Babylon-ian kings. Of all these, the most famous is theCode of Hammurabi, described by J. N. Post-gate as “the most informative single source forlegal history before the classical world” (Post-gate 1992: 288).

The codes of Lipit-Ishtar and Hammurabiare especially fascinating because their prologueshave been preserved. Like the opening of theDeclaration of Independence and the preambleto the Constitution, each prologue sets forth thespiritual and moral justification for the text thatfollows. Each king invokes the names of hiscountry’s supreme gods, declaring that theycalled upon him to act on their behalf so as tomake human society more orderly and just.Lipit-Ishtar emphasizes his commitment to fam-ily values, while Hammurabi proclaims his mis-sion to “crush the evil-doer and protect the weakfrom the strong.” At the top of Hammurabi’ssculpted stela, the king stands before the sun-godShamash, promising as in his prologue to make“justice rise over the people like the sun andbrighten the land with its light.” In similar fash-ion, a seventh- or sixth-century B.C.E. Neo-


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Babylonian text celebrates the dedication of anow anonymous king to the cause of justice:

For the sake of due process he did not neglecttruth and justice, nor did he rest day andnight! He was always drawing up, with rea-soned deliberation, cases and decisions pleas-ing to the great lord Marduk (and) framed forthe benefit of all the people and the stabilityof Babylonia. He drew up improved regula-tions for the city, he rebuilt the law court. Hedrew up regulations . . . his kingship forever.(Foster 1995: 209)

Copied onto stone stelae and set up in thecities of the land, the law codes of Mesopotamia

made public the standards by which people wereexpected to live. Such standardization sought tounify a wide territory that might otherwise havebeen fragmented by diverse practices, andsimultaneously solidified the ruler’s grasp overhis domain. And when reforms were introducedto correct abuses, the level of social justice wasuniversally raised.

The codes cover a lot of ground—crime andpunishment, of course, but also matters that arelargely economic: wage and price controls,property rights (including slave ownership), andregulations governing inheritance and indebted-


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3.3 The code of Hammurabi, carved on asculpted block of black diorite, stands today in Parisin the Louvre. (Photographie LaurosGiraudon/Art Resources, N.Y.)

3.4 In this close-up, we see the Babylonian godShamash instructing Hammurabi in the law.Shamash is seated on his divine throne as the kingstands before him. (Bildarchiv Foto Marburg/ArtResource, N.Y.)

ness. The codes are by no means comprehen-sive, but their range is wide. In content, theyseem to be rationalized compilations of normalpractices elevated by an abiding concern for uni-formity and equity. In style, case-form prevails:“If X has done such-and-such, then Y must bethe penalty.” Indeed, their very specificity servesto illuminate the nooks and crannies of dailylife—from who pays for a damaged ox to whogets to keep a divorced wife’s dowry.

In the Code of Hammurabi, penalties wereassessed based on one’s social class: the sameact committed against a member of a lowerclass resulted in a lighter punishment; butagainst a member of a higher class, a heavierone. The penalty system thus reinforced theexisting social order. And, in recognition ofeconomic realities, fines assessed on the poorwere lower than fines assessed on the rich.

Mesopotamian law also fostered worker effi-ciency by severely punishing professionalincompetence. A boatman whose negligencesank a boat was responsible for the cost of theboat and its entire cargo. A surgeon who cost apatient his eye had his hand cut off. And if abuilding collapsed and its owner died, thebuilder had to pay with his life.

The Administration of Justice

If the law codes of Mesopotamia signify anideal of justice that should govern society, howwas the ideal made an everyday reality?

To begin with, there were no lawyers. Norwas there a regular court system, as we under-stand it. Nor were there prisons, or even apolice force. How then was justice achieved, oreven approximated?

The key was an innate compliance to higherauthority, a behavioral characteristic that per-meated Mesopotamian culture. Society’s prime

personal virtue was humble and unquestioningobedience—to the gods and their earthly sur-rogates. Within society, it was the state and itsdemands rather than the individual and hisrights that were supreme.

The Mesopotamians, however, were humanbeings, and therefore far from perfect. Evenwhen greed and anger didn’t rear up their uglyheads, other things—an accident, a basic mis-understanding, or overlapping claims—couldprovoke controversy. Hence the need for adju-dication to settle disputes.

Most controversies were resolved on thelocal level—the village or neighborhood—by acouncil of elders whose members were impan-eled as judges when circumstances warranted.Though there were judges in ancient Mesopo-tamia, there were no juries selected from thepopulation at large to hear cases. Instead, the lit-igants presented their arguments to the judgesin oral testimony, witnesses were called (some, ifneed be, from considerable distances), and evi-dence (in the form of a written contract, forexample) was examined. Those who testifiedwere required to swear an oath, not on a Biblebut on a sacred symbol of the local god. (For thisreason, trials were often held on the grounds oftemples.) Perjury was punished not by law butby divine retribution, for the only way to avoid acurse was to tell the truth, and anyone refusingto take the oath was immediately suspect.

If the judges were unable to reach a decisionby rational means, they had recourse to “trialby river.” The accused would be thrown intothe river. If he surfaced and swam to shore, hewas innocent. But if the god of the river swal-lowed him up, he was guilty as charged.

The eventual verdict would be inscribed ona clay tablet and announced publicly by a her-ald. If property had to be seized or some otherdirective of the court carried out, a soldierwould act as bailiff.

Cases of serious crime, including murder,were referred to a higher court presided over


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by one or more officials appointed by the king.A verdict could be appealed to such a highercourt, and even the king himself, if authoritiesdeemed it proper.

Penalties

Punishments could be harsh and served aspowerful deterrents against unlawful acts. Ear-lier Sumerian law seems to have been guidedby the principle of compensation to a victimwho had suffered injury or loss, but the laterBabylonian Code of Hammurabi preferred tophysically punish the perpetrator, following theprinciple of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for atooth,” a principle enunciated also in the OldTestament (Leviticus 24:20). Though initiallysuch a practice might seem barbaric, uponcloser inspection it can be viewed as an attemptby society to set limits to retribution that mightotherwise have taken both the eyes and eventhe life of a perpetrator. This said, Ham-murabi’s Code severely punishes crimes thatwould receive lesser penalties under contem-porary Western law. The death penalty, forexample, is meted out for breaking and enter-ing, for stealing, or for receiving stolen prop-erty; likewise, for falsely accusing another ofmurder. An adulterous couple was bound andthrown into the river to drown, and a son whostruck his father had his hand cut off. And apriestess who was caught entering a bar wasburnt alive. By such harsh strictures, Babylon-ian law sought to preserve the integrity ofproperty, the sanctity of family, and the sacred-ness of society’s institutions.

To the Western eye, Assyrian law seemseven more savage. If a man’s wife was caughtstealing from another man’s home, her hus-band had to pay a penalty and cut off her ears;if he chose not to pay the penalty, the ownercould cut off her nose. If a couple were found

committing adultery, the man would be cas-trated and his face mutilated; the woman—again—would lose her nose. There were alsosevere penalties for showing affection toanother man’s wife: for touching, the perpetra-tor would have a finger cut off; for a kiss, hislower lip would be passed across the sharpblade of an ax, slicing it off. Furthermore, if aman saw a prostitute wearing a veil (the sign ofa respectable woman) and failed to report herinfraction, he would be stripped and beatenwith a stick 50 times. Then his ears would bepierced and threaded with a cord and somehowtied to his back, after which he would serve amonth at hard labor.

Incarceration was apparently not a sentenc-ing option in Mesopotamia, for imprisonmentdid neither the injured party nor society itselfany good. Using the criminal for forced laborseemed, at least to the Assyrian state, a farmore economically productive and sociallybeneficial alternative.

Assaults upon morality and their reproofwere serious subjects in Mesopotamia, pre-cisely because society itself was serious busi-ness. Without order and respect for ethicalconstraint, civilization itself would be doomed.

It would be a facile and self-serving exercisefor us who are spectators at our own permissiveculture’s decline to mock the efforts of ancients,however excessive, to stave off civilization’s fall.Perhaps the closer to the end they came, themore desperate they became, hoping—in vain,it turns out—to save the world they knew bytoughening the penal code and rounding up theusual suspects. As Mesopotamian history shows,their real enemy was an entropy to which allempires succumb. Ironically today, a similarholding action is again taking place in certainnations of the Mideast, this time against what isperceived as the morally corruptive influence ofthe West. Only in Islamic law can analogies stillbe found for the harsh penalties of the Mideast’smore ancient codes.


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For our understanding of Mesopotamianjurisprudence, we are aided by the survival ofcourt records. Some cases acquired such noto-riety or seemed so stereotypical that theybecame copying exercises for scribal trainees,and were thus preserved in multiple copies.One of the most famous trials involved a mur-der that took place around 1900 B.C.E. Threemen conspired to murder a fourth, and theintended victim’s wife found out about the plot,but she did nothing to stop it. The killers werelater apprehended, along with the all-too-reti-cent wife. The transcript goes like this:

Nanna-sig, Ku-Enlilla the barber, and Enlil-ennam the orchard-keeper, murdered Lu-Inanna the priest. After Lu-Inanna was dead,they told his wife Nin-dada that her husbandhad been murdered. Nin-dada kept hermouth shut and didn’t tell anyone. The casewas referred to the city of Isin and presentedto the king. King Ur-Ninurta remanded thecase for trial before Nippur’s Assembly.

Ur-gula, Dudu the bird-catcher, Ali-ellatithe noble, Puzu, Eluti, Sheshkalla the potter,Lugal-kam the orchard-keeper, Lugal-azida,and Sheshkalla the son of Shara-har got up andsaid: “Since they killed a man, they shouldn’tbe allowed to live. All four should be killed infront of the ceremonial chair where Lu-Inannaused to sit.” Then Shuqalilum the soldier andUbar-Suen the orchard-keeper got up and said:“Nin-dada didn’t really kill her husband, sowhy should she be executed?” At that point theElders addressed the Assembly and said: “If awife has no respect for her husband’s life, itmay be because she’s already slept with anotherman. That other man may murder her husbandknowing she would never tell. Why else wouldshe keep silent? More than anyone else she’s theone who caused her husband’s death, and shebears the most guilt!”

The Assembly having resolved the issue,Nanna-sig, Ku-Enlilla the barber, Enlil-ennam the orchard-keeper, and Nin-dada, thewife of Lu-Inanna, were sentenced to death.Verdict of the Assembly of Nippur.

All that is missing from the account are thetears in Nin-dada’s eyes and the downcastexpressions on the faces of the condemned,including Ku-Enlilla the barber, who probablywielded the deadly razor that took the unsus-pecting priest’s life 4,000 years ago.

BIOGRAPHIES OFPOLITICAL LEADERS

In chapter 2 we tried to capture the sweep ofMesopotamian history by painting its movinglandscape in broad strokes. Now it is time toidentify individual figures in that landscapewho, for better or worse, may be said to have“made history” by governing the lands of theTigris and Euphrates and their people.

Our list is alphabetical rather than chrono-logical because Mesopotamia embraced not onecountry and culture but multiple ones thatmoved separately on parallel tracks, yet alsointeracted when one nation or another becamedominant and exerted political control over itsneighbors. Thus to study Mesopotamian historyis to study not one chronology but many that areintertwined like the threads of an elaboratetapestry. To follow these threads, the reader maywish to consult the chronological tables at theback of Georges Roux’s masterful book, AncientIraq, or the streamlined table at the end of ourown. There is also a chronological list of KeyRulers of Mesopotamia included in chapter 2.

An alphabetical list like the one that followshas certain intrinsic virtues. The reader who isintrigued by a particular figure in history canreadily find the basic facts of his career as wellas the period in which he lived and held power.And it is precisely by ignoring chronology andreading such a list sequentially that the readercan become sensitized to the common political


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themes that by their repetition transcend theborders of space and time.

For the reader in a hurry who has no time toread the following directory in its entirety, asummary is in order:

The kings of Mesopotamia had long names,and sons usually followed them to the thronewith equally long names. They all busiedthemselves fighting over territory againstother kings. When they weren’t destroying orkilling something, they spent their spare timebuilding things. We know a lot about somekings, and precious little about others. Somekings, however, do stand out due to the qual-ity or quantity of their destroying, theirkilling, or their building. Their wives are sel-dom mentioned.

The impression such as summary givescomes not only from what the ancient rulers ofMesopotamia did but also from what they andtheir chroniclers wanted remembered. Inshort, we are prisoners of the evidence, evi-dence that is inevitably the biased product ofdeliberate selection by the participants. Fur-thermore, the more objective archaeologicalevidence we could have possessed has been win-nowed by time and the forces of natural andman-made destruction, leaving us with a pileof historical detritus. Only rarely when wehave twin portraits of the same ruler paintedfrom opposing angles—from his nation’s sideand the enemy’s—do we have grounds for con-structing an accurate hologram, yet one that—like all holograms—will forever remain notquite alive.

Before taking the true measure of a man, wemust also learn to read between the cuneiformlines: to appreciate not only the “killing” butthe killed; not only the “destroying” but thedestroyed; not only the “building” but the pur-poses for which things were built, and what—ifanything—in the end they achieved.

We will seek in the remainder of this bookto fill in those very human blanks as we explore

life in ancient Mesopotamia. But let us firstgive these “makers of civilization” their due.

Note: the dates in parentheses are, whereknown, the dates of a given king’s reign. Whilehistorians often differ on matters of ancientchronology, for simplicity’s sake I have fol-lowed the dating scheme found in GeorgesRoux’s book cited above.

A-annepadda (ca. 2525–2485 B.C.E.) Thisruler of Ur’s First Dynasty erected a temple atTell Ubaid near Ur in honor of the goddessNinhursag.

Abi-eshuh (1711–1684 B.C.E.) Abi-eshuhwas the grandson of Hammurabi I and fol-lowed his father, Samsu-iluna, to the throne ofBabylon. His father had faced the first Kassiteattack on Babylonian territory; Samsu-ilunasuccessfully repelled the second, but neverthe-less lost a hold on some of the lands he hadinherited in the area of the Middle Euphrates.Seeking to regain control over Sumer, Abi-eshuh dammed up the Tigris in a failed attemptto drive out the rebel leader Iluma-ilum fromthe marshes to the south.

Abirattash (middle of the 17th century B.C.E.)Abirattash ruled the Kassites of Babylonia afterthe reign of Ushishi.

Abi-sare (1905–1895 B.C.E.) As king ofLarsa, Abi-sare triumphed over the rival city-state of Isin after slaying its king in battle.

Adad-apla-iddina (1067–1046 B.C.E.) ThisBabylonian king was married to an Assyrianprincess, but that did not prevent the Assyriansfrom attacking Babylonia. His reign was alsotroubled by an Aramaean revolt and Suteanraids. Internally, he wisely concentrated onrebuilding Babylon’s fortifications and renovat-ing temples throughout Babylonia to courtdivine favor.


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Adad-nirari I (1307–1275 B.C.E.) By militaryforce this Assyrian king extended the borders ofhis empire in every direction. His military cam-paigns are made vivid by surviving descriptiveaccounts of his army’s actions, something whichwe do not have in the case of earlier Assyriankings. Among his achievements was his capture(and, later, generous release) of the Mitanni kingShatturara I after a Mitanni challenge to Assyr-ian dominion. The Assyrian king’s generosity,however, was misplaced: after Shattuara’s death,the Mitanni revolted again.

Adad-nirari II (911–891 B.C.E.) This laterAssyrian king continued the mission of hisfather, Ashur-dan II, to restore his nation’s bor-ders against the intrusions of its enemies.

Adad-nirari III (810–783 B.C.E.) This Assyr-ian king tried to establish rapprochement withBabylonia consequent to the brutal treatmentit had suffered at the hands of his predecessor,Shamshi-Adad V. As a consequence, Babylon-ian deportees were allowed to return to theirhomeland, and the statues of Babylonia’s godswere restored to the shrines from which theyhad been taken.

Adad-shuma-iddina (late 13th century B.C.E.)A Kassite king of Babylon during the periodwhen Babylonia was under the control ofAssyria’s king Tukulti-Ninurta I.

Adad-shuma-usur (1218–1189 B.C.E.) A Kas-site, Adad-shuma-usur became Babylonia’sking after his predecessor, Adad-shuma-iddina,was overthrown. He appears as a character in alate Babylonian epic.

Agga (Akka) (ca. 2650 B.C.E.) A ruler ofKish, Agga tried to impose his will upon theneighboring city of Uruk, but he was defeatedand captured by Uruk’s ruler, the legendaryGilgamesh. According to an early epic account,

Gilgamesh showed mercy to Agga and releasedhim after the battle.

Agum I (early 18th century B.C.E.) Agum Ibecame second king of the migrant Kassitesafter they had established themselves inMesopotamia.

Agum II Kakrime (ca. 1570 B.C.E.) Agum IIwas the first Kassite ruler of the city of Babylonfollowing Babylon’s destruction by the Hittitesand the termination of its First Dynasty.According to a story, he brought back to Baby-lon sacred statues of the god Marduk and hisdivine consort Sarpanitum, statues which theHittites had earlier carried off when they plun-dered Babylon in 1595 B.C.E.

Agum III (middle of the 15th century B.C.E.)Agum III was a Kassite king of Babylonia. Dur-ing his career he conducted military campaignsin the south against the army of the Sea-Land,a political region so named because of its prox-imity to the Persian Gulf.

Akalamdug (ca. 2600 B.C.E.) The tomb ofthis ruler of Ur was discovered by Sir LeonardWoolley in the city’s Royal Cemetery.

Akkia (beginning of the 20th century B.C.E.)The name of this early Assyrian king suggeststhat he—like his predecessors Ushpia andKikkia—was Hurrian.

Akurgal (ca. 2465 B.C.E.) Ruler of Lagash.

Alexander III the Great (356–323 B.C.E.) Amaster strategist and charismatic leader, Alexan-der became king of Macedonia at the age of 20following the assassination of his father Philip II.Not content with merely inheriting his father’sHellenic empire but driven instead by a heroiccompulsion to prove his own worth and wingreater glory, Alexander conceived a plan to


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wage a holy war against Greece’s historic enemy,the Persians, then the possessors of the largestempire in the history of the world. After defeat-ing Persia’s “king of kings,” Darius III, with acombined Macedonian and Greek force, burn-ing the palace at Persepolis, and liberating Egyptfrom Persian domination, Alexander marched tothe Indian subcontinent and might have gone onto China had his men not threatened mutiny.Recognizing that a 3,000-mile-wide empirespanning Europe and Asia could not be heldtogether by military force alone, Alexander envi-sioned the creation of a racially integrated soci-ety on a global scale. To achieve this end, heenlisted Persian officers in his army, encouragedhis soldiers to intermarry with native women (ashe did himself), and founded cities across thebreadth of his kingdom to be partly populated bycolonists from Greece to encourage the forma-tion of a unified culture. Babylon was the cen-trally located city that he chose for his capital,and in Babylon he died—of fever possibly aggra-vated by alcoholism—just short of his 33rdbirthday. Though the empire he had sought tobuild was divided up after his death by the gener-als who had fought by his side, his most lasting

legacy was the cultural fusion of West and Eastknown as Hellenistic civilization.

Alexander Severus (222–235 C.E.) A Romanemperor, he managed to maintain Rome’s mili-tary hold over Mesopotamia.

Amar-Sin (2046–2038 B.C.E.) The son ofShulgi and the third member of Ur’s gloriousThird Dynasty, Amar-Sin presided over asecure and prosperous empire.

Amel-Marduk (Biblical “Evil-Merodach”)(first half of the sixth century B.C.E.) Amel-Marduk was the son and successor of Neb-uchadnezzar II, and the third king of theNeo-Babylonian dynasty. Tradition recordsthat his royal behavior was tyrannical. Aftertwo years he was assassinated by his sister’s hus-band, Nergal-shar-usur.

Ammi-ditana (1683–1647 B.C.E.) Ammi-ditana was the great-grandson of Hammurabi Iand followed his father, Abi-eshuh, to Babylon’sthrone. He engaged in public works projectsinside the city of Babylon and may have brieflyregained hold over some of the lands lost torebels subsequent to Hammurabi’s death.

Ammi-saduqa (1646–1626 B.C.E.) Ammi-saduqa was the son of Ammi-ditana and thetenth king of Babylon’s First Dynasty. Like hisancestor Hammurabi, Ammi-saduqa ordereda cancellation of citizens’ debts as a way ofgiving Babylon’s economy a fresh start. He isalso remembered for having ordered courtastronomers to record the rising and settingtimes of the planet Venus for the purpose ofmaking astrological predictions. Thanks to thisdatabase recorded in cuneiform, modern histo-rians can date the reign of Ammi-saduqa andother First Dynasty rulers, including Ham-murabi. However, because the planet Venushas a 60-year cycle, the rising and setting the


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3.5 This ancient Greek coin portrays Alexanderthe Great (on the left) wearing the lion-skin cap ofhis hero Hercules. The back of the coin (on theright) shows the king of the Greek gods, Zeus,seated upon his Olympian throne. ( J. Verschoyle,The History of Ancient Civilization [London:Chapman and Hall, 1889])

Babylonians recorded could fit any one ofthree possible chronological “windows” asmuch as 120 years apart. The Venus Tabletshave thus compelled scholars to chose—andargue—among a “High,” a “Middle,” and a“Low” chronology for Babylon’s kings (“Low”having the lowest B.C.E. numbers). The datingscheme used in this chapter follows the mid-dle road.

Anni (second half of the 18th century B.C.E.)Anni was the last man to rule Eshnunna beforeits destruction by the Babylonians underSamsu-iluna.

Antiochus I (281–260 B.C.E.) Antiochus wasthe son of Seleucus I. Following his father’smurder, he succeeded him after a long militarystruggle as Hellenistic ruler of Babylonia. Towin the loyalty of his people, he restored thegreat temples of Babylon and asked the godsfor their blessings. His is the last survivingroyal inscription in Mesopotamia to beengraved in cuneiform.

Antiochus II (260–246 B.C.E.) Antiochus wasthe third member of the Seleucid dynasty thatruled Babylonia in Hellenistic times. To makepeace with Ptolemaic Egypt, Antiochus agreedto marry Ptolemy II’s daughter. Because Anti-ochus was already married, his plan did not havea happy outcome: his first wife poisoned him.

Antiochus III (222–187 B.C.E.) A memberof the Hellenistic Seleucid dynasty, he won ter-ritory in Egypt by employing trained elephantsin battle, but he was forced out of Turkey bythe Roman army.

Antiochus IV (175–164 B.C.E.) Antiochuswielded Hellenistic culture as a device to unifyhis kingdom. In Israel his efforts sparked arevolt by the Maccabees, who succeeded incapturing and reconsecrating the temple at

Jerusalem, which had been dedicated to theworship of Zeus. Their victory is still com-memorated in the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.In Babylon, Antiochus constructed a Greek-style gymnasium and theater, but by that timethe city’s population had declined as a result ofa mass movement to Mesopotamia’s popularHellenistic capital, Seleucia-on-the-Tigris. InEgypt, Antiochus suffered defeat at the handsof the Romans, who compelled him to kill hisattack elephants.

Antiochus VII (138–129 B.C.E.) Earlier inthe second century B.C.E., the Seleucid dynastyhad lost territory to Parthian aggression. Anti-ochus VII succeeded in reclaiming Babyloniaand Media, but only briefly. He died in battle,and after his reign the Euphrates became hiskingdom’s easternmost border. In less than acentury, the Romans laid claim to even that.

Antiochus XIII (69–65 B.C.E.) The lastmember of the Seleucid dynasty. In 64 B.C.E.under Pompey’s leadership the Roman armycaptured Antioch, which had become theSeleucid’s capital after the fall of Seleucia to theParthians.

Apil-Kin (2126–2091 B.C.E.) Military gov-ernor of Mari.

Apil-Sin (1830–1813 B.C.E.) Son of Sabium,Apil-Sin was the fourth king of Babylon’s FirstDynasty. During his 18-year reign, there is noreference to war. Instead, he seems to havedevoted himself to peaceful works, augmentingthe city’s network of irrigation canals andwaterways while shoring up its defensive walls.

Ardeshir (Artaxerxes I) (first half of the thirdcentury C.E.) The founder of a dynasty,Ardeshir was the first Sassanian ruler to conquerMesopotamia. In the process, he destroyed thecity of Hatra and made Ctesiphon his capital.


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Arik-den-ili (1319–1308 B.C.E.) This Assyr-ian king led his army into the Zagros Moun-tains to check the incursions of nomadic tribeson Assyria’s northern and eastern frontiers.

Arsaces (Arshak) (250–248 B.C.E.) Arsaceswas the founder of the Arsacid Dynasty and thefirst Parthian to rule Mesopotamia.

Artabanus I (211–191 B.C.E.) The thirdParthian ruler of Mesopotamia.

Artabanus II (128–124 B.C.E.) A Parthianking, Artabanus confirmed Parthia’s hold overMesopotamia, a dominion that would endurefor three and a half centuries until the triumphof the Sassanians in 227 C.E.

Artatama I (ca. 1430 B.C.E.) Hurrian king ofthe Mitanni. The pharaoh Amenhotep III ofEgypt repeatedly asked (in the Amarna letters)to marry a daughter of Artatama to strengthendiplomatic ties between the two nations in theface of potential Hittite aggression.

Artaxerxes I (464–424 B.C.E.) This king ofthe Persian Empire was troubled by insurgen-cies instigated by the Greeks at the westernedge of his kingdom.

Artaxerxes II (404–359 B.C.E.) The reign ofthis Persian king was contested by his youngerbrother, Cyrus, who marched into northernMesopotamia at the head of an army thatincluded 10,000 Greek mercenaries. WhenCyrus was defeated and killed at Cunaxa inBabylonia, the Greeks were a thousand milesfrom home and were forced to make a danger-ous trek home through hostile territory. Thetale was later told by one of their courageousleaders, Xenophon, in his Anabasis (“TheMarch Upcountry”).

Artaxerxes III (358–338 B.C.E.) A king ofthe Persian Empire, Artaxerxes III reasserted

Persia’s control over Egypt before being killedin a coup along with most of his family.

Asharid-apal-Ekur (first half of the 11th cen-tury B.C.E.) An Assyrian king.

Ashurbanipal (668–627 B.C.E.) When Esar-haddon was still king of Assyria, he appointedhis son Ashurbanipal as his heir to the Assyrianthrone and his son Shamash-shum-ukin as hisheir to the throne of Babylonia. After his death,the two brothers continued to share power inkeeping with their father’s wishes. Shamash-shum-ukin, however, chafed under Ashurbani-pal’s directives and eventually led a rebellionthat Ashurbanipal crushed. Ashurbanipal wenton to become Assyria’s last warrior-king, wagingwar not only against Babylonia but also againstEgypt and Elam. The king prided himself on hislearning and established a great library in hispalace at Nineveh, a library which—thanks toexcavation—became a treasure-house of literaryand scientific knowledge for modern scholars.Though his tomb at the city of Ashur was lootedlong, long ago, Ashurbanipal is still ebullient inLondon at the British Museum, enjoying asculpted garden party with his resplendentqueen, as the king of Elam’s severed head hangsin perpetual adornment from a nearby bough.

Ashurbanipal’s name—like those of themonarchs that follow—incorporates the nameof Assyria’s national god, Ashur, for whom thecountry itself was named.

Ashur-bel-kala (1074–1057 B.C.E.) An Assyr-ian king, Ashur-bel-kala spent his leisure timehunting and collecting exotic animals, some ofwhich were sent to him as a gift by Egypt’spharaoh. Another gift he received was a newwife, thanks to the generosity of Adad-apla-iddina, whom Ashur-bel-kala appointed to thethrone of Babylon and whose daughter Ashur-bel-kala then wed to strengthen diplomaticties between Assyria and Babylonia. Militarily,


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Ashur-bel-kala spent time dealing with insur-gents on Assyria’s borders. His royal tomb wasone of five discovered in the lower reaches ofthe palace at Ashur.

Ashur-bel-nisheshu (late 15th century B.C.E.)This Assyrian king signed a treaty with theBabylonian king Karaindash confirming anearlier agreement between their predecessors(Puzur-Ashur III and Burnaburiash I) definingthe border between Assyria in the north andBabylonia in the south, and thereby establish-ing the historic division of Mesopotamiabetween the two nations. He also constructed anew wall around his capital city of Ashur tobetter protect it in case the Babylonians hadsecond thoughts.

Ashur-dan I (1179–1134 B.C.E.) ThisAssyrian king was renowned for havingreached a ripe old age (without dying of nat-ural causes or falling victim to an assassin) andis credited with a 46-year reign. His king-dom’s extended prosperity must have con-tributed to his longevity. On the other hand,

the prosperity was achieved in part by plun-dering Babylonian cities.

Ashur-dan II (934–912 B.C.E.) This Assyr-ian king made efforts to restore the losses hisnation had sustained for almost a century and ahalf following the death of Tiglathpileser I.Adding muscle to his army, he recaptured landsAssyria’s enemies had seized and returned themto productive use, while regaining control overold trade routes to further stimulate hisnation’s economy. In one brutal show of force,he flayed an enemy king alive and hung his skinover his city’s wall.

Ashur-dan III (772–755 B.C.E.) The reignof this Assyrian king was troubled by rebellion,failed military ventures, the spread of epi-demic, and an eclipse of the sun. Despite theking’s bad luck, the last of these events provedto be a boon to historians since the calculationof its date, June 15, 763 B.C.E., helped them todate Ashur-dan’s reign as well as Meso-potamian chronology in general during thefirst millennium B.C.E.


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3.6 Ashurbanipal and his queen enjoy a garden party as the severed head of an enemy king hangs from anearby tree. (The British Museum)

Ashur-etil-ilani (second half of the seventhcentury B.C.E.) Ashur-etil-ilani was an Assyr-ian king, the son and successor of the greatAshurbanipal. His ascent to the throne wasn’teasy: he needed the backing of a powerful courteunuch and, even then, was challenged militar-ily by his own brother. He also faced a foreignenemy, King Nabopolassar of Babylonia.

Ashur-nadin-ahhe I (ca. 1450 B.C.E.) Acongratulatory letter survives sent by thisAssyrian king to his international colleague,the pharaoh Thutmose III, complimenting theEgyptian ruler on his military victories inPalestine and Syria. Despite his epistolary skill,Ashur-nadin-ahhe was deposed by his brother,proving the sword is mightier than the pen.

Ashur-nadin-ahhe II (ca. 1400 B.C.E.) ThisAssyrian king constructed a palace at Ashurthat Assyrian kings continued to occupy forcenturies thereafter. He was also the recipientof a shipment of gold from Egypt meant toinsure good diplomatic relations betweenAssyria and the land of the Nile.

Ashur-nadin-apli (end of the 13th centuryB.C.E.) This Assyrian king seized the crownby plotting with courtiers and murdering hisfather, Tukulti-Ninurta I. Despite his malevo-lence, he could humbly fall to his knees when itsuited his purposes: when the river Tigrisbegan to change its course and seemed bent onflooding his capital city, Ashur-nadin-apliprayed and the disaster was averted.

Ashur-nadin-shumi (699–694 B.C.E.) Ascrown prince of Assyria, Ashur-nadin-shumiwas put on the throne of Babylon by his father,Sennacherib. When Sennacherib attackedsouthern Elam to drive out Chaldaean rebelswho had sought refuge there, the Elamitescounterattacked by striking at Babylonia. AtSippar they captured Ashur-nadin-shumi and

transported him to Elam where it is probablehe was executed.

Ashurnasirpal I (1050–1032 B.C.E.) AnAssyrian king. Though he ruled for almost twodecades, we know nothing of what he did. Hewasn’t even the father of the famous Ashurnasir-pal II. That honor went to Tukulti-Ninurta II.

Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 B.C.E.) Ashur-nasirpal II set a standard for the future warrior-kings of Assyria. In the words of GeorgesRoux, he “possessed to the extreme all the


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3.7 Carved from a 3.5-foot-tall block of hardmagnesite, this portrait of Ashurnasirpal greetedLayard when he dug up the king’s palace at Kalhu(Nimrud). The inscription below the king’s beardgives his name. (Layard, A Second Series of theMonuments of Nineveh, 1853)

qualities and defects of his successors, the ruth-less, indefatigable empire-builders: ambition,energy, courage, vanity, cruelty, magnificence”(Roux 1992: 288). His annals were the mostextensive of any Assyrian ruler up to his time,detailing the multiple military campaigns heled to secure or enlarge his nation’s territorialdominion. From one raid alone he filled hiskingdom’s coffers with 660 pounds of gold andan equal measure of silver, and added 460horses to his stables. The sadistic cruelty heinflicted upon rebel leaders was legendary,skinning them alive and displaying their skin,and cutting off the noses and the ears of theirfollowers or mounting their severed heads onpillars to serve as a warning to others. Insidehis kingdom he constructed a new capital cityat Kalhu (Nimrud) with an over 300,000 sq.ft.palace. To celebrate its completion, he invited69,574 people to a party that lasted 10 days.The menu of the banquet still survives as dothe ruins of his palace, the finest such structurein Assyria and one of the first great Assyrianmonuments to be discovered in modern times.

Ashur-nirari I (1547–1522 B.C.E.) Inscrip-tions record that this Assyrian king engaged inbuilding projects at his capital city.

Ashur-nirari II (second half of the 15th cen-tury B.C.E.) An Assyrian king, son of Enlil-nasir II.

Ashur-nirari III (end of the 13th centuryB.C.E.) This Assyrian king’s claim to fame isthat he was once reprimanded by a Babylonianking in a vitriolic letter.

Ashur-nirari IV (second half of the 11th cen-tury B.C.E.) An Assyrian king.

Ashur-nirari V (754–745 B.C.E.) ThisAssyrian king died during a revolt that began inhis capital city, Kalhu.

Ashur-rabi I (first half of the 15th centuryB.C.E.) Though he was the son of a formerAssyrian king (Enlil-nasir I), Ashur-rabi had todepose a usurper to become king. The usurperhad warmed the seat only for a month.

Ashur-rabi II (1016–973 B.C.E.) An Assyr-ian king.

Ashur-rem-nisheshu (late 15th centuryB.C.E.) An Assyrian king.

Ashur-resh-ishi I (1133–1116 B.C.E.) AnAssyrian king, he fought against Babylonia tothe south as well as tribal insurgents onAssyria’s eastern and western flanks.

Ashur-resh-ishi II (first half of the 10th cen-tury B.C.E.) An Assyrian king.

Ashur-uballit I (1365–1330 B.C.E.) Duringthe reign of this Assyrian king, the kingdom ofMitanni collapsed due to civil war within andHittite pressure without. In consequence,Assyria became the major power in northernMesopotamia. Ashur-uballit intervened inBabylonian politics, deposing a usurper andputting his own candidate (Kurigalzu II) on thethrone. Ashur-uballit’s confidence is evident ina pompous letter sent to Egypt’s pharaoh, andin the epithet, “king of the universe,” heawarded to himself.

Ashur-uballit II (second half of the seventhcentury B.C.E.) Assyria’s last recorded king.After Nineveh fell in 612 B.C.E. to the Babyloni-ans and Medes, Ashur-uballit escaped to the cityof Harran and set up a government in exile.Nabopolassar of Babylon viewed Ashur-uballitas a dangerous loose end and accordingly laidsiege to Harran. That year, 610 B.C.E., marksthe last page in the annals of the AssyrianEmpire. As for Ashur-uballit himself, we canonly imagine his end at Nabopolassar’s hands.


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Asinum (second half of the 18th centuryB.C.E.) An Assyrian king. After his death,anarchy ensued as a series of eight usurpersseized the throne.

Azuzum (second half of the 20th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of Eshnunna and rebuilder ofthe capital’s royal palace.

Baba-aha-iddina (late ninth century B.C.E.)Like his predecessor, Marduk-balassu-iqbi,Baba-aha-iddina was captured by the Assyriansand likely executed. He had sat on the throneof Babylon for less than a year.

Balili (middle of the 25th century B.C.E.) Amember of Ur’s First Dynasty.

Bazaia (1649–1622 B.C.E.) An Assyrian king.

Belakum (beginning of the 19th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of Eshnunna.

Bel-shar-usur (Biblical “Belshazzar”) (ca.553–543 B.C.E.) Bel-shar-usur ruled Babylonduring his father Nabonidus’s 10 year absencefrom the capital, shortly before it fell to thePersians. In the biblical book of Daniel Bels-hazzar sees the fateful writing on the wall thatforecasts his kingdom’s fall.

Belshazzar See Bel-shar-usur.

Belu-bani (1700–1691 B.C.E.) An Assyrianking.

Bilalama (first half of the 20th centuryB.C.E.) This ruler of Eshnunna is creditedwith developing a code of law, written inAkkadian, over a century before the morefamous Akkadian Code of Hammurabi.Bilalama also fought off Amorite chiefs beforethey became an established force in Meso-potamian politics.

Burnaburiash I (second half of the 16th cen-tury B.C.E.) Burnaburiash I was the successorof Agum II Kakrime and thus the second Kas-site king to rule Babylon following its fall tothe Hittites. To stabilize the northern border ofhis kingdom, he negotiated a treaty with theAssyrians establishing the territorial limits oftheir separate empires.

Burnaburiash II (1375–1347 B.C.E.) AKassite king of Babylonia, Burnaburiash IIreigned for 28 years, during which he con-structed or renovated a number of religiousedifices. The Amarna letters record diplo-matic exchanges of gifts between Burnaburi-ash and the heretic pharaoh Akhenaton:Burnaburiash sending horses and lapis lazuliand Akhenaton reciprocating with gold, ivory,and ebony. Burnaburiash was miffed, however,when the pharaoh sent only five carriages toBabylonia to escort Burnaburiash’s daughterto her royal wedding in Egypt. Even so, thewedding went ahead as scheduled, withAkhenaton sending bridal gifts sufficient tofill four columns and 307 lines of a cuneiforminventory. Hopefully, this Nilotic gesturemade amends, but Burnaburiash was not aneasy father-in-law to please: on an earlieroccasion, when the pharaoh had promised tosend him 50 lbs. of gold, the Kassite kingmelted down the artifacts upon their arrivaland found they came up short. He then sent aletter of complaint, avoiding direct insult bysuggesting that some Egyptian underlingmust have erred in tallying the shipment.

Bur-Sin (1895–1874 B.C.E.) Ruler of Isin.

Cambyses II (530–522 B.C.E.) When CyrusII the Great of Persia captured the city ofBabylon on his march of conquest, Cyrusappointed his son Cambyses to be Babylon’sking. Upon Cyrus’s death, Cambyses assumedthe throne of the Persian Empire as well and


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made war on Egypt to complete his father’simperial plans. Hastening from Egypt to Persiato subdue a revolt at home, he accidentallywounded himself with his sword and died ofblood poisoning.

Caracalla (198–217 C.E.) This Romanemperor, famous for the baths he completedin Rome, was killed by an assassin in northernMesopotamia, while he visited the temple ofthe moon-god Sin at Harran, later called Car-rhae. According to one version of the story, hewas relieving himself behind a sand dunewhen the guard who was accompanying himdid him in.

Carus (282–283 C.E.) After driving the Per-sians back, this Roman emperor was suppos-edly killed near Ctesiphon by an errant bolt oflightning (rare at that time of year) or morelikely by the well-aimed blade of an assassin.

Constantius II (337–361 C.E.) This Romanemperor battled the Sassanian king Shapur IIfor control of northern Mesopotamia.

Cyrus II the Great (559–530 B.C.E.) CyrusII was an aggressive Persian conqueror andempire-builder who transformed his originalkingdom into a formidable world power. Afterdefeating the Medes, he had all of Iran in hisgrasp. He then won Anatolia from King Croe-sus of Lydia and Babylonia from KingNabonidus, capturing both rulers. He shrewdlyreleased the Judaeans who had been held cap-tive in Babylonia for half a century, and heallowed them to return home to rebuild thetemple in Jerusalem that Nebuchadnezzar hadearlier destroyed. As a result, Jewish traditionmade “Cyrus” one of the two non-Hebrewnames that Jewish boys can be given (the otherbeing “Alexander,” the name of another for-eign benefactor of the Jewish people, Alexan-der the Great).

Dadusha (ca. 1805–1780 B.C.E.) A ruler ofEshnunna, he formed an alliance with Elam.

Damiq-ilishu (1816–1794 B.C.E.) He losthis sovereignty—and Isin, its independence—


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3.8 On this cylinder inscribed in cuneiform, Cyrusdescribes how the Babylonian god Marduk showedhis favor. Because of the Persian king’s piety—Cyrustells us—Marduk allowed him to march into the cityof Babylon unopposed. (Rogers, A History ofBabylonia and Assyria, 1915; picture courtesy Mansell,1915)

when he was defeated in war by Rim-Sin, kingof the rival state of Larsa. Not to be confusedwith a later ruler (below) of the same name.

Damiq-ilishu (first half of the 17th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of the Sea-Land, the marshlandof southern Babylonia.

Darius I (522–486 B.C.E.) Darius’s acces-sion to the Persian throne was greeted withrebellions in all quarters of his kingdom. Hissubsequent triumph over the rebels was cele-brated in an inscription carved on the sheerface of a cliff overlooking Behistun (Bisitun) inMedia. The inscription—in Old Persian,Elamite, and Babylonian—became the equiva-lent to Egypt’s Rosetta Stone, offering modernscholars the key to the decipherment ofMesopotamia’s cuneiform writing system.Darius also built a new capital city andgrandiose palace at Persepolis, as well as con-structing an arsenal and an expanded royal res-idence at Babylon. In addition, he reorganizedthe administration of his empire to give him-self greater control, established a system ofroyal roads and messengers for efficient com-munication, and imposed a universal code oflaw and standard of currency throughout hisrealm. It was he who made Aramaic (instead ofAkkadian) the official language of Mesopo-tamia and the rest of his Near Eastern empire.His greatest foreign policy success was hisdomination of Egypt; his signal failure, hismilitary defeat at the hand of the Greeks atMarathon in 490 B.C.E.

Darius II (423–405 B.C.E.) This Persianking faced challenges to his authority in Mediaand Ionia.

Darius III (335–331 B.C.E.) The last king ofthe Persian Empire, Darius was defeated onthe battlefield by Alexander the Great, andlater murdered by a Persian general. In keeping

with Alexander’s wishes, Darius was buriedwith full honors at Persepolis, the Persian cap-ital, whose palace had earlier been burned fol-lowing its capture by Alexander.

Diadumenian (218 C.E.) Briefly Romanemperor together with his father Macrinus,Diadumenian fled to Parthia after his father’sdefeat in battle. There he was caught andexecuted.

Dumuzi (second half of the 28th centuryB.C.E.) The last of the four mythical kings ofUruk, Dumuzi is also described in Sumerianmythology as a shepherd who became the loverand husband of the goddess Inanna.

Ea-gamil (ca. 1460 B.C.E.) With his defeatby Ulamburiash, king of Babylon, Ea-gamilbecame the last ruler of the Sea-Land and thelast member of the so-called Second Dynastyof Babylon. From that point forward, Babyloncontrolled the whole of Sumer.

Eannatum (ca. 2455–2425 B.C.E.) The “Steleof the Vultures” depicts this ruler of Lagash bat-tling his enemies as vultures feast on theircorpses. His enemies were legion both withinsouthern Mesopotamia and at its fringes.

Elili (ca. 2445 B.C.E.) A member of Ur’s FirstDynasty.

Emisum (2004–1977 B.C.E.) Ruler of Larsa.

Enannatum I (ca. 2425 B.C.E.) This ruler ofLagash built a temple in his home city with adistinctive oval shape.

Enannatum II (first half of the 24th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of Lagash.

Enbi-Ishtar (ca. 2430 B.C.E.) A member ofKish’s Second Dynasty.


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En-entarzi (first half of the 24th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of Lagash.

En-hegal (ca. 2540 B.C.E.) King of Lagash.

Enlil-bani (1860–1837 B.C.E.) A gardenerby trade, Enlil-bani was chosen by Isin’smonarch, Irra-imitti, to serve as “substituteking” until the king himself was free of thedanger a prophecy had foretold. Irra-imitti,however, ended up choking on some hot soup,and Enlil-bani became Isin’s next king, a goodone at that to judge by the hymns of praise thatwere afterward composed in his honor.

Enlil-kudurri-usur (end of the 13th centuryB.C.E.) An Assyrian king.

Enlil-nadin-ahhe (1159–1157 B.C.E.) Enlil-nadin-ahhe was the last Kassite king to ruleBabylon. After waging war against the king ofElam, he was captured. The Elamites then rav-aged Babylonia and deported large numbers ofits people. With this defeat, over four centuriesof Kassite rule came to an end.

Enlil-nadin-apli (ca. 1100 B.C.E.) Enlil-nadin-apli ruled Babylon as the son and succes-sor of Nebuchadnezzar I.

Enlil-nadin-shumi (late 13th century B.C.E.)Enlil-nadin-shumi was a Kassite king of Baby-lon during the period when Babylon’s fate wasin the hands of the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I.

Enlil-nasir I (ca. 1500 B.C.E.) Inscriptionsrecord the building projects of this Assyrianking.

Enlil-nasir II (second half of the 15th centuryB.C.E.) An Assyrian king who took the throneby unseating his brother, Ashur-nadin-ahhe I.

Enlil-nirari (ca. 1325 B.C.E.) Enlil-nirari’sfather and predecessor on the Assyrian thronewas Ashur-uballit I, during whose reign theempire of Mitanni ceased to be a threat. Dur-ing Enlil-nirari’s reign, however, Kurigalzu IIof Babylon (who had been put on his throne byEnlil-nirari’s father) challenged Assyria on thebattlefield, after which a peace treaty wassigned that historically redefined the borders ofthe two countries.

Enmebaragesi (ca. 2700 B.C.E.) The 21st tosit on the throne of Kish after the days of thelegendary Great Flood, Enmebaragesi distin-guished himself by triumphing over the rivalstate of Elam.

Enmerkar (second half of the 28th centuryB.C.E.) The second of the four mythicalkings of Uruk, Enmerkar made war againstthe distant kingdom of Aratta to obtain sup-plies of gold, silver, and lapis lazuli for thebeautification of his city’s temples. In thiscause he was aided by the goddess Inanna.Legend says he was also responsible for theinvention of writing.

En-shakush-anna (ca. 2430–2400 B.C.E.) Amember of Uruk’s Second Dynasty, this kingwarred against Kish and recovered religiousartifacts that had been plundered from Uruk’stemples by Kish’s king.

Entemena (Enmetena) (ca. 2400 B.C.E.)Entemena is famous for a canal he built con-necting the Tigris with the Euphrates. In thecity of Lagash where he was ruler he was popu-lar for issuing a decree that absolved citizens ofheavy debts. His piety is documented by aninscribed silver vase that he dedicated to thepatron god of the city, Ningirsu.

Eriba-Adad I (1392–1366 B.C.E.) An Assyr-ian king who ruled for a quarter of a century


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and is remembered only in two broken build-ing inscriptions.

Eriba-Marduk (769–761 B.C.E.) Followingthe death of the Assyrian king Adad-nirari III,Eriba-Marduk seized the Babylonian throne.He then suppressed the incursions of nomadsinto Babylonian territory and laid the basis foreconomic growth and prosperity, taking timeto thank the gods for renewing their blessings.

Erishum I (ca. 1906–1867 B.C.E.) Erishum Iwas an Assyrian king who continued the tradepolicies of his predecessor, Ilushuma. Like hispredecessor also, he restored the temples of thegods at Ashur, his capital.

Erishum II (second half of the 19th centuryB.C.E.) An Assyrian king.

Erishum III (1598–1586 B.C.E.) An Assyr-ian king.

Esarhaddon (680–669 B.C.E.) The son ofSennacherib, Esarhaddon had to fight hisbrother for Assyria’s throne. At home, he triedto placate the Babylonians by restoring the cityhis father had destroyed. Though propheciesdeclared that Babylon could not be rebuilt for70 years, Esarhaddon had his priests read thecuneiform number upside-down and came upwith 11, exactly the number he had wanted tofulfill his plans. Abroad, his major preoccupa-tion was Egypt, which he invaded three times,dying on his third and final march. As his let-ters attest, no Mesopotamian king before orafter had so frequently consulted astrologers toforesee his destiny.

Etana (early third millennium B.C.E.) Accord-ing to an epic poem entitled The Adventure ofEtana (see chapter 5), this early ruler of Kishtraveled to heaven on the back of an eagle inorder to obtain a magic plant that would enablehim to father an heir.

Eulmash-shakin-shumi (1003–987 B.C.E.)Eulmash-shakin-shumi founded Babylon’s SixthDynasty that endured for just three years afterhis death.

Evil-Merodach See Amel-Marduk.


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3.9 On this diorite stele, Esarhaddon holds twosubject kings on leashes. The smaller figure,kneeling, is Egypt’s pharaoh. (Rogers, A History of Babylonia and Assyria, 1915; picture courtesyMansell, 1915)

Gandash (ca. 1730 B.C.E.) Gandash is thename given in the Babylonian King List to thefounder and first king of the Kassite dynasty.Originating in the Zagros Mountains of Iran,the Kassites swept into Mesopotamia in thesecond half of the 18th century B.C.E. By thebeginning of the 16th century B.C.E., theycontrolled Babylonia and went on to domi-nate the land militarily and politically for overfour centuries.

Gilgamesh (Sumerian: Bilgames) (ca. 2700B.C.E.) Gilgamesh is the central character inMesopotamia’s greatest literary work, The Epic ofGilgamesh (see chapter 5). His epic exploits areapparently based on the life of a real person, aruler of Uruk named in the Sumerian King List.Gilgamesh is credited with having built Uruk’smighty walls. In the epic, he begins his career asa self-centered king and ends it searching for,and losing, the secret to eternal life.

Gordian III (238–244 C.E.) This Romanemperor drove the Persians out of Mesopotamia.A mutiny instigated by an ambitious subordi-nate led to his execution at the city of Circe-sium in Mesopotamia.

Gudea (2141–2122 B.C.E.) The prosperitythat had begun in Lagash under Ur-Baba con-tinued during the reign of Gudea. To thank thegods, Gudea restored or rebuilt over a dozentemples, and commissioned multiple stoneportraits of himself to communicate his piety.In two statues he sits with the Mesopotamianequivalent of blueprints resting on his lap. Hislengthy dedicatory inscriptions embody theapex of classic Sumerian literary style. In thewords of Georges Roux: “This young man sit-ting calmly, a faint smile upon his lips, hishands clasped in front of his chest, the plan of atemple or a foot rule across his knee, is thefinest example of a figure unfortunately soon todisappear: the perfect Sumerian ruler, pious,

just, cultured, faithful to the old traditions,devoted to his people, filled with love and pridefor his city and . . . pacific” (Roux 1992: 168).

Gulkishar (second half of the 17th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of the Sea-Land.

Gungunum (1932–1906 B.C.E.) Gungunumwas an imperialistic leader of Larsa who occu-pied the lower half of southern Mesopotamiaand thereby gained commercial access to thePersian Gulf.

Hammurabi I (Hammurapi) (1792–1750B.C.E.) Hammurabi, the son of Sin-muballit,was the sixth and greatest of the Amorite rulerswho governed Babylon as its First Dynasty.


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3.10 In this disembodied portrait head in stone,we gaze upon the serene and imperturbablecountenance of Gudea. The leader’s capacity forcontrol and attention to detail are suggested by theprecise sculpting of the multiple spirals in Gudea’scap and the chiseling of his chevron-like brows. Theportrait is now in the collection of the Louvre.(de Sarzec, Découvertes en Chaldée, 1884–1912)

Hammurabi reigned for 43 years, beginning hiscareer as a local king and ending it as the undis-puted master of Mesopotamia. He is mostfamous for his codification of Babylonian law(see above and chapter 5), an act which exempli-fied his interest in organization, his preoccupa-tion with detail, and his desire for control, as wellas his dedication to the cause of uniform socialjustice. In addition to these personal qualities, hewas also an able administrator, an adroit diplo-mat, and a canny imperialist, patient in theachievement of his goals. Upon taking thethrone, he issued a proclamation forgiving peo-ple’s debts, and during the first five years of hisreign further enhanced his popularity by piouslyrenovating the sanctuaries of the gods, especiallyMarduk, Babylon’s patron. Then, with his powerat home secure and his military forces primed, hebegan a five-year series of campaigns againstrival states to the south and east, expanding histerritory. This accomplished, Hammurabi spentthe next 18 years consolidating his holdings andcarrying out public works projects at home,including strengthening the city’s fortifications,improving its irrigation system, and beautifyingits temples. Then, commencing in the 29th yearof his reign, he turned once again to war, con-quering in rapid succession all his former rivals:the states of Eshnunna (in the east), Larsa (in thesouth), Assyria (in the north), and Mari (in thewest). In the end, illness compelled him to aban-don his dreams and surrender his throne to asuccessor. It is mainly from the diplomatic corre-spondence of others (especially the Mari letters)that we get an impression of Hammurabi’s char-acter. From the practice of naming Babylon’syears after the most outstanding accomplish-ments of its rulers, we gain a chronologicalaccount of his deeds. As to the actual city heruled, it remains buried beneath the stratifiedruins left by his successors, so deep below thewater table as to preclude excavation to date.Soaking in the darkness lie the unread archives ofone of Mesopotamia’s mightiest monarchs.

Hanun-Dagan (2016–2008 B.C.E.) Militarygovernor of Mari.

Harbashihu (second half of the 17th centuryB.C.E.) Harbashihu ruled the BabylonianKassites after the days of Urzigurumash.

Hilal-Erra (ca. 2025 B.C.E.) Military gover-nor of Mari.

Iaggid-Lim (Yaggid-Lim) (ca. 1830–1820B.C.E.) Iaggid-Lim was an Amorite chieftainwho founded a dynasty that ruled the kingdomof Mari for a little over a century. Situated onthe upper Euphrates, Mari was the main stopfor merchants traveling between Syria andBabylonia. As a result of trade and textile man-ufacture, Mari grew rich and became a princi-pal player in the power politics of the earlysecond millennium B.C.E. After a falling-outwith his rival, the king of Ekallatum on theTigris, Iaggid-Lim’s capital was captured andhis son taken and held as a hostage. By 1820B.C.E. the father had died and the son, Iahdun-Lim, became Mari’s new ruler.

Iahdun-Lim (Yahdun-Lim) (ca. 1820–1796B.C.E.) The son of Iaggid-Lim, Iahdun-Limfollowed his father to Mari’s throne, and he tookinitiatives to enhance the wealth and power ofhis kingdom and dynasty. Domestically, heundertook large-scale irrigation projects andstrengthened the fortifications of Mari andnearby Terqa. In foreign affairs, he pursued anexpansionist policy, marching his army west-ward to the shores of the Mediterranean, com-pelling the cities of the Syrian coast to pay himtribute, and securing the trade routes inbetween. He was killed by order of the king ofTerqa, possibly at the hands of his own son,Sumu-Iaman, who briefly succeeded him beforebeing murdered in turn by servants.

Iasmah-Adad (Yasmah-Addu) (1796–1776B.C.E.) Following the death of Iahdun-Lim’s


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son, Sumu-Iaman, Iasmah-Adad became thethird Amorite ruler of the kingdom of Mari. Hewas appointed to this position by his father,Shamshi-Adad, who then reigned as king of As-syria. The son, however, proved to be a sore dis-appointment to the father, as the Mari archivesreveal, more interested in fast horses andwomen than the serious business of state. In oneletter, Shamshi-Adad sternly reproved his son:

Here’s your brother winning battles and thereyou are bedding women! When you next headup the army, act like a man. Your brother isearning himself a fine reputation. You have achance to do the same.

Iasmah-Adad tried to answer the charges, butthe tone of his response merely confirmed theiraccuracy:

Daddy, I read your letter where you wrote:“How can I let you hold the reins? You’re achild, not a grown-up, too young even toshave! When will you learn to manage ahousehold? Can’t you see that your brother iscommanding huge armies? And you can’t evenrun a palace!” That’s what you wrote, Daddy.How can I be the hopeless child you say I am?Aren’t you the same person who promotedme? You’ve known me ever since I was a littleboy. Why then do you believe the bad thingssome people are saying about me? You hurtmy feelings, and I’m coming to tell you so.

After Shamshi-Adad’s death, Zimri-Lim, a sonof Iahdun-Lim, returned from exile and seizedMari’s throne.

Ibal-pi-El I (first half of the 19th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of Eshnunna.

Ibal-pi-El II (first half of the 18th centuryB.C.E.) Ibal-pi El II ruled Eshnunna in thedays of Hammurabi and Babylonian imperial-ism. He captured Mari and forced its king,Zimri-Lim, to recognize his authority in theregion, but the agreement wasn’t worth theclay it was written on.

Ibbi-Sin (2028–2004 B.C.E.) The last mem-ber of Ur’s Third Dynasty, Ibbi-Sin tried tostave off the inevitability of its collapse fromexternal pressures, but in the end he failed.The brutal attack on Ur by the Elamites andtheir allies is recalled in a poetic lamentationcomposed by one of the city’s survivors. Ibbi-Sin himself was captured and died in exile.

Ibiq-Adad I (second half of the 20th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of Eshnunna.

Ibiq-Adad II (first half of the 19th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of Eshnunna.

Iblul-il (second half of the 25th centuryB.C.E.) This king of Mari tried to encroachupon the Syrian city of Ebla’s commercialempire but was stopped short on the battle-field. He was allowed to stay on as Mari’s gov-ernor subject to the will of Ebla’s king.

Iddin-Dagan (1974–1954 B.C.E.) This rulerof Isin is best remembered for a poem writtenin his day, which describes the king makinglove to the city’s patron goddess Ninisina aspart of the annual New Year Festival to renewthe fertility of the land.

Iddin-Ilum (first half of the 21st centuryB.C.E.) Military governor of Mari.

Ididish (second half of the 23rd century B.C.E.)The first to rule Mari with the special title ofshakkanakku (“military governor”) under ordersfrom the king of Akkad.

Ikinum (first half of the 19th century B.C.E.)An Assyrian king, Ikinum strengthened Ashur’sfortifications and maintained commercialcolonies in Turkey.

Ikin-Shamagan (second half of the 25th cen-tury B.C.E.) Ruler of Mari.


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Ikum-Shamash (first half of the 25th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of Mari.

Ilshu (ca. 2500 B.C.E.) King of Mari.

Iluma-ilum (Iliman) (ca. 1732 B.C.E.) Orig-inally a ruler of Isin, Iluma-ilum built a mini-empire based in the marshlands of southernMesopotamia, founding the so-called Dynastyof the Sea-Land (so named for its proximity tothe sea), or Second Dynasty of Babylon. Thecontemporary king of Babylon, Abi-eshuh,tried to capture him by damming the Tigris anddrying out its marshes, but to no avail.

Ilum-Ishtar (first half of the 21st centuryB.C.E.) Military governor of Mari.

Ilushu-ilia (ca. 2028 B.C.E.) Ruler of Esh-nunna.

Ilushuma (second half of the 20th centuryB.C.E.) Ilushuma was an early Assyrian kingwho concentrated on expanding trade as a wayto create prosperity. He encouraged Assyrianmerchants to found colonies in Turkey, whichwas rich in metallic ores, and he spurred themto act as middlemen, selling metals (especiallycopper) to Babylonia, which lacked suchresources. He also rewarded Assyria’s tradingpartners by exempting them from customsduties. Domestically, he focused on the restora-tion of temples dedicated to Assyria’s gods.

Iptar-Sin (1661–1650 B.C.E.) An Assyrianking.

Iqish-Tiskpak (second half of the 18th cen-tury B.C.E.) He governed Eshnunna betweenits conquest by Hammurabi and its destructionunder Hammurabi’s successor, Samsu-iluna.

Ir-Nanna (ca. 2050 B.C.E.) Governor ofLagash when it was under the domination of Ur.

Irra-imitti (1868–1861 B.C.E.) Ruler of Isin.

Ishar-ramashshu (first half of the 20th cen-tury B.C.E.) Ruler of Eshnunna.

Ishbi-Erra (2017–1985 B.C.E.) This generalof Ur used a famine to his personal advantage.When the king of Ur desperately ordered himto secure grain from nearby cities with the helpof local governors, he used his newly obtainedauthority to proclaim himself the ruler of Isin.

Ishkibal (middle of the 17th century B.C.E.)Ruler of the Sea-Land.

Ishkum-Addu (second half of the 22nd cen-tury B.C.E.) Military governor of Mari.

Ishme-Dagan (1953–1935 B.C.E.) Duringhis reign, this king of Isin attacked the city ofKish.

Ishme-Dagan I (1780–1741 B.C.E.) AnAssyrian king.

Ishme-Dagan II (first half of the 16th centuryB.C.E.) An Assyrian king.

Ishtup-Ilum (ca. 2150 B.C.E.) Military gov-ernor of Mari.

Ishu-Il (ca. 2400 B.C.E.) Ruler of the north-ern Mesopotamia city-state of Akshak.

Isma-Dagan (2199–2154 B.C.E.) Militarygovernor of Mari.

Isqi-Mari See Lamgi-Mari.

Iterpisha (second half of the 19th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of Isin.

Itti-ili-nibi (ca. 1700 B.C.E.) Ruler of theSea-Land.


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Itti-Marduk-balatu (second half of the 12thcentury B.C.E.) Itti-Marduk-balatu was thesecond king of Babylon’s Fourth Dynasty, other-wise known as the Second Dynasty of Isin, afterthe name of the city-state from which its rulerscame. Like his father before him, Itti-Marduk-balatu made incursions into Assyrian territory.

Jovian (363–364 C.E.) Under the emperorJovian, the Romans pulled out of northernMesopotamia and made peace with the Sassa-nians, surrendering territory Rome had wondecades before.

Julian II the Apostate (360–363 C.E.)Reviled by the Christian Church for his sup-port of paganism over Christianity, the Romanemperor Julian died in battle near Ctesiphon ina campaign against the Persians. According totradition, as he lay dying from a spear woundhe cried out to Jesus, “Though you havedefeated me, Galilean, I renounce you still!”

Kadashman-Enlil I (early 14th centuryB.C.E.) Like his predecessor Kurigalzu I, theKassite king Kadashman-Enlil I sent a daugh-ter (as well as a sister) to enter the pharaohAmenhotep III’s harem. However, suchfriendly overtures had their limits. Amenhotepsent Kadashman-Enlil large quantities of goldin recompense, but not one of his own daugh-ters in exchange. The kings’ diplomatic corre-spondence survives in Egypt’s Amarna archives.

Kadashman-Enlil II (1279–1265 B.C.E.)Like his royal Kassite predecessor, Kadashman-Turgu, Kadashman-Enlil II maintained corre-spondence with the Hittite king Hattusilis III.Like his predecessor, also, he devoted hisdomestic energies to renovating religious struc-tures in the Sumerian city of Nippur.

Kadashman-Harbe I (middle of the 15th cen-tury B.C.E.) Kadashman-Harbe I was a mem-

ber of Babylon’s Kassite dynasty and the fatherof Kurigalzu I.

Kadashman-Turgu (1297–1280 B.C.E.) AKassite king of Babylon, Kadashman-Turguwas a contemporary of the Hittite king Hat-tusilis III. In surviving correspondence, theBabylonian king promises to lend military sup-port to the Hittite king if the latter’s interestsare ever threatened by Egypt.

Kandalanu (647–627 B.C.E.) Kandalanu ruledBabylonia thanks to the Assyrians. They put himon the throne following an Assyrian civil warthat led to the death of Babylonia’s previousking, Shamash-shum-ukin. Kandalanu was thelast member of Babylonia’s Ninth Dynasty.

Karahardash (middle of the 14th centuryB.C.E.) A Kassite king of Babylonia who wasalso the grandson of an Assyrian king, Kara-hardash was dethroned and probably murderedin Babylon as part of a Kassite coup.

Karaindash (ca. 1425 B.C.E.) Karaindashwas a member of Babylon’s Kassite dynasty.Correspondence between him and Egypt’spharaoh, Amenhotep III, has been found in theAmarna archives. Domestically, he erected anew temple to the goddess Inanna in the city ofUruk, deep in Sumer.

Kashtiliash I (first half of the 17th centuryB.C.E.) Kashtiliash I was the son and successorof Agum I and became the third Kassite ruler ofBabylonia. His throne was in Terqa, where hereigned as sovereign of the kingdom of Hana.His rival and enemy was Abi-esuh, Ham-murabi’s grandson, who defended the throne ofBabylon and the territories it controlled.

Kashtiliash II (middle of the 17th centuryB.C.E.) Kashtiliash II followed Abirattash asking of the Babylonian Kassites.


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Kashtiliash III (ca. 1500 B.C.E.) KashtiliashIII was another member of Babylonia’s Kassitedynasty.

Kashtiliash IV (middle of the 13th centuryB.C.E.) The Kassite king Kashtiliash IV wasthe successor and possibly the son of Sha-garakti-Shuriash, during whose reign theBabylonian people faced harsh economic con-ditions. Perhaps to enrich his nation, Kashtil-iash attacked Assyria and Elam, but he wasdefeated on both fronts. His defeat inspired theonly surviving Assyrian epic, the so-calledTukulti-Ninurta Epic. Eventually, he wasdeposed by Assyria’s king Tukulti-Ninurta I,who appointed a series of three governors toadminister Babylonia in Assyria’s name. Beforea decade had passed, however, Kassite Babylo-nia had regained its independence.

Kidin-Ninua (1615–1602 B.C.E.) An Assyr-ian king.

Kikkia (end of the 21st century B.C.E.)Kikkia is an Assyrian king who was credited inancient times with having been the first to for-tify the city of Ashur with a defensive wall. Hemay have also been the first ruler to have endedSumer’s dominance over Ashur during the daysof Ur’s Third Dynasty. His name, which is nei-ther Sumerian nor Akkadian, suggests he mayhave been a Hurrian.

Kirikiki (first half of the 20th century B.C.E.)Ruler of Eshnunna who formed an alliancewith Elam and the Amorites.

Kirta (first half of the 16th century B.C.E.) AHurrian ruler.

Ku-Baba (ca. 2400 B.C.E.) A queen duringKish’s Third Dynasty, Ku-Baba is said to havebegun her career as a “woman of wine,” that is, agrape grower, wine merchant, or tavernkeeper.

Kudur-Enlil (middle of the 13th centuryB.C.E.) Not much is known about this Kassiteking of Babylonia, except that his name appearsin inscriptions on civic monuments and in eco-nomic texts. He was succeeded by Shagarakti-Shuriash, who may have been his son.

Kurigalzu I (second half of the 15th centuryB.C.E.) To enhance his prestige, Kurigalzu Ibecame the first Kassite ruler of Babylonia todeclare himself divine. To add to his magnifi-cence, he also constructed a new capital city,Dur-Kurigalzu (“Kurigalzu’s Fortress”), about65 miles north-northwest of Babylon at the sitenow known as Aqar Quf. His capital included afrescoed palace, a larger-than-life-sized statueof himself, and a mighty ziggurat whose corestill rises 187 feet above the desolate desertplain. Under his leadership, Babylonia becamea major player in international politics. To firmup good relations with Egypt, he sent hisdaughter to join Amenhotep III’s harem andexchanged gifts and letters with the pharaoh.

Kurigalzu II (1345–1324 B.C.E.) A Kassite,Kurigalzu II was given the throne of Babylonby the Assyrians after they put down a coupand deposed a Kassite usurper. Kurigalzu IIwent on to become a celebrated warrior,defeating the Elamites of Iran and even chal-lenging the Assyrians. At home, he carried onbuilding projects in Sumer and at the Kassitecapital, Dur-Kurigalzu, named for his name-sake and earlier predecessor, Kurigalzu I.

Labashi-Marduk (556 B.C.E.) The son ofNergal-shar-usur, Labashi-Marduk had ayouthful and malevolent turn on the Babylon-ian throne for nine months before enemies tor-tured and murdered him. He was succeeded byNabu-naid (Nabonidus).

Lamgi-Mari (Isqi-Mari) (first half of the25th century B.C.E.) Found in the ruins of


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Tell Hariri, a statue of this king—with aninscription describing him as Mari’s king—enabled archaeologists to identify the site asthe capital of one of Mesopotamia’s greatkingdoms.

Lipit-Enlil (1873–1869 B.C.E.) Ruler of Isin.

Lipit-Ishtar (1934–1924 B.C.E.) The moralsensibilities of this king of Isin were expressedin two ways: through the promulgation of acode of laws that set humane limits to personaldebts, and through the construction of a rec-tory at Ur where his daughter served as templepriestess. Ur was captured by Larsa, and Lipit-Ishtar died that same year.

Libaia (1690–1674 B.C.E.) An Assyrian king.

Lubalanda (first half of the 24th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of Lagash.

Lugalbanda (second half of the 28th centuryB.C.E.) The third of the four mythical kingsof Uruk, Lugalbanda is described as a shepherdwho attained divinity.

Lugal-dalu (ca. 2500 B.C.E.) Ruler of thesouthern Mesopotamian city-state of Adab.

Lugal-kinishe-dudu (ca. 2400 B.C.E.) Thisking of Uruk also held sway over Ur.

Lugal-shag-engur (ca. 2500 B.C.E.) Rulerof Lagash.

Lugal-ushumgal (2230–2200 B.C.E.) Rulerof Lagash.

Lugalzagesi (ca. 2340–2316 B.C.E.) Animperialist, Lugalzagesi began his career asruler of Umma. He went on to plunder Lagashand make himself king over Uruk. Having con-quered Sumer, he boasted of ruling the Near

East from sunrise to sunset (east to west) andfrom the Persian Gulf to the shores of theMediterranean. After a quarter of a century hisdreams of empire were eclipsed when he wasdefeated by another imperialist, Sargon ofAkkad.

Lu-kirilaza (first half of the 21st centuryB.C.E.) Governor of Lagash when it wasunder the domination of Ur.

Lullaia (1621–1618 B.C.E.) An Assyrianking.

Manishtusu (2269–2255 B.C.E.) Manishtusufollowed his twin brother Rimush to the throneof the Akkadian Empire founded by theirfather, Sargon of Akkad. During his reign,Manishtusu sent military expeditions across thePersian Gulf in quest of silver ore and otherprecious natural resources. One text relatesthat his courtiers murdered him with theircylinder seals—an excruciatingly slow way togo. It is possible, however, that the storyalludes to a murder plot that employed forgery.

Mar-biti-ahhe-iddina (941–?B.C.E.) Mar-biti-ahhe-iddina was the third member of theEighth Dynasty to sit on Babylon’s throne.

Mar-biti-apla-usur (ca. 975 B.C.E) Mar-biti-apla-usur was the founder and, to hisregret, sole member of Babylon’s SeventhDynasty, also known as the Elamite dynasty.

Marduk-apal-iddina I (1173–1161 B.C.E.)Marduk-apal-iddina was one of the last Kassitekings of Babylon. Four years after he died, theKassite dynasty fell.

Marduk-apal-iddina II (Biblical “Mero-dach-Baladan”) (721–710 B.C.E.) Marduk-apal-iddina II was a Chaldaean leader whobecame king of Babylon with the support of


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the Elamites. Sargon, the king of Assyria, triedtwice to unseat him militarily, and the secondtime forced him to flee to Elam for refuge.Seven years later with the support of theElamites and the Aramaeans of southern Iraq,Marduk-apal-iddina made another bid forpower, entering Babylon and declaring himselfking. Rightly viewing this as a challenge toAssyrian dominance, the new Assyrian king,

Sennacherib, attacked with his army andforced Marduk-apal-iddina to flee once more.But three years later the Chaldaean leader wasat it again, stirring up rebellion. This time hefled by ship, taking with him statues of thecountry’s gods, and he ultimately died in exile.Today, his only surviving portrait is carved onan ancient boundary stone. He is rememberedalso in the Bible (Isaiah 39) for having soughtto enlist King Hezekiah of Judah in his anti-Assyrian cause.

Marduk-apla-usur (early eighth centuryB.C.E.) Marduk-apla-usur was a Babylonianking of the Eighth Dynasty.

Marduk-balassu-iqbi (second half of theninth century B.C.E.) Under his reign, thepeace that had existed for almost a half centurybetween Babylonia and Assyria came to an endas a new Assyrian king, Shamshi-Adad V,raided Babylonian cities and succeeded in cap-turing Marduk-balassu-iqbi himself.

Marduk-bel-zeri (early eighth century B.C.E.)Marduk-bel-zeri ruled Babylon as a member ofits Eighth Dynasty.

Marduk-kabil-ahhesu (1156–1139 B.C.E.)Marduk-kabil-ahhesu founded Babylonia’sFourth Dynasty, also known as the SecondDynasty of Isin, the city-state that was the homeof its members. The dynasty established itself inBabylon once Elamite troops who had beenoccupying the city were expelled or withdrew.Marduk-kabil-ahhesu made incursions intoAssyrian territory as would his two successors,Itti-Marduk-balatu and Ninurta-nadin-shumi.

Marduk-nadin-ahhe (early 11th centuryB.C.E.) As king of Babylon, Marduk-nadin-ahhe invaded Assyria when it was ruled byTiglathpileser I. By capturing Ekallatum, he puthis forces just 30 miles south of Assyria’s royal


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3.11 This so-called boundary stone or kudurru,marks a real estate transaction in which theBabylonian king Marduk-apal-iddina II gave anoble title to lands formerly held by the king. Notehow the king is deliberately made taller than thenoble to convey his greater political stature. Indeed,even his walking stick is taller. At the top aresymbols of the gods. (Carl Bezold, Nineve undBabylon, 1909)

capital. The Assyrians struck back, attackingcities in northern Babylonia, including Dur-Kurigalzu and Babylon, where the royal palacewas targeted for destruction. Later in the king’sreign, a famine struck Babylonia and Aramaeantribesmen raided Babylonian territory.

Marduk-shapik-zeri (first half of the 11thcentury B.C.E.) During his reign the faminethat had begun in the days of his predecessor,Marduk-nadin-ahhe, abated, and a peace treatywas concluded with the Assyrians.

Marduk-zakir-shumi I (854–819 B.C.E.)Marduk-zakir-shumi’s position as Babylonianking was threatened by his brother Marduk-bel-usate’s ambition. His brother, moreover,had the backing of the Aramaeans. To hold theAramaeans in check, the Assyrian king Shal-maneser III sent in his army and won the day.With the rebellion over, to show his good faithto Babylon’s king, Shalmaneser humbly madethanksgiving offerings at the great shrines ofthe city’s gods. For good measure, he thendrove south to Sumer and pushed the Chal-daeans (another potential enemy of Babylonia)all the way back to the Persian Gulf.

Marduk-zer-x (ca. 1050 B.C.E.) Little isknown of this 10th king of Babylon’s FourthDynasty, not even the last syllable(s) of hisname—hence the “x.”

Me-durba (second half of the 26th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of Adab.

Melishipak (1188–1174 B.C.E.) Melishipakwas king of Babylon during the last century ofrule by the Kassite dynasty. Records show hebequeathed land to his son Marduk-apal-iddinaI, who succeeded him to the throne.

Merodach-Baladan See Marduk-apal-iddina II.

Mesannepadda (ca. 2560–2525 B.C.E.) Abead of lapis lazuli inscribed with the name ofthis king of Ur was found at Mari in northwest-ern Mesopotamia. That single bead is about allwe know of this Sumerian king.

Meshkiangasher (second half of the 28thcentury B.C.E.) The first of the four mythicalkings of Uruk, Meshkiangasher was—accord-ing to tradition—the son of the Sumerian sun-god, Utu.

Mesilim (ca. 2550 B.C.E.) An early and influ-ential ruler of Kish, Mesilim helped resolve aquarrel between two other Sumerian cities. Atone of them, Lagash, he built a temple to thecity’s patron god, Ningirsu.

Meskalamdug (second half of the 27th cen-tury B.C.E.) The tomb of this ruler of Ur wasunearthed by Sir Leonard Woolley. Among theobjects in the tomb were a golden oil lampshaped like a shell and an extraordinarilydetailed helmet of gold that simulated theking’s chignon hairstyle, complete with func-tional ear-holes for hearing.

Meskiagnunna (ca. 2485–2450 B.C.E.) Oneof the oldest inscriptions in Akkadian is foundon a bowl dedicated to this king of Ur by hisdevoted wife.

Mithridates I (171–138 B.C.E.) A Parthianking, Mithridates marched into Mesopotamia,capturing the cities of Babylon and Seleucia.To make himself more acceptable to the peopleof Mesopotamia, he described himself as a“king of kings” as had the Persian kings beforehim, and portrayed himself as sympathetic tothe values of Greek civilization to which Hel-lenistic monarchs before him had subscribed.

Mut-Ashkur (second half of the 18th centuryB.C.E.) An Assyrian king. His father and pre-


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decessor, Ishme-Dagan, had arranged a diplo-matically useful marriage for him with a Hur-rian princess.

Nabonassar See Nabu-nasir.

Nabonidus See Nabu-naid.

Nabopolassar See Nabu-apla-usur.

Nabu-apla-iddina (887–855? B.C.E.) Nabu-apla-iddina maintained the peace that hisfather, Nabu-shuma-ukin, had secured forBabylonia, and he signed an additional peacetreaty with the new Assyrian king, ShalmaneserIII. In addition, he devoted his energies toreactivating old religious rites and sites torenew his people’s spirituality and inviteheaven’s protection. His leadership fostered anera of cultural rebirth.

Nabu-apla-usur (Nabopolassar) (625–605B.C.E.) Nabu-apla-usur was the first memberof Babylonia’s 10th Dynasty, also known as theNeo-Babylonian or Chaldaean dynasty. Possi-bly of Chaldaean origin, Nabu-apla-usur madesouthern Mesopotamia (known as the Sea-Land) his powerbase. Following the death ofthe Babylonian king Kandalanu, he fought forthe mastery of Babylonia for seven yearsagainst armed Assyrian opposition. When theMedes captured Ashur, Nabu-apla-usur tookadvantage of the opportunity to form analliance with them through a treaty sealed bythe marriage of a Median princess to his son,Nebuchadnezzar II. With the fall of Ninevehin 612 B.C.E., Nabu-apla-usur achieved his goalof Mesopotamian sovereignty. Meanwhile, theEgyptians had moved military forces intoPalestine and Syria. He unsuccessfully tried tooppose them, but they were finally vanquishedby Nebuchadnezzar at the battle of Carchem-ish in 605 B.C.E. as Nabu-apla-usur lay dying inhis palace at Babylon. During his reign he had

devoted himself to the restoration of Babylon’smonuments, a task that his son continued afterhis father’s passing.

Nabu-kudurru-usur I (Nebuchadnezzar I,Nebuchadrezzar I) (1124–1103 B.C.E.) Nabu-kudurru-usur I was the fourth king to sit onBabylon’s throne after the fall of the Kassitedynasty and the city’s brief occupation by theElamites. Unlike his three predecessors whohad made military moves against the Assyriansto the north, he focused on Elam to the east,waging two campaigns, the first of which wasunsuccessful and the second of which suc-ceeded thanks to the help of an Elamite defec-tor. The king was proud of having recoveredfrom Elam a statue of the god Marduk that hadbeen looted from its sanctuary in Babylon.

Nabu-kudurru-usur II (NebuchadnezzarII, Nebuchadrezzar II) (604–562 B.C.E.)Thanks to the Bible, the most famousMesopotamian king of all was Nabu-kudurru-usur II. If his name seems unfamiliar, itsHebrew equivalent is not: Nebuchadnezzar (or,as it is sometimes spelled in closer keeping withthe Akkadian original, Nebuchadrezzar). Evenwithout the Bible, this king’s fame is welldeserved: he was one of Babylon’s greatestkings and sat on the throne for 43 years, one ofthe longest reigns in Mesopotamian history.His father was Nabopolassar (Nabu-apla-usur)and his wife was a Median princess namedAmytis. But Nebuchadnezzar didn’t just sit onthe throne. He had extensive military experi-ence even before he became king, including hisdefeat of Egypt’s army at Carchemish. In for-eign affairs, his eyes looked to the west, for hecoveted the tribute he could exact from thetrade-rich cities of Palestine and Syria, and thetimber he could harvest from the mountains ofLebanon. Of course, the pharaoh of Egyptwanted the same things, and that put Babyloniaand Egypt on a collision course. When the


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kingdom of Judaea twice rebelled against itsBabylonian masters, Nebuchadnezzar twicelaid siege to Jerusalem, destroying the city thesecond time (in 586 B.C.E.), despoiling andburning its Holy Temple, and marching thou-sands of Jews into captivity. Domestically,Nebuchadnezzar focused on large public worksprojects in 13 major Mesopotamian cities,completing them in part with slave labor. Hedevoted the greatest attention to his capital cityof Babylon, virtually rebuilding its fortifica-tions, substantially enlarging its palace, addingto the splendor of its temple tower, spanningthe Euphrates with a mighty bridge, and con-structing a grand processional boulevard andgateway that glistened in glazed brick. Thepublic museum he installed in his palace andfilled with antiquities may rank as the world’soldest museum. Nevertheless, despite Neb-uchadnezzar’s civic efforts and ambitious plans,within a quarter of a century after his death theNeo-Babylonian Empire he had helped fashionfell to the Persians, the consequence of succes-sors who were less determined and ruthlessthan he.

Nabu-mukin-apli (977–942 B.C.E.) Nabu-mukin-apli founded Babylon’s Eighth Dynasty,the so-called Dynasty of E, and he ruled for 36years. Invasions by Aramaeans were a persis-tent problem during his reign. For oneextended period the city of Babylon was cut offfrom its fertile countryside and religious pro-cessions were unable to commemorate theNew Year. Later the Aramaeans settled inSouthern Mesopotamia between the Tigris andElam. During his reign also, a tribe known asthe Kaldu (later called the Chaldaeans) invadedand settled in Sumer.

Nabu-mukin-zeri (ca. 730 B.C.E.) After thedeath of Nabu-nasir, two kings briefly ruledBabylonia. The second assassinated the firstand was, in turn, deposed by a powerful sheikh

named Nabu-mukin-zeri. Worried over politi-cal instability in Babylonia, the Assyrian kingTiglathpileser III made his move and pursuedNabu-mukin-zeri with his army. Failing tocapture him, the Assyrian nevertheless securedthe support of some Babylonian leaders anddeclared himself king.

Nabu-naid (Nabonidus) (556–539 B.C.E.)Nabu-naid was the last member of Babylon’sNeo-Babylonian dynasty, before the countrywas conquered by Persia. Nabu-naid’s careerwas distinguished by piety verging on preoccu-pation at a critical period in Mesopotamia’s his-tory. His mother had been a priestess of themoon-god Sin at the northern city of Harran;Nabu-naid would appoint his own daughterhigh priestess of the god at the southern city ofUr; and he himself devoted time to the recon-struction of both temples. His most radical act,however, was his withdrawal from public life,retreating to the oasis of Tema in Arabia, andabsenting himself from his capital city for 10years. In part, his actions may be explained byhis mother’s death at the age of 104 during theeighth year of his reign, but we will neverknow. His absence from Babylon, however,irritated the priests of Marduk since it pre-cluded the celebration of the spiritually impor-tant New Year Festival, adding to the rage thepriests felt at the king’s fixation over the godSin to the exclusion of Babylon’s principal deityand divine patron, Marduk. During hisabsence, Nabu-naid left his son Bel-shar-usurin charge of the government, a responsibilityBel-shar-usur failed to take seriously enough inview of the looming menace of Persian imperi-alism. Nabu-naid returned to Babylonia in 539B.C.E., but it was too late: the Persian army wasalready on the march. Nabu-naid was capturedand his son killed in battle. According to onetradition, Nabu-naid was not killed but insteadwas awarded a government post in central Iranas part of a Persian policy of amnesty. Nabu-


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naid and his son are both remembered inHebrew literature. Nabu-naid’s sojourn in thedesert is attributed to an extended fit of mad-ness during which he ate grass (according tothe book of Daniel, which confuses him withNebuchadnezzar); also he suffered from aking-sized case of boils (according to the“Prayer of Nabonidus” found among the DeadSea Scrolls). As for Bel-shar-usur (Belshazzar),he was reviled in the book of Daniel (chapter 5)for the ominous feast at which he saw thedivine writing on the wall that foretold hisempire’s doom. Nabu-naid himself has a morerespectable claim to fame as perhaps theworld’s first archaeologist: while rebuildingtemples, he explored their lower reaches forancient time-capsules called “foundationdeposits” put there by his predecessors. Theaesthetic and historic objects he found (includ-ing inscriptions and works of sculpture) werethen deposited by him in a special museum.

Nabu-nasir (Nabonassar) (747–734 B.C.E.)Nabu-nasir ruled Babylonia with the militaryhelp of Assyria’s king, Tiglathpileser III, whopushed back the Aramaeans and Chaldaeansand used deportation and resettlement asinstruments of control. In exchange, Tiglath-pileser received the title of “King of Sumer andAkkad.” Six years after Nabu-nasir’s death, theAssyrian king would declare himself “King ofBabylon” as well. Drawing upon Babylonianrecords, the second century C.E. Greekastronomer Ptolemy drew up a list ofMesopotamian rulers from Nabu-nasir (whomhe called “Nabonassar”) to Alexander theGreat, noting remarkable astronomical eventsthat occurred during their reigns. Calculatingwhen the celestial events would take place,modern historians have been able to accuratelydate the reigns of Babylonia’s kings.

Nabu-shuma-ishkun (760–748 B.C.E.) Thelast member of Babylon’s Eighth Dynasty,

Nabu-shuma-ishkun presided over a time ofcivic violence and unrest.

Nabu-shuma-ukin (899–888? B.C.E.) Thoughthreatened by the Assyrian army, Nanu-shuma-ukin negotiated a treaty that secured apeace for Babylonia that endured for 80 years,providing the framework for economic stabil-ity. The peace treaty was sealed by a doublewedding in which each king married a daugh-ter of the other.

Nabu-shum-libur (1032–1025 B.C.E.) Nabu-shum-libur was the 11th and last member ofBabylon’s Fourth Dynasty. The westernprovinces of his kingdom were subject to fre-quent raids by nomadic tribes. A marble weightsurvives, optimistically inscribed with the title,“King of the World,” but priestly omens werealready boding disaster, a prophecy fulfilledwhen his dynasty fell.

Nam-mahazi (2113–2111 B.C.E.) Ruler ofLagash.

Naplanum (2025–2005 B.C.E.) Possibly anAmorite, Naplanum ruled Larsa when Isin wasthe dominant power in southern Mesopotamia.

Naram-Sin (2254–2218 B.C.E.) The grand-son of Sargon of Akkad, Naram-Sin conductedmilitary campaigns along his kingdom’s far-flung borders, regaling himself with the title“King of the Four Quarters (of the Earth)” andcalling himself divine. A stela now in the Lou-vre shows him proudly ascending a mountainin triumph over his enemies. Tradition declaresthat his overweening pride angered the gods,who chastised him for his hubris.

Naram-Sin (second half of the 19th centuryB.C.E.) An Assyrian king who bore the samename as an illustrious earlier ruler of Akkad.Originally the son of a king of Eshnunna, he


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favored the city and fostered its influence in theaffairs of northwestern Mesopotamia.

Naram-Sin (second half of the 19th centuryB.C.E.) A ruler of Eshnunna, he allied himselfwith Mari and fought against the Assyrians. Hecalled himself the divine “king of the world.”Easily confused with a contemporary Assyrianking of the same name who ruled around thesame time.

Narses (end of the third century C.E.) A Sas-sanian ruler, he challenged the power of Romein the Near East by invading Mesopotamia. Hewas eventually defeated on the battlefield andsubmitted to a peace treaty that ceded territoryto Rome as far east as the Tigris.

Nazimaruttash (1323–1298 B.C.E.) Nazi-maruttash was a Kassite king of Babylonia andthe son and successor of the warrior andbuilder Kurigalzu II. The Babylonians duringhis reign clashed with the Assyrians over theirmutual interest in Elam. The result was atreaty defining their national borders.

Nebuchadnezzar I (Nebuchardrezzar I)See Nabu-kudurru-usur I.

Nebuchadnezzar II (Nebuchadrezzar II)see Nabu-kudurru-usur II.

Nergal-shar-usur (Neriglisaros, Neriglissar)(559–556 B.C.E.) Nergal-shar-usur was a busi-nessman who became king of Babylon by killinghis sister’s husband, Amel-Marduk. During hisfour-year reign he militarily restored Babylon’scontrol over the Cilician coast in southwesternTurkey and engaged in public works at home.When he died, he was succeeded by his youngNero-like son, Labashi-Marduk, who was tor-tured and murdered nine months later.

Neriglisaros See Nergal-shar-usur.

Nin-kisalsi (first half of the 26th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of Adab.

Ninurta-apal-Ekur (1192–1180 B.C.E.) Forsome reason, the women in this Assyrian king’sharem repeatedly squabbled, compelling himto issue decree after decree to maintain order.

Ninurta-apla-x (ca. 800 B.C.E.) Little isknown of this Babylonian king of the Eighth


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3.12 As the stellar symbols of his patron godsshine above him, the larger-than-life figure ofNaram-Sin of Akkad triumphantly towers over afallen enemy king as Naram-Sin’s army looks onfrom below. (Rogers, A History of Babylonia andAssyria, 1915; photo from a 1900 French workentitled Délégation en Perse)

Dynasty, not even the last syllable(s) of hisname: hence the “x.”

Ninurta-kudurri-usur (ca. 950 B.C.E.) Nin-urta-kudurri-usur was the son of Nabu-mukin-apli and became the second king of Babylon’sEighth Dynasty.

Ninurta-nadin-shumi (second half of the12th century B.C.E.) The third member ofBabylon’s so-called Second Dynasty of Isin,Ninurta-nadin-shumi made incursions intoAssyrian territory as had his two predecessors.He was the father of the next Babylonian king,Nabu-kudurru-usur I.

Nur-Adad (1865–1850 B.C.E.) Nur-Adad,a king of Larsa, expanded his city’s territoryto the north. When the Euphrates, uponwhich his kingdom’s life depended, changedits course, Nur-Adad set into motion a mas-sive project to reroute its waters, resettle peo-ple whose homes had been destroyed, andrebuild structures that had been damaged notonly in Larsa proper but also in nearby Eriduand Ur.

Nur-ahum (first half of the 20th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of Eshnunna who formed analliance with the city-state of Isin.

Nur-ili (first half of the 15th century B.C.E.)An Assyrian king.

Nur-mer (ca. 2150 B.C.E.) Military gover-nor of Mari.

Odenath (ca. 250 C.E.) As king of Palmyrain Syria, he made his kingdom a power to bereckoned with. His foreign policy was pro-Roman, and with Roman backing he attackedthe city of Ctesiphon. Odenath’s wife and suc-cessor was the legendary Zenobia.

Orodes II (57–37 B.C.E.) After the disastrousdefeat of the Romans at Carrhae (Harran), thisParthian king was awarded the severed head ofthe Roman general Crassus, supposedly whileOrodes was watching a performance of Euripi-des’ savage tragedy, The Bacchae.

Parattarna (ca. 1530 B.C.E.) A Hurrian kingof the Mitanni.

Pescennius Niger (193–194 C.E.) Pescen-nius Niger served as governor of Syria underthe Roman emperor Pertinax. At news of Perti-nax’s death, Pescennius’s army proclaimed himRome’s new emperor. Defeated by anotherclaimant to the throne, Septimius Severus,Pescennius fled east, but he was caught andkilled near Antioch.

Phraates II (139/138–128 B.C.E.) The son ofMithridates I and a king of Parthia, Phraatesrebuffed a challenge by the Seleucid king Anti-ochus VII to take over control of Mesopotamia.

Pirig-me (2117–2115 B.C.E.) Ruler of Larsa.

Puzur-Ashur I (ca. 2000 B.C.E.) This earlyAssyrian king was the founder of a new dynastythat ruled from the city of Ashur. Unlike hispredecessors who had Hurrian names, Puzur-Ashur is the first Assyrian monarch whose lan-guage was Semitic Akkadian, a linguistic andethnic precedent.

Puzur-Ashur II (ca. 1850 B.C.E.) An Assyr-ian king.

Puzur-Ashur III (1521–1498 B.C.E.) TheAssyrian king Puzur-Ashur III concluded atreaty with king Burnaburiash I of Babyloniadelineating the border between their two king-doms (near Samarra), thus establishing the his-toric geographical division between Assyria inthe north and Babylonia in the south. The


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terms of the treaty were confirmed near theend of the century by Ashur-bel-nisheshu ofAssyria and Karaindash of Babylonia.

Puzur-Ishtar (2050–2025 B.C.E.) Militarygovernor of Mari.

Puzur-Nirah (ca. 2400 B.C.E.) Ruler ofAkshak.

Puzur-Sin (first half of the 24th centuryB.C.E.) Founder of Kish’s Fourth Dynasty.

Rim-Sin I (1822–1763 B.C.E.) His 60-yearreign as ruler of Larsa was the longest of anyancient Near Eastern king except for Egypt’sRamses II, who reigned for 67. Rim-Sin wasproudest of his conquest of Isin, Larsa’s age-old rival. Eventually, Larsa itself was con-quered in 1768 B.C.E. by the combined forcesof Mari (under Zimri-Lim) and Babylon(under Hammurabi).

Rim-Sin II (1741–1736 B.C.E.) Ruler ofLarsa after its conquest by Hammurabi ofBabylon, who stripped the city of its fortifica-tions.

Rimush (2278–2270 B.C.E.) Despite rebel-lions, Rimush successfully maintained thekingdom he inherited from his father, Sargonof Akkad, which stretched from Syria in thewest to Iran in the east.

Sabium (1844–1831 B.C.E.) The son ofSumu-la-El, Sabium was Babylon’s third king.He supervised the construction of temples andcanals, and he strengthened the city’s walls.

Samium (1976–1942 B.C.E.) Ruler of Larsa.

Sammuramat See Semiramis.

Samsi-Addu See Shamshi-Adad.

Samsu-ditana (1625–1595 B.C.E.) The sonof Ammi-saduqa, Samsu-ditana was the lastmember of Babylon’s First Dynasty. His reignended with a Hittite assault upon the city thatled to Babylon’s destruction and the king’sprobable death. Thereafter Babylonia wasruled by a Kassite dynasty.

Samsu-iluna (1749–1712 B.C.E.) The sonand successor of Hammurabi I, Samsu-iluna ofBabylon spent most of his 38-year reign tryingto protect the territory won by his fatheragainst foreign invasion (by the Kassites) andinternal insurrections in the northern andsouthern provinces. By the end of his reign, thenorth and south had been lost, and Babylononly controlled Akkad. In the course of subdu-ing rebellions in Sumer, Samsu-iluna lootedand burned the temples of Ur and Uruk, anddemolished their cities’ walls.

Sargon of Akkad (Sharru-kin) (2334–2279B.C.E.) Sargon was a Semitic ruler of Akkadwho conquered Sumer and united the two landsunder his leadership, thereby forming the mostextensive kingdom Mesopotamia had ever seen.His capital was founded at Agade, “the onlyroyal city of ancient Iraq whose location remainsunknown” (Roux 1992: 152). His imperialisticambitions carried him and his army to Iran inthe east and Syria in the west. As he boasted inan inscription: “Let any king who regards him-self as my equal go where I have gone!” A legend(that may have inspired the biblical story ofMoses’ birth) related that his mother gave birthto him in secret, thereafter placing him in a reedbasket and floating him down a river until hewas found by someone (a drawer of water) whoadopted and raised him. Shown divine favor (bythe goddess Ishtar), he went on to fulfill hisroyal destiny. Sargon’s name means “legitimateruler,” implying that he may in fact have been ausurper, a theory supported by another account:that he had served as cup-bearer to king Ur-


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zababa of Kish until he seized the king’s thronefor himself.

Sargon I (Sharru-kin) (first half of the 19thcentury B.C.E.) Sargon I was an Assyrianking who bore the same name as an illustriousone who earlier ruled Akkad. Like his prede-cessors in Assyria, he encouraged the found-ing of trading colonies in Turkey, and he alsoworked at the never-ending task of repairinghis city’s fortifications.

Sargon II (Sharru-kin) (721–705 B.C.E.) Thename of this Assyrian king, Sargon, means“legitimate king,” and indicates that he—likethe original Sargon of Akkad—may have been a

usurper who used such a title to make peoplethink he deserved the throne. Though SargonII had his share of military successes, he wascontinually pressed on all fronts by thosenations who coveted Assyria’s territory and hertribute-paying vassal states. Among his enemiesfor a time were the Muski, or Phrygians, anAnatolian people ruled by a king named Mita—the legendary Midas who had the touch of gold.Sargon built a new capital city for himself at aplace he called Dur-Sharrukin (“Sargon’sFortress”), later known as Khorsabad. Thepalace was completed a year before Sargon diedin battle, but later kings preferred to rule fromNineveh, so it was never used thereafter as aroyal residence. The tomb of Sargon’s queen,Taliya, may have been uncovered in yet anotherpalace, an earlier one at Kalhu (Nimrud).

Saustatar (ca. 1500 B.C.E.) Hurrian king ofthe Mitanni.

Seleucus I (305–281 B.C.E.) Seleucus wasone of the successors of Alexander the Greatwho divided up and ruled Alexander’s empiresubsequent to his death. After fighting off thechallenges of a rival named Antigonus, Seleu-cus consolidated his hold over Babylonia andextended his dominion so that it includedSyria and half of Turkey. He founded a newcapital he named for himself, Seleucia-on-the-Tigris, and he maintained a second capital aswell farther west at Antioch-on-the-Orontes.The Hellenistic dynasty which he established,the Seleucid, endured for almost two and ahalf centuries until its defeat by the Romans in64 B.C.E. Seleucus was succeeded by his son,Antiochus I.

Seleucus II (245–226 B.C.E.) Son of theHellenistic ruler Antiochus II, Seleucus suf-fered military defeats and saw the size of hisinherited kingdom shrink. In the end, he diedof a fall from a horse.


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3.13 This bronze royal portrait head dates to thelate third millennium B.C.E. and is believed to bearthe likeness of Sargon the Great. It is housed in theIraq Museum in Baghdad. (PhotographieGiraudon/Art Resource, N.Y.)

Semiramis (Sammuramat) (ca. 823–811 B.C.E.)Semiramis was the wife of Shamshi-Adad Vand the mother of his successor, Adad-nirariIII. She took the extraordinary step of accom-panying her husband on at least one militarycampaign, and she is prominently mentionedin royal inscriptions. Thanks to embellish-ments added to her biography by later Greekhistorians, she became the most famous queenof Assyria, legendary for her beauty, cruelty,and sexual appetite.

Sennacherib (Sin-ahhe-eriba) (704–681B.C.E.) Sennacherib was the son of Sargon IIof Assyria. The chief problem during his reignwas the intransigence of Babylonia, which heeventually dealt with by besieging Babylon anddevastating the city after its capture by floodingit with the rechanneled waters of the Euphrates.To force King Hezekiah of Judah to pay himtribute, he laid siege to the kingdom’s cities, acampaign that he commemorated in sculpturalreliefs and annals in which he boasted of havingshut Hezekiah in Jerusalem like a bird in a cage(see also 2 Kings 18). Turning from his father’scapital of Dur-sharru-kin (Khorsabad), Sen-nacherib directed his energies toward the con-struction of a new capital at Nineveh, adorningit with a palace “without rival.” Nineveh wouldremain thereafter the capital city of Assyriankings. Sennacherib was stabbed to death by anassassin (possibly one of his sons) or, accordingto another account, was crushed to death by themonumental weight of a winged bull that hejust happened to be standing beneath.

Septimius Severus (193–211 C.E.) ThisRoman emperor campaigned with his army inMesopotamia and imposed Roman authorityon the northern part of the country with thehelp of two legions. His campaign and the cap-ture of Ctesiphon were celebrated in sculpturalrelief on his triumphal arch that still stands atthe western end of the Roman Forum.

Shagarakti-Shuriash (1255–1243 B.C.E.) Con-temporary economic texts suggest that Baby-lonia faced hard economic times under thereign of this monarch. The level of individualdebt was high, forcing many people to sellthemselves into slavery as a means of repayingtheir creditors.

Shallim-ahhe (ca. 1950 B.C.E.) The son ofPuzur-Ashur I, Shallim-ahhe was the second


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3.14 Sennacherib on his throne. The king holds abow and arrows in his hands to signify his martialcharacter. (Newman, The Thrones and Palaces ofBabylon and Nineveh from Sea to Sea, 1876)

member of Assyria’s new Akkadian dynasty. Herenovated the temple of the god Ashur, thepatron god of the city which bore his name andthe god of the Assyrian nation. Shallim-ahhe’sname turns up in letters uncovered in an Assyr-ian merchant colony located in northeasternTurkey.

Shalmaneser I (Shulmani-ashared) (1274–1245 B.C.E.) Shalmaneser I was an Assyrianking and leader in war who viewed himself asthe servant of the god Ashur in extendingAssyria’s dominion over other nations. Hiswas the last reign in which the kingdom ofMitanni challenged Assyrian power. Shal-maneser defeated Mitanni’s Hurrian king andappointed governors to rule the kingdom there-after. He boasted in his inscriptions of havingturned his enemies’ cities into abandoned ruins.Among other campaigns, his army made a thrustinto the territory of Urartu in Armenia.

Shalmaneser II (1031–1020 B.C.E.) AnAssyrian king.

Shalmaneser III (858–824 B.C.E.) The sonof the great Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II,Shalmaneser III followed in his father’s imperi-alistic footsteps (or chariot tracks). He directed34 military campaigns, over two times as manyas his father had, and he recorded his name andconquests in inscriptions and chronologicalannals more than any other Assyrian king. Atthe royal capital of Kalhu (Nimrud) he con-structed a treasury and arsenal dubbed “FortShalmaneser” by modern archaeologists. Shal-maneser died of old age in the midst of a longcivil war instigated by one of his sons.

Shalmaneser IV (first half of the eighth cen-tury B.C.E.) The role of the Assyrian king ascommander in chief of the nation’s armedforces seems to have been subverted in thereign of Shalmaneser IV by a general named

Shamshi-ilu, who boasted of his victories with-out even mentioning the king’s name.

Shalmaneser V (726–722 B.C.E.) This Assyr-ian king was the son of Tiglathpileser III, but helacked his father’s acumen. By making formerlyindependent cities pay taxes, he ignited a revoltthat terminated his reign (and life) after fouryears. The tomb of his wife, Yaba, may havebeen found beneath the floor of their palace atKalhu (Nimrud).

Shamash-mudammiq (?–ca. 900 B.C.E.)During the reign of Shamash-mudammiq,Babylonia was invaded twice by the Assyrianking Adad-nirari II. Each time the Babyloni-ans were vanquished and suffered major terri-torial losses.

Shamash-shum-ukin (668–648 B.C.E.) Antic-ipating his own death, King Esarhaddon ofAssyria chose his son, crown prince Shamash-shum-ukin, to govern Babylonia. He appointedhis other son, Ashurbanipal, to govern Assyria.After Esarhaddon died, Ashurbanipal insistedthat Shamash-shum-ukin be subservient tohim. For 16 years, Shamash-shum-ukin toler-ated this humiliating arrangement, but hefinally plotted his brother’s overthrow. Learn-ing of the plot, Ashurbanipal marched onBabylon and a civil war ensued. After a two-year siege, Babylon—ravaged by famine anddisease—fell. Shamash-shum-ukin died in afire that consumed the palace, a fire—legendsays—that he set himself.

Shamshi-Adad I (Samsi-Addu) (1809–1766B.C.E.) Before the time of Shamshi-Adad, thekings of Assyria had used the title of ishakkum(“governor”), equivalent to the Sumerian title ofensi. Shamshi-Adad was the first to refer to him-self as sharrum (“king”) and even shar kishshatim(“king of the universe”). Significantly, he wasnot of royal blood, and therefore he probably


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sought to enhance his prestige through theadoption of more magnificent titles than thoseused by his predecessors. His reign is docu-mented by the archives of Mari, where his sonserved as governor. Shamshi-Adad’s domainreached to the Mediterranean, and south to theBabylonian empire of his contemporary, Ham-murabi, with whom he signed a treaty.

Shamshi-Adad II (1585–1580 B.C.E.) AnAssyrian king.

Shamshi-Adad III (first half of the 16th cen-tury B.C.E.) Shamshi-Adad III was an Assyr-ian king who prided himself on repairing thecrumbling tops of the temple towers in his cap-ital city.

Shamshi-Adad IV (ca. 1050 B.C.E.) AnAssyrian king of Babylonian origin.

Shamshi-Adad V (823–811 B.C.E.) The sonand successor of Shalmaneser III, Shamshi-Adad V of Assyria invaded Babylonia despitethe good diplomatic relations that had earlierexisted between the two countries. Captured,the Babylonian king and his advisers weretransported to Nineveh where they were exe-cuted by being skinned alive. Shamshi-Adadwas also husband to the legendary Semiramis(Sammuramat).

Shapur I (Sapor) (middle of the third cen-tury C.E.) Shapur was the successor ofArdeshir and the second Sassanian ruler ofMesopotamia. In his wars against Rome, hedestroyed the city of Ashur and surrounded aRoman army commanded by the emperorValerian. Valerian himself was taken prisonerand died in captivity.

Shar-kalli-sharri (2217–2193 B.C.E.) Theson of Naram-Sin of Akkad, this Assyrian kingwitnessed the collapse of the empire his grand-

father Sargon had built. Though he built tem-ples to the gods, their favor deserted him asnomadic tribes swept across his borders and hisauthority crumbled.

Sharma-Adad I (1673–1662 B.C.E.) AnAssyrian king.

Sharma-Adad II (1601 B.C.E.) An Assyrianking.

Sharria (end of the 20th century B.C.E.)Ruler of Eshnunna.

Sharru-kin See Sargon.

Shattuara I (ca. 1300 B.C.E.) After thebreakdown of the Mitanni empire, the king ofAssyria, Adad-Nirari I, first deported this Hur-rian king and then relented and sent him home.But when Shattuara fomented a revolt, Adad-Nirari attacked his capital and killed him.

Shattuara II (ca. 1275 B.C.E.) Possibly thelast of the Hurrian rulers of what was left of theonce-great Mitanni Empire.

Shu-Dagan (second half of the 23rd centuryB.C.E.) Military governor of Mari.

Shu-ilishu (1984–1975 B.C.E.) This ruler ofIsin became a benefactor of Ur. He built amonumental gateway for the city and retrievedfrom Elam a purloined idol depicting Ur’spatron deity, Nanna, god of the moon.

Shulgi (2094–2047 B.C.E.) Shulgi, the Ur-born son and successor of Ur-Nammu,required that he be worshiped as a god duringhis lifetime. He had statues of himself set upthroughout his empire and decreed that offer-ings should be placed before them twice aweek. As Julius and Augustus Caesar would dotwo thousand years later (via July and August),


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he even named a month in the calendar forhimself. When he wasn’t strengthening hisempire’s frontiers, Shulgi was bureaucraticallytightening his control over its economy, goingso far as to tax the temple estates of the gods.He prided himself on his stamina, boasting hecould run the hundred or so miles betweenNippur and Ur roundtrip in a single day, andhe improved public roads, furnishing themwith landscaped rest stops. Despite hisphysique and energy, Shulgi may have died vio-lently from an assassin’s blow, along with hisconsorts Geme-Ninlila and Shulgi-shimti.

Shulmani-ashared See Shalmaneser.

Shushsi (middle of the 17th century B.C.E.)Ruler of the Sea-Land.

Shu-Sin (first half of the 24th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of Akshak.

Shu-Sin (2037–2029 B.C.E.) Shu-Sin was aSumerian king of Ur. Like the Roman emperorHadrian, Shu-Sin built a long wall to blockincursions by barbarians. Hadrian’s barbarianswere the Scots, who tried to invade RomanBritain in the second century C.E.; Shu-Sin’s bar-barians were the Amorites, who had their eyes onhis fertile lands and their riches. Hadrian’s Wallwent east to west across England for 73 miles;Shu-Sin’s stretched for 170 miles from the Tigrisin the east to the Euphrates in the west. Shu-Sinwas also the male lead in a series of erotic poemsin Akkadian written in dialogue form similar tothe later biblical Song of Songs.

Shuttarna I (ca. 1560 B.C.E.) A Hurrian ruler.

Shuttarna II (ca. 1400 B.C.E.) A Hurrianking of the Mitanni.

Shu-Turul (2168–2154 B.C.E.) Shu-Turulwas the last king to govern the shattered

empire that Sargon of Akkad had founded acentury and a half before.

Silli-Adad (1842–1835 B.C.E.) He ruledLarsa briefly before dying in a battle againstthe forces of Babylon.

Simbar-shipak (1024–1007 B.C.E.) Simbar-shipak was the founder of Babylon’s short-livedFifth Dynasty, also called the Second Sea-Landdynasty because its founder may have comefrom the south. Simbar-shipak, who followedNabu-shum-libur to the throne, did his best torestore public confidence by lending his sup-port to traditional religious activities, but hefell victim to a coup. Two now nameless kingsfollowed him in quick succession and thedynasty ended in 1004 B.C.E.

Sin-ahhe-eriba See Sennacherib.

Sin-eribam (middle of the 19th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of Larsa.

Sin-iddinam (1849–1843 B.C.E.) A king ofLarsa, Sin-iddinam reinforced the imperialisticpolicies of his predecessors. According toreports, he was killed when a chunk of brickworkfell from the top of his city’s temple to the sun.

Sin-iqisham (middle of the 19th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of Larsa.

Sin-magir (1827–1817 B.C.E.) We know lit-tle about this king of Isin except that he was soloved by a concubine, named Nattuptum, thatshe donated money to construct a building inhis honor.

Sin-muballit (1812–1793 B.C.E.) Son ofApil-Sin, Sin-muballit was Babylon’s fifth king.Domestically, he engaged in public works pro-jects. Externally, he joined in an alliance tocurb the territorial ambitions of Larsa, but hewas defeated by its king, Rim-Sin.


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Sin-shar-ishkun (second half of the seventhcentury B.C.E.) Sin-shar-ishkun, a son ofAshurbanipal, vied with his brother, Ashur-etil-ilani, for the crown of Assyria. He succeeded himto the throne, becoming the next to the last kingAssyria would have. Under his reign the city ofNineveh was attacked and captured by a com-bined force of Babylonians and Medes. His lifewas either spared by the enemy or, according toanother source, lost when the palace caught fire.

Sumu-Abum (1894–1881 B.C.E.) Sumu-Abum was one of a number of Amorite sheikhswho led their tribes into Mesopotamia duringthe early second millennium B.C.E. Sumu-Abum chose as his headquarters a small city onthe middle of the Euphrates called “The Gateof the Gods” (Ka-dingir-ra in Sumerian andBab-ilani in Akkadian), the city that came to beknown in the Bible as Babylon. Sumu-Abumbecame its first king and founded its First

Dynasty. To strengthen his position, he forti-fied the city with defensive walls and foughtneighboring kings to establish his supremacy.

Sumu-El (1894–1866 B.C.E.) As king ofLarsa, he continued the expansionist policies ofhis predecessor, Gungunum. Sumu-El divertedwater away from Isin and wrested away itsauthority over Nippur.

Sumu-la-El (1880–1845 B.C.E.) Sumu-la-Elwas the second king of Babylon’s First Dynasty.During his 36-year reign, he strengthenedBabylon’s defenses and battled Kish and theincursions of nomadic tribes.

Tiglathpileser I (1115–1077 B.C.E.) Activethroughout his almost 40-year reign asAssyria’s king, Tiglathpileser I led expeditionafter expedition against his nation’s enemieson the north, south, and west. He was the


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3.15 Grooms lead the horses to Tiglathpileser III’s chariot. As the driver grips the reins, a servant holds aparasol to keep the sun off the king’s head. (Newman, The Thrones and Palaces of Babylon and Nineveh fromSea to Sea, 1876)

first Assyrian king to record and celebrate hisvictories in chronological annals, and to ideo-logically justify his conquests. His annals arealso the first to mention the Aramaeans, atribe that would remain a thorn in Assyria’sside for centuries to come. In his militarycampaigns, he defeated King Nebuchadnez-zar I of Babylon and marched westward to theMediterranean, where he went fishing andcaught a narwhal, a cross between a dolphinand a swordfish. His annals also boasted ofhis having killed 920 lions, 800 from his char-iot and 120 on foot. Back home, he set up apalace library, supervised the codification ofAssyrian laws and judicial precedents, andplanted foreign and domestic flora in luxuri-ous gardens and parks. The lengthy résuméof this Assyrian Teddy Roosevelt ended when

he was murdered and succeeded by a nonde-script conspirator.

Tiglathpileser II (967–935 B.C.E.) Duringthe reign of this Assyrian king, the Aramaeansadvanced farther into Assyrian territory.

Tiglathpileser III (744–727 B.C.E.) ThisAssyrian king reinvigorated his nation’s imperi-alistic dreams by systematic reorganization. Toincrease his own power, he decreased theauthority of nobles by reducing the size of theterritory each controlled and the autonomythey previously possessed. He also restructuredthe army, making conscripts subordinate to anew permanent corps of professional soldiers.In addition, he strengthened Assyria’s hold onconquered lands by deporting patriotic native


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3.16 The military might of Assyria inspired fear and respect. On this limestone relief, the eighth-century B.C.E. king Tiglathpileser III (second from the left) receives homage. While the king stands bowin hand conversing with two officials, a groveling ruler kisses his foot in obeisance. On the far rightanother figure has his hands manacled. Meanwhile, at the far left, a servant whisks flies fromTiglathpileser’s head. (© 1984 The Detroit Institute of Arts [Founders Society Purchase, RalphHarman Booth Bequest Fund])

populations and replacing them with loyal set-tlers; the deportees were then used as laborersin outlying provinces.

Tiptakzi (end of the 17th century B.C.E.)Tiptakzi was the king of the Kassites at thetime of the capture of Babylon by the Hittites.Subsequent to the event, the Kassites assumedthe throne of Babylon, which they were to holdfor over four centuries.

Tiridates I (248–211 B.C.E.) The secondParthian king to rule over Mesopotamia.

Tiriqan (Tirigan) (?–2120 B.C.E.) Tiriqan,a Gutian tribesman, reigned over Mesopotamiafor a little over a month, but his fall marked theend of nearly a century of Gutian domination.When his army was defeated by a coalition ledby Uruk, Tiriqan was captured. The king ofUruk then dramatized his victory by forcingTiriqan to lie on the ground while he put hisfoot on Tiriqan’s neck.

Trajan (98–117 C.E.) Famous for his defeat ofDacian tribes in Romania, the Roman emperorTrajan invaded Mesopotamia, capturing theParthian capital of Ctesiphon, and marching tothe Persian Gulf. He then declared Mesopo-tamia a province of the Roman Empire, but hewas ultimately forced to retreat.

Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244–1208 B.C.E.) Tukulti-Ninurta was a warrior and Assyrian empire-builder in the tradition of his father andpredecessor, Shalmaneser I. His defeat of theBabylonian king Kashtiliash resulted in Baby-lonia being ruled for a time by Assyrian gover-nors. In literature, Tukulti-Ninurta’s victoryover Kashtiliash was celebrated in an epic, theso-called Tukulti-Ninurta Epic, the only Assyr-ian one we possess. In the end he was murderedin his palace by conspirators led by his son,Ashur-nadin-apli.

Tukulti-Ninurta II (beginning of the ninthcentury B.C.E.) This Assyrian king com-pletely rebuilt the wall protecting his capitalcity of Ashur. He toured Mesopotamia with hisarmy, collecting tribute on the way, and heentrenched Assyria’s hold on its subject territo-ries by building fortressess and fostering thesettlement of underpopulated areas.

Turam-Dagan (2071–2051 B.C.E.) Militarygovernor of Mari.

Tushratta (ca. 1375 B.C.E.) A Hurrian kingof the Mitanni, Tushratta sent his daughter tojoin the harem of pharaoh Amenhotep III as ameans of strengthening diplomatic tiesbetween the two nations in the event of Hittiteaggression. Tushratta also corresponded, as theAmarna letters show, with Queen Tiye ofEgypt and her son Amenhotep IV (later namedAkhenaton). When Amenhotep III was ailing,Tushratta sent him a statue of Ishtar of Nin-eveh in the hope that the goddess’ powerswould cure him. Tushratta’s brother, ArtatamaII, may have set up a separate ruling dynasty.Whatever the case, Tushratta was in the endmurdered by a son he did not choose to suc-ceed him. The other son, Shattiwaza, the right-ful heir, sought refuge first in Babylon andthen, when refused, fled to the Hittites for asy-lum, as his father’s kingdom disintegrated.

Uhub (ca. 2570 B.C.E.) An early ruler of Kish.

Ulamburiash (ca. 1475 B.C.E.) Ulamburiashdefeated the king of the Sea-Land in battle,and thereby regained control over Sumer,which had seceded from the BabylonianEmpire after the death of Hammurabi I.

Unzi (second half of the 25th century B.C.E.)Ruler of Akshak.

Ur-Baba (2155–2142 B.C.E.) Ruler of Lagash.


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Urdukuga (1836–1828 B.C.E.) Ruler of Isin.

Ur-gar (2114 B.C.E.) Ruler of Lagash.

Ur-gigira (2146–2141 B.C.E.) A member ofUruk’s Fourth Dynasty.

Ur-Nammu (2112–2095 B.C.E.) Ur-Nammufounded the glorious Third Dynasty of Ur thatfilled the power vacuum left when the SargonicEmpire collapsed. To court the gods’ favor andthank them for their blessings, he undertookthe construction of towering ziggurats at Eridu,Nippur, Uruk, and Ur, and he ringed Ur withwalls “high as a shining mountain.” To increase

agricultural productivity, he dug new irrigationcanals and dredged old ones, at the same timepromoting foreign trade. And to bring justice tothe land, he (or possibly his son Shulgi) promul-gated the oldest surviving code of Meso-potamian law. Praised in hymns for his valorand good works, Ur-Nammu died on the bat-tlefield, where sadly “his body lay tossed asidelike a broken urn.”

Ur-Nanshe (ca. 2550 B.C.E.) This ruler ofLagash engaged in building activities and isproudly depicted on a plaque carrying a basketof clay on his head to make bricks for a newtemple. Ur-Nanshe also promoted foreign


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3.17 Observed by his queen and courtiers, Ur-Nanshe, with his son in tow, proudly commences theconstruction of a new temple. Below, we see him celebrating with drink in hand. (E. de Sarzec, Découvertesen Chaldée, 1884–1912)

trade between his own city and far-off Dilmunin the Persian Gulf.

Ur-nigina (2153–2147 B.C.E.) A member ofUruk’s Fourth Dynasty.

Ur-Ningirsu (2121–2118 B.C.E.) Ruler ofLagash and successor of Gudea.

Ur-Ningizzida (second half of the 20th cen-tury B.C.E.) Ruler of Eshnunna.

Ur-Ninkimara (first half of the 21st centuryB.C.E.) Governor of Lagash when it wasdominated by Ur.

Ur-Ninmar (second half of the 20th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of Eshnunna.

Ur-Ninsuna (first half of the 21st centuryB.C.E.) Governor of Lagash when it was domi-nated by Ur.

Ur-Ninurta (1923–1896 B.C.E.) A usurper,Ur-Ninurta took the throne of Isin upon thedeath of Lipit-Ishtar, but he lost it when he waskilled in battle some 30 years later. With hisdefeat, Larsa seized the lands Isin had controlled.

Uruinimgina See Urukagina.

Urukagina (ca. 2350 B.C.E.) Ruler ofLagash. Before his military defeat by the rulerof Uruk, Urukagina instituted social reforms tofree citizens from the crushing weight of heavydebt and excessive taxation.

Ur-Zababa (ca. 2340 B.C.E.) Ur-Zababa wasthe last member of Kish’s Fourth Dynasty. Hewas deposed by a usurper who had served as hisroyal cup-bearer, the ambitious Sargon of Akkad.

Urzigurumash (second half of the 17th cen-tury B.C.E.) Urzigurumash was a Kassite king

in Babylonia who took the throne afterKashtiliash II.

Ushpia (ca. 2025 B.C.E.) An Assyrian kingwho, to judge by his name, was probably Hur-rian in origin.

Ushshi (first half of the 17th century B.C.E.)Ushshi became the leader of the Kassitesin Babylonia following the death of Kashtil-iash I.

Usur-awassu (first half of the 20th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of Eshnunna.

Utu-hegal (2123–2113 B.C.E.) During hisreign he drove invading Gutian hordes out ofSumer but was replaced on the throne of Urukby the ruler of another city, Ur-Nammu of Ur.A text says that he died of drowning whilesupervising an irrigation project.

Warad-Sin (1834–1823 B.C.E.) Warad-Sinwas put on Larsa’s throne after his father,Kudur-Mabuk, a tribal leader, defeated Larsa’sking in battle. To court popular favor, Warad-Sin devoted himself to renovating temples tothe gods within his kingdom’s borders, makingsure to inscribe his name on his public works.He also took charge of reconstructing the for-tifications of Ur.

Warassa (first half of the 19th century B.C.E.)Ruler of Eshnunna.

Wasasatta (beginning of the 13th centuryB.C.E.) One of the Hurrian rulers of whathad once been the powerful kingdom ofMitanni.

Xerxes I (485–465 B.C.E.) The son of thePersian king Darius I, Xerxes reasserted Per-sian authority over Egypt and Babylonia, divid-ing the latter into two districts for more


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effective administration. Preoccupied with theconquest of Greece, which his predecessor hadfailed to win, Xerxes set into motion a massiveinvasion of Greece involving forces on landand sea—the second “Persian War” recountedby Herodotus in his History. Once again, Persiawas defeated in a David and Goliath strugglethat served to inspire the patriotic Golden Ageof Greece. Both Xerxes and his son were laterkilled in a coup.

Yaggid-Lim See Iaggid-Lim.

Yahdun-Lim See Iahdun-Lim.

Yasmah-Addu See Iasmah-Adad.

Zababa-shuma-iddina (middle of the 12thcentury B.C.E.) Zababa-shuma-iddina wasthe next to the last Kassite king to rule Baby-lonia. After reigning for only a year, he wasforcibly deposed.

Zabaia (1941–1933 B.C.E.) Ruler of Larsa.

Zambia (second half of the 19th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of Isin.

Zenobia (250 C.E.) Wife and successor ofthe Palmyran king Odenath, she reversed herhusband’s pro-Roman policy and drove theRomans out of Egypt, Syria, and Turkey. Invengeance, the Roman emperor Aurelianattacked and ravaged Palmyra, capturingZenobia and transporting her to Rome to beparaded in his triumphal procession. Traditionsays she lived out her days in Rome in exile butwith dignity.

Zimri-Lim (1776–1761 B.C.E.) Exiled whenShamshi-Adad I appointed his own son gov-ernor of Mari, Zimri-Lim—the son of Mari’sformer king Yahdun-Lim—returned follow-

ing Shamshi-Adad’s death to claim thethrone. The Mari letters illuminate his times,revealing how he gathered intelligence abouthis rivals and used political alliances tostrengthen his position, often by giving hisdaughters in marriage to other potentates andrelying on his wife for advice. He addedsplendor to his six-acre palace, such that itbecame one of the wonders of the ancientNear East. In a mural, he still stands receiv-ing the symbols of kingship from the goddessIshtar, while other female deities attend,holding vases from which the waters of lifecontinually flow. The royal family dined onhaute cuisine detailed in the palace’s survivingculinary archives; Zimri-Lim himself wasmost proud that he had arranged for ice to bebrought from the mountains to the north tocool his guests’ drinks. Unfortunately, hisdiplomatic relations broke down with hislongtime ally and friend, Babylon’s kingHammurabi. Hammurabi eventually attackedMari with his army, sacked the palace, anddemolished the city’s walls. Zimri-Lim’s din-ner parties ceased, as did probably Zimri-Limhimself.

Zuzu (second half of the 25th centuryB.C.E.) Ruler of Akshak. Supported bythe forces of Mari and Kish, he marchedagainst king Eannatum of Lagash, but he wasdefeated.

READING

The Structure of Civilization

Diakonoff 1982: structure of Mesopotamiansociety; Frankfort 1956: the rise and uniquecharacter of Mesopotamian civilization.


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The Stratification of Society

Gordon 1953: social stratification; Gordon1957: role of social classes in Hammurabi’sCode; Kramer 1963: social structure of theSumerian city; Oates 1978: social organization;Van de Mieroop 1999: the city.

The Beginnings

Bottéro et al. 2001: origin of the Sumerians;Frankfort 1948, Klein 2001, Jacobsen 1970: thebeginnings and primitive democracy; Frank-fort, Wilson, and Jacobsen 1946: the cosmos asa state, the function of the state.

Kingship

Bienkowski and Millard 2000: kings and king-ship; Bottéro 1992: the substitute king; Conte-nau 1954: king and state; Frankfort, Wilson,and Jacobsen 1946: the function of the state;Gibson and Briggs 1987: Near Eastern bureau-cracy; Grayson 1999: absolute monarchy inAssyria; Greengus 1995: legal and social insti-tutions of Mesopotamia; Larsen 1976, Liverani1976: imperialism; Oppenheim 1977: “thegreat organizations”; Postgate 1995: royal ide-ology and state administration in Sumer andAkkad; Saggs 1989: the rise of kingship; Saggs1995: kingship.

Taxation

Bienkowski and Millard 2000: taxation in theancient Near East; Postgate 1974: taxation inAssyria; Postgate 1992: limitations of evidencefor early Mesopotamia; Saggs 1962: taxation inMesopotamia.

Justice and Law

Bienkowski and Millard 2000: law, river ordeal;Bottéro et al. 2001: trial by ordeal; Driver andMiles 1952 and 1955: Babylonian laws; Gor-don 1957: Hammurabi’s Code; Greengus 1995:law codes, social justice, and legal education;judges and courts; Nemet-Nejat 1998: admin-istration of justice; Postgate 1994: laws and thelaw; Pritchard 1969: legal texts; Saggs 1962:law and statecraft; Saggs 1965: law; Sasson1977; criminals.

Biographies of Political Leaders

Bienkowski and Millard 2000, Leick 1999, Sas-son 1995: biographies; Brown 1995: selectedkings; Roux 1992: historical context.


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4

RELIGION AND MYTH

THE MULTIPLICITYOF THE GODS

Manifold are the divine powers that ruledover Mesopotamia and the minds and heartsof its people.

The multiplicity of these ancient gods canbe explained by many factors. What we in ourscientific age would describe objectively as“the environment,” the ancients viewed asalive with diverse spirits. The spirits wereimmanent in nature and as numerous asnature’s parts: the sky above, the fertile earthbeneath, and the waters that nourished thesoil; the Moon, Sun, and stars; and the genera-tive powers that helped the creatures ofnature, including humanity, reproduce and

flourish. The ancients also saw the hand of thedivine at work in the arts by which human cul-ture and civilization were sustained: the mak-ing of fire, the molding of brick, the raising ofcrops, the tending of flocks and herds, thehealing of the sick, the invention of writing,and the creation of justice and law. To addressthese numinous powers, to thank them fortheir beneficence and to appeal to them intime of need, the ancients conceived of theirgods in anthropomorphic form with eyes tosee them and ears to hear their hymns andprayers. In a naturalistic way, they alsoendowed them with human emotions becausenature seemed alternately compassionate andcruel. They also envisioned the existence ofother powers—darker, demonic powers—thatlurked in a subterranean realm and were everready to rise and to steal from human beingsthe very things they regarded as most precious.


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4.1 As King Ashurnasirpal II looks on, the god Ninurta advances with thunderbolts in hand against ahorned monster, part lion, part bird. The relief once adorned a temple at Kalhu that the king built to honorthe god. (Layard, A Second Series of the Monuments of Nineveh, 1853)

R E L I G I O N A N D M Y T H

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But there were other reasons that explainthe gods’ multiplicity. The human institutionof marriage, for example, when applied to themajor gods automatically doubled their num-bers, since most deities were assigned divinespouses.

Mesopotamia’s ethnic composition andpolitical history also played their roles. TheSumerians worshiped certain gods by certainnames, and the Semitic Babylonians and Assyr-ians worshiped others by others, though inmany ways the pantheons were parallel or grewto be so as a result of cultural assimilation andconquest. In addition, before the rise ofempire, the existence of autonomous city-statesengendered special gods who were veneratedlocally as the protectors of their hometowns;whereas, with the rise of empire, certain localgods assumed a nationwide importance theyhad not previously enjoyed. In a reverse phe-nomenon, through a process known as syn-cretism, a major god might absorb thefunctions and family connections of lessergods. Yet the force of tradition was often sostrong that the names of the so-called lessergods would still persist.

To the pious Christian, Jew, or Muslim whotakes the oneness of god as an article of faith,or even to the secular soul who regardsmonotheism as a normal state of affairs,Mesopotamian polytheism may come as some-thing of a shock. But it is simply another way—perhaps more primitive—of coming to termswith a world in which there are namelessforces, some seemingly benign and others hos-tile, that affect an individual’s life. If theMesopotamians used more names to articulatetheir confusion and their hope, it does notmake them less human than we. Indeed, werethey to travel by time machine to our world,they might marvel how a human race so hell-bent on mutual destruction could naivelybelieve that god is loving and one.

THE GOVERNANCEOF THE WORLD

According to a tradition that began with theSumerians, human society was patterned on aplan conceived by the gods. To fulfill this orga-nizational plan, operational rules had beendevised to govern human activities and behav-ior. These rules were collectively known as theme (a Sumerian plural pronounced “may,” andreferred to in Akkadian as parsu). The medefined such aspects of civilization as govern-ment and religion, war and peace, sexual inter-course (including prostitution), art and music,and crafts and professions, as well as suchabstractions as truth and falsehood, and sadnessand joy. The implementation of the me wassupervised by the gods, especially by An (Akka-dian Anu), the god of creation, and Enlil(Akkadian Ellil), heaven’s chief executive.

In addition, Babylonian tradition told of theexistence of an object called the Tablet of Des-tinies. This inscribed tablet contained withinitself absolute power over the world, andbestowed this power upon its possessor. Heldin the hand or worn on the chest, the tabletcould be given by one god to another, stolen byguile, or seized by force.

THE NAMESAND FUNCTIONSOF THE GODS

In the following inventory, the gods and god-desses of Mesopotamia are listed alphabetically.


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In cases where a deity was worshiped under botha Sumerian and an Akkadian name, the Sumer-ian name is given first, followed by the Akkadianequivalent. Thus, for example, Utu/Shamashtells us that the god of the sun was worshiped bythe Sumerians as “Utu” but by the Babyloniansand Assyrians as “Shamash.” For convenience,cross-references are also provided. Where godsor goddesses played prominent roles in mythol-ogy, their significance is noted by asterisksplaced before their names. Their dramatic func-tions in Mesopotamian literature will bedescribed in chapter 5. The reader will noticethe Mesopotamian predilection for having godsstarting with the letter “N.” This practice is inlarge part due to their use of the honorific prefix“Nin-,” which meant “Lord” or “Lady,” notunlike our own use of “St.” before the name of areligious figure.

Abba A Babylonian goddess popular in Mariand Isin; also a divine being created by the god-dess Ninhursag.

Abzu/Apsu A primordial god personifyingthe subterranean realm from which freshwateremanates.

Adad See Ishkur.

Alala A god of songs sung at harvest time.

Amurru See Martu.

Anshar and Kishar A pair of primordialdeities who are mentioned in the BabylonianEpic of Creation. In Sumerian, the first syllableof the god Anshar’s name meant “heaven”; thefirst syllable of the goddess Kishar’s namemeant “earth.” Their cosmic parents (or possi-ble grandparents) were Apsu, the primordialgod of freshwater, and Tiamat, the goddess ofsalt water. Anshar and Kishar became the par-ents of the sky-god Anu.

*An/Anu An was the august and revered“chairman of the board” of the Mesopotamianpantheon. His name literally meant “heaven.”He was the supreme source of authority amongthe gods, and among men, upon whom he con-ferred kingship. As heaven’s grand patriarch, hedispensed justice and controlled the laws knownas the me that governed the universe. Mythsname various goddesses as his wife: the goddessof the earth (Ki/Uras); a female heavenly coun-terpart (Antum); a mother-goddess (Nammu orNinmah); and the sex-goddess Inanna/Ishtar,who is sometimes also spoken of as his daughter.

Annunitum An Akkadian goddess, wor-shiped in a number of Sumerian cities, whoseattributes resemble those of the goddessInanna/Ishtar.

Annunaki (or Anunnaki) An assemblage oflesser deities (as many as 60 or even 600) who arefrequently mentioned in literature and are alwaysreferred to collectively, like a flock of angels.They can pronounce judgment or perform laborat the behest of other gods. In their number andfunction, they parallel another divine grouping,the Igigi. The Annunaki were worshiped in bothSumerian and Babylonian tradition.

Anu See An.

Anzu See Imdugud.

Apsu See Abzu.

Aruru A Babylonian mother-goddess.

Asag A hideous demon that could provoke vio-lence and cause human suffering. A myth relateshow Asag was defeated by the hero Ninurta.

Asarluhi An ancient Sumerian deity wor-shiped in a temple near Eridu and in the city-state of Lagash. A son of the wise god Enki,

Asarluhi was associated with the magical powerof incantations. In Babylonian thought, he tookon the heroic stature of Marduk, with whom hewas linked.

Ashnan An ancient Sumerian goddess ofgrain and bountiful harvests. In curses, shewas asked to withhold her blessings from thefields of the enemy so as to starve him intosubmission.

*Ashur (or Asshur) God of the Assyriannation. Originally a local god of the city ofAshur, he grew to preeminence as the Assyrianstate expanded through imperialistic conquest.

Astabi The Hurrian god of war.

Aya See Sherida.

Baba A Sumerian deity of great antiquity,Baba was the “Lady of Abundance” whose fer-tilizing energy helped human beings and herdsto generate offspring. In later times, she wasassociated with the divine power of healing andwith the potency of magic spells. She was wor-shiped as the wife of Ningirsu at Lagash, wheretheir marriage rite was ritually reenacted aspart of the New Year Festival.

Bel Meaning “lord” or “master” in Akkadian,this name signified the god Enlil, and later thegod Marduk. The biblical equivalent for thishonorific title was Baal, the name given to thechief god of the Canaanites. The feminineform of Bel was Belet.

Belet-ekallim A Babylonian goddess whosename meant “Lady of the Great House.” AtMari she was the divine patroness of the rulerand his family, and she was known as the “Ladyof the Sceptre.” Her role there and her titlesinform us she was the special protector of theroyal household.

Belet-seri A Babylonian goddess who, as the“Lady of the Steppe,” served as the wife ofAmurru, the god of the nomadic Amorites. Shealso functioned as a scribe in the netherworld.

Damgalnuna/Damkina Originally a mother-goddess, she was worshiped as the wife of theSumerian god Enki (Ea), the lord of freshwater,and dwelt with him in his subterranean king-dom. In Babylonian times, she was lookedupon as the mother of Babylon’s chief god,Marduk.

Damu Taking after his divine mother Nin-isini, Damu functioned as a Sumerian god ofhealing, as did his physician-sister Gunura.Damu was especially worshiped in the city ofIsin.

*Dumuzi (Hebrew and Arabic: Tammuz)A Sumerian god of shepherds and their flocks,Dumuzi was chosen by Inanna/Ishtar, the cruelgoddess of sexual passion, to be her lover.When Inanna was held captive in the nether-world and needed a substitute to “die” for her,she pointed the demons to Dumuzi. He stilllives on today in the Hebrew and Arabicspelling of his name, Tammuz, the name forthe Semitic lunar month that laps over July, thetime when pastures wither and the god mustfor a time die again.

Dumuziabzu A Sumerian goddess who rep-resented the life-giving powers of freshwater;also, in Sumerian, the name of a male deitywho served Enki, the freshwater god.

Ea See Enki.

Ellil See Enlil.

Enbililu A son of the water-god Enki/Ea, hewent into the family business and became adivine inspector of canals, also supervising theflow of the Tigris and Euphrates.


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*Enki/Ea Enki’s domain was the Abzu (orAbsu), an ocean of freshwater upon which theearth floated and which served as the life-giv-ing source of streams and rivers. Because ofwater’s secret and potent source, Enki/Ea wasassociated with arcane wisdom, embodied inboth skilled crafts and sorcery. He used hiscunning to save mankind before the GreatFlood, and he was prayed to by those beset bycrisis. His holy city was watery Eridu. In art,Enki/Ea is depicted with streams of water cas-cading from his shoulders or pouring from avase held in his hands. His divine wife wasNinki, the “Lady (Sumerian: nin) of the Earth(Sumerian: ki),” just as Enki is its “Lord”(Sumerian: en). Elsewhere, his wife is calledDamgalnuna (Damkina). Their divine childrenwere Marduk and his sister Nanshe.

Enkimdu Enkimdu went into business withhis brother Enbililu as a protector of irrigationsystems.

*Enlil/Ellil One of the most important godsof Mesopotamia, Enlil/Ellil was second inauthority only to An/Anu. Just as An/Anu ruledthe airy realm above the earth and Enki/Earuled the watery realm beneath, Enlil/Ellil ruledthe earth itself, directing the forces of nature(especially torrential floods) and bestowingkingship upon the leaders of humankind. Hewas the keeper of the Tablet of Destinies thatdecreed the fate of gods and men. If An (Enlil’sfather, according to one tradition) was the divinechairman of the board, Enlil was the heavenlycorporation’s CEO, or chief executive officer.His cosmic headquarters were based at Nippur.His executive assistant was his son Nuska.Enlil/Ellil was a family man, married to Ninlil(also called Sud), and with her he raised a broodthat included—among others—the moon-godNanna/Sin, the sun-god Utu/Shamash, theweather-god Ishkur/Adad, and the love-goddessInanna/Ishtar.

Enmesharra A primordial god associatedwith the realm of the dead.

Ennugi A god associated with both the realmof the dead and the irrigation of fertile land.

*Ereshkigal The queen of the Meso-potamian netherworld. Sexually deprived andjealous of her sister Inanna/Ishtar, she dwelt ina dark and desolate domain. Seduced by her,the god of light Nergal was compelled to spendsix months of every year (the months of winterdarkness) trapped in her realm as her sexualpartner. Compared to an analogous Greekmyth, Ereshkigal played the role of lonelyHades and Nergal the role of ravished and for-lorn Persephone, though with their mytholog-ical genders reversed. The center of the cult ofthe netherworld was the city of Kutha, famousfor its temple of Nergal.

Erra See Nergal.

Galla One of a number of like-named under-world demons whose job it was to hunt downthe marked souls of the living and drag themdown to the infernal regions. The Gallas’ mostfamous victim was Dumuzi.

Gatumdug A daughter of An, she was wor-shiped in Lagash.

Geshtinanna A Sumerian goddess and thesister of Dumuzi. Because she tried to keephim from the clutches of the Gallas, Geshti-nanna was sentenced to spend six months outof every year in the underworld. There sheserved as a scribe. Each time she was paroled,she spent her freedom weeping for herbrother, who took her place. Because she livedin the steppes where she kept sheep, she wasidentified with a similar divinity, Belet-seri.Tradition also connected Geshtinanna withviniculture.


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Gibil/Girra The Mesopotamian god of fireand heat, viewed not only as a destructive forcebut also as a constructive power. Because heenergized the baker’s oven, the potter’s kiln,and the metalsmith’s forge, Gibil/Girra wascalled the “founder of cities.”

Girra See Gibil.

Gishbare A god who was worshiped in thecity of Girsu.

Gugulanna The Sumerian name forEreshkigal’s husband. By Babylonian times hewas referred to as Nergal.

Gula The Babylonian goddess of healingand the patron deity of physicians. Her mostimportant temple was at Isin, but she washonored in other cities as well. Her sacredanimal was the dog, and ceramic models ofdogs were dedicated to her at her sanctuariesby those who had been blessed by her tendermercies. Her husband was variously namedNinurta, Pabilsag, or Abu. Because at leasttwo of these divinities were connected withagriculture, her marriage to them may sym-bolically reflect the medicinal use of plants.Gula gave birth to two children, the godsDamu and Ninazu, both of whom dedicatedthemselves to the healing arts.

Gushkin-banda Patron god of Sumeriangoldsmiths.

Hendursanga/Ishum A benevolent Meso-potamian deity who gave wise and calmingadvice to the gods. He also acted as a divineherald, and as a watchman providing nighttimesecurity.

Humbaba See Huwawa.

Huwawa/Humbaba Distinguished by hishideous, Gorgon-like face (which resembled a

coiled mass of intestines), this monster wascharged with the protection of a mountainousforest of sacred cedar trees. Duped by the heroGilgamesh into surrendering his magic powersin exchange for trinkets and empty promises,Huwawa was killed by having his head cut off.In Babylonia, clay models of Huwawa’s facewere hung on walls to ward off evil. If, how-ever, diviners examining a sacrificed animalthought they saw Huwawa’s face in its entrails,it was a sure sign the nation would find itself ina dangerous mess.

Igigi (or Igigu) A collective term (like Anun-naki) for a group of assorted, but otherwisenameless, gods. Some believe the Igigi may havebeen chthonic deities and the Anunnaki celestialones, but the matter is unresolved, as is theIgigi’s number, which may have been as high as300. According to one myth (contained in theAkkadian tale of Atrahasis), the Igigi were forcedto do hard labor by the Annunaki. After 40 days,however, the Igigi had had enough, and theycalled a strike by burning their tools—the firststrike in history by organized labor The strike,however, had an unforeseen and (from ourstandpoint) unwelcome outcome: to take up theslack, human beings were created to do thegods’ work. Unlike the Anunnaki who are firstmentioned in Sumerian texts, the Igigi do notappear in literature until Babylonian times.

Ilaba The chief god of Agade. With the mili-tary triumphs of Sargon I, the war-god Ilaba(along with Inanna/Ishtar, who always loved agood fight) became the patron deity of theAkkadian Empire’s kings.

Imdugud/Anzu (or the “Zu-bird”) Animmense mythical bird with the head of a lionand the body of an eagle, whose huge wingscould stir up horrendous windstorms. Accordingto Mesopotamian legend, its behavior could bebenevolent (rewarding a hero for tending its


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young) or malevolent (stealing the Tablet ofDestinies, which gave to its possessor controlover the universe). The latter theft by Imdugud/Anzu was thwarted by the heroic god Ninurta.

Iminbi/Sebittu A group of seven chthonicspirits, some good, some evil, led by the godNergal/Erra.

*Inanna, or Inana/Ishtar (West Semitic:Astarte) The most popular deity of ancientMesopotamia, Inanna/Ishtar represented thepower of sexual attraction and the carnal plea-sure that proceeds from it. Focused on theimmediate gratification of her own sensualneeds, she was neither a goddess of marriage norof childbirth. Her sexual appetite was inex-haustible and her relationships with men shortterm. Legion were her lovers but cruel the pricethey all paid, Dumuzi in particular, whom sheconsigned to hell. Because of her savagery andher fierce determination to have her own waywhatever the cost to others, Inanna/Ishtar wasalso a goddess of war and a patroness of rulingdynasties. Her animal was the lion and her sym-bol the star, signifying the morning and eveningstar Venus, with whom she was astrologicallyidentified. Her major shrines were at Uruk andKish (in Sumer), Agade (in Akkad), and Arbiland Nineveh (in Assyria), and priestesses aresaid to have served her as sacred prostitutes.Inanna/Ishtar’s divine father was variously listedas An/Anu, Enlil/Ellil, Enki/Ea, or Nanna/Sin(the moon-god); her mother, in certain texts, asthe moon-god’s wife, Ningal. Inanna/Ishtar her-self was also associated with the moon, eitherbecause of the moon’s changeable moodexpressed through its phases or the parallelismbetween lunar and menstrual cycles. Her onlysibling was the dread Ereshkigal, the sexuallydeprived queen of the netherworld.

Inzak The chief god of the blessed paradise-like land of Dilmun.

Ishhara A goddess who, like Inanna/Ishtar,was associated with love and war. Her worshipseems to have been of Semitic origin, and shewas popular among the Hurrians. The creaturessacred to her were the snake and scorpion. Inastrology, she was identified with the constella-tion the Greeks would later call Scorpio inremembrance of the scorpion that was her pet.

Ishkur/Adad (West Semitic: Hadad) Thegod of weather, worshiped in Sumer, Babylonia,and Assyria, and as far west as Syria. The son ofAn/Anu or Enlil/Ellil, his power precipitatedboth destructive storms and beneficent rain.His divine symbol was lightning, and his sacredanimal the bull, which bellowed like thunder.

Ishtar See Inanna.

Ishtaran The patron god of the city of Derin eastern Mesopotamia. Associated with theidea of justice, Ishtaran’s minister was a snake-god and his symbol the snake.

Ishum See Hendursanga.

Isimud/Usmu A minor god with two faces,who served as minister to Enki/Ea.

Iter-Mer The name of this Babylonian godmeans “Mer has returned.” Since Mer is theSumerian word for rain, the god may have beenassociated with the seasonal rains that nour-ished the fields. He was the patron god of thecity-state of Mari.

Ki The Sumerian goddess who symbolizedthe earth.

Kingu (also Qingu) In the Babylonian Epicof Creation, Kingu serves under Tiamat andcommands her military forces. When Tiamatand her minions are defeated, Marduk executesKingu and uses his blood to create man.


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Kulla Patron god of brick-laying.

Kumarbi A Hurrian deity, possible a god ofgrain, who struggled for power with his divinefather Anu.

Kusuh The Hurrian god of the moon.

Lahmu (male) and Lahamu (female) Pri-mordial Mesopotamian gods who were bornfrom Abzu/Apsu (freshwater) and Tiamat (salt-water). Their bodies, according to one text,were half human and half fish.

Lama, or Lamma/Lamassu A female deity ofthe Sumerians who offered her worshipers pro-tection. In Assyria, the term lamassu was appliedto the protective statues of winged bulls or lionsthat guarded the entranceways to palaces.

Lamashtu A gruesome Babylonian demonesswho tried to snatch away the lives of fetusesand newborn infants. To ward her off, a preg-nant woman or nursing mother would wear amagic charm or hang an amuletic plaque byher doorway.

Lamassu See Lama.

La-tarak and Lulal Protective gods whoguarded doorways and protected the faithfulagainst sorcery.

Lisin A Sumerian mother-goddess.

Lugal-irra and Meslamta-ea Twin deitieswho guarded doorways, including the entranceto the netherworld. In astrology, they werelinked to the constellation later called Gemini,“the Twins.”

Mamitu (abbreviated as Mami or Mame)Named for the Akkadian word for “oath,” thisgoddess stood for the sanctity of the oath andpunished those who committed perjury.

*Marduk Originally a patron deity of Baby-lon and a farmer’s god whose symbol was themarru, or spade, Marduk rose with the growthof the city’s empire to become a national deityand chief god of the Babylonian pantheon. Hisheroic deeds included the defeat of Tiamat(followed by the organization of the cosmosand the creation of man), the rescue of theTablet of Destinies from the Zu-bird, and thedefense of the moon against the gods who triedto steal its light. As a divine champion of goodagainst the forces of evil, Marduk was fre-quently invoked in incantations by petitionerswho sought his protection. He was described intradition as the first-born son of Enki/Ea, asthe spouse of Sarpanitum, and as the father ofNabu, patron of scribes and god of wisdom.His main sanctuary, the Esagila, was fittinglylocated in the city of Babylon, his originalhometown.

Martu/Amurru The national god of theAmorites, a nomadic Semitic people from thesteppes who raided the cultivated lands ofSumer and Babylonia. As the Amorites were


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4.2 This glazed-brick dragon from Babylon’sIshtar Gate symbolizes the power of the city’spatron god, Marduk. (Photograph © 2001, TheDetroit Institute of Arts [Founders SocietyPurchase, General Membership Fund])

integrated into Mesopotamia’s civilized popu-lation, the god Martu/Amurru joined theMesopotamian pantheon, where he was“adopted” as An/Anu’s son. Among the westernSemites, his wife was known as Ashratum;among the Babylonians, as Belet-seri, the“Lady of the Wilderness.” A Sumerian talerecounts how the uncultured Martu (who dugup truffles and ate his meat raw) became “civi-lized” when he married a Sumerian girl fromthe city.

Meshkilak Chief goddess of the blessed par-adise-like land of Dilmun.

Meslamta-ea An ancient Sumerian god ofthe underworld, later identified with Nergal.

*Nabu Equivalent to the Sumerian goddessNisaba and revered by the Babylonians andAssyrians, the god Nabu was the patron deity ofscribes, literacy, and wisdom. By the first mil-lennium B.C.E., he was spoken of as the son ofthe great Marduk, a sign of the high esteem inwhich he, and the written word he stood for,were held. His name was used in Babylonianpersonal names, including the names of some ofBabylon’s rulers, such as Nebuchadnezzar andNabonidus. He even appears in the Bible as“Nebo” in a passage (Isaiah 46:1) in which thetext refers to the humbling of Babylon’s idols,Bel (=Marduk) and Nebo. Nabu was the chiefgod of Babylon’s sister-city, Borsippa, fromwhich his cult statue was ceremoniously borneto Babylon each New Year’s so that he mightpay his respects to his divine father. At Nabu’stemple, votive offerings (no doubt given ingratitude by scribes) included clay tabletsimprinted with especial calligraphic skill.Nabu’s symbol was a single wedge-shapedcuneiform mark, or a stylus shown resting on atablet. His divine wife was named Tashmit.Continually worshiped until the second centuryC.E. (when cuneiform became a lost art), Nabu

was identified in Hellenistic times with theGreek god of prophecy and the arts, Apollo.

Nammu A primordial Sumerian mother-goddess who originally signified the freshwaterthat nourishes the soil. It was she who first con-ceived of the idea of creating man so that hemight serve the gods. Her name is contained inthe name of the Sumerian ruler and lawgiverUr-Nammu.

Namtar/Namtaru The name of an under-world demon and/or the minister of Ereshki-gal, queen of the dead.

Nana A Sumerian goddess, known in Baby-lonian times as the wife of Marduk or of Nabu.Because of her association with both love andwar, she bore similarities to Inanna/Ishtar.

Nanaya Another Sumerian goddess similarin nature to Inanna, Nanaya was invoked inincantations where the petitioner prayed tobecome more sexually appealing.

*Nanna/Sin or Suen First-born son ofEnlil/Ellil and Ninlil, Nanna/Sin was theMesopotamian god of the moon. He was mar-ried to Ningal, and through her he bore twochildren: Utu/Shamash, the god of the sun; andInanna/Ishtar, the goddess of love. TheMesopotamians thus conceived of day, illumi-nated by the sun, as emanating from the dark-ness of night and the lesser light of the moon.As the time of lovemaking, the night and themoon were linked to the goddess of the erotic.As a source of light, the moon was also viewedas humanity’s protector against acts of crimi-nality undertaken under the cover of darkness(even as the illuminating and all-seeing sun waslooked upon as a guardian of justice). AMesopotamian myth tells how a cabal of gods(including the god of the sun) plotted to stealthe moon’s light, until their plot was foiled by


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Marduk. Lunar eclipses were a source of greatritual concern. During the new moon whenNanna/Sin’s light was not visible, the god wassaid to be in the netherworld, where he judgedthe dead. The moon’s crescent was viewedalternately as a boat in which he traveled or asthe horns of a calf, inspiring the god’s connec-tion with the fecundity of herds. The center ofmoon-worship in Mesopotamia was Nanna’stemple at Ur, where the daughters of rulersoften served as priestesses. Another center ofmoon-worship was the city of Harran in north-western Mesopotamia. King Nabonidus’smother served as chief priestess there, even ashis daughter was consecrated to the god’s ser-vice at Ur. The god’s name was sometimes sim-ply written as the number “30,” signifying theapproximate number of days in the lunarmonth, the basis of the ancient Mesopotamiancalendar. Despite the correspondence of themoon’s phases to the menstrual cycle, the godNanna/Sin was conceptualized as male. In thisrespect, he was like the moon-gods of ancientEgypt (Thoth, Khensu, and Aah), but unlikethe moon-goddesses of classical civilization(Artemis and Diana).

Nanshe A Sumerian goddess, worshipedespecially in Lagash, who was the divine patronof fishing and divination. Gudea of Lagashsought her oracular guidance. A hymndescribes her concern for social justice.

Nergal/Erra A Mesopotamian god of theunderworld and husband of Ereshkigal. Thecenter of his cult was located at the city ofKutha. Nergal/Erra was also a destructive godof war and pestilence, associated also with thescorching heat of the sun. In astrology he wasidentified with the planet Mars, named for theclassical god of war.

Ninazu A Sumerian chthonic deity whosemother was Ereshkigal. He is spoken of as a

god of healing who brought humanity the giftof grain.

Ningal A Sumerian goddess, wife to themoon-god Nanna, with whom she was veneratedat Ur and Harran. Known as Nikkal in Syria, herworship there endured until the first millenniumC.E. One of the specialties of the goddess and herpriestesses was the interpretation of dreams. Anancient Sumerian lamentation describes how shetried unsuccessfully to intervene with the gods toavert the city of Ur’s destruction.

Ningirin A Sumerian goddess whose namemeans “Lady of Incantations.”

Ningirsu A Sumerian god whose namemeans “Lord of Girsu.” He began as the localgod who protected the city of Girsu and nur-tured the productivity of its fields. His symbolwas then the plow. But as the political powerand territorial ambitions of Girsu grew, so didhis stature. Eventually, his heraldic symbolbecame the awesome Zu-bird of myth, whosought to steal the cosmic Tablet of Destinies.

Ningishzida A son of Ninazu and, like hisfather, a Sumerian god of the underworld,Ningishzida was called the “Lord of the Stead-fast Tree” perhaps because trees are rooted inand draw their sustenance from a subterraneanrealm. Gudea of Lagash chose him as his per-sonal patron, and he was honored in othercities as well. The god’s wife was Geshtinanna,who—like her brother Dumuzi—spent sixmonths of every year living in the netherworld.Ningishzida’s symbol was the dragon, whichMesopotamian astronomers saw in the sky as aconstellation. The later Greeks called thatsame constellation Hydra, their own name fora dragon-like monster.

Ninhursag (or Ninhursaga, or Ninhursanga)A Sumerian mother-goddess, who watched over


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the wild animals that roam the hills, and nur-tured earth’s creatures. Many rulers proudlyclaimed that she loved them and accordinglybuilt sanctuaries in her honor, especially at thecity of Kish.

Ninildu Patron god of carpentry.

Ninisina A Sumerian goddess of healingand patron deity of the city of Isin. She waspraised as the “great physician of the black-headed ones [i.e., the human race].” Herfather was the sky-god An and her mother anearth-goddess named Urash. Her husbandwas Pabilsag. Their son, Damu, also became adoctor, chasing away evil demons and “mend-ing torn sinew.”

Ninlil Originally named Sud, Ninlil becamethe wife of Enlil/Ellil and together with himjointly administered the cosmos. In the days ofthe Assyrian Empire, she was spoken of as thewife of Ashur, the god of the Assyrian nation.This mythological adjustment served todivinely justify the temporal power exercisedby Assyria’s imperialistic monarchs.

Ninmah A Sumerian mother-goddess whoserved as “midwife” when the primeval god-dess Nammu created man. Later, Ninmah andEnki got drunk on beer and took turns tryingto alter how man was designed. Enki won thecontest when he invented a design so bad itcouldn’t be changed. Our gross imperfectionas a race, said the Sumerians, was thus theresult of a drunken bet.

Ninmar A local deity worshiped in Lagash.

Ninshubur/Papsukkal A Mesopotamian deitywho acted as a vizier for An/Anu or forInanna/Ishtar. In texts where he servesAn/Anu, he is depicted as male; in texts wherehe serves Inanna/Ishtar, as female. In stories,

Ninshubur/Papsukkal plays the role of a divinemessenger.

Ninsianna A Sumerian goddess identifiedwith the bright planet Venus and the goddessof love, Inanna.

Ninsun The wife of Lugulbanda, ruler ofUruk, and the mother of the hero Gilgamesh.In other sources, she is also cited as themother of Dumuzi, Inanna/Ishtar’s star-crossed lover. Ninsun’s main sanctuary was atUruk and she was the patron goddess of thecattle-herder, reflecting Dumuzi’s origin as adivine herdsman.

Nintu (also Nintur) The Sumerian goddessof childbirth.

Ninurta Ninurta began his divine career as agod of irrigation and agriculture. In fact “TheInstruction of Ninurta” is the title of an ancientSumerian “farmer’s almanac.” But with the riseof imperialism he too, like Ningirsu, was trans-formed into a young and vigorous god of war.In this latter role, Ninurta became a favorite ofaggressive Assyrian kings. His wife was namedGula or Bau.

Nisaba (also Nidaba) Especially popularduring the second millennium B.C.E., Nisabawas the Sumerian patron goddess of writing,and she worked as a divine scribe for the gods.With the rise of the Semitic god Nabu (also apatron of scribes), she became his mythologicalbride and lived with him happily ever after inthe ancient land of literacy.

Numushda A son of the Sumerian moon-god Nanna, Numushda had a daughter whomarried and civilized the cloddish god Martu.

Nungal A Sumerian goddess of the nether-world who pursued and imprisoned the wicked.


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Nusku A Sumerian god of fire and light whoserved as a high official under the god Enlil.Gibil/Girra, the fire-god, was his son. In incan-tations, Nusku’s powers were invoked to burnsorcerers. His symbol in art was the oil lamp. AtHarran, he was worshiped together with hisfather, the moon-god Sin, and in Syria Nusku’scult endured down to the early centuries of thecommon era, keeping his sacred fire alive.

Pabilsag A son of Enlil, Pabilsag was thehusband of the Sumerian goddess of healing,Ninisina. His cult center was Larak, and hisstar-cluster the constellation Sagittarius.

Pazuzu A hideous-looking chthonic demonwho inhabited the pantheon of the Babyloniansand Assyrians. Despite his appearance (seeSamana below), he could be benevolent: pro-tecting pregnant women from harm (as long asthey wore an amulet with his ugly face on it).He did so by restraining the demonessLamashtu from killing their unborn childrenby keeping her in the underworld. He couldalso fight ancient air pollution by diverting foulwinds from Mesopotamia’s cities. Thoughshort on pizzazz, Pazuzu made it to Holly-wood: he is the only Mesopotamian demon tohave starred in a movie—The Exorcist.

Qingu See Kingu.

Samana While Pazuzu had a snake-headedpenis, a scaly body, and bulging eyes (not tomention his four wings and bad smile), thedemon Samana had dragon’s teeth, eagle’stalons, and a scorpion’s tail. Both inhabitedthe underworld of the Babylonians and Assyr-ians. Samana targeted both men and women,but he had a special appetite for infants andprostitutes.

Sarpanitum (or Zarpanitum) As the divinewife of Marduk, Sarpanitum was the preemi-

nent goddess of Babylon and shared her hus-band’s temple there. Under the name Erua, shewas looked to as a goddess of pregnancy andchildbirth.

Sebittu See Iminbi.

Shala A Hurrian goddess, the wife ofIshkur/Adad or of Canaanite Dagan. In astrol-ogy, she was identified with the constellationVirgo.

Shamash See Utu.

Shara A Sumerian warrior-god and protectorof the city of Umma.

Shulpae The husband of Ninhursag, thisSumerian god was associated with Ninhursag’sgenerative power over the animal kingdom, buthe also had a demonic side. In astrology, he waslinked with the planet Jupiter.

Shaushga A Hurrian goddess who shared theattributes of Inanna/Ishtar.

Sherida/Aya Wife of the sun-god Utu/Shamash and, by association, a goddess oflight. Because of the sun’s life-giving energy,she was also associated with fecundity.

Shimegi A Hurrian god of the sun.

Sin, or Suen See Nanna.

Sud See Ninlil.

Tashmetu The wife of the scribal god Nabu,Tashmetu was a benevolent and mercifulMesopotamian deity who interceded withother divine powers on behalf of those whoprayed to her. In astrology she was identifiedwith the constellation Capricorn.


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Teshub The Hurrian weather-god. His sis-ter was Shaushga.

*Tiamat The primordial goddess of saltwater. She and Abzu/Apsu, primordial god offreshwater, produced the next generation ofgods. As the leader of a rebellion, she was van-quished by Marduk, who sliced through herbody and used her top half to make the sky.Their battle is described in the Babylonian Epicof Creation.

Tishpak A warrior-god who became the pro-tector of Eshnunna, a city located near Hurrianterritory. Tishpak may have originally beenidentical to the Hurrian god of the storm,Teshub.

Tutu A Sumerian god of creation.

Urash A Sumerian earth-goddess who is spo-ken of as the wife of the sky-god An. Urash isalso the name of a male deity who was thepatron god of the Babylonian city of Dilbat andas such was cited in the prologue to Ham-murabi’s Code.

Usmu See Isimud.

*Utu/Shamash The Mesopotamian god ofthe sun, whose father was the moon-godNanna/Sin and whose sister was Inanna/Ishtar.As a source of light that banishes darkness andas a god who, by virtue of his light, sees allthings from heaven, Utu/Shamash was lookedupon as a god of justice who punishes theunjust. In this guise he is depicted on theCode of Hammurabi as a dispenser of justice.Utu/Shamash traversed the sky in his chariot,emanating from a heavenly gate at the eastand departing through a gate at the west. Hethen rested in the netherworld before com-mencing another journey. His wife wasSherida/Aya and his symbol was the solar disc.

He was worshiped in Sumer at Eridu andprominently at Larsa, where his temple wascalled the “Shining House.” In Akkad, he wasvenerated at Sippar, and in Assyria at Ashur,where he shared a sanctuary with the god ofthe moon.

Uttu The Sumerian patron goddess ofweaving. As a weaver of webs, her symbol wasthe spider.

Zababa A warrior god who was the protectorof the city of Kish. Inanna/Ishtar, who in addi-tion to being a goddess of love was also a god-dess of war, was said to be his wife.

Zarpanitum See Sarpanitum.

MYTHS

Mesopotamian tradition contained many sto-ries about the gods and their interactionswith each other and with human beings.While we may casually refer to these tales asmyths, to the ancient people of Mesopotamiathey were as real as history itself, onlyshrouded in mist because of the remotenessof the times in which they took place. As forthe gods and goddesses themselves, they werepalpable realities, as real as the invisibleforces that make plants and animals multiply,human beings yearn for love, and life come toan end.

Preserved through the miracle of writingand the equal miracle of literature, these talessurvive, though many have been lost foreverand still others wait to be retrieved from thedust. The major tales can be found retold inchapter 5 in the section on epic poetry. For ref-erences to specific gods or goddesses, thereader is directed to the index.


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PLACES OF PUBLICWORSHIP

The physical focus of Mesopotamian religionwas the temple. The temple, however, was notlike a church, synagogue, or mosque—a build-ing whose interior is intended for congrega-tional worship. Instead, the Mesopotamiantemple—like the sanctuaries of ancient Egypt,Greece, and Rome—was conceived of as thehome of the deity. Inside was the cult statue,the rendering in three-dimensional sculptedform of the god’s numinous presence. Insidealso was the repository for the votive offeringsgiven by the faithful. Attached to the sanctuarywould be the official quarters of the priests orpriestesses who acted as the deity’s servants,performing rituals at the altar, singing hymnsof praise, or uttering prayers on behalf of thecommunity as a whole or on behalf of piousindividuals who had sought the god’s interces-sion and aid. Public worship, when it occurred,took place outside the temple in a large court-

yard, much as today a crowd will reverentlygather in St. Peter’s Square as the popeappears on his balcony to lead them in wor-ship. Each Mesopotamian city might have anumber of temples dedicated to different gods,but in each city a certain god was usually sin-gled out for special treatment because he orshe was looked upon as the city’s special patronand protector. It is the sanctuary of that godthat would be the largest and most architec-turally splendid in all the city. In some casesthe same sanctuary or an adjacent one mightbe dedicated to the worship of a related deity,such as a divine husband or wife.

What distinguishes the Mesopotamian tem-ple from other ancient Mediterranean sanctu-aries was the presence of an additionalstructure that adjoined those temples that weremost important: the ziggurat. Called unir inSumerian and zigguratu in Akkadian, the zig-gurat was a multistoried stepped platform sur-mounted, it is believed, by a shrine. Staircasesenabled priests or priestesses to ascend to thestructure’s summit to perform rituals and recitehymns and prayers in full view of worshipersgathered below. The height of the shrine,


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4.3 Reconstructed plan of the ziggurat built by Ur-Nammu at Ur. (P. R. S. Moorey, Ur ‘of the Chaldees’:A Revised and Updated Edition of Sir Leonard Woolley’s Excavations at Ur [Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UniversityPress, 1982]; © the Estate of Sir Leonard Woolley and P. R. S. Moorey; used by permission of the publisher)

moreover, enabled the deity to descend moreeasily from heaven both to receive offeringsand to bestow divine blessings on his or herearthly devotees. The mountain-like mass andprofile of the ziggurat may have constituted aman-made replica of the mountains where thegods were once thought to dwell, mountainsthat were absent from the flat alluvial plainwhere civilization itself took root.

Thus a Mesopotamian temple complexmight include both a sanctuary and a zigguratwith a large or double courtyard, all enclosed bya wall. The temple, however, was more than justa sacred edifice. It was also an office building ofsorts, containing rooms where priestly officialsmanaged real-estate holdings and commercialtransactions in the name of the god they served.For in actuality much of the property in the citybelonged to the gods, and man was merely acaretaker—not unlike the way God in Genesisplanted a garden in Eden and placed man thereto tend it. And because writing was so importantfor recordkeeping, part of the temple complexoften functioned as a school where students,including prospective clerics, were instructed inthe scribal arts.

Both temple and ziggurat were given hon-orific names (beginning with the Sumerian e,which meant “house”), such as “the ShiningHouse” or “the House that is the Foundationof Heaven and Earth.” The story of the archi-tectural design of these structures is told inchapter 6.

PRIESTS ANDPRIESTESSES

The management of a temple complex was inthe hands of the priesthood. In earliest days,the secular ruler of a Mesopotamian commu-

nity may have simultaneously served as its chiefpriest; indeed, our modern distinction betweenchurch and state is not one that an ancientMesopotamian would have readily understoodsince the everyday affairs of man were thoughtof as inextricably intertwined with the will ofheavenly and earthly powers who governedhuman existence and whom human beingswere required to serve. Eventually, however,the exercise of sacred and secular duties wereseparated to a degree, leading to the rise ofprofessional priesthoods who managed theday-to-day operations of temples and the wor-ship of the gods. Each temple might have atemple administrator (known as a sanga inSumerian and a shangu in Akkadian) whosupervised the business side of the temple’sactivities. At the same time, a high priest (en) orhigh priestess (entu) would govern the perfor-mance of the sanctuary’s sacred rites and duties.Assisting them were numerous priests andpriestesses, some of whom had specializedfunctions: for example, to ritually slaughteranimals, interpret omens, or perform rites ofpurification. Some priests played a role analo-gous to that of a Jewish cantor, singing songs oflamentation or joy to the accompaniment ofinstrumentalists and a choir that might consistof over a hundred voices.

To qualify to train as a priest or priestess ayoung person would need to come from a goodfamily and have a body that was free of physicaldefect. Training would include an education inliteracy (often at a temple-run school) and anextensive period of apprenticeship. Malenovices could look forward to a career serving agod; female novices, to serving a goddess,though there are instances in which a highpriestess governed the temple of a male deity,such as the moon-god Nanna/Sin. Priestesseswere expected to be celibate. Though theycould not bear children, they could, paradoxi-cally, marry, sharing their husband’s estate andacting as stepmother to any children he mayhave fathered. The office of priestess was one


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of great respect, like that of the Vestal Virginsof ancient Rome (who, incidentally, were alsoallowed to marry—and even bear children—once they had completed 30 years of service totheir goddess).

In Mesopotamian religion perhaps the mostcurious and salacious custom (at least to theWestern mind) was sacred prostitution, that isthe practice of women offering sex for pay onthe sacred grounds of the temple of Ishtar. Thefifth century B.C.E. Greek historian Herodotuswas the first to report this custom to a Euro-pean audience. As Herodotus (History 1: 199)tells it:

The Babylonians have one most shameful cus-tom. Every woman born in the country mustonce in her life go and sit down in the precinctof Aphrodite [=Ishtar], and there consort with astranger. Many of the wealthier sort, who aretoo proud to mix with the others, drive in cov-ered carriages to the precinct, followed by agoodly train of attendants, and there take theirstation. But the larger number seat themselveswithin the holy enclosure with wreaths ofstring about their heads,—and here there isalways a great crowd, some coming and othersgoing; lines of cord mark out paths in all direc-tions among the women, and the strangers passalong them to make their choice. A womanwho has once taken her seat is not allowed toreturn home till one of the strangers throws asilver coin into her lap, and takes her with himbeyond the holy ground. When he throws thecoin he says these words: “The goddessMylitta prosper thee.” (Aphrodite is calledMylitta [=an Akkadian title of Ishtar, meaning“she who brings about birth”] by the Assyri-ans.) The silver coin may be of any size; itcannot be refused, for that is forbidden by thelaw, since once thrown it is sacred. Thewoman goes with the first man who throwsher money, and rejects no one. When she hasgone with him, and so satisfied the goddess,she returns home, and from that time forth nogift however great will prevail with her. Suchof the women as are tall and beautiful are soonreleased, but others who are ugly have to stay

a long time before they can fulfil the law.Some have waited three or four years in theprecinct. A custom very much like this isfound also in certain parts of the island ofCyprus. (Herodotus, 1942 [1862]: 107–8,trans. George Rawlinson)

The Greek geographer Strabo repeated thetale some four centuries later, and the Greeksatirist Lucian described a similar practice in asecond century C.E. temple of Astarte inLebanon. How accurate these accounts are wedo not know. It is also possible that certainpriestesses of Ishtar functioned as sacred pros-titutes, or “hierodules” as scholars sometimescall them. Mesopotamian sources themselvesare silent about these matters except for thefact that they inform us of the existence ofprostitutes in society (witness the seduction ofEnkidu in the Epic of Gilgamesh and referencesto prostitutes in law codes—evidence of the“world’s oldest profession” in the world’s oldestcivilization). There is no doubt, however, thatthe concept of sacred prostitution would havebeen consistent with the character of Ishtar, agoddess of carnal pleasure who used men andsex for her own higher purposes.

Because the Mesopotamian temple was alarge and complex enterprise engaged in notonly religious but also commercial activities,many employees beyond its normal comple-ment of priests and priestesses were required torun it. First of all, there had to be a householdstaff to accommodate the priesthood’s need forfood, drink, and clothing, and—even moreimportant—to provide regular offerings ofnourishment and refreshment for the deity:usually two meals a day, a two-course breakfastand a big, two-course dinner, set on or near thealtar. Among the god’s favorite menu itemsmight be bread and beer, and a variety of meatssuch as mutton, lamb, and beef, as well assweets such as honey, dates, figs, and cakes. Tosupply these provisions, herdsmen and butcherswere employed as well as millers, oil-pressers,


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brewers, bakers, cooks, and servers. The divine“leftovers” (a statue doesn’t eat much!) may havebeen diverted for priestly consumption. Alsonumbered among the temple staff would havebeen accountants, treasurers, scribes, and mes-sengers; janitors and guards; artisans to createritual objects; weavers, tailors, and seamstressesto make vestments; and barbers to shave theheads of priests. Some of these positions mayhave been filled by slaves—dedicated to thetemples as orphans or by parents who were tooimpoverished to raise a child, donated to thetemple by wealthy parishioners from slaves intheir own household, or consigned to the god’sservice as prisoners of war.

HOLY DAYSAND FESTIVALS

The greatness of the gods and their manifoldblessings were celebrated on special holy daysand festivals. The most important of thesesacred occasions in a community honored itslocal god, who was its patron and protector.But on a larger scale across their country, thepeople of Mesopotamia also expressed theirgratitude in common for the fertility of theirland whose bounty sustained their lives andderived from divine favor.

The greatest of these agricultural holidayswas called, in Sumerian, the Akiti, and in Akka-dian, the Akitu, a word of uncertain meaningthat may in fact be pre-Sumerian. The cere-monies connected with the holiday took placeprincipally at a sanctuary in the countryside justoutside the city walls, a structure known simplyas the Akiti or Akitu building. In some commu-nities, like Babylon, the ceremonies were con-ducted once a year immediately after the barley

harvest in March at the time of the springequinox. (Barley was Mesopotamia’s chief grain.)In other communities, like Ur, there were twocelebrations a year, one at the time of the harvestand the other in September when new seed wassown. Because the Mesopotamians looked uponthe spring equinox as the beginning of their year,the Harvest Akitu was also a New Year’s holidayand a time of added celebration.

Thanks to the survival of fragmentary textsthat date to between 1000 and 600 B.C.E. and acopy that belongs to the Hellenistic period, weknow the main outlines and many of the detailsof the Akitu festival that took place in ancientBabylon.

The holiday began on the vernal equinox (onthe first day [Zagmuk] of the ancient month ofNisan, equivalent to our March 20th or 21st—atleast when the eccentric lunar calendar coin-cided with the solar one!). The holiday thenlasted for a total of 12 days, the first six or seven(we’re not sure how many) taken up with privatereligious rituals conducted by the high priest,and the last five or six involving outdoor proces-sions and public rites. During both halves of theholiday the king played an important role. Andbecause the patron god was Marduk, it was Mar-duk who was the focal deity, along with his first-born son Nabu, who was worshiped both atBabylon itself and at nearby Borsippa.

About Day One we have no information. OnDay Two, the high priest prayed alone beforethe statue of Marduk asking that the god protecthis city. On Day Three, the priest instructedcraftsmen to make two dolls out of wood simu-lating worshipers of Nabu. On Day Four, thepriest prayed before Marduk and his divine wifeSarpanitum in her adjoining sanctuary. Then,standing in the courtyard, he faced north anduttered a triple blessing over the entire templecomplex. Later that same day, the king set outfor Borsippa to fetch the sacred image of Nabuand bring it to Babylon. In the evening, the highpriest stood before Marduk’s statue and recited


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the entire Epic of Creation, the poem that cele-brated Marduk’s ascendancy among the godsand his creative arts, including the arrangementof the cosmos and the making of man. On DayFive, the high priest again prayed before Mar-duk and Sarpanitum, addressing them in celes-tial terms. Their temple was then rituallycleansed, as was a shrine of Nabu located withinthe temple precinct. The Nabu shrine was thencovered with a golden canopy in anticipation ofthe god’s arrival by boat from Borsippa, accom-panied by Babylon’s king. Then followed a dra-matic ceremony: the high priest divested theking of his royal insignia, slapped his face, andforced him to kneel before the god’s holyimage—an act of humbling debasement thatasserted the power of church over state, of godover man. On his knees, the king made confes-sion, swearing that he had not abused theauthority entrusted to him and had not sinfullyforsaken the interests of Babylon, its people, andits god. (In its negative formulation [“I have not. . .”], this confession is reminiscent of the “Neg-ative Confession” found in the Egyptian Book ofthe Dead by which souls sought to gain entryinto paradise, and also of the biblical Ten Com-mandments, which were also cast in negativeterms [“Thou shall not . . .”].) At the conclusionof the royal confession, the high priest againslapped the face of the king until tears flowedfrom his eyes, a sign of his genuine contrition.Later, just before sunset, the king—his insigniarestored—offered up a burnt offering as he andthe high priest jointly prayed to the planet Mer-cury, the “star of Marduk,” now visible on thehorizon (Nisan being the month of its heliacalrising). On Day Six, statues of the patron godsand goddesses of surrounding communitiesarrived in Babylon to collectively honor Mar-duk. It is then that the two wooden dolls hadtheir heads cut off and were burnt in a ritual firein the presence of Nabu (perhaps symbolic of anancient human sacrifice or of an unknownepisode in mythology).

On Day Seven or Eight, the more publicaspect of the holiday began, as the king tookthe image of Marduk by the hand and led himout of his temple and on to the “Shrine of theDestinies,” situated within Nabu’s sanctuary.Within the shrine, the king’s fate for the com-ing year (and, with it, the destiny of his people)was divined and decreed as the king, Marduk,and Nabu stood in the company of the othergods. Then, the doors of the shrine werethrown open by the priests and a grand proces-sion began. In his book, Ancient Iraq, GeorgesRoux recaptures the thrilling scene:

A great solemn cortège was then formed,including the statues of all the gods and god-desses. Headed by Marduk on his chariot glit-tering with gold and precious stones and led bythe king, it went down Procession Street acrossBabylon in an aura of incense, songs and music,while people were kneeling down in adorationas it passed by. Through Ishtar Gate thecortège left the city, and after a short journeyon the Euphrates, reached the bît akitu, a tem-ple filled with plants and flowers in the middleof a large park. (Roux 1992: 400)

At that point, a great banquet was held in theAkitu building, where the participants remainedfor three days, returning to Babylon on DayEleven, accompanied by the statues of thegods. The grand procession back to the citywas accompanied by another round of celebra-tion and festivity, with the cortège arriving atNabu’s temple, where the previously divineddestiny of the king was publicly proclaimed,after which a final banquet for dignitariesensued. On Day Twelve, the sacred image ofNabu was borne home to Borsippa, and theimages of the neighboring gods to their respec-tive communities.

Scholarly speculation and debate surround anevent that may have taken place in the Akitubuilding or in Babylon itself upon the return ofthe holy procession. Two Sumerian literary doc-uments, one referring to Shulgi of Ur and the


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other to Iddin-Dagan of Isin, speak in poeticterms of each king making love to the goddessInanna/Ishtar in a reenactment of her copula-tion with the divine shepherd Dumuzi. In thecase of Iddin-Dagan, the liaison took place in hispalace on New Year’s Eve. Both occasions havebeen interpreted as symbolic rituals thatrenewed the fecundity of the land. We alsoknow that in late Assyrian and Babylonian timesa ritual was carried out in Babylon in which thestatues of Marduk and Sarpanitum were laid inbed side by side as part of the New Year’s cere-monies. Herodotus—our entertaining Greekinformant on all things Mesopotamian—says(History 1:181) that the shrine on top of Baby-lon’s ziggurat was the site of a sacred tryst.

On the topmost tower there is a spacious tem-ple, and inside the temple stands a couch ofunusual size, richly adorned, with a goldentable by its side. There is no statue of any kindset up in the place, nor is the chamber occupiedof nights by any one but a single native woman,who, as the Chaldaeans, the priests of this god,affirm, is chosen for himself by the deity out ofall the women of the land. They also declare—but I for my part do not credit it—that the godcomes down in person into this chamber, andsleeps upon the couch. (Herodotus 1942[1862]: 97–98, trans. George Rawlinson)

In his account, Herodotus does not refer to theNew Year’s holiday as the occasion for this mat-ing, but instead he seems to describe it as anongoing activity rather than a once-a-year event.Indeed, even if Herodotus got his informationfrom a personal visit to Babylon, the New Yearfestival would have been last celebrated there in aformal way in 538 B.C.E., almost a century beforethe time of his visit. The Persian king Xerxes, infact, destroyed Marduk’s temple in 482 B.C.E.and removed the god’s statue from its home,decades before Herodotus’s visit.

Some scholars have proposed that duringthe New Year’s festival a “sacred marriage”took place between the king (acting as

Dumuzi) and perhaps the high priestess ofInanna/Ishtar. However, the focus of the NewYear holiday was on Marduk not Dumuzi, andthe two are not identified in Mesopotamianreligion. Still, it is possible that the wedding ofMarduk and his divine consort Sarpanitum wasritually enacted, not only by their statues but ina live reenactment in which the king played therole of Marduk and a priestess of Sarpanitumplayed the goddess, and that this sacred mar-riage did take place as part of the holiday,either in the Akitu temple or upon the returnto Babylon. But our ancient sources are tooslim on the details of the holiday to make thismore than an intriguing speculation.

What we do know for sure is that the cele-bration of the springtime New Year festival inBabylon was Mesopotamia’s most elaboratereligious holiday, reaffirming the supremacy ofBabylon’s great god and offering thanksgivingfor the fertility of the lands he ruled.

DIVINATIONAND EXORCISM

Apart from participating in public festivals, thepeople of Mesopotamia had access to the godsby other means.

They believed, for example, that the will ofthe gods is manifest in nature and that, withproper skill, it can be read and interpreted, thusgiving the pious petitioner insight into divineintention. Priestly specialists known as barupriests were charged with the responsibility ofdivining heaven’s will by inspecting the organs(especially the liver) of sacrificial animals, bystudying heavenly bodies and the celestial mes-sages their changes and movements implied, andby analyzing telltale patterns in floating drops ofoil or upward-spiraling wisps of smoke. Both


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king and commoner turned to these priests forspiritual guidance and sought personal readingsto help them see into the future. Because illnesswas frequently thought to be caused by unexpi-ated sin or by demonic possession, spiritualhealers called ashipu priests were summoned toassist the sick by discovering what god they mayhave offended so he or she could be appeased, orby finding what hostile spirit was possessingthem so that it might be expelled by rites ofexorcism. Meanwhile, amuletic plaques werehung in the home from walls or by doors to keepout evil spirits who might attempt entry, like the

feared demoness Lamashtu, who tried to stealunborn children from mothers’ wombs orinfants from their cribs, robbing them of life.

The documented arts of divination and exor-cism are described in chapter 5 (“Language,Writing, and Literature”), while their practition-ers are discussed in chapter 11 (“Everyday Life”).

PERSONAL PIETY

Beyond prayer and ritual, beyond ceremonyand magic, lies another dimension of piety: theintent of the heart and its personal expressionthrough moral action. Yet the depth of theheart, especially the ancient heart, is difficult toplumb, for the private recesses of the soul arenot as accessible as public demonstrations offaith, nor are they as evident in a culture’s mon-umental remains. To find them we will need tosearch for the soul’s signature in poetry andread between the lines of cuneiform prose.

In his book, History Begins at Sumer, SamuelNoah Kramer summarized the ethical outlookof Mesopotamia’s first civilized culture:

The Sumerians, according to their ownrecords, cherished goodness and truth, lawand order, justice and freedom, righteousnessand straightforwardness, mercy and compas-sion. And they abhorred evil and falsehood,lawlessness and disorder, injustice and oppres-sion, sinfulness and perversity, cruelty andpitilessness. King and rulers constantlyboasted of the fact that they had establishedlaw and order in the land; protected the weakfrom the strong; the poor from the rich; andwiped out evil and violence. . . . The gods,too, according to the Sumerian sages, pre-ferred the ethical and moral to the unethicaland immoral, and practically all the majordeities of the Sumerian pantheon are extolledin Sumerian hymns as lovers of the good andthe just, of truth and righteousness. Indeed,


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4.4 Represented in this drawing is an anatomicallydetailed model of a sheep’s liver fashioned out of clay.The zones marked by the grid denote areas of theorgan that might portend future events indicated byannotations in cuneiform. The holes may haveserved to hold pegs used as markers, either for thepurpose of priestly instruction or during theexamination of an actual liver. Measuring about 6inches by 6 inches, the model is now in the collectionof the British Museum and may date back tobetween 2000 and 1600 B.C.E. (Drawing by theauthor)

there were several deities who had the super-vision of the moral order as their main func-tion—the sun-god Utu, for example. Anotherdeity, a Lagashite goddess by the name ofNanshe, is also sporadically mentioned in thetexts as devoted to truth, justice, and mercy.(Kramer 1981: 101–2)

Even as the all-seeing eye of the sun lookeddown from heaven upon the deeds of man, thegoddess Nanshe protected widows and orphansand gave comfort and shelter to the weak. Thepresence of such gods in Sumerian conscious-ness thus instilled in the people a sense of con-science that was reinforced by the ethicalstandards articulated in law.

It would be too much to imagine that theSumerians, or the Mesopotamians in general,were morally pure. After all, it was from theblood of a rebellious god that the first humanbeing was made, and many of the rites inMesopotamian religion were intended to expi-ate man’s propensity for sin. Nor would lawitself have needed to exist if humanity did notrequire its instructions and sanctions. In short,the ancient Mesopotamians were human likeourselves.

Nevertheless, they clearly recognized thatthere is a difference between being merelyhuman and being humane. As J. J. A. Van Dijkhas shown, the Sumerian word namlulu meantnot only “the human race” but also “human-ity,” those collective qualities of conduct andbehavior that make human beings worthy ofthe name. It was those qualities that the ancientSumerians strove to emulate.

THE CONCEPTOF IMMORTALITY

The ethical conduct of the ancient Mesopotamianin this life was not conditioned by the notion of

an afterlife where the good were rewarded andthe wicked were punished. As the divine bar-maid Siduri tells the soul-weary Gilgamesh,instead of futilely seeking the blessing of aneternal life you should make the most of yourown. “The life you’re looking for,” she says,“you’ll never find, for when the gods mademan, they reserved death for him, saving lifefor themselves.” These lines from the Epic ofGilgamesh highlight what we find imprintedelsewhere in the Mesopotamian mind: thedichotomy between the authority and preroga-tives of the gods and the necessary obedienceand humility of man who must remain resignedto his lesser station in the existential order.Indeed, only through such resignation does thehero Gilgamesh ultimately find inner peace.

An even more pessimistic assessment ofthe human condition occurs in a literary dia-logue between a Babylonian master and hiscynical slave:

Master: “Agree with me, slave!”Slave: “Absolutely, master!”Master: “I shall make love to a woman!”Slave: “By all means, my lord. A man who

loves a woman forgets his sorrows.”Master: “No, slave, I won’t love a woman!”Slave: “Correct, my lord. A woman is a pitfall,

a sharp-bladed dagger that can slit yourthroat!”

Master: “Slave, I shall give alms to the poor!”Slave: “Oh, do so, my lord. He who gives alms

to the poor is blessed by god.”Master: “No, slave, I won’t give alms!”Slave: “Just so, my lord. Such charity could

only breed ingratitude . . . Climb upon themounds of bygone cities and walk amongthe ruins. Behold the skulls of those whodied in days of yore. Who, my lord, is theevildoer, who the doer of good?”

Other texts affirm that there is an afterlife,but that it is morally neutral. The souls of thewicked are not eternally punished as in theChristian hell, nor the souls of the good eter-


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nally rewarded as in heaven. There is, inshort, no spiritual grist for a MesopotamianDante’s mill—no “Inferno,” no “Paradiso,”nor even a “Purgatorio” between the two. Butthe landscape of the netherworld is grimnonetheless: a dark, dusty, and desolate placewhere souls of the dead gather and must eter-nally remain, their only hope being that theliving will remember them. Ruling over thissombre realm are death’s queen, Ereshkigal,and her divine consort Nergal, just as kingsand queens rule the sunlit world above. It is alandscape depressingly similar to the onepainted by the Greek poet Homer in the 11thbook of his Odyssey, and one that is alluded toin the Old Testament by the name of Sheol.

The bleak Mesopotamian vision of the after-life was reinforced, indeed even induced, by thevery environment in which the people ofMesopotamia lived, an environment in whichnature could sweep away with sudden floods allthe works and material possessions of man,burying the sites of the cities in shrouds of mud,making a mockery of humanity’s very existence.

What incentive, we may then ask, would theancient Mesopotamian have had for living a lifeof piety if he foresaw no final judgment at life’send, no reward for good deeds or punishmentsfor bad?

If some scholars are correct, this very ques-tion would have lacked meaning for the averageMesopotamian, who was culturally conditionedto obey the gods’ supreme authority and whoviewed himself as a necessarily compliant ser-vant of his heavenly master, a servant for whomthe very notion of free will would have been anovel—even an unsettling—idea.

But there is another possibility. Despite thedarkness of Hades (or even because of it), theancient Greeks lived passionate lives, fervent inthe realization that they must drink this life’swine down to the last drop because there wouldbe only an empty cup in Hades. Nor did thatattitude divert them from seeking to build a just

society in this world, to enact laws for its con-struction, and to debate the very definition ofjustice in order that they might more nearlyapproximate its philosophical ideal in their pri-vate and public lives. Nor did the absence of aclear picture of the afterlife dissuade the ancientHebrew prophets from proclaiming the impera-tive of social justice, or Jewish sages from laterseeking its realization through acts of everydaypiety and righteousness. The same may well betrue of the ancient Mesopotamians, who soughtto live moral lives without the incentive of heav-enly reward in an afterlife. It was in this life thattheir gods would reward them both as individu-als and as communities for their faithful service.And if the gods did not, it was as it should be inaccordance with heaven’s greater wisdom andwill. Paradoxically, Islam—the dominant reli-gion of present-day Iraq—offers a paradise tothe faithful and, in doing so, reveals a closerconnection to the eschatology of ancient Egyptand of early Christianity than to the ancient tra-ditions of its own land.

READING

The Multiplicity of the Gods

Black and Green 1998, Leick 1991: lists ofgods; Bottéro 2001: the pantheon andhenotheistic tendencies; Nemet-Nejat 1998:development of the pantheon.

The Governance of the World

Black and Green 1998; Kramer 1963: the meand the Tablet of Destinies.


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The Names and Functionsof the Gods

Black and Green 1998: demons, and symbols;Kramer 1961: mythology of Sumer and Akkad;Kramer 1972: Sumerian mythology; Leick1991: Near Eastern mythology; McCall 1990:Mesopotamian myths; Saggs 1962: demons;Van Buren 1945: divine symbols.

Myths

Bottéro 2001: general discussion; Dalley 1989:translations and commentary; Kramer 1972:Sumerian mythology; Lambert 1995: myth andmythmaking in Sumer and Akkad; McCall 1990:major Mesopotamian myths; Nemet-Nejat1998: religious views in early Mesopotamia.

Places of Public Worship

Harris 1963: the cloister; Nemet-Nejat 1998:places of worship and their functions; Roaf1995: palaces and temples; Robertson 1995:temple organization.

Priests and Priestesses

Bienkowski and Millard 2000: priest andpriestess; prostitution and ritual sex; Bottéro2001: maintenance of cults; Leick 1994: ritualsex; Nemet-Nejat 1998: religious personneland servants; Saggs 1962: priests and associatedtemple personnel; Wiggermann 1995: theolo-gies, priests, and worship.

Holy Days and Festivals

Bienkowski and Millard 2000: sacred marriage;Black 1981: New Year ceremonies; Cohen1993: the cultic calendar; Kramer 1969: sacredmarriage; Nemet-Nejat 1998: religious festi-vals; Roux 1996: New Year festival; Steinkeller1999: sacred marriage.

Divination and Exorcism

Bottéro 1992: interpretation of dreams, divina-tion, and the scientific spirit; Bottéro et al. 2001:astrology, magic and medicine; Farber 1995:witchcraft, magic, and divination; Jeyes 1980:extispicy; Jones 2000: horoscopes; Nemet-Nejat1998: sorcerers, exorcists, and diviners; Oppen-heim 1977: the art of the diviner.

Personal Piety

Bottéro 2001: religious sentiment; Bottéro etal. 2001: the concept of sin; Buccellati 1995:ethics and piety in the ancient Near East; Con-tenau 1954: the moral worth of the gods, sinand confession; Frankfort, Wilson, and Jacob-sen 1949: the good life; Jacobsen 1976: per-sonal religion; Kramer 1963: the concept ofhumanity; Kramer 1981: the first moral ideasand the first “Job”; Jacobsen 1976: history ofreligion.

The Concept of Immortality

Bottéro 2001, Surlock 1995: death and theafterlife in ancient Mesopotamian thought.


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5

LANGUAGE, WRITING, AND LITERATURE

LANGUAGE

In 1890, inventor Thomas Edison invited thethree most famous people in England to recordtheir voices for posterity on his recent inven-tion, the phonograph. The three people wereQueen Victoria, Prime Minister Gladstone,and the poet Tennyson. The queen declined,the prime minister sent some one else to readhis message, and Tennyson—who had alwaysbeen fascinated with science—agreed, and pro-ceeded to make a whole series of recordings onthe primitive wax cylinders of Edison’s “talkingmachine.” Regrettably, Tennyson stored hisrecords in a box near the heating pipes of hishome, and so the waxen hills and dales made bythe running needle long ago melted into inaudi-ble plains. But on some tracks still, beyond thehiss of hardened wax, the poet’s voice can still beheard, boldly declaiming his spirited verse.

Before the invention of the phonograph, thepast stands silent. The great Americans whosefaces we know from early photographs or art—Lincoln or Jefferson, for example—are mute. Ifhistory is measured in “B.C.E.” and “C.E.,”another pair of designators ought to beemployed to signify the time before which andafter which history can be authentically heard.If such were used, we would soon realize howmany important voices cannot speak becauseaudio technology came too late.

Of course, their words still remain, even ifthey can only be recited in the privacy of ourminds or aloud with our own 21st-centurytongue. But what if these words too hadnever been preserved, or had faded beyond allrecognition?

Such problems are compounded the fartherback into time we go: before the phonograph,before the photograph, before the printedword, before the written word itself. Mutehuman remains and an equally silent art are our

only witnesses to these most ancient timesbefore writing’s invention.

The present chapter will focus on the writtenrecord of Mesopotamian culture; a later chapter,on the testimony of ancient art. Here we willexamine Mesopotamia’s languages and its inven-tion of writing, which has not only allowed usliterally to read the ancient mind but also hasgiven us the world’s oldest masterpieces of liter-ature. Next, we will examine the forms of liter-ary expression that Mesopotamian languagetook: epic poetry, historical chronicles, legaldocuments, divination texts, hymns and prayers,lamentations, letters, proverbs, social satire, anderotic poetry.

THE GREATDECIPHERMENTS

Even though ancient artists have provided uswith pictures of life in ancient Mesopotamia,those pictures would be silent were it not forour ability to read and understand the “cap-tions,” and through literature and writtenrecords penetrate deeper into the ideas, emo-tions, and experiences of the past.

Yet before the ancient writings could be read,they first had to be deciphered, for they were setdown in scripts whose sounds and meanings hadlong ago been forgotten. The decipherment, aswe shall see, was the product of an internationaleffort carried out over most of the last two cen-turies. Though the scholarly achievements werelargely incremental and based on dogged persis-tence, they were energized by flashes of insightand even acts of courage.

In many ways the story of the deciphermentof lost languages embodies some of the mostadmirable qualities of our race: curiosity, dedi-


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cation, intelligence, and tenacity. But most ofall it signifies the spiritual essence of civiliza-tion: the realization that we are nothing if weforget our roots.

The Significance of Inscriptions

Before inscriptions can be deciphered, how-ever, they must first be recognized for whatthey are—writing. Though early travelers hadreturned to Europe with inscribed artifacts orhad copied inscriptions they had seen on mon-uments, many doubted they were examples ofwriting. To some, the tablets resembled “bits ofpottery decorated in an unusual manner.” Toothers, the peculiar wedge-shaped symbolslooked like “bird tracks on wet sand.” But stillothers saw them for what they were: the tracesof a mysterious writing system unlike any thatwas known. One such scholar, EngelbertKämpfer, called the wedge-shaped characters“cuneatae,” or cuneiform, from the Latin wordfor wedge.

The Challenge of Persepolis

After surviving a disastrous expedition to Arabia,the Danish mathematician Carsten Niebuhrjourneyed in 1765 to Persepolis, the ancient cap-ital of the Persian kings. While there he studiedthe monuments and made detailed copies of theinscriptions he found on the stones. These werepublished upon his return to Denmark.

The scene now shifts to Germany where, in1802, a school teacher named Georg FriedrichGrotefend bet some friends he could decode atleast part of the Persepolis inscriptions.

Niebuhr had recognized what seemed to bethree distinct writing systems based on the

number of characters they used. In the beliefthat it was alphabetic, Grotefend decided toattack the shortest of the systems, thinking itwould be the easiest to crack.

Observing how certain clusters of charactersrepeated themselves in patterns, Grotefendrecalled a classic pattern from his study of Per-sian history: “A, Great King, King of Kings,Son of B, Great King.” The Persepolis inscrip-tion, however, added what seemed to be a thirdname: “. . . Son of C,” but C was not identifiedas a king himself. Who then, wondered Grote-fend, were A, B, and C? Persian history sup-plied the answer: A was Xerxes, whose fatherhad been a king. B was the father, Cyrus theGreat; and C was Cyrus’s father, Hystaspes,who had never sat on the Persian throne.

L A N G U A G E , W R I T I N G , A N D L I T E R A T U R E

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5.1 Georg Friedrich Grotefend opened the doorto the decipherment of cuneiform by discoveringroyal names in inscriptions found at Persepolis.(Rogers, A History of Babylonia and Assyria, 1915)

Grotefend then substituted the names ofXerxes, Cyrus, and Hystaspes for the alphabeticcuneiform characters that spelled out theirnames. In addition to recognizing three names,he now also knew the phonetic values of 12cuneiform characters, and he had identified thewords for “king” and “great.” Moreover, he hadwon his bet.

But he had also hit a roadblock. He had noother historical formulas to give him a clue aswhat the other words in the inscription meant,nor even enough letters to help him soundthem all out.

Discovered just three years earlier, Egypt’sRosetta Stone would prove far easier to decode.At its bottom was a complete Greek translationof the hieroglyphic text. With the help of Cop-tic, a living linguistic descendant of ancientEgyptian, the French scholar Jean FrançoisChampollion eventually translated all the hiero-glyphic words. What cuneiform scholars wouldneed was the Mesopotamian equivalent of Cop-tic: a living descendant of the language of Per-sia’s ancient kings; with its aid the meanings ofother cuneiform words might be deduced. Thatlanguage would prove to be Parsee, or Avestan,the language of the Zend-Avesta and of theZoroastrians who cherished it as their sacredscripture. While the key to cuneiform would beAvestan, the key waited to be turned in the lin-guistic lock by an English adventurer namedHenry Creswicke Rawlinson.

The Behistun Rock

On the royal road between Babylon andEcbatana stands a 1,700-foot-high cliff.Around 520 B.C.E. the Persian king Darius Iordered a monument to be carved on its sheerface celebrating his triumph over insurgents.On a sculpted relief he stands with his foot on aprostrate enemy as defeated chieftains cower

before him, their hands tied behind their backs,their necks connected by rope. Accompanyingthe relief is an immense cuneiform inscriptiontotaling 1,200 lines and measuring about 100feet high by 150 feet wide. To make the rockface more durable, the entire surface washighly polished by the Persians and thenthickly varnished after repairs had been madeto cracks with fresh stone set in lead.


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5.2 The carvings on the sheer face of the BehistunRock proved to be the Mesopotamian equivalent ofEgypt’s Rosetta Stone. The inscriptions provided themaster key for unlocking cuneiform’s complexities.(Maspero, The Dawn of Civilization, 1897)

The English soldier, diplomat, and linguistHenry Creswicke Rawlinson had become fasci-nated with the Behistun Rock, whose precisedetails were unintelligible from ground leveleven with the aid of a telescope. Beginning in1835 Rawlinson climbed the cliff face to get abetter look, inching his way across a two-foot-wide ledge. Determined to copy the entireinscription, he brought up a ladder and bal-anced precariously on its topmost rung, orhung from ropes like a mountain climber. Hewas still at it by 1847, when he secured the helpof a “wild Kurdish boy,” who reached the moreinaccessible parts of the cliff by driving woodenpegs into the rock and swinging from side toside by rope. Finally, dangling in a makeshift

scaffold, the boy copied the remaining parts ofthe inscription by squeezing wet papier-mâchéinto the engravings.

Back home in Baghdad with a pet lion cuboften napping beneath his chair, Rawlinsonlabored over the same alphabetical cuneiformcharacters Grotefend had worked on yearsbefore, and he came up with similar insightsabout royal names and titles. But then, drawingupon his knowledge of Avestan and Sanscrit (anIndo-European language related to Persian),Rawlinson took the decipherment of cuneiforma giant step further, aided by the fact that theBehistun inscription contained numerous per-sonal and place names that could, by deduction,yield additional phonetic values.

In the end, Rawlinson completely translatedthe so-called Old Persian part of the Behistuninscription—a third of the whole—and beganwork on what we now know as the Akkadianpart. This section was far more difficult todecipher because it was not alphabetic innature; instead, it was composed of over 300characters, many of which had multiple values.By 1845, however, the Swedish philologistIsidor Löwenstern identified its language fam-ily as Semitic, and, thanks to parallel vocabu-lary in known Semitic languages like Hebrewand Arabic, the Akkadian portion of Darius’sinscription was eventually decoded.

The middle portion, however, now knownas Elamite posed a special challenge because, asit turned out, Elamite is a linguistic orphanwith no known parentage that can provide ety-mological clues. Indeed, even today, theElamite portion of the Behistun trilingual isnot completely understood.

The Secrets of Sumerian

Cuneiform inscriptions found in southernMesopotamia revealed the existence of yet


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5.3 Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson died at theage of 85 after a life of derring-do that includedscaling the heights of Behistun. (Rogers, A Historyof Babylonia and Assyria, 1915)

another language, the language of the oldest ofMesopotamian civilizations: Sumerian. LikeElamite, Sumerian is a linguistic anomaly; itsmeaning could not be unlocked by comparingits vocabulary to that of other known languages.

Nevertheless, Sumerian was deciphered,chiefly because the Babylonians and Assyriansheld it in such high esteem as a classical lan-guage long after it had ceased to be spoken. Asa result of its reputation as a language of learn-ing, Akkadian dictionaries were prepared inancient times, dictionaries that listed Sumerianand Akkadian synonyms in parallel columns.With their assistance, scholars like the French-man François Thureau-Dangin, the GermanArno Poebel, and the Americans ThorkildJacobsen and Samuel Noah Kramer advancedour understanding of the world’s oldest classi-cal language and the people who originallyspoke it 5,000 years before our time.

Deciphering the Past

In our quest to decipher the meaning of the past,it is the ancients who have helped us the most:first, by inventing writing and giving it lastingform; and second, by developing a multiculturalsociety in which the linguistic traditions of dif-ferent ethnic groups were acknowledged andpreserved. By unlocking one script, we are giventhe keys to unlock another; by reading one lan-guage, we come to better understand them all.

Babylon Online

Because the first major archaeological discov-eries in Mesopotamia were made in Assyria,scholars who study cuneiform inscriptions havecome to be called “Assyriologists” even thoughtheir interests may range beyond that northernland. Today there are some 400 professional

Assyriologists working in universities andmuseums around the world.

Since 1998, their efforts have been aided bythe Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative, aproject cosponsored by the University of Cali-fornia at Los Angeles and the Max PlanckInstitute for the History of Science in Berlin,and headed by Robert K. Englund of UCLA.

The CDLI is hoping to scan and digitize themore than 200,000 cuneiform tablets scatteredin collections around the globe and make theirtexts electronically accessible. According toProfessor Englund, the online library willbecome “the single-largest, most organized, andbest catalogued repository of cuneiform inscrip-tions in the world,” accelerating our under-standing of Mesopotamia’s life and thought.

MAJOR LANGUAGES

Sumerian

The oldest texts discovered in Mesopotamiaare written in a language called Sumerian.Sumerian was the primary language of south-ern Mesopotamia, and it was used by the peo-ple who, near the end of the fourth millenniumB.C.E., created what may have been the world’sfirst civilization. It is from that time thathumanity’s autobiography begins. Sumeriancontinued to be a spoken language for two mil-lennia more, but it continued even after to havea vital existence as a classic language of learningfor another millennium and a half down to thefirst century B.C.E.

Sumerian, however, was not the oldest lan-guage ever spoken in the valleys of the Tigrisand Euphrates. Imbedded in Sumerian vocabu-lary are words not Sumerian in origin, butinstead ones that hark back to earlier


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Mesopotamian tongues and cultures. Thenames of some of Sumeria’s most famous citiesand even the names “Tigris” and “Euphrates”are pre-Sumerian, belonging to a languagescholars have dubbed “Proto-Euphratean” or“Ubaidian” (from the name of a site of greatantiquity now called Tell al-Ubaid). The highlevel of this pre-Sumerian culture can be mea-sured by the words the Sumerians borrowedfrom this mysterious indigenous populationwhen they first settled in the land, including thevery names of basic occupations: farming, herd-ing, and fishing; potterymaking, weaving, bas-ketmaking, and leatherworking; carpentry,masonry, and metalworking; and even the pro-fessions of merchant and priest. That the Sume-rians learned the arts of agriculture from thesepeople is clear from the non-Sumerian origin oftheir words for “plow” and “furrow.” Likewise,the non-Sumerian origins of their words for“date” and “palm” reveal that the Sumerianswere outsiders when they first encountered theseplants after migrating and settling in the land.

The Sumerians’ language also contains itsown mystery: it is linguistically unique, beingunrelated to any other world language or lan-guage family for which evidence exists. Thusthe language of the Sumerians provides noclues as to the country of their origin or theirpreimmigration ethnic ties. Unlike the Semiticlanguages of Mesopotamia, Sumerian used twoclasses—personal or impersonal—to distin-guish nouns. Also it was an agglutinative lan-guage: its words were based on mono- orbi-syllabic stems that changed their meaningand syntactic function through the attachmentof one or more prefixes and suffixes.

Akkadian

The other major language of ancientMesopotamia was Akkadian, a member of the

Semitic language family. Akkadian entered thescene with the migration of Semites from thewest during the early third millennium B.C.E.Establishing themselves in northern and centralMesopotamia, the Semites dominated Sumerby 2350 B.C.E. under the leadership of Sargonof Akkad. As a result, “Akkadian” (from Akkad)gradually supplanted Sumerian, even in thesouth, as Mesopotamia’s chief vernacular lan-guage. By about 1450 B.C.E. through the wide-spread activity of Mesopotamian merchants,Akkadian had become an international lan-guage of diplomatic correspondence betweenand among the great nations of the Near East.

Unlike Sumerian, Akkadian—like otherSemitic languages—used two genders (mascu-line and feminine) to distinguish betweennouns, and based its vocabulary on three-letterroots, modifying their spelling both externallyand internally to convey shades of meaning.Two dialects of Akkadian existed: Babylonianin the south and Assyrian in the north.

In modern scholarly transcriptions, Sumer-ian words are printed in capital letters andAkkadian ones in italics.

Later Semitic migrations by a people fromthe west called the Amorites led to the intro-duction of yet another Semitic language, Ara-maic, that began to displace Akkadian inpopularity by the late first millennium B.C.E.,and it eventually became the dominant Semiticlanguage of the ancient Near East.

Other Languages

Another ingredient in the linguistic mix ofMesopotamia was Hurrian, the language of apeople who settled in Mesopotamia—first inthe north and later in the south—beginningaround 2500 B.C.E., and who developed thepowerful kingdom of Mitanni. Like Sumerian,Hurrian is connected to no known language orlanguage family.


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Eventually, as Persian and Greek con-querors swept across the landscape of theTigris and Euphrates, other tongues could beheard in the marketplaces and administrativecenters of the land.

Throughout, the one line of continuity wasSumerian, which, like Latin in classical,medieval, and Renaissance Europe, bridged thetemporal expanse between the birth of civiliza-tion and its later cultural transformations.

WRITING

Our knowledge of the languages that were spo-ken in ancient Mesopotamia derives from thediscovery and decipherment of written texts.The invention of writing was one of Mesopo-tamia’s greatest achievements. It facilitated theorganization and management of society andserved as the chief instrument by which a com-plex civilization could come into being. Eventu-ally, it became the medium through which thepeople’s collective experience and wisdom weretransgenerationally transmitted. Though Meso-potamia’s languages and scripts ultimatelybecame extinct, its invention of writing enduredas its most lasting legacy to the modern world.

Origins and Devices

Vast and impressive as its impact was, writing’sorigins were simple and humble. The earthitself was its birthplace: the clay found besideits rivers was shaped in the hands to form smallpillow-like tablets to write on, while the reedsthat grew along the rivers’ banks became tools.With the upper and lower parts of the stemneatly sliced off, the reed became a stylus andacquired a triangular cross-section that couldbe pressed into the soft clay. The wedge-

shaped indentations later gave rise to a namefor this style of writing, “cuneiform,” from theLatin word “cuneus” for wedge.

Around the same time in history, writing wasinvented in the valley of the Nile. There theEgyptians made use of a plant that grew in abun-dance along the river’s banks, the papyrus plant.From its fibrous pulp, hammered flat and driedin the sun, they made the world’s first paper.Indeed, our word “paper” comes from theancient word “papyrus.” From the loose fibers atthe ends of the plant’s stems, the Egyptians madebrushes they used to apply ink to paper.

Did the Egyptians learn the concept of writ-ing from Mesopotamia? Did Mesopotamialearn the art of writing from Egypt? Or did thetwo instances of invention arise independently?Scholars still debate the issue—an importantone, since at its heart lies another critical ques-tion: Which civilization—Mesopotamia’s orEgypt’s was the world’s first? The real answermay never be found, because the evidence—ifit did not disintegrate—probably lies burieddeep in the estuaries of the Tigris andEuphrates and the Nile’s muddy delta.

One thing is almost certain: necessity wasthe mother of invention. As each culturebecame economically and politically complexnear the fourth millennium B.C.E., writing wasdevised as a way of keeping records. Eachnation found in its own natural environmentthe raw materials it needed to become literate.

Style

Both the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians alsoused the objects of the world around them as theinspiration for the shapes of their written sym-bols. These were far easier to represent throughthe use of a brush, and so Egyptian charactersbecame largely recognizable images of suchthings as animals, plants, and the parts of thehuman body. But using the blunt end of a reed


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to do so posed a special challenge, and thereforeMesopotamian written characters tended tolook more abstract, being angular assemblagesof wedge-shaped marks arranged in differentpositions (vertical, horizontal, or slanted). Thepictographic origins of Mesopotamian writing,as Denise Schmandt-Besserat has argued, mayactually lie in small clay tokens that were pressedby merchants into clay to mark the basis of atransaction: so many sheep, so many bushels.From these primitive impressions of animal,garment, food, and vase shapes arose the out-lines of the shapes later reproduced, in moresophisticated form, in cuneiform. Long dis-missed by archaeologists as trivial finds, thesetoy-like tokens—some as early as the eighthmillennium B.C.E.—may constitute the firstbaby steps in the slow march toward phoneticwriting and literature.

From Pictogram to Phonogram

Initially, each character stood for the object thatit pictorially represented: in short, the pictureof a sheep meant “one sheep” and two picturesof a sheep meant “two sheep.” But such a sys-tem has obvious limitations when it comes toexpressing actions rather than objects, and evenmore limitations when it comes to representingabstract ideas and logical relationships. (Forexample, does a picture of a man next to a sheepmean “the man owns the sheep,” “the man soldthe sheep,” or “the man is sheepish”? And, inci-dentally, was the sheep white or black, young orold?) The solution was to create some charac-ters that would traditionally stand for certainabstract concepts or ideas. Thus, the ideogramwas born. But even pictograms and ideogramsleft much to be desired, since there had to be asymbol for everything, especially as societybecame more complex and affluent. Through aleap of imagination, the phonogram was born: a

symbol that stood not for an object or an ideabut a sound. Using a finite number of phono-grams, the sounds of each and every word in thelanguage could be reproduced and representedin writing, including the names of people andplaces. This was especially easy to do in Sumer-ian, where most words were monosyllabic.Thus by joining different syllabic symbols, orsyllograms, together, new words could beformed. Of course, in a traditional society likeancient Mesopotamia’s or Egypt’s, few thingswere readily discarded, including pictogramsand ideograms, especially if they could helpclarify meaning through a kind of graphicredundancy. But the basis of each nation’s writ-ing system became phonograms. All that wasleft was to reduce their total number into themakings of a streamlined alphabet, an innova-tion that first appeared in the second millen-nium B.C.E. but took many centuries to gainacceptance. Until then, each ancient system wascomprised of hundreds upon hundreds of sepa-rate characters (for Akkadian, about six hun-dred), representing individual sounds andsyllabic combinations along with more ancientpictographic and ideographic symbols.

Technique

These symbols were impressed on clay tablets,with the writer’s hand moving from left toright, or from top to bottom, so as not tosmudge the clay with the palm of the hand.When vertical columns were used, the tabletswere written and read from left to right. Tothen “turn the page,” the column was flippedover bottom to top. Reading then continuedfrom the column on the farthest right andmoved leftward. If the scribe ran out of room,he might write between the lines or even writeon the tablet’s edge. At the end of the tabletwould go what scholars call a colophon, givingthe title of the document, the “page” number


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Meaning

heaven

sun, day

earth

water, stream

mountain

plough

grain

orchard

ox

cow

pig

donkey

fish

Pictogram (ca. 3500–3000

B.C.E.)

EarlyCuneiform

(ca. 2400–1800 B.C.E.)

LaterCuneiform

(ca. 700 B.C.E.)

PhoneticEquivalent

(in Sumerian)

bird

bowl, food

eat(“mouth and food”)

drink(“mouth and water”)

an

ud

ki

a

kur

apin

she

shar

gud

ab

sha

anshe

ku(a)

mushen

ninda

ku

nag

of the tablet, and a “catch-line”: the first line ofthe next tablet. In a legal document, thecolophon might include the scribe’s name, andthe date and place where the tablet was written.Contracts and letters were generally put in clayenvelopes marked on the outside with the con-tents and the seals of the parties involved.When taking dictation or doing rough drafts, ascribe might write with a bronze stylus on awooden tablet covered with soft wax, whichcould later be rubbed smooth like a “magicslate” to ready it for the next composition.Texts of permanent significance—like a lawcode or a royal proclamation—would bepainstakingly cut into monumental stone.

The Role of the Scribe

Without doubt, the most important man in theancient society of Mesopotamia was the scribe.Kings might extend their sway over hithertounknown regions, merchants might organizethe importation of rare commodities from dis-tant lands, the irrigation officials might set thelabourers to utilise the bountiful waters of therivers and bring fertility to the soil, but withoutthe scribe to record and transmit, to pass ondetailed orders of administrators, to providethe astronomical data for controlling the cal-endar, to calculate the labour force necessaryfor digging a canal or the supplies required byan army, the co-ordination and continuity ofall these activities could never have beenachieved. Ancient Mesopotamian civilisationwas above all a literate civilisation.


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5.5 This simulation illustrates how cuneiformcharacters would have been produced using a claytablet and a stylus. (Oriental Institute, Universityof Chicago)

5.6 For purposes of security, cuneiform tabletswere often enclosed in clay envelopes. Theseenvelopes, or “case tablets,” included a descriptionof the contents. In addition to being so inscribed, theenvelopes might also be marked with personal seals.(Babylonian Collection, Yale University Library)

5.4 (Opposite page) This chart illustrates the development of cuneiform characters. Characters wereoriginally drawn as pictures, but they were later reproduced in more abstract form by using triangularimpressions made in clay by the blunt end of a reed. Over the course of time, the number of impressions wasreduced and the shapes simplified in the interest of efficiency. At some point in time, the axis of mostcharacters was rotated 90 degrees, in effect making them “lie on their backs.” The reason for this is notclear, but it may reflect a desire on the part of scribes to save valuable space by compressing the charactersvertically.

Each character stood for a simple sound. By combining these characters, and the sounds they stood for, morecomplex words and ideas could be represented.

With these words H. W. F. Saggs points upthe central role of writing and the scribe inMesopotamia (Saggs 1965, 1987: 72). Meso-potamia’s was, as Saggs notes, “above all a literatecivilisation.” But literacy in Mesopotamia wasvery limited, making the role of the professionalscribe (dubsar in Sumerian and tupsharru inAkkadian) all the more important. Given thecomplexity of the cuneiform script, becoming ascribe required a lengthy education.

Though evidence exists for literate women,indeed, for the activity of female scribes, theoccupation of scribe was a profession mostlyreserved for males. As boys (almost always thesons of socially prominent individuals) theywould attend a scribal academy known as a“tablet house” (edubba in Sumerian and bit tuppiin Akkadian). Initially their training consisted ofshaping tablets out of clay, cutting styluses, andlearning to manipulate the stylus to produce leg-ible cuneiform characters. Simultaneously, theywould practice and practice again, recognizingand reciting such characters aloud. They wouldthen move on to the study of language, includ-ing spelling and grammar. After the conquest ofSumer by Akkad, scribes had to be bilingual, andthat meant studying vernacular Akkadian andclassic Sumerian (sometimes with the help ofbilingual dictionaries). Finally came the study ofliterary style, achieved by the repeated copyingof compositional models and perfected by theattentive reading of literary masterpieces. Thecurriculum would also include mathematics andlessons in the technical vocabulary a scribemight need to know in such fields as medicine,astronomy, and engineering. For the advancedstudent there would also be instruction in thedialectal differences between Babylonian andAssyrian, and perhaps even training in other lan-guages such as Hurrian and Egyptian.

Archaeologists believe they may have foundthe remains of scribal academies in the ruins ofUr, Sippar, and Nippur—private houses con-taining rooms with multiple benches that mayhave served as classrooms—but schools may

have also been attached to temples in variouscities. A neighborhood in ancient Nippur hadso many tablets scattered on the floors of itshouses that archaeologists concluded it mayhave once been a scribal quarter (which theynamed “Tablet Hill”).

Once a scribal student “graduated” fromschool, he could look forward to a remunerativecareer. He might serve on the staff of a palace ortemple (keeping records, maintaining invento-ries, copying documents, taking dictation, man-aging correspondence, and composing the textsfor inscriptions). Or he might work for busi-nessmen (cataloguing merchandise, writing uptransactions, and drawing up contracts). Or hemight even freelance, setting up shop near acity gate and charging illiterate customers forwriting or reading their letters or drawing upthe formal documents they needed to arrangesuch things as a marriage or the legal transfer ofproperty. The enterprising graduate might evengo on to further training to become a physicianor priest or—equipped with literacy—help hisfather in an already thriving family business.

Literary Tradition

Beyond meeting the immediate needs of hissociety, however, the scribe played a critical rolein maintaining his culture’s spiritual longevity. Itwas the scribe who by his skills enabled a thirstypresent to drink from the reservoir of the past,for literacy was the link that connected the pre-sent with the wisdom of the past and its instruc-tional and inspirational power. By makingmultiple copies of Mesopotamia’s literary mas-terpieces, the ancient scribe—like the monks inthe European Middle Ages—preserved a pre-cious literary legacy and made it accessible tolater generations. Indeed, were it not forMesopotamia’s scribes, her ghosts would bevoiceless today and her ruins silent.


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Archives and Libraries

The records of palace and temple were storedin archives. Thanks to this database, we can tapinto the everyday life of an ancient world,adding to the information we can elsewheregain from public inscriptions graven on stone.

By a twist of fate, the destruction of the cityof Nineveh by the Babylonians and Medes in612 B.C.E. buried and preserved the royal libraryof Ashurbanipal. Containing as many as 1,500separate works, it represents the private literarypreserve of an avid and intellectual collectorwho once boasted that he had read with his owneyes tablets “written before the Flood.” Thoughother royal libraries may have existed, Ashur-banipal’s is the only one to have survived. Morethan any other single source it has illuminatedour understanding of the Mesopotamian mind.Ironically, the burning of cities by enemyarmies actually preserved the clay documentsby baking them.

It is now time to explore the literary trea-sures of ancient Mesopotamia: its epic poetry;its historical chronicles; its legal documents; itsdivination texts, hymns, prayers, and lamenta-tions; its letters and proverbs; its social satire;and its erotic poetry.

LITERATURE

Epic Poetry

The scale of an epic tapestry is broad, fordivine myth and heroic legend are the warpand woof from which it is woven. Its themesare the great deeds of human beings and thegods, and the intertwined existence of theirworlds. Its length is often long, given theweight of its message: the creation of the uni-

verse, the origins of heavenly beings andhumanity, the meaning and purpose of life.

Before writing’s invention, such tales wererecited orally, each storyteller transmitting atraditional narrative core that grew by creativeembellishment. Writing tended to fix the story’sstructure and content, but over the course ofgenerations even these might be reshaped,especially in the hands of a master poet, to forma work of literary art.

The civilization preserved its masterpiecesby copying and recopying them; but the liter-ary masterpieces also preserved their civiliza-tion by acting as a lifeline that connected thepresent to the past and the spiritual guidance itcould provide.

THE LEGEND OF GILGAMESH

One of the greatest poems of ancientMesopotamia is the Epic of Gilgamesh. Of allMesopotamian epics, its voice is the most uni-versal for, despite the epic’s alien names andsettings, it speaks of the human condition: oflove and loss, of striving and failure, of inno-cence and regret, of boundless dreams andreality’s cruel limits. The Epic of Gilgamesh isthus at once the oldest of mankind’s tales andthe most perennially modern.

It is also a tale that is incomplete. Only 80percent of the story survives: 575 of its original3,000 or so lines are completely lost, and theplot is riddled with holes. But the story’s mainoutlines are clear, and the characters com-pelling. A “standard version” of the epic hasbeen pieced together from the remains of some70 clay “manuscripts” found in Mesopotamia,most from the seventh century B.C.E. library ofAshurbanipal at Nineveh. But documentsprove the story is many centuries earlier. Onetradition attributes its authorship to a scholarfrom Uruk named Sinleqqiunninni, who per-haps lived in the 13th century B.C.E.. Yet frag-ments exist of an even earlier version of thetext, dating back to the Old Babylonian period


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(ca. 1800–1600 B.C.E.). And even older thanthese are samples of the story written inSumerian: individual heroic episodes that laterwere integrated into a single grand design tran-scribed into Akkadian.

As for the hero himself, it looks like he mayhave actually existed. The Sumerian King-listnames a Gilgamesh as the fifth king to ruleUruk after the legendary Great Flood. Work-ing backward from the names and dates ofmore historic kings, this would put his reign tosometime between 2800 and 2700 B.C.E. Fromhis actual deeds—the conquest of Kish and theconstruction of Uruk’s great walls—grew thestuff of legend. Like England’s King Arthur,Gilgamesh became larger than life: a man “2⁄3divine and 1⁄3 mortal,” as the story goes, who“probed the depths of existence . . . and finallyfound wisdom.”

Our survey of his legend begins withSumerian tales (where his name is spelled “Bil-games”) and concludes with the great Akkadianepic that bears his name. Like other longMesopotamian poems, the text of the Epic ofGilgamesh is traditionally divided into chapterscalled tablets because each fills the surface of asingle clay document. We begin, however, withthe shorter Sumerian tales from which thelonger epic grew.

Sumerian Tales of Bilgames

“BILGAMES AND AGGA” OR “THE ENVOYS OF AGGA”

CharactersAgga (Akka), ruler of KishBilgames, ruler of UrukBirhurturra, Bilgames’s bodyguard

PlotThrough envoys, Agga, the ruler of Kish, deliv-ers an ultimatum to the city of Uruk demandingits submission. Bilgames, the ruler of Uruk,turns to his council of elders, who recommend

acceding to Agga’s demands. Rejecting theirdecision, Bilgames then turns to an assembly ofyoung warriors, who choose to fight rather thansurrender. With his ultimatum rejected, Aggalays siege to the city. Birhurturra volunteers togo as an emissary to persuade Agga to desist.His body beaten, Birhurturra remains defiant,declaring that Bilgames will ultimately triumph.Bilgames then leads his people into battle,defeats the enemy, and captures Agga. Recallinga past favor, however, Bilgames shows Aggamercy and releases him.

CommentaryThis is the best preserved Sumerian tale thatfeatures Bilgames as its central character. At115 lines, it is also the shortest to survive. Thestory celebrates defiance in defense of civicfreedom and praises individual courage. Inaddition, it extols mercy as an attribute ofeffective leadership. As a reflection of Sumer-ian political history, the story documents mili-tary conflict between city-states (in particular,Uruk and Kish) and demonstrates the existenceof a bicameral legislature in Sumer. The diver-gent views of the elders and the young warriorsis also our earliest literary evidence in historyof a politically charged generation gap. Thepicture of Gilgamesh we see here is that of abrave and resolute military leader who tempersjustice with mercy. The content of the epic taleis purely secular and features no gods.

“BILGAMES AND THE CEDAR MOUNTAIN”

CharactersBilgames, ruler of UrukEnkidu, his servantUtu, god of the sunHuwawa, guardian of the Cedar Mountain

PlotSeeing a corpse drifting down a river, Bilgamesbecomes acutely conscious of his own mortality.In order to secure immortality, he decides to


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become famous by journeying to a distant andforbidding mountain covered with sacred cedartrees. His servant, Enkidu, implores him to prayto the sun-god Utu for aid. In response, Utugives Bilgames seven constellations to act as hisguides. Fifty men free of responsibility volun-teer to serve under Bilgames’s command on thisdangerous mission and are armed for combat.After crossing six mountain ranges, the expedi-tion arrives at the seventh—their destination—where they begin to fell sacred cedar trees. Thenoise, however, awakens the divine guardian ofthe forest, Huwawa, who attacks them with hismagic power and renders them unconscious.Awakened by Enkidu, Bilgames resolves to findand fight Huwawa. When Enkidu tries to dis-suade him from going, Bilgames urges thatEnkidu join him, since two will be strongerthan one. Bilgames eventually succeeds not bymight but by craft, offering to give Huwawaone gift after another in exchange for each ofhis magic powers. The seven gifts include thegift of Bilgames’s two sisters in marriage, kin-ship, flour and cool water, slippers, and preciousminerals. Stripped of his powers, Huwawa isthen captured by Bilgames, who in an act ofgenerosity releases him, much to the consterna-tion of Enkidu, who proceeds to cut off the dan-gerous Huwawa’s head. Upset over Huwawa’sdeath, the god Enlil distributes the magic pow-ers that were once Huwawa’s to other entities inthe cosmos.

CommentaryThis story draws upon a variety of motifs thatoccur in the mythologies of other nations,including the myths of the Greeks. Like Achillesin the tale of the Trojan War, Bilgames is drivenby a hunger for immortality that he seeks to sat-isfy by performing unforgettable deeds. LikeUlysses in the cave of the Cyclops, Bilgamesuses trickery and the lure of a gift to strip a mon-ster of his power when physical strength alonewill not prevail. And like Jason and the Argo-

nauts who sought the Golden Fleece, Bilgamesand his men quest after something guarded byan awesome and terrifying creature. In theMesopotamian myth, the recurrence of themagic number seven is also notable.

In the later Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, thehero is motivated to search for the secret of eter-nal life after keeping vigil over the dead body ofhis companion, Enkidu. The later storytellerachieved this effect by intermixing three ele-ments from the tale of Bilgames and the CedarMountain: the thought-provoking corpse float-ing down the river; Enkidu’s efforts to awakenBilgames from a death-like sleep; and Bilgames’sunderlying compulsion to attain immortality. Inthis tale, however, Enkidu is merely a servant,not the half-civilized, half-animal creature helater becomes.

Two Sumerian versions of the Cedar Moun-tain story survive. In one, the potent theme ofthe fragileness of mortality is positioned in thenarrative to give it greater emphasis. In thissame version, Bilgames expresses doubts abouthis ability to defeat his enemy. What we seethen in these two versions is evidence of differ-ent authorship and a different philosophicalperspective on the nature of the hero. The laterepic will choose the path of vulnerability anddoubt over the path of bravado.

“BILGAMES AND THE BULL OF HEAVEN”

CharactersBilgames, ruler of UrukNinsun, his goddess-motherInanna, goddess of sexual loveAn, Inanna’s divine fatherLugalgabangal, Bilgames’s minstrelEnkidu, Bilgames’s servant

PlotSeeing the handsome Bilgames rowing a boatin a marsh, the goddess Inanna wants to havesex with him. Later, Bilgames’s mother warnsher son about Inanna’s dangerous and seductive


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power. As a result, Bilgames rejects Inanna’sadvances and thereby enrages her. Bent onrevenge, Inanna appeals to her divine father torelease the destructive Bull of Heaven (possiblythe constellation Taurus) from the sky. Whenhe refuses, she throws a tantrum and gets herway. Bilgames’s minstrel, Lugalgabangal, seesthe Bull of Heaven coming and warns his mas-ter about its approach, but Bilgames dismisseshis fears as exaggerated, bidding Lugalgaban-gal to play and sing while he (Bilgames) drinksbeer. Finally, Bilgames rises to the challenge.With his servant Enkidu holding the bull’s tail,Bilgames strikes its head with an ax and slays it.Then, he cuts off its hindquarter and hurls theobject at Inanna, driving her off. Afterward,Bilgames cuts up the bull’s meat and gives it tothe orphans of his city to eat. The horns heconsecrates to Inanna.

CommentaryThe battle with the Bull of Heaven willbecome a major episode in the comprehensiveBabylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. The probableastral significance of the episode, however, isregretably unknown to us.

The story clearly illustrates how theMesopotamians conceived of both the goddessof sexual love and the love she represented: aprimal hunger that was seductive and danger-ous, self-serving and cruelly destructive. In thatregard, Inanna (Babylonian Ishtar) was notunlike Greek Aphrodite, but very unlike theChristianized and chivalric notion of love thatwould pervade the European Middle Ages andstill persists in the popular imagination todayas “romance.” As the conclusion of the storyshows, Inanna’s importunings may be tem-porarily rebuffed, but ultimately her powersmust be acknowledged by man.

“BILGAMES AND THE NETHERWORLD”

CharactersEnki, god of subterranean freshwater

Inanna, goddess of sexual loveUtu, god of the sunBilgames, ruler of UrukEnkidu, Bilgames’s servant

PlotAfter a comic episode, the story describes howa storm strikes the god Enki as he is sailing tothe netherworld. In the aftermath of the storm,the goddess Inanna finds a broken willow treebeside the Euphrates. She plants it in her gar-den in the hopes of making a throne and bedfrom its wood after it has grown. The tree,however, is inhabited by evil spirits. They arelater driven away by Bilgames, who cuts thetree down so that Inanna will have the woodshe needs for her furniture. From the woodBilgames also makes equipment for a game(perhaps a wooden ball and mallet). The gamebecomes so popular among the young men ofthe city that the women are distressed. Thesports equipment, however, falls through ahole in the ground into the netherworld.Enkidu volunteers to retrieve it, and Bilgamesgives him special instructions on maintaining ahumble demeanor when he enters the land ofthe dead—instructions that Enkidu totallyignores, with the result that he is held captivein the netherworld. Bilgames’s pleas for divinehelp are ignored until Enki asks Utu, the sun-god, to bring Enkidu along as a passengerwhen he rises at dawn from the darkness. UponEnkidu’s return, Bilgames questions him aboutwhat he saw and learned during his visit to thenetherworld. Enkidu speaks of the sufferings ofthose who died childless (and thus have no oneto mourn them) and describes the suffering ofthose who died awful deaths.

CommentaryThe story of Bilgames and the netherworld isan imaginative Alice-in-Wonderland tale inwhich one odd or improbable event generatesanother. Like Homer’s Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid,and Dante’s Divine Comedy, it also takes us on a


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tour of the land of the dead, though in moreabbreviated form than do the poetic tours con-ducted by later European authors. To theSumerian storyteller, the netherworld was anunmitigated horror of sorrow except for thosewho had male heirs to keep their memory alive.Significantly, the happiest souls are those ofstillborn babies; thus the most blessed humanbeings are those who were never born at all.

The second half of this Sumerian tale(Enkidu’s mission and his report) forms thesubstance of the Epic of Gilgamesh’s Tablet XIIand a now-lost dream sequence in Tablet VII.

“THE DEATH OF BILGAMES”

CharactersBilgames, ruler of UrukVarious gods, including Enlil and Enki

PlotThe story begins with Bilgames on his deathbed. In a dream he appears before an assemblyof the gods who are to decide his fate. Though(like Achilles) his mother was a goddess, hisfather was a mortal; his mixed parentage thusposes a quandary to the gods: should he begranted immortality or not? After a recitationof his deeds—including his defeat of Huwawaand his visitation with Ziusdra, the Noah-likesurvivor of the Sumerian Deluge—the godsreach their decision: Bilgames must go to thenetherworld, but he will occupy a place ofhonor there as a semi-divine judge. There hewill be reunited with his family and his com-panion, Enkidu. Meanwhile, he is told, onearth men will honor him with festivities thatwill include wrestling matches, even as he oncewrestled with Enkidu. Awakened from hisdream, Bilgames proceeds to plan his tomb.The tomb is to be built of stone and gold in thebed of the Euphrates, after the waters of theriver have been diverted to permit excavation.There he will be buried together with mem-

bers of his family and his servants and his pos-sessions along with presents meant for the godshe will later meet.

CommentaryThe storyteller reminds his audience that evena demi-god like Bilgames was compelled todwell in the netherworld after death. As theBabylonian Epic of Gilgamesh would make clear,the gods reserved eternal life for themselves.The mass burial described in the text strikinglyparallels the discoveries of the Royal Tombs ofUr made by Sir Leonard Woolley. The textitself inspired Tablet VIII of the Epic of Gil-gamesh, but there it is Enkidu rather than Gil-gamesh who is to be buried.

The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh

CharactersGilgamesh (= Sumerian “Bilgames”), ruler of

UrukNinsun, his divine motherEnkidu, his friend and companionShamhat, a prostituteShamash, the god of the sunHumbaba (= Sumerian “Huwawa”), guardian

of the Cedar MountainIshtar (= Sumerian “Inanna”), goddess of sexual

love and chief goddess of UrukSiduri, a divine barmaidUrshanabi, a ferrymanUtnapishtim, the Babylonian “Noah” (= Sumer-

ian “Ziusdra”)

Plot

Tablet I: Gilgamesh and Enkidu

Gilgamesh, the hero of the epic, is described ashandsome, brave, and strong, two-thirds divineand one-third human. As king of Uruk, he hadbuilt its great walls. He later searched for thesecret of life and, after great effort, ultimatelyfound wisdom. Before he died, he recorded hisautobiography on a tablet of lapis lazuli


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secured in a cedar box—the basis of the storythat follows.

Early in his reign, Gilgamesh acted arro-gantly, harassing young men and sleeping withtheir brides before they were wed. To alleviatetheir oppression, the gods created someone tooppose Gilgamesh. His opponent was namedEnkidu, a hairy, muscular, and naked creaturemore at home with the wild beasts than he waswith humankind. Enkidu looked after his ani-mal friends by undoing hunters’ traps, lettingthe animals live free.

To stop Enkidu, a hunter hires a prostitute.By having sex with Enkidu, the prostitute stripshim of his naïveté and estranges him from thesimple animals that had formerly been hisfriends. She invites him to come to Uruk tochallenge Gilgamesh, who had already had apremonition of his arrival.

Tablet II: Conflict, Friendship, and Coming Adventure

After sharing the company of shepherds andlearning the ways of man, Enkidu arrives inUruk and blocks Gilgamesh’s path. The twoworthy adversaries wrestle and, in recognitionof each other’s prowess, become friends. Gil-gamesh proposes that Enkidu join him on amission to kill Humbaba, the guardian of theCedar Mountain. Enkidu expresses reserva-tions about the wisdom of such an adventure.Gilgamesh then proposes his plan to thecouncil of elders, but they too seek to dissuadehim. Gilgamesh, however, is undeterred.

Tablet III: Blessings and Instructions

The elders then give Gilgamesh and Enkiduadvice to guide them on their mission. After-ward, the two go to visit Gilgamesh’s divinemother. Ninsun ceremonially adopts Enkidu asher son, and he and Gilgamesh perform ritualsto promote their success. Gilgamesh nextinstructs his people about what they must do inhis absence. Enkidu again seeks to dissuadeGilgamesh from his plan, but finally he offershis aid. The young men of the city cheer thetwo heroes on.

Tablet IV: A Journey of Dreams

On successive nights of their journey, Gil-gamesh has a series of foreboding dreams thatare interpreted optimistically by Enkidu.With Shamash urging them to commencetheir attack on Humbaba, the two heroes bol-ster each other’s courage and arrive at theplace of combat.


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5.7 The hero Gilgamesh, holding a sword in onehand, with a lion cub tucked under his arm.(Bonomi, Nineveh and Its Palaces, 1875 [after Botta])

Tablet V: Encounter with Humbaba

Humbaba demeans Enkidu’s heroic stature.Humbaba and Gilgamesh then clash. Shamashaids Gilgamesh by buffeting Humbaba withfierce winds. Defeated, Humbaba begs formercy. Enkidu argues that he must be slain,and Gilgamesh kills Humbaba with his dagger.Gilgamesh and Enkidu then chop down cedartrees, with Enkidu choosing an especially talltree to serve as timber for constructing a newdoor for Enlil’s temple in Uruk. The two thenload the lumber on a raft for the trip backhome. Gilgamesh carries the head of Humbabahome as a trophy.

Tablet VI: Ishtar and the Bull of Heaven

Back home in Uruk, as Gilgamesh bathes anddresses, the goddess Ishtar lusts for him and triesto seduce him with offers of wealth and power.Gilgamesh, however, rebuffs her advances, citingher vices and reciting a litany of her formerlovers who paid a high price for her affections.Enraged, Ishtar asks the sky-god Anu to let loosethe Bull of Heaven to ravage Uruk and kill itsking. Anu at first refuses but then relents whenIshtar threatens to release the dead from thenetherworld. The bull begins its rampage but isstopped dead in its tracks by Gilgamesh andEnkidu. When Ishtar throws a fit in frustration,Enkidu tears off the bull’s hindquarters and hurlsthem at the goddess. The heroes then consecratethe bull’s horns and celebrate their victory.

Tablet VII: The Death of Enkidu

Enkidu recounts to Gilgamesh a dream he had.In the dream the gods pronounced a death sen-tence upon him for complicity in the murder ofHumbaba and the Bull of Heaven. Enkidu thenexpresses regret for the cedar temple door hemade for an ungrateful Enlil, and he curses thehunter and the prostitute who were his originalundoing. In response, Shamash tells Enkidu heshould count his blessings for having becomecivilized: the pleasure from the bread and beer

he consumed and the clothes he wore, thefriendship he shared with Gilgamesh, and thehonors he will receive from humankind afterhis death (including honors Gilgamesh himselfpromises to bestow). Humbled by this realiza-tion, Enkidu blesses the prostitute he had pre-viously cursed.

In a second dream, the text of which ismostly lost, Enkidu describes what he saw inthe dark and dusty realm of the dead.

Growing weaker and weaker from sickness,Enkidu finally dies.

Tablet VIII: The Funeral of Enkidu

Recalling their deeds together, Gilgameshlaments the death of his friend and companion.He orders that a statue of Enkidu be fashionedfrom precious materials, describes the mourningthat will ensue, and recounts the inventory ofgrave goods to be placed in the tomb as offeringsto Enkidu and as presents for the gods whomEnkidu’s spirit will meet in the netherworld.

Tablet IX: The Wanderings of Gilgamesh

Driven mad by grief, Gilgamesh wandersacross the world seeking light to replace thedarkness that has now possessed his soul. Thedeath of Enkidu has awakened in him a realiza-tion of his own mortality, and he searches forUtnapishtim, the survivor of the Deluge, whoholds the secret to eternal life. Gilgameshpasses through a mountain guarded by scor-pion-men, and he travels through a long, darktunnel to a garden of bright jewels at the edgeof the world.

Tablet X: At the World’s Edge

Beyond the garden lies the shore of an immensesea. Near the end of his journey, wasted byweariness and harrowed by grief, Gilgameshcomes upon a tavern run by a divine barmaidnamed Siduri. Frightened by his haggardappearance, she hides, but he finds and accostsher. She listens as he tells her of his love for


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Enkidu and the weight of the sadness he carriesbecause of Enkidu’s death. He tells her how hekept vigil over Enkidu’s corpse until a maggotcrawled from the nose and Gilgamesh knewthat Enkidu’s life was gone forever, that deathwould one day claim him too, and that he musttherefore search for the secret of everlastinglife. To this Siduri replies as follows (accordingto the Old Babylonian version of the Epic):

Gilgamesh, where are you going?The life you’re looking for you’ll never find.When the gods made man,Death is what they reserved for him, but saved

life for themselves.Eat and drink your fill, Gilgamesh, and

celebrate day and night.Make every day a festival; day and night dance

and play.Let your clothes be sparkling fresh; rinse your

hair and bathe.Mind the little one that holds your hand, and

let your wife enjoy your embrace.For this is the proper business of man.

Noting his determination, however, Siduripoints Gilgamesh toward a ferryman that couldtransport him across the vast sea and theWaters of Death to the place where Utnapish-tim dwells, the survivor of the Great Flood andthe only man ever to have been grantedimmortality. With the ferryman Urshanabi’shelp, Gilgamesh lands on the farther shore andfinds Utnapishtim.

Tablet XI: The Story of the Deluge, and Immortality Lost

Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh about the GreatFlood that destroyed all of humanity and allliving things. Warned by the god Ea to build anark to save himself and his family and othercreatures, Utnapishtim survived the destructivecaprice of the other gods who had sent the Del-uge. Out of divine repentance for having sentthe flood, the god Enlil rewarded Utnapishtimand his wife by making them immortal.

Utnapishtim then puts Gilgamesh to thetest. To see if he too deserves immortality,Utnapishtim requires Gilgamesh to stay awakefor six days and seven nights. If he can resistsleep, he can resist the bigger sleep that isdeath. But Gilgamesh falls asleep and thus failsthe test. Utnapishtim then tells Urshanabi totake this unwelcome visitor away and neveragain return. Nevertheless, prompted by thecompassion of his wife, Utnapishtim tells Gil-gamesh about a magic plant that grows at thebottom of the sea, a plant that can restoreyouth. Gilgamesh dives and plucks the plantfrom the sea floor.

Traveling home with Urshanabi, Gilgameshstops beside a pool to rest and bathe, settingthe plant down at the pool’s edge. Attracted bythe plant’s fragrance, a serpent steals the plantaway and, with its youth renewed, sheds itsskin. The hope of eternal youth has thusslipped from the hero’s grasp, and he weeps,grieving over its loss.

As Urshanabi and Gilgamesh come to the endof their journey, Gilgamesh points out to his fer-ryman Uruk’s mighty walls and the city’s gloriousexpanse, the image of grandeur and culturalachievement with which the epic poem began.

Tablet XII: Enkidu and the Netherworld

This tablet reiterates the second half of theSumerian tale entitled “Bilgames and theNetherworld.” For this reason, and especiallybecause Enkidu had already died long before thispoint in the Epic’s narrative, some modern schol-ars believe the tablet represents a scribal adden-dum that was not integral to the Epic’s own plan.

CommentaryLike Goethe’s Faust, Gilgamesh sought onemeans after another to satisfy a deep hunger inhis soul. In the beginning, he wielded hispower as king to dominate others but gainedno lasting satisfaction. Then in Enkidu he methis match. Together with Enkidu, he followed


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another avenue—aiming for fame—but foundit was only a dead end street when the one hesought to share it with was no more. Havingonce asserted his autonomy by scorning Inannaand carnal pleasure, he had lost Enkidu, theobject of his manly love. To fill the void causedby Enkidu’s death and the consequent realiza-tion of his own mortality, he goes on a quest foreternal life only to find that it too cannot behad. Hoping instead to merely restore hisyouth, he sees even that wish slip through hisfingers and be lost.

In the end, like Faust who dug drainageditches to reclaim wasteland and by that hum-ble work found satisfaction, Gilgamesh returnsto Uruk, the place where his epic journey hadbegun, and contemplates the city walls he hadbuilt. In a world where no one is immortal andnothing is permanent, it is better, he realizes,to give his life to something rather than tonothing, to some constructive act that may, inways he may never know, benefit others. In anantique anticipation of T. S. Eliot’s Four Quar-tets, Gilgamesh returned to where he hadbegun and knew it now for the first time. Thegreatest irony is that the immortality Gil-gamesh vainly searched for during his lifetimewould be bestowed upon him posthumously bythe heroic account of his failed struggle.

Beyond the personal implications of the epicis a larger theme: the value of civilization itself.In one of the boldest strokes of originality, theepic transforms Enkidu from a mere servantand companion to an anti-civilizational creatureof untamed nature. With a bite of a bitterEden-like apple, Enkidu loses paradise, surren-dering the unself-conscious innocence of nat-ural instinct to contrivance and calculation. It isnot sexual experience per se that does him in—for animals have sex too—but cunning decep-tion, a markedly human trait. In exchange,Enkidu gets bread and beer, a haircut, fancyclothes, and an exciting adventure that killshim. Poor brutish Humbaba also pays a price,

and once he succumbs to deceit, it’s open seasonfor loggers in the great Cedar Forest. Civiliza-tion has triumphed, but the cost has been high.

The Babylonian Epic of Creation Our nextepic is called the Babylonian Epic of Creation, orEnuma elish as it was known to the Babyloniansthemselves from the first words of the poemthat meant “When on high . . .”

Its modern name is a bit of a misnomer sinceit hardly deals with creation in the way theopening chapters of the Old Testament do.Instead, this thousand-line epic is a patrioticreligious tract celebrating the rise to power ofBabylon’s chief god, Marduk. His ascendancy isset against a background of cosmic events andstruggles. In the Babylonian narrative the cre-ation of man, the culminating act of God’s six-day workweek in Genesis, is relegated to therole of a cosmic footnote. But that is as it shouldbe in the Mesopotamian worldview: man was alesser being who only earned his right to livethrough subservience to the gods—a flawedbeing at that, since he was manufactured withthe blood of a rebel god who was slain for hisarrogance. And what a crew these gods are: lust-ing for power, seething with anger, thirsting forrevenge, and rejoicing in slaughter. Enough tomake one tremble, and that too is as it shouldbe, so that man would remain humble andmindful of his servile place. Yet there is reasonfor hope, for most of the poem’s rogues’ gallerywere primal gods, vanquished and put in theirplace by the chosen one, Babylon’s own, thegreat god Marduk, champion of the universe.

Unlike the Epic of Gilgamesh, there are nohuman characters here with lines to speak, andthe storyteller is not interested in what an intel-lectual (ancient or modern) might call “thehuman condition.” The gods are not evenanthropomorphic, except by a stretch: Mardukhas four eyes and four ears, and Tiamat mayhave been a verbose dragon. But the gods areanthropopathic: they are endowed with human


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emotions, including some of the most ugly. Andtherefore, without meaning to, the epic consti-tutes an inverse commentary on our own darkerside. It is a side that ought to give us pause, fortoday we possess cosmic powers of destructionthat the ancients could only attribute in theirimagination to primal gods. Moreover, we areflawed—as they foresaw—for in our veins flowsthe blood of an angel who lost paradise.

It is now time to recite the litany of tabletsthat recount this Mesopotamian clash of theTitans.

CharactersApsu, god of subterranean freshwaterMummu, primal god and Apsu’s vizierTiamat, goddess of salt waterAnu, god of the skyEa, god of cunning and wisdom and father of

MardukMarduk, chief god of Babylon and son of EaKingu, divine commander serving under Tiamat

PlotTablet I

Before heaven and earth were created, three pri-mordial gods coexisted: Apsu, Mummu, andTiamat. The male god Apsu and the female godTiamat mated and produced four offspring. Oneof these, Anshar, fathered Anu, and he in turnfathered Ea. These gods were a noisy bunch andtheir noise bothered Apsu. Much to Tiamat’sdistress, Apsu proposes to destroy his boisterousprogeny. He and his ally Mummu are, however,opposed by Ea, who vanquishes them and takesApsu’s crown. Ea then fathers the god Marduk.Ea’s revolt, however, provokes Tiamat to seekrevenge. To aid her, she creates a number ofmonsters, including their leader Kingu, towhom she entrusts the “Tablet of Destinies.”

Tablet II

Having discovered Tiamat’s plan, Ea reports itto his grandfather Anshar, who calls for a

champion to oppose Tiamat. Anu and Ea bothshrink in fear before her might, but Mardukoffers to stand up to her provided the godsgrant him absolute power.

Tablet III

Anshar summons the gods to an assembly inorder that they may confer supreme authorityon Marduk.

Table IV

In a coronation ceremony, Marduk is grantedkingship over the universe. He then armshimself for battle. Preceded by storm winds,he rides in his chariot against Tiamat. Seeinghim, Kingu and his minions lose heart. Forher part, Tiamat is incensed. Charging herwith rebellion against the divine order, Mar-duk challenges Tiamat to single battle. Heattacks her with his winds and fires an arrowthrough her heart, felling her. Next, he tiesKingu up and strips him of the Tablet of Des-tinies, which he then places on his own chest.Finally, he smashes Tiamat’s skull with a club,severs her arteries, and slices her body in two,using the top half to form the sky.

Tablet V

Marduk proceeds to organize the cosmos, sta-tioning the stars and constellations, appor-tioning the seasons, and fixing the phases ofthe moon.

Tablet VI

Kingu is charged with inciting a revolt and isexecuted by having his arteries cut. Kingu’sblood is then used by Ea to make man. Aftermercifully setting free Tiamat’s and Kingu’saccomplices, Marduk assigns the various godstheir realms. The gods in turn sing Marduk’spraises.

Tablet VII

Marduk’s manifold powers and virtues are cele-brated as the poem concludes.


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The Descent of Inanna and Dumuzi’s Death

CharactersInanna, the goddess of loveNinshubur, her faithful servantNeti, the gatekeeper of the netherworldEreshkigal, the queen of the netherworld and

Inanna’s sisterEnlil, the supreme god of heavenNanna, god of the moonEnki, god of cleverness and wisdomDumuzi, a shepherd and the husband of InannaUtu, the god of the sunGeshtinanna, Dumuzi’s sister

PlotInanna decides to leave heaven and earth andjourney to the netherworld. After dressing inher regalia, she instructs her servant Nin-shubur to get divine help to rescue her if shefails to return. Inanna then travels to thenetherworld and demands entrance. Neti, thegatekeeper, informs Ereshkigal of her arrival.Ereshkigal grudgingly agrees to admit her, butshe tells Neti to strip Inanna of everything shewears. As Inanna then passes through each ofseven gates, she is compelled to remove an arti-cle of apparel until finally she stands nakedbefore her sister. Ereshkigal peremptorilyorders Inanna killed and savagely hangs hercarcass from a hook.

After Inanna fails to return home, Nin-shubur follows her instructions and turns to aseries of gods for aid. Enlil and Nanna refuse,but Enki agrees to help. Enki then creates twobeings and sends them on a mission to thenetherworld. When they find Ereshkigal griev-ing for her lost children, they are to empathizewith her pain. They do so, and in gratitude fortheir concern Ereshkigal offers them a reward.They refuse generous gifts and (as planned)merely ask for the meat they see hanging on ahook. Ereshkigal gladly complies, not realizingtheir hidden intent. The two creatures thensprinkle Inanna’s corpse with the food and

water of life and revive her. But a panel ofdivine judges announces that, once dead, a per-son cannot simply leave the netherworld, atleast not without providing a substitute. Hencea substitute must be found.

In the company of demons, Inanna returns toearth and goes from city to city searching for asubstitute. She rejects a number of her loyal ser-vants who grieved over her death. Coming uponher husband, Dumuzi, however, she finds himsitting on a throne and untouched by mourning.Enraged, she directs the demons to take Dumuzihostage and haul him off to the netherworld.Dumuzi pleas with Utu, the sun god, for help,and Utu lets Dumuzi change shape to escape hispursuers. Finally, despite attempts by his sisterGeshtinanna to protect him, the demons dis-cover Dumuzi in a sheepfold and drag him to thenetherworld along with his sister. An agreementis then reached by which each will in turn spendonly half a year in the realm of the dead.

CommentaryThe texts of these Sumerian myths constitutethe components of an epic tale about the god-dess of love, Inanna, and the fate of her lover, theshepherd, Dumuzi. The story teaches that deathis inexorable, that even the gods cannot escapeits grip if they come too dangerously close. And,like the Epic of Gilgamesh, the narrative takes usto depths our own human vision cannot pene-trate—at least while we are alive—by describingthe landscape of death’s realm and the dark spir-its who inhabit it. It is a portrait more chillingthan that painted by Homer in the Odyssey’s 11thbook and Vergil in the Aeneid’s sixth, and, in itsbrushstrokes if not in the sweep of its canvas,approximates the hand of Dante in the Inferno.Significantly, all these works—Gilgamesh, theOdyssey, the Aeneid, and the Inferno—see deathand love as cruelly intertwined, and the tale ofInanna and Dumuzi is no exception. The detailsof the story bring other classical myths to mind:King Admetus’s search for a substitute to die for


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him (dramatized by the playwright Euripides inAlcestis) and the eternal bargain struck by Deme-ter that allows her daughter Persephone to dwellabove ground for half the year before returningto Hades’ winter embrace.

The Mesopotamian tale is tantalizingbecause of the questions it leaves unanswered(though the ancients might have thoughtexplicit answers redundant since they alreadyknew them by heart): who were the childrenfor whom the queen of the dead grieved, whydid Dumuzi fail to mourn his wife, and—mostof all—what was Inanna’s motive for descend-ing to the netherworld in the first place? But,then, the universal response to death hasalways been a series of unanswered questions.

The Romance of Nergal and Ereshkigal

CharactersAnu, the father of the godsKakka, Anu’s emissaryEa, god of cleverness and wisdomEreshkigal, queen of the netherworldNamtar, Ereshkigal’s vizierNergal, a male deity, who becomes Ereshkigal’s

consort

PlotAt a heavenly banquet of the gods, Anu real-izes Ereshkigal cannot join the celebrants (norwould the celebrants deign to descend to thenetherworld). As a compromise, he sends anemissary down to tell Ereshkigal she can callin an order for carry-out food. The emissarydoes so, and in turn Ereshkigal sends hervizier up to claim her portion. Upon hisarrival in heaven, however, he is insulted byone of the gods, Nergal, who fails to showhim proper respect. To make amends, Nergalis instructed by Ea to go down to Ereshkigal’sdomain. But, lest Nergal be ritually compelledto stay in the netherworld, Ea warns him notto sit in a chair while he is there, not to eatbread or meat, not to drink beer, not to have a

foot-bath, and most certainly not to have sexwith Ereshkigal.

Yes, you guessed it: after passing throughthe seven gates of the netherworld, Nergal isable to turn down everything he is offered,except Ereshkigal herself. When Ereshkigaltakes a seductive bath and puts on a transparentgown, Nergal can’t resist. (Actually, it takes hertwo baths and two gowns to thoroughly breakdown his resistance.) Then they have sex for sixdays. On the seventh, Nergal insists he mustleave and ascends a staircase to heaven.

Ereshkigal is disconsolate, and sends Namtarto heaven to fetch Nergal, threatening that shewill raise the dead until they outnumber the liv-ing unless her demands are met. “When I was alittle girl,” she says, “I never played with dolls,never knew what it would be like to have a childof my own. Now his seed is in me, and I want tosleep with him again.” Anu complies androunds up the usual suspects, but Namtar failsto pick Nergal out of the lineup. After Namtarreports his failure to his mistress, Ereshkigalsends him back up, ordering him in no uncer-tain terms to arrest the divine perpetrator. Hedoes so, and Nergal is forced to descend.

Upon arriving in the netherworld, Nergalsmashes through its seven gates, confrontsEreshkigal, laughs in her face, grabs her by thehair, pulls her off her throne, and . . . embracesher passionately. Like Rhett Butler standingwith Scarlet O’Hara on the landing of Tara’sgrand staircase, he sweeps her off her feet. Atthis point—alas—the text breaks off.

In a condensed version of the tale found inEgypt in the 14th century B.C.E. ruins ofAmarna, there is an ending. After breakingthrough the gates of the netherworld (as before),Nergal grabs Ereshkigal’s hair and pulls her offthe throne, intending to cut her head off. “Pleasedon’t kill me,” she begs. “I have something tosay. Be my husband and I will be your wife.Marry me and share the kingdom I rule.” Hear-ing her words, Nergal’s grip relaxes. He draws


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her close, kissing her and wiping away her tears.“You waited for me,” he says. “I have come.”

CommentaryThe story explains how Nergal became theconsort of Ereshkigal and shared her dominionover the dead. Beneath the archaic stiffness oftraditional narrative form is a tale of emotionaldeprivation and hunger that shows hot colorscan exist even in the unremitting grayness ofthe netherworld. As the biblical Song of Songs(8:6) proclaims: “Set me as a seal upon yourheart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is asstrong as death, passion as cruel as the grave.”As an inversion of the much later Roman epic,the Aeneid (where the hero Aeneas rejectsQueen Dido’s offer of her body and kingdomonly to be shunned by her chill ghost inHades), the story of Nergal and Ereshkigaleternally joins two hot-blooded protagonists.

The Wrath of Erra

CharactersErra, god of devastation and lord of the nether-

world (=Nergal)Ishum, Erra’s faithful vizier and god of fireMarduk, chief god of Babylon

PlotThe story opens with the god of war in the gripof lethargy. Even his weapons, gathering dust instorage, complain. Their rebuke rouses himfrom inertia and he decides, contrary to Ishum’scounsel, to conquer Babylon. In order to dis-tract its patron god Marduk, Erra accuses Mar-duk of dressing shabbily. Chagrined, Mardukrepairs to his tailor while Erra offers to mindthe store (Babylon). Seizing this opportunity,Erra attacks Babylon and rains down indiscrim-inate destruction upon its people. Once again,Ishum counsels prudence, but to no avail.Young and old are put to death, fathers burytheir sons, and the righteous perish togetherwith the wicked. Sated with bloodshed, Erra

finally relents, prophesying that one day, afteran era of universal warfare, a new militaryleader will arise and unify the people. Now inthe company of the other gods, Erra justifies hisactions as simply an expression of the kind ofgod he is (“When I get angry, I break things!”).Ishum then prophesies that, thanks to Erra’srestraint, a remnant will remain that will even-tually flourish anew. The poem concludes witha paean of praise for Erra, god of war.

CommentaryThis poem vividly portrays the savagery of war,and the bloodlust that colored so much ofMesopotamian history. The poem’s most hor-rifying aspect is that it does not condemn war,but instead regards it as an inevitable part ofthe human condition. Historically, the descrip-tion of Babylon as disheveled suggests that theevents of the poem refer to a time when Baby-lon and its empire were in decline, but a time(cf. Erra’s lethargy) when full-scale aggressionagainst her had not yet broken out. The imageof the “remnant” recalls the imagery of theHebrew prophets who looked toward the daywhen the survivors of the Babylonian Captivitywould be gathered together by God’s faithful-ness and returned to their homeland. The“Wrath of Erra” may date to the eighth cen-tury B.C.E., or about two centuries before thecaptivity took place.

The Story of Enki and Ninhursag

CharactersEnki, god of subterranean freshwaterNinhursag, a goddess of the earth

PlotThis mythic story takes place in a watery andfertile paradise-like land called Dilmun, whereno one dies. The god Enki impregnates the god-dess Ninhursag, who gives birth to a daughter.Enki then impregnates his daughter and, later,his granddaughter. Before he can impregnate his


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great-granddaughter, she insists upon his firstgiving her gifts of vegetables and fruit. Afterreceiving them, she sleeps with her great-grand-father, but she does not give birth to a child.Somehow, Ninhursag uses Enki’s semen to pro-duce eight different plants that Enki later picksand eats. Angry at him for uprooting the plants,Ninhursag curses him and disappears. Enkipines away for her until a clever fox lures herback to Dilmun. As Ninhursag and Enki haveintercourse, she asks him if he feels pain in anypart of his body. Eight times he replies in theaffirmative, naming the part of his body thathurts, and eight times Ninhursag names a corre-sponding god that is then born of his pain. Enkiappoints the last to rule as lord of Dilmun.

CommentaryThe details of this story may seem bizarre (serialincest among the gods, sexual intercourse for thepurposes of horticulture, and psychosomaticcoitus, not to mention a cameo appearance byReynard the Fox), but underlying them is a vitaltheme: fertility and fecundity and the inscrutablepower of the divine that generates both. Thestory also teaches us how different from ours areancient Mesopotamian sensibilities, at least untilwe reflect upon the frequent occurrence of serialdivorce, child abuse, artificial insemination, psy-chosomatic illness, and genetically manipulatedfood production in our own contemporary soci-ety. The only difference is that we don’t attachthese processes to our concept of God.

The Defeat of Zu

CharactersZu, a divine birdEnlil, the ruler of the godsEa, the god of cleverness and wisdomNinurta, a warlike divine champion

PlotThis three-tablet epic from Old Babylonian andAssyrian times is based upon a character who

first appears in Sumerian myth, Zu, a god-likebird. According to the story, the Zu-bird stealsthe Tablet of Destinies from the supreme godEnlil and thus arrogates to himself the controlof the universe. The Zu-bird has flown off withthe tablet, and now the gods must choose achampion to secure its return. Ninurta, the godwho is selected, attacks Zu in the air over amountain range, but his missile attack fails:because it possesses the Tablet of Destinies, Zuhas the power to order Ninurta’s weapons todisassemble themselves and revert to the placesof their origin: the bow to the woodland, the gutbowstring to a sheep, the shafts of the arrows toa canebrake, and the arrows’ feathers to birds.Urged on by the god Ea to launch anotherattack, Ninurta assails Zu with powerful windsthat tear its wings off and render it defenseless.Ninurta then slits the Zu-bird’s throat andrecovers the precious Tablet of Destinies.

CommentaryIn divine terms, the epic describes how thebenign order of collaborative government canbe threatened by a single individual’s arbitraryseizure of power and how, in the end, suchtreason is inevitably punished. The myth maytherefore have served as an object lesson in reallife to forewarn potential political traitors ofthe deadly consequences of their designs.

Fragmentary Epics

The original length of the foregoing epicscan only be approximated due to the breakageof the fragile tablets on which they were writ-ten. In fact, a number of other Mesopotamianepics once existed, but today they surviveonly in random fragments like the scatteredpieces of incomplete jigsaw puzzles. Belong-ing to different tablets and even to differentchronological periods, the pieces can bearranged on the scholar’s worktable to create


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the semblance of a narrative order, but gapingholes remain, often for those parts of the pic-ture we would most want to see. Yet becausethe stories themselves are so intrinsically fas-cinating, they deserve to be heard againdespite the tentative quality of their presentreconstruction. Perhaps in the future otherpieces of these literary puzzles will be foundin the dust, making their pictures complete.Here then are their outlines.

The Story of Atrahasis

CharactersEnlil, the supreme god of heavenEa, the god of cleverness and wisdomAtrahasis, a pious man

PlotDisturbed by mankind’s noisiness, the godEnlil determines to eliminate the problem ofnoise pollution by reducing the earth’s popu-lation. First he causes devastating famine anddisease, but when these are not totally effec-tive, he decides to drown humanity in heavyrains. Anguished at the human suffering andselfishness he has witnessed during the crisis,Atrahasis prays to Enlil for divine help. Earesponds by telling Atrahasis to build a bigboat and put food on it along with birds andbeasts, men skilled in crafts, and members ofhis own family.

This Assyrian and Old Babylonian tale isantedated by an earlier Sumerian one in whichthe character known as Atra(m)hasis is calledZiusdra. Ziusdra is described as a pious kingwho receives divine instruction to build an ark.After seven days and seven nights of rain, Zius-dra looks out from the ark and sees sunlight.He is then granted immortality and is allowedto dwell in a paradise called Dilmun.

CommentaryThe character of Ziusdra and Atrahasis andtheir stories prefigure Utnapishtim and hisnarrative of the Deluge in the Epic of Gilgamesh,

where the account is longer and richer indetail. The biblical account of Noah and theark drew upon this Mesopotamian epic tradi-tion for its literary inspiration.

The Story of Adapa

CharactersAdapa, a heroAnu, god of the skyEa, god of cleverness and wisdom

PlotDrowning in the sea in the midst of a storm,Adapa curses the wind and causes it to stop bybreaking its wing. Distressed that the wind nolonger blows, the sky-god Anu summonsAdapa to heaven. Before Adapa goes, Ea, thegod of wisdom, advises him not to eat or drinkwhile he is there or he will die. Adapa complies,not realizing the food and drink he is offeredare really a means to become immortal.

CommentaryThe myth of Adapa tells us that man was notmeant to live forever. Even when the food anddrink of eternal life were within his grasp, hechose not to taste them. In the end, he wasbetrayed by one of the gods (or, in a morehumanistic interpretation, by his own flawedintellectual assumptions).

The Adventure of Etana

CharactersA snakeAn eagleShamash, the sun-godEtana, a hero

PlotThe city of Kish is in need of a king, and the godEnlil has selected Etana for the job, but Etanalacks a son who could become his royal heir.

Meanwhile, a snake and an eagle make a pactpledging their mutual cooperation: while eachin turn hunts for food, the one will not eat the


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other’s young. The eagle, however, breaks thepact by devouring the snake’s offspring. Thesnake appeals to the god Shamash in whosename both creatures had sworn. Shamashadvises the snake to hide inside the carcass of abull; when the eagle crawls inside to pick at themeat, the snake should seize it, sever its wings,and hurl it into a bottomless pit.

Soon after, Etana prays to Shamash for off-spring of his own. In response, Shamash tellsEtana about the eagle’s plight and advises himto seek the eagle’s help in securing a magic“birth plant.”

Etana finds the pit where the eagle istrapped and, after a long period of physicaltherapy and rehabilitation, helps the eagle tofly once again. The eagle then in gratitudeoffers to fly Etana up to heaven so he can getthe magic “birth plant” from Ishtar, goddess ofsexuality. Etana climbs onto the eagle’s backand they go for a test flight. As they reach analtitude of three miles, Etana becomes fearfuland asks the eagle to land. Once on the ground,Etana climbs on the eagle’s back once again,and again they take off, climbing higher andhigher, until they reach heaven.

Though the final tablet ends here, the Sumer-ian King-list reports that Etana not only ruledKish but also had an heir, so apparently the sec-ond flight was a success and Etana returned toearth with the miracle cure he had sought.

CommentaryThis tale blends together an Aesopian fablewith the essence of heroic adventure. Particu-larly graphic is the description of the progres-sively shrinking landscape as Etana and theeagle look down at first from one mile up, thenfrom two, and lastly from three. Like the viewfrom an ascending rocket, the green Meso-potamian countryside comes to resemble a lit-tle garden and the sea a small water-filledbucket. The image of manned flight via eaglerecurs in the Greek myth of Ganymede, who

was borne up to heaven, and the Arabic tale ofSinbad and the bird known as the Rukh. Theancient story of Etana is also notable for its lit-erary treatment of the theme of male infertilityand the search for a medicinal cure.

Ninurta and Agag

CharactersNinurta, a heroic kingSharur, his magic weapon (endowed with

speech)Agag, a rebel leader

PlotThe Sumerian story tells how Ninurta battledAgag, a spirit of nature (possibly a mighty tree)that led a rebellious rabble of plants and stonesin an invasion of Ninurta’s territory. With thehelp of his talking weapon, Sharur, he defeatsAgag by using rain to quell a dust-stormwhipped up by his enemy. Next (in what mayoriginally have been a separate tale), Ninurtaraises up foothills to make rain flow south intothe Tigris so farmers can thereby use its watersto irrigate their fields. Lastly, Ninurta pro-nounces judgment upon the various types ofstone that had been Agag’s accomplices in hisrebellion. In a long passage, he assigns a spe-cific function to each of Mesopotamia’s miner-als. At the fragmentary conclusion of the epic,the god Enlil sings Ninurta’s praises; the god-dess of writing, Nidaba, through whose powersNinurta’s deeds will be preserved, is celebrated;and Ninurta himself is honored by the poet.

CommentaryThe epic begins with an imaginative variationon the theme of military invasion. After its“Sorcerer’s Apprentice” opening, the epic thenturns etiological, delving into the origins ofagricultural irrigation and explaining why dif-ferent kinds of stones are used for differentpurposes. The epic’s conclusion extols the artof writing’s importance.


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Lugalbanda and the Thunderbird

CharactersLugalbanda, a warrior from UrukThunderbird, a divine birdEnmerkar, king of UrukInanna, the goddess of sexual love

PlotThe beginning of this Sumerian epic presup-poses an earlier event: the war between Urukand Aratta. Recovering from illness in a cavewhere he has been left behind by his fellow sol-diers, Lugalbanda becomes well enough totravel to the front to rejoin his comrades. Onthe way, he comes upon the nest of a giant bird,and he feeds and cares for the bird’s young.When the bird, the Thunderbird, returns, itexpresses its gratitude by offering Lugalbandaa reward. Lugalbanda asks for speed andendurance, which are granted to him. When hereaches the army, he finds that its commanderin chief, Enmerkar, is about to call off the siegeof Aratta. Needing the goddess Inanna’s per-mission to do so, Enmerkar calls upon Lugal-banda to hasten to Uruk to seek the goddess’blessing. The goddess instead sends instruc-tions to Enmerkar to eat a special fish and feedit to his troops. This diet, according to the bro-ken tablet, will bring them victory. Regretably,the text ends before dinner is served!

CommentaryThe plot blends wartime realism with fantasy.The theme of a hero who is rewarded by a greatbird he has befriended is found in anotherMesopotamian epic, The Adventure of Etana,though the reward in each case is different.Above all, the story teaches that people can begranted special powers by the divine if they aremerciful and obedient.

The Tukulti-Ninurta Epic

CharactersTukulti-Ninurta I (Assyrian king: 1244–1208

B.C.E.)

Kashtiliash IV (Kassite king of Babylonia andTukulti-Ninurta’s contemporary)

Chorus of Assyrian soldiers

PlotIgnoring his treaty with Tukulti-Ninurta,Kashtiliash prepares to make war againstAssyria. Tukulti-Ninurta seeks rapprochementbut is rebuffed. Praying for divine aid, theAssyrian king then launches a preemptive inva-sion of Babylonia. A fearful Kashtiliash offersresistance, but his army is routed and he him-self flees the battlefield. Praising Tukulti-Nin-urta’s valor, his soldiers urge him to attackagain and secure a decisive victory. The Assyr-ian army then triumphs and plunders Babylo-nia. The treasure is transported to Assyria’scapital, Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta, where it enrichesthe temples of the gods. The poem concludeswith a celebration of Tukulti-Ninurta’s piety.

CommentaryThis is Assyrian literature’s only native epic, andit is significant that it deals with what the Assyri-ans were most proud of: their capacity to shapehistory through the exercise of force. Ratherthan dwell on mythology, the poet choosesrecent military events as the material most wor-thy of his talents and constructs an encomium inpraise of his king, a monarch who is portrayed asboth pious and brave. Indeed, it is likely thepoem was given its first public reading in thepalace before Tukulti-Ninurta himself and hiscourtiers. On a separate note, it is interestingthat the poem’s inventory of Babylonian plunderincludes works of literature as well as gold.

Historical ChroniclesThe archaeologist who digs into the earthseeks not gold but history. His quarry, however,is an elusive one, the more so the deeper hedigs. No living witnesses remain, and artifactsalone are mute. Even the testimony of literature


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is suspect, especially when—like epic—it is basedmore on imagination than on fact.

The archaeologist’s quest is made easier bythose who in ancient times sought to chronicletheir own past. The record they left behind isincomplete and often very subjective. It is usu-ally content to list events in mere chronologicalorder rather than to explore their causal con-nection. And it is not “scientific,” since itassumes the hand of God shapes the affairs ofman. But these very limitations teach us howthe ancients understood history, and thereforeilluminate the Mesopotamian mind in a waythat sterile objectivity could not.

The earliest documents we have, fromSumerian times, are written on clay. The laterones, from Old Babylonian, Assyrian, and Neo-Babylonian times, are frequently inscribed onstone. These later documents are more numer-ous, in part because stone is more durable thanclay, but in larger part because the imperialistickings whose deeds they describe loved to trum-pet their accomplishments. Thus their achieve-ments are inscribed on the pavements oftemples, the walls of palaces, the bases of stat-ues, and on sculpted cylinders, barrels, multi-sided prisms, and stelae of stone. As a result, thekings have triumphed over their adversaries notonly in war but also in remembrance.

Among the oldest Sumerian works we pos-sess is the “Sumerian King-list.” Though thetext dates backs about 2100 B.C.E., its narrativerecalls events that it asserts took place 241,000years before the primordial Flood. Declaringthat kingship came from heaven, it lists themonarchs who ruled Sumer’s cities both beforeand after the cataclysm, beginning with A-lulimof Eridu, who reigned—it says—for 28,800years. In chronological sequence, the names ofother kings and the lengths of their reigns arecited (including the 27th king, Dumuzi, thehusband of the goddess Inanna, who ruled for100 years; and the 28th, the hero Gilgamesh,who ruled for 126). The list also mentions key

military defeats that shifted supreme powerfrom city to city. The larger-than-life reigns,incidentally, are reminiscent of the genealogiesin the early chapters of Genesis.

Another important text is the “SargonChronicle,” which comes down to us in a Neo-Babylonian transcription. The chronicle paintsthe rise of Sargon of Akkad with broad and dra-matic brushstrokes, focusing not on chronol-ogy but on action, including an act of sacrilegethat brought down upon Sargon the divinevengeance of Marduk.

The career of another famous king, Ham-murabi of Babylon, can be reconstructed thanksto the official custom of naming each of theyears in a king’s reign after a memorable deedhe performed. Forty-three surviving “yearnames” pay special attention to Hammurabi’spiety in erecting temples and statues to the godsand to his civic leadership in constructing andrestoring canals and walls. His military tri-umphs are also recounted de rigueur.

For the kings of Assyria, however, militarytriumphs were the main bill. Supreme egotistsas well as conquerors, they composed autobi-ographies and ordered them inscribed inmonumental stone for all to see. One suchautobiography contains over 1,300 neatlychiseled cuneiform lines of self-congratula-tion. We read how monarchs smashed theirenemies like clay pots, used blood to dye themountains red, and leveled cities like torrentsof a flood. Conspirators might be punished byhaving their tongues torn out, or by havingtheir heads crushed with stone idols and theircorpses cut into small pieces and fed to dogs,pigs, and vultures. The compliant would beallowed to kiss the king’s feet after their trib-ute had been duly itemized and tallied. TheAssyrian autobiographies (of such kings asTiglathpileser, Shalmaneser III, Sennacherib,and Ashurbanipal) also give step-by-stepaccounts of their military campaigns and vic-tories (including Sennacherib’s siege of


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Jerusalem). Needless to say, royal defeats arenot highlighted.

Western civilization would have to wait forover two centuries for Greek historians likeHerodotus and Thucydides to probe the rolethat human nature plays in history. Withoutmeaning to, however, the royal chronicles ofMesopotamia have much to say to us abouthumanity’s dark side as well as its occasionalconscientious capacity for constructive good.

Legal Documents

The Mesopotamians believed their ruler wasan instrument of God who brought justice toan imperfect human society. To organize hisdivinely inspired vision of an ideal society, theruler applied the force of law and used theinstrument of writing to give it permanent and,eventually, public form. By compiling legalstandards and displaying them on inscribed ste-lae, the ruler gave monumental expression tohis desire for civic order and enduring justice.

THE CODE OF HAMMURABI

The most outstanding example of this desire isthe 18th-century B.C.E. Code of Hammurabi,king of Babylon. It has been described byCyrus H. Gordon as “the apex of legal codifica-tion prior to Roman Law” (Gordon 1957: 2).But the code’s sociological value exceeds itsplace in the history of jurisprudence. As a sum-mary of everyday life in ancient times, Gordonadds, it is “our chief single source for recon-structing the society of Old Babylonia” and our“best available mirror of Mesopotamian soci-ety” (Gordon 1957: 3). Carved on a 6.5-foot-tall monolith of smooth and hard black diorite,the Code of Hammurabi is an imperishabletime capsule from a lost civilization.

The code consists of 282 laws in forthrightprose framed by a lengthy and elaborate pro-

logue and epilogue in verse. The laws are orga-nized into topical categories (such as family lawand property rights), with legal principlesclearly expounded according to a standard caseformula (“If such-and-such happens, then such-and-such will be done.”) The poetic prologueand epilogue stylistically elevate the prosaic


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5.8 The Code of Hammurabi is preserved on thisinscribed and sculpted block of stone housed in theLouvre. (Rogers, A History of Babylonia andAssyria, 1915; picture courtesy Mansell, 1915)

center section and provide the spiritual ratio-nale for obedience: Hammurabi was mandatedby none other than Shamash, god of the sunand justice, and Marduk, chief god of Babylon,to enact these statutes for the betterment ofsociety; he who obeys will be blessed and hewho disobeys will be punished by heaven. Thedivine source of the law is further illustrated atthe top of the stela by a relief that shows Ham-murabi piously standing before Shamash’sthrone as he receives the god’s instruction—apowerful image meant to impress even the illit-erate. By both its visual and literary structure,Hammurabi’s stela communicates the impera-tive of order.

EARLIER CODES

Hammurabi’s, however, was not the firstMesopotamian code of law. Another Akkadiancode, two centuries earlier, has been found inthe city of Eshnunna, but without a formal pro-logue and epilogue. Somewhat earlier is theSumerian code of Lipit-Ishtar, copied in clayfrom the text of a now-missing stone stela.Only 37 laws are legible on the broken tabletalong with a prologue and epilogue (with bless-ing and curse) in prose. Still earlier is the 21st-century B.C.E. Sumerian code of Ur-Nammu,of which only five statutes can be deciphered.The oldest code we know of, however, was pro-mulgated by a Sumerian ruler named Urukag-ina, who reigned around 2350 B.C.E., over sixcenturies before Hammurabi. In a fragmentaryinscription in clay, the king enumerates varioussocial injustices and cites the legal measures hewill institute to correct them. Though not theoldest, Hammurabi’s Code is nevertheless themost complete and detailed legal document wepossess from Mesopotamia’s long history. Laterlaws on clay tablets have been unearthed datingto Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian times, andother laws—even older that Urukagina’s—mayeven now lie buried in neglected mounds.

CONTRACTS

Though not matching law codes in regal splen-dor, another category of legal documents sur-passes them in sheer abundance: contracts. Infact, of the tens of thousands of cuneiformtablets found in Sumer, nine out of 10 are con-tractual in nature. Like the codes, the contractsfollow a formulaic pattern established by tradi-tion. First the subject is stated (the purchase of aslave, an exchange of property, the arrangementof a marriage), followed by the names of thecontracting parties and the details of their trans-action. The document concludes with the namesand seals of witnesses, the name of the scribe,and the seals of the principals to the agreement,with the place and date of the transaction some-times appended. Such contracts reveal the highlyorganized nature of ancient Mesopotamian civi-lization and the pervasive role of commerce ineveryday life. More than the abstract codes,these humble documents disclose by the cumu-lative weight of their mundane particulars thehumanity of the past.

Divination Texts

To many, history is a dull subject because thepast lacks excitement. After all, they say, it’s allso predictable: this happened in one century,and that happened in the next. In actuality,however, the past was not predictable at all forthose who lived it. We may know what wasgoing to happen, but they certainly did not—not the next century nor even the next day.

In fact, precisely because of their historicalmyopia, the people of the past passionately caredto know what the future held. This was especiallytrue of the people in ancient Mesopotamia, whoused a variety of methods to foretell the futureand employed specialists to do the job.

The Mesopotamians’ bent for futurism waspredicated on the belief that human affairs and


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the natural environment are interrelated.What was going to happen to human beingson earth, they believed, was already inscribedin the book of nature. By drawing upon arcaneknowledge and applying traditional skills, aseer could discern the shape of things to come.By studying the appropriate omens, such a seercould determine in advance whether a con-templated course of action would lead to fail-ure or success.

Divination was based on the idea that asso-ciation is tantamount to causality: that is, if twounusual events occur in proximity, one isresponsible for the other. Thus if a king diedafter an eclipse, the conclusion was reachedthat the eclipse foreshadowed his death. Like-wise, if a shooting star was sighted the nightbefore a military victory, a later sighting fore-told yet another military success.

For most of Mesopotamian history, divina-tion was used to guide the affairs of state. Fewrulers would make or act upon an importantdecision without first consulting their royalfortunetellers.

To predict the future, Mesopotamian seersstudied celestial and meteorological phenom-ena and examined the organs and entrails ofsacrificial animals. Though they didn’t read tealeaves, they did scrutinize oil (how drops dis-persed on the surface of water in a bowl) andsmoke (how wisps curled up from a censer) forclues about what lay ahead. In effect, theancient seer was like the modern weathermanwho uses his professional expertise to forecastwhat the future holds for us.

ASTROLOGY

In Mesopotamia, astrology was the premiermeans of divination, for the ancient Meso-potamians believed our destinies are written inthe skies.

In the 21st century, we are blinded to theluminous stars and planets of a pitch-black night

by the ambient light of 24/7 electric cities. Theancients, however, gazing upward at the starsslowly wheeling across the dark expanse of theheavens, stood in the presence of an awesomemystery. In the scattered stellar dots they dis-cerned heavenly images and, by connecting thedots, drew constellations and gave them names.Some of these names—translated into Greek asHydra, and into Latin as Taurus, Gemini, Can-cer, Leo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn,and Aquarius—are the names we still call themby. The Mesopotamians also followed the trailsof five “wandering” stars, the planets Mercury,Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The eveningand morning star, Venus, held special fascina-tion for them and they named it, as did the laterRomans, for the goddess of love.

The outer planets—Uranus, Neptune, andPluto—were unknown to Mesopotamianastronomers because, though they were drawnto the numinous sky, they lacked a telescope topenetrate its deepest secrets. The best theycould do was to use a forked stick or hollowtube, a telescope sans lens, for sighting.

The moon, with its changing phases andstunning Eclipses, became the essence of theircosmic calendar. Yet because a lunar year (12cycles of about 29.5 days each) is shorter byabout 11 days than a solar one, the lunarmonths and their religious holidays soon grewout of step with the seasons. The solution wasto insert extra, or intercalary, months at regularintervals to bring the lunar year back intoalignment with the solar. This seemingly awk-ward lunar calendar was inherited by the laterinhabitants of the Near East and is still used bypious Jews and Muslims to mark the sacredpassage of the months and their holy occasions.Indeed, to this very day the ancient Babyloniannames for the months are echoed in the litanyof month-names found in the Jewish calendar.

As a result of their painstaking observationof celestial phenomena over the course of manycenturies, Mesopotamian priests accumulated


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in diaries and almanacs a vast store of mathe-matical information about the operation of thecosmos: the regular movements of stars andplanets, the cycle of eclipses of sun and moon,and the appearance of comets. This writteninformation ultimately served as an invaluabledatabase for the later scientific speculationsand theories of the Hellenistic Greeks. TheChristian Middle Ages likewise stood in awe of“Chaldaean science” as Mesopotamian astron-omy came to be called, in particular because itslore had inspired the Three Magi to follow the“star of Bethlehem.”

Like the Magi of the New Testament, thepriests of Mesopotamia viewed astronomy notas an end in itself but as a means to a higherspiritual truth. Their concern for most of theirhistory was not with astronomy as a science butwith astrology as an art by which the futurecould be divined through the discovery ofomens good and bad to inform political deci-sion making and assure personal success. Noless an Old Testament prophet than Isaiah,however, railed against Babylonian kings whodared think that astrology could shield themfrom Jehovah’s vengeance. “Let the astrolo-gists, stargazers, and monthly prognosticatorsstand up,” he said, “and try to save you fromwhat is coming” (47:13). In a latter day, AdolfHitler too fell under astrology’s spell, only tolearn its shortcomings in war.

Numerous texts survive that revealMesopotamia’s fascination with the skies.Most were preserved in Ashurbanipal’s libraryfound at Nineveh. They include astronomicaldiaries, mathematical tables on celestial sub-jects, and instructional manuals for interpret-ing heavenly signs.

Three works have special significance. Thefirst is Enuma elish (“When on high . . .”), theBabylonian Epic of Creation, which can be datedback to at least the first millennium B.C.E.Tablet V describes how Marduk, the god ofBabylon, fashioned the heavens and formed the

constellations. Another work, Enuma Anu Enlil(“When [the gods] Anu and Enlil . . .”), may beeven older, and systematically lists omensunder the categories of moon, sun, weather,and stars. Another seventh century B.C.E. trea-tise, Mul Apin (named for the “Plough Star”that begins its narrative), divides the stars andconstellations into three parallel belts, eachruled by a different god: Enlil, Anu (in the mid-dle), and Ea. By the fifth century B.C.E., as ourtexts show, the astrologers had divided thenight sky into three belts that were now circu-lar and concentric. These were divided by 12radii into 12 equal pie-slice segments of 30degrees, each marked by a sign—the origin ofthe now-familiar zodiac.

It was in the fifth century also that astrologytook a personal turn. Whereas previouslyastrologers had focused on kings and the fate ofnations, now for the first time they began tooffer their services to ordinary clients, specifi-cally the parents of newborn babies. A smallnumber of inscriptions, dating between thefifth and third centuries B.C.E. reveal thatastronomers were hired to predict a child’sfuture based on the infant’s birth date or pre-sumed date of conception. Thanks to thedetailed astronomical information contained inthe horoscopes, we can actually calculate themonth, day, and year a given child began itslife. One such horoscope reads:

In the year 48 of the Seleucid era (=263 B.C.E.)on the night of the twenty-third of Adar (Feb-ruary/March), a child was born. At the sametime the Sun was 30 degrees into Aries; theMoon ten degrees into Aquarius; Jupiter atthe start of Leo; Venus with the Sun; Mercurywith the Sun; Saturn in Cancer; and Mars atCancer’s end. . . . He won’t be rich. Hisappetite won’t be satisfied. What he has whenhe is young he will lose. But then for 36 yearshe will prosper, and his life will be long . . .

Not all such texts are found on clay tablets.Over 70 years ago a young archaeologist


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named Jotham Johnson came upon the ruins ofa private home in the ancient city of Dura-Europos. Scratched onto the plastered wall wasa sketch of the zodiac with astronomical nota-tions in the Greek alphabet, the script thenused by Dura’s Hellenistic population. Thoughthe plaster was cracked, Johnson labored overthe enigma until he had deciphered the namesof planets and the signs of the zodiac wherethey had stood when the child was born.

A horoscope, yes—but what year, whatmonth, what day? On his return to Yale, youngJohnson turned to the university’s Departmentof Astronomy. Six weeks later, after a numberof celestial calculations to determine when allof the planets could have been aligned the waythe sketch portrayed them, Johnson had hisanswer: July 3, 176 C.E. More than that, theYale astronomers were able to give him thetime of birth: about 10 P.M.

10 P.M. almost two millennia ago. Night-time in Roman Dura. A baby cries in a bed-room lit by a flickering oil lamp. We still donot know the child’s name, or the fortune thestars foretold.

ANIMAL AUTOPSIES

Besides looking up to the sky to predict thefuture, the priests of Mesopotamia also lookeddown at the organs and entrails of animals sac-rificed, a practice known as extispicy. Fromthese ancient biopsies, the priests believed theycould tell whether circumstances were auspi-cious or inauspicious for a course of actiontheir king was contemplating. The mostfavored organ for these readings was the liver,regarded as the seat of emotions. Next inimportance came the animal’s lungs andintestines. To guide them in their determina-tions (and to aid in the training of apprenticediviners), the priests had recourse to clay mod-els of the organs in question, appropriatelylabeled in cuneiform with the key features of an

organ and their spiritual meaning. Finding amalformed organ was a bad omen for sure. Inaddition to the clay models, we also have textsthat enumerate the telltale signs an augurshould look for and what his prognosis shouldbe. The formulaic pattern is: “If X is found,then . . . or, with more detail, “If X is found andY is present also, then . . .”

Besides guiding policy, extispicy was alsoapplied in elections to high office: as each can-didate was presented, the omens were taken. Ifthe omens were unfavorable, the next candi-date stepped up, and so on until a winneremerged. Such a system led to the election ofking Nabonidus’s daughter as high priestess ofthe moon god, Nanna. Of course, it wouldhave been embarrassing if the king’s daughterhad not been chosen, so we have grounds forsuspecting some priestly collusion in the out-come—if not a stuffed ballot box, then a stuffedsheep, stuffed with the best-looking liver thathad been seen in many a moon. The desire toplease at all costs is also evident in reports sub-mitted by royal astrologers, who sometimes goout of their way to show that the stars favorwhat the king has already done.

For the priest, however, who took his sacredcraft seriously, divine will was immanent in thethings of this world. Such priestly piety andhumility infuse a remarkable ancient poemcalled “The Prayer to the Gods of the Night,”which was composed sometime between 2000and 1500 B.C.E. In it, a priest readies a lamb sothat from its flesh a vision of the future mightemerge. Historian Giorgio Buccellati sets thescene: “The suppliant is standing on the roof ofa temple, looking at a world asleep. It is a calmand dark night: even the moon and the bright-est star (the morning star) are absent. The fireon the roof and the constellations in the sky arethe only source of light, and to them the sup-plicant turns as operative sources of truth”(Buccellati 1995: 1693). Here are the priest’sancient words:


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The gods of heaven repose; the doors of their palace are locked.The people on earth lie down; the gates of their cities are shut.All gods, all goddesses —Sun and Moon, Morning-Star and Storm —have gone to sleep, suspending their judgment, withholding their verdict.The curtain of night has fallen; the shrines and temples are dark.The traveler murmurs his last utterance; the litigant stills his plea.Even Shamash, guardian of justice, has gone to bed.

O great gods of the night —of Fire and the Netherworld;O Constellations and Stars looking down; watch over me as I offer this sacrifice.Harken to my prayer.

Hymns and Prayers

The “Prayer to the Gods of the Night”printed above belongs to an important genreof poetic literature in which the writer (andspeaker) addresses the divine. In such a work,one or more gods may be praised through acommendatory account of the divine attrib-utes they possess and the blessings theybestow. This praise can then be followed by apetition from the worshiper asking for thegod’s help and concluding with an affirmationof faith. In their sensibility and imagery, theseMesopotamian hymns and prayers remind usof the Psalms of the Old Testament; indeed,the Psalms vividly reflect the historic influ-ence of Mesopotamian spirituality and expres-sion on Hebraic thought, an influence thattranscended the difference between the num-ber of gods each people worshiped.

Most of the hymns were probably composedby priests, and they were set down in writing asan act of piety. Once transcribed, the words ofpraise could then be recopied and recited byothers. Such songs of praise may have beenaccompanied by instrumental music (as whenthe psalmist, King David, strummed his harp),but we cannot say with certainty.

The hymns provide us with the names of themajor divinities the Mesopotamians worshipedand tell us where their chief temples werelocated. The most elaborate hymns are likespiritual kaleidoscopes, radiant with divine epi-thets and attributes and illuminated with color-ful shards of myth (“O Adad, god of thunder,warrior who wields lightning, whose gentlerain makes the fields rejoice . . .”).

If the hymns of Mesopotamia illuminate thegods, it is the prayers that teach us abouthumanity, for in prayers we encounter the hopesand fears of everyday mortal life. Why suchearnest messages should ever have been com-mitted to writing is difficult to explain. Thosewho uttered and transcribed the prayers mayhave believed that their sentiments, expressedthrough the originally sacred medium of writ-ing, might thereby more readily reach the ears(and eyes) of the gods. Another possibility is thatprayers set down in writing were deposited in—and thus, like letters, delivered to—the holytemples where the gods dwelled.

What the people prayed for is instructive: tobe cured of disease, freed of infirmity, absolvedof guilt, safeguarded from enemies, protectedfrom family ghosts, shielded from witchcraft,and to attain professional success. In one strik-ing example, a suffering soul—uncertain of whatsin he may have committed or what deity hemay have offended—prays to all gods for for-giveness of all possible sins—the first “to whomit may concern” letter in history sent to heaven.

The sin I have committed I know not; the forbidden thing I have done I do not know.


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Some god has turned his rage against me; some goddess has aimed her ire.I cry for help but no one takes my hand.I weep but no one comforts me.God, Goddess, Whoever you are, forgive me and I will give you praise.

There are also some prayers from themouths of Assyria’s kings. An ailing Ashur-nasirpal I implores Ishtar to restore his vigor; ascholarly Ashurbanipal petitions Nabu, patronof scribes, for divine blessing; and Nabonidus,Assyria’s last king, with unconscious ironyprays to Shamash for lasting dominion. Tomake their intent more indelible, such royalprayers were often inscribed on the thresholdsand steps of palaces and temples and even onthe bricks that paved ceremonial avenues.

Most remarkable of all is a lengthy prayercomposed by Enheduanna, daughter of thethird millennium B.C.E. monarch Sargon ofAkkad. Her father, it seems, had appointed herhigh priestess of the moon-god Nanna, thepatron god of Ur. But political contention andreligious turmoil put her position—and per-haps, even, her life—at risk. In her prayer shepleads with the formidable goddess Ishtar tochampion her cause, and recounts her suffering:

The day came: I was burned by the sun;The night came: I was blown by the wind.My voice fails me;Pleasure is turned to dust . . .I have come to a harbor of sorrows.There I will die with this hymn on my lips.

Lamentations

Grief is raised from a personal to a communallevel in another genre of poetry that began inSumerian times, the genre of lamentation. Inthis type of literature, the poets’ concerns arenot with their own suffering and fate but withthe suffering and fate of their city-state as a con-sequence of war. These poems of lamentation

decry the destruction of the cities themselvesand their temples, and the pain inflicted upon avanquished people. As the poems reveal, thepeople’s affliction is made all the more intense bythe realization that they are being punished byGod. Ultimately, however, these “city laments,”as they are called, become hymns of redemption,for in their concluding stanzas they tell of howthe power and glory of each community wereultimately restored by divine intervention. It isfor this reason that the poems were for centuriesthereafter publicly recited by priests as patrioticand spiritual anthems.

It is their “happy endings” that make theSumerian laments so different from the bibli-cal book of Lamentations, which they other-wise resemble and indeed inspired. For theJewish people the destruction of Jerusalemand its temple in 586 B.C.E. was followed byexile; only in later days under the leadershipof Ezra and Nehemiah was a victorious end-ing appended to their story, an ending thatsadly would not be lasting.

As historical documents, the laments overthe destruction of such cities as Ur and Nippurgraphically illustrate the instability of ancientMesopotamian life and the capriciousness ofgods who, unlike their Hebraic counterpart,offered no moral lesson to justify their wrath.In the verses of these poems, moreover, weencounter a universality of wartime sufferingthat transcends time.

During the siege:

Inside, outside, is the same:Only death.Without, the enemy’s spear;Within, famine’s knife . . .Hunger contorts the belly,Twists the face.

During the attack:

My eyes can no longer beholdThe slashing of mothers’ wombs.


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In the aftermath:

Dead men, not potsherds littered the way.In the wide streets where the crowds once gathered and cheered, the corpses lay scattered.In the fields where the dancers once dancedthe dead were heaped in piles.

Congealed blood plugged up the walls.Flesh oozed beneath the rotting sun.

On the boulevards where people used to promenade

The fat of corpses melts.

* * *This is my house:

where food is not eaten, where drink is not drunk, where seats are not sat in, where beds are not made, where jars lie empty, and cups are overturned, where harps no longer vibrate and tunes no longer sing.

This is my house: without a husband, without a child without even me.

It is images like these that shrink the cen-turies, putting the lie to the specious claim thatin four thousand years humanity’s cause hasmeasurably improved. If anything, we havesimply amplified suffering’s scale.

Letters

ORIGIN

According to a Sumerian tale, the desire towrite a letter inspired the invention of writing.

Once upon a time, as the story goes, twokings vied with each other for supremacy: the

king of Uruk in southern Iraq and the king ofAratta in Iran. Instead of making war againstone another, they engaged in an internationalbattle of wits, using riddles as their weapons.Whoever failed to solve his opponent’s riddlewould be the loser. A messenger acted as ago-between, memorizing each riddle, report-ing it orally, and returning with the recipi-ent’s answer. Because the kings were wellmatched, the intellectual contest wore on andon with each successive riddle becomingmore complicated than the last. Finally, thepoor messenger’s memory circuits overloadedand crashed. Undaunted, the king of Uruk(named Enmerkar) took a piece of clay, pattedit flat, and inscribed it with the blunt end of areed, making the world’s first written sym-bols. He then sent the tablet to his opponentwho, in utter bafflement at the meaning ofthe visual riddle, threw up his hands andadmitted defeat.

According to another Sumerian tale, a muchdarker motive inspired the world’s first letter.As the story goes, the king of Kish had anambitious cupbearer named Sargon whom hefeared might someday seize the throne. To pre-vent this, he wrote a message on a clay tabletand enclosed it in another piece of clay, thuscreating the first envelope in history. “Take thisto the king Lugalzagesi of Uruk,” he said, andgave the sealed letter to Sargon. The messageinside: “Kill the bearer of this letter!” Like theGreek hero Bellerophon who was targeted in asimilar way, Sargon sidestepped disaster andwent on to achieve greatness.

Each of those tales is surely woven on theloom of imagination, but some of the yarn isspun from history. Both stories involve the cityof Uruk, where in fact archaeologists haveunearthed samples of Mesopotamia’s mostancient writing system, a pictographic scriptthat became the ancestor of classic cuneiform.Legend places Enmerkar, the hero of the firststory, in the early third millennium B.C.E.,


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close to the time when writing was indeedinvented; while history puts Sargon in the lat-ter part of the millennium, the date of our ear-liest cuneiform letters.

One thing is certain: the letter was to becomea major category of Mesopotamian writing.

PRESERVATION

Had they been written on paper, letters fromMesopotamia never would have survived;buried in damp soil, they would have readilydisintegrated. But, made of clay, theyendured. Unlike a modern letter, a Meso-potamian one couldn’t be “torn up” or “crum-pled”; tossed into a trash heap, it would stillretain its shape. Indeed, even when crackedinto pieces, its message can be restored towholeness by the patience and diligence of thearchaeologist and philologist. Some tablets, infact, are oven-baked after excavation to insuretheir survival.

DELIVERY

The philatelist is bound to be stymied in hissearch for ancient postage stamps! TheMesopotamians never used stamps, butinstead simply addressed the envelope withthe name of the intended recipient (and some-times the sender’s own name) and entrustedthe missive to a servant or peripatetic mer-chant to deliver with careful instructions as towhere the addressee lived. Regretably, most ofthese clay envelopes are lost because theywere immediately broken apart to get to theletters inside and then thrown away. The clos-est thing to a government postal service wasthe royal mail, but this was reserved for diplo-matic and military communiqués transportedby special messengers. Such a system was theproduct of imperialism and the territorialexpansion of empire. For the average person,life was lived out mostly in one’s home andneighborhood where formal letters were not

needed because communication was moreintimate and personal. Besides, given thecomplexity of cuneiform and the low level ofpopular literacy, composing a letter—or evenreading one—normally required the paid ser-vices of a scribe.

STYLE

Instead of beginning with “Dear X” and con-cluding with “Yours truly, Y,” an ancientMesopotamian letter generally began with asingle line naming the sender and the one towhom the message was directed (“Y says thefollowing. Tell X that . . .”). Sometimes theaddressee was named in the first line (“Tell X”)and the sender simply signed the letter at thebottom with his seal.

Next might come an expression of respectfor the recipient and a wish for his goodhealth and the welfare of his household(assuming that the intent of the letter wasreasonably friendly).

This then would be followed by the mainbody of the letter, a detailed statement outliningthe writer’s concerns and any actions he wishedthe recipient to take in response to them.

TONE

The tone of a letter reflected the relative sta-tus of the sender and the recipient. If someoneof lower social status were writing to someoneof higher social status (an underling corre-sponding with a ruler, for example), the tonewould tend to be flattering and subservient (“Iam but dirt beneath your feet.”) If socialequals were corresponding (for example, oneking to another), the tone would tend to beproud but respectful, with one referring to theother as “brother” (“I and my household, myhorses and chariots, and my officials and sub-jects are well. I trust things are well with mybrother and his household, his horses andchariots, and his officials and subjects.”) When


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a superior, however, was writing to an inferior,the tone could be direct and brusk and bereftof formal pleasantry (“Mark this urgent!” “Idon’t want to have to remind you about thismatter again!” “Don’t eat, drink, or even sitdown till you get here!” “I don’t wantexcuses!”) A brief perusal of some of theseMesopotamian memos is enough to persuadeus that stress must not have been an exclu-sively modern phenomenon.

CONTENT

Mesopotamian letters fall into a number of cat-egories based on their subject-matter.

Royal Correspondence Among the histori-cal treasures of Mesopotamia are letters fromthe archives of its kings. From the palace ofZimri-Lim at Mari come documents that detailthe political uncertainty and shifting alliancesthat prevailed in the days before Hammurabiunified Babylonia. Communiqués concern thesending of ambassadors and the movement oftroops, including intelligence reports on theenemy. Some letters contain advice offered byoracles and prophets to guide foreign policy.From Mari and elsewhere come letters thatilluminate Hammurabi’s own reign, especiallyin the correspondence he exchanges with sub-ordinates. Other letters discovered in the ruinsof Nineveh portray the life and times of Ashur-banipal and the later kings of Assyria and offerinsights into their diplomatic, military, anddomestic activities. These letters further revealhow omens and divination could determine thedirection of government policy.

Here are some examples:

To his majesty, universal sovereign, from hisservant, Nabu-shum-lishir:

May the gods Nabu and Marduk grant your royal majesty everlasting life.

When I sent soldiers from Birat on recon-naissance into the Babylonian marshland, they

were attacked by Babylonian troops. Theykilled four of the enemy and took nine prison-ers that are on their way to you.

To his royal majesty from his servant Bel-ikisha:May Nabu and Marduk bless your royal

majesty.The members of your royal household

whom you have chosen to promote (Tabzuaito the rank of captain, Nabu-sakip to the rankof adjutant, and Emur-ilishu to the rank ofbodyguard) are all drunks and will be toodrunk to stop a potential assassin from stab-bing you. Because of what I know, I felt I hadto write to you. Feel free, though, to use yourown discretion.

To his royal majesty from his servant Kisir-Ashur:

Greetings!When I went to Khorsabad, people there

told me there had been an earthquake on theninth of Adar. They said you’d want to knowif it had done any damage to the city walls.

I’m pleased to report that the shrines and ziggurats, the palace and fortifications, andthe houses of the city are in good shape.

I knew that when you heard about theearthquake in a day or two you’d want the lat-est report.

To his majesty, universal sovereign, from his servant, Bel-ushezib:

May Bel, Nabu, and Shamash bless your Majesty.

An eclipse is supposed to have occurred but was not visible here in the capital because ofcloud cover. Your majesty should send mes-sengers to various cities to find out if anyonesighted it.

Be sure to recite the necessary incantationsto secure forgiveness for any sin.

The great gods who dwell in your city caused the clouds to obscure the eclipse as a wayof saying that the eclipse would not bring harmto you or your country. Therefore rejoice!

The thunder-god Adad will be loudest during the month of Nisan, but the harvestwill be unaffected.


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To his royal majesty from your servant Nabu-nasir:

In response to your request for an official diagnosis, I have concluded you are sufferingfrom an inflammation. An inflammation ofthe head, hands, and feet is dental in origin.Therefore your teeth should be extracted.Your pain will then subside, and your condi-tion will improve.

Letters from the sands of ancient Egypt havealso shed light on Mesopotamia. The 14thcentury B.C.E. was an age of internationalismin which various rulers of the Near East cor-responded with Egypt’s pharaohs: AmenhotepIII, Amenhotep IV (better known as Akhen-aten, the heretic pharaoh), and the boy-kingTutankhamun. Beginning in 1887, almost 400letters were recovered from the deserted capi-tal city of Akhetaten (modern Tell el Amarna).Known as the “Amarna letters,” these docu-ments underscore the tenuous and tense rela-tionship that existed between and among themilitary superpowers of the day—the Egyp-tians, the Hittites, and the Mitanni—as a dis-tracted Egypt began to lose its military gripon its vassal states in the Levant. Lesser play-ers, eager to inflate their roles, also appear onthe stage: the Babylonians and the Assyrians.All the while, Egypt’s enemies hover like cov-etous vultures. “Send me more gold,” theysay. “In Egypt, gold is as plentiful as dirt.”

Most striking is the fact that the letters arewritten in cuneiform on clay tablets, almostall in the Akkadian cuneiform, proof of thepervasive influence of Mesopotamian culturethroughout the East Mediterranean world.

Business Correspondence The widespreaduse of the cuneiform script and Akkadian wasdue in considerable part to the internationalactivity of Mesopotamian businessmen and thetrading routes and colonies they established.The bulk of these letters concern commoditiesand payments due. The commodities include

textiles, livestock, and grain—Mesopotamia’schief exports.

Scribal Exercises Except for merchants whokept their own books and were therefore liter-ate, most letters we have come from the handsof professional scribes who took dictation fromtheir masters and clients. Part of a scribe’s edu-cation consisted of practicing the writing of for-mal letters. To give their students such practice,some scribal schools maintained collections ofsample letters to serve as models for their stu-dents’ work. Thanks to the repeated copying ofsuch models, the texts of some historical lettershave come down to us even though the originalshave long since disappeared. Most notableamong these are letters from some of the kingsof Ur’s glorious Third Dynasty.

Letters to Gods Comprising what may bethe most unusual category of correspondenceare letters written to gods. Composed byrulers, they were probably intended to be readaloud by priests to the assembled populace. Anumber of such letters are known to have beenwritten by Assyrian kings, but the practice isdocumented as far back as Sumerian times andcontinued down through the days of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. By composing such a let-ter, a king expressed his gratitude for divineguidance and aid. Of course, having his sub-jects as an audience for such a pious recitationserved to enhance his popularity. The nearestmodern equivalent to such an occasion—albeitin a secular setting—would be a U.S. presi-dent’s “State of the Union” address.

Sometimes, however, the letter to a godwas cast in the form of a question, wherebythe king sought divine guidance in choosingthe right course for the ship of state. Thegod’s answer came in the form of a sign readby priests from the entrails (usually the liver)of a sacrificed animal.


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In two documented cases from Assyriantimes, a god actually sent a letter to a kingexpressing his divine displeasure at somethingthe king had done. No doubt the letter waspenned by a priestly ghostwriter who used theopportunity to make a political statement. Nodoubt also the priest was later transferred by aknowing king to a remote desert parish.

Personal Letters Most letters mailed inMesopotamia are not addressed to us. Theyspeak of remote gods and kings, of an alien worldwe may intellectually understand but can neveremotionally know. But then there are otherancient letters, ones inscribed in a more humanhand. By their simplicity and immediacy theyachieve a velocity that permits them to escapethe orbit of their times and enter our own.

Curiously, in one way or another they alltreat the subject of material possession.Therein perhaps lies the secret of theirpotency: as we read the letters we realize thatthe fragile things that mattered most to thewriters are, like the writers themselves, nomore, even as we ourselves and the things wecherish will someday cease to exist.

Here, then, are one humorous and twopoignant examples. The first is written by aspoiled young man; the last two, by vulnerablewomen.

From Iddin-Sin to his mother, Lady Zinu:Every year my friends dress better, and

every year my own clothes get worse. It seemsthis is the way you want it. I know you haveplenty of wool at home, but all you send me isrags. My friend, whose father works for myfather, dresses better than I do: he has two setsof everything. My friend’s mother adoptedhim; yet you gave me birth. But it looks likeshe loves him more than you love me.

From the slave-girl Dabitum to her Master:I told you what might happen, and it has. I

carried the baby for seven months. The babyhas been dead for a month now, and no one will

help me. Do something before I die. Just come,Master, so I can see you. You said you weresending me something, but nothing hasarrived. If I must die, let me only see your face.

From the priestess Awat-Aja to her dear Gamillum:

When my eyes beheld you, I filled with joy like that first day when the door of the darkchapel closed behind me and I saw the face ofthe goddess shining down. I know it made youhappy to see me too. “I’ll be here for a week,”you said. But I couldn’t tell you then what Ionce wrote to you about from a distance. Andthen all of a sudden you were gone, and forthree days I went mad. No food touched mylips, no water, only memory. Send me what youcan so I can feed those who are depending onme. The winter cold draws near. Help me. Noone did I ever love more.

Proverbs

An essential function of writing was to preserve arecord of the past, for from the experiences ofthe past the ancient reader could draw lessons toguide his life in the present and future. Evenbefore the invention of writing such lessons werepassed on, but by word of mouth from one gen-eration to the next. The shorter the lessonswere, the easier they were to remember andrecite, and so the proverb was born. Eventually,when writing became popular, these nuggets ofcultural wisdom were recorded and organizedinto anthologies. Sumerian anthologies havebeen found that date back to the second millen-nium B.C.E., though their entries no doubtderive from even earlier times. They are, in fact,the oldest documented proverbs in the world. Bythe first millennium B.C.E., bilingual anthologieswere being composed with parallel versions ofthe same proverb in Sumerian and Akkadian.

In one respect, these proverbs are culture-specific: in their imagery and references they


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reflect the largely agrarian society from whichthey grew. But in another respect, they are uni-versal: they provide insights into life that canbe translated into the language of any age—atleast, any age willing to listen.

Despite natural destruction and war (or pos-sibly because of them), the ancient Mesopo-tamians valued the reassuring constancy oftradition. They saw no necessary disconnectbetween the past and the present; becausechange came slowly, the experience of oldergenerations remained relevant and useful andwas shown respect. It is for this reason thatproverbial wisdom was revered. This respectand reverence is evident in the very fact thatSumerian was preserved as a classic languagelong after the glory days of Sumer were gone.

A word of caution. Proverbs are by defini-tion pithy. But over the course of millennia,some of the “pith” has disintegrated, much tothe consternation of cuneiform scholars whoseek to divine the exact meanings of uncom-mon words and phrases. Many Mesopotamianproverbs, therefore, still elude translation. Thesamples below, though, are among the clearestthat have come down to us.

“If I threw you in the river, you’d pollutethe water.”

“If you’re poor, you’re better dead than alive;if you’ve got bread, you can’t afford salt; ifyou’ve got salt, you can’t afford bread.”

“Take your enemy’s land and your enemycomes and takes yours.”

“There are lords and there are kings, but thereal person to fear is the tax collector.”

“If you don’t shut your mouth, a fly will get in.”

“Tell me what you found, not what you lost.”

Social Satire

As far back as Sumerian times, class structureinspired satire. The satire took the form of

brief humorous tales, animal fables, and fic-tional letters. The common theme is class con-flict: in some of these works, representativemembers of different classes vie with oneanother, proclaiming their own virtues even asthey demean their rivals; while, in others, socialinjustices are depicted. Many have happy end-ings in which the weak put down or gain theupper hand over the strong.

In one short story, a well-to-do anddemanding customer hectors a cleaner on howto properly launder his robe; the cleanerresponds by telling the customer to take hisown clothes and wash them in the river. In asecond story, a poor man cleverly repays theingratitude of an arrogant mayor. And in athird, a supposedly learned doctor is shown upas a fool by a simple gardener.

Over a thousand years before Aesop,Sumerian fables used talking animals to pointup human truths. Significantly, the lowly dog isthe most common character in those stories,and even a powerful lion can be outwitted. Ani-mals also take part in debates (as do trees), eachsinging the praises of its own class (dog, wolf,or fox; tamarisk or date-palm) while beratingthe deficiencies of others.

Mesopotamian satire could also take theform of fictional letters or contracts. One let-ter, which purports to be written by noneother than the hero Gilgamesh, ridicules thepretentiousness of royal correspondence.Another letter, written by a trained monkeyto his mother, bemoans how animals in showbusiness are mistreated and pleads for a “carepackage” from home. Most curious of all is acuneiform real estate contract for the pur-chase of worthless land. The unusual thing isthat the contract is drawn up by a bird and iswitnessed at the bottom by his featheredfriends whose “signatures” appear in the clayas bird-tracks!

Behind the Mesopotamian humor, of course,is a serious message about social injustice: how a


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poor peasant (the bird) might not be able toafford a decent plot to work; how the talents ofa worker (the monkey) might be taken advan-tage of by an unfeeling boss; and how the richand powerful (the demanding customer, thearrogant mayor) might lord it over the humble.Despite the legal codes of Ur-Nammu andHammurabi, unlegislated (and perhaps unlegis-latable) inequities still lurked between thelines—even as they still do today despite all ourlaws. By wearing an animal mask or wieldingthe blade of wit, an ancient social critic couldhelp his fellow citizens see the glaring gaps.

Erotic Poetry

Separated as they are by space and time, it iseasy to be insensible to the unity that binds civ-ilizations together. Since cultures are morereadily distinguished from one another by theirdifferences, their inner likenesses may escapeus. Yet surely such likenesses exist, and haveexisted throughout all time.

One of them is the human capacity to love.Sexual love has been primarily responsible forthe perpetuation of the human race, but it hasalso been responsible for the creation of litera-ture—more so than any other category of loveexcept, perhaps, the love of God.

The erotic poetry of different nations is simi-lar in the psychophysical source of its inspira-tion. But love poets are also conditioned by theplaces and times in which they live. The Egypt-ian love poet speaks of nature and eternity, theGreek poet of beauty and transience, the Romanpoet of slavery and mastery. Even the imagery oferotic poems varies with geography.

When the ancient Mesopotamians weremoved by love, what did they write about andby what tokens did they express their passion?

To begin with, writing about love did notcome naturally. Writing in cuneiform was not

a spontaneous process but a laborious one,requiring calligraphic skill and the commandof a complex script. And, because literacy wasnot common, especially among women, it washighly unlikely that a Sumerian Juliet couldhave understood a note from her Romeowithout asking for help from a scribe. More-over, since Mesopotamian literature was gov-erned by tradition, there would have beenage-old traditional norms of form and themean amorous writer would have been expectedto observe.

These challenges, in fact, are evident insurviving Sumerian examples of erotic poetry:they echo the hallowed halls of temple andpalace. A long work celebrates the courtshipand wedding of the sex-goddess Inanna andher shepherd-lover Dumuzi; another, themourning that attended his death. Elsewhere,lyrics lavishly praise the handsomeness ofking Shu-Sin of Ur and the dutifulness of hisqueen. These two sets of poems may indeedbe related, for in an annual rite on New Year’sDay it may have been customary for a Sumer-ian ruler to play the role of Dumuzi in a cere-mony of “sacred marriage.” In this wedding,the role of Inanna would have been played bythe goddess’ high priestess, who may havealso been the queen. Examples of bawdy lyricalso occur, no doubt intended for the titilla-tion of the royal court. One is a dialogue inwhich a customer at a tavern propositions anall-too-willing barmaid.

In these poems, erotic experience isdescribed through the use of similes andmetaphors designed to evoke the senses. Para-mount among the senses here are taste andsmell. The sweetness of the beloved is com-pared to the sweetness of honey and dates, ofbutter and beer; the pleasantness of the belovedto the fragrance of woods such as juniper andpine. The sense of sight is addressed throughvisible imagery reflecting the sky (the Moonand moonlight, and the stars) and the colors of


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precious minerals (gold and silver, carnelianand topaz, alabaster and obsidian, and lapislazuli) that adorn or delineate the lover’s body.Touch is awakened by references to tempera-ture: the coolness of water and ice; the shade ofa cedar tree. Of all the senses, hearing receivesthe least overt attention, perhaps because it wasalready implicit in dialogue and underlay thepoet’s very mission.

The origin of the poetic similes andmetaphors was the agrarian society in whichthe Mesopotamian poet lived and the richmaterial culture that grew from it. This reser-voir of imagery is evident in the examplesabove, but also in the poetic terms of referenceapplied to the body’s sexual organs. Thus thepenis “sprouts” and, when erect, is comparedto a straight stalk of barley, the trunk of anapple tree, a stout pillar of hard alabaster, orthe taut string of a lyre. Pubic hair is calledwool or tufted lettuce. The vagina is describedas wet, either as an irrigated garden watered bysemen or as an incense-bearing tree flowingwith sap. And the clitoris is spoken of as a littlebird. As these illustrations show, Sumerianpoetry could be sensually explicit and anatomi-cally graphic.

Passion, for its part, was likened to a hungerfor bread or beer; infatuation, to the stickypitch that clings to a boat’s hull; and inter-course, to digging a canal or ploughing a field.In coarse love charms (short poems recited tosecure a woman’s affections by magic power),the copulation craved by the sorcerer’s clientswas gleefully compared to the activity of rut-ting swine or dogs in heat. In other poems, asthe following passages reveal, writers trans-muted base impulse into high art.

The plan for a tryst:

Tell your mother:“I was with my girlfriend.”Tell your mother:“We were strolling in the square.”Tell your mother:

“We heard music and she danced with me.”All the while in the moonlightI will sit on my bed, loosening the combs from your hair, holding you in my arms.Lie to her andlie with me.

Love’s strategy:

As a general advance against my position and I shall withdraw tothe bedroom.

As a soldier march against my lines and I shall retreat to bed.

Forced entry:

Like a bridge I will span you, your waters surging beneath me.

Like a thresholdI will cross you, thrusting through your gate.

Counting the time:

You have wasted the day, wasted the night.You have squandered the moon and stars.For all these hours my door stood unlocked.

The last sentry rounds the walls.Come to me now before the dawn.

Recipe for passion:

Squeeze yourself into me as the hand presses flour into an open cup.


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Pound yourself into me as the fist rams flour into a cup craving to be filled.

An elegy to a dead lover:

“Your lover is coming,” she said. “Be ready!”

He comes from a far-away place now.He comes by an alien road.He comes like a dragonfly silent above the

stream,like a mist floating across the mountains.

I clothe his empty chair.

A second elegy (after Thorkild Jacobsen):

In the desert, by the early grass,she cannot hold back her tearsfrom watering the dead husbandstill growing in her mind.

If, as the Bible’s Song of Songs claims, loveas is strong as death, then these erotic poemswill forever keep alive the spirit of a long-dead world.

READING

The Great Decipherments

Cleator 1961, Daniels 1995, Friedrich 1957,Gordon 1982 and 1986, Kahn 1967, and Pope1998: the history of cuneiform’s decipherment;McLemee 2000: online library.

Major Languages

Edzard 1995: Sumerian language; Huehner-gard 1995: Semitic languages; Nemet-Nejat1998: the peoples and their languages.

Writing

Bienkowski and Millard 2000: scribes, libraries;Black and Tait 1995: archives and libraries;Chiera 1938: technique; Claiborne 1974: ori-gins; Driver 1976: Semitic writing; Nemet-Nejat 1998: scribes, archives, libraries; Pearson1995: scribes; Saggs 1965: the scribe in Baby-lonian society; Schmandt-Besserat 1992 and1996: tokens; Walker 1987: cuneiform.

Epic Poetry

Bottéro 1995: Akkadian literature; Bottéro etal. 2001: Epic of Gilgamesh; Foster 1987: sex,love, and knowledge in Gilgamesh; Foster1995: translations: Gardner and Maier, trans-lation of Gilgamesh; George 1999: translationof Gilgamesh and Sumerian epics; Heidel1949: Gilgamesh and Old Testament parallels;Heidel 1951: the Babylonian Epic of Creationand Old Testament parallels; Jackson 1997,Kovacs 1989, Mason 1972: translation of Gil-gamesh; Jacobson 1987: translation of Sumer-ian epics; Kramer 1963 and 1981: Sumerianepic; Lambert 1987: Gilgamesh in literatureand art; Maier 1997: readings on Gilgamesh;Pritchard 1969: translations of Sumerian andAkkadian myths and epics; Saggs 1962:Mesopotamian epic; Tigay 1982: evolution ofthe Gilgamesh epic; Wolkstein and Kramer1983: stories of Inanna.

Historical Chronicles

Bienkowski and Millard 2000: concise overview;Contenau 1954: treatment, style, and validity;Grayson 1975: Assyrian and Babylonian chroni-


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cles; Greenstein 1995: autobiographies inancient Western Asia; Kramer 1981: the first his-torian; Liverani 1995: the deeds of ancientMesopotamian kings; Luckenbill 1924: Sen-nacherib’s annals; Luckenbill 1926–27: Assyrianand Babylonian records; Pritchard 1969: Sumer-ian, Babylonian, and Assyrian historical texts;Thomas 1958: records of Assyria and Babylonia;Van Seters 1995: historiography of the ancientNear East.

Legal Documents

Driver and Miles 1935: Assyrian laws; Driverand Miles 1952–55: Babylonian laws; Gordon1957: Hammurabi’s Code; Greengus 1995:legal and social institutions of ancientMesopotamia; Kramer 1981: the first “Moses”and the first legal precedent; Pritchard 1969:collections of laws from Mesopotamia; Roth1997: law collections from Mesopotamia andAsia Minor; Saggs 1962: law and statecraft.

Divination Texts

Bottéro 2001: astrology; Buccellati 1995:“Prayer to the Gods of the Night”; Contenau1954: astronomy, astrology, and divination;Johnson 1951: Dura Europos horoscope;Nemet-Nejat 1998: astronomy and divina-tion; Olmstead 1938: Babylonian astronomy;Oppenheim 1977: astronomy, astrology, andextispicy; Pritchard 1969: Babylonian Epic ofCreation; Rochberg 1995: astronomy and cal-endars; Rochberg-Halton 1992: Near Easterncalendars; Sachs 1952: Babylonian horoscopes;Saggs 1962: astronomy, divination, and horo-scopes; Swerdlow 2000: ancient astronomy.

Hymns and Prayers

Bienkowski and Millard 2000: concise discus-sion with bibliography; Foster 1995, Pritchard1969: translations.

Lamentations

Bienkowski and Millard 2000, Ferris 1992: thegenre of lamentation; Cohen 1988: lamenta-tions in Mesopotamia; Foster 1995: a citylament; Freedman 2000: lamentations in theOld Testament; Green 1978: Eridu lament;Green 1984: Uruk lament; Kramer 1940: Urlament; Kramer 1981: Nippur lament and themotif of the weeping goddess; Michalowski:Sumer and Ur lament; Pritchard 1969: Urlament, and Sumer and Ur lament.

Letters

Michalowski 1993, Oppenheim 1967: selectedletters from Mesopotamia; Moran 1992: theAmarna letters; Pritchard 1969: Sumerian andAkkadian letters.

Proverbs

Barton 1937: Biblical parallels; Gordon 1959,Kramer 1963 and 1981: Sumerian proverbs;Marzal 1976: proverbs from Mari; Pritchard1969: Akkadian proverbs.

Social Satire

Foster 1995: stories and humor; Foster 1995:humor and wit in the ancient Near East; Kramer1981: Sumerian animal fables; Pritchard 1969:Akkadian fables.


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Erotic Poetry

Alster 1985: Sumerian love songs; Foster 1995,Jacobsen 1987, Pritchard 1969: translations;Leick 1994: sex and eroticism in Mesopotamian

literature; Kramer 1981: the first love song;Westenholz 1995: love lyrics from the ancientNear East; Wolkstein and Kramer 1983: transla-tions of poems about Inanna.


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6

ARCHITECTURE AND ENGINEERING

Through architecture and engineering,humanity leaves its mark upon the earth.

Over the long course of time, however, theforces of nature and the destructive bent ofman conspire to erase that mark, leaving onlyits remnants for the archaeologist to trace.This is especially true in a land like southernMesopotamia that lacks stone, where structurescould be built only of clay. Indeed, in all of Iraqthere is not a single ancient monument stillstanding intact that dates to Sumerian, Baby-lonian, or Assyrian times. Unlike the Egyptolo-gist who gazes at the pyramids of Giza and thecolumned splendor of Karnak, the student ofMesopotamia must sadly contemplate founda-tions in the dust.

As the author of the biblical book of Jobonce lamented (4: 19–20):

How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust . . .

They are destroyed from morning to evening.

Yet the Mesopotamian archaeologist rises tothe challenge, inspired by the conviction thatthere great civilizations once stood, that herecivilization itself arose. If walls have fallen andbricks lie scattered, they must be reconstructedin the excavator’s imagination with the help ofkeen observation and an imagery supplied byancient literature and art. Through such effort,the lost world of Mesopotamia can once againassume three-dimensional form.

BUILDING MATERIALSAND HOUSES

The natural resources of Mesopotamia largelydetermined the structural materials used by itsarchitects and engineers. In turn, the structuralmaterials determined the basic size, shape, andstyle of the works they produced.

Limitations

Southern Mesopotamia was an alluvial plainthat was bereft of stone. Indeed, it has beensaid that not a single pebble could be found inits soil that was not brought there from some-where else. Building stone could be imported,but it was prohibitively expensive to do so.Only in the north was quarriable stone avail-able, but even there it was used by the Assyri-ans exclusively for projects such as palaces andtemples because of its limited supply.

Large forests that could yield construction-grade timber (of oak, pine, or cedar) were like-wise lacking. In the south, the only local treewas the date-palm, more valuable alive thandead because its fruit was a staple of theMesopotamian diet. When required, timberwas imported from the mountains to the eastand north, or from Lebanon to the west, famedfor its forests of cedar.

In place of wood, Mesopotamian buildersused bundles of river-grown reeds; in the placeof stone, brick made from riverine clay.

Brick

The clayish soil of southern Mesopotamia wasideally suited to the manufacture of brick. Themost durable brick was baked in kilns, but—ina country short of wood—the cost of heatingthe ovens made such brick very expensive. As apractical matter, then, oven-baked brick wasreserved for prestigious buildings or for placeslike embankments or dikes where its greaterdurability made it essential. The most commonbrick was baked in the sun. It might not last aslong as oven-baked brick, especially when sub-jected to rain and flood, but it was cheap andeasy to replace.

The perfect time to make such brick was thesummertime, when the sun was hot. For this


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reason, the ancient Mesopotamians called thefirst month of summer “the month of bricks.”By that time, the winter rains and the springfloods would have done their maximum dam-age, and the need for repairs could be readilyassessed and the work completed in timelyfashion before wet weather returned.

If the required repairs were too extensive,the entire building might be leveled and a newone constructed atop its ruins. Such reconstruc-tions, repeated throughout a community overthe course of decades and centuries, led to itseventual elevation above the surrounding plain.In Arabic, the term for such an artificial moundis a “tell,” a word that forms the common prefixfound in the names of many abandoned sitesfrom antiquity that dot the landscape of mod-ern Iraq.

The actual making of the bricks was simpleand similar, whether they were baked in ovensor in the sun. Though ordinary wet clay couldbe used by itself, it was usually blended withfinely chopped straw to bind it and lend it extrastrength (see Exodus 5: 10–14). The clay mix-ture would then be pressed into four-sided rec-tangular wooden molds. Next, the moldswould be lifted up, much as a cake mold mightbe gingerly lifted off a freshly baked cake. Thebricks would then be left out in the hot sun todry, or transferred to the oven rack for baking.

When it came time for the finished bricks tobe laid, they would be set in a mortar made ofslushy clay or, better yet, made of an asphalt-like substance called bitumen.

The shape of Mesopotamian bricks changedover the course of history. The earliest examplesare long and thin. Beginning in the fourth mil-lennium B.C.E. and on into the third, theybecome uniformly rectangular, with their lengthdouble their width. In the Early Dynasticperiod, they retain their rectangular outline butacquire a convex side produced by rounding offthe soft clay atop the mold. Such “plano-convex” bricks, with their rounded sides turned

outward, created a variegated wall surface. Stilllater, in the Akkadian period, the square brick,about 14 by 14 inches, came into its own.

Once their chronology was established,Mesopotamian bricks—like their clay cousins,the potsherds—helped archaeologists date thestructures and strata where they occurred. SomeMesopotamian bricks, in fact, are stamped withthe datable names of their royal builders.

A curiosity of etymology is that the word“adobe,” which we normally associate with thearchitecture of Mexico and the American South-west, is actually Near Eastern in origin. TheSpaniards picked up the word from the Arabiclanguage of the Moors, who occupied Spain inthe eighth century C.E. In Arabic, at-tub meant

A R C H I T E C T U R E A N D E N G I N E E R I N G

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6.1 Making sun-dried brick near the bank of theTigris River. (Rogers, A History of Babylonia andAssyria, 1915)

“the brick.” But the word entered the Arabiclanguage as a result of the Muslim conquest ofEgypt in the seventh century C.E. There, theword for brick used by the native Copts was tobe.The Copts, for their part, had preserved the lin-guistic memory of the ancient Egyptian wordfor brick, djebat. Egyptian djebat became Coptictobe, Coptic tobe became Arabic at-tub, and even-tually Arabic at-tub became Spanish adobe.

Bitumen

Bitumen is another name for ancient asphalt. Itis a petroleum-like substance that occurs natu-rally in the Near East, especially in Iraq, whereit seeps to the earth’s surface and forms black-ish, sticky deposits. The aboveground presenceof this substance is, of course, connected to theunderground presence of the oil that is thegreatest source of Iraqi wealth today. Bitumendeposits are found along both of Iraq’s majorrivers, but in particular near the modern citiesof Hit and Ramadi, west of Baghdad, on thesouthern bank of the Euphrates. The ancientswho found these deposits discovered in themthe properties of a powerful adhesive thatbonded to brick better than did ordinary mortarand was, moreover, waterproof. Bitumen there-after became the premium adhesive for layingbrick walls and floors. Additionally, it wasapplied as a coating to make walls and pipeswatertight. Among the ancient civilizations ofthe world, bitumen was used almost exclusivelyby the Mesopotamians, probably because it wasfound in their country in such abundance.

Waterproof though it was, bitumen couldnot prevent woe from seeping into the life ofthe average Mesopotamian. As one Babylon-ian long ago complained: “Here I am living ina house made of brick and bitumen and whatdo you know if a lump of mud doesn’t land onmy head!”

Reeds

Just as the land of the Tigris and Euphratesprovided its people with the clay to make bricksand the bitumen to cement them together, sodid it also provide them with the reeds theyemployed to fashion some of their earliesthomes. Because of their natural buoyancy, bun-dles of reeds had long been used to build boats.But the early Mesopotaminas also used thesame materials to construct their houses.

DOMESTICARCHITECTURE

Reed Houses

Digging a series of holes in the ground, thebuilders would insert a tall bundle of reeds ineach hole. A circle of holes would be used tomake a circular house; two parallel rows to makea rectangular one. Once the bundles were allfirmly inserted, the ones opposite each otherwould be bent over and tied at the top to form aroof. For a front or back door, a reed mat wouldbe draped over an opening (either at the ends ofa rectangular house, or on the side of a circularone). Such primitive homes are still made andused by the marsh-dwellers of southern Iraq.

In a hot climate like Iraq’s, a well-designedhouse must protect its dwellers from the sun’ssearing heat.

The reed houses accomplished this pur-pose by providing shade. In addition, the thickbundles of reeds provided some insulation. Ifthe house was rectangular and there was anopening at either end, its owners may haveenjoyed cross-ventilation as well, especially if


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the axis of the house was orientated to takeadvantage of prevailing winds. But the tem-perature inside such a one-room house musthave been high indeed during summer. Dur-ing cold weather, portable brasiers or a smalloven could have provided heat, but with theever-present risk of fire due to the com-bustible nature of the materials from whichthe house was made.

Brick Houses

Superior to a reed house was one made ofbrick. The walls of such homes were as muchas eight feet thick to keep out the summer’sheat. For the same reason, there were few ifany windows, and those that existed would

have been small and fitted with a wooden grillfor security. The exterior walls would havebeen whitewashed to reflect the radiant heatof the sun. In the walls, horizontal ducts, lead-ing to the interior, admitted a small amount offresh air.

Within, rooms were grouped around andopened onto a central courtyard, roofed overwith flat planking and palm-fronds—again, tokeep off the sun. Even if sunlight streameddown, the occupants could always sit againstone of the courtyard’s more shady walls.Against one wall of the courtyard a brickhearth might be built whose smoke would riseand exit through gaps in the roof. Often, theroof was packed down with earth. In such acase, using an exterior staircase, family mem-bers could ascend to sleep on the roof in thecool of a starlit evening.


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6.2 An early 20th-century view of reed houses being constructed in southern Iraq using age-old tech-niques and design. (Rogers, A History of Babylonia and Assyria, 1915)

Just as locally available raw materials dictatedthe structure of the Mesopotamian house, so—as we have seen—did local climate determine itsdesign. (See also “Homes” in chapter 11.)

TECHNIQUES OFCONSTRUCTION

The builders of ancient Mesopotamiaemployed the same basic techniques of con-struction as other early peoples. Essentially,mass was piled on top of mass to create a solidform (such as the platformed base of a temple)or to create walls that enclosed space.

A major challenge ancient builders facedwas creating doors and passageways. This wasgenerally accomplished by the post-and-lintelsystem: a horizontal beam (the lintel) was sup-ported atop two vertical posts. The opening,however, could be made only as wide as thelongest available beam. In practical terms, thismeant the height of a tree from which timberswere obtained or, in stone construction, thespan of a quarried block. Yet if too muchweight was placed on top of the lintel, thestress imposed could cause the lintel to crackand the structure to collapse. In stone con-struction, a lintel supported only at its endscould even crack from its own weight if its spanwas too great.

The engineering solution proved to be thearch, a Sumerian invention of the fourth mil-lennium B.C.E. The arch created an openingwhile at the same time bearing weight. Itssecret was to transfer that weight outward andthen downward into the ground, rather thanbearing it solely upon itself. By building aseries of such arches back to back, engineerswere able to construct vaults that served as tun-

nels. In addition to forming passageways, thearch was a strong and efficient way of support-ing a superstructure: because of its openness, itrequired less brick or stone than a wall of simi-lar size carrying a similar weight.

The first arch to be designed in Mesopotamiawas a corbel arch. Rather than consisting of aseries of wedge-shaped blocks (voussoirs) curv-ing around to either side of a central keystone, acorbel arch consisted of two slanting sets ofstone steps that came closer and closer to eachother as they rose until they met at the top toform the apex of a triangle.

The later true arch was a more sophisticateddevice both because of the correct slant neededfor each voussoir and because of the criticalrole played by the keystone in maintaining thestability of the arch as a whole.

It is possible, but not at all certain, that theidea for the corbel arch was inspired by thestepped profile of the platforms used in build-ing Mesopotamian temples. Another source forthe idea of the arch may have been the curvingoutline of the bent-over bundles of reeds usedto fashion homes.

Neither the Mesopotamians nor the Egyp-tians nor the Greeks—all of whom were familiarwith the true arch—used it with the engineeringand architectural bravado of the Romans. Inpart, this was so because Rome’s legions neededbridges in order to traverse Europe’s rivers. Inpart, it was so because the empire’s cities neededelevated aqueducts to supplement local sourcesof water. But most of all, it was true becauseRoman leaders insured their own political sur-vival by keeping the urban masses happy. As aresult, on the backs of multiple arches rose tow-ering amphitheaters and spas that provided tensof thousands of people with easy access tosensual pleasure. Though Mesopotamian engi-neers used arches to construct bridges and aque-ducts, Mesopotamia’s leaders never recognizedthe potential of the arch as a means of publicpersuasion.


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FROM VILLAGETO CITY

Though humanity first expressed its artisticimpulses in the Old Stone Age, architecturebegan in the New. The New Stone Age, orNeolithic Period, began in the Near East inthe seventh millennium B.C.E. and was markedby a radical change in the way people lived. Inearlier times, people had lived by hunting andgathering their food. But in the seventh mil-lennium B.C.E., the principles of agriculturewere discovered as well as the ways to domesti-cate animals. Practicing agriculture meant liv-ing in one place, and that in turn led to theconstruction of permanent dwellings and thebeginning of village life. Farming producednot only a more settled way of life but a popu-lation explosion because of the abundant sup-plies of food it generated. As a result, clustersof primitive dwellings soon became large com-munities. In the fertile alluvial plains of theTigris and Euphrates, once the methods ofirrigation agriculture had been mastered thesevillages grew to the size of cities. Thus the“Neolithic Revolution” gave way to an “UrbanRevolution” in which engineering and archi-tecture came to play a larger and larger role.Cities arose that guarded their wealth behindmoats and gated walls, while within thesewalls—amid winding streets and huddleddwellings and shops—stood administrativecenters and temples, the new institutions of aninvention called civilization.

TEMPLES

“Mesopotamia is the birthplace of architec-ture,” declared art historian Sigfried Giedion

in his work, The Eternal Present (Giedion 1964:176). In Mesopotamia “the age-old yearning toestablish contact with invisible forces was, forthe first time, given an architectural form”(Giedion 1964: 213).

If Giedion is correct, the churches, syna-gogues, and mosques of today ultimately owetheir formal existence to structures that beganin Sumer some 6,000 years ago.

When monumental architecture arose, itsfirst utterance was a prayer. Just as the ancientMesopotamians lived in houses, so did theybuild houses for their gods in the hope theirgods would dwell among them and protectthem. In these sacred houses, they set up imagesof their deities, and in them placed tables onwhich they laid offerings meant to obtain andinsure divine blessing. In addition, they erectedplatformed shrines to coax their gods todescend to earth and to help their own humanvoices more readily reach heaven’s heights.

Unlike today’s places of worship, however,temple interiors were not intended to hold acongregation. Instead, the temple was thedwelling-place of the god’s or goddess’ holystatue, the repository of the deity’s treasures,and the residence of its priestly attendants.On sacred occasions, the congregation mightprayerfully gather in the courtyard in front ofthe sanctuary, but not pray within its dark-ened enclosure. Instead, priests or priestessesaddressed the deity there on the community’sbehalf and offered up its gifts.

Origins and Development

The oldest example of a Mesopotamian templeyet found belongs to the southern city ofEridu. Dating as far back as the fifth millen-nium B.C.E., it consists of a single room mea-suring only 12 by 15 feet. At its center stood anoffering table; in the wall before it was a niche


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with a plinth that once functioned as an altar orsupported a god’s statue. If that statue everexisted, it has never been found, nor do weknow the name of the divinity it portrayed.The primitive sanctuary was approachedthrough a simple doorway as though anyone inneed could enter and commune with god.

By the fourth millennium B.C.E., templearchitecture had changed, as revealed by a latertemple at Eridu. The size of the structure hadgrown, and its interior was now subdivided intoa floorplan that would become characteristic oftemples at other sites: a central hall flanked oneither side by a series of rooms, not unlike thenave of a church. In addition, the walls on theoutside were strongly buttressed. The sanctu-ary, moreover, was raised on a terrace and hadto be approached by a staircase. At times, theterrace was quite high, perhaps as much as 40feet or more.

Some would see in this architectural trans-formation a transformation of religion itself:from a type of worship that was originally moreintimate and personal to one that was latermore hierarchical and remote. Commentingon this apparent transformation, archaeologistWalter Andrae wrote:

Life in these [earlier] temples must be imag-ined as flowing freely through them. A com-ing and going is possible on every side, instrong contrast to the enclosure of thelater Akkadian-Babylonian temple precinctswhich, with few exceptions, were built likea fortress with one single entry point.(Giedion 1964: 190)

Whether such an interpretation is justifiedwe will never know. It is always a riskyendeavor to extract a romantic homily from apile of bricks. In the history of religion, how-ever, the visionary prophet is eventuallyreplaced by the myopic bureaucrat. Whetherthat was true in Mesopotamia, though, we can-not say. What is clear is that the temples them-

selves grew in size and complexity and withthem, no doubt, the priestly colleges thatsupervised their activities.

Later in the Assyrian and Neo-BabylonianEmpires, the temple was structurally inte-grated with the palace. On the one hand, such astep served to enhance the majesty of the king.On the other hand, it symbolized, througharchitecture, the subordination of sacred activ-ities to secular control.

As time went on, Mesopotamian templeswere renovated and rebuilt over the remains oftheir former selves. As this process continued,the sanctuaries rose higher and higher abovethe surrounding terrain.

Decorative fragments suggest their formersplendor. Thanks to a coating of white gypsumplaster, the exterior walls of Uruk’s “WhiteTemple” must have shimmered in the sun.Meanwhile at Al Ubaid, a gleaming mosaic ofcolored stones and mother-of-pearl envelopedcolumns cut from the trunks of tall palms.Guardian leopards and geometric patternsadorned the interior of Tell Uqair’s “PaintedTemple.” After a few hours of being exposed tothe open air, their hues faded, but when theexcavators first uncovered them, they were asvibrant as when they were first painted.

A city might well possess multiple temples.Sometimes, with the help of connecting court-yards, they formed religious complexes. A city’stemples might be dedicated to a number of dif-ferent deities, but usually the patron god orgoddess of a city had a larger and more impos-ing temple than the rest. At Ur, the moon-godNanna and his consort Ningal were so hon-ored. At Ischali it was Ishtar, goddess of loveand war. And at Babylon it was Marduk.

Markuk’s temple precinct at Babylon wasimmense, stretching 470 feet in length andspreading over 60 acres. Initially built duringthe days of Babylon’s First Dynasty, it wasrestored and refurbished a number of timesbefore its final destruction in 479 B.C.E. under


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the Persians. After choosing Babylon as hisnew capital, Alexander the Great contemplatedthe temple’s reconstruction, but after employ-ing 10,000 laborers for two months just to clearaway its rubble, he abandoned the project.

Some cities also featured a special templelocated outside the city walls. Called a bıt akıtuin Akkadian, it served as the destination for areligious procession that took place to cele-brate the New Year.

One feature that set Mesopotamian templesapart from the ones Alexander knew in Greecewas their cosmic orientation. The front of

almost every Greek temple faced east, with theother sides facing west, north, and south. InMesopotamia, however, it was the corners andnot the sides that pointed in the cardinal direc-tions, with the entry of the temple oftenlocated on its northeast or southeast side.

Mesopotamia’s rulers took great pride intheir role as builders of religious edifices. Thestela that is inscribed with Ur-Nammu’s codeof law depicts him carrying tools on his shoul-der, while a plaque portrays Ur-Nashe bear-ing on his head a basket of clay for the makingof bricks. A statue of Gudea, now in the Lou-vre, shows him sitting with a ruler and the“blueprints” for a temple in his lap. Nabopo-lassar, for his part, boasts in an inscriptionhow he rolled up his sleeves (actually, tuckedup his gown!) and hauled clay and bricks forMarduk’s temple. All of this is not very differ-ent from the posed photo of a politician turn-ing up the first spadeful of dirt at thecommencement of a civic project, except thatour Mesopotamian examples involve places ofworship.

One of the most fascinating aspects of tem-ple construction was the insertion of a “foun-dation deposit,” the ancient equivalent of atime capsule buried behind a modern corner-stone. Such a deposit would consist of aninscription recording the name of the royalbuilder and describing the circumstances ofconstruction, including a list of any specialmaterials that were employed, like the scentedoils or honey sometimes added to the mortaror expensive woods like cypress and cedar usedfor the doors. The sixth century B.C.E. rulerNabonidus even made a hobby of digging upold foundation deposits to see what they said,thereby bestowing upon himself the distinctionof being the world’s first archaeologist.

Foundation deposits were also incorporatedinto the construction of another type of reli-gious structure, the ziggurat. Just as a cam-panile, or bell tower, stands next to an Italian


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6.3 Though headless, Gudea of Lagash still sitswith his blueprints on his lap. The inscription onhis skirt celebrates his pious penchant for erectingtemples. (E. de Sarzec, Découvertes en Chaldée,1884–1912)

church, so did the ziggurat stand near the tem-ple to the god it honored.

ZIGGURATS

The most distinctive architectural creation ofancient Mesopotamia was not the temple butthe ziggurat. So far, over 30 of these structureshave been found in various cities, the earliest atEridu dating back to the end of the third mil-lennium B.C.E.

The term ziggurat derives from the Akkadianword zigguratu, which meant a “peak” or “highplace.” Essentially, a ziggurat was a multisteppedplatform made of brick. The platform restedupon a terrace and presumably supported a

shrine at its top—presumably, because no suchshrine has ever been found. Indeed, even themassive earthen platforms themselves lie inruins. But it is doubtless the case that in ancienttimes when they were intact, rituals involving thegods were enacted on their summits.

Ur

The best preserved ziggurat stands at Ur anddates to the late third millennium B.C.E. Its baseis rectangular and measures 145 feet (on thenorthwest and southeast) by 190 feet (on thenortheast and southwest). As our descriptionsuggests, its cosmic orientation is like that ofmost Mesopotamian temples, with its four cor-ners pointing in the directions of east and westand north and south. Each side of the base is


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6.4 A restored view of the walls and ziggurat of ancient Babylon. (M. Jastrow, Babylonia and Assyria, 1917)

actually convex, whether deliberately so to con-vey an impression of greater massiveness or thesimple result of pressure from the weight aboveis hard to say.

The first level at Ur, the only one to surviveintact, stands 50 feet high. Atop this are thewalled outlines of a second higher level and theremains of a third, for a grand total of 70 feetfrom the bottom of the ziggurat to its currenttop. Jutting out from the northeast face is agrand staircase that is joined by two other stair-cases angling up from the building’s corners.The staircases would bring the priestly wor-shiper up to the first floor, where other stair-cases would allow him to ascend to the secondand then final levels.

In terms of construction, the Ur zigguratconsists of a core of sun-dried brick covered byan outer layer of oven-baked brick eight feetthick. It is this tough outer layer of weather-resistant brick that largely accounts for the zig-gurat’s survival. The core itself is interwovenwith cables and mats woven from reeds. Weep-holes in the sides of the structure permit inter-nal moisture to drip out, while channelsrunning vertically drain off rainwater anddirect it to the ground.

Originally, the first floor would have had itsouter edges painted black, with red reserved forthe second and third. At the top, the shrinemay have been finished in an enameled brickwith a deep blue glaze.


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6.5 In this exterior view of the ziggurat at Ur, we can make out downspout channels and “weep holes” inthe brick façade. These were designed to keep the interior of the structure dry. (University of PennsylvaniaMuseum)

Babylon

Though only its foundations survive, Meso-potamia’s largest ziggurat was located at Baby-lon. In ancient times it was called “Etemenanki,”a name that means something like “the founda-tion of heaven and earth” or, perhaps better, “thelink between heaven and earth.” Originally,Babylon’s ziggurat stood some 300 feet tall androse up in seven stories. As a vertical triumph, itsarchitectural audacity and the manpower andorganization needed to execute it would laterinspire the biblical tale of the Tower of Babel, forBabel is but another name for Babylon.

Seen from a distance, the ziggurat of Baby-lon would have appeared like a massive flight ofmulticolored stairs reaching for the heavens. Ifour ancient sources are reliable, each level waspainted a different color: the first and lowest,white; the second, black; the third, red; thefourth, again white; the fifth, reddish orange;the sixth, silver; and the seventh and highest,glistening gold.

In addition to a cuneiform tablet that pro-vides the measurements for Babylon’s fabledziggurat, we have an eyewitness account fromthe Greek traveler and historian Herodotus,who describes (History 1: 181–82) what he sawand was told during a visit in the mid-fifth cen-tury B.C.E.

There was a tower of solid masonry, a littleover 600 feet in length and width, upon whichwas raised a second tower, and on that a third,and so on up to eight. The ascent to the top ison the outside, by a path which winds roundall the towers. When one is about half-wayup, one finds a resting-place and seats, wherepersons are wont to sit some time on their wayto the summit. On the topmost tower there isa spacious temple, and inside the templestands a couch of unusual size, richly adorned,with a golden table by its side. There is nostatue of any kind set up in the place, nor isthe chamber occupied of nights by any one

but a single native woman, who, as the Chal-daeans, the priests of this god [ Jupiter Belus],affirm, is chosen for himself by the deity outof all the women in the land. They alsodeclare—but I for my part do not credit it—that the god comes down in person into thischamber, and sleeps upon the couch.(Herodotus 1942 [1858]: 97–98, trans. GeorgeRawlinson, revised)

Herodotus thus connects the shrine at thetop with a rite of sacred marriage in which thegod Marduk (identified by Herodotus withZeus) mated with a mortal woman.

Additional details are provided by the firstcentury B.C.E. historian Diodorus Siculus (2: 9).

Now since with regard to this temple [of Zeus]the historians are at variance, and since timehas caused the structure to fall into ruins, it isimpossible to give the exact facts concerning it.But all agree that it was exceedingly high, andthat in it the Chaldaeans made their observa-tions of the stars, whose risings and settingscould be accurately observed by reason of theheight of the structure. Now the entire build-ing was ingeniously constructed at greatexpense of bitumen and brick, and at the top ofthe ascent Semiramis [the builder, according toDiodorus] set up three statues of hammeredgold . . . A table for all three statues, made ofhammered gold, stood before them, forty feetlong, fifteen wide, and weighing five hundredtalents. And there were censers as well . . . andalso three gold mixing bowls [for wine] . . . Butall these were later carried off by the kings ofthe Persians, while as for the palaces and theother buildings, time has either entirely effacedthem or left them in ruins; and in fact of Baby-lon itself but a small part is inhabited at thistime, and most of the area within its walls isgiven over to agriculture. (Diodorus Siculus1974: 381, trans. C. H. Oldfather)

Indeed, after Robert Koldewey stopped hisexcavations at the site in 1917, the peasants ofthe nearby village of Hilla stole all the bricksthey could find, leaving behind only a large


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muddy hole where once had risen a tower thatreached toward the heavens.

INSPIRATION AND FUNCTION

What, then, was the inspiration for the ziggu-rat? Herodotus gives one explanation: that itwas designed as a lofty platform for a shrinethat a god would descend to from heaven.Even more simply, the ziggurat could beviewed as an elaborate altar, elevated so that itmight be closer to the gods’ own realm.Diodorus offers yet another explanation: thatit was meant to be a celestial observatory.Some, in fact, might see in the seven storys asymbolic representation of the five planetsknown to Babylonian astronomers, plus theSun and Moon. Closer to Earth, others mightalternately propose that, in a land ravaged byflood, the ziggurat was merely a monumentalmeans to raise up a shrine and protect it fromwater damage. And if this explanation shouldseem too pedestrian, another explanationmight suffice: that the ziggurat’s form echoesthe topography of the mountainous homelandfrom which the builders originally came, aland where gods were believed to dwell onmountaintops. Though we do not in fact knowof such origins, some poetic names given toziggurats—“house of the mountain” and“mountain of the storm”—tend to lend cre-dence to the notion of the ziggurat as a man-made mountain.

Which explanation, then, is correct? Theonly valid answer I can give is that the variousanswers above are not mutually exclusive: morethan one may have played a role in ministeringto the ziggurat’s birth.

ZIGGURATS AND PYRAMIDS

There is a saying in Arabic: “Man fears time, buttime fears the pyramids.” There is much truth inthat saying, since the pyramids of Egypt have

endured like no other monument of the ancientworld. By their sheer mass they defy annihila-tion, and they will remain behind as a testamentto human striving and ingenuity long after thehuman race itself has disappeared.

The durability of the pyramids is in greatmeasure due to the natural resources of Egypt.The land of the Nile is rich in limestone, a stoneideal for quarrying and construction. Such, weknow, was not the case in Mesopotamia, espe-cially in the south. Ziggurats had to be madefrom brick, and brick—even oven-baked brick—is not as millennially lasting as stone. Hencemost of Iraq’s ancient ziggurats have dissolvedinto its landscape while the pyramids still towerabove Egypt’s desert.

Nevertheless, might the two—the pyramidof ancient Egypt and the ziggurat of ancientIraq—be somehow related? Both arose in com-parable cultural settings: riverine civilizationsthat flowered in the Near East in the fourthmillennium B.C.E. Both required massive con-centrations of manpower, organized and directedunder centralized authority. Both were erectedto honor the gods: in Egypt to honor the divineruler, the pharaoh; in Mesopotamia to honorheavenly divinities that man had to serve. Andboth were vertical statements similar in form:four triangular sloping sides rising from a recti-linear base and made by piling mass upon mass.Indeed, before the Egyptians succeeded inbuilding smooth-sided pyramids, they builtones that were stepped, and even afterward theycontinued to speak of their pyramids as “stair-cases to heaven.”

While all these things are true, there are alsosignificant differences between pyramids andziggurats. Ziggurats were intended for the liv-ing; pyramids were built for the dead. Zigguratswere constructed in the hearts of bustling cities;pyramids were raised in the barren and desolatedesert. Fundamentally, each pyramid was dedi-cated to a single pharaoh’s quest for eternal life;each ziggurat, however, was dedicated to a god


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who was already eternal and would abide for-ever. Unlike the pyramid, which was built for asingle individual and then sealed shut, the zig-gurat was open to all to see and benefit from,not only during the generation that built it butalso for all future time. In addition, the age ofpyramid-building was relatively short, essen-tially the 450-year span of Egypt’s Old King-dom, but ziggurats continued to be built andrebuilt in Iraq for at least two thousand years.

Did one form influence the other? CouldPharaoh Zoser’s Step Pyramid have inspiredthe earliest ziggurat? Could the ziggurat con-versely have inspired the Egyptian architectImhotep in his design of Zoser’s monument? Itis difficult to say. The earliest ziggurats ofwhich we have traces (about 2100 B.C.E.) arecenturies later than the date of Egypt’s StepPyramid (about 2650 B.C.E.). But still earlierziggurats could have been built of which we nolonger have physical evidence, especially sincethey were shaped from materials less durablethan stone.

Of course, it is possible that Egypt andMesopotamia arrived at their architectural con-cepts independently: Egypt piling rectangulartomb upon rectangular tomb, Mesopotamia rais-ing platform upon platform, until the steppedprofile emerged. We will never know.

What we do know is that each nation reachedto the heavens, bending will and muscle toachieve transcendent goals. There is perhaps nomore that a civilization can ask of itself.

PALACES

Like the earliest temple and ziggurat, Mesopo-tamia’s earliest palace comes from Eridu. It datesto the early third millennium B.C.E.

While the developed temple is distinguishedby its floorplan and the ziggurat by its elevation,

the palace is marked by its multiplicity of rooms.Indeed, its name in Sumerian meant “big house.”

Design

Just as the temple gradually gained rooms andthe ziggurat storys, the palace took time inacquiring its characteristic form. That formconsisted of two courtyards connected by athrone room that doubled as an audience hall.The outer courtyard was used for publicevents; the inner, for private ceremonies. Sur-rounding the outer courtyard were rooms thatserved as offices, workshops, and storage areas;surrounding the inner were residential quar-ters for the royal family and facilities to servetheir domestic needs. A later addition was aSyrian-style columned portico known in Akka-dian as a bıt hilani. The walls of the palacemight be decorated with paintings of ceremo-nial scenes or, in Assyrian times, with sculptedreliefs depicting the favorite pursuits of themonarch: hunting and war. The entire struc-ture was usually surrounded by its own defen-sive wall. Some cities even boasted more thanone royal palace, a tribute to the reigningmonarch’s egotism and vainglory.

Examples

One of the most extensive Mesopotamianpalaces was that of the 18th-century B.C.E.ruler of Mari, Zimri-Lim, a contemporary ofHammurabi. Called “a jewel of archaic orientalarchitecture” (Lloyd, Müller and Martin 1974:23), it contained about 300 rooms. When theeighth century B.C.E. Assyrian king Sargon IIbuilt his new capital city at Dur-Sharrukin, hedesigned its throne room with two special fea-tures: a spiral staircase leading to the roof forcelestial observations and ceremonies, and a


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floor with a stone track to guide the wheels of aportable brazier to comfort him with heat inwinter. His successors, Sennacherib and Ashur-banipal, fitted out their palace at Nineveh withcolossal pairs of sentries: stone-carved man-headed bulls that guarded its entranceways andstood 10 to 15 feet tall, enough to terrorize anyvisiting dignitary.

The most impressive Mesopotamian palaceof all, however, may have been Nebuchadnez-zar II’s at Babylon, described in the king’s ownwords as “the marvel of mankind, the center ofthe land, the shining residence, the dwelling ofmajesty.” This palace had no fewer than fivecourtyards and a throne room measuring 55 by140 feet. On the throne room’s glazed-brickwalls, lions with jaws agape paced nervously asthe king contemplated his next military move.

The most stunning, and controversial fea-ture of the palace were the Hanging Gardensof Babylon—controversial, because they maynever have really existed or, at least, because no

incontrovertible proof of their existence hasever been found.

The Hanging Gardens were one of theSeven Wonders of the World, an ancient list ofthe seven greatest man-made marvels that atraveler in Hellenistic times could have beheld.Two were in Greece: the statue of Zeus atOlympia and the Colossus of Rhodes. Two werein Turkey: the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus andthe Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Two were inEgypt: the Great Pyramid at Giza and thePharos, or Lighthouse, at Alexandria. And onein Mesopotamia: the Hanging Gardens ofBabylon. Of these wonders, only one stillstands: Egypt’s Great Pyramid.

For a picture of what the Hanging Gardenslooked like, we must go to the half-dozenancient authors who described them, thoughnone of these writers may have actually seen thegardens with his own eyes. Though theiraccounts differ in detail, they do agree in theirbasic outline: the gardens constituted an elevated


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6.6 A restored view (by James Fergusson) of the façade and grand entrance of Sennacherib’s palace atNineveh. (Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, 1853)


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6.8 Exterior view of an Assyrian palace. (Franz von Reber, History of Ancient Art[New York: Harper, 1882])

6.7 Interior view of an Assyrian palace. (Rawlinson, Seven Great Monarchies of theAncient Eastern World, 1884)

(hence “hanging”) earth-covered terrace plantedwith trees, architecturally supported andmechanically watered. According to the ancienttale, their construction was ordered by Neb-uchadnezzar because of his love for his wife (orconcubine), who was homesick for the moun-tainous and tree-covered landscape of her Iran-ian homeland. The Greek historian DiodorusSiculus describes the gardens as resembling astepped ziggurat; the Roman historian QuintusCurtius Rufus says the trees were about six feetin diameter and stood 50 feet tall, and the groverested on a square base, each side of which was400 feet long; while the Greek geographer,Strabo, and Philo of Byzantium describe thescrew pump and hydraulic principles that wereapplied to raise the volume of water needed toirrigate the artificial forest. Whatever the case,the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were morethan just the royal equivalent of a bouquet oflong-stemmed roses! Though Robert Kold-ewey and others have searched for their massiveremains, the exact location of the gardens,whether attached to the palace or beyond,remains a wondrous mystery.

CITY PLANNING

According to historian Marc Van de Mieroop,“Mesopotamia was . . . the most denselyurbanized region in the ancient world” (Van deMieroop 1999: 64). Yet, uncovering the plan ofits cities is no easy matter. As Van de Mierooppoints out, “Not a single urban site inMesopotamia has been completely excavated.In fact, most excavations have uncovered onlya very small percentage of the total area of thesite under investigation” (Van de Mieroop1999: 63).

The reasons for this are easy to understand.To begin with, archaeological excavation is a

painstaking, time-consuming, and expensiveundertaking. Second, most Mesopotamian sitesare in a state of archaeological “melt-down”due to the decomposition of the building mate-rials that were used in ancient times, especiallyin common houses. Short on time and money,the archaeologist will often zero in on obviousmonumental remains in the hope of findinginscriptions and art, thereby ignoring thelarger landscape where the everyday lives ofordinary people were lived out. Even aerialsurveys offer only a skewed bird’s-eye view of asite: not a snapshot of a day in the life of a citybut a confusing montage of exposed ruins dat-ing to different eras.

Fortunately, some ancient maps (in bakedclay) survive, including one picturing Nippuras it appeared around 1500 B.C.E. In addition,there are cuneiform texts that cite the majormonuments of various cities and list neighbor-hoods and the names of streets and city gates.With the help of these documents and the par-tial information gathered from a collection ofsites, a composite portrait of a typical Meso-potamian city has emerged.

Our typical Mesopotamian city developedgradually. If it possessed a plan, it was not onethat was imposed by logic with a neat grid-pat-tern of broad streets meeting at right angles.Instead, its “plan” arose organically fromwithin as its population grew and their needshad to be met. Streets would tend to wind andbe narrow, but that was acceptable since theshade their huddled buildings offered lent thepedestrian protection from the sun. At somepoint accessible to all by thoroughfare, a tem-ple and ziggurat would be raised up in honor ofthe city’s patron god. Elsewhere a palace wouldbe constructed. In the cities of the south, thereligious complex and palace would be cen-trally located; in the cities of the north, whereterrain was uneven, both were enclosed withina strategically placed and well-fortified “uppercity,” while most of the population lived in the


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“lower” city below, or in the plains thatstretched out beyond. In the south, suburbsprobably existed outside the city walls, as wellas harbors, fields, and orchards. In time of war,both in the south and the north, settlers wouldseek refuge inside the city’s fortifications. Toprovide for just such a contingency, openspaces seem to have been reserved inside thecity as a safe haven.

Of course, when a new capital city was con-structed or an older city was given a facelift byan image-conscious king, efforts were made toimpose regularity by substituting broad, inter-secting avenues for the narrow, winding streetsof an earlier era.

Though it is extremely difficult to estimatethe population density of these ancient cities, itis possible to measure their general size. Urcovered 23.5 square miles; other Sumeriancities, almost 30. Nineveh, by comparison, cov-ered nearly 290 square miles. According to thebiblical book of Jonah (4:11), the sinful city ofNineveh was so broad it took three days tocross it, “that great city wherein more than120,000 people dwell who cannot tell theirright hand from their left.” The largest city inMesopotamia, however, was Babylon. Indeed,it was the largest city in the world until thedays of imperial Rome. Babylon’s expanse mea-sured over 340 square miles. Describing Baby-lon, the Greek philosopher Aristotle once said(Politics 3: 3) that it was as big as a nation, “forwhen Babylon was captured, it took many of itscitizens three days to learn the news” (Van deMieroop 1999: 95).

WALLS

Mesopotamian cities were defined by theirwalls. Originally, especially in the south,those walls may have been built as dikes to

protect early settlements, and the shrines ofthe gods, from the annual threat of flooding.But with the rise of imperialism, walls wereprincipally designed to meet the danger ofmilitary attack.

Though little of them survives physically,their likeness is preserved in art, especially inAssyrian reliefs that depict cities under siege.There we see walls fitted out with zigzagcrenelations, not unlike of those of medievalEuropean castles. The crenelations enabled thedefenders of a city to rain their arrows on theenemy below (taking aim through the opennotches, or crenels) and then duck behind thetooth-like projections (or merlons) when theenemy returned fire with its own missiles.

Fortifications were constructed of brick(oven-baked on the outside of the wall; sun-dried, if necessary, within) and, wherever possi-ble, of stone, at least on the lowest level. All ofthis was designed to prevent enemy sappersfrom burrowing through, and portable ramsfrom piercing and smashing through, duringtime of siege. The city of Babylon had a doublewall with rubble packed in between. The outerwall alone was between 20 and 25 feet thick,and defensive towers were set at 65-foot inter-vals along its 11-mile length, giving archers ineach tower an overlapping field of fire. In addi-tion, cities like Babylon provided themselveswith an additional line of defense by surround-ings themselves with moats fed by river water,or by using the river itself as an obstacle.

Citizens gained entry to their citiesthrough imposing fortified gateways. Babylonprobably had nine gates, of which only onehas been excavated, the famous Ishtar Gatenow on display in the Berlin Museum anddecorated with lions and dragons executed insculptured brick.

The greatest celebration of city walls, and ofthe promise of urban life itself, is to be found asa refrain in Mesopotamia’s literary masterpiece,the Epic of Gilgamesh. After his labors are over


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and his travails past, the hero-king gazestoward the skyline of his city and says:

Climb up and walk the length of Uruk’s walls.Inspect its foundation. Make trial of the brick.Were not the bricks hardened in fire?Did not the Seven Sages lay their course?

With immortality denied him, Gilgamesh,with renewed vigor, commits himself to life inthe here and now, to building a better existencefor his people and himself, starting from theground up.

CANALS ANDAQUEDUCTS

Across the yawning gulf of 5,000 years, wesee the sun-browned Sumerians beginningthe endless task of breaking the rivers andthe plain to the use of man. As century fol-lowed century, Mesopotamia came to bedamascened by an azure web of canals,which tamed the mighty Euphrates, clothedthe desert in rippling fields of golden grain,and moistened the roots of date palmsplanted along their banks in endless rows.(De Camp 1963: 52)

So L. Sprague de Camp depicts Meso-potamia in his book, The Ancient Engineers.Mesopotamia’s land was blessed with life-givingwater, and that is one of the leading reasonswhy civilization began there. Indeed, its veryname means “the land between the rivers”(from the ancient Greek potamos, which meant“river,” and the prefix meso, “between”).

But it was not sufficient that the waters ofthe Tigris and Euphrates merely existed. Thewaters had to be bent to the “use of man” anddelivered to his fields and pastures so that cropsand herds could grow to sustain human life. As

a result, the rivers of Mesopotamia inspiredsome of the earliest achievements in civil andmechanical engineering.

The Nature of the Rivers

When it came to water, the farmers of Egypthad an easier time than their ancient Iraqibrethren. The Nile flooded once a year with cal-endric precision, enabling farmers to prepare forits rise. When it did rise beginning in late July,its waters rose gradually, inundating the fields inAugust and September. And when they with-drew in early October, they left behind a freshlayer of rich silt that renewed the fertility of theland. It was then that the first seeds were sownand the agricultural cycle began. Indeed, therewas time to plant both winter and summer cropsbefore the Nile would rise again.

In Mesopotamia, however, the situation wasvery different. When the snows in the moun-tains to the north melted, the waters of theTigris and Euphrates rose, but their annualflooding was unpredictable, occurring anytimebetween April and early June, too late to helpany winter crops, and by then the seeds for sum-mer crops had already been sown. And when thedeluge came, it could arrive suddenly with analmost capricious fury, destroying the youngplants as well as everything in its path. No won-der, then, that Mesopotamia was the home ofthe world’s oldest story of a cataclysmic flood.

Of the two rivers, the Tigris was the moreviolent, flowing faster and flooding sooner.The Euphrates, on the other hand, with a shal-lower channel flowed more slowly and was lessviolent. Because of its more gentle nature, theEuphrates was more readily turned to by farm-ers for aid. Though the Tigris was used towater the lands that lay to its east, the waters ofthe more friendly Euphrates nourished most ofMesopotamia’s cultivated soil.


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Defensive Earthworks

Wherever feasible, levees were built to raisethe height of the rivers’ embankments, whichwere at times reinforced with reed mats or, forgreater stability, with walls of baked brick set inbitumen. Dams were usually ineffectualbecause the earth out of which they were madeeventually washed away.

Projects and Management

In addition to defensive earthworks to holdback floodwaters, networks of canals wereconstructed to distribute river water safelyand efficiently. These public works projectscould not have been accomplished without theefforts of an organized work force operatingunder centralized authority. To be sure, thepopulace knew their lives and welfaredepended upon their collaborative efforts. Buttheir kings also regarded flood control andirrigation as their highest responsibility andtook the greatest pride in their hydraulicachievements. Hammurabi of Babylon, forexample, devoted most of the last nine yearsof his reign to such projects and even ceremo-nially honored one of the years of his reign bynaming it for a great canal he had built. Infact, three of the statutes in his famous codedealt specifically with the control of water,including punishments meted out to thosewho out of laziness failed to maintain the lev-ees near their property.

Methods of Irrigation

Not only did canals need to be laboriously dugby hand; they also needed to be laboriouslymaintained. The fact is echoed in a favorite

Babylonian curse: “May your canal becomeclogged with sand!”

The slope of a canal was critical to its oper-ation because the flow of water dependedupon gravity. If the slope was too steep, ero-sion from fast-flowing water would eat awaythe bed of the channel and make the level ofthe water too low for it to spill into the fields;if the slope was too gradual, silt would buildup or reeds grow, clogging the flow. Thus,surveying played an important role in the con-struction of canals, just as regular dredgingand reed-pulling did once they were dug. Inaddition, the embankments of canals had to bepreserved to insure they would not collapse.When canals formed networks, the problemsand challenges only multiplied.

At inlet points along the riverside, sluicegates controlled the entry of water into thecanal system. But when the level of the water inthe river dropped below the inlet point, thewater had to be raised. This was accomplishedby an ingenious device known in Arabic as ashaduf, a device still used in the Near East today.

A shaduf is a seesaw-like contraption consist-ing of a long pole with an empty bucket at oneend and a counterweight at the other. Thecounterweight can be a bucket or sack filledwith clay or rubble. The pole, for its part, restshorizontally atop a simple wooden frameworkthat holds it loosely and allows it to swivel orbend as though on a fulcrum. Using his ownbody weight, the worker pulls the bucket endof the pole downward, swings it out over thewater, and dips it into the river until the bucketis full. Loosening his grip on the pole, he thenlets the counterweight raise the heavy bucket,and swings it out over the canal, into which heempties the water. Because the counterweightdoes the work of lifting the full bucket, the jobis made easier. In fact, by using more than oneshaduf, water can be raised from one level toanother. Besides moving water from river tocanal, the shaduf could help a farmer transfer


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water from a major canal and pour it into aminor one to irrigate his fields.

In addition to canals, wells have been foundat a number of Mesopotamian sites. Here, abucket would simply be lowered and thenpulled up. This job too was made easier by aninvention—the pulley—sometime before 1500B.C.E. The pulley itself represented an applica-tion of an even earlier invention, the Sumerianwheel. For a more rapid water supply, KingNebuchadnezzar of Babylon installed a chainpump in the basement of his palace: a series ofbuckets attached to a continuous metal chain.As the buckets at the bottom filled up withwater, the ones at the top emptied out.

Aqueducts

According to the Greek historian Herodotus,an Arabian king of the sixth century B.C.E. oncetransported water across the desert in a pipesewn together from animal skins. The pipe wasa long one: it would have taken 12 days tocover the same distance by camel caravan, adistance of more than 300 miles.

Whether the story is true or not, we’ll neverknow. What we do know is that water was regu-larly transported for long distances acrossnorthern Mesopotamia by underground con-duit, especially when a growing populationcenter needed water and there was no handyriver nearby. Once again an engineering solu-tion solved a problem, in this case a solutioneven more ingenious than the shaduf.

On the one hand, transporting water overlong distances in a closed conduit (to avoidevaporation) is not hard, for gravity will do thejob. As long as the source of water—say, amountain spring—is always higher than thepoint of delivery—say, a city in a valley, thewater will reach its destination by simply flow-ing downhill. The problem, however, is to

maintain the proper degree of slope. If the slopeis not constant, for example, if the conduit goesup instead of down, flow will be impeded. If theslope is too gradual, flow will be too slow andsedimentation may clog the channel. If theslope is too steep, the rapid flow of the watermay erode the channel and cause it to collapse.How, then, does one insure that the slope willbe appropriate? Only by putting it under-ground, where its course is determined by exca-vation rather than by the landscape above. Buthow does one insure the right slope when theconduit is being cut many feet, perhaps evenhundreds of feet, below ground? And, even ifthat can be accomplished, how can we be surethe workmen digging the conduit undergroundwill point it in the right direction and keep itgoing straight? Besides, if we’re talking about aconduit stretching for miles, how long will ittake a few workmen in a crowded pit to cutthrough miles of solid bedrock? All of thesefrustrating questions show us why the under-ground water conduit, or subterranean aque-duct, was a long time in coming.

The solution was discovered by an eighthcentury B.C.E. Assyrian king named Sargon IIduring his conquest of Urartu, the ancientname for Armenia. Urartu was mining coun-try, and the miners of Urartu had found theanswers to all our questions. Once Sargon IIlearned them, he punished the Urartians bydestroying all their aqueducts and then, whenhe returned triumphantly to Assyria, builtunderground aqueducts of his own. Later, thePersians would learn the secret, and in succes-sive centuries it became common knowledgethroughout the Mideast, where it is still in usetoday.

The device in question is called in Arabic aqanat, and in Persian a kariz. Basically, it is anunderground water conduit with a constantslope. Not only that, but it has a regular series ofaccess holes for maintenance (in case of block-ages), holes that also release the air pressure that


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can build up and impede flow when the rush ofwater through the pipe becomes too fast.

But back to our problem: how, then, doesone make a qanat?

The answer is to dig vertical channels intothe rock at regular intervals. A surveyor on theground marks out a straight line in the direc-tion the water is meant to travel in. Whereverhe then plants a stake, a hole is dug and a chan-nel cut down through the rock. The straightup-and-downness of each channel can be easilymonitored with a plumb line dropped downand dangled from the hole at the top. Theproper depth of each channel can also be accu-rately predetermined by measuring from thehorizontal plane above the series of holes.When different teams of miners have dug theirvertical channels to the right depth, short hori-zontal channels can then be cut to connectthem at the bottom. These short channels canbe subsequently smoothed out to achieve agraduated slope. By employing multiple teamsof diggers, the complete project can be exe-cuted more quickly and accurately than if a sin-gle set of miners burrowed slowly ahead inmole-like fashion.

In Afghanistan, such tunnels, dried out andabandoned, were exploited and expanded ashiding places and storage facilities by the mili-tants of modern times.

Of course, the qanat could not be used insouthern Mesopotamia’s alluvial plain wherethe earth was soft and tunneling would havebeen risky. There, aboveground canals werethe method of choice for moving water. Butin the north where there was substantialbedrock, the qanat was the answer.

In later centuries, the ancient Romans exca-vated underground conduits to transport waterto their cities, but they also carried the waterthrough conduits supported far above groundby tall arches. The most remarkable of theseaqueducts can still be seen in Spain at Segoviaand in France at Nîmes. Nîmes’s celebrated

Pont du Gard was, in fact, originally designed tocarry not traffic but water. In their heyday, theaqueducts of Rome—both underground andelevated—brought 250 million gallons of fresh-water each day to the capital’s urban masses.Amazingly, four are still in operation, includingone that feeds the romantic Trevi Fountain.The Romans were able to erect abovegroundaqueducts because they had access to large localsupplies of quarriable stone, especially lime-stone, a luxury that the Mesopotamian engineerdid not generally enjoy.

One Mesopotamian exception can be viewednear the modern city of Jerwan, located north ofancient Nineveh. A 30-mile-long undergroundconduit was built by the Assyrian king Sen-nacherib to supply Nineveh with water, but itsslope required that it cross a small river valley.Sennacherib’s solution was to build a 90-foot-long bridge to carry the conduit 30 feet abovethe stream. Ruins can still be seen of the fivecorbelled arches that supported the bridge, eachconstructed of cubic blocks of stone measuring20 inches on each side. The whole aqueducttook a year and a quarter to complete, and Sen-nacherib planned a special ceremony to mark itsopening. The monarch’s thunder, however, wasapparently stolen by a defective sluice-gate thatallowed the water to flow before the ceremonycould begin. Ever the opportunist, Sennacheribtook this to be a sign from the gods validatinghis project and so he did not punish the seem-ingly negligent workers. Instead, as he proudlytells us in his annals, he rewarded them with fineclothes and golden rings and daggars.

Then and Now

Thanks to a complex and extensive systemof irrigation that maximized the fertile potentialof its soil, Mesopotamia enjoyed an abun-dance of agricultural produce. The land culti-


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vated in southern Mesopotamia alone may haveexceeded 12,000 square miles and the popula-tion density of the country as a whole may haveeven surpassed that of present-day Iraq.

This system was surely one of the glorioustriumphs of ancient engineering. But what,then, became of it? And why must Iraq todayimport food to feed its people?

In part, the answer can be traced to themalevolence of man and nature.

Sennacherib, the same Assyrian king whobuilt the aqueduct at Jerwan, was also capableof hydraulic destruction. Angry at Babylon forrevolting against his rule, he massacred its peo-ple, dammed up the Euphrates, and thendiverted its waters, sending them hurtlingthrough the city. Later, he repented and rebuiltwhat he had destroyed, as did his son who suc-ceeded him.

Less forgiving, however, were the Mongolhordes led by Hulagu Khan. After capturingBaghdad in 1258 C.E. and conqueringMesopotamia, they ravaged the country’s canalsystem, leaving the people to starve. Politicallyand militarily vulnerable, Mesopotamia wasplundered in successive centuries by foreignpeople as its population declined and socialorder broke down.

No enemy, however, foreign or domesticproved as unforgiving as nature itself.

Over time, the rivers meandered and theircourses altered. Old canals became useless andwere abandoned. With persistent neglect, evencanals that still functioned slowly filled up withsilt and reeds.

In prehistoric times, much of what is south-ern Iraq and Kuwait today lay submergedbeneath the waters of the Persian Gulf. As aresult, there are thick beds of sea salt beneaththe soil. In ancient Mesopotamia, the intensiveirrigation of the soil dissolved the salt andbrought it to the surface. When the waterevaporated, traces of salt were left behind,traces that accumulated over many centuries

and, over time, chemically inhibited seeds fromgerminating. The problem was compoundedby the Tigris and Euphrates themselves, whichcarried dissolved salts they had picked up fromthe mountains to the north that were theirsource. As their waters flowed through Meso-potamia’s canals and evaporated from its soil,the salts were left behind. Thus, what theMongols and others had been incapable ofachieving, salinization accomplished.

Today, parallel ridges can be seen traversingthe landscape of Iraq, tracing in dry wastelandthe lines of canals that once flowed with life-giving water. From outer space, satelliteimagery can detect the remains of now-desiccated watercourses invisible at groundlevel to the naked eye. Nearby, a weary peasantbends over, lowering the pole of a shaduf just ashis ancestors did 5,000 years ago. TheEuphrates rolls silently by him, mindless ofhuman struggle and folly.

BRIDGES

The building of the Jerwan aqueduct wasnecessitated by terrain: if water was to be car-ried in a conduit above a stream, the conduithad to be supported by a bridge. However, abridge to transport vital water was one thing;one to transport people was another. Pedes-trian bridges were rare in Mesopotamiabecause the rivers themselves provided themain means of transport. Where rivers weretoo broad or deep to be forded, ferries wereused to convey passengers and cargo. In addi-tion, rafts made of buoyant bundles of reedswere used, sometimes equipped with inflatedanimal skins for increased flotation when car-rying heavy loads. The military used such raftsto cross rivers and, when necessary, built tem-porary pontoon bridges. The Assyrian king


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Tiglathpileser I even employed a special corpsof engineers to make emergency roadways onland and pontoon bridges over water for theuse of his army.

Bridge construction in the land of the Tigrisand Euphrates posed special engineering prob-lems: the riverbeds, especially in the south,were soft and unstable; currents, especially onthe Tigris, could be swift; and, over time, thevery courses of the rivers shifted, making whatotherwise would have been a permanent bridgeobsolete. In addition, the proper materials forbridge construction—quarried stone and suit-able timber—were in short supply locally, par-ticularly in the south.

One remarkable exception was the bridgebuilt over the Euphrates River at Babylon atthe end of the seventh century B.C.E.

The bridge is described by two ancienthistorians: Herodotus, who lived during theGolden Age of Athens, and Diodorus Siculus,who lived during the Golden Age of Rome.Diodorus attributes its construction to thelegendary Semiramis, ninth-century B.C.E.queen of Nineveh and early founder ofBabylon; Herodotus, to Nitocris, the wife ofBabylon’s later sixth-century B.C.E. king,Nebuchadnezzar. As it turns out, Herodotus’sversion is closer to the truth, for, in aninscription that has been found, Nebuchad-nezzar himself identifies the builder: hisfather, Nabopolassar.

Here then is Herodotus’s account (History 1:186) of the bridge’s construction (with Nitocrisplaying the role of Nabopolassar).

The city . . . was divided by the river into twodistinct portions. Under the former kings, if aman wanted to pass from one of these divi-sions to the other, he had to cross in a boat;which must, it seems to me, have been verytroublesome. Accordingly, while she was dig-ging [an artificial lake], Nitocris bethoughtherself of turning it to a use which should atonce remove this inconvenience, and enable

her to leave another monument to her reignover Babylon. She gave orders for the hewingof immense blocks of stone, and when theywere ready and the basin [of the lake] wasexcavated, she turned the entire stream of theEuphrates into the cutting, and thus for atime, while the basin was filling, the naturalchannel of the river was left dry. Forthwithshe set to work, and in the first place lined thebanks of the stream within the city with quaysof burnt brick, and also bricked the landingplaces opposite the river-gates, adoptingthroughout the same fashion of brickworkwhich had been used in the town wall; afterwhich, with the materials which had been pre-pared, she built, as near the middle of thetown as possible, a stone bridge, the blockswhereof were bound together with iron andlead [clamps]. In the daytime square woodenplatforms were laid along from pier to pier, onwhich the inhabitants crossed the stream; butat night they were withdrawn, to prevent peo-ple passing from side to side in the dark tocommit robberies. When the river had filledthe cutting [for the lake], and the bridge wasfinished, the Euphrates was turned back againinto its ancient bed. (Herodotus 1942 [1858]:100–1, trans. George Rawlinson)

Thanks to the fact that the Euphrateschanged its course over time, archaeologistswere able to excavate the actual ruins of thebridge. It was 380 feet long (Diodorus makes italmost a half mile in length) and was supportedon seven piers made of stone, brick, and timber.Though massive (28 feet wide and 65 feet long),the piers were hydrodynamically designed likean airplane wing—rounded on the upstreamside where the force of the current met thepier, and then sharply tapered toward thedownstream. The flaw in the design was thattheir mass filled up half the river’s width. Thisincreased the velocity of the water flowingbetween them, especially at flood time, and ledto the erosion of the riverbed around theirfoundations. But the bridge was still standing


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in Diodorus’s time, more than 600 years after itwas built, possibly because the riverbedrepaired itself every year with fresh silt whenthe current was slow.

According to Diodorus, the superstructureof the bridge was 30 feet wide with a floorfashioned from palm-tree logs and planksof cypress and cedar, some of which—asHerodotus notes—could be removed fornighttime security.

Nabopolassar’s bridge over the mightyEuphrates was unique in its day and continuedto be so for centuries. It is the oldest perma-nent bridge of which we have any record, andrightly rivaled Babylon’s Hanging Gardens infame. If its span did not match New York’sVerrazano or San Francisco’s Golden Gate, itis only because Mesopotamian engineers daredin wood and brick what they could not yetdream in steel.

ROADS

Mesopotamia’s rivers were its natural high-ways. Its cities dappled its riverbanks like greenway stations in a wilderness, like gems strungalong a riverine necklace hanging down towardthe bosom of the sea.

As long as communal activities were cir-cumscribed by a city’s walls, and wheeledvehicles were few, there was little need forman-made roadways. The kingdoms ofMesopotamia were originally self-sufficientcity-states, and therefore they did not needinterconnection. Dirt pathways sufficed,especially for the caravans that brought tradegoods overland.

Indeed, southern Mesopotamia’s canal sys-tem inhibited the making of roads by setting upa series of watery barriers to movement byland. During winter rains dirt tracks turned to

mud, and during spring floods they becameimpassable. Besides, the speediest beasts ofburden were the obstinate donkey and, in laterdays, the lumbering camel.

In time of intercity war, armies traveled bywater or along mercantile trails. Only withthe rise of empire did the idea of permanentroads begin to appeal to Mesopotamia’s rulersas a means to better communication andlogistical control.

The Assyrians devoted particular attentionto roads for a number of reasons. First, the ter-rain they inhabited was rough and hilly andrequired roadways to permit columned soldiersto pass. Second, their native river, the Tigris,was less navigable than the Euphrates andmade water transport more difficult. And third,the extent of their conquests demanded a sys-tem that could expedite the transmission ofadministrative and military reports and ordersand the rapid deployment of troops.

The Assyrian kings did not go so far as tobuild highways, but they did establish guard-posts at regular intervals along desert tracksand dug wells for the use of travelers. In addi-tion, they set up road signs to help them findtheir way. Sennacherib declared that roadsshould be well maintained and city streets wellconstructed, while Esarhaddon promised toreconstruct the infrastructure in conqueredstates so that their roads would be open andthey could carry on commerce with neighbor-ing nations. The Assyrians also established aroyal messenger service, and they drew upmaps for their couriers indicating the distancesin hours between stops.

Paved roads were a rarity, but they didexist in Assyrian times, especially for proces-sional ways that led to temples and were usedduring religious festivals. Also, the entrywaysto royal cities were paved to impress visitors.The pavement consisted of slabs of gypsumset in a bitumen mortar on top of a founda-tion of baked brick that rested on a layer of


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gravel. Main streets and market squaresmight also be paved. In earlier days especiallyin the south, brick in all likelihood took theplace of stone.

It was the Persians who raised high-speedland travel to the level of an art. Herodotus(History 8: 98) recounted the method usedby the kings of Persia to send official com-muniqués to the far-flung corners of theirempire.

Nothing mortal travels so fast as these Persianmessengers. The entire plan is a Persianinvention; and this is the method of it. Alongthe whole line of road there are men (they say)stationed with horses, in number equal to thenumber of days the journey takes, allowing aman and a horse to each day; and these menwill not be hindered from accomplishing attheir best speed the distance they have to go,either by snow, or rain, or heat, or by thedarkness of night. The first rider delivers hisdispatch to the second, and the second passesit to the third; and so it is borne from hand tohand along the whole line, like the light in thetorch-race, which the Greeks celebrate toHephaestus [the ancient god of technology].(Herodotus 1942 [1858]: 633–34, trans.George Rawlinson)

The Persian system was duplicated byAmerica’s 19th century “Pony Express,” butbeat it by 24 centuries. Herodotus’s descrip-tion, incidentally, was adapted and inscribed onthe façade of New York City’s General PostOffice (“Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, norgloom of night stays these couriers from theswift completion of their appointed rounds”).

It was the Romans, however, who wereantiquity’s master road-builders. “All roadslead to Rome,” went the saying, but it mightmore truly have said that all roads led fromRome, for the Romans understood theimportance of land transportation for consol-idation of their conquests. Their first high-way was the famous Appian Way. Begun in

312 B.C.E., it led south from the city of Rometo the Italian seaport of Brundisium, a dis-tance of 234 miles. By the time their empirehad reached its zenith, Roman engineers hadconstructed 50,000 miles of all-weather,paved roads stretching from western Europeall the way to the Near East. So durable werethey that some are still being used to this veryday, including stretches of the venerableAppian Way. At places in the Near East, wecan still see their neatly cut paving blockspointing into the desert to vanished cities.

READING

Building Materials andHouses, DomesticArchitecture, and Techniques of Construction

Contenau 1954: clay and brick making; deCamp 1963: house design; Forbes 1955–58:bitumen and quarrying; Kramer 1967: descrip-tion and illustration of typical Sumerian house;Muller 1940, Stone 1997: houses; Saggs 1965:Babylonian and Assyrian houses.

From Village to City

Adams 1960, 1966, 1981: origins of cities; Childe1951: the Neolithic and Urban Revolutions;Crawford 1977: early architecture; Lampl 1968:city planning in the ancient Near East; Leacroft1974: illustrations of buildings; Oppenheim1969: urban density and layout; Redman 1978:from farming to urban civilization; Roaf 1990:the evolution of agricultural villages; Roux 1992:the emergence of the city; Stone 1995: the devel-


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opment of cities in southern and northernMesopotamia; Thesiger 1964: the marsh Arabs.

Temples

Contenau 1954: plan; Giedion 1964: evolution;Leacroft 1974: illustrations; Lloyd, Müller, andMartin 1974: plans; Roaf 1995: description.

Ziggurats

Contenau 1954: description; Giedion 1964:evolution and meaning; Leacroft 1974: illustra-tions; Ravn 1932: Babylon’s tower; Van Buren1952: construction.

Palaces

Bienkowski and Millard 2000: survey; Claytonand Price 1988, Romer 1995: Hanging Gar-dens of Babylon; Leacroft 1974: illustrations;Lloyd, Müller, and Martin 1974: plans; Roaf1995: discussion; Russell 1998: Sennacherib’sthrone room; Stevenson 1992: irrigation of theHanging Gardens; Winter 1993: the NearEastern palace as ideological construct.

City Planning

Frankfort 1950: town planning in Mesopotamia;Gallery 1976: town planning and communitystructure; Lampl 1968: city planning; Oppen-

heim 1969: Mesopotamian cities; Rav 1932:Herodotus’s description of Babylon; Stone1995: development of cities in Mesopotamia;Van de Mieroop 1999: urban landscape.

Walls

Bienkowski and Millard 2000: walls in theancient Near East.

Canals and Aqueducts

Adams 1981: irrigation and urban society;Borowski 1997: irrigation in the Near East; deCamp 1963: Mesopotamian engineering; Forbes1955–58: irrigation, drainage, and water sup-ply; Jacobsen 1982: salinity and irrigation;Jacobsen and Lloyd 1935: the Jerwan aqueduct;Landels 1978: the shaduf and qanat.

Bridges

De Camp 1963: triumphs of Mesopotamianengineering.

Roads

Forbes 1955–58: land transport and road-building.


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7

SCULPTURE AND OTHER ARTS

THE ROLE OFTHE ARTIST

Today when we think of an artist, we tend tothink of an individualist who uses his or her tal-ent for the purpose of self-expression, a non-conformist who may defy tradition even at thecost of financial security. Those who succeedare known by their names.

While this may be true of modern artists, itwas not generally true of ancient ones except inGreece, where individualism shone. Rather thanindividualists and nonconformists, most ancientartists were the servants of society and tradition.Their employers were the state, centered in tem-ple or palace, and the public at large, whoseeveryday needs they supplied. It may thereforebe more useful to conceive of Mesopotamia’sartists as craftsmen and artisans whose liveli-hoods were guaranteed by the utility and beautyof the objects their skill and talent produced:pottery, wall paintings, mosaics, glass, cylinderseals, carved ivory, and jewelry, as well as sculp-ture for the glorification of their kings and gods.Because of their subservient role, the great artistsof Mesopotamia remain anonymous; onlythrough their work does their identity survive.

MATERIALS

The artists of Mesopotamia were challenged bythe scarcity of locally available materials todevelop and practice their craft. In measuringthe technical achievement of Mesopotamia’sartists, therefore, we must appreciate the nat-ural obstacles they rose above to reach aes-thetic heights.

In the south where civilization began, onlyclay was readily available; most other materials,

especially minerals, had to be imported. It isfor this reason that pottery became one of thevery first of the country’s arts, and architecturewas first built with foundations and walls ofbrick. Only later in Assyria to the north couldarchitects and sculptors avail themselves ofample local supplies of stone.

SCULPTURE

It is through sculpture that the faces of thepast three-dimensionally emerge from themists of time.

Art and Immortality

Life in ancient Mesopotamia, life anywhereand anytime, is as evanescent as flesh. For lifeto be preserved, it must be recorded in writingor art. But the preservation of life dependsupon the permanence of the materials ontowhich its forms are transcribed.

We labor under an illusion if we assumeour present age will be better rememberedthan antiquity. The average life expectancy ofmagnetic tapes, audio or video, is only about10 years; of optical disks, 50; of archival qual-ity microfilm, but a 100. In fact, average-quality CD-ROMs become unreadable orunreliable after only five years. Advances intechnology, moreover, make older computerhardware and software obsolete; and as theygrow obsolete, their data becomes unintelligi-ble. Meanwhile, the film that recorded theimages of the past is already crumbling;according to UNESCO, “three-quarters ofthe films which were made worldwide before1950 have already disappeared.” Thus our so-called Age of Information may be known tothe future as an age of missing information.


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The inhabitants of Mesopotamia’s flood-plains were intimately familiar with imperma-nence. Like other peoples of antiquity theysought to imprint their identity on substancesmore durable than flesh, and—paradoxically—more durable than the electronic media we usetoday. For writing, they relied on clay; forsculpture, stone, copper, and bronze.

The scarcity of stone and metal, especiallyin the south, limited the quantity of portraitsculpture that could be produced. Combinedwith an autocratic government, the intrinsicvalue of these materials caused them to be usedin art almost exclusively to portray the pietyand power of political leaders.

Almost inexplicably, the faces of the godsrarely appear, unlike the situation in Egyptwhere the gods, along with the divine pharaoh,were one of sculpture’s major subjects. OneMesopotamian exception found at Warka is ahaunting almost life-size female head made ofalabaster that today lacks its inlaid eyebrows andeyes. The “case of the missing idols” may per-haps be solved if we assume such statues weremade of materials even more precious thanstone or bronze: gold, for example, and/or ivory,materials that would be readily seized and car-ried off by an invading force. This is exactlywhat happened in classical Greece after the fallof the Roman Empire: the chryselephantine(gold and ivory) statues of Zeus at Olympia andAthena in Athens’ Parthenon were cannibalizedby iconoclastic vandals. During the EuropeanDark Ages, even Greek and Roman bronze stat-ues were melted down wholesale for the usablemetal they contained. Similarly, classical statuesof marble were burnt in kilns to extract limefrom the stone, lime that could then be used tomake humble cement. It is the sheer quantity ofclassical sculpture that accounts for its partialsurvival against such great odds. Just as Greecewas rich in marble, so in Egypt abundant quar-ries generated huge supplies of stone that weresuitable for both architecture and monumental

sculpture. Geology was not so kind toMesopotamia, where the scarcity of raw materi-als severely limited artistic production.

Types and Techniques

Mesopotamian sculpture like sculpture every-where falls into two broad categories. First,there are statues, or “sculpture in the round,”ranging in size from small figurines to largerthan life-size pieces. Second, there are reliefs,works in which the stone on the surface of a slabis partially chiseled away, leaving raised figuresset off against a lower background. When thefigures dramatically stand out from the back-ground, we speak of “high relief ”; when the dis-tance between planes is more subtle, we speakof “low” or (after the French) “bas-relief.” Inboth statues and reliefs, details are incised intostone with hammer and chisel, and final finish-ing is achieved with the aid of abrasives. Copperand bronze statues were made by pouringmolten metal into molds (if the statue wassmall) or by using the lost-wax, or cire perdue,method (if the statue was to be large). With thismethod, an original was shaped out of wax on aclay core and then covered in more clay. Thewax was then melted out and displaced bymolten metal that took on its form. At times,individual parts of a large statue might be castseparately and then fused together.

Traces of coloring show that Mesopotamiansculptors applied tinting to make stone statuesand reliefs more life-like. Black was used forhair and beads, and for the rims and pupils ofeyes, while the eyeball itself was painted white.Yellow paint was used to simulate golden jew-elry, and green to make the vegetation in land-scapes look more natural. Red was occasionallydaubed on as well. In addition, statues might beenlivened with an inlay of stone in a contrast-ing or complementary color.

S C U L P T U R E A N D O T H E R A R T S

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As evident in scenes carved in relief,Mesopotamian sculptors had not mastered theart of perspective. An object or person thatrealistically would have been behind another isoften shown above.

Likewise, the parts of the body are not shownin true perspective. Generally, the face, legs, andfeet are portrayed in profile, but the shouldersand chest full-front. The approach is one thatattempts to capture not the naturalistic appear-ance of the body as a whole but the functionalessence of each part. Thus, the locomotion gen-erated by the lower limbs is best conveyed inrelief not from the front but from the side whereone leg and foot can be shown ahead of theother; in contrast, the muscular strength of theupper body can best be displayed not from thenarrow side but from the broad front. Thismode of anatomical representation parallels thatemployed by the artists of Egypt, as does theMesopotamian portrayal of the eye, shown fulland almond-shaped as though to communicateas completely as possible its vital structure.

Purposes and Subjects

Statues embodied the personality in order tocommunicate it to others in a religious or polit-ical setting. The statues might portray wor-shipers or rulers. In Assyrian times, pairedstatues of fantastic beasts flanked the entrancesto palaces to inspire visitors with awe.

Reliefs served to commemorate importantevents such as a military victory, the comple-tion of a major building, or the public procla-mation of law. Reliefs could be carved onpaneled walls for the purposes of decorationand propaganda, or could be carved on individ-ual slabs of stone (known as stelae; sg., stela orstele) to signify a boundary or to record anepisode from recent history. Stelae could com-bine pictures with inscriptions in cuneiform. A

technique principally employed by the Persianswas to carve an inscribed relief on a prominentcliffside for all to see.

Statues from Sumer and Akkad

In 1932 while digging in the ruins of Tell Asmar(ancient Eshnunna), Henri (Hans) Frankfortand Seton Lloyd made a startling discovery.Mary Chubb, who was present, describes it:

Seton and Hans were alone in the Abu templewhen I reached it. They were crouching infront of the niche beside the altar, and a freshpile of rubble lay all around them on the cleanfloor. . . . Down in the floor of the niche was along oblong cavity—and in it I could see agleaming, tightly packed mass of white andcream and gray and yellow stone statues. Herea strange eye stared up, then a hand, long fin-gers, curled round a cup, seemed to tremblewith life as Seton gently brushed it with hisfingers. . . . Most were over a foot in length.Many of them were broken, though all thepieces were in place; . . . it looked as if they hadbeen complete when buried, but that theweight of the numerous rebuildings of thetemple above must have cracked and crushedthem. More statues came up, men and women,the men in fringed and tasseled kilts, thewomen with long cloaks thrown over oneshoulder, leaving the other bare. All had theirhands clasped before them, some holdingcups. “They are worshipers, of course,” Hanssaid. . . . Gazing up at us out of the shadowswere two pairs of appalling eyes—huge blackeyes with gleaming white eyeballs. They wereset in the faces of a bearded man and a woman,each holding a cup. . . . We gazed at them, andthey gazed back at us with vast, unseeing,nightmare eyes. (Chubb 1957: 142–44)

What Frankfort and Lloyd had found was acache of 12 Sumerian figurines dating to about2700 B.C.E. The largest, the “bearded man,”


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was 30 inches tall with large, staring eyes oflapis lazuli and shell set in bitumen glue. Simi-lar statues have been found at other Sumeriansites. Inscriptions on them have been found aswell, indicating—along with the statues’ rever-ential poses and libation cups—that the fig-urines were meant to serve as pious surrogatesfor real-life worshipers. Says one inscription:“It offers prayers.” Says another: “Statue, say tomy lord . . .” By dedicating such a figurine to adeity and having it placed within the god’s tem-ple, the Sumerian worshiper expressed perpet-ual piety in anticipation of the god’s blessings.As dutiful substitutes in art for the humble

humans they represented, these figurinesresemble the mummy-like shawabti figurinesthat abound in the graves and tombs of Egypt.

From about 2100 B.C.E. come a series ofstatuettes portraying Gudea, the famous rulerof Lagash. At least 30 such portraits survive,suggesting that they were commissioned byGudea himself both out of pride and out of adesire for self-glorification. In one marvelousexample, now in the collection of the DetroitInstitute of Arts, he stands 161/8 inches tallcarved out of translucent gray-green parago-nite. He wears a turban-like cap and a longshawl-like robe draped over his left arm, leav-


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7.1 Votive statuettes discovered at Tell Asmar. Carved from limestone, alabaster, and gypsum, they standreverently in prayer, even as they once stood in ancient Eshnunna almost 5,000 years ago. (OrientalInstitute, University of Chicago)

ing his right shoulder bare. Over that shoulderand down his back runs an inscribed cuneiform“tattoo” recounting how he piously built tem-ples to his patron god and his god’s consort,and how he had a statue of the goddess createdfor her temple. As in his many portraits, Gudeastares ahead impassively, his hands clasped instudied and silent devotion.

In the field of relief sculpture, two stelae nowin the Louvre commemorate other rulers ofLagash and their deeds. The stela of Ur-Nan-she (see figure 3.17, page 109) depicts the leader

in the company of his family as he carries a bas-ket filled with clay that he will use to make thefirst bricks for a new city temple. In a lower reg-ister, or level, he is shown celebrating togetherwith his family the temple’s completion. In bothregisters, the artist conveys Ur-Nanshe’s socialimportance by making him twice as tall as hisrelatives. While the stela of Ur-Nanshe com-memorates peacetime activities, the stela ofEannatum (also from the third millenniumB.C.E.) celebrates victory in war. On one side ofthe stela, the ruler leads a tightly packed pha-lanx of warriors into battle and rides his chariotat the head of a column of light infantry. Eanna-tum’s army advances over the corpses of theenemy. At the bottom, Lagash’s own casualtiesare buried in a mass grave as Eannatum per-forms funeral rites. On the reverse side,Ningirsu, the god of Lagash, triumphantlyholds enemy captives in a symbolic net.

From late third millenium B.C.E. Akkadcomes the stela of Naram-Sin, also in the Lou-vre (see figure 3.12, page 98). The helmetedking holding bow and arrow appears at the footof a mountain whose outline is echoed in thetall curved shape of the sculpted slab. As histroops ascend the slopes of the mountain, theking himself stands with his foot planted onenemy corpses while other enemy soldiers sur-render and beg for mercy.

Dating to approximately the same period isthe almost life-size copper portrait head of ananonymous Akkadian king, perhaps Sargon theGreat (See figure 3.13, page 101). The hair onhis head is carefully plaited, ending in a tightchignon held by three rings, duplicating thegolden ones the king himself once wore. Beneatha diadem, locks of hair overlap in precise semicir-cles across his brow. His full and artfully curvedlips are framed by a moustache above and a beardbelow, a long forked beard that descends in mul-tiple cascading curls. The head was found inNineveh’s ancient city dump. The nose was bentwhen the statue tumbled to the ground, tossed


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7.2 Fashioned from jade-green paragonite, thisreverential statue of Gudea of Lagash stands 161⁄8inches tall. Dating to the late third millenniumB.C.E., the Sumerian statuette now calls Detroit itshome. (Photograph © 1996, The Detroit Instituteof Arts [Founders Society Purchase, Robert H.Tannahill Foundation Fund])

there perhaps by the vandals who savagelygouged out the gems that once brightened itseyes, leaving only empty holes where preciousstones had been. Eyeless today in a Baghdadmuseum, this Iraqi Oedipus smiles. It is the smileof one who has outlived his enemies.

The Stela of Hammurabi

One of the world’s oldest compendia of law isthe Code of Hammurabi, named for the Baby-lonian king of the early eighteenth centuryB.C.E. This code comes down to us not in abook, nor on a clay tablet, but inscribed on theoutside of a block of sculpted black diorite that

stands almost 7.5 feet tall and weighs four tons(See figure 3.3, page 69). At the top of the stelais a two-foot-high relief. On the right, sittingon his divine throne, is the bearded Babyloniangod Shamash, waves of sunlight rising in raysfrom his shoulders. He wears a flounced gownand a spiraling turban, and he holds whatappears to be a scepter in his hand. Facing himon the left like Moses is Hammurabi, one handraised to his lips, portrayed as he receives legalenlightenment from his god. Diorite is one ofthe hardest stones to sculpt, but it is thereforealso one of the most durable. The stone waschosen well to symbolize the everlasting natureof the king’s divinely inspired laws, spelled outunder the relief in 3,500 precisely incised linesof cuneiform. After the fall of Babylon, the


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7.3 Art celebrated the military exploits of rulers. Here the Sumerian leader Eannatum spearheads anassault as a phalanx of his soldiers tramples the bodies of their enemies. (Rogers, A History of Babylonia andAssyria, 1915)

stela was carried off by the Elamites to the cityof Susa, where it remained buried untilunearthed by French archaeologists at thedawn of the 20th century. It is today one of thetreasured possessions of the Louvre.

Images from Assyria

Of the more than 100 kings who ruled Assyria,statues of only two exist: Ashurnasirpal II andhis son Shalmaneser III. It is not through stat-ues that the spirit of ancient Assyria still speaks,but through sculptural relief. According toHenri Frankfort:

Reliefs constitute the greatest and most origi-nal achievement of the Assyrians. In fact, thehistory of Assyrian art is mainly the history ofrelief carving. (Frankfort 1997: 156)

A stone native to the north, gypsum, was thematerial from which these works of art werecut. Because of the tendency of this relativelysoft stone to degrade when exposed to the ele-ments, it was used mostly for the interiors, butsometimes for the façades and grand entrance-ways, of palaces. The reliefs date chiefly to theera of the Assyrian Empire’s rise, from the ninthcentury to the fall of Nineveh in 612 B.C.E. Theprincipal sites where the sculptures have sur-faced are Nimrud (from the days of Ashurnasir-pal II and Shalmaneser III), Khorsabad (fromthe days of Sargon II), and Nineveh (during thereigns of Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal). Addi-tionally, from the site of Balawat near Nimrudcome embossed bronze bands that once deco-rated the wooden doors of the ruined palace.Three sets of double doors survive, each girdedwith eight metal bands. The scenes in relief onthe hammered and incised bronze bands dupli-cate in miniature the types of scenes executedelsewhere on gypsum panels.

As Julian Reade has observed, the pictures onAssyrian reliefs project “a man’s world, where

the secular themes were overwhelmingly warand sport” (Reade 1998 [1993]: 32). They areenergized by action and the exercise of rawpower, harnessed and rationally disciplined toachieve a single objective: domination. Whethershowing battle or the hunt, the sculptures exude


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7.4 Based on a sculptural relief, this drawingdepicts in striking detail an Assyrian assault on anenemy city. As scaling soldiers storm the walls ofthe city, prisoners of war are led away intocaptivity. The eye and hand of the artist alsocapture the natural setting for man-made violenceand suffering: trees and fish oblivious to war.(Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, 1849)

delight in savagery, be it the slaughter of lions orthe brutal butchery of men.

Notes Dominique Collon: “In all the scenesof battle depicted for over three centuries ofAssyrian relief, no Assyrian is ever shownwounded or at a disadvantage” (Collon 1995:36). Assyrian invincibility is the recurrentmessage of these works whose communica-tional intent was to fill Assyrian monarchswith self-confidence and subject peoples withdread.

The portraits of the kings, whatever theirnames, are monotonously the same. But suchmonotony can also have a purpose: to symbol-ize the unvarying power and constancy ofAssyrian rule.

Nevertheless, throughout the sculptedscenes there is a meticulous attention to real-istic detail. The Assyrian army crosses a river,cavalry and chariots charge, siege equipmentadvances, and another city falls and is sacked.Enemy soldiers and leaders inexorably die—

their chests pierced by spears, their throatsslashed by swords, their limp bodies impaledon tall stakes or tied spread-eagle to theground and flayed alive as their childrenwatch. We see an aerial view of the Assyriancamp: while dinner is being prepared, thetroops dance to the accompaniment of lutesand harps and play a game of ball with thedecapitated heads of their victims. Mean-while, the civilian survivors are herded on todeportation, their remaining possessionspiled on carts and camels.

Violence and conquest also pervade scenesof the hunt, a diversion for Assyrian kingswhen they were not at war. A lioness, herhindquarters paralyzed by three arrows, risesup on her front legs in a defiant death agony,while a wounded lion vomits a torrent of blood.


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7.6 The Assyrian artist’s ability to portray thesuffering of victims in war was paralleled by hiscapacity to render the pain of once-proud animalswounded in the hunt. Here we see a lioness whosebody is pierced by arrows, and a dying lion thatcoughs up blood. (Bonomi, Nineveh and Its Palaces,1875)

7.5 In this detail from a palace relief, fortificationwalls are attacked by a battering ram as archers fireat the defenders. Like a photojournalist, the sculptoralso depicts the bodies of captives impaled on stakes.(M. Jastrow, Babylonia and Assyria, 1917)

In the anatomy of both hunting and war,sinews are taut and muscles bulge.

Transfigured in the sculptor’s imagination,lions rise to life in three-dimensional form as

the multiton guardians of palace entrance-ways and gates. Like sphinxes, they are fittedout with the wings of great birds and the tur-baned heads of bearded men to convey—asAusten Henry Layard perceived—the intelli-gence of man combined with the speed of abird and the prowess of a lion (or, in othersculptural incarnations, the power of a bull).They stand in pairs, eyes fixed straight aheadlike vigilant sentries, or with heads turned 90degrees inward as if to inspect watchfully thestranger passing between them. Curiously,each block-like beast has five legs: four whenviewed in profile, two when seen from thefront, with one leg at the corner serving dou-ble duty.

Meanwhile inside the palace at Nineveh ona relief, Ashurbanipal and his queen enjoy acharming garden party, sampling delicacies tothe strains of music while, from a nearby tree,hangs the severed head of an enemy king.

Some would claim the Assyrians were nomore savage than other people; merely morehonest. But their art betrays a pleasure taken inothers’ suffering that is unmatched in the art of


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7.8 An Assyrian sculptor carefully depicted the army of laborers needed to transport a multiton stone bullto its palatial site. (Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, 1853)

7.7 A winged human-headed lion that once stoodas a colossal sentinel at the Assyrian royal palace atKalhu (Nimrud). (Layard, Nineveh and ItsRemains, 1849)

any other nation. It is not simply horror we see,but horror celebrated. Comparable horrors aredepicted in sketches that survive from Naziconcentration camps, but the sketches weredrawn by anguished victims, not their tormen-tors. The only aesthetic analogue is a Germanlampshade made from Jewish skin, but eventhat was not meant for public display.

POTTERY

Compared to architecture, sculpture, andpainting, pottery is often regarded as a“minor” art. Yet pottery combines withinitself the defining virtues of the other arts.Like a work of architecture, a piece of potterymust have stability and structural integrity,and it serves utilitarian ends. Like sculpture,pottery is a tactile art that is shaped by hand.And like painting, the art of pottery mayinvolve the decorative application of pigmentsto a smooth surface.

Archaeological Value

Some may demean pottery because of its com-monness and everyday use. Yet it is preciselybecause of these qualities that pottery is thearchaeologist’s best friend. Its commonplacenature means that its remains will be foundthroughout an ancient site, unlike other moreprecious artifacts that survive only in limitednumbers. Though vases are fragile, once bro-ken their fragments (known as potsherds orsimply sherds) are virtually indestructible andcan endure for millennia. The very breakabilityof pottery endears it to the archaeologist, forwhen a piece of pottery is broken, it must bereplaced, not by one that is exactly the same butby one that may embody subtle stylistic changesof shape, fabric, or decoration that were intro-duced after the original piece was made. Thisstylistic mutability makes pottery an embodi-ment of change and, as such, a chronologicalmarker that denotes the cultural period towhich it belongs. Find enough datable potteryand you can date the cultural remains that sur-round it; find similar pottery at two sites andyou know they are contemporary. Thus thehumble art of pottery becomes the handmaid ofhistory, offering its chronological services fromthe Neolithic Period (or New Stone Age) whenceramic ware began, down to the modern era.For Mesopotamia, pottery’s story begins in theearly seventh millenium B.C.E.

Aesthetic Value

For some ancient peoples, the Greeks in par-ticular, pottery became a vehicle for intenseand joyous artistic expression. Through thestriking symmetry of their vases, the Greeksdeclared that order and beauty are synony-mous; through dramatic vase-paintings ofheroic myths, they proclaimed the cosmic


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7.9 Before this inscribed brick from Kalhu(Nimrud) dried, a dog leaped lightly over it,leaving his pawprints behind. (Oriental Institute,University of Chicago)

centrality of man. To a poet like Keats, a Gre-cian urn could inspire an ode.

We would be far less than honest if wesought to make such a case for the pottery ofMesopotamia. Shapes are limited and pedes-trian; designs are crude: lines, wavy or straight,and occasional silhouettes or outlines of birds,fish, or mammals including man, confinedwithin geometric frames. Advances are largelytechnical: the introduction of the rapidly spin-ning potter’s wheel (in the late fifth millenniumB.C.E) that streamlined form and increased pro-duction; the ability (in the 14th century B.C.E.)to create delicate vessels, including cups, withwalls almost as thin as an eggshell; and thecapacity (in the same century) to make smallbottles and jars with colorful glazes that sealedin the aroma of perfumes and scented oils.

When the ancient Greeks confronted thefragileness of human existence, their responsewas a defiant one: to take a medium as fragile aslife itself and make it a work of beauty. Whenthe ancient Mesopotamians confronted thesame, potentially depressing fact, their answerwas less bold but no less constructive: to reachdown into the mud from which life had pri-mordially sprung, harden the clay in fire, anduse it to make existence more tolerable.

PAINTING

Bored by the monotony of a dusty and mono-chromatic landscape, a French tourist oncedescribed Iraq as le pays beige, “the beige coun-try.” Though we can readily understand how acompatriot of Monet might be less thanthrilled with Iraq’s dull visual appeal, we mustbe careful not to confuse modern topographywith ancient character. However bland the landmight seem today, in ancient times—thanks toextensive irrigation—much of the country

around its population centers was verdant. But,more significantly, the land supported a vigor-ous culture that was rich in color.

It is the archaeologist’s task to recapture thatcolor in all its variety so it can be seen throughthe mind’s eye. But the archaeologist’s task iscomplicated by the nature of the objectsunearthed. Rather than organic and alive, theyare inorganic or dead. Skeletons, after all, arepoor witnesses to the pleasures of the flesh, andinscribed words are a paltry substitute for vis-ceral experience. Even art stumbles on its way tothe witness box, since two main forms of art—architecture and sculpture—are made from col-orless materials. Whatever decorative tintingthey may have once enjoyed was long agobleached away by the sun and stripped away bythe forces of wind and water. As a result, thesculpted images of the dead stand before usalmost as pale as stone. A chronic anemia seemsto drain the past of its blood and transform theancients into a race apart, remarkable perhapsbut not human like ourselves.

It is the art of painting, however, that canput flesh back onto the old bones, add color tothe complexion, enliven the costume, andrevivify the settings in which ancient life waslived. But paintings, especially ones thousandsof years old, are subject to the ravages of time.Colors fade and, in the case of murals, the plas-ter crumbles upon which the paint was applied,especially when the walls themselves cometumbling down. Here restorers must performtheir duty, imaginatively reconstructing wholepictures where only fragments remain andfaithfully re-creating the antique colors out ofwhich they were composed.

Wall Paintings

Traces of paint still cling to Sumerian figuresand Assyrian reliefs, demonstrating that the


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Mesopotamians recognized the limitations ofmonotone clay and stone in portraying life,and accordingly sought to enhance them byadding color. Pottery, which in the hands ofthe classical Greek vase painter became a cele-bration of heroic myth and daily existence,never attained such stature in Mesopotamia;except for occasional abstract designs and fig-ures in silhouette, the pottery of ancient Iraqwas dully functional. Where painting shonewas on the walls of Mesopotamia’s palaces,and to a minor degree—judging by the lim-ited evidence we possess—on the walls of itstemples and private homes.

TECHNIQUES AND MATERIALS

In the earliest era of Mesopotamian wall paint-ing, paints were applied to walls that had pre-viously been coated with a plaster of mud,lime, or gypsum that had been allowed to dry.By the second half of the second millenniumB.C.E., paints were applied while the plasterwas still wet or fresh ( fresco in Italian). Theadvantage of the fresco technique was that thepigments bonded better with the surface towhich they were applied; the disadvantage wasthat the artist had to work rapidly while theundercoat was still damp. The practical solu-tion was either to coat and paint a small area ofwall at a time, or to keep the already plasteredsurface damp (perhaps with wet cloths) until itcould be painted.

The wall painter’s palette included black(made from lampblack or bitumen), white(from gypsum), and red (from iron oxide ormercuric oxide). Later, blue (made from cop-per oxide or lapis lazuli) and green (frommalachite) made their appearance. Yellowseems to have been relatively rare. Before theartist painted, the mineral pigments werediluted in water to which egg white or caseinfrom milk had been added as a binding agentso the paint would better adhere to the wall’s

surface. The overall design was then sketchedout on the wall with a sharp tool. After thecolors were applied, figures were outlined inblack.

SUBJECTS

The subjects of Mesopotamian wall paintingswere traditional, featuring ceremonial tableauxand scenes of battle and hunting, much in themanner of stone reliefs. Like carved seal-stones, the figures included animals both realand fantastic, gods and goddesses, and kingsand attendants.

DISCOVERIES

Remains of wall paintings have been found insouthern Iraq at Uruk, Nippur, Tell Uqair(with its painted temple), and Aqar Quf; innorthern Iraq at Tepe Gawra, Nuzu, andKhorsabad; and in eastern Syria at Tell SheikhHamad. The best preserved and most exten-sive murals come from Mari, Til Barsip, andDura-Europos.

Dating to the early 18th century B.C.E., thepalace of King Zimri-Lim at Mari has yielded26 rooms decorated with wall painting, the ear-liest murals to survive from any ancient NearEastern palace. Ironically, the paintings werepreserved by an act of war, for when Ham-murabi destroyed the building, its second storycollapsed on and sealed in its first, protectingthe murals from further harm. When the citywas abandoned, the ruined paintings surviveduntil their recovery by French archaeologists inthe 20th century.

The most striking scene shows the investi-ture of the king. He stands before the goddessIshtar in the company of other gods and takeshis oath of office. The central scene is flankedby griffins (symbols of awesome power) and bypalm trees (symbols of fertility). Below, god-desses hold urns from which water magically


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leaps up and then flows down, nourishing theearth.

Til Barsip, located on the upper Euphratesin northern Syria, was the site of a palace con-structed in the eighth century B.C.E. by theAssyrian king Tiglathpileser III. The well-preserved wall paintings show scenes of warfareand hunting. Prisoners of war tied to chariotsare escorted to execution by armed soldiers.One Assyrian soldier leads an enemy prisonerby the beard. In a mural over 70 feet long,Tiglathpileser is shown enthroned in majesty,surrounded by members of his army andadministrative staff. Elsewhere in the palace, ina bathroom of all places, we see a lion huntindicative of the Assyrian fascination withpower and domination.

The ruins of Dura-Europos lie at the outeredge of our study of Mesopotamia both geo-graphically and chronologically. Situated inSyria at the northern end of the Euphrates, thecity was founded about 300 B.C.E. and rose tobecome an important way station for Mideast-ern caravans. Among its remains are two syna-gogues and a church, all dating to the thirdcentury C.E. In one of the synagogues and inthe church are frescoed walls that constitute,along with the paintings of Rome’s catacombs,some of the earliest documented evidence ofJewish and Christian religious art. The wallpaintings of the synagogue are extensive(unlike those of the Jewish catacombs) and por-tray episodes from the Old Testament, includ-ing Abraham contemplating the sacrifice of hisson Isaac and Moses leading the Israelitesacross the Red Sea. Meanwhile, in the church,are portraits of Adam and Eve, on the onehand, and the Good Shepherd on the other,contrasting human mortality (in the person ofAdam) with everlasting life (personified byJesus as the Good Shepherd). The frescoes inthe Dura-Europos church also include one ofthe earliest artistic portraits of Jesus, as ayoung, clean-shaven man with short hair.

Painted Cones andEnameled Brick

Murals were not the only way to enliven wallswith color. Some Sumerian temples featuredmud-brick columns implanted with clay cones,inserted into mortar-like nails with their headspainted black, white, or red.

In the Neo-Babylonian period, enameledbrick was used for exterior walls. Unlike wallpaintings which were only suitable for interiorsurfaces, enameled bricks created glossy and col-orful pictures that were capable of withstandingweather. The brick was sculpted in low reliefbefore being baked and was then coated withglazes in which pigments were blended withmelted silica. The most renowned example isthe almost 47-foot-tall Ishtar Gate and Proces-sional Way that led into Babylon in the days ofNebuchadnezzar II. Against a blue background,bulls, lions, and giraffe-like dragons move in astately parade.

Besides Babylon, enameled decoration wasemployed in Ashur and Nimrud in the time ofthe Assyrian Empire, and it was later adoptedby the Persians at Susa to depict bodyguardsin procession.

MOSAIC

In Hellenistic Greek art and in Roman art,mosaic played a prominent role. Mosaic pic-tures, composed of naturally colored stones orcolorfully glazed tiles, decorated the floors ofprivate homes and public buildings with imagesof gods and myths.

The infusion of Hellenistic culture into theNear East and the subsequent rise of Romanimperialism brought with them the influence ofEuropean ideas and art. But prior to the Hel-


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lenistic period, mosaics played almost no role inancient Near Eastern architectural decoration.

In Sumerian times, terra-cotta cones withtheir heads colored in black, white, and red wereinserted into mud-brick walls to create geomet-ric designs known to archaeologists as “conemosaics.” Such designs included zigzags and dia-mond-shaped patterns. Another decorative tech-nique used artificial flowers with black, white,and pink petals composed of alternating stones(for white and pink) and bitumen (for black).

The most famous and most elaborate exampleof Mesopotamian mosaic also dates to Sumeriandays: the Royal Standard of Ur. Using bitumenas glue, an anonymous artist pieced together pic-tures with the help of blue lapis lazuli (for back-ground) and bits of shell or mother of pearl (forthe figures of people and animals). The Royal

Standard consists of two back-to-back panels,each consisting of three horizontal registers offigures. One panel depicts the military victory ofUr and its leader over the city’s enemies; thecorollary panel depicts the celebration followingthe victory. Apart from its historic interest, theRoyal Standard of Ur informs us about life inSumer: the mode of battle (infantry and chari-ots), the brutal consequences of war (the corpsesof soldiers trampled beneath the onrushing char-iots; the prisoners of war taken captive), and thepleasures of peace (music, drinking, and theenjoyment of affluence). Enlightening as its con-tent is in cultural terms, the Royal Standard ofUr is an aesthetic anomaly and, as far as weknow, had no impact on the later history ofMesopotamian art. It is the sole surviving pictor-ial mosaic we possess from pre-Hellenistic Iraq.


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7.10 This glazed tile, colored in red, brown, green, yellow, and black, and found at Kalhu (Nimrud),seems to show a cup, borne by a bodyguard, being presented to the king of Assyria (the fragmentary figureat the left). (von Reber, History of Ancient Art, 1882)


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7.11 From Babylon’s Ishtar Gate comes this bull executed in glazed brick.(Layard, A Second Series of the Monuments of Nineveh, 1853)

7.12 Alternating with the bulls guarding Babylon’s Ishtar Gate were fantasticdragon-like creatures like this one. (Layard, A Second Series of the Monuments ofNineveh, 1853)

GLASS

Surely the most fragile material to survive fromantiquity is glass. If cuneiform inscriptions areour “message in a bottle” from the Mesopo-tamian past, the bottle itself deserves ourinspection. Considering the vicissitudes of his-tory, it is a small miracle that a bottle of ancientglass should have floated intact across the sea oftime to our own day, especially having comefrom a far-off land like Mesopotamia, so oftenravaged by war and natural destruction.

History

In actuality, however, our oldest samples ofMesopotamian glass reach us not as intact arti-facts but as lumps and fragments from primitivefounderies. Crude as they are, they are never-theless indisputable proof that glass was beingmanufactured as long ago as the late third mil-lennium B.C.E. These examples are not only ourearliest evidence of a Mesopotamian glass indus-try; they are, in fact, the oldest evidence of glass-making anywhere in the world.

By the second millennium B.C.E., we findglass beads scattered in Mesopotamia’s soil.By 1600 B.C.E., new colors are being added toglass, and the first fragments of bottles occur.By the 12th century B.C.E. following the col-lapse of political stability in the Near East, theglass industry itself slips into decline due tosocial upheaval and the shrinkage of a marketfor luxury goods. In the eighth century B.C.E.,a revival in the art takes place with Meso-potamia as one of the key centers of rebirth.During the centuries that follow, preciousglass objects continue to be in demand. Andby the first century B.C.E. with the advent of anew technique of mass production, even thoseof modest means could now afford glass ves-

sels that were once the prized possessions onlyof the rich.

UsesIn ancient Mesopotamia, glass was used to cre-ate pieces of jewelry, including beads, pen-dants, and amulets. Through the admixture ofcertain chemicals, the glassmaker could simu-late the colors of precious stones, in particularlapis lazuli. Glass was also used for makingvases and bottles, especially perfume bottles.Because only so much glass could be meltedand worked at one time, these vessels were nec-essarily small. In addition, glass was employedin the art of sculpture: little figurines weremade of molten glass, as well as the pupils ofthe realistic inlaid eyes in some statues.

TechniquesThe prime ingredient for glassmaking is silica,obtained from sand or crushed quartz. Whenheated to the melting point with sodium com-pounds or plant ash, stabilized with lime, andthen cooled, it becomes the translucent ortransparent material known as glass.

The techniques employed in ancient glass-making depended upon whether the objectsbeing manufactured were to be solid or hollow.

For solid objects the “open mold” methodwas used. Molten glass was simply poured intomolds and, when cooled, took on their shape.This was the method used to make beads, pen-dants, amulets, and figurines.

For hollow objects like vases and bottles a dif-ferent method was used, called “core-forming.”A core was modeled out of mud mixed with strawor clay mixed with manure. A rod was then stuckinto the top of the mass. Next, the artisan—holding the rod—dipped the core into moltenglass. After it was extracted and while it was still


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hot and soft, the glass object would be rolled tomake its surface more regular. Glass of differentcolors could also be dribbled over its exterior tocreate linear designs, or blobs of glass could beattached to its exterior to form a decorative pat-tern. After the vessel was totally cool, the rodwould be removed and the core broken up andshaken out, leaving a hollow vessel whose inte-rior could then be washed out and cleaned.

About 700 B.C.E. another method was intro-duced for making hollow objects. Known as the“lost wax technique,” it was also used in antiq-uity for the manufacture of delicate jewelry andbronze statuary. Around a solid clay core, waxwould be molded to the thickness and shape ofthe intended vessel. Then the wax would be cov-ered with more clay. The inner core and outerlayer of clay would be connected by small rods.Then the whole would be heated, melting thewax out and leaving a gap between the core andits outer envelope. Finally, molten glass wouldbe poured into the gap, filling up the spacewhere the wax had formerly been. Once theglass cooled, the outer layer of clay would becarefully peeled away, and the inner core (now“inside” the bottle) would be removed as well.

Interestingly, glassblowing was not intro-duced until the first century B.C.E. Thus mostproducts of Mesopotamian glassmaking werecreated without the aid of this now-acceptedmethod.

Colors and DesignsThe favorite color for Mesopotamian glass wasblue, perhaps in imitation of lapis lazuli’s desir-able hue. For decoration, other colors such aswhite and yellow were used. Coloration wasachieved by blending chemicals with the basicsilica mix. Crystal clear glass was not devel-oped, however, until about 700 B.C.E.

The favorite designs were linear and wavy,accomplished by dribbling colored glass over

an already formed vessel, probably while thevessel was being rotated on a wheel or, morelikely, on a rod or lathe-like device. By carefullyarranging pieces of colored glass on a soft glasssurface, patterns such as chevrons could beformed as well as colorful mosaic designs.

Technology and FaithOne of the hallmarks of our own era is a faithin technology. But in ancient Mesopotamia—atleast to judge by glassmaking—technologydepended on faith.

A number of cuneiform tablets exist thatgive instructions for the making of glass. Mostof these come from the library of the seventh-century B.C.E. Assyrian king Ashurbanipal.Before detailing the steps of manufacture, thetablets outline the spiritual prerequisites forproducing good glass.

First, a propitious day in an auspiciousmonth must be chosen for the commence-ment of work. Next, as soon as the kiln hasbeen built but before the fire is lit, idols mustbe set up before which offerings must bemade. A sheep must be sacrificed and juniperincense burnt, and a libation made of honeyand melted butter. Furthermore, only thosewho are ritually clean can be allowed to bepresent at the worksite.

Some would claim these requirements sim-ply prove the artisans were superstitious; oth-ers, that the craftsmen thought glassmakingwas a form of magic that only the gods couldperform. But a third possibility is that theglassmakers recognized the limitations of theirown human powers and believed that their suc-cess was dependent upon divine help. In short,for technology to be truly effective, man mustrely on more than practical knowledge.

If there is a modern lesson here, it is not thatwe must sacrifice a sheep or burn juniperincense or pour out honey and butter before


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taking a new technological step. Only that weshould pause to reflect in humility upon ourown smallness before undertaking new andgreat things.

CYLINDER SEALS

It is in miniature sculpture, or glyptic art (fromGreek glyphein, “to carve”), that the artists ofMesopotamia especially excelled. The most cul-turally distinctive objet d’art from the land ofthe Tigris and Euphrates is the cylinder seal, asmall (on average, 1–1.5 inches long), engravedcylinder of stone that was traditionally rolled onsoft clay in order to leave its imprint as a signa-ture or mark of ownership. Though cylinderseals were used throughout the ancient NearEast wherever Mesopotamian influence wasdeeply felt, no other civilization in the worldinvented or perfected this art form.

Durability

The cylinder seal’s career was a long one, cov-ering three millennia of Mesopotamian history.Moreover, it journeyed across the millennia toour own day like a compact time capsule ofancient civilization. Unlike more fragile exam-ples of human handiwork, the cylinder seal ismade of durable stone. Its survival is furtherexplained by its multiplicity. From a singlethousand-year period of Mesopotamian history(3300–2300 B.C.E.: from the protoliterateperiod to the era of the early city-states), some2,000 cylinder seals have been recovered.Based on the theory that for every archaeologi-cal object in a museum at least a hundred stilllie buried, some 200,000 such seals from thisone period alone still await excavation. And

where the seals themselves have not yet beenlocated, their ancient impressions on clay per-sist and proclaim their existence.

Archaeological Value

As we will later see, cylinder seals and theirimprints present us with pictures illustratingancient Mesopotamia’s myths, religious beliefs,and daily life. Their only shortcoming is thatthe pictures lack captions, but they are invalu-able nonetheless as a pictorial record of a lostworld. The seals supply information, moreover,about the chronology of ancient sites and theirstrata. Some, for example, bear a datableinscription naming a historic ruler. In addi-tion—like pottery—the materials, size, shape,and decoration of cylinder seals changed overthe course of time and thus denote when theywere made. Finding a cylinder seal in a layer ofruins, even without an inscription, can be a clueas to the layer’s age. One drawback, however, isthat cylinder seals sometimes became heirloomsand as such were passed on from one generationto the next. As a result, the stratum in which aseal is found may be later than the era in whichit was first made. Besides this, being a smallobject, a cylinder seal can easily tumble fromthe side of an excavation trench, down the slopeof a mound during heavy rain, or even into ahole burrowed by a rodent, displacing itselffrom its original location and time period. Butchronological limitations notwithstanding, inchfor inch a cylinder seal packs more informationand beauty into its compact size than any otherobject Mesopotamia produced.

Aesthetic Value

More than mere artifacts, cylinder seals areextraordinary examples of craftsmanly virtuosity.


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They carry engravings in miniature, exe-cuted—to our knowledge—without the aid ofa magnifying glass. Indeed, magnification isrequired today to fully appreciate their detail,as are modern pressings in clay or plasticinethrough which the hollowed-out carvingsassume their intended three-dimensional full-ness as sculpture in relief. This technique ofengraving is called intaglio, from Latin inta-liare, “to cut.” To achieve its desired effect,the ancient seal cutter had to think in reverse,imagining the positive shapes his negativecuttings would ultimately produce. Likewise,when inscriptions were required, the artisthad to cut them as mirror images so theywould read in the right direction when rolledonto clay. The actual engraving was furthercomplicated by the fact that the surface of theseal was not flat, but curved.

Why would artists have engaged in an occu-pation fraught with such challenges? First,because sealcutting was a valued professionthat bestowed upon the craftsman social

esteem and honor. Second, because the prod-ucts of his talent would be in constant demand.And third, because, like many an artist, hereceived pleasure from rising to a challenge toproduce a work that was both useful and aes-thetically pleasing.

At their finest, cylinder seal engravingsexhibit in their detail and narrative arrange-ment what Edith Porada once called a“rhythmically ordered composition,” that inrolled repetition is almost hypnotic in itsoverall effect.

History

The use of a seal (Sumerian kishib; Akkadiankunukku) to mark clay is attested as far back asthe eighth millennium B.C.E. in Syria, whensuch objects served a decorative or possiblymagical purpose. These seals were not cylindri-cal in shape, but circular and used like rubberstamps. By the middle of the sixth millenniumB.C.E., stamp seals were being used in northernIraq to imprint linear patterns or shapes ontoclay tags and discs for identification purposes.

Perhaps by the fifth or certainly by thefourth millennium B.C.E., a new type of seal—the cylinder seal—was in use among the Sume-rians of southern Mesopotamia and theElamites of southwestern Iran, to judge by sur-viving impressions in clay. Its introductionantedates the birth of writing, but is contempo-rary with the discovery of metallurgy sincemetal tools were needed to engrave the stone.

The cylinder seal had a number of advantagesover its predecessor, the stamp seal. By beingrolled, a cylinder seal could cover a larger area ina shorter time. Its greater surface area admittedmore room for designs which insured the indi-viduality of the particular seal and therefore itseffectiveness as a mark of personal identity andownership. After the birth of writing, its greater


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7.13 Small disks and cylinders of stone, carvedwith religious and mythological images, were usedby the ancient Mesopotamians as personal seals.Their impressions in clay served as signatures.(Babylonian Collection, Yale University Library)

surface area also allowed space for an inscriptionnaming its owner. The more extensive designalso appealed to the Mesopotamian aestheticsense: its more elaborate imprint was literallymore impressive than a stamp seal’s, while itsengraved embellishments made it a piece of jew-elry as well as a unique mark of identity.

For three millennia, from Sumerian timesdown to the days of the Persian Empire, thecylinder seal surpassed the stamp seal in popu-larity. But by about 1000 B.C.E., it lost ground tothe stamp seal, becoming obsolete by the end ofthe fifth century B.C.E. The reason was a changein language and script. Aramaic replaced Akka-dian as the lingua franca of the Near East.While Akkadian was written in cuneiform on aclay tablet, Aramaic was written in ink onpapyrus, parchment, or leather scrolls that wererolled up and tied with a cord secured by a smallwad of clay. With no room for rolling a cylinder,the stamp seal became the seal of choice.

Manufacture

The task of making seals belonged to the seal-cutter (Sumerian burgul; Akkadian purkullu).An apprenticeship in making cylinder sealslasted at least four years, and masters andapprentices plied their craft in workshops, suchas the one whose ruins were found in the Syr-ian city of Ugarit. From Tell Asmar, east ofBaghdad, comes the toolkit of a worker. In aclay jar were found a small copper chisel, twopointed copper gravers (for detail), a whet-stone, a borer (for drilling holes), and someseals that had not yet been completed. Engrav-ing tools were also made of bronze and flint.

Drills and cutting blades were hand-powered:as the sealcutter’s hand moved a bow back andforth, the bowstring caused a shaft it held torotate back and forth. Later, a foot-operatedwheel may have been used to make the shaft spin

continuously in a single direction. Rather thancutting rough cylinders from stone, the sealcut-ters may have bought blanks from dealers,adding the finishing touches in their workshops.

Before or possibly after the engraving wasdone, a hole was drilled into each end of thecylinder. When the two holes met, they formeda longitudinal channel through which a cordcould be threaded so the seal could be wornaround the neck like a pendant. Sometimes ametal cap, usually of gold, was fastened withbitumen to one end of the cylinder. The capfeatured a loophole through which the cordcould be strung or a pin inserted to attach theseal to a garment. Just such a pinned seal wasfound resting on the skeletal chest of QueenPuabi in her grave at Ur. Judging by an ancienttale, such pins could be turned into lethalweapons: two of Mesopotamia’s kings wereassassinated by killers who tore off the royalpins and wielded them with deadly force.

Materials

The vast majority of cylinder seals were carvedfrom stone, much of it imported. But somewere made from other materials such as bone,ivory, shell, wood, clay, or metal (gold, silver,copper, and bronze).

The type of stone varied from period toperiod, depending on the vagaries of fashionand the availability of a particular stone fromlocal or foreign sources. The earliest cylinderswere carved from soft limestone, lapis lazuli,and rock crystal. Later, minerals with differinghues were employed, such as talc, diorite, andvariegated agate. Colors were supplied by thegreens of serpentine, chlorite, greenstone, andapple-green amazonite; the reds of carnelian,hematite goethite, and red-and-white mottledjasper; the purple of amethyst; and the blacksof black limestone, magnetite, and glassy


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obsidian. At one point late in the history ofmanufacture, a synthetic stone—composite, or“sinistered,” quartz—was employed.

Some stones were believed to have magicalproperties and to bestow benefits upon theirowner: lapis lazuli symbolized power and suc-cess, crystal conveyed happiness, and greenmarble insured continual blessings. Accordingto Assyrian interpreters, to dream of beinggiven a seal portended the birth of a son; a sealengraved with figures, sons and peace of mind;a red seal, sons and daughters; an ivory seal,one’s heart’s desire; and a royal seal, the protec-tion of the gods.

Decorative Themes

In the decoration of cylinders seals a variety ofthemes was invoked, some predominating inone cultural period and others in another.

The earliest themes are economic in nature,depicting the production or display of foods

and textiles. Accompanying these economicscenes are representations of rituals. Reflectedin the cylinder seal’s decoration at this earlyperiod, then, are two interconnected themes:material prosperity and piety. During theEarly Dynastic period, perhaps in celebrationof the heroic achievements of the age, newthemes occur: mythic combat and banqueting;somewhat later, the gods themselves appear. Insuccessive centuries, heroes and monsters, andgods and kings take their place on the minia-ture stage.

The seals inform us about Mesopotamiandaily life (especially agricultural activities), din-ing and dress, music and dance, and transporta-tion. We see deities just as the Mesopotamianssaw them in their spiritual imagination, espe-cially Utu (or Shamash), the god of the sun;Nanna (or Sin), the god of the moon; andInanna (or Ishtar), the goddess of sexuality andbattle. We also see illustrations of ancientmyths, in particular struggles pitting one ormore animals against a hero (Gilgamesh?) or


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7.14 Rolled onto clay (as here), a cylinder seal produced a raised design. This seal impression seems toportray the legendary comrades of Mesopotamian epic, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, shown here grappling withwild beasts. Both Gilgamesh and Enkidu are bearded, but Enkidu has horns and a tail, denoting his statusas a creature of nature. (Babylonian Collection, Yale University Library)

against a creature that is half-man, half-bull(Enkidu?). Also populating the engravings areanimals, birds, fish, and even insects, includingsome species of fauna that are extinct. Theseals also provide us with our earliest pictorialevidence for temple design, domed buildings,the composite bow, and the lute.

Uses and Users

The Mesopotamian seal had a number of spe-cialized uses.

Its earliest use, in the era before writing,was to mark hollow balls of clay that containedlittle clay tokens symbolizing goods (likesheep) involved in commercial transactions.Later, seals were used to secure jars and thevaluables they contained: the mouths of thejars were covered and wound with cord; thecord was tied and knotted and wrapped in clay;and the clay was then imprinted with the seal.In similar fashion, seals were applied to doorsleading to storage compartments and ware-houses. The most frequent use of the seal,however, was to “sign” clay documents byrolling the seal across the tablet or across theclay envelope that contained it.

The function of the seal could be enhancedby a cuneiform inscription giving the name ofthe owner. Additional data might include thename of the owner’s father, the owner’s titleand/or occupation, and the ruler or god heserved. Such inscriptions were probably addedafter the pictorial design on the seal had beencompleted and the seal itself was purchased.The name of the purchaser would then beengraved, usually in a vertical space reservedfor it. From such inscriptions we know thatcylinder seals were owned and used by peoplein a great variety of occupations and socialroles: men and (less commonly) women, rulersand priests, soldiers and scribes, royal cooks

and servants, carpenters and other craftsmen,and the ubiquitous merchant. Even slaves whoconducted business owned seals, as did thegods themselves who are sometimes shownwearing them. The same person could, in fact,own more than one seal, sometimes ordering anew one cut when he received a promotion orserved a new ruler.

Seal impressions have been found on legalcontracts, treaties, and letters. For a loan, theborrower or his cosigner would roll his sealacknowledging the amount borrowed. In atransfer of property, the seller would sign thebill of sale. Upon receiving goods, the recipientwould sign the receipt. And in the case ofmutual obligations—a marriage or a businessagreement, for example—both contractingparties would sign. By the middle of the firstmillennium B.C.E., two copies of documentswere generated, one for each party, much as itis done today.

If a cylinder seal were lost or stolen, it was amatter of great concern. The former ownerwould record the date and time of loss with anofficial to insure that transactions made afterthe loss would be invalid (not unlike the waywe might call Visa or Mastercard to report alost or stolen credit card). In one instance, weare told, a horn was sounded in a city toannounce the loss of a seal.

The ancients were intimate with somethingthat more and more has come to characterizeour lives today: impermanence. In a land wherea raging flood could wash away an entire city,the ancient Mesopotamian understood that fewthings—including life itself—are guaranteedand secure. Gilgamesh, we remember, held thefragile secret of eternal life in his hand only tosee it snatched away. For the people ofMesopotamia then, the stone cylinder seal wasthe ultimate symbol of permanence in animpermanent world. Perhaps that is why itoccupied such an important position in theirlives and was worn as a badge of honor.


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CARVED IVORY

In the biblical Song of Solomon, the eroticprotagonists praise each other’s body in termsof glistening ivory. Says he: “Your neck is like atower of ivory.” Says she: “Your abdomen isivory inlaid with sapphire.” The books ofKings and Chronicles, for their part, tell howevery three years a fleet of ships brought KingSolomon a rich and exotic cargo of “gold, sil-ver, ivory, apes, and peacocks.”

Throughout the ancient Near East, ivorywas regarded as a precious material, especiallybecause it could be carved and made into orna-ments. Its prime source was the elephant,hunted in the Near East until it became extinctthere by the mid first millennium B.C.E. Yet asearly as 2000 B.C.E., ivory was also beingimported from India by the merchants of Ur.

The craft of carving ivory flourished espe-cially in ancient Syria and Phoenicia, and theornate products of these land traveled eastwardto Mesopotamia by trade or, in the days ofAssyrian imperialism, were acquired as tributeor booty from the lands Assyria conquered. In

Mesopotamia itself, local workshops as wellmay have sprung up to transform raw ivoryinto works of art.

Ivory was used to make the handles of handmirrors and fly whisks (de rigueur in the hotNear East) or was fashioned into luxuriouscontainers for cosmetics. Ivory ornaments evenadorned the bridles of royal horses. But ivory’sprime function was to decorate furniture. Cut


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7.16 A woman of the ancient Near East gazes atus across the millennia through an ivory window.(Bonomi, Nineveh and Its Palaces, 1875)

7.15 Fragments of two miniature heads carved in ivory in the days of the Assyrian Empire. (Bonomi,Nineveh and Its Palaces, 1875)

into small panels, the surface of the ivory wasincised or sculpted in low relief with picturesand designs that might then be colored withpaint or enlivened with an inlay of semi-precious stone. The panels were then attachedto the wooden furniture with small nails.

Pictures on ivory objects included scenes ofcombat between man and lion, images of fan-tastic creatures, depictions of banqueting andentertainment, and portrayals of kings andcourtiers. A favorite motif for panels was the“woman in the window,” a woman’s face setwithin a window-like frame. In addition, doll-sized female heads carved out of ivory have alsobeen found. Whether they once actuallybelonged to dolls or perhaps to figurines ofgoddesses is unknown.

Though most of these ivory carvings wereprobably manufactured by foreign craftsmenbefore they ever reached Mesopotamia, theyare numbered in the thousands, revealing thedomestic popularity of this art form. Most ofthe remains date to Assyrian times, the ninthand eighth centuries B.C.E. A great cache wasuncovered at Nimrud, but other finds havebeen made at Tell Halaf, Ashur, and Khorsabad.

One extraordinary piece, recovered at Nim-rud from the bottom of a 70-foot-deep well,shows a young man being killed by a lioness.The Negroid features of the young man’s faceand his tightly curled hair suggest that he isEthiopian or Nubian, though his skin is notblack. He sits on the ground, his back bentback and supported by his arms as the lioness,standing over him, closes her jaws over hisneck. Pain is not written on the young man’sface, but rather surrender. Nor is the lionesssavage, for she cradles his neck with one of herpaws. The background is lush with flowers,papyrus and lily, inlaid in lapis lazuli and car-nelian, gleaming with gilding. The scene mightalmost be an idyll of lovers coupling—she thetender aggressor, he the willing victim—butlocked in fatal embrace.

“Love is as strong as death” the Song ofSolomon reminds us. On this ivory panel, butfour inches tall, we hear the same words. Yet wewonder why it was hurled down the mouth of aNimrud well so long ago . . . and by whom.

JEWELRY

The survival of ancient jewelry is an enduringtestament to humanity’s love of beauty and itstalent to fashion works of beauty from inertmatter. The created ornaments become, in turn,a guarantor of the maker’s and owner’s immor-tality, for precious metal and stone that last formillennia are far more durable than flesh andblood. It is in graves that archaeologists mostoften find pieces of jewelry, for those who wore


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7.17 This ivory panel from Kalhu (Nimrud),highlighted in gold, portrays an African man inthe deadly grip of a lioness. (The BritishMuseum)

them in life wished to wear them also for alleternity in the life beyond. The presence ofsuch objects in burials is in itself proof of anancient belief in immortality, a belief that heldout to the deceased the promise of enjoyingearthly delights in the hereafter.

Materials and Manufacture

Along with that of Egypt, the jewelry ofMesopotamia is the world’s oldest. As early asthe seventh millennium B.C.E., necklaces,bracelets, and ornamental girdles were fash-ioned in Mesopotamia from shells, pieces ofbone, and polished stones. When civilizationbegan in the late fourth millennium B.C.E., theart of metallurgy began with it, expanding thejeweler’s repertoire. But while Egypt couldturn to the desert east of the Nile or southwardto Nubia for sources of gold, the valleys of theTigris and Euphrates were poor in minerals. Intheir hunger for adornment, the Mesopotami-ans sought out raw materials from other landsby trade. Gold and silver were obtained fromAnatolia and northern Iran; orange-red car-nelian from southeastern Iran, Pakistan, andIndia; and lapis lazuli, a precious blue mineralused for beads and inlay, from the Badakhshandistrict of northern Afghanistan and from east-ern Pakistan.

One of the most remarkable techniques inthe Mesopotamian goldsmith’s arsenal was aprocess called granulation, which involvedfusing masses of tiny gold globules onto asolid gold background. Also called “fusionwelding,” granulation used no solder but onlyheat to achieve its effects, a delicate procedurebecause at too high a temperature the goldenglobules could melt and lose their roundness.In addition to delicate hammering and granu-lation, jewelers employed such techniques asengraving, chasing, repoussé, filigree, and

cloisonné, and they crafted hinges and claspsas well.

To produce different colors, gold was some-times mixed with other metals such as copper.Blended with silver, it became an alloy knownas electrum, which could also be found in a nat-ural state.

Perhaps because it was so rare in Sumeriantimes, gold was not cast but instead ham-mered into thin sheets that were then cut,incised, and shaped. Heavier gold piecesbecame more common in the days of theAssyrians, either because their territory laycloser to sources of ore or because theirarmies were more effective in gathering goldfrom the peoples they conquered.

The Jewelry Trade

Jewelers played an important role in Meso-potamian society, serving the needs of bothpalace and temple. Such artisans are frequentlymentioned in commercial documents and oftenby name along with the quantities of preciousmetals they were consigned for the executionof their commissions. Items once belonging toa jeweler from Larsa named Ilsu-Ibnisu werefound in the ruins of his 18th-century B.C.E.temple workshop. Stored in a jar where Ilsu-Ibnisu had left them were some of his tools(including a tweezer, gravers, a stone forsmoothing out metal, and a small anvil); 67small weights; miscellaneous beads of agate,carnelian, hematite, and lapis lazuli; and scrapsof precious metal that he intended someday tomelt down and reuse. Among the Sumerians,the patron god of jewelers was none other thanthe god of wisdom, a testimonial to both thehigh level of expertise this craft demanded andthe respect its practitioners received. Suchrespect, however, did not prevent a priestessnamed Bakhlatum from writing a letter of


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complaint to a goldsmith named Ili-iddinam.Preserved in the palace archives of Mari, a copyof her letter reproaches the jeweler for the fouryears that had passed since the priestess hadpaid him in full for a necklace and ornamentthat he had still not delivered.

Types and Uses

In Mesopotamia, jewelry was made for and usedby both men and women. Among the favoritetypes that were worn by both sexes were rings,bracelets for wrists and ankles, armlets (wornon the upper arm), earrings, necklaces, and pinsfor holding garments or hair. Some necklaceswere so heavy they required a counterweight atthe back so the necklace would balance com-fortably on the shoulders rather than pull onthe nape of the neck. Such a device was alsoused by the bejeweled and top-heavy royals ofEgypt. Another popular item of jewelry wassomething the Akkadians called a tudittum, or“breast ornament,” though its exact shape anduse remain unknown. It was just such an orna-ment that the priestess Bakhlatum had beenwaiting four years to wear!

Jewelry served many functions in Meso-potamian society. It was a favorite type of gift tocelebrate a wedding or to honor a mother forthe birth of a child. It could accompany a brideas part of her dowry, or it could be passed on asan heirloom on the occasion of a funeral. Piecesof jewelry were also exchanged between rulersto cement diplomatic relations, or they werebestowed on prostitutes by their Mesopotamian“Johns” to express appreciation. Nor werehuman beings the only ones to wear jewelry:the gods are described as wearing it as well, andtheir cult statues in temples were rituallyadorned in similar fashion.

Although their prime purpose was legal andcommercial, carved seal-stones used for “sign-

ing” one’s name were usually worn around theneck like the pendant of a necklace and thusbecame one of the most conspicuous types ofjewelry during the course of Mesopotamia’slong history.

Discoveries

The late fourth millennium B.C.E. tombs ofTepe Gawra, on the northern Tigris, haveyielded a rich cache of ancient ornaments. Thegarments of the dead had been sewn withgolden crescents and gold rosettes, the latterenhanced with centers of turquoise and lapislazuli. Covering one body were 25,000 beads ofsemiprecious stone.

The richest find of jewelry ever made insouthern Mesopotamia was at the Sumeriancity of Ur. There, between 1926 and 1932,British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolleyuncovered the graves of 16 kings and queenswho reigned during the middle of the thirdmillennium B.C.E. Their servants were alsoburied with them (perhaps after having takena sleeping potion) so they could tend to theirlords’ and ladies’ needs in the afterworld.Especially noteworthy is the jewelry of QueenPuabi, featuring an elaborate headdress ofgolden flowers rising on stems above a canopyof golden beech leaves, while alongside eachear dangled huge golden earrings in the shapeof twin crescent moons. In one mass grave,Woolley discovered the skeleton of a serving-maid still clasping in her hand a wound-upspool of silver hair ribbon, still coiled—Wool-ley deduced—because she had arrived at theceremony late and hadn’t had the time to putthe ribbon on her hair.

Surpassing the royal treasures of Ur inweight is the golden jewelry found in 1988 and1989 by Iraqi archaeologist Mazahim MahmudHussein at the Assyrian capital of Nimrud.


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Excavating beneath the floor of the NorthwestPalace, Hussein unearthed the entombedremains of three queens of the ninth and eighthcenturies B.C.E., all draped in golden jewelry.All told, some 1,500 pieces of jewelry werefound weighing a total of 100 pounds. Amongthe pieces was a crown decorated with goldenrosettes, a wide cuff-bracelet with lion’s-headfinials, and a necklace consisting of 28 goldenpendants in the shape of teardrops.

The spirits of the dead queens still clutch attheir regal baubles. As a cuneiform inscriptionon a stone tablet in the crypt of Queen Yabadeclares: “If anyone lays his hand on my

tomb . . . , opens my grave, or steals my jewelry,I pray to the gods of the netherworld that hissoul shall roam in the scorching sun afterdeath.”

Yet if the Mesopotamian poem “TheDescent of Ishtar” is to be believed, evenQueen Yaba might have had to surrender hertreasures someday. According to the poem,the goddess Ishtar was compelled to perform adivine striptease before gaining admission tothe underworld. At each of its seven gates shehad to remove an article of dress: her crown,her earrings, her beaded necklace, her breastornaments, her girdle of birthstones, her wristand ankle bracelets, and—finally—her cloth-ing. As we were naked when we were born,she is told, so must we be naked when we passthrough death’s final door. Archaeological dis-coveries, however, argue to the contrary:Ishtar notwithstanding, the Mesopotamiansbelieved—or, at least, hoped—that you cantake it with you.


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7.19 In a drawing based upon a palace relieffrom Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad), the Assyrianking’s cup-bearer wears a heavy earring of solidgold. The knobs of the earring accent the curls ofhis coiffure and the embroidered shoulder of hisrobe. (Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, 1849)

7.18 The elaborate headdress and dramaticearrings of Queen Puabi of Ur. In this photographthey adorn a head sculpted in clay by the wife of SirLeonard Woolley, who sought to capture the humanpresence of the queen, framed in her goldensplendor. (The British Museum)

READING

The Role of the Artist

Bienkowski and Millard 2000: art and artists;Gunter 1990: artistic environments; Matthews1995: artisans and artists in ancient westernAsia.

Materials

Parrot 1961: Mesopotamian techniques; Sas-son 1995: technology and artistic production.

Sculpture

Amiet 1977, Barnett 1976, Barnett and Loren-zini 1975, Collon 1995, Frankfort 1970, Groe-newegen-Frankfort 1978, Lloyd 1961, Moortgat1969, Parrot 1961, Reade 1976, 1998, Winter1995, 1997: photographic illustrations inblack-and-white and color, with discussion;Bertman 1986: art and immortality.

Pottery

Armstrong 1997: Mesopotamian pottery (withbibliography); Matson 1995: potters and potteryin the ancient Near East (with bibliography).

Painting

Amiet 1979, Parrot 1961: color illustrations;Castriota 1997: survey of ancient Near Easternwall painting; Levine 1982: Dura Europos(with bibliography).

MosaicParrot 1961: Sumerian mosaics; Moorey 1982:the Royal Standard of Ur.

GlassOppenheim et al. 1970: techniques of glassmak-ing, translations of cuneiform instructions, andillustrations of artifacts from the collection of theCorning (New York) Museum of Glass; White-house 1997: survey of Near Eastern glassmaking.

Cylinder SealsBuchanan 1981: photographs and translatedinscriptions; Collon 1987 and 1993: illustratedsurvey; Frankfort 1965, Gibson and Briggs1977: survey; Gordon 1957: glyptic art;Magness-Gardiner 1997: Near Eastern seals;Pittman 1995: survey of seals and scarabs;Porada 1976: Sumerian art in miniature; Porada1980: mythological themes; Wiseman 1959:photographic enlargements and commentary.

Carved IvoryBarnett 1975, 1982: ancient ivories in the MiddleEast; Bienkowski and Millard 2000: ivory carv-ing; Herrmann 1986 and 1992: ivories fromNimrud; Lloyd 1961: Ethiopian slain by a lion(color illustration); Mallowan 1966–74, 1978:Nimrud ivories; Parrot 1961: photographs ofivories.

JewelryBahrani 1995: survey; Harrington 1990: trea-sures from Nimrud; Maxwell-Hyslop 1971: de-tailed account; Moorey 1982: treasures from Ur.


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8

ECONOMY

DEFINITION ANDSTRUCTURE

In the contemporary Western world, a nation’seconomy is conceptualized in secular terms: it isthe product of human effort and choice, on theone hand, and the operation of impersonalforces such as supply and demand, on the other.In ancient Mesopotamia, however, the economywas ultimately a sacred entity: however humanits participants might be, its success was depen-dent upon the favor of divine powers. Moreover,while today’s economy is interpreted by special-ists called economists, the ancient economy wasguided by specialists called priests.

Because the economy of Mesopotamia wasfundamentally agrarian, it was based on fertilesoil and abundant water. The goddess Ninhur-sag was “Mother Earth”; the god Enki, thedeity of freshwater beneath the soil. Thearchetypal farmer, Ninurta, was the son ofEnlil, Mesopotamia’s supreme god. In addi-tion, each city worshiped its own patron divin-ity whose beneficence was sought throughprayer and sacrifice.

In the beginning, the land belonged to thegod of the city and was administered by a priest-hood. Later, rulers and members of an aristoc-racy became landowners. Kinship groups cameto own property as well, as did individuals whowere awarded special grants. The land wasworked by the owners themselves or by tenantfarmers on behalf of the owners, especially whenthose owners held high social status.

SIGNIFICANCE

Were it not for Mesopotamia’s productiveeconomy, civilization itself could not have

developed. The organization of land and themaintenance of irrigation canals led to the riseof law and government while food surplusessupported a complex division of labor andengendered a leisure that inspired the arts.

FARMING ANDANIMAL HUSBANDRY

The prime occupation in Mesopotamia wasfarming.

Agriculture originated in the ancient NearEast around 9000 B.C.E. and marked a revolu-tionary change in people’s lives. Whereas pre-viously their subsistence had come fromhunting and gathering, the raising of cropscombined with the domestication of animals(another innovation), caused them to live amore settled rather than a nomadic existence.Mesopotamia, with its fertile soil and abundantwater, offered the ideal environment for such asettled life to flourish, and small communitiesgradually grew to the size of cities. Thus thediscovery of agriculture promoted the birth ofurban civilization.

The chief crop in the valleys of the Tigrisand Euphrates was grain, especially barley andemmer wheat, and the herb which yieldedsesame seeds.

The farmers’ tools were simple and mostlymade of wood: a plow pulled by oxen, sicklesfitted with flint blades for harvesting, a heavysledge for threshing, and scoops or paddles forwinnowing. The plow is depicted on cylinderseals from the fourth millennium B.C.E., butmay have been invented as early as the fifth. Bythe second millennium B.C.E., a type of plowhad been designed featuring a vertical funnelthat allowed seeds poured in the top to dropinto the furrows as they were cut by the blade.


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The agricultural year began with sowing inthe autumn or early winter. The chief dangersthe farmer faced during the growing seasonwere floods (often at the very time when cropswere ripening), crop disease, locusts, and mice.In fact, farmers ritually recited a prayer toNinkilim, the goddess of mice, imploring thatthe seed that had just been sown not bedevoured. After the harvest (April and May andagain, for some types, in summer), grain was

stored in tall cylindrical silos built on decks tokeep rodents away and to prevent undergroundmoisture from coming into contact with androtting the kernels.

We are fortunate to have a Sumerian“Farmer’s Almanac” of over 100 lines datingback to 1700 B.C.E. In it, a father gives his sonstep-by-step instructions on how to bring in agood crop. Most critical, we are told, was thedepth at which the seed was sown and thebreaking up of heavy clods that might other-wise keep the seeds from sprouting. Thefarmer’s son was also reminded to supervise hisworkers diligently. The Mesopotamian farmerunderstood the principle of crop rotation andthe need to leave fields fallow so they couldregain their fertility; he did not seem to haveknown, however, that fertility could beincreased by adding manure to the soil.

Orchards and Gardening

Mesopotamian farmers were adept at growingtrees that yielded such fruits as apples, cherries,figs, pears, plums, pomegranates, and (in thePersian period) peaches, but the major cashcrop was dates. Orchardists employed cuttingsand graftings, and they recognized early onthat the date-palm required sexual “mating” toproduce its fruit.

The blazing sun and hot, dry winds of Iraqcan quickly cause vegetables to wither in theparched soil. To combat the effects of oppressiveheat, the ancient farmer invented “shade-treegardening,” using date-palms and other fruittrees to shield ground-level crops from excessivesun and wind. According to a myth, the tech-nique was devised by a gardener namedShukallituda with the help of divine inspiration.

An illuminating text lists the varied vegeta-bles and herbs that once grew in the gardens ofking Merodach-baladan II of Babylon. The

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8.1 At Nineveh, attendants carry delicacies for aroyal Assyrian feast: pomegranates and locusts.(Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Baby-lon, 1853)

scientific-mindedness of the scribe is expressedby the fact that the plants in the inventory aregrouped according to species.

Irrigation

In northern Mesopotamia, farmers dependedon rainfall to water their crops. In southernMesopotamia, however, they used river waterby digging and maintaining a system of irriga-tion canals (see chapter 6).

Sometimes the transportation of water wasaccomplished through the use of a shaduf, along pole with a bucket at one end and a coun-terweight at the other, with the pole balancedon a fulcrum-like device. Swung out over asource of water, the shaduf ’s bucket could bedipped in, easily raised (thanks to the counter-weight), and then swiveled around and pouredout into a nearby channel. The shaduf, as it iscalled in Arabic, is still being used by farmers inthe Middle East today.

Animal Husbandry

The Neolithic discovery that plants couldbe grown for food occurred around the sametime that people found they could raiseanimals as both sources of food and beasts ofburden.

In ancient Mesopotamia the most importantdomesticated animals were oxen and donkeys,on the one hand, and sheep and cattle on theother. The former served as draught animals;the latter were raised for their milk, and forhides and wool that could be converted intoclothing. A Sumerian temple frieze shows menmilking cows and pouring the milk into jarsthat are thought to have been rocked back andforth to churn the milk into butter.

Farmyards also included ducks and geeseraised for their eggs and meat. The chicken didnot become popular until the first millenniumB.C.E. And contrary to the Islamic prohibitionagainst eating pork, there is evidence that theancient Mesopotamians raised pigs.


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8.2 A sow herds her young beside a bank of tall reeds. (Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins of of Nineveh andBabylon, 1853)

The food supply of Mesopotamians wasincreased also by hunting (chiefly for gamebirds in the marshes) and fishing.

FISHING ANDHUNTING

The waters of the Tigris and Euphrates nur-tured fish, especially carp, that populated therivers and their estuaries as well as the canalsthrough which their waters flowed. Sometimes

fish were also cultivated in ponds. Nets, spears,and harpoons were the fisherman’s weaponsdepending on the size and weight of his quarry.Once caught, fish would be immediatelycooked to prevent spoilage, or they were saltedfor later use. Documents show that royal andpriestly authorities could control and leasefishing rights to commercial fishermen on thegrounds that the waters as well as the landbelonged to the state and its gods.

With the rise of agriculture and the domes-tication of animals, hunting ceased being aprime food-gathering activity. Hunting wasused instead to kill animals that preyed onflocks and herds, or as a sport, especially in the

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8.3 An Assyrian lion hunt in progress. As a charioteer holds the reins and the team gallops over a fallenlion, an archer prepares to fire again. (George Redford, A Manual of Sculpture [London: Sampson Low,Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1882])

days of the Assyrian kings, who hunted lions todemonstrate their own prowess.

CRAFTS

The accumulation of surplus food eventuallymeant that not everyone needed to beengaged in food production. As a result, indi-viduals drew upon their talents and skills andtraded the products of their labor for the foodthey required. Specialized crafts became moreextensive as increased wealth led to thedemand for luxury goods, and persons withsocial prestige called upon others to do theirbidding. As a result, a whole variety of tradeswas soon practiced in ancient Mesopotamia.

The building trades employed architects,brickmakers, stone masons, and carpenters aswell as decorative artists such as sculptors andpainters. The food trades were practiced by suchworkers as fishermen, butchers, bakers, andbrewers. Meanwhile, consumer goods were

manufactured by bronze workers, silversmiths,goldsmiths, glassmakers, potters (the most com-mon craft), leather workers and shoemakers,weavers, reed plaiters and basketmakers, jewel-ers, and seal-stone cutters. Transportation needswere met by wagonmakers, wagon drivers, ship-wrights, and boatmen. In addition, there werestreet vendors, shopowners, and innkeepers, aswell as prostitutes, some of whom wereemployed in the sacred service of the goddess offertility in temples while others freelanced at thecity gates and in taverns.

Most trades followed a system of maleapprenticeship and were often passed on fromfather to son. Some trades may have beenorganized into guilds, and some traditionallyoccupied specific quarters of the city wheretheir workshops were located and their wareswere sold.

PROFESSIONS

In addition to the crafts and trades, there werealso professions that required many years ofdedication and were accompanied by highsocial status. Among these were the profes-sions of the scribe, the physician, and thepriest, including those who specialized inastronomy, divining, and exorcism. With therise of imperialism and bureaucracy, a class ofcivil servants and career soldiers joined theancient workforce.

WAGES AND PRICES

Surviving legal and business documents provideus with information about wages and prices in


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8.4 A wounded and vindictive lion gnaws on an Assyrian chariot-wheel during a hunt.(Rawlinson, The Seven Great Monarchies of theAncient Eastern World, 1884)

Mesopotamia. However, because the history ofthe land stretched over thousands of years acrossdiverse cultures that prospered in peace and suf-fered in war, generalizations about the ancientcost of living are hard to make, especiallybecause the evidence we have is so fragmentary.But though the jigsaw puzzle on our table isincomplete, we can nevertheless be confidentabout many of the economic pieces we havebeen able to join together.

For example, during the second and firstmillennia B.C.E. the daily wage for an averageworker seems to have held constant at aboutone-quarter of a bushel of barley. Workerswere thus paid in a commodity rather than inmoney, since a money economy took manycenturies to develop. But barley was a valuablecommodity at that, since a worker could liter-ally consume his wages. In addition to hissalary in grain, the average worker would havealso received a daily ration of about four and ahalf pounds of bread, a little over a gallon ofbeer, and (over the course of a year) approxi-mately four pounds of wool that could be con-verted into enough cloth to make a smallgarment. On holidays, such as the festival ofthe New Year, a worker might receive an extraallowance of barley along with meat andsesame oil.

It would take the average worker betweenfour to eight days to earn the equivalent of ashekel of silver (about 3⁄10 of an ounce of thisprecious metal). What could he then buy for alump of silver? The answer is: any one of theitems below. The peculiarities of our shoppinglist reflect the eccentricities of our documen-tary evidence, but nevertheless convey the buy-ing power of a few days’ wages.

Depending, then, on the prevailing marketprice, which could and did vary over time, ashekel of silver might be traded for:

1 or 2 additional bushels of barley or1 or 2 bushels of dates or1⁄8–1⁄12 bushel of sesame seeds or

63⁄4–27 gallons of sesame oil or1⁄8 jar of grape wine ora little over a jar of date wine or21⁄4 lbs. of plain wool or21⁄4 oz. of purple-dyed wool or50–100 bricks or600 lbs. of asphalt or25 small tools or11 copper bowls.

A ram or a goat could be purchased for 2shekels of silver, i.e., from the earnings gener-ated by 8 to 16 days of work. An ox would gofor 20 to 30 shekels, a donkey for 30, and aslave for 40 (at least in the days of Nebuchad-nezzar). Moreover, for a shekel of silver awagon and driver could be rented for threedays, a boat for two days, and a small home orshop for half a year.

These “shekels,” however, were not coins inthe modern sense, since coinage had not yetbeen invented. As we will see in the next chap-ter, during Mesopotamia’s long history mostpurchases were made by bartering one com-modity for another, be it silver or produce,rather than by using money.

Though wages tended to hold steady,prices seem to have gradually escalated overthe centuries, and efforts by kings such asHammurabi to control them proved ineffec-tive. Thus over time the cost of living wentup and workers found it harder and harder tomake ends meet. Wages, of course, would besupplemented by whatever goods an individ-ual or family could raise or grow for personalconsumption or sale, and therefore peopletried to be as self-sufficient as possible. Natu-rally, the higher your social status, the higheryour income. Thus an average laborer mightearn the equivalent of a shekel every four toeight days, but a temple guard might earn asmuch as one and a half shekels in a single day.And those who sold commodities or theproducts of their specialized skills could earnstill more.

E C O N O M Y

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Cuneiform tablets inscribed with the ques-tions put to fortunetellers reveal that the poorlonged to be rich, the rich feared becomingpoor, and both worried about the tax collector!

READING

Definition, Structure, and Significance

Diakonoff 1991, Kramer 1963: land ownership;Jacobs 1985: wealth and cities; Lamberg-Karlovsky 1976: Sumerian economy; Oppen-heim 1957: economic history; Postgate 1992:society and economy; Van de Mieroop 1999:urban economy; Yoffee 1995: economy ofancient western Asia.

Farming and AnimalHusbandry

Braidwood R. J. 1960: origins of agriculture;Civil 1995, Kramer 1956: farmer’s almanac;Crabtree, Campana, and Ryan 1989: domesti-cation of animals; Crawford 1991, Hopkins1997: agriculture; Dalley 1993, Gleason andWelch 1997: gardens; Gelb, Steinkeller, andWhiting 1991: land tenure; Hesse 1995: ani-mal husbandry; Higham 1977: earliest farm-ers; LaBianca 1997, Schwartz 1995: pastoralnomadism; Leach 1982: kitchen gardening;Pollock 1999: pigs; Postgate and Payne 1975:shepherds and flocks; Schwartz 1995: pastoral

nomadism; Zeder 1991: feeding cities; Zeuner1963: domestic animals.

Fishing and Hunting

Anderson 1985, Contenau 1954: hunting;Bienkowski and Millard 2000: fishing and hunt-ing; Nemet-Nejat 1998, Nun 1999: fishing.

Crafts

Armstrong 1997: ceramics; Bienkowski andMillard 2000: craftsmen; Matson 1995: pot-tery; Matthews 1995: artisans and artists;Moorey 1985: materials and manufacture;Nemet-Nejat 1998: crafts; Oppenheim et al.1970: glassmaking; Oppenheim 1997: crafts-men and artists; Petzel 1987: textiles; Saggs1965: crafts and industries; Zaccagnini 1983:mobility among craftsmen.

Professions

Contenau 1954, Nemet-Nejat 1998, Saggs1965: various professions; Leemans 1960: theBabylonian merchant.

Wages and Prices

Contenau 1954: Babylonian and Assyrianweights, measures, and prices; Kramer 1963:Sumerian weights and measures.


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9

TRANSPORTATION AND TRADE

TRANSPORTATIONBY WATER

Characteristics of the Rivers

If Mesopotamia’s water was the life’s blood ofits economy, its rivers were the arteries of itstransportation and trade.

Because every community depended uponriver water to drink and to irrigate its fields, nocity was far from the Tigris or Euphrates.Indeed, if over the long course of time a wind-ing river changed its path, the settlers it onceserved might be forced to abandon theirhomes. In this way, water could alter the flowof history.

The Tigris and the Euphrates are both nav-igable for most of their length, though thewaters of the Euphrates are gentler and friend-lier to boats. The relative shallowness of therivers, however, and the shifting mud in theirbeds precluded the use of ships with deepdraughts.

Both rivers flow from north to south, emp-tying into the Persian Gulf. Unfortunately, theprevailing winds blow in exactly the samedirection. As a consequence, boats in ancientIraq—except for short trips—could only travelsouth; journeys to the north, including returntrips, had to be made by land. In this instance,ancient Egypt had a natural advantage over hersister civilization: while the Nile flows northinto the Mediterranean, the prevailing winds inEgypt blow to the south. Thus, an Egyptianmariner had but to hoist his sails to head backhome from the delta.

Expanding Mesopotamia’s twin river systemwere multiple irrigation canals, many of whichwere broad and deep enough to carry boatsalong with passengers and cargo.

Types of Boats

Model boats are among the earliest objectsfound in Mesopotamian graves and tombs.From a grave at Eridu dug before 4000 B.C.E.comes the baked clay model of a broad-bot-tomed sailboat, complete with a socket for amast; holes fore, aft, and amidships to tie therigging; and a seat for the sailor to sit on.From a third millennium B.C.E. royal tomb atUr comes a sleek rowboat crafted from silverwith seven rowing benches and oars. Suchmodel boats may have been intended to pro-vide the ghosts of the dead with transportationin the spirit-world, like the more elaborate toyships found in the treasure-filled tomb ofpharaoh Tutankhamun. All these Near Easternminiatures may also point to something farmore mundane but just as illuminating:model-building as an ancient hobby. Addition-ally, just as Egyptian pieces of jewelry portraythe gods sailing on a heavenly Nile, so doMesopotamian cylinder seals depict the godstraveling in divine ships on similar voyages.

Of actual boats, the largest were barges andferries that were hauled by ropes pulled fromthe banks of the rivers. The scarcity of timberin the land, however, limited the number ofsuch large vessels.

Smaller vessels included the coracle and thekelek. The coracle is still in use in Iraq todaywhere it goes by the Arabic name of guffa. Itsshape led the ancients to call it a “turnip.”Resembling a round reed basket, the coracle’snatural buoyancy was enhanced by a watertightcoating of bitumen. Both locomotion anddirection were achieved with the help of apunting pole or oar, since Mesopotamian boatslacked a rudder.

Apart from the majestic city of Babylon, themost surprising thing the Greek travelerHerodotus saw during his visit to Mesopotamiawas the kelek. Unlike the round coracle, the


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round kelek was made of hides stretched over aframe of willow branches, and it was inge-niously disassembled after it had served its pur-pose. (See Herodotus History 1: 194.)

Vessels could be made even more buoyantby attaching inflated goatskins to the hull.Where the goat’s neck had been, the skin wassewn tight, as was the hide at the ends of threeof the legs. The opening at the end of thefourth leg was then used like the mouth of aballoon to inflate the rest of the hide, afterwhich the opening was tied shut. Assyrian artdepicts soldiers clinging to goatskin “waterwings” as they make their way across a river; ifair leaked out, more could be added by blowinginto the tightly gripped mouth of the “bal-loon.” Assyrian art likewise shows enemiesusing such flotation devices to help them swimaway and evade capture.

The importance of water transportation toMesopotamia is evident in the Code of Ham-murabi, where seven statutes apply to boats andboating. The code sets the price for caulking a

boat as well as the penalty for not doing soproperly. In addition, it sets the wage for a boat-man and the punishment to be meted out forany accidents resulting from his carelessness.

TRANSPORTATIONBY LAND

The Character of Roads

Unlike reliable rivers, paved roads were a rarityin ancient Mesopotamia. For most of the coun-try’s history, roads were simply the well-trodden and often winding trails flattened intobroad pathways by centuries after centuries ofcommercial traffic. Occasionally they might berepaired locally by order of a city’s ruler. It wasimperialists, however, who were the first to

T R A N S P O R T A T I O N A N D T R A D E

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9.1 Transporting cargo in a kelek made more bouyant by inflated goatskins. (von Reber, History ofAncient Art, 1882)

recognize the strategic importance of goodroads, which made possible the rapid deploy-ment of troops and military equipment and theswift transmission of military intelligence.Those masters of territorial conquest, theAssyrians, were the first to institute, control,and maintain a nationwide system of highwayswith “Pony-Express” way stations for messen-gers set at regular intervals, a precedent laterfollowed more extensively by the Persians. Inorder to reach their military objectives, theAssyrian army cut roads through ruggedmountains, while outside cities their engineerspaved royal highways with stone to impress vis-itors approaching the administrative centers ofthe empire. By the second millennium B.C.E.,permanent bridges, albeit of wood, spannedthe Euphrates; by the first millennium B.C.E.,stone bridges graced Nineveh and Babylon.

As the imperialistic Romans would discovercenturies later, roads built for war carry morethan the tramping boots of soldiers; they alsocarry the material benefits of peace and therebyserve to homogenize culture, commerciallyunifying the conquerors with the conquered.Not only did merchants’ wares widely travelthese roads but also those invisible but invalu-able commodities of cultural traditions andnew ideas.

Vehicles

Sometime before 3000 B.C.E., the Sumeriansbecame the first people in history to invent thewheel and dedicate it to the cause of trans-portation. By the third millennium B.C.E., theywere constructing small two- and four-wheeledcarts as well as covered wagons. The wheels ofthese vehicles were made of two half-discs ofsolid wood nailed together and covered withtires of leather, like those of a cart found in thetomb of Puabi at Ur. Many centuries later, theAssyrians manufactured metal tires out of

sheets of copper, bronze, and ultimately iron,which afforded the wooden wheels better pro-tection. Originally, the wheels of Sumerianvehicles were attached to the axle and turnedwith it. Later, they were designed to rotate sep-arately around a rigid axle to make corneringeasier. Four-wheeled vehicles, however, had ahard time turning because their front axleswere not pivoted. The fastest vehicles weretwo-wheeled chariots, a clay model of whichsurvives in a Sumerian grave.

The discovery around 1500 B.C.E. that woodcould be bent with heat led to the developmentof wooden rims equipped with four to sixspokes leading to a hub. Such lighter wheelsmeant faster vehicles, and faster vehicles accel-erated the flow of commerce and the pace ofbattle. For passengers, however, wooden wheels,metal tires, and rough roads added up to abumpy ride, especially when compared to aslow boat floating down a river.

Throughout, sledges—which antedated thewheel—continued to be used for draggingheavy loads over terrain that was too muddy orrocky for carts or wagons.

Beasts of Burden

The speed of wheeled transportation inevitablydepended upon the speed of the animalspulling it. Prior to the domestication of thehorse in the Near East (around 2300 B.C.E.),the draught animals of choice were the ox, thedonkey, or the mule—slow going by any mea-sure, especially in warfare. Donkey or mulecaravans plied the trails of Mesopotamia formillennia, patiently hauling civilization’s cargo.It was perhaps not until the ninth centuryB.C.E. that the horse, rather than the donkey,was used for riding.

Though our mental image of the MiddleEast is populated with camels (thanks to


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Lawrence of Arabia), the camel made its his-toric appearance rather late in history, proba-bly domesticated only shortly before 1000B.C.E. Superior to other beasts of burdenbecause it could carry five times the load of adonkey while requiring less frequent watering,the camel was used as a pack animal by theAssyrian military. Cyrus the Great of Persia, infact, employed it as a surprise weapon againstKing Croesus of Lydia. Knowing horses could-n’t stand the sight or smell of camels, Cyruspositioned his camels in front of his infantryand immediately threw the enemy’s crack cav-alry into disarray, winning the battle as a result.Or so reports Herodotus.

TRADE

Natural Resources

Despite the fact that Mesopotamia was agricul-turally rich, it was poor in key natural resources

that early civilizations thrived on. Chief amongthese were copper and tin, the two metals thatwere compounded to produce bronze, themetallic mainstay of the post–Stone Age world.Missing also, especially in the south, were twoother resources: stone that could be quarriedand cut into building blocks, and trees thatcould yield sufficient timber for large-scaleconstruction.

To clothe themselves in the trappings ofaffluence, the ancient Mesopotamians initiatedtrade directly with the lands that possessed theresources they needed and, in addition, dealtwith intermediaries who could supply themwith these commodities. From these sourcesthey also sought luxuries they lacked and rawmaterials that could be crafted into objects offine art. From Anatolia and Iran they importedtin. From Bahrain and the Arabian coast theyobtained copper, gold, ivory, pearls (called “fisheyes”), and a delicacy known as “Dilmunonions.” From the territories that are todayOman and the United Arab Emirates theysecured copper, diorite, ochre (for cosmetics),ivory, and semiprecious stones. From theAfrican coast came gold, ebony, ivory, and car-nelian; and from Phoenicia (today’s Lebanon),timber (especially cedarwood) and aromaticoils. According to a poem, imported elephantsand apes once jostled in the main city square ofAkkad in the 23rd century B.C.E.

Mesopotamian ships were navigating theRed Sea by around 3000 B.C.E. and, even ear-lier, plying the waters of the Persian Gulf.There were also trade links with the far-offcivilization of the Indus Valley, a prime sourceof carnelian and other semiprecious stones.Afghanistan was the ultimate source of lapislazuli, a mineral for jewelry and ornaments,one that traveled over 1,300 miles to reach aneager Mesopotamian market. By the late 15thand early 14th centuries B.C.E., trade routesstretched to pharaonic Egypt, Syria, and theHittite Empire of Turkey, enriching with


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9.2 This drawing, based on an Assyrian relieffrom Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad), portrays agroom leading two horses decked out with elegantharnesses. (Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, 1849)

their profits such commercial cities as Ugaritand Ebla in Syria and Mari in northernMesopotamia.

In exchange for imported commodities,Mesopotamians offered such products as grain(barley, emmer wheat, or sesame seeds), otheragricultural products like dates, and textilesboth unfinished and tailored.

Merchants

The merchants (Akkadian tamkaru) ofMesopotamia belonged to one of three cate-gories: those whose activities were purelydomestic, whether retail or wholesale; thosewho were engaged in the import and exportbusiness; and those who busied themselveswith the carrying trade, transporting materialsor merchandise from one locale to another.

Until the rise of the enterprising Phoeni-cians in the eighth century B.C.E., the entrepre-neurs of Babylonia were the most industrioustraders of the ancient world. So widespread wastheir mercantile activity that their language,Akkadian, became the lingua franca of theNear East, employed not only for transactingbusiness across national borders but also forthe purposes of international diplomatic corre-spondence. Because of their mobility and for-eign connections, Babylonian merchants alsofunctioned as emissaries to foreign potentates,presenting gifts from Mesopotamian rulers andcarrying messages on their behalf. As docu-ments show, their commercial operations wereat times carried out under treaties arrangedbetween their homeland and the cities or coun-tries where they conducted business.

For their mutual benefit, merchants formedcooperative trade organizations and collabo-rated in operating caravans that, because oftheir size, offered greater security against raidsby marauders. Their commercial ventures were

sometimes financed by loans from templepriesthoods or wealthy individuals who in turnwere rewarded with interest on their financialinvestment or a share of the profits.

By the early second millennium B.C.E.,checkpoints were set up on the Euphrates thatallowed passage only to those merchant vesselsthat bore a “tablet of the king.” Around thesame time, the royal administration included ahigh official known as the “chief trader,” or“secretary of commerce.” Both facts testify tothe realization by the government that the stateshould play an active role in commercial affairs.

Mediums of Exchange

One of the most remarkable aspects of busi-ness in the ancient world was that it waslargely conducted without money. During thethird and second millennia B.C.E. barter andnot coinage constituted the basis of commer-cial exchange. Coinage was not invented untilabout 700 B.C.E., introduced first in the Turk-ish kingdom of Lydia. During that same cen-tury King Sennacherib of Assyria ordered thatmolten bronze be poured into clay molds tofunction as the first coinage of the land of thetwin rivers. But coinage remained a novelty inconservative Mesopotamia until the kings ofPersia and the monarchs of the HellenisticAge promoted its use.

Coinage had a natural advantage overbarter: unlike grain or livestock, coins wereeminently portable and universally attractive astokens of exchange, especially when the state,rather than individual merchants, guaranteedthe weight and purity of the precious metalthey contained. Indeed, the manufacture of anational coinage constitutes yet another step inthe control of commerce by the state. At first,individual merchants put their own personalmark and guarantee on lumps of preciousmetal. But the larger the territory of a state


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became, the more it overlapped the wide com-mercial territory of merchants, and the moresense it made for the state to normalize andregulate transactions, especially if, by such reg-ulation, commercial exchanges could be facili-tated and accelerated to enhance the state’sown wealth and power.

Prior to the introduction of coinage, thebasic mediums of exchange in Mesopotamiawere grain (measured by volume) and silver(measured by weight). Even the value of goldwas expressed in terms of the more commonmetal, silver. In terms of relative value, firstcame gold (eight to 15 times more valuable thansilver by weight); then silver; next lead; thencopper; and finally iron, which became a com-mon metal only in the first millennium B.C.E..

WEIGHTS ANDMEASURES

Commercial exchange necessitated uniformlyaccepted weights and measures. In all likeli-hood, such standards grew up informally insociety’s earliest days until centuries of usageand tradition fixed their meaning and value.Yet, even then, standards might vary from city-state to city-state. The rise of civilization andbureaucracy led to standardization, while theexpansion of empire imposed uniformity overlarger and larger geographical areas.

Ancient standards for weights and mea-sures can be reconstructed with some degreeof accuracy from surviving weights and com-mercial containers; measuring marks; deduc-tions about basic units of measurementderived from the proportions of manufacturedobjects; and especially economic records,including private contracts and referencesfound in law codes.

Babylonian and Assyrian weights and mea-sures reveal their Sumerian origin in the non-Semitic, Sumerian names they bore and in theSumerian counting system they embodied. TheSumerian mathematical system was a hybrid of asexagesimal system (in which the basic number is6 and multiples of 6) and a decimal system (basedon the number 10 and its multiples). Like somany other things in Mesopotamian culture,counting owed its origins to the builders of theland’s first civilization, the Sumerians. InMesopotamia’s system of linear measurement wecan also see the operation of a universal humanscale in which the joint of a finger or the lengthof a forearm serves as a basic unit.

Listed below are the Akkadian names andapproximate values of Mesopotamian weightsand measures along with their original Sumer-ian designations, the meanings of their names(where known), and their approximate valuesin today’s terms.

Table of Weights1 she (Sum. se, “grain”) = 1⁄600 oz.1 shiklu (Sum. gin; “shekel”) = 180 she = 3⁄10 oz.1 manû (Sum. ma-na; “mina”) = 60 shiklu = 18 oz.1 biltu (Sum. gu; “talent”) = 60 manû = 67 lb.

By Neo-Babylonian times, the shiklu, or“shekel,” took the place of the she as the basicunit of weight. At 3⁄10 of an ounce, a shekel ofsilver was approximately the weight of a U.S.quarter. The survival of the Sumerian sexagesi-mal system is evident in the multiples of 60 thatfunction in the above table. Also, two of thefour Akkadian names echo Sumerian ones.

Table of Lengths1 ubanu (Sum. shu-si; “finger”) = 2⁄3 inch1 ammatu (Sum. kush; “elbow” or “cubit”) =

24 ubanu = 151⁄2 inches1 kanu (Sum. gi; “reed” or “cane”) = 6 ammatu

= 7′101⁄2′′1 gar (Sum. gar-(du)) = 12 ammatu = 15′9′′


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1 ashlu (Sum. esh; “line”) = 10 gar = 1571⁄2′, or521⁄2 yds.

1 beru (Sum. danna; “league”) = 1800 gar-(du) =51⁄4 miles

The Sumerian kush equaled 30, rather than 24,ubanu. Again, the multiples reveal the influenceof the Sumerian sexigesimal system and, to alesser extent, a decimal system. ReplacingSumerian etymologies are Akkadian terms basedon standards of measurement from the naturalworld the Babylonians knew: the length of a fin-ger joint, the length of the forearm, and theheight of a tall reed. One of the most commonmeasures of length was the second, the so-calledcubit, the distance from the elbow to the tip ofthe middle finger. Obviously, when purchasingrope or cloth, it would have been advantageousto buy it from a merchant with long arms!

Table of Area1musaru (Sum. sar; “garden”) = 1 sq. gar = 271⁄2

sq. yds.1 iku (Sum. iku; “field”) = 100 musaru = 5⁄6 acre1 buru (Sum. bur) = 18 iku = 15 acres1 shar = 1,080 iku = 251⁄3 sq. miles

The Sumerians, as the first civilized people towork the land, passed on their terminology forland measurement to the later civilizations ofMesopotamia. The sexigesimal and decimalsystems are again evident. Areas of land werealso calculated by the amount of grain requiredto sow them: hence the terms pi and imêrubelow, originally used to measure volumes,were also applied to measuring land.

Table of Volumes1 Sumerian gin = 2⁄5 oz.1 sila or qa (Sum. sila) = 60 gin = 11⁄2 pints1 massiktu or pi = 60 sila or qa = 11 gallons or

11⁄3 bushels1 imêru = 100 sila or qa = 181⁄3 gallons or 21⁄4

bushels1 qurru or gur (Sum. gur) = 180 sila or qa = 33

gallons or 41⁄10 bushels

Over the course of time, different values arecited for the sila and gur. Cuneiform tabletsinform us that a typical donkey-load of grainwas an imêru, or 21⁄4 bushels, a mathematicalfact that the poor donkey was oblivious to!

READING

Transportation by Water

Bass 1995: sea and river craft in the Near East;Beitzel 1992: travel and communication in OldTestament times; Casson 1994: ancient travel;Casson 1995: ancient ships and seamanship;Nemet-Nejat 1998: water transportation; Price1923: water transportation; Roaf 1990: modelsof boats; Wachsman 1998: seagoing ships.

Transportation by Land

Beitzel 1992: travel and communication in OldTestament times; Bulliet 1990: the camel andthe wheel; Crouwel and Littauer 1995: chariotsand the wheel; Crouwel and Littauer 1997, thewheel; Dorsey 1995: carts and roads; Littauerand Crouwel 1979: wheeled vehicles and rid-den animals; Meadow and Uerpmann 1986,1991, Wapnish and Hesse 1995, 1997: equids;Meier 1988: the messenger in the ancientSemitic world; Nemet-Nejat 1998: land trans-portation; Piggott 1983: earliest wheeled trans-port; Wapnish 1995, 1997: camels.

Trade

Astour 1995: overland trade routes; Contenau1954: trade; Crawford 1973: invisible exports;Groom 1981: frankincense and myrrh; Hawkins


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1977: trade in the Near East; Joannès 1995:commerce and banking; Knapp 1991: spice,drugs, grain, and grog; Leemans 1960: mer-chants and foreign trade; MacDonald 1997:trade routes and goods; Moore and Lewis1999: the birth of the multinational; Nemet-Nejat 1998: domestic economy and foreigntrade; Polanyi 1957: trade and markets in earlyempires; Potts 1995: foreign trade; Snell 1995:exchange and coinage; Zaccagnini 1977: mer-chants at Nuzu.

Weights and Measures

Contenau 1954: Babylonian and Assyrianweights and measures; Hoyrup 1994: measure,number, and weight; Kramer, 1963: Sumerianmeasures; Powell 1981: money prior tocoinage; Powell 1992: overview of weights andmeasures in the ancient Near East; Powell,1995: sources and methods for reconstructingancient measuring systems.

MILITARY AFFAIRS

10

THE INFLUENCEOF GEOGRAPHY

The geography of Mesopotamia encouragedwar.

Mesopotamia is geographically defined by itsmountains in the north, its alluvial plains in thesouth, and the rivers that connect them. Theexistence of not one but two major river valleyspromoted the development of multiple settle-ments; the fertility of the valleys generatedwealth; wealth, in turn, incited competition andgreed; and the flatness of the plains made indi-vidual communities vulnerable to attack. Thenet effect in the south was a coalescence ofpower through imperialism: Akkad absorbedSumer, and Babylon absorbed both. Eventually,mountainous Assyria in the north—which hadalways been topographically separate from thesouth and, because of its terrain, more defensi-ble—marched upon the south and conquered it,and then went on to build an even wider empire.To life in Mesopotamia, therefore, warfare was anatural condition.

In Egypt, by contrast, the story was very dif-ferent. There, there was one river, not two. Thefertile singularity of the Nile and the forbiddingdeserts to its east and west promoted solidarityamong the separate communities that grew upalong the river’s narrow banks. Conflict did exist:between the kingdom of the river valley to thesouth (Upper Egypt) and the kingdom of thedelta to the north (Lower Egypt). But once theking of the south, Narmer, conquered the king-dom of the north around 3000 B.C.E., Egypt wasunited and would remain so, free for most of itshistory from internal war and the threat ofexternal invasion.

The only similarity between the militaryhistories of the two countries was that con-quest followed the flow of water: in Egypt

from south to north and in Mesopotamia fromnorth to south.

EVIDENCE

While the goal of war is victory, its instrumentis destruction. The physical effect of war, then,is to obliterate the factual proof of its very exis-tence except through the survival of muteruins. It is in its emotional aftermath that war isbest remembered: in the celebratory propa-ganda of the winners and in the traumaticmemories of the losers. But each of these—whether expressed in art or literature—isintrinsically subjective and prone to exaggera-tion. Yet if these are our main testimonies wemust accordingly hear them out, measuringtheir veracity always against the objectivebones and stones that archaeology can raisefrom the ground. At the same time, in assessingwar, we must also be attuned to the silence andto the void that are war’s truest fruits.

FORTIFICATIONS

Ancient warfare was essentially horizontal.Only in modern times with the advent of theairplane, bombs, and missiles, has attackbecome largely vertical. Consequently, ancientdefenses were defenses against horizontalassault. Though they would be ineffectiveagainst today’s aerial attack, the stout walls ofan ancient city were a powerful deterrentagainst capture by its adversaries.

Because the earliest kingdoms of Mesopo-tamia were city-states, all power and legitimacywas concentrated in the fortified city; with itscapture, the kingdom fell. Even when later


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Mesopotamian states grew to the size ofempires, the capital city remained the primetarget of the enemy.

Because of the scarcity of building stone inthe southern part of the country, city walls weremade out of brick, especially baked, or burnt,brick for greater hardness and durability. Out-side this wall might be a moat fed by river water;inside might be a second, or inner security wallguarding the king’s palace. According to A. LeoOppenheim “The walls of the cities in theancient Near East . . . proclaimed the impor-tance and might of the city.” (Oppenheim 1977:128). The strategic effect of the city walls wasamplified by the height of the city above the sur-rounding plain. In the main, the verticality ofthe city was the product of continuous habita-tion at the same site for centuries. As housesmade of sun-dried brick collapsed or were aban-

doned, newer structures were built over theirleveled remains. To keep pace with their rise,streets were resurfaced and rose as well. Thisprocess, carried out for a millennium or more,explains the abandoned mounds, or stratified“tells,” that dot the landscape of Iraq today.

WEAPONS ANDEQUIPMENT

Throughout the ancient Near East, the mostcommon offensive weapon was the bow and

M I L I T A R Y A F F A I R S

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10.2 This relief depicts some of the equipmentcarried by Assyrian troops: swords, a spear, a shield,arrows in a quiver, and a bow. (Rogers, A Historyof Babylonia and Assyria, 1915)

10.1 An artist’s reconstruction of the metropolisof Babylon as it would have looked around 600B.C.E. (Oriental Institute, University of Chicago)

arrow; the most common defensive armor, thehelmet and shield. Other frequently usedweapons were spears (for thrusting), javelins(for throwing), maces with stone heads, battle-axes with metal blades, and daggers. Surpris-ingly, the straight-bladed sword was rarely usedin Mesopotamia before the first millenniumB.C.E. Instead, for slashing, swords with sickle-shaped blades were preferred. Additionalweapons included slingshots (with an effectiverange of over 300 feet) and mundane but effec-tive digging tools for burrowing through orunder enemy walls.

Soldiers wore helmets (first of relativelyineffective felt or leather, later of hammeredmetal), laced boots, and—in Sumer—a cloak oflinen or leather to which metal discs were sewnfor armored protection. By Assyrian times,

select troops were outfitted with body armormade of hundreds of overlapping metal scalesthat could flex and lend mobility in combat.

Offensive and defensive equipment evolvedreciprocally and supported an ongoing armsrace: developments in weaponry led to counter-measures in armor, and innovations in armorinspired further advances in weaponry. Theintroduction of the metal helmet, for example,led to the introduction of a battle-axe with a headlike an adze to pierce the helmet’s metal shell.

The most dramatic advance in Near Easternweaponry occurred in Mesopotamia during thesecond half of the third millennium B.C.E.: theintroduction of the composite bow. Unlike asimple bow carved from a single piece of wood,the composite bow consisted of multiple layersof material—wood, bone, and sinew—that


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10.3 Armed Assyrian soldiers. The two on the left hold spears and shields. One shield has already stoppedtwo arrows fired by the enemy. The spearmen crouch to allow an archer behind them to fire. Assisting thearcher is another spearman who holds a tall shield designed to protect the archer from enemy missiles.(Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, 1849)

were glued together. The composite nature ofthe bow increased its tensile strength, whichwas sometimes further enhanced by bondingtogether wood from different types of trees.The greater tensile strength of the bowincreased the velocity and distance of thearrows it fired. With an accurate range of 300to 400 feet (and a maximum range double that),the composite bow enabled archers to striketheir targets while they themselves were stilloutside the range of their enemy’s missiles. It isjust such a weapon that may have allowed thearmy of Akkad to triumph over its otherwisewell-equipped Sumerian adversaries. Accord-ing to military historian Yigael Yadin: “theinvention of the composite bow with its com-paratively long range was as revolutionary, inits day, and brought comparable results as thediscovery of gunpowder thousands of yearslater” (Yadin 1963: 48).

The materials out of which military equip-ment was constructed account in large part forits survival archaeologically. While perishablewood, linen, and leather disintegrated, thebronze and iron of arrowheads, spearpoints, axe-blades, and armor endured. Yet even when thetools of war decomposed, their shapes and usespersisted in works of art that depicted ancientcombat. Notable among such artworks are thevictory monuments of Sumer and the battlescenes on the sculpted palace walls of Assyria.

THE ORGANIZATIONOF THE ARMY

Begun as citizen militias, the armies of Meso-potamia eventually became large aggregationsof trained professional soldiers with specializedskills and functions in battle. The expansionand professionalization of Mesopotamia’s fight-

ing forces went hand in hand with the growthof imperialism. The Sumerian army numberedits troops in the thousands, the Assyrian in thetens of thousands, and the Persian in the hun-dreds of thousands.

In the third millennium B.C.E., Sargon ofAkkad became the first ruler in history to create astanding army. Shulgi, his successor, became thefirst to form specialized military units.

CommandLeading the Mesopotamian army in all periodswas the king himself or his military surrogates,accompanied by the invisible protective pres-ence of one or more state gods.

In its developed state, the Mesopotamianarmy consisted of both heavily armed assaulttroops and lightly armed auxiliaries deployedfor tactical maneuvers. Specialists includedarchers (at times transported by chariot), sap-pers (to undermine enemy fortifications), andengineers (for the construction of militarybridges and roads, and for building and super-vising the operation of siege equipment). Expe-ditions also employed spies for reconnaissanceand chaplains whose duty it was to sacrifice ani-mals and inspect their entrails to determine if agiven course of military action was divinelyfavored. Mobile units included chariots and, ata much later date, cavalry.

ChariotsAccording to Yigael Yadin, the “invention anddevelopment of the chariot was the most sig-nificant contribution to the art of warfare inthe third millennium” (Yadin 1963: 36). Char-iots were an innovation of the Sumerians who,in the absence of the horse, employed adonkey-like animal (perhaps the onager, orwild ass) for power. Though two-wheeled


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chariots were used for transporting messen-gers with military intelligence or orders, theSumerian war chariot was a heavy four-wheeled cart that carried a driver and a spear-man. As a vehicle it was not easy to maneuverbecause the solid wheels were originally fixedto the axles and the front axle could not swivelduring turns. Because of its clumsiness andthe relative slowness of the draught animalsthat hauled it, the Sumerian battle-wagon wasprobably reserved for breaking up enemy for-mations in coordination with an infantrycharge. Conceivably, it could also have beenused for a kamikaze-style attack on the enemycommander in chief.

With the introduction of the horse from cen-tral Asia in the second millennium B.C.E., thechariot became a swift-moving two-wheeled

mobile firing platform that carried a driver, anarcher with spare quivers, and a shield-bearer toprotect the rest of the crew. Centuries later, thePersians added to the deadliness of the Babylon-ian and Assyrian chariot by attaching scythe-likeblades to the rims of the wheels to chop upenemy troops during a charge.

Cavalry

Because saddles and stirrups were unknown, itwas extremely difficult for a rider to shootarrows and control his mount at the same time.As a result, cavalry played a minor role in NearEastern warfare until the first millenniumB.C.E., when it was developed as a weapon bythe Assyrians.


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10.4 A trio of Assyrian soldiers in a chariot. One drives, the second shoots arrows, and the third wields ashield for their protection. (Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, 1849)

Logistical SupportLike every fighting force, the ancientMesopotamian army traveled on its stomach,and required food supplies, cooks, and othertypes of logistical support.

SIEGE WARFARE

Siege warfare was raised to the level of an artby the Babylonians and Assyrians.

In addition to corps of sappers, their armiesattacked walls with battering rams made ofstout poles sheathed and capped in metal.Hung within wheeled and armored vehiclesthat were pushed by soldiers hidden inside forprotection, rams fitted with pointed headspierced city gates or penetrated walls at theirbase by prying building blocks apart. Ramswere also pushed up specially constructed

earthen ramps (limed or planked for traction)in order to pound the walls’ thinner and there-fore more vulnerable upper sections.

Meanwhile, scaling ladders were used forvertical assault. While the defenders withinhastily braced the base of their walls with pilesof earth and rubble and fired arrows, hurledstones, and poured flaming oil on the enemybelow, the attackers advanced under the coverof leather shields. Portable siege towersenabled archers to focus their fire at thedefenders at precisely those strategic points inthe walls where sappers, battering rams, andground forces were directing their energy.

During the Hellenistic period, siege technol-ogy in the Near East progressed even further inthe hands of the Greeks and Romans, who intro-duced artillery-style crossbows and torsion cata-pults of various types that mechanically launchedclusters of arrows, heaps of stones, and burningoil or naphtha at their hapless targets.

PSYCHOLOGICALWARFARE

The Assyrians in particular were adept at psy-chological warfare.

When Sennacherib was trying to captureJerusalem, his representative addressed theofficials of the city in Assyrian, urging them tosurrender in the face of Assyria’s superiormight. But when the officials refused, theAssyrian representative turned and shouted tothe defenders on the walls, telling themdirectly in Hebrew what he knew their ownleaders would never report. The point of thestratagem, of course, was to incite rebellion.

In conquering a territory, the Assyrianswould frequently target small cities that couldbe easily captured. After achieving their military


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10.5 As Assyrian archers fire on a besieged cityand a mobile battering ram does its work, impaledcaptives hang lifelessly. (Layard, Nineveh and ItsRemains, 1849)

objective, they would then proceed to loot andtorch the houses, rape the women, burn thechildren alive, and kill or mutilate the men.The bodies or heads of their victims would beimpaled on stakes erected atop the city walls, ortheir severed hands, noses, lower lips, or skullswould be heaped up in piles to demonstrate toothers the price of resistance to Assyrian rule.Alternately, their corpses might be cut up intosmall pieces and fed to dogs, pigs, and vultures.Instead of butchering captives, the Assyrianswould sometimes merely blind them and setthem free so they could testify to the horrorsthey had last seen with their eyes.

Prisoners of war were often used by theAssyrians for forced labor. Beginning in the 13thcentury B.C.E., Assyria practiced the deportationof conquered peoples to prevent their insurrec-tion in the future; by the ninth century B.C.E.,mass deportation had attained the status of pol-icy. The most famous such act was committednot by the Assyrians but by the Babylonians inthe sixth century B.C.E., when king Nebuchad-nezzar captured Jerusalem, destroyed its tem-ple, and marched its rulers and people toBabylon in what became known as the “Baby-lonian Captivity.”

THE ART OF WAR

Warfare appears as a theme in the art ofMesopotamia, where it serves as a visual cele-bration of victory. As would be expected, suchworks of art were commissioned by the victorsrather than the vanquished and consequentlyglorify the disciplined but brutal use of force toachieve political and economic ends.

From the world of the Sumerians come twoparticularly notable examples, both from themiddle of the third millennium B.C.E.: the RoyalStandard of Ur and the Stele of the Vultures.

The Royal Standard depicts a successfulmilitary campaign through the art of mosaic.On one side are scenes of battle: four-wheeledchariots with driver and spearman on boardtraverse a battlefield at increasing speed,rolling over the corpses of the enemy; later,infantrymen in cloaks advance and herd nakedand bound prisoners of war in procession as thevictorious king looks on. The opposite side ofthe Standard shows a victory banquet inprogress as the spoils of war, chiefly livestock,are paraded past the king and his counselors,who drink beer and joyfully listen to music.

Only four fragments of the stone Stele ofthe Vultures survive. Together they commem-orate in sculpture the triumph of a ruler ofLagash over the rival city-state of Umma. Thelargest fragment portrays the king of Lagashleading his forces into battle (See figure 7.3,page 219). Soldiers march with spears heldhigh or move forward in tight formation withshields interlocked. The other fragmentsshow the enemy falling in heaps before thearmy’s onslaught. Vultures (from which thestele gets its name) fly by clutching in theirtalons the severed heads of executed prison-ers. In an inscription, the humbled king ofUmma vows never again to invade Lagash’sborders.


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10.6 At the right, scribes tally the severed headsof the enemy. (Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains,1849)


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10.7 Discovered in the remains of Ur, the “Royal Standard” on one side depicts Ur’s victorious army,composed of infantry and a corps of chariots. Near the center of the topmost register, prisoners of war areparaded before Ur’s leader. (The British Museum)

10.8 On the opposite side, the Royal Standard of Ur shows the fruits of victory. As enemy livestock arebrought into the city, its leaders (at the top) take part in a victory celebration, drinking beer and listening tomusic. (The British Museum)

To judge by the archaeological evidence,however, no people celebrated war more thanthe Assyrians. Though the plentiful evidencemay simply be a result of sculptable stone beingmore available in the north, its extent also sug-gests that the Assyrians delighted in reflectingon their conquests.

Sculptural reliefs from Sennacherib’s palaceat Nineveh, for example, present panoramic pic-tures of siege operations conducted againstenemy cities. As battering rams move into posi-tion, Assyrian archers and slingers fire their mis-siles. Meanwhile, defenders hurl blazing torchesfrom the battlements, only to be shot and thentumble from their heights. All that is missingfrom these graphic carvings are the sounds ofbattle: the rumble of siege engines, the whiz ofarrows, and the screams of the wounded. Buteven in silence such reliefs would cause theAssyrian king to swell with pride as he surveyedhis palace walls and cause visiting dignitaries to

tremble at the prospect of Assyrian mightturned against them.

ANCIENTMONUMENTSAND MODERNWARFARE

War can imperil not only the cities of the livingbut also the ghost towns of the dead.

In 1991 during the Persian Gulf War, themonuments of Mesopotamia were menacedby aerial bombardment because of the prox-imity of archaeological sites to strategic tar-


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10.9 The king of Assyria returns home from battle triumphant, riding in a chariot, his head covered by aparasol. In the foreground flows the fish-filled Tigris; in the background grow palm trees laden with dates.(Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, 1849)

gets. The environs of ancient Ur, for example,served as a base for Iraqi planes while its zig-gurat became a platform for anti-aircraftguns. Another anti-aircraft battery stood atopTell Kuyunjik, ancient Babylon’s main mound.Meanwhile, an air defense command centerwas moved to Nineveh, the ruined capital ofthe Assyrian Empire, from the modern city ofMosul. Indiscriminate bombing of these sitescould have led to the wholesale destruction ofhistoric remains. Indeed, the placement ofmilitary assets was likely designed to inhibitjust such attacks.

Except for four bomb craters in its sacredprecinct and bullet holes in the southeast faceof its ziggurat, Ur escaped mostly unscathed.Elsewhere, the vibration from bomb blastsshook bricks loose from Ctesiphon’s soaringarch (close to Iraq’s largest bioweapons plantand a nuclear research facility) and cracked thewalls of Nimrud’s Northwest Palace.

At the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, portableantiquities were packed up and transported toprovincial museums for safekeeping, but largermonuments—including colossal bulls fromKhorsabad and a Sumerian mosaic wall—hadto be left behind. Located next door to SaddamHussein’s presidential palace and the studios ofBaghdad TV, the museum fortunately sufferedonly superficial damage.

In the chaos of war, outlying museums werereportedly attacked and looted by Kurdish andShiite rebels. The Iraqi authorities, for theirpart, had already methodically looted theKuwaiti National Museum before torching it.The illegal antiquities market may have bene-fited from such thefts.

Far more treasures, however, could not havebeen destroyed or stolen. They still lie securelyburied beneath Iraq’s soil—30, 40, or 50 feetdeep in thousands of undiscovered cities andtowns—where they have slept for millenniasafe from the violence of a later age.

READING

The Influence of Geography

Hughes 1975: the physical environment ofMesopotamia.

Evidence

Editors of Time-Life Books 1993: illustra-tions of weaponry; Parrot 1961: Assyrian art;Pritchard 1969: texts.

Fortifications

Damerji 1992, Herzog 1997, Mazar 1995: for-tifications; Yadin 1963: the art of warfare.

Weapons and Equipment

Boudet 1966: the ancient art of warfare;Chapman 1997: weapons and warfare; Gonen1975: weapons of the ancient world; Hackett1990: ancient warfare; Pfeiffer 1966: arms andweapons.

The Organization of the Army

Cook 1983: military communications; Dalley1996: military organization; Henshaw 1969:soldiers; Kendall 1974: warfare and militarymatters in the Nuzu tablets; Sasson 1969: mili-tary establishments at Mari.


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Siege Warfare

Editors of Time-Life Books 1995: illustrations;Hornblower and Spawforth 1996: artillery andsiegecraft among the Greeks and Romans.

Psychological Warfare

Gelb 1973: prisoners of war; Nemet-Nejat1998 (including notes): techniques and sav-agery; Oded 1979: mass deportations.

The Art of War

Editors of Time-Life Books 1993, Winter 1985:Stele of the Vultures; Moorey 1982: Royal Stan-dard of Ur; Parrot 1961: Assyrian sculpture.

Ancient Monuments and Modern Warfare

Zimansky and Stone 1992: reports of wardamage.

EVERYDAY LIFE

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WORK

Because ancient Mesopotamia was fundamen-tally an agrarian society, the principal occupa-tions were growing crops and raising livestock.

The Rise of Specialization

Because of the industriousness of the peopleand the fertility of the land, food surplusessoon arose. Such surpluses meant that noteveryone needed to be self-sufficient, for any-one could now eat who had the means to barterfood from those who produced it. As a result, aspecialization of labor developed by whichmany traded the goods they made or the ser-vices they provided for the food and othercommodities they desired.

Types of Work

With increasing specialization, a variety ofoccupations took shape, many of whichreflected the growing complexity and sophisti-cation of society.

Supplying the basic needs of domestic lifewere potters, weavers of cloth and baskets,leather workers and shoemakers, metalworkers(working copper and bronze and, later, iron),millers and brewers, and fishermen and boat-men. Manufacturing the material refinementsof life were perfumers and confectioners as wellas artisans like jewelers (goldsmiths and silver-smiths) and carvers of that omnipresent markerof personal identity, the cylinder seal. Andtending to the needs of body and mind weredoctors, scribes, and teachers.

While those who practiced crafts usuallysold their handiwork themselves, there were

busy vendors and peddlers who sold commodi-ties like salt and spices and sesame seed oil, andmerchants who engaged in trade with distantcities and lands. Meanwhile in the streets, tav-ernkeepers and prostitutes, “the world’s oldestprofession,” plied their trade.

While canal diggers kept the river waterflowing to thirsty fields, others—architects andengineers, bricklayers and carpenters, sculptorsand painters—applied their skills to buildingmonumental works upon the urban landscape.

At the head of society were the kings andpriests served by the populous staff of palaceand temple. With the institution of standingarmies and the spread of imperialism, militaryofficers and professional soldiers took theirplace in Mesopotamia’s expanding and diverseworkforce.

SLAVERY

One of the early effects of civilization’s expan-sion was the dehumanization of its members.

Causes of Slavery

With the rise of imperialism, prisoners of warbecame the slaves of their conquerors. Thewholesale use of captives for forced laborreached its height under the Assyrian con-queror-kings, but its origins date back to atleast the third millennium B.C.E. Thus theSumerian ideogram for female slave is com-posed of two signs: one for woman, and theother for mountains—signifying the march ofSumer’s armies beyond the river valleys andplains, and the subjugation of upland peoples.

Another explanation for ancient slaverybesides conquest was financial desperation, forwhen families were hungry or in debt they


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often chose enslavement as the means of theireconomic salvation. An individual might sellhimself into slavery, or sell his wife or children.Indeed, one of the most poignant testimoniesto slavery is the clay impression of a child’s footdating to about 1200 B.C.E. Across the foot-print runs a notation in cuneiform accompa-nied by the imprint of a seal—the bill of salefor an ancient child.

The Slave as PropertyTo be a slave was to be property. If a slave is hurtby someone, says Hammurabi’s Code, it is theslaveowner not the slave who is to be compen-sated. Like property, a slave was marked with hisowner’s name: a brand on the hand. Should aslave escape and be caught, the punishment wassevere; should someone help a slave escape, thepunishment would be death for the abettor. If abarber shaved off the lock of hair that was themark of a slave, the barber’s hand could be cutoff and the man who hired him impaled in hisown doorway as a warning to others.

EmploymentMost often, slaves were used for manual laborin households, but some served in temples asaids to priests. In Babylonia in the first millen-nium B.C.E., there may have been between twoand three slaves in the average private home; inAssyria, perhaps between three and four;though poorer people owned none, and richpeople more. Female slaves could serve a spe-cial purpose as their masters’ concubines.

Some masters apprenticed their slaves tolearn a trade or, if the slaves seemed clever,backed them financially in business. A Mesopo-tamian slave could even save money, rent prop-erty, and buy slaves of his own. But ultimatelyall his assets belonged to his master, who was

merely making a shrewd investment in his ownfuture. It is even questionable whether a slavecould use his earnings to buy back his freedom.

MARRIAGEAND FAMILY

The ancient Mesopotamians believed that thefamily was of central importance to the stabil-ity of society.

The Business of MarriageTHE LEGAL FRAMEWORK

The belief in the centrality of marriage isclearly expressed in the Babylonian Code ofHammurabi. Of its 282 statutes, almost one-fourth are devoted to family law. This focus onthe family is evident in even older Sumerianlaw codes, which influenced later Babylonianlegal thinking.

In the language of the Sumerians, the wordfor “love” was a compound verb that, in its lit-eral sense, meant “to measure the earth,” that is,“to mark off land.” To the Sumerians, then, theconcept of love was related to the concept ofpossession and property. The Babylonians maywell have shared this view: second only to thestatutes of Hammurabi that deal with the familyare statutes that deal with real estate. And evenwithin the sphere of family law, questions con-cerning ownership and inheritance loom large.

Among both the Sumerians and the Babylo-nians (and very likely among the Assyrians aswell) marriage was fundamentally a businessarrangement designed to assure and perpetuatean orderly society. Though there was aninevitable emotional component to marriage,its prime intent in the eyes of the state was not

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companionship but procreation; not personalhappiness in the present but communal conti-nuity for the future.

Every marriage began with a legal contract.Indeed, as Mesopotamian law stated, if a manshould marry without having first drawn up andexecuted a marriage contract, the woman he“marries” would not be his wife. Though such acouple might cohabit, without the formality ofa contract neither they nor their offspringwould be protected by the state and its laws.

Every marriage began not with a joint deci-sion by two people in love but with a negotia-tion between the representatives of two families:between the prospective groom and hisprospective father-in-law, or between the fatherof the prospective groom and the father of thebride-to-be. Once again it was the family thatwas paramount rather than the individual: morethan uniting two individuals, the weddingwould unite two families. Indeed, before thewedding (as is still the custom in certain tradi-tional societies today) the bride and groommight not have known each other personally.The bride, in fact, could be considerablyyounger than her propertied husband-to-be;though betrothed, she might continue to livewith her own family until coming of age.

CEREMONIES

The negotiation would have concluded with anamicable agreement involving betrothal gifts anda promised exchange of property. The groomwould “purchase” his wife by paying a bride-price to her father; the father in turn wouldenrich his daughter with a dowry that might wellexceed the value that the groom had paid. Theterms of the prenuptial agreement would then berecorded in cuneiform by a scribe, “signed” byboth parties with cylinder seals, and presented toeach family for safekeeping.

Any debts either spouse had incurred beforetheir wedding were their separate responsibili-

ties, but debts incurred after their marriagewere looked upon as their joint duty to repay.

Regrettably, almost no information comesdown to us about the joyous celebration thatno doubt would have followed (and even possi-bly have preceded) the formal signing of themarriage contract. For an idea of the feast, therichness of which would have been proportion-ate to the wealth of the two families, readersare invited to close their eyes after reading thesections in this chapter entitled “Food andDrink” and “Music,” preferably after havingpartaken of authentic Mideastern food, drink,and music. (Even an authoritative text like thishas its limitations!)

The veil, so prominent a symbol of the mar-ried woman in conservative Islamic societiestoday (and, in its absence, of her emancipa-tion), owes its origin to ancient Mesopotamianpractice. As part of the wedding ceremony, it islikely that the groom removed it from the faceof his bride. Evidence suggests that marriedwomen wore it in public in ancient Assyria, butnot in earlier Babylonia. Its use even earlier inSumer is not attested.

THE SERIOUSNESS OF ENGAGEMENT

Engagements were serious business in Babylo-nia, especially for those who might have achange of heart. According to Hammurabi’sCode, a suitor who changed his mind wouldforfeit his entire deposit (betrothal gift) andbride-price. If the prospective father-in-lawchanged his mind, he had to pay the disap-pointed suitor double the bride-price. Fur-thermore, if a rival suitor persuaded thefather-in-law to change his mind, not only didthe father-in-law have to pay double, but therival wasn’t allowed to marry the daughter.These legal penalties acted as a potent deter-rent against changes of heart and a powerfulincentive for both responsible decision makingand orderly social behavior.


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BRIDAL AUCTIONS

In addition to the arranged marriagesdescribed above, the marrying off of eligibleyoung women may have been facilitated bypublic auction. The tradition is reported byHerodotus, who visited Mesopotamia in thefifth century B.C.E., as well as by other writerswho lived during the Augustan Age of Rome.Herodotus (History 1: 196) writes:

Of their customs . . . the following . . . is thewisest in my judgment. Once a year in each vil-lage the young women eligible to marry werecollected all together in one place; while themen stood around them in a circle. Then a her-ald called up the young women one by one, andoffered them for sale. He began with the mostbeautiful. When she was sold for a high price,he offered for sale the one who ranked next inbeauty. All of them were then sold to be wives.The richest of the Babylonians who wished towed bid against each other for the loveliestyoung women, while the commoners, whowere not concerned about beauty, received theuglier women along with monetary compensa-tion. When the herald had finished selling themost attractive women, he would call up theugliest one, or perhaps one who was crippled,and would auction her off to the man who waswilling to live with her for the least compensa-tion. And the man who offered to take thesmallest sum had her assigned to him. All themoney came from the payments made for thebeautiful women, and so those who wereattractive financed the sale of those who wereugly or crippled. No one was allowed to givehis daughter in marriage to the man of hischoice, nor might any one take away and livewith the young woman he had purchased with-out first having made a down payment; if, how-ever, the parties did not agree on finalarrangements, the money would be refunded.All who liked might come, even from distantvillages, and bid for the women. This was thebest of all their customs, but it has now falleninto disuse. (Herodotus 1942 [1858]: 105–6,trans. George Rawlinson, revised)

This tale reflects the Babylonian view, notedelsewhere in our discussion, that women wereproperty to be bought and sold by men. Thecommercial ingenuity behind the auction alsodemonstrates the business acumen for whichthe Mesopotamian merchant was renowned.

Sterility, Divorce, and Marital Infidelity

As to the marriage bond itself, it was generallymonogamous. But because the prime purposeof marriage was procreation, exceptions weremade when a wife could not bear children. Insuch a case, the husband would be permitted totake a secondary wife, or use a handmaid, forthe purpose of producing an heir. The hus-band, however, would be expected to honorand continue to support his wedded wife withinhis household. In the case of a wife’s presump-tive sterility, a husband would also have theoption of divorce. Should he elect that option,he would have not only to refund his wife’sdowry but pay her the full amount of her origi-nal marriage price, or, in lieu thereof, a sub-stantial monetary settlement dictated bylaw—a persuasive financial disincentive againstfiling for divorce. Though the position of awife was protected by the force of law, in casesof no progeny it was the woman, not the man,who was held responsible by society.

Besides sterility, Mesopotamian jurispru-dence recognized other grounds for divorce.Furthermore, proceedings could be initiated byeither husband or wife. If, for example, a wifewas abused by her husband and denied himconjugal rights, and he then denounced her inpublic, she could win a divorce and secure thereturn of her dowry. Significantly though, thedowry would be repaid not to her directly butto her father from whom it had originallycome. Two centuries before Hammurabi, the


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Sumerian code of Lipit-Ishtar had protectedwives by decreeing that a woman could not bearbitrarily divorced simply because her hus-band wanted to marry someone else; and theeven earlier code of Ur-Nammu had specifiedalimony payments a husband must make.

But the man-made laws of Mesopotamiadevoted more statutes to the sins of wives thanthey did to the faults of husbands. A woman,for example, who neglected her home andbelittled her husband deserved to be summarilydivorced without any financial settlementwhatsoever, not even travel expenses. The mostserious sin, however, was that of adultery. If awoman were accused of adultery by her hus-band, she could exonerate herself by swearingher fidelity before god; if accused by relativesor neighbors, she would be hurled into theriver and left to its mercies; if caught in the sex-ual act, she would be tied to her paramour anddrowned with him. If he wished, a forgivinghusband could spare her; but, if so, the statecould also then spare his wife’s lover as well.

Incest

Incest within a family also incurred severepenalties. The harshest punishment was for ason and a mother who Oedipally slepttogether: both would be burned alive. A similarpunishment was meted out to a father whoslept with a son’s virginal fiancée. But curiously,incest with one’s own daughter was punishableonly by exile from one’s city.

Prolonged Separation

Other statutes dealt with the issue of missinghusbands, especially soldiers who were cap-tured in battle or merchants who were heldhostage in foreign lands. If a husband had left

sufficient provisions for his wife and family, shewas obliged to remain faithful to him or sufferthe penalty of being drowned. If no provisionsremained or none had been left, she was free tolive with another man for the sake of her andher children’s welfare. But in the event of herhusband’s return, she had to return home withhim. Any children born to the man she hadbeen living with would then stay with that man.However, should a husband deliberately deserthis family and forsake his city, he could reclaimneither wife nor progeny.

Death and InheritanceIn the event a married woman died, the dowrywhich she had brought with her when she mar-ried was applied to guarantee the properupbringing of her children, both male andfemale. Indeed, the prime function of thedowry may have been to provide insurance ofthis very kind. Were a wife to die without bear-ing children, however, the dowry would revertto her father or brothers, who would then beresponsible for refunding the original bride-price to her widowed husband so that he mightmarry again.

Were a married man to die, his estate wouldbe passed on to his sons, the eldest son receivingthe largest share. In Sumerian times, instead ofdividing up a father’s estate, the eldest sonbecame the new head of the household underwhose roof all the other family members couldcontinue to live; in later times, however, theproperty (including land, buildings, furniture,slaves, and animals) was often divided.

Because Mesopotamian society was patriar-chal, it was the sons, not the daughters, whoinherited the estate. A father might make spe-cial bequests to his daughters or wife during hislifetime or in his will, but it was the sons (or, ifthey were dead, their sons) who were the auto-matic beneficiaries. These sons were in turn


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expected to look after their mother and unmar-ried sisters financially, including providingdowries for those of their sisters who were asyet unwed. Though a father could attempt todisinherit a son through his will, such actionrequired court approval after the presentationof compelling evidence. In addition, as long asshe did not remarry, a widow might continue torun her deceased husband’s business.

As early as the Sumerian code of Ur-Nammuthe law had extended special protection to wid-ows and orphans, who otherwise might havebeen at the mercy of selfish and avaricious rela-tives. The Code of Hammurabi exhibits partic-ular concern for the treatment children mightreceive at the hands of a hard-hearted step-father who had children of his own from a priormarriage. To insure the proper upbringing ofthe new stepchildren, the Babylonian courtdemanded a full accounting of their deceasedfather’s estate as well as guarantees of theirfuture financial security before granting theirwidowed mother permission to remarry.

The Emotional Dimensionof Marriage

While we have now examined most of the legalimplications of marriage Mesopotamian-style,we have yet to explore its emotional side. Evenif the marriage itself was in many ways a busi-ness arrangement, the partners in that businesswere human beings with feelings. The verysurvival of tons of legalistic clay tablets tends tobury and obscure the far more intangibleaspect of emotion. To do real justice, then, tolife in ancient Mesopotamia, we must learn toread between the cuneiform lines.

The physical act of love endures in worksof erotic art retrieved from bedrooms, tem-ples (for love was also divine), and tombs (forlove was never meant to die). On plaques,

women of Mesopotamia kneel, their thighsinvitingly outspread, or stand, proud in theirnakedness, lifting their breasts as once theydid for sculptors whose wet fingers caressedthe soft clay of figurines. On terra-cotta beds,lovers look into each other’s eyes, the woman’shand guiding penis to vagina, now the femaleon top, now the male.

Meanwhile, for those whose desire was unre-quited, an appropriate magic spell was available.Use it, an Asssyrian sorcerer promised, and “shewill speak to you the next time you see her and,powerless to resist your charms, will make love.”


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11.1 On this baked-clay model of a bed dating tothe first half of the second millennium B.C.E., acouple sexually embraces. In addition to portrayingan everyday act, the plaque may also have beensymbolic in a religious sense, depicting a divine rit-ual of “sacred marriage” that insured the fertilityof the land. (The British Museum)

Or, with the help of another charm, “she willnot keep you from her bed.”

All the while, an elderly Sumerian couple sitside by side fused by sculpture into a singlepiece of gypsum rock: his right arm wrappedaround her shoulder, his left hand tenderlyclasping her right, their large eyes lookingstraight ahead to the future, their aged heartsremembering the past. “Though she hasalready borne me eight sons,” the Sumeriancouplet sings, “she is still ready to make love.”

“A man’s wife,” declares a proverb, “is like acanteen in the desert.”

Marriage, though, is a human institution,and like every human institution has its down-side. Sumerian literature is replete with bits ofproverbial wisdom that show the misgivingsmen had about matrimony:

The heart of a bride is filled with joy;The heart of a groom with regret.

A marvelous idea: to marry;A more marvelous idea: to divorce.

The complaints of Sumerian men, however,could be even more direct:

My wife is down at the temple;My mother is down at the river;And here I am starving!

Whoever hasn’t supported a wife and a childDoesn’t know what it’s like to haveA leash through his nose!

Sacred Marriage

Every year, however, the institution of mar-riage was celebrated amid great festivity. At thebeginning of the New Year, it is believed, theking mated with a priestess who symbolized theincarnation of Inanna or Ishtar, the goddess ofsexuality and procreation. By this sacred wed-ding, the future fertility of the womb and thesoil was assured. In this rite the king played therole of the shepherd Dumuzi or Tammuz, thegreat goddess’s divine lover.

As crowds of couples gathered about thetemple and attended this rite, they would havereceived a spiritual confirmation of the cosmicrightness of the bond that connected them asman and woman, as husband and wife. Perhapsit is more than coincidental that the statue ofthe elderly couple we described was found inNippur amid the ruins of the goddess’s temple.


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11.2 This seated figure of a Sumerian husbandand wife dates to about 2700 B.C.E. and was foundin the city of Nippur at the temple of Inanna, god-dess of love. Both individuals stare ahead stiffly withwide-open eyes, like the subjects of turn-of-the-20th-century photographs. Affection is signified bythe husband’s right arm wrapped around his wife’sshoulders and by his left hand resting on her wrist.(Oriental Institute, University of Chicago)

BIRTH, DEATH, AND THE BELIEFIN AN AFTERLIFE

The Concept of Immortality

The ancient Egyptians fervently believed in asensuous afterlife where the pleasures of thislife would be eternally reexperienced in thenext. Their spiritual confidence was sustainedby the land in which they lived, a land whoseabundance was made possible by the river Nile.Every year in July, the waters of the Nile rosegently and predictably, depositing a rich layerof silt on the farmers’ fields, thereby renewingthe valley’s fertility. The benevolent depend-ability of the Nile coupled with the protectivedeserts on east and west that guarded Egyptfrom invasion encouraged its people to believethat beyond death’s door lay a sunny vista radi-ant with promise.

But Mesopotamia was a different kind ofland. Though it was watered by twin rivers, itsflatness and openness left it vulnerable to inva-sion and attack. The Tigris and Euphrates,moreover, were potentially violent rivers.When the winter snows melted, the riverscould flood suddenly, savagely uprootingeverything in their path. In a world whereeverything one had counted on could be sud-denly swept away by war or natural disaster, anoptimistic belief in the guaranteed happiness ofthe hereafter could hardly take root.

The certainty of death and the impossibilityof immortality are the central themes ofancient Mesopotamia’s greatest heroic tale, theEpic of Gilgamesh. In this story, the hero Gil-gamesh, crushed by the death of his best friend,searches for the secret of eternal life only tohave it snatched from his grasp. He learns that

Death cannot be seen— not its face, not its voice —until it shatters our livesleaving nothing behind.

Death is what the gods gave man;Life is what they kept for themselves.

Yet despite their innate pessimism, the peo-ple of Mesopotamia continued to hope that thesoul could somehow live on after death. Theirpessimism, however, tended to paint the land-scape of that afterworld in gloomy tones. AsGeorges Contenau has written:

In this region, illumined by no ray of light,wholly shrouded in dust, airless and lackingfood and drink, the only sustenance of thespirits of the dead was the funerary offerings.If no man remembered them, then theyreturned to earth to plague the living, subsist-ing as best they might on such miserablescraps of food as they could find in the gut-ters. (Contenau 1954: 300)

Dwelling in a dark underworld called “theland of no return,” the spirits of the dead hun-gered for the nourishment they had known inthis life. In a world that was neither heaven norhell but a realm of endless emptiness, the deadlonged for the food of remembrance.

Death and Burial

PREPARATIONS

When the hour of death neared for an adult,the ancient Mesopotamian would lie in bed toawait its coming in the company of lovedones, perhaps also with a priest in attendance.Beside the bed on the left sat an empty chairreserved for the spirit when it would riseinvisibly from the corpse. Beside the chair laythe first spiritual offerings: beer and flat breadto strengthen the soul for its long journey tothe underworld.


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When death finally came, the body wouldbe washed, anointed in perfumed oils, andclothed, and laid out with jewelry and otherfavorite possessions.

INTERMENT

Burial would be in a baked-clay coffin set in agrave or in a mud-brick family crypt con-structed beneath the house where the deceasedhad lived. A baby who had died might beburied in a large terra-cotta jar beneath thehome’s earthen floor; one such jar has beenfound shaped like a mother’s breast. By theirlocation the bodies of deceased relatives wouldremain close to their families and to thedomestic settings they had known in their life-times. In cities, large public cemeteries havealso been found.

Together with its possessions and offeringsof food and drink, the body would be laid in thegrave or crypt in a pose simulating the relaxedsleep from which its spirit would awaken, or ina fetal position foreshadowing its rebirth in thebeyond. In humble graves the body might lieupon or be wrapped in a simple reed mat. In aniche a clay lamp might burn to light the soul’spath through the darkness of the underworld.

Royal Tombs

For those of great social prominence andpower, a much more prominent burial sitewould be chosen and a far more ostentatiousfuneral held. This was especially true of roy-alty, at whose death the entire city or kingdomwould go into official mourning.

The most famous royal graves to be discov-ered in Mesopotamia are those of the Sumerianrulers buried at Ur around the middle of thethird millennium B.C.E. and the Assyrian royalsinterred in stone sarcophagi at their palace atAshur in the first millennium B.C.E. The royal


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11.3 This poignant photograph shows an infantburial at Tepe Gawra. Uncovered by the archaeolo-gist, the skeleton of the child rests in a cracked pot-tery bowl where its parents placed it thousands ofyears ago. (Estate of Cyrus H. Gordon)

11.4 An Iraqi child stands beside an ancient sar-cophagus that had just been excavated. ( Jastrow,Babylonia and Assyria, 1917)

graves at Ur are especially stunning because oftheir elaborate contents, which allow us toreconstruct the opulent lives of the dead.These contents, moreover, imply a level ofconfidence in a happy afterlife—at least for themighty—that may antedate the dark pessimismof later times.

Unearthed by Sir Leonard Woolley in the1920s, the royal cemetery at Ur contained thegraves of 16 individuals, most probably kingsand queens. The rulers were accompanied indeath by the bodies of their guardians and ser-vants who, by being buried with their masters,would live on to serve them in the next world.The poses of the servants and the absence ofvisible wounds point to the use of a sleeping

potion or gentle poison administrated as theystood in the tomb, awaiting their spiritualjourney.

BURIED TREASURE

These burials date to the middle of the thirdmillennium B.C.E., the age when Egypt’spharaohs built the pyramids at Giza. Just as thepyramids would be robbed, so were the gravesat Ur, violated by ancient thieves who brokeinto the tombs from above, sometimes in thecourse of digging later graves. Of the 16 tombs,only two survived intact. Yet even in the ran-sacked tombs evidence endures that illuminateslife in ancient Sumer.


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11.5 A re-creation of the burial ceremony at the funeral of one of Ur’s kings. In position are bodyguardsand charioteers, musicians and servants, all waiting for the sleeping potion that will help them travel withthe spirit of their dead king to the afterworld. (University of Pennsylvania Museum, Neg. # NC 35–8700;drawn by A. Forestier and originally published in The Illustrated London News, 1928)

In the tomb of a king, guarded by the skele-tons of spear-carrying sentries, lay the corpsesof nine women barren of their flesh but stilladorned with ornate headdresses. Goldenflower petals had once been poised over theirheads as golden beech-leaves and beads of lapislazuli and orange-red carnelian fringed theirforeheads. Large earrings of beaten gold in theshape of crescent moons had once hung besidetheir ears.

The remains of two ox-drawn four-wheeledwagons lay on the earthen ramp where thefuneral cortege had paused. The grain in thewood of the wheels was still impressed inthe earth along with the traces of beaded reinsand leather tires—the remains of the oldestwheeled vehicles in history ever found.

A queen’s grave had been prepared over thesite of her husband’s. Beside her grasping handlay a golden cup. A collar of variegated beads—gold, silver, lapis lazuli, carnelian, agate, andchalcedony—still hung from her neck. Nearher lay shells filled with green eye shadow.

To occupy her idle hours in eternity therewas the inlaid board and playing pieces of a royalparlor game like Parcheesi. While playing, shecould sip a refreshing drink from a golden straw,and listen to the strains of a lyre strummed byher court musician, whose body rested nearby.

In another tomb, Woolley uncovered theremains of 28 serving-women. Two skulls stillbore the traces of a purplish powder, silver chlo-ride, the remnants of the silver ribbons they hadonce worn on their hair over 4,000 years ago.

As he knelt beside another skeleton, Wool-ley detected a flat gray disc about three inchesacross lying beside the maidservant’s waist.Cleaning and inspecting it that night in hisexcavation headquarters, he realized what itwas. As he would later write:

It was the silver hair-ribbon, but it had neverbeen worn—carried apparently in thewoman’s pocket, it was just as she had taken itfrom her room, done up in a tight coil with

the ends brought over to prevent its comingundone; and since it formed thus a compara-tively solid mass of metal and had been pro-tected by the cloth of her dress, it was verywell preserved and even the delicate edges ofthe ribbon were sharply distinct. Why theowner had not put it on one could not say;perhaps she was late for the ceremony and hadnot time to dress properly. (Woolley 1955: 72)

Perhaps she still holds it in her hand as shefaithfully stands beside her queen in the land ofno return. Or perhaps now, since she has hadall eternity to catch her breath and fix her hair,she stands smiling with the ribbon finally andforever in place.

Birth

ANXIETY

If there is a theme that emerges from theMesopotamian literature of childhood, it isfear. Perhaps this is only to be expected in aland where the consciousness of adults seemsto have been so shadowed by pessimism. Ourimpression, of course, must be mollified bywhat we know has always been universallytrue of children, their joy in play, and by thetestimony of the toys they have left behind,but the fear is there nonetheless, at leastamong adults who are the ones who have leftus a record.

It begins in pregnancy with the litany ofprayers and incantations and the hanging ofamulets from the mother’s neck to ward off evilspirits, chiefly the dread goddess Lamashtu, whothreatens the expectant mother’s life, can causemiscarriage and crib death, and may even stealthe infant from its nurse. It continues in theprognoses of physicians who see evil omens atevery turn. And it progresses through labor.(Will the child be born dead? Will it live only tobecome the one out of two that finally die? Will


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it be born deformed and need to be drowned inthe river to avert evil? Will it be a girl that wemust let die because she is not a boy who couldsupport us when we grow old?) And it persistsafter delivery when lullabies are sung for fear thebaby’s crying will awake and anger the gods. Asthe incantation has it, a child is a ship that car-ries unknown cargo.

AN ANCIENT LULLABY

These sentiments are most poignantly revealedin a lullaby that survives in the tablets ofSumer. In fact, it is the oldest lullaby that existsin writing. In it a Sumerian mother tries to singher son to sleep even as she fears the sicknessthat now grips him. She promises to feed himspecial treats once he gets well: leaves of freshlettuce from her garden and sweet littlecheeses. She sees him when he is older, taking awife of his own, having a son to call his own.But her anxiety sweeps back, and in the future’sdarkness sees her baby already dead. Finally,hoping against hope, she prays for a guardianangel to watch over him in his sleep and bringhim happiness in life and success. “Oo-a a-oo-a,” she sings to comfort him. “Oo-a a-oo-a,”she sings to still her own heart.

HOMES

Materials and Construction

The domestic architecture of Mesopotamiagrew out of the soil upon which it stood.Unlike Egypt, Mesopotamia—especially in thesouth—was barren of stone that could be quar-ried for construction. Except for the date-palm, it was also poor in trees that could be cutdown for lumber. Instead, the people of theTigris and Euphrates turned to other natural

resources that lay abundantly at hand: themuddy clay of its riverbanks and the rushes andreeds that grew in their marshes. With them,the Mesopotamians created the world’s firstcolumns, arches, and roofed structures, as wellas the world’s first cities. Indeed, these samematerials were the very ones out of which theyinvented the earliest tools of writing.

BUNDLES OF REEDS

To build a simple house, tall marsh plantswould be uprooted, gathered together, and tiedinto tight bundles. After holes were dug in theground, the bundles of reeds would beinserted, one bundle per hole. After the holeswere filled in and firmly packed, pairs of bun-dles that faced each other would be bent overand tied together at the top, forming an arch-way. The remaining bundles would then bejoined together in similar fashion. If the holeswere dug in parallel rows, the archway wouldbe long and the house rectangular; if they weredug in a circle, the resulting house would beround. Reed mats would then be draped overthe top to cover the roof, or hung from a wall-opening to make a door. (See also DomesticArchitecture, chapter 6.)

BRICKS OF CLAY

Another, even more popular alternative was touse sun-dried brick. Clay from the riverbankswould be mixed with straw for reinforcementand packed into small brick-shaped woodenmolds, which would then be lifted off so themud bricks could dry on the ground in the hotsun. Because a hot sun was essential for brick-making, the first month of summer was dubbed“the month of bricks.”

Sun-dried brick was notoriously imperma-nent, especially as a consequence of yearlydownpours. The alternative, oven-baked brick,was expensive, however, because of the fuel andskilled labor required for its manufacture. As a


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result, it tended to be used for the houses ofkings and gods rather than the homes of ordi-nary people. Occasionally, though, it would beemployed as tiles for floors in place of plainbeaten earth, the usual surface families walkedon in their homes.

WALLS, WINDOWS, AND DOORS

Before the walls of a house were raised, theground at a building site would be leveled andbeaten flat; since no foundation was used, levelground was critical for structural stability. Thebricks would then be laid in rows with dilutedclay serving as mortar. The walls would bemade deliberately thick—sometimes as muchas eight feet thick—to keep out the day’s heat.Vertical channels might be left within the wallsto permit the drainage of rainwater from roof

to street. At the same time, horizontal ducts tothe interior might be incorporated to allow forthe circulation of air. These ducts would beblocked by perforated clay discs, with holes bigenough to let air pass through but smallenough to keep out rodents. Unfortunately, theoccasional serpent might wend its way in, aswell as other under-the-transom “guests,”seeking relief from the oppressive heat: ants,beetles, cockroaches, scorpions, and lizards.Windows were small and rare but, if used,would be fitted with a wooden grillwork. Thewalls’ exterior would be whitewashed—a fur-ther defense against radiant heat—and couldfeature a saw-toothed surface that in sunlightwould create a pleasing vertical pattern ofshadow and light. There would be only oneexterior door, its frame painted bright red tokeep out evil spirits.


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11.6 A native reed hut from Nuffar, Iraq, the site of ancient Nippur. (University of PennsylvaniaMuseum)

Plan and Furnishings

A comfortable home made of brick would fea-ture a central roofed courtyard around whichsmaller rooms would be grouped. In ancientBabylon, such a courtyard might have measuredsomething like 8 by 18 feet or as much as 17 by45 feet, giving the overall house plan a rectangu-lar shape. The roof (which was also the ceiling)would have been flat and constructed of palm-wood planks supporting palmleaves and rusheson top packed down with earth.

The kitchen could be a separate room, butoften it was incorporated into the courtyardwith an open brick hearth built against a wall.The kitchen’s equipment would have includedmortars for grinding spices, a stone handmillfor grinding grain, knives, and terra-cotta cups,bowls, pots, and platters, some with a naturalbuff color, others glazed in blue, white, or yel-low. There would be covered jars lined withbitumen to store food and semiporous jars tohold water and keep it cool by evaporation.Outside, depending on the locale, there mightbe a small garden and a livestock pen.

Other rooms, some of which would intercon-nect, would have included a living room, bed-rooms, a bathroom, and—in the case of thewell-to-do—servants’ quarters. Furniture wouldhave been minimal, consisting of built-inbenches of mud brick, chairs and low tablescarved from palmwood, and—for special com-fort—armchairs with curved backs woven ofplaited reeds. The rich would have enjoyed highwooden beds to sleep on; the poor would havemade do with reed mats, woolen throw rugs, orthin mattresses spread on the floor.

Lighting and Heating

In such homes made deliberately dark to keepout the heat of the day, artificial light wouldcome from clay lamps. These were small andshaped like slippers, with a narrow pinched endto hold the wick. While Mediterranean cul-tures used olive oil to fuel their lamps, the olivewas rare in Mesopotamia. Instead, sesame seedoil was used. Though the ancient Mesopotami-ans did know of crude oil (today’s major sourceof Middle Eastern wealth), petroleum was sel-dom used because it was hard to extract fromthe ground. For more light than small lampscould provide, torches were used, especially inlarge buildings like palaces.

When heat was needed, portable braziersholding palm-wood embers would usuallysuffice.

Sanitation

Separate rooms with toilets date back to the thirdmillennium B.C.E.. A tiled drain in the lowestpart of the floor would carry away waste andwastewater to a cesspool or, if a primitive sewersystem existed in a city, all the way to the river.

Garbage might be thrown into the streetsfor scavenging animals to dispose of or carried


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11.7 Cut-away view of a brick home as found inUr (after Sir Leonard Woolley).

to a communal dump at the edge of the villageor town.

Ruins and Resurrection

DECONSTRUCTION

Because of their fragile materials and theabsence of standards governing construction,ancient homes often collapsed. To insure pub-lic safety, Hammurabi imposed the deathpenalty on builders who were guilty of negli-gence in a homeowner’s death. Likewise, if ahomeowner’s son died in an accident due tofaulty construction, the Babylonian builder’sson would be executed by the state.

Despite these stern measures, archaeologistsremain indebted to the Mesopotamians for theimpermanence of what they built. The weaknessof walls led to the destruction of houses, as didthe risk of fire—always great when there areopen fires inside living quarters, when structureshave highly flammable ceilings and roofs, andwhen buildings are packed closely togetheralong alley-like streets. Because of the fragilenature of the original building materials, theeasiest way to rebuild involved leveling the looserubble and building on top of it, thereby bury-ing and preserving for all time broken artifactsand other fragments of everyday life.

GARBAGE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

In addition, the absence of systematic garbageremoval often dictated that refuse originallythrown on a floor would simply be covered up(when it became too unsightly) with a new layerof earth. Eventually, the floor level would riseso much that people would hit their heads onthe ceiling (!)—a persuasive reason to rebuild.Even throwing the garbage into the street on aregular basis, and repaving the street with freshdirt to cover it, resulted in street levels risinghigher than the front stoop—creating a mess

inside when it rained outside and the rainpoured in. Again, a reason to rebuild.

As a result of such events being repeated overcenturies, whole Near Eastern communitiesgrew not only horizontally but also vertically.Indeed, at a certain point the horizontal spreadof a city was inhibited by its steep outer edge.

EXCAVATING INFORMATION

The net effect of all this is what archaeologycalls “stratification,” the superimposition of lay-ers of occupational debris caused by continuoushabitation at a site. The compressed garbageactually represents the compressed pages of ahistory book because every layer contains evi-dence in minute detail of day-to-day existence asit was lived during a particular period of time.By peeling away the layers, or strata, one at atime, and by carefully reading their “words,” theskilled archaeologist can trace the course ofhuman activities over millennia, not by survey-ing the consciously posed monumental portraitsof the mighty but by examining the unpreten-tious minutiae of everyday life.

In Arabic, the raised ruins of a deserted cityare called a “tell.” But this Arabic word has a dualmeaning, for it is the tells of the Near East that“tell” us of a vast and vanished world, a worldthat (to paraphrase Ecclesiastes) once hummedwith life “before the silver cord was snapped, andthe golden bowl was crushed, and the pitcherwas shattered at the fountain, and the wheel fellsplit into the pit” (Ecclesiastes 12: 6).

CLOTHING

Invention and Symbolism

According to the Bible, the founders of thefashion industry were Adam and Eve. For when


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they ate the educational apple and for the firsttime recognized their nakedness, they set aboutsewing fig leaves together to hide the baretruth. If Sumer was the geographical inspira-tion for the Garden of Eden, as many believe,the world’s first clothes were labeled “made inMesopotamia.”

Of course, tailoring was more than just theworld’s first craft. It also symbolically markedthe distinction between technology and nature,between man and beast. Once Adam and Evewere garbed in knowledge, they were banishedfrom Eden’s naive simplicity. In effect, clothingwas the outer garment of humanity that sig-naled man was a creature apart.

This same theme appears in the Epic of Gil-gamesh in an episode that may well antedate thebiblical book of Genesis. There, a savagenamed Enkidu is tempted by a prostitute togive up the ways of the wild. After she has sexwith him, she clothes him and calls him a man.As a result, he is rejected by all the animals thathad formerly been his friends.

Early Textiles

Archaeologists confirm that textiles wereamong the first of human inventions. Plantfibers may have been twisted, sewn, and plaitedas far back as the Old Stone Age, some 25,000years ago.

Some 10,000 years ago in the ancient NearEast, New Stone Age farmers domesticatedsheep and goats for their wool and hair, andthey raised flax and cotton for yarn and thread.Wool seems to have been Mesopotamia’s mostcommon kind of cloth, along with linen, whichwas reserved for more expensive garments.Cotton wasn’t introduced until the days of theAssyrians, who imported the plant from Egyptand the Sudan around 700 B.C.E.; and silk, per-haps not until the days of the Romans, whoimported it from China.

Dyes

Though frequently employed with their nat-ural hues, fabrics could be enlivened with col-orful vegetable dyes. The most precious dye,however, a rich royal purple, came from ashellfish, the murex, which was harvested offthe Lebanese and Syrian coasts. Thanks to theancient Greeks who prized this dye, the land ofits origin came to be called Phoenicia, or “Pur-pleland,” from the Greek word for the colorpurple, phoinix.

Textile Production

Due to the abundance of raw materials, theindustriousness of workers, and the energy ofmerchants, textile manufacture became a majorindustry in Mesopotamia and a prime source ofits wealth. Rather than being based in factories,however, the manufacture of ancient textileswas most likely a cottage industry, but one con-ducted on a large scale. Though physical evi-dence is scant, looms and a spindle are depictedin surviving works of art.

Elusive Evidence

Though textiles are among the earliest ofancient products, they are also among the mostelusive to document. Because of their organicsubstance, they readily perish and thus vanishfrom the archaeological record. If we are thento attempt a reconstruction of ancient clothingand fashions, we will need to turn to moredurable materials like sculptured stone onwhich artists portrayed them. But even themost detailed of sculptures will leave us largelyin the dark about the color and feel of the fab-ric. Moreover, since such monumental art nor-mally commemorates only the rich and


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powerful, the clothing of the poor and humblewill continue to be invisible. Though the Ser-mon on the Mount declares that the meek willinherit the earth, archaeologically speakingthey usually inherit only the shroud ofanonymity.

The Testimony of Art

Notwithstanding all these limitations, then,what can we learn about the clothing of ancientMesopotamia?

THE SUMERIAN ELITE

As for the Sumerians, they stand before us asvotive figurines in wide-eyed silence, theirhands clasped reverentially below their hearts.The bearded men are dressed in long robesthat leave one shoulder bare, or are wrapped inbroadly pleated skirts of sheepskin or leather;the women are gowned in simple tunics thatfall almost to their ankles. On the inlaid RoyalStandard of Ur, the noblemen are clean-shavenwith shaven heads, and they wear belted skirts.The soldiers, for their part, are uniformed indistinctive hooded capes.

BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN ROYALTY

On the black Babylonian stele inscribed withHammurabi’s Code, the king stands attentivelybefore the god of the sun. Hammurabi wears along flowing robe, part of which he carriesdraped over his left arm. The god himself isseated in a gown that features a cascading skirtwith five overlapping and flounced layers.

Mounted on a fleet horse and pursuing hisquarry on a stone relief, the Assyrian kingAshurbanipal is decked out for the hunt in abelted tunic elaborately embroidered withflowers. Back in the garden of his palace,Queen Ashurharrat sits opposite him sharingwine while the two are fanned by servants and

entertained by a harpist. The queen wears anelaborate embroidered outfit with a shawl anddouble tunic fringed with tassels. The locks ofhair of both king and consort descend in tightornate curls, once lustrous with oil.

THE CLOTHES OF COMMONERS

Paraphrasing King Arthur in Lerner andLoewe’s Camelot, we might now pause to ask,“What did the simple folk wear?”

A tantalizing set of colorful clues comesnot from Mesopotamia itself but from theland of the Nile. Dating from about 1900B.C.E., the tomb of Khnumhotep at BeniHasan offers us a series of colorful wall paint-ings portraying a group of Semitic immigrantsto Egypt. A total of 37 individuals aredepicted, including men, women, and chil-dren along with the donkeys that carry theirbaggage. The sandaled men, dark-haired withpointed beards, wear fringed kilts; the women,with long dark hair falling over their shoul-ders, are dressed in shifts resplendent withpolka dots, geometric patterns, and variegatedstripes in assorted colors. Though the hiero-glyphic caption identifies their leader, Ibsha,as “the ruler of a foreign land,” their simplepossessions and their mode of transport sug-gest not a mighty potentate and his vassals buta tribal chieftain and his band.

Perhaps, then, this is how we might imaginethe everyday dress of the common people ofMesopotamia throughout the centuries: a plainshort skirt or kilt for men and a basic one-piecetunic for women, with some kind of wrap forcolder weather. One thing in certain: rapidchanges in fashion, designer labels, and mass-market merchandising were unknown to shop-pers along the Tigris and Euphrates.

Our understanding is further enhanced byan eyewitness account of what Babylonianslooked like in the fifth century B.C.E. Writingin the fifth century B.C.E., Herodotus (History1: 195) reported:


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The dress of the Babylonians is a linen tunicreaching to the feet, and above it another tunicmade in wool, besides which they have a shortwhite cloak thrown around them, and shoes ofa peculiar fashion . . . They have long hair, wearturbans on their heads, and anoint their wholebody with perfumes. Every one carries a seal,and a walking stick, carved at the top into theform of an apple, a rose, a lily, an eagle, orsomething similar; for it is not their habit touse a stick without an ornament. (Herodotus1942 [1858]: 105, trans. George Rawlinson)

COSMETICSAND PERFUME

The desire to enhance one’s natural beauty andallure through the use of cosmetics and per-fume is attested as far back as Sumerian times.

In Ur’s Royal Cemetery a number ofmakeup kits were found containing a varietyof pigments: white and black, yellow and red,and blue and green—all intended to help thedead look their best in the afterlife. Beforetraveling to the netherworld, we are told, thelove-goddess Inanna/Ishtar applied an eye-liner (or possibly eyeshadow) called “ComeHither.”

In Assyria and elsewhere, recipes existedfor making perfumes by steeping aromaticplants in water and blending their essencewith oil. A king of the Mitanni sent such per-fume as a gift to his daughter in Egypt aftershe became one of the pharaoh’s wives. And atMari, perfume-makers used the resins of fra-grant woods like cedar, cypress, juniper, myr-tle, and storax, some of which were probablyimported.

FOOD AND DRINK

Just as water was vital to the creation of organiclife on this planet, so was it vital to the birth ofcivilization. The first civilizations of the worldbegan in river valleys where abundant suppliesof water made it possible to grow sufficientcrops to support large populations. The world’sfirst cities began in Mesopotamia, an event thatcould not have taken place had it not been forlarge-scale agriculture and the plentiful waterupon which it depended.

Grain and Its By-Products

The staple crop of ancient farmers around theworld was always grain: wheat, barley, rice, orcorn. In Mesopotamia, the chief crop was bar-ley. Rice and corn were unknown, and wheat


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11.8 Two types of Assyrian sandals as depicted inpalace reliefs from Kalhu (Nimrud) and Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad). (Layard, Nineveh and ItsRemains, 1849)

flourished on a soil less saline than exists inmost of Mesopotamia. Thus barley, and thebread baked from its flour, became the staff oflife.

Mesopotamian bread was ordinarily coarse,flat, and unleavened, but a more expensivebread could be baked from finer flour. Pieces ofjust such a bread were, in fact, found in thetomb of Queen Puabi of Ur, stored there toprovide her spirit with sustenance in the after-life. Bread could also be enriched with animaland vegetable fat; milk, butter, and cheese; fruitand fruit juice; and sesame seeds.

Though bread was basic to the Mesopo-tamian diet, botanist Jonathan D. Sauer hassuggested the making of it may not have beenthe original incentive for raising barley. Instead,he has argued, the real incentive was beer, firstdiscovered when kernels of barley were foundsprouting and fermenting in storage.

Whether or not Sauer is right, beer soonbecame the ancient Mesopotamian’s favoritedrink. As a Sumerian proverb has it: “He whodoes not know beer, does not know what isgood.” The Babylonians had some 70 vari-eties, and beer was enjoyed by both gods andhumans who, as art shows, drank it from longstraws to avoid the barley hulls that tended tofloat to the surface.

There was even a goddess of brewing, namedNinkasi, who was celebrated in a Sumerianhymn that dates to about 1800 B.C.E. Using thedetails of the brewing process recorded in thishymn, in 1989 the Anchor Brewing Company ofSan Francisco duplicated the recipe. Accordingto one expert, the beer dubbed “Ninkasi” “hadthe smoothness and effervescence of champagneand a slight aroma of dates,” which had beenadded as an ancient sweetening agent (Katz andMaytag 1991: 33).


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11.9 Courtiers hoist tankards of beer in the palace at Dur-Sharrukin. The bottoms of the handlelessmugs are shaped out of metal to resemble the heads of lions. (Rawlinson, The Seven Great Monarchies of theAncient Eastern World, 1884)

Fruits and Vegetables

The gardens of Mesopotamia, watered by irri-gation canals, were lush with fruits and vegeta-bles, whose ancient names survive in cuneiformdictionaries and commercial records.

Among the fruits were apples, apricots, cher-ries, figs, melons, mulberries, pears, plums,pomegranates, and quinces. The most importantfruit crop, especially in southern Mesopotamia,was the date. Rich in sugar and iron, dates wereeasily preserved. Like barley, the date-palmthrived on relatively saline soil and was one ofthe first plants farmers domesticated.

Should you wish to sample a fruitcake fit fora Sumerian king or queen, the recipe survives:one cup butter, one-third cup white cheese,three cups first-quality dates, and one-thirdcup raisins, all blended with fine flour.

As for vegetables, the onion was king, alongwith its cousin, garlic. Other vegetables includedlettuce, cabbage, and cucumbers; carrots andradishes; beets and turnips; and a variety oflegumes, including beans, peas, and chickpeas,that could be dried for storage and later use.Together, the vegetables served as the basicingredients for soup. Cooking oil, for its part,came from sesame seeds.

Curiously, two mainstays of the Mediter-ranean diet—olives and grapes (as well aswine)—were seldom found in Mesopotamiancuisine, largely because of the salinity of theriver-valley soil and the absence of significantrainfall needed for their growth. Even honeywas a luxury item since the Mesopotamians,unlike the Egyptians, did not keep bees butrelied on hives found in the wild.

Spices and Herbs

Our contact with ancient Mesopotamia mostlytakes place in the rarified atmosphere of muse-

ums, but to appreciate Mesopotamian daily lifeour imagination must breathe in the pungentaroma of the seasonings that once rose fromancient stoves and filled the air of once-popu-lous cities. Coriander, cress, and cumin; fennel,fenugreek, and leek; marjoram, mint, and mus-tard; rosemary and rue; saffron and thyme oncecomprised the odoriferous litany of theMesopotamian cook. Cumin, in fact, stillechoes the Babylonian name, kamunu, bywhich it was known 4,000 years ago.

Livestock and Fish

According to legend, prosperity came toMesopotamia when the gods “made ewes givebirth to lambs, and grain grow in furrows.”

Sheep played an important role in theMesopotamian economy. Shepherds tendingtheir flocks are among the earliest images onseal-stones, and woolly rams are proudly pic-tured on the Royal Standard of Ur. The Sumeri-ans, in fact, used 200 different words to describesheep. Like goats and cows, ewes produced milkthat was converted into butter and cheese, butsheep were also slaughtered for meat.

Beef was in short supply because meadow-lands for grazing large herds were limited.The meat supply, however, was augmented bypork from pigs that foraged in marshlands.Game birds, deer, and gazelle were hunted aswell. On farms, domesticated geese and duckssupplied eggs, while from the rivers and thesea, and from canals and private ponds, camesome 50 types of fish, a staple of the Mesopo-tamian diet.

Generally, meats were either dried, smoked,or salted for safekeeping, or they were cookedby roasting, boiling, broiling, or barbecuing.

Housed at Yale University in New Haven,Connecticut, are the Yale Culinary Tablets, acollection of 35 recipes that seem to have sur-vived from a “cordon bleu” cooking school that


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operated in Babylonia around 1700 B.C.E.Among the more exotic recipes is one for par-tridge sprinkled with vinegar and rubbed withsalt and crushed mint.

The Good Life

Despite its abundance, the real Mesopotamiawas no Garden of Eden, for our SumerianAdam and Eve had to earn their living by thesweat of their brow. However, if the godssmiled and floods did not ravage the fields, lifecould indeed be good.

According to a legend, the hero Gilgameshonce went on a quest in search of immortality.In the course of his journey, he happened upona tavern where a divine barmaid offered himsome advice:

Eat and drink your fill, Gilgamesh,And celebrate day and night.Make every day a festival;Day and night dance and play.

Thus, even if the people of Mesopotamiawere denied immortality, they could still eat,drink, and be merry until they died thanks tothe beneficence of their land.

MUSIC

Recapturing Sounds

“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheardare sweeter,” wrote John Keats in 1820 in his“Ode on a Grecian Urn.” In this poem Keatsattested to the power of the imagination toconceptualize a level of beauty loftier than thatwhich reality can aspire to.

Ruins too possess such a power, romanti-cally stimulating our imagination to construct ashining citadel out of scattered stones. Indeed,were it not for the romance of archaeology,those who have made it their career might beunable to endure the tedium of excavation.Nevertheless, the archaeologist’s task is toretrieve an authentic picture of the past, notinvent an imaginary one. Yet how challengingthat task is when the evidence crumbles in one’shands; and how much more challenging stillwhen it doesn’t exist in matter at all.

In the whole body of the past there is perhapsno element more evanescent than music, an arti-fact written on the wind. How can we recapturethe sounds of distant millennia when the civiliza-tions that once heard them lie in the dust, espe-cially if the particular civilization we areexploring is one of the earliest in human history?

The answer is to turn to media where thestory of ancient music still resides: the writtenrecord of compositions and performance;works of art that depict musicians and theircraft; and, where possible, the actual instru-ments themselves.

In the end we may still have to draw uponour imagination to bring the music fully to life,but it will be an imagination informed byarchaeological fact.

The Importance of Music

One fact reverberates from the surviving worksof art: though the ruins themselves may lie insilence, music was an integral part of ancientMesopotamian life.

The images on inlaid plaques, carved seal-stones, and sculpted reliefs transport us back toa world of sound. We watch a shepherd playinghis flute as his dog sits and attentively listens.We revel with banqueters as a solo vocalist inthe background raises her voice to the strains


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of a lyre. We repose in a palatial garden as acourt harpist caresses his strings. We encampwith soldiers weary from a march as musiciansplay to soothe them. We clap our handstogether with other spectators as two lines ofdancers rhythmically advance toward oneanother and retreat. And we hear priestssolemnly intone their temple hymns. So great,in fact, was a queen of Ur’s love of music, shecould not bear the thought of being in theafterworld without it; so, with the help of asleeping potion in the tomb, she took her royalmusicians with her into the beyond.

Types of Instruments

Works of art also show us in great detail thetypes of instruments musicians played and theirgreat variety. They include percussion, wind,and string instruments.

PERCUSSION

Among the pictured percussions are bells. Abouta hundred have been dug up, their bronze clap-pers long ago stilled by corrosion. Large cym-bals and castanets for the fingers of dancers aredepicted as well as rattles and the sistrum, a typeof metallic noisemaker that may have originatedin Egypt. The sistrum resembled a slingshot,

but, instead of an elastic band, it had one ormore thick wires mounted horizontally thatcould be shaken and were sometimes strungwith tiny cymbals or rings. Drums came in dif-ferent shapes and sizes: shallow or deep; one- ortwo-sided; and made for setting on the floor,holding in the hands, or carrying suspendedfrom a shoulder-strap. The biggest drum of allmeasured some five or six feet in diameter;known as “the great bull’s hide,” it was bangedby priests during eclipses of the moon.

WIND

Wind instruments included single or doublerecorders (played vertically), the flute (playedhorizontally), panpipes, and horns. The hornswere not used to make music but instead wereblown to help signal large groups, such as sol-diers in battle formation or laborers haulingcolossal statues to their sites.

STRING

String instruments were of two main kinds:lyres and harps.

In a lyre, two arms rise up from a sound box.The strings, all of the same length, extendupward from the sound box to a crossbar wherethe strings are attached. Because they are thesame length, the strings (made from animal gut


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11.10 An orchestra with strings and woodwinds marches out to greet an Assyrian army returning homein triumph. Bringing up the rear is a rhythm section with hands clapping. The figures with raised handsmay be singers.

or sinew) have the same pitch unless they are ofdifferent thicknesses or unless they are tuned.Tuning is accomplished by winding the stringsaround the crossbar to create proper tension orby turning adjustable metal pins that hold thestrings in place.

Harps, on the other hand, have only onearm rising up from the sound box. The strings,of different lengths (and therefore of differentpitches) extend diagonally from the sound boxto the arm.

Traditionally, Mesopotamian lyres andharps seem to have had a maximum of 11strings. In addition to lyres and harps, lutes arealso portrayed.

Discoveries at UrOne of the most amazing finds in the entire his-tory of music was made in the soil of Ur—thediscovery of the world’s oldest string instru-ments that are among the earliest musicalinstruments of any type ever found. They dateto the mid third millennium B.C.E. A total ofnine lyres and three harps lay buried in royalgraves. Though the wooden frames had disinte-grated, the inorganic ornamentation—of redlimestone, white shell, and blue lapis lazuli—wasintact, and it was recovered by pouring plaster ofParis into the outlines the frames had left so thepieces would stick together. Still shimmeringwas the gold, the one material that over the agesbetter than any other survives the ravages of


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11.12 The reconstructed Great Lyre from the“King’s Grave” at Ur. (University of Pennsylva-nia Museum)

11.11 This Assyrian musician has his harpattached by a belt to his waist, and he plays it withhis left hand and a plectrum held in his right.(Rawlinson, The Seven Great Monarchies of theAncient Eastern World, 1884)

time. On the fronts of the body-like soundboxes, gold foil had been fashioned over woodto simulate the heads of bulls, probably tosuggest the sonorous bellow that once resonatedfrom the bass strings. To make the bulls’ headsappear both more human and more divine, theywere adorned with locks of hair and curly beardsof purplish lapis. Below them were decorativepanels portraying the hero Gilgamesh and vari-ous wild beasts. In one panel reminiscent of anAesop’s fable, a standing jackass strums a lyreand brays to the delight of his animal audience.The largest of the lyres—from the “GreatDeath Pit”—stood almost 5.5 feet tall.

Reconstructing Ancient Music

Attempts have been made by technicians at theBritish Museum and elsewhere to reconstruct aSumerian lyre out of woods similar to thosethat would have once been used by ancientcraftsmen. But, despite these reconstructions,the question still remains: what music did theseancient instruments once play?

Major clues have emerged from a series ofcuneiform tablets dug up in Mesopotamiancities (including Ur) and in the Syrian coastalcity of Ugarit, cities which flourished over3,000 years ago. Called the “Song Tablet,” thedocument from Ugarit contains the words andmusic for a hymn to the goddess Nikkal, con-sort of the moon god. The words are written inthe languages of the Hurrians, a people whoonce dwelt in Mesopotamia. The Mesopo-tamian tablets, on the other hand, are so-calledtheory tablets, describing the mechanics ofmaking music: the names of the strings of thelyre, the musical intervals between them, andthe methods for tuning the lyre to differentkeys. The instructions for tuning reveal the useof a seven-note scale not unlike the “do-re-mi”of Western music. Combining the informationfrom the theory tablets with the notations onthe song tablet, musicologists have been able toplay the song on a re-strung “ancient” lyre,reproducing melodies and harmonies of theremote past.

Love Songs

Of course, not all the songs of Mesopotamiawere sacred hymns. There were love songs too.We know this from a cuneiform list of their firstlines, which also served as their titles. Amongthe top hits along the Tigris were tunes such as


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11.13 Detail from the front of the Great Lyre.The decorative bull’s head is ornamented with goldfoil and lapis lazuli. The bull is humanized with abeard, and below him, inlaid animals cavort likehuman beings, including a donkey that plays a lyre.(University of Pennsylvania Museum)

“Your love, my lord, is like the aroma of cedar-wood”; “How lush she is, how radiant” “Come to the royal gardens where cedarsabound”; and “You are the keeper of the gardenof desire.”

Elvis Lives

One might well question how commercialsuch lyrics would be in today’s pop musicscene. But not to worry. A Finnish professorof literature, Jukka Ammondt, from the Uni-versity of Jyväskylä might just have theanswer. Professor Ammondt’s claim to popmusic fame is that he once recorded twoalbums of Elvis Presley songs in Latin. Hislatest release, you will be relieved to know,consists of songs of the “King” in Sumerian.The first cut is “Blue Suede Shoes,” whichtranslates into Sumerian as “E-sir Kush-za-gin-ga” (“Sandals of Leather of the Color of aBlue Gem”). Granted, something may be lostin translation, but it is comforting to knowthat—after all those millennia—the beat stillgoes on.

TOYS AND GAMES

Children’s Toys

When we picture ancient civilizations in ourminds, we seldom think of children. Perhaps it isbecause such civilizations are so old, or becausetheir monuments—the remnants by which weknow them—proclaim the glories of an adultworld. But children there were, and their great-est testament is toys. Shaped from clay or wood,they remind us that the now silent streets andhomes of ruined cities once rang with the shoutsand laughter of the very young.

For infants and toddlers there were terra-cotta rattles, filled with pellets and pinched atthe edges like piecrust, with a small hole for astring. For boys, dreaming of hunting or sol-diering, there were slingshots and little bowsand arrows and boomerangs to throw. Forgirls, hoping to raise their own children someday, there were dolls and miniature pieces offurniture (tables, stools, and beds) for playinghouse. Meanwhile, handheld ships and chari-ots, and tiny draught animals and wagons, let


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11.14 Though the children who played with them are long gone, these terra-cotta toys from ancientMesopotamia survive. (University of Pennsylvania Museum)

the young travel through the world of theirimagination. For more amusement there werealso balls and hoops and a game of jump ropenamed curiously for the love goddess Ishtar.

Such toys as survive are now dutifully inkedwith museum acquisition numbers and lockedup in glass cases. But on some Saturday shouldan errant child come by and gaze at them, hereyes may yet light up with an antique joy.

Board GamesOne of the hazards of sentry duty on a long hotday is boredom. So it was over 27 centuries agoin the Assyrian city of Khorsabad. Two sentries,tired and bored, sought relief from the heat inthe shade of a colossal winged bull, one of a pairof monstrous statues that guarded the entranceto King Sargon II’s palace. Using the sharppoint of his dagger, one of the sentries scratchedout a rectangular pattern of 20 squares on thebull’s stone pedestal. Then, with the aid ofimpromptu playing pieces and a pair of dice theyhad with them, he and his friend took turnsplaying a board game not unlike the ancientIndian game of Parcheesi or the modern ParkerBros. game of Sorry. Of course we don’t knowwhich guard won or lost, or how much theywagered on winning, but the scratches on thestone slab are still there for us to see.

The board game they played seems to havebeen a popular one in their day, for similar pat-terns have been found elsewhere scratchedonto large clay bricks. Other game boards havebeen found with different numbers of squaresor holes on their surface for playing otherkinds of games, including one that may havebeen used for telling fortunes with the help ofthe 12 signs of the zodiac. A variety of playingpieces or “men” have been recovered, someabstract in shape and some in the shape of ani-mals, as well as dice and throwing sticks used todetermine moves. The dice are especiallyinteresting since their opposite sides don’t add

up to seven like most numbers on modern dice(two and five, for example) but feature consec-utive numbers (for example, one and two) onopposite sides. Some dice, in fact, are tetrahe-dral, with four triangular surfaces.

ETERNAL PASTIMES

Passing the time at work is one thing, but pass-ing the time for all eternity is quite another. Tosupply recreation and alleviate ennui in theafterlife, Sumerian royalty had themselvesburied with the means for their entertainment,just as did King Tutankhamun of Egypt. KingTut’s tomb, in fact, was equipped with fourgame boards for playing the Egyptian gamesenet, the name of which meant “passage.” Asimilar game was found by Sir Leonard Woolleyin the Royal Cemetery at Ur, but dating to overa thousand years before Tut’s time.

The Ur game board was originally made outof wood overlaid with a design composed ofwhite shell, dark blue lapis lazuli, and red lime-stone set in a black bitumen cement. Measur-ing about 43⁄4 inches by 105⁄8 inches, thesurface is composed of 21 squares of assorteddesign—some with dots, others with flowers,and still others with “eyes.” The squares deco-rate an unusually shaped board that features abigger rectangular zone and a smaller onejoined by a narrow bridge. Guarding the outeredge is a band of hypnotic eyes.

The object of the game seems to have been tomove your men from one end of the board to theother, while your opponent tried to block yourpassage across the bridge. Some of the markedsquares may have been lucky (“Take anotherturn!”) or unlucky (“Go back to Square One!”).As for the playing pieces, there are seven perplayer, one set with dark dots on a light back-ground, the other set with light dots on dark.

RULES

The rules for all these games essentially remainan enigma. Knowing the rules themselves, the


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Mesopotamians saw no need to enclose a set ofinstructions. After all, it wasn’t us they had inmind when they played!

SPORTS

Though other forms of competitive athleticsmay have existed in ancient Mesopotamia, theone sport for which there is considerable evi-dence—in art and literature—is wrestling. Thewrestling match, for example, is a motif fre-quently found on cylinder seals. In fact, themost famous hero of Mesopotamian mythol-ogy, Gilgamesh, began his legendary career(see The Epic of Gilgamesh) by wrestling with abrute named Enkidu. As often happens insports, the two competitors ended up becom-ing best friends.

In addition to wrestling, boxing is alsodepicted in Mesopotamian art, where itappears on decorative baked-clay plaques.

For kings, there was always the royal sportof hunting. The hunting exploits of Assyria’skings were celebrated in their annals and insculptural relief on their palace walls.

EDUCATION

Just as the rivers of Mesopotamia fed its soil,the waters of knowledge nourished its civiliza-tion. And just as river water was transportedto fields by a system of irrigation, so wasknowledge transmitted to people by a systemof education.


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11.15 To while away the endless hours of eternity, Sumerian royals packed gameboards in their graves.This one from Ur comes complete with playing pieces but no set of rules. (The British Museum)

History of Schooling

The earliest schools of which we have recordwere developed by the ancient Sumerians.

The oldest evidence, lists of vocabularywords, survives from the ruins of the city of Urukand dates to around 3000 B.C.E., close to the timewhen writing itself was invented. From 2500B.C.E. come archaeological remains of the firstreal schools, at least two of which were estab-lished by royal edict. From between 2500 and2000 B.C.E. sufficient remains exist to documentthe operation of a true school system. Additionalproof comes in the form of hundreds of cu-neiform tablets, the actual homework and class-room exercises of ancient students, ranging frombeginner to advanced, along with directions andcorrections from their teachers and even literaryvignettes of everyday life in a Mesopotamianschool. This abundant evidence dates to between2000 and 1500 B.C.E., and it comes from a wholearray of cities, including Uruk, Ur, Nippur, Shu-ruppak, and Abu Salabikh.

Schoolhouses

A Mesopotamian school was called a “tablethouse” (Sumerian edubba; Akkadian bît tuppi)because of the clay tablets that were its stock-in-trade.

The first schools were probably attached totemples, which were the original communalcenters of wisdom and learning. Later, schoolswere secularized and came to be located in pri-vate buildings.

Remains of ancient schoolhouses may havebeen uncovered at Ur, Nippur, Sippar, andMari. The building uncovered at Mari featuredtwo rooms, one of which had rows of benchesmade of baked brick that, depending on theirlength, could accommodate one, two, or fourpupils at a time. In addition, large earthenware

receptacles were found, probably intended forholding the damp clay out of which the stu-dents shaped their writing tablets. A completeschoolroom likely would have had shelves onwhich completed work was laid out to dry, stor-age chests for miscellaneous school suppliesand for the safekeeping of “textbooks,” andperhaps an oven to bake selected clay tablets inorder to give them permanence.

Additional equipment may have includedthin, slat-like writing boards made of wood andcoated with wax that could be written uponwith a sharp stylus and then later erased byrubbing the waxed surface smooth with the sty-lus’s rounded edge.

Student Body

Students would have probably ranged in agefrom somewhere under 10 to their teens.Because schooling was privately paid andcostly, students would have been the childrenof wealthy and prominent families. Except forthe daughters of royalty or for girls beinggroomed as future priestesses, pupils wouldhave been exclusively male. Accordingly, thestudent body of a Mesopotamian school wouldhave been composed almost entirely of thesons of government officials, military officers,priests and scribes, and wealthy businessmen.

The Mesopotamian educational system thusdiffered from the modern Western model inthree respects; it was private (rather than pub-lic), voluntary (rather than compulsory), andselective (rather than universal).

Faculty

In many ways, the Mesopotamian school wasstructured along the lines of the Mesopotamianfamily.


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At the head of the Mesopotamian family wasthe father, and at the head of the Mesopotamianschool was the “father of the tablet house,” orprincipal (Sumerian adda edubba). Yet, even asevery Mesopotamian family had to be obedientto the supreme authority of the state, there wasan even higher authority in the school, the head-master (Sumerian ummia, “expert” or “author-ity”). The students themselves were referred toas “the school’s sons,” while their work wassupervised by older students called “big broth-ers,” who acted as teachers’ aids.

The disciplinary role of the father wasplayed by an administrative officer who beatunruly pupils with a stick. Punishments weremeted out for speaking without permission,getting up without permission, leaving withoutpermission, dressing inappropriately, and notspeaking in proper Sumerian.

The actual instructors were specialists invarious subject areas. They included a mathteacher (“the scribe of counting”), a teacher ofsurveying (“the scribe of the field”), and a lan-guage teacher (“the scribe of Sumerian”).

Their salaries came out of the tuition paidby parents. They apparently were also notabove being bribed: a Sumerian short storytells of the apple-polishing father of a lazy stu-dent who, at his son’s prompting, invited theboy’s teacher home to dinner and gave himfancy gifts including a fine ring. The teachergraciously responded by praising the boy effu-sively and expressing the hope that he would goto the head of his class and someday become aman of great leaning. (Whether he did or not,the tablets do not tell.)

School Calendar

The school day went from sunrise to sunset,with students eating lunch at school. Out of atypical 30-day month, school was in session 24,

with three days off for vacation and three forreligious holidays. Whether or not school wasin operation year-round we do not know.

Curriculum

The prime purpose of schooling was to teachstudents the practical skills of literacy andnumeracy so that, as adults, they could taketheir place in society and play a useful role.

Initially students were taught to recognizethe meaning of basic cuneiform characters andto reproduce them on clay tablets with the aidof a blunt-ended reed “pen.” They were alsotaught how to prepare blank clay tablets for thepurpose of writing, by mixing, shaping, andsmoothing the clay. Additionally, they weretaught how to bake inscribed tablets to lendthem permanence.

The mastery of cuneiform took many yearsbecause of the complexity of the script. Liter-acy was therefore not easy to come by, andrequired thousands of hours of specializedtraining to recognize and reproduce frommemory the hundreds upon hundreds of char-acters and character combinations that wereused. Because of the minuteness of these char-acters and the potential for confusion, trainingincluded the cultivation of a painstakinglyaccurate calligraphic style.

Formal education involved the mastery of lit-eracy (for such tasks as maintaining businessrecords, writing and reading contracts, compos-ing letters, sending military messages, recitingprayers and incantations, and understandingmedical texts) as well as the mastery of numer-acy (for such jobs as measuring plots of land andtheir produce, determining taxes, projectingsupplies for a military campaign, figuring outthe amount of earth needed to construct a siegeramp, estimating the number of bricks requiredto erect a new palace, or making celestial calcu-


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lations). Ultimately, specialized vocabularywould have to be mastered in such fields asastronomy, geography, mineralogy, zoology,botany, medicine, engineering, and architecture.

Furthermore, once the northerners ofAkkad conquered the southerners of Sumer,becoming learned meant learning not one lan-guage but two: non-Semitic Sumerian andSemitic Akkadian. Though eventually Sumer-ian became a dead language like Latin, it wasdiligently studied because of the reverence inwhich it was held and the richness of its intel-lectual treasures, not unlike the position Latinlater attained during the European MiddleAges and Renaissance and maintained until ourown times. Advanced students might go on tostudy masterworks of Mesopotamian literatureand, depending upon their chosen vocations,might continue such study during professionalcareers as priests or scholars.

Pedagogical Method

Repeated practice combined with the correc-tions of one’s mistakes were the keys to learningin a Mesopotamian school. The teacher wouldbegin by writing a sentence on the top of a tablet(or on the left side) and the student would beexpected to copy it again and again below (or tothe right). The teacher, or “big brother,” wouldthen make corrections. The student would thenstudy his corrected work at home and on thenext day would be expected to reproduce itwithout error. A new lesson would then follow.Not only do we have examples of written workwith the teacher’s corrections on them, but evenone where the frustrated teacher crossed out allthe student’s work in exasperation!

Recitation as well as writing would be done tomake sure the pupil was able not only to copycharacters but also to comprehend their mean-ing. More advanced lessons would require the

writing out and reading of more lengthy texts orextended mathematical calculations perhapsbased on story problems. Throughout, thememorization of new vocabulary and mathemat-ical procedures was stressed, while intellectualself-discipline was reinforced by maintaining astrict code of behavior in the classroom.

When appropriate, the teachers wouldexplain material by lecture, and at intervals givetests, including comprehensive examinations.However, because the Mesopotamian school wasreally a kind of “one-room schoolhouse,” pupilsin a given classroom were simultaneously at dif-ferent grade levels, an added reason to have anattentive “big brother” look over their shoulders.

For more advanced students, the drudgerywas sometimes alleviated by the introductionof humorous story lessons about school (anepisode, for example, in which a pupil and a bigbrother argue over who is really smarter, or inwhich a father complains about all the ways hiserrant son misbehaves). While poking fun atthe educational system, these stories alsoserved to point up the fact that going to schoolwas a real privilege with an important purposebehind all the hard work.

GoalsVOCATIONAL TRAINING

The goal of this educational system was to turna child into a scribe (Sumerian tupshar, “onewho writes on tablets”). When grown up, thegraduate of the Mesopotamian school systemwould be able to serve society by taking hisplace in the worlds of temple, palace, and busi-ness, drawing upon his skills in literacy andnumeracy to excel at his job. Some mightbecome professional scribes serving the practi-cal needs of others; but others would followtheir fathers’ professions as government ortemple officials or as businessmen.


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SUSTAINING CIVILIZATION

Education also served a goal wider and deeperthan mere vocationalism. Mesopotamia’s systemof schools was founded upon the principle thatno civilization can prosper or long endure unlessit draws upon the wisdom and experience of thepast, however “dead” that past might superfi-cially seem to be. Because that wisdom andexperience was enshrined in writing, it was onlythrough the instrument of literacy that itsknowledge could be tapped. Moreover, it wasonly through literacy that the insights andachievements of the past and present could bepassed on to the future. In short, the ancientMesopotamians recognized that at its heart civi-lization is a vital continuum in which past, pre-sent, and future are organically linked. If aculture ceases to be literate, if it can no longerhear the guiding words of the past or speak themto the future, that chain is irrevocably broken.

The weakness of the Mesopotamian systemmay have been that it stressed memorizationover creativity, conformity over individualism,and rote learning over invention. But its amaz-ing durability shows that, despite this weak-ness, it also possessed enduring strength.

CULTIVATING HUMANITY

In an even larger sense, despite the seemingnarrowness of its curriculum and pedagogy,education in Mesopotamia sought to inculcatewhat we must call, for want of a better word,“humanity.” Indeed, this term appears for thefirst time in human history in Sumerian texts,and in ones that deal specifically with the goalsof education. A student says to his headmaster:“I was like a puppy dog until you opened myeyes. You formed humanity inside me.” A frus-trated scribe writes to his son: “Because you didnot have regard for your humanity, my heartwas broken.”

Through a respect for the past, through areverence for learning, through the constant

practice of self-discipline, and through anunderlying commitment to service higher thanto self, the Mesopotamians sought to reacheducation’s highest goal: the fostering ofhumane sensibility and conduct.

HEALTH ANDMEDICINE

The Beginnings of Medicine

The origins of the art of medicine are hidden inthe mists of prehistory. It was in those earliest ofdays that human beings, in the palpable pres-ence of death, sought the precious remedy forinjury and illness by drawing upon the simpleknowledge and skill they possessed and byinvoking the invisible spiritual powers thatinhabited their world. Trial and error were theirteachers, and priests their guides, as ancestralwisdom was passed on from one generation tothe next by word of mouth and example.

With the invention of writing, it becamepossible to give such wisdom tangible and per-manent form, enabling it to be collected andstored for later use. With the advent of civiliza-tion, specialists arose who were trained in itsstudy and application.

Early Texts

The oldest medical textbook in the world wasuncovered in the ruins of the Sumerian city ofNippur. Dating to the close of the third millen-nium B.C.E., it consists of a single cuneiformtablet measuring 33⁄4 inches by 61⁄4 inches andinscribed with a dozen trusty prescriptions. Toview the world’s oldest medical library, how-


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ever, we would need to travel north to theAssyrian city of Nineveh (or rather to London’sBritish Museum, where its archives are nowhoused). There in Nineveh in the eighth cen-tury B.C.E., the acquisitive king Ashurbanipalassembled in his palace library a collection ofsome 800 clay tablets embodying the medicalknowledge of his day, a valuable resource tohave handy if ever he fell ill.

Types of Doctors

In ancient Mesopotamia there were two basictypes of doctor you could turn to. First of all,there was the kind of doctor (asu) who as a rulerelied upon medical substances to effect a cure.Second, there was the kind of doctor (ashipu)who traditionally trusted in spiritual remedies.On occasion, each type of doctor might applythe other’s methods in addition to his own toassure a patient’s recovery; and, in difficult cases,specialists of both types might collaborate.

It is noteworthy that the ancient Mesopo-tamians did not draw a sharp line between whatwe in the modern Western world would regardas the separate realms of science and religion.That modern medicine is increasingly recogniz-ing the therapeutic function of the mind andspirit is a tribute to this ancient perception, how-ever haltingly it may have once been uttered.

Divine Powers

A hymn has been discovered praising the Sumer-ian patron goddess of medicine, known variouslyas Bau, Gula, or Ninisina. Her opposite numberamong the Babylonians was Lamashtu, the god-dess of disease and death. Significantly, amongthe Sumerians the insignia of the medical profes-sion was a divine staff entwined with serpents,the origin of a similar symbol among the classical

Greeks and the ultimate inspiration for theAmerican Medical Association’s logo.

To find a doctor in a Mesopotamian cityyou’d be well advised to head for the largesttemple in town, which often doubled as aminiature medical center and school.

The Practice of Medicine

Cuneiform texts give us ample insights into thepractices of Mesopotamian physicians.

PHARMACEUTICALS

The medical library of Ashurbanipal, for exam-ple, is a veritable Physician’s Desk Reference, list-ing some 250 vegetable substances and some120 mineral ones with ascribed medicinalproperties. The most common mineral agentswere potassium nitrate (or saltpeter), a knownastringent, and sodium chloride (or salt), a rec-ognized antiseptic. In addition, sulphur andalum are cited. Modern medicine also acknowl-edges the curative powers of many Mesopo-tamian extracts derived from seeds, fruits,roots, leaves, branches, barks, and gums. Thisnatural pharmacopeia included asafoetida, bel-ladonna, cannabis, cardamon, cassia, castor oil,cinnamon, colocynth, coriander, date, fig, fir,garlic, henbane, juniper, licorice, mandragora,mint, mustard, myrrh, myrtle, pear, poppy,thyme, and willow. Even the right time to pickherbs was noted in order to assure their maxi-mum efficacy. The extraction and purificationof minerals, moreover, points to an early butsophisticated understanding of chemistry.

PREPARATION AND USE OF MEDICINES

Medicinal agents may have been kept fresh orstored in a dry state until needed, when theywould be prepared and blended with varioussubstances for internal consumption or external


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application. The favorite Mesopotamian “mixer”was beer, but milk, honey, and wine served thesame function. For external applications, such assalves and ointments, cedar oil, animal fat, or waxmight be used. The combination of alkaline sub-stances with fat yielded a kind of soap that hadpositive antiseptic benefits. Medicinal agentsmight also be put into poultices, inhaled invapor, applied in drops to eyes and ears, oreven—with the aid of a hollow reed or metaltube—blown into the vagina or penis. The use ofemetics, enemas, suppositories, and hot baths isalso attested.

Texts diligently cite the condition to betreated, the medicine to be used, and themethod of administration. However, the quan-tities to be blended and the dosages to beadministered regrettably are not recorded, per-haps because these depended upon the experi-ence and judgment of the attending physician,or perhaps because they were closely guardedas professional secrets. Most significantly, theapplication of certain treatments for specificconditions is often in agreement with currentmedical practice.

DIAGNOSIS AND DISEASE

Before deciding upon treatment, the medicaldoctor would examine the patient, noting suchthings as pulse and temperature, reflexes, andthe coloration of skin and urine. Following aflowchart of general symptoms, the physicianwould arrive at a diagnosis. Among the condi-tions diagnosed and treated are intestinal prob-lems such as obstructions, colic, and diarrhea;neurological ones such as persistent headachesand epilepsy; rheumatism, jaundice, and gout;diseases such as tuberculosis, smallpox, typhus,and bubonic plague; infestations of lice; andvenereal disease, including gonorrhea. Thecuneiform literature also refers to mental ill-ness and proposes a psychological explanationfor sexual impotence.

By about 700 B.C.E. a pregnancy test hadbeen developed for use by midwives. The testemployed a woolen tampon soaked with a plantextract that reacted to changes in the pH valueof vaginal secretions indicative of pregnancy. Ineffect, the tampon worked like a kind of gyne-cological “litmus paper.”

Though there is no explicit reference to agerm theory of disease, at least one documentreveals an awareness of contagion as a factor inthe spread of illness. In a letter of concern sentto his wife, an 18th century B.C.E. king of Mariwrote:

I’ve heard that lady Nanname is sick. Shecomes into contact with many people in thepalace. Issue orders that no one should drinkfrom the cup she drinks from, or sit on theseat she sits on, or sleep in the bed she sleepsin. Don’t let her socialize with any other ladiesin her house. What she has is catching.

MEDICAL SPECIALISTS

Specialists, so common a feature of medical prac-tice today, are rarely mentioned in Mesopo-tamian literature, though a veterinarian and anophthalmologist are cited. Mention is also madeof a female doctor; though she may have been agynecologist, this is by no means certain.

Spiritual Healing

Besides the physicians who used medicines toeffect a cure, there were those who relied uponspiritual skills. Many illnesses, it was believed,were caused by evil spirits, or demons, that forone reason or another occupied the humanbody and made it sick. The job of the ashipu, orspiritual doctor, was to rid the body of such aspirit. The skilled practitioner was familiarwith some 6,000 different demons by name,some of whom were held to be responsible forspecific maladies. Once the malady had been


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determined and the demon identified, treat-ment could begin.

THE FUNCTION OF SIN

The premise was that an illness was caused bysome kind of sin: a moral offense or crime, per-haps, or a failure to properly carry out arequired religious ritual. To help the patient,the doctor might begin by reciting a list of typ-ical sins in the hope that the patient would rec-ognize the one that he had committed andwhich had led to his woes. Thus the Meso-potamian mind saw a connection betweenuprightness of character and uprightness ofhealth, and Mesopotamians recognized whatwe might call illness of a psychosomatic nature,especially when induced by worry or guilt.

EXORCISM

Though he might well resort to using medicineto open up a second front against disease, thespiritual doctor essentially drew upon a store ofmagical spells and incantations. In some casesthe demon was encouraged to leave its host andtake up residence in an animal or an inanimateobject. In other cases it was enticed to leave onthe promise of gifts it would magically receive.At other times it would be chased awaythrough the use of foul-smelling substancessuch as excrement.

GROUNDS FOR PROGNOSIS

Medical texts concerned with spiritual curesoften list physical symptoms that can predictwhether a patient will recover or die. If, forexample, the patient is sick and gets out of bedon the third day of his illness, he will recover.But if on the third day he cries out from pain inhis abdomen and his abdomen is hot, he willdie. Other signs, however, which have no con-nection with a patient’s physical state, areregarded as just as important. Thus if a patient

suffering from a long illness has a hallucinationin which he sees a dog, he will recover, while ifhe sees a gazelle he will die. Moreover, if thedoctor passes a white pig on his way to treat apatient, the patient will recover, but the patientwill die if the pig is black.

MAGIC VERSUS MEDICINE

Based on his reliance on these latter signs andhis dependence on magical spells to drive offdemons, we might regard the ashipu as somesort of witch doctor, but his attention to physi-cal symptoms and his willingness to use medi-cines when necessary is evidence of a morescientific approach. It is important to remem-ber also that to a believer incantations couldhave a powerful psychological effect in pro-moting recovery. Furthermore, illnesses of psy-chogenic origin could well benefit from anashipu’s ministrations, especially if those ill-nesses had been exacerbated by worry.

While it is easy to regard the art of spiritualhealing as more primitive than the scientificuse of medicines, it must be remembered thatthe search for medicinal agents may well havebeen as ancient as the application of spiritualremedies. Both methods may have grown upsimultaneously, especially if the world of plantsand minerals was viewed animistically as anexpression of the divine.

Surgeons

In addition to the medical and spiritual physi-cians of ancient Mesopotamia, there was athird category of doctor: the surgeon.

LIABILITY

Surviving texts tell us very little about surgicalpractice, yet of all the doctors the surgeon is the


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one type singled out by Mesopotamia’s legal sys-tem for government control. The Code ofHammurabi, for example, sets fees for opera-tions and establishes penalties for surgicalerrors, the earliest recorded instance in historyof legal consequences for medical malpractice.

FEES

The Babylonian surgeon’s regulated fee struc-ture was based on the patient’s class, and thuson the ability to pay. For major surgery, includ-ing an eye operation, the surgeon would bepaid 10 silver shekels by a member of thenobility, but only five shekels by a commoner.For a similar operation on a slave, the slave’sowner would be expected to pay just twoshekels. For setting a broken bone or tendingto a sprained tendon, the fee would be five,three, or two shekels, respectively, againdepending on the injured person’s class. Veteri-nary operations cost even less.

PENALTIES

The penalties for surgical failure were sub-stantial and, in the case of an aristocraticpatient, severe. For causing a noble’s death orblindness, for example, the surgeon’s handwould be cut off. Such punitive measures andthe greater scrutiny over surgery in generalmay be due to the fact that the consequencesof surgery are more self-evident whereas theeffects of medicines and magic spells are notso demonstrable.

OPERATIONS

Since dissection was forbidden by religion,surgeons would have had to learn their craftfrom practical experience, often in emergencysituations. Their instrument of choice in aB.C.E. “O.R.” would have resembled a straightrazor and is casually referred to as a “barber’sknife.”

Dentistry

According to Mesopotamian tradition, a tooth-ache was caused by a worm that had beengiven permission by the gods to feed on teethand gums.

Our information comes from a cuneiformtablet that preserves an incantation againsttoothache. The document, in Akkadian, datesto the Neo-Babylonian period, but says it isbased on an even more ancient text. A similarincantation, in the Hurrian language, has beenfound in the Old Babylonian records of Mari.

According to the Akkadian version, whenthe world was created a worm was spawned bythe primordial mud. Racked by hunger, theworm tearfully pleaded to the gods for food. Itrejected the ripe figs and apricots the godsoffered, and instead asked if it could feed onteeth and gums. To our eternal grief, the godsacceded to the worm’s request.

After telling the tale, the incantationinstructs the doctor to grasp the base of thetooth with a surgical instrument (a forceps?)and curse the worm with divine retribution(“May the mighty hand of the god Ea strikeyou!”). The doctor is told to recite the tale andthe curse three times. (An Ea-like yank proba-bly came at the end of curse number three!) Aprescription is then given for a postoperativemouthwash consisting mostly of beer andsesame seed oil. No mention is made of a pre-operative anaesthetic.

Whether there were doctors specializing indentistry, or whether dentistry was simply partof a doctor’s general practice, we do not know.

Community Medicine

Like Internet users today who frequent med-ical chat-rooms to share experiences and infor-mation with others suffering from the same


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condition, the people of Mesopotamia prac-ticed an early form of community medicine bygiving each other tips on how to get better.According to the fifth century B.C.E. Greekhistorian Herodotus (History 1: 197):

The following custom seems to me [one of]the wisest of their institutions. . . . [W]hen aman is ill, they lay him in the public square,and the passersby come up to him, and if theyhave ever had his disease themselves or haveknown any one who has suffered from it, theygive him advice, recommending him to dowhatever they found good in their own case,or in the case known to them; and no one isallowed to pass the sick man in silence withoutasking him what his ailment is. (Herodotus1942 [1858]: 106–7, trans. George Rawlinson)

One may add that just being pelted with allthat advice may have been enough to drive anancient Babylonian into instant wellness.

READING

Work

Nemet-Nejat 1998: occupations; Powell 1987:labor.

Slavery

Dandmaev 1984, Saggs 1995: slaves.

Marriage and Family

Bottéro et al. 2001: love and sex in Babylon,women’s rights; Derevenski 1994: children;Dosch 1996: family in Nuzu; Fenshaw 1962:

widows, orphans, and the poor; Finkelstein1966: sex offenses; Gelb 1979: household andfamily; Gordon 1957: legal framework of mar-ried life in Hammurabi’s Babylonia; Greenfield1982: care for the elderly; Greengus 1966:marriage ceremonies; Greengus 1969–70,Westbrook 1990: adultery; Hallo 1976: womenof Sumer; Harris 1990: literary images ofwomen; Kramer 1963: love in Sumerian times;Kramer 1969: the sacred marriage ritual; Leick1994: sex and eroticism; Mendelsohn 1949: thefamily in the ancient Near East; Roth 1987:marriage; Siebert 1984: women in the ancientNear East; Stol 1995: private life; Van derToorn 1994: religion in women’s lives; Westen-holz 1990: role of women.

Birth, Death and the Belief in an Afterlife

Alster 1980: death; Bottéro 2001, Scurlock1995: death and the afterlife; Bottéro et al. 2001,Moorey 1982: burials at Ur; Campbell andGreen 1995: archaeology of death; Crawford1991: life, death, and the meaning of the uni-verse; Frankfort, Wilson, and Jacobsen 1946:discussion of the differing spiritual outlooks ofthe ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians; Hei-del 1949: the afterlife; Kramer 1956: the world’soldest lullaby; Jonker 1995: remembrance of thedead; Marks and Good 1987: love and death inthe ancient Near East; Moorey 1982: tombs atUr; Nemet-Nejat 1998: childbirth, infancy, andinfant mortality; Saggs 1962: obstetric and pedi-atric medicine.

Homes

Baker 1966: furniture; Kramer 1967, Moorey1982: description and illustrations of a typical


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Sumerian home; Muller 1940, Stone 1997:houses; Saggs 1965: houses in Babylonia andAssyria; Simpson 1995: furniture.

Clothing

Bier 1995: textile arts; Collon 1995: clothingand grooming; Payne 1965: history of costume;Speiser 1953: color illustrations of life anddress in ancient Mesopotamia.

Cosmetics and Perfume

Bimson 1980: cosmetics from Ur; Dayagi-Mendels 1989: ancient perfumes and cosmetics.

Food and Drink

Badler, McGovern, and Michel 1992: beer;Bottéro 1992: recipes; Bottéro et al. 2001: cui-sine, feasting, wine; Hartman and Oppenheim1950: beer and brewing; Katz and Maytag1991: brewing; Limet 1987: Sumerian cuisine;Milano 1994: drinking in ancient societies;Renfrew 1995: vegetables.

Music

Biblical Archaeology Review 1980: the world’soldest musical notation; Farmer 1957, Galpin1955, Parrot 1961: ancient Mesopotamianmusic; Garfinkel 1998: dancing; Kilmer 1995:music and dance; Rimmer 1969: musicalinstruments; Woolley 1934: descriptions ofharps and lyres found at Ur.

Toys and Games

Dales 1968: dice; Hübner 1997: games; Moorey1982: illustration of game board from Ur; RoyalGame of Ur 1991: reconstruction of gameboard.

Sports

Bienkowski and Millard 2000, Nemet-Nejat1998: types of sports.

Education

Civil 1992: survey; Gadd 1956: the oldestschools; Kramer 1949, 1956, and 1963: educa-tion in Sumer; Landsberger 1960: scribal edu-cation; “Oldest School” 1952: archaeologicalevidence; Pearce 1995: scribes and scholars;Sjöberg 1975: the school; Vanstiphout 1995:memory and literacy.

Health and Medicine

Avalos 1995: illness and health care; Biggs1969, Oppenheim 1962: survey; Biggs 1995:medicine, surgery, and public health; Contenau1954: Babylonian medicine; Geller 1991: Tal-mudic evidence; James and Thorpe 1994: preg-nancy test; Oppenheim 1960: Caesariansection; Powell 1993: drugs and pharmaceuti-cals; Ritter 1965: magical experts and physi-cians; Saggs 1962 and 1989; the practice ofmedicine, including translations of medicaltexts; Sigerist 1961: history of medicine; Wil-son 1965, 1967: mental diseases and psychiatry.


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MESOPOTAMIA ANDSACRED SCRIPTURE

12

THE OLD TESTAMENT

Mesopotamian civilization had a far greaterimpact on the Old Testament than the New.Mesopotamia’s cultural values and literaryinfluence are especially evident in the book ofGenesis, while its military and political historyshaped the lives and times of the Hebrewprophets.

Geography made these influences inevitable:the land of the Bible was part of the “FertileCrescent,” the continuum of arable land thatarced from the valleys of the Tigris and Eu-phrates to the valley of the Nile. This contin-uum was not only spatial but also cultural:ceaseless commerce and recurrent conquestbrought into contact the different peoples of theNear East together with their languages andideas. In short, the Bible was not born in a cul-tural vacuum. Though its spiritual message wasunique, the experience and consciousness of itsauthors were conditioned by the Mesopotamiancontext in which they grew up.

Often the Old Testament appears to borrowmaterial from the even older literary traditionsof Mesopotamia. But even when this occurs,the differences are as telling as the similarities.Beneath the superficial parallelisms in imageryis a profound deviation in spiritual outlook.Identifying the similarities and appreciatingthe differences can help us better understandthe ideological individuality of both the ancientHebrews and their neighbors.

The Book of Genesis

CREATION

Date In 1654, using chronological data foundin scripture, Archbishop James Ussher ofArmagh, Ireland, calculated the date when the

universe was created by God: 4004 B.C.E. Later,Dr. John Lightfoot, vice chancellor of Cam-bridge University, refined this date and con-cluded the world had been created on October23, 4004 B.C.E., at 9 o’clock in the morning.Long before the efforts of Ussher and Light-foot, Jewish scholars had already calculated theyear of creation at 3761 B.C.E., a date whichbecame the starting point for the traditionalJewish calendar.

On the basis of scientific evidence, however,today’s astronomers would argue that the uni-verse was created not in 4004 or 3761 B.C.E.,but between eight and 20 billion years ago.

Nevertheless, the chronological informationin the Bible may reflect an historical fact: notthe date for the creation of the universe but thedate for the birth of civilization, an event thatarchaeologists say took place in the ancientNear East sometime in the fourth millenniumB.C.E. Like an insect caught in prehistoricamber, this critical event in humanity’s storymay have been chronologically preserved inancient memory, but confused in scripture withthe world’s own beginning.

Literary Precedents Parallels exist betweenthe story of creation in the biblical book ofGenesis and an account of creation in the clas-sic Babylonian epic, Enuma Elish.

Both Genesis and Enuma Elish are religioustexts which detail and celebrate cultural ori-gins: Genesis describes the origin and foundingof the Jewish people under the guidance of theLord; Enuma Elish recounts the origin andfounding of Babylon under the leadership ofthe god Marduk. Contained in each work is astory of how the cosmos and man were created.Each work begins by describing the waterychaos and primeval darkness that once filledthe universe. Then light is created to replacethe darkness. Afterward, the heavens are madeand in them heavenly bodies are placed.Finally, man is created.


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These similarities notwithstanding, the twoaccounts are more different than alike.

Genesis is the product of a monotheisticreligion; Enuma Elish, the product of a poly-theistic one. But more spiritually significantthan the quantity of gods a culture worshipsis their quality.

Enuma Elish tells how the gods savagelywarred with each other for supremacy untilMarduk emerged triumphant, splitting open thebody of the goddess Tiamat to make the sky anddraining the blood of the god Kingu to makeman. Man, meanwhile, is merely fashioned outof divine self-interest by Mesopotamian godswho want someone to serve them. There is noparadise for man to lose, no original sin to com-mit, because man is not pure to begin with, hav-ing been made from the blood of a demon. Thecreation of man (woman is not even mentioned)is simply one episode among many in the tale ofMarduk’s rise to power. The tale’s culminatingevent is the building of a great temple to hisglory in Babylon.

In contrast, the story in Genesis buildstoward the creation of man, and of woman,after which the Lord rests. God is portrayed asa singular and creative force, not battling withother gods for primacy, but intent upon creat-ing through the power of His word a universeof rational order, beauty, and goodness.

THE GARDEN OF EDEN

Origin of the Name The word “eden” firstappears in Sumerian literature, where it means “afertile plain.” Indeed, its origin may even be pre-Sumerian—borrowed from the language ofthose who lived in southern Mesopotamia beforethe Sumerians settled there. The word seems torecall in mythic terms the well-watered, garden-like paradise the earliest settlers would haveencountered upon their arrival.

Location According to the book of Genesis(2:8), the Garden of Eden was located in the

east. The garden was watered by a river thatflowed out of Eden and then split into fourbranches (2:10–14): the Hiddekel, the Pherath,the Gihon, and the Pishon. Of these rivers, twoare easy to identify: the Hiddekel is describedas bordering Assyria and is the Hebrew nameof the Tigris (Sumerian “Idiglat”); while thePherath is the Hebrew name for the Euphrates(Sumerian “Buranum”). Thus the Bible locatesEden somewhere in or near Mesopotamia, anatural location for paradise given its verdantriverine landscape.

The other two rivers—the Gihon and Pi-shon—are harder to locate. The Bible says theGihon flows around the land of Cush, a coun-try normally identified with Ethiopia. Here,however, Cush may refer to a country east ofthe Tigris that was inhabited by a people calledthe Kashsha. The river in that Cush is theKarun, which rises in Iran and empties into thePersian Gulf. The fourth river, the Pishon, hasnow been identified thanks to an earth-orbitingsatellite which detected traces of dry river beds(the Wadi Rimah and the Wadi Batin) downwhich the river’s waters once coursed. TheArabian desert through which the Pishon longago flowed was in fact once rich in gold, just asthe Bible says.

One problem with our identifications is thatour candidates for the biblical Gihon and Pi-shon do not, as the Bible states, originate fromthe same source as the Tigris and Euphrates.All four rivers, however, would have collec-tively emptied their waters into the same place,the Persian Gulf.

Ancient Sumerian literature once spoke ofan Eden-like paradise. Called Dilmun, the landwas pure, clean, and sunlit, a country wherefresh water nourished the fields, predatorswere absent, and aging and sickness wereunknown, a land inhabited by gods or byhumans who had been made immortal. Likethe biblical Garden of Eden, Dilmun waslocated in the east toward the rising sun. Some

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have searched for the remains of Dilmun onthe island of Bahrain (though Bahrain liessouth not east of Sumer), while others point tothe Indus Valley, another early birthplace ofcivilization. Still others argue that Dilmun, andperhaps Eden itself, now lie submergedbeneath the waters of the Persian Gulf, theresult of a radical elevation in sea level thatoccurred between 5,000 and 4,000 B.C.E. Thememory of such a paradise would have sur-vived, they argue, long after the garden itselfhad sunk beneath the sea.

ADAM AND EVE

In the book of Genesis, Adam is enticed by Eveand, as a result, loses his claim to paradise. Byeating the apple he gains knowledge, includingthe knowledge of his own nakedness. Enticedfirst by a serpent, Eve gains this knowledge toobut, like Adam, pays the price of banishmentfrom Eden’s garden.

In the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, aprostitute seduces Enkidu, a naive hero whohad grown up in nature. As a result of theencounter, Enkidu gains knowledge, includinga conscious awareness of his own nakedness,but he is forever banished from the compan-ionship of the creatures of nature that had for-merly been his friends. Later in the story, thehero Gilgamesh searches for the secret of eter-nal life. Given a magic plant that can providerejuvenation, he loses this gift when it is stolenby a serpent.

In both Genesis and the Epic of Gilgameshthe attainment of knowledge is associated witha loss of innocence. In each story, sexual seduc-tion and a serpent’s wiles cause a male hero tofall from a state of grace.

Genesis, however, differs from the Epic ofGilgamesh in attributing the hero’s fall to hisdisobedience to his god. The narrative in Gen-esis is thus distinguished by its moral frame-work. However painful the losses suffered by

Enkidu and Gilgamesh, they do not stem frominsubordination.

The story of Eve’s birth is illuminated by amyth set in Dilmun, the Sumerian Eden.According to the tale, the goddess Ninhursagsought to cure the ailing god Enki. To cure hisrib (Sumerian “ti”), she created a special goddessof healing called Nin-ti, “the lady of the rib.”The creation of this goddess may underlie thestory of how God created Eve from Adam’s rib.Because the Sumerian word “ti” also means “tolive,” the goddess’ name also meant “the ladywho brings (someone) to life.” Significantly,Eve’s name in Hebrew, Havvah, means life.

THE FLOOD

The most compelling case for Mesopotamianliterary influence on the Bible is the story ofNoah and the ark, for the tale of a global floodand a divinely chosen survivor also occurs inthe literary traditions of Sumer, Babylonia, andAssyria. These accounts strikingly parallel thebiblical narrative both in their general outlinesand in particular details. In its Akkadian incar-nation as part of the classic Epic of Gilgamesh,the Mesopotamian flood-story was to become astaple of literature across the ancient NearEast, including the land of the Bible.

Similarities In the Mesopotamian versions, agod warns an individual of devastation from animpending flood. The god then gives direc-tions for the construction of a vessel designedto save a select group of human beings and ani-mals. Once the deadly rains have ceased, theboat comes to rest on a mountaintop. After thepassage of time, the Mesopotamian Noahreleases a series of birds in the hope they willfly back with evidence the flood is abating.Upon the receipt of this evidence, the passen-gers disembark and offer thanks to their god,who in turn promises never to send such aflood again.


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Differences Despite these similarities to thestoryline in Genesis, there are also significantdifferences. While the biblical ark is made out ofwood, the Mesopotamian one is made out ofreeds, an abundant material used for construc-tion in a land where wood was scarce. While thebiblical ark is rectangular, the Mesopotamianone is a giant cube, with five times the displace-ment of Noah’s vessel. As for the rain, it lasts for40 days and nights in the Bible but only a weekin the Mesopotamian account. The biblical arkcomes to rest on the mountains of Ararat inArmenia; the Mesopotamian one, on AssyrianMt. Nisir. And the species of birds sent out inthe two stories are not exactly the same.

But the most illuminating differencebetween the two accounts is a moral one. InGenesis the Lord uses the flood to purge theearth of human sinfulness, singling out Noah

for special treatment because he is righteous.The Mesopotamian Noah, on the other hand,is not explicitly saved because he is more right-eous than his contemporaries. Nor does Enlil,the leader of the Mesopotamian gods, use theflood to punish sin. Instead, he floods the earthbecause a populous and noisy human race hasbeen making him lose sleep. Throughout, theBiblical narrative has moral direction; indeed,after the flood God promulgates new ethicalguidelines by which humankind must live. Con-versely, Enlil is self-centered and concernedonly with his own gratification; it is a divinesubordinate, Ea, who warns the MesopotamianNoah of the impending disaster.

The Name of Noah To the Sumerians theflood-hero was known as Ziusudra (“a life oflong days”), spelled Xisouthros by the thirdcentury B.C.E. Babylonian priest, Berossus, inhis retelling of the tale. In the Babylonian andAssyrian traditions, the hero was also known asUtnapishtim (“he found life”) or as Atrahasis(“exceedingly wise”). Though Jewish traditionexplains the name Noah as coming from theHebrew root for “comfort,” it may instead be ashortened form of the name Naahmuuliel, thename given to the flood-hero by the Hurrians,an ethnic group active in Mesopotamia in thesecond millennium B.C.E.

Historical Evidence for the Flood UnlikeIsrael, Mesopotamia was frequented by destruc-tive floods, a persuasive reason for concludingthat the biblical story of the flood originated notin Israel but in the valleys of the Tigris andEuphrates. Such a conclusion is supported bythe fact that the ark was said to come to rest noton a mountain in Israel but on a mountain chainon Mesopotamia’s northern frontier.

In his excavations at the Sumerian city ofUr, Sir Leonard Woolley believed for a timehe had actually uncovered physical confirma-tion of the event: an eight-foot-thick layer of


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12.1 The decipherment of this tablet—aBabylonian account of the Genesis-like GreatFlood—revolutionized biblical studies and gave newimpetus to the modern exploration of Mesopotamia.(The British Museum)

alluvial soil sandwiched between two layers ofoccupational debris, the remains of two cul-tures that had flourished before and after agreat inundation. The layer of silt dated to thefourth millennium B.C.E. Later surveys ofSumer, however, revealed layers of silt at manysites, but all of them dated to different timeperiods ranging from 4000 to 2500 B.C.E.Thus, there had not been one universal flood,but many localized ones.

Nevertheless, in their ancient lists ofkings, the Sumerians themselves divided theirhistory into two main periods: before theGreat Flood and after. Some modern scholarsbelieve this division reflects the memory of an

inundation that occurred some 10,000 yearsago at the end of the Ice Age, when huge por-tions of land were covered by what are nowthe waters of the Persian Gulf. It was this cat-aclysmic event, they believe, that later becametransfigured in myth.

THE TOWER OF BABEL

Genesis recalls an act of supreme arrogance,the building of a city with a lofty tower meantto reach to the heavens. To stop the project,God made human beings speak different lan-guages so that, no longer being able to com-municate with one another, they would beunable to collaborate. Accordingly, the Biblederives the word Babel from the Hebrew rootbalal, “to confuse.”

The monument that inspired this story was,no doubt, the great ziggurat, or platformedtemple, that once stood in the imposing city ofBabylon. Babylon’s name is in fact echoed inthe Tower of Babel’s name and is thus its trueetymological source.

Because building stone was rare in southernMesopotamia, ziggurats were built of brick,just as the Bible notes in its description of theTower of Babel’s construction.

In the Sumerian language, the stepped plat-form was called Etemenanki, “The House ofthe Foundation of Heaven and Earth,” whilethe temple on top was called Esagila, “TheHouse That Lifts Its Head.” As though recall-ing these names, the Bible speaks of the Towerof Babel having “its head in heaven.”

More than a disquisition on architecture,however, the story of the Tower of Babel is amoralistic tale that sees in the multiple lan-guages of Mesopotamia’s multicultural civiliza-tion the mark of divine vengeance.

ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND JACOB

The “Patriarchal Narratives”—the stories ofAbraham, Isaac, and Jacob—are a tapestry


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12.2 The great “Flood Pit” at Ur. The discoveryof a thick layer of mud sandwiched between layersof artifacts led Sir Leonard Woolley to speculate hehad found evidence of the biblical flood.(University of Pennsylvania Museum)

woven out of the cultural threads of theMesopotamian world.

Origins Abraham’s homeland was not Israelbut ancient Iraq.

The Bible calls the city of his birth Ur ofthe Chaldees. This city may have been the Urexcavated by Sir Leonard Woolley in south-ern Mesopotamia, or its namesake, Ura,located in the northwest. Locating Abraham’sbirthplace in the north makes sense in termsof his ancestry: the names of his great-grand-father, grandfather, and brother are synony-mous with the names of cities in the region,the same area from which Abraham latersought a wife for his son, Isaac. Moreover, aninscription found at the powerful city of Eblareveals that one of its greatest kings borethe name Ebrum, the same name as Abra-ham’s great-great-great-great-grandfather,the ancestor for whom the Hebrews werenamed. The language of Ebla was, in fact, thedirect ancestor of the Hebrew language, andin its cuneiform tablets we read of peoplenamed Abraham, Esau, Ishmael, and Israel, averitable “telephone directory” of Hebrewpersonal names.

Customs The folkways of the patriarchs,which once seemed peculiar and unique tothe Bible, have now been shown to be consis-tent with practices in ancient Mesopotamiansociety during the second millennium B.C.E.Texts discovered at the northern Mesopo-tamian city of Nuzu have been especiallyinstructive in this regard. Sarai’s gift of ahandmaid to Abram in order that her hus-band might produce an heir; Esau’s sale of hisbirthright to his younger brother Jacob for abowl of soup; the dying Isaac’s oral will; andRachel’s theft of ritual objects called teraphimfrom her father Laban’s home all find paral-lels in the legal documents of Nuzu, demon-strating that the patriarchs’ lives were a fabric

woven from the yarn of Mesopotamian cul-tural values.

The Book of Exodus

THE BIRTH OF MOSES

The story of the birth of Moses echoes ele-ments in the legend of the birth of Sargon ofAkkad, who ruled southern Mesopotamiaapproximately a thousand years before theprobable date of the Exodus. Sargon’s legendrecounts how he was born in secret to a highpriestess, who put him in a basket of rushes(the lid of which was sealed with bitumen) andplaced the basket in a river. The basket waslater found by a man named Akki, who was adrawer of water. Akki became the child’s fos-ter father and raised him. Later, the story says,the goddess Ishtar bestowed her love on theyoung Sargon and he rose to become king ofthe land. The secret birth, the deposit of thebaby into a basket that is then floated on ariver, the baby’s discovery by an adult whobecomes his foster parent, and the subsequentrise of the child to kingship under divine favorparallels the story of Moses in Exodus 2: 1–10.To be sure, there are differences: Moses’mother was not a priestess and his foster par-ent (an Egyptian princess) was not a lowlydrawer of water; the social status of his birthmother and his foster mother are thusreversed in scripture.

These literary parallels may, of course, bemerely a coincidence. The argument is furthercomplicated by the fact that the basic outlinesof the story are found in the Roman legend ofRomulus and Remus, who were born to apriestess, set adrift in a river (the Tiber), foundby a she-wolf and raised by a shepherd untilthey sought to become leaders of their people.It is hard to say whether the three stories arosefrom separate sources, or whether the Roman


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legend was in some way shaped by Near East-ern story motifs.

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

The focus of Exodus is not Mesopotamia, theland of the Jewish people’s origin, but Egypt,the country of its enslavement. Yet even inExodus the presence of Mesopotamian culturalinfluence is palpable. While Egyptian societywas governed by the oral pronouncements ofthe pharaoh, Mesopotamia was regulated by along-standing tradition of written codes of law,from the Sumerian Code of Ur-Nammu to theBabylonian Code of Hammurabi. In concept aswell as in content, the biblical “Ten Command-ments” in Exodus are a lineal descendant ofthese codes. When Moses the leader standsatop Mt. Sinai to receive the Torah from theLord, he becomes the Hebraic analogue toking Hammurabi who five centuries earlier hadreceived the statutes of Babylon from the godShamash seated upon his throne.

The Hebrew Prophets

Just as the earliest books of the Old Testamentreflect the lifestyles and practices of ancientMesopotamia, so do some of its last books bearthe imprint of Mesopotamian militarism andpolitics. This is most clear in the book of Kings, Iand II, and the writings of the Hebrew prophets.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The key military events that had an impact onthe prophets were the Assyrian king Shal-maneser’s conquest of the Northern Kingdomof Israel in 722 B.C.E.; Sennacherib’s siege ofJerusalem in 701 B.C.E.; the Babylonian kingNebuchadnezzar’s capture of Jerusalem in 597B.C.E. leading to the First Exile of the Jews; thecity’s recapture, the Temple’s destruction, andthe Second Exile in 586 B.C.E.; and the return of

Jewish captives to Jerusalem in 536 B.C.E. underthe reign of the Persian king Cyrus.

While the comments of the prophets oftenforecast the defeat of the Jewish nation orhold out the hope of its eventual renewal,their primary message is fundamentally moral


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12.3 This object, known as the “Black Obelisk,”describes how the ninth-century B.C.E. Assyrianking, Shalmaneser III, prevailed over lesserkingdoms. (Rogers, A History of Babylonia andAssyria, 1915)

in tone, viewing societal downfall as theinevitable consequence of ignoring or defyingGod’s ethical teachings.

THE PROPHETS AND THEIR MESSAGE

The Hebrew prophets who lived before the daysof exile derided the social injustices and religioushypocrisy that prevailed in their land under theinfluence of materialism. Amos, the earliest ofthe prophets, foresaw retribution:

“Thus saith the Lord: Because they haverejected the law of the Lord, and have not kept

His statutes, . . . I will send a fire upon Judah,and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem . . .because they sell the righteous for silver andthe needy for a pair of shoes.”

“They shall fall by the sword; their infants shallbe dashed in pieces,” said Hosea of the people ofIsrael who relied on foreign powers like Assyriarather than the Lord. “It hath been told thee, Oman, what is good,” proclaimed Micah, “andwhat the Lord doth require of thee: only to dojustly, and to love mercy, and to walk humblywith thy God.” Under the encroaching shadowof war, both Micah and Isaiah longed for the daywhen people “shall beat their swords into plow-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks.Nation shall not lift up sword against nation;neither shall they learn war any more. But theyshall sit every man under his vine and under hisfig tree, and none shall make them afraid.”Meanwhile, the prophet Nahum railed againstthe savagery of Assyrian Nineveh, “the bloodycity, the den of lions, the feeding place of theyoung lions,” a city God would punish becauseof its brutality.


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12.4 Detail from the Black Obelisk. In the secondregister from the top, King Jehu of Israel kneels insubmission before Shalmaneser. (Rogers, AHistory of Babylonia and Assyria, 1915)

12.5 In 701 B.C.E. the Assyrian king Sennacheriblaid siege to the Judaean city of Lachish. The siege isdescribed in detail in the Old Testament. Here, froma relief found at the site of the Assyrian capital,Jewish captives are shown begging for mercy.(Layard, Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh, 1853)

Nineveh and the Assyrian Empire didindeed fall in 612 B.C.E., but its conqueror,Babylon, proved an even greater threat to theJewish nation. The prophet Habakkuk foresawJerusalem’s coming destruction at the hands ofthe Babylonians, “that bitter and impetuousnation, that march through the breadth of theearth, to possess dwelling-places that are nottheirs. They are terrible and dreadful. . . .Their horses are swifter than leopards, and aremore fierce than the wolves of the desert.”Both he and Jeremiah prayed for deliverance,but in the end Jerusalem fell, its Temple wassacked and burned, and its population wastransported to Babylon to become slaves.

The sorrows of the captives are voiced in thebook of Lamentations and in Psalm 137:

By the waters of Babylon,There we sat down, yea, we wept,When we remembered Zion.Upon the willows in the midst thereofWe hanged our harps.For there they that led us captive asked of us

words of song,And our tormentors asked of us mirth:“Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”

How shall we sing the Lord’s songIn a foreign land?If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,Let my right hand forget her cunning.Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,If I remember thee not;If I set not JerusalemAbove my chiefest joy.

Stripped of their Temple, the captivesreplaced empty ritual with heartfelt prayer,while their prophet Ezekiel envisioned the daywhen their dry bones would be revivified andtheir nationhood resurrected.

Released from captivity by the Persian kingCyrus, the Jews returned to their homelandand rebuilt their Temple, led by Ezra andNehemiah and inspired by the words of theprophets Haggai and Zechariah. Yet, as the

writings of Malachi show, prosperity wouldonce again undermine a single-minded com-mitment to God’s teachings. Once again, like aperpetual Greek tragedy, the ancient cycle ofaffluence, arrogance, folly, and vengeance wasplayed out. To the eyes of the prophet Joel, thearmies of destruction were already massing onthe horizon like a vast swarm of locusts aboutto devour the land. Only God’s mercy and lovecould and would save His people:

And it shall come to pass in that day that themountains shall drop down sweet wine, andthe hills shall flow with milk . . . and a foun-tain shall come forth of the house of the Lord.. . . Judah shall be inhabited for ever, andJerusalem from generation to generation.

THE BOOK OF JONAH

One of the most extraordinary books of the OldTestament is the book of Jonah. In the book,God instructs the prophet Jonah to preach tothe people of Nineveh in order that they mightturn from their wicked ways. Fearing the per-sonal consequences of preaching to the Assyri-ans and assuming that God would eventuallyand mercifully spare them anyway, Jonah boardsa ship heading in exactly the opposite direction.In the end, thanks to a divinely sent storm andsea monster (not a whale in the original Hebrewtext!), Jonah accepts the mission and travels toNineveh, “an exceedingly great city, of threedays’ journey [in scope].” In response to Jonah’smessage, the entire population of Nineveh,including man and beast, put on sackcloth andashes and pray for deliverance. In turn, the Lorddoes not punish them.

The underlying theme of this story is theuniversality of Judaism’s god. Not only do Hispowers reach out over the Mediterranean, butHis judgment and mercy extend beyond theland of Israel to foreign lands, even to thoseinhabited by Israel’s ancient enemies, whoeventually acknowledge His power.


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Psalms and Proverbs

Both the biblical book of Psalms and the bibli-cal book of Proverbs are expressions of literarygenres that long flourished in Mesopotamiaand inspired their Hebrew analogues by exam-ple and form.

Job and Ecclesiastes

In addition, a Sumerian precedent exists for thebook of Job, but a thousand years older than thebiblical work. As Samuel Noah Kramer observes,“it represents man’s first recorded attempt todeal with the age-old yet very modern problemof human suffering” (Kramer 1981: 112).

Similarly, a Babylonian dialogue exists thatis colored by pessimism, anticipating the toneof the later biblical book of Ecclesiastes.

Both of these Mesopotamian works, how-ever, are shorter and less complex than theiranalogues in the Bible. Rather than signifyingdirect literary influence, they may instead pointto parallel efforts on the part of thinkers inboth cultures to explain the human condition.

The Book of Esther

Although the geographical setting of the Bookof Esther is Persia (Iran) rather than Meso-potamia (Iraq), the names of two of the sto-ries’ main characters are Mesopotamian inorigin. The Hebrew name Mordecai echoesthe name of the Babylonian god Marduk, andthe Hebrew name Esther echoes the name ofthe love-goddess Ishtar.

The story states that Mordecai and Esther’sfamilies had previously lived in Babylon as aconsequence of the Babylonian Captivity.Their Babylonian names could therefore beexplained by their birthplace. When Cyrus II

the Great of Persia released the Jews from theircaptivity in 536 B.C.E., some may havemigrated to Persia, where our story takes place.

However, because Marduk and Ishtar arethe names of Babylonian gods (and unlikelychoices for the names of Jewish babies), theBook of Esther’s characters may instead deriveat least in part from Babylonian religious tradi-tion. The marriage of the sexually attractiveEsther to the Persian king may recall the ritualmating of the goddess Ishtar with Babylon’smonarchs to ensure the earth’s fertility (seeChapter 4). Furthermore, the role of Mordecaias the guardian of the king’s life and his even-tual adviser recalls the place of Marduk as thedivine protector of Babylon’s kings.

A key element in the story—the casting oflots by Persian diviners to determine the mostauspicious date on which to exterminate theJews—is reminiscent of the prominent placedivination had in Mesopotamian society (seeChapters 4, 5, and 11). Even the Hebrew wordfor lot, pur (Esther 3: 7), the etymological ori-gin of the Jewish holiday Purim, may stemfrom the Akkadian word for lot, puru.

The Book of Daniel

The theme of God’s universality is also foundnot only in the book of Jonah but also in thebook of Daniel, which dates to the second cen-tury B.C.E. In the story, Daniel and his threefriends work for the Babylonian king Nebuchad-nezzar and win his admiration because of theirGod-given wisdom and skill. Because of Daniel’sability to interpret a royal dream, Nebuchadnez-zar declares the Lord to be the one true god.However, because Daniel and his friends refuseto worship a golden idol of the king, he throwsthem into a fiery furnace. When they emergeunscathed, he restores them to their position andreaffirms his faith in God, as he does again afterDaniel interprets yet another dream.


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Later, Nebuchadnezzar is slain and isreplaced on the throne by Darius the Mede.Arrested for praying to someone other thanDarius, Daniel is thrown into a lions’ den, butthrough the power of prayer is saved onceagain. In recognition of this miracle, Dariusthen declares that Daniel’s god should be wor-shiped throughout the empire.

The concluding portion of Daniel reportsvisions of successive conquerors who will rulethe Near East: the Babylonians, the Medes, thePersians, Alexander the Great, and Alexander’sHellenistic successors. Ultimately, says theprophet, the Jewish people will stand supreme.

The acknowledgment of the Lord by foreignkings and the prophecy of the Jewish people’sultimate triumph over their enemies served toreassure the Jews with confidence in their owndivinely ordained future in the face of centuriesof conquest and oppression by others.

MESOPOTAMIA ANDTHE APOCRYPHA

The 13 ancient Jewish works known as the“Apocrypha” date to between 300 B.C.E. and70 C.E. and they were not included in thecanonical text of the Hebrew scriptures. Someof these works are connected with Mesopo-tamian civilization. The Prayer of Azariah, theSong of the Three Young Men, Susanna, and Beland the Dragon supplement the canonical bookof Daniel and are set in the court at Babylon,while the book of Tobit takes place in Nineveh.Bel and the Dragon tells how Daniel (1) clev-erly proved that the food being offered to theidol Bel (Semitic for ‘Lord’) was actuallybeing eaten by his priests and their familiesand (2) killed a dragon the Babylonians wor-shiped by feeding it a mix of pitch, fat, and

hair. The first episode exposes the fraudu-lence of Mesopotamian idolatry; the second,the vulnerability of a pagan deity pictured inMesopotamian art. The book of Judith for itspart tells the tale of a Jewish heroine whosaved her country by beheading an Assyriangeneral named Holofernes, who was thenbesieging Jerusalem.

MESOPOTAMIAAND THE NEWTESTAMENT

While Mesopotamia plays a major role in thestories of the Old Testament, it plays only aminor role in the New. Instead, it is the cul-ture, history, and thought of the Greco-Romanworld that infuses the Gospels and their com-panion books. In short, while the Old Testa-ment faces east (to Mesopotamia) and south (toEgypt), the New Testament looks westward tothe civilizations of Greece and Rome.

Nevertheless, sporadic references to Meso-potamia do occur. In citing the genealogy ofJesus, Matthew refers three times to the Baby-lonian Captivity of 586 B.C.E., an event alsoreferred to in the book of Acts. In his first letterthe apostle Peter mentions Babylon once,referring to it only in passing. Indeed, only onestory about Mesopotamia can be found in theGospels: in Matthew we read how Jesus criti-cized the scribes and Pharisees for being lessreceptive to his message than the Ninevites hadbeen to the message of Jonah.

In the book of Revelation, however, oneMesopotamian city assumes symbolic signifi-cance. In the book of Revelation, Babylonfunctions as a repugnant symbol of sin. Angels


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speak of its fall and prophesy its future destruc-tion by God. In one powerful passage, an angelreveals the image of a prostitute bedecked ingaudy jewelry and holding a cup filled withmoral contamination. On her head is written:“Babylon, the great, mother of harlots and ofearth’s abominations.”

Revelation is the last book in the New Tes-tament. Thus the Bible’s final word on Meso-potamia is a curse.

MESOPOTAMIAAND THE KORAN

In the whole of the Koran, Mesopotamia ismentioned only once. The negative image ofBabylon in the book of Revelation persists inthe Koran’s second Sura, where the angels ofthe city are described as masters of sorcery—amemory perhaps, albeit distorted, of ancientBabylonian magic.

In contrast to this single reference, the textof the Koran frequently refers to Egypt and itspharaoh, perhaps because in the seventh cen-tury C.E. when Mohammed lived the stonesplendors of Egypt were still visible while themud monuments of Mesopotamia had longsince sunk into oblivion.

Yet in describing the paradise where thefaithful will go after death, the prophet takesthe biblical Eden and transmutes it into anidyllic land of pleasure where the immortal willforever dwell. In this Islamic image, SumerianDilmun awakens from its 3,500-year-longsleep. Says Mohammed:

But whoever stands before Him in the purityof faith after performing good deeds will beraised to new heights—to the Gardens ofEden with flowing streams where he will dwellforever. (Sura 20: 75–76; trans. Ahmed Ali)

READING

Old Testament (General)

Barton 1937: archaeology and the Bible;Cornfeld 1976: archaeological commentaryon biblical times and events; Dalley 1998:Mesopotamian influence; Gordon and Rends-burg 1997: the Near Eastern cultural context ofthe Bible; Keller 1981: the Bible as history; King1969: Babylonian legends and Hebrew tradi-tion; Kramer 1959: Sumerian literature and theBible; Pritchard 1969: Mesopotamian texts.

The Book of Genesis

CREATION

Brandon 1963: Near Eastern stories; Clifford1994, Tsumura 1994: comparisons; Dalley1989 and 1991, McCall 1990: Mesopotamianmyth of creation; Heidel 1951: BabylonianGenesis; Tsumura 1989: earth and waters.

THE GARDEN OF EDEN

Bibby 1972, Kramer 1944 and 1963, Potts1983: Dilmun; Cornwall 1946: Dilmun; Ham-blin 1987: location; Kramer 1956: Sumerianparallels; Rice 1985: Bahrain; Widegren 1951:tree of life.

ADAM AND EVE

Kramer 1956: Sumerian parallels.

THE FLOOD

Dalley 1991: Mesopotamian myth; Dundas1988: literary parallels; Frymer-Kensky 1977,1978: flood story; Heidel 1949: the Gilgameshepic and parallels; Lambert and Millard 1969:


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Atrahasis; Schmidt 1995: flood narratives;Tigay 1982: development of the Gilgameshlegend; Tsumura 1994: comparisons.

THE TOWER OF BABEL

Killick 1996: ziggurat; Koldewey 1915: exca-vations; Larue 1969, Oates 1986, Parrot1955, Saggs 1962: tower; Van Buren 1952:construction.

ABRAHAM, ISAAC, AND JACOB

Berment and Weitzman 1979, Ebla; Eichler1989, Gordon 1940, Gordon and Rendsburg1992, Matthiae 1980, Pettinato 1981 and 1991,Starr 1939, Zaccagnini 1977: Nuzu; Gordon1958 and 1963: Abraham as a merchant, andUra as Ur; Greenberg 1955: the Hebrews andthe Hab/piru; 1962: Rachel’s theft of theteraphim; Liverani 1973: the Amorites; Mala-mat 1971 and 1992, Mendelhall 1948, Oppen-heim 1952: Mari; Millard 2001, Schanks 2000:Abraham’s Ur; Owen and Wilhelm 1981–: theHurrians and Nuzu; Thompson 1974: historic-ity; Van Weters, 1972: Abraham in history andtradition; Wilhelm 1989: the Hurrians; Wool-ley 1950: Ur.

The Book of Exodus

Gordon 1957: the Code of Hammurabi;Kramer 1981: Sumerian law codes; Lewis1980, Pfeiffer 1966, and Pritchard 1969: theSargon legend.

The Hebrew Prophets

Hoenig and Rosenberg 1957: historical back-ground and prophetic themes.

Psalms and Proverbs

Kramer 1956: commentary; Pritchard 1969:texts.

Job and EcclesiastesKramer 1956: commentary; Pritchard 1969:texts.

The Book of EstherAusubel 1964: background to Purim.

The Book of DanielFreedman 2000: background and additions totext.

Mesopotamia and the ApocryphaFreedman 2000: Bel and the Dragon; Wigoder1986: summaries of books.

Mesopotamia and the New TestamentKeller 1981: Bible as history; Wigoder 1986:summaries of books.

Mesopotamia and the KoranBabil 1995: Babylon’s reputation in medievalArabic literature; Ali 1988: text of the Koran.


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THE LEGACY OFMESOPOTAMIA

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What have the civilizations of ancientMesopotamia bequeathed to us? What

is their legacy to us, the inhabitants of a worldthey never could have imagined?

In his book, History Begins at Sumer, SamuelNoah Kramer lists 39 “firsts” in recorded his-tory that can be credited to the Sumerians andthe culture they created. Many of these belongto the field of religion: “Man’s First Cos-mogony and Cosmology,” “Man’s First GoldenAge,” “The First Moral Ideas,” “The First Bib-lical Parallels,” “The First ‘Noah,’” “The First‘Moses,’” “The First ‘Job,’” “The First LiturgicLaments,” “The First Messiahs,” “The FirstMater Dolorosa,” “The First Funeral Chants,”“The First Tale of Resurrection,” and “TheFirst ‘St. George.’” Others are landmarks in lit-erature: “The First ‘Farmer’s Almanac,’” “TheFirst Animal Fables,” “The First Proverbs andSayings,” “Man’s First Epic Literature,” “TheFirst Historian,” “The First Love Song,” “TheFirst Sex Symbolism,” “The First Literary Por-trait of the Ideal Mother,” “The First Lullaby,”“The First Literary Imagery,” “The First Caseof Literary Borrowing,” “The First LiteraryDebates,” and “The First Library Catalogue.”Still others are milestones in social history:“The First Legal Precedent,” “The FirstBicameral Congress,” “The First Case of TaxReduction,” “Labor’s First Victory,” “The First‘War of Nerves,’” “The First ‘Sick Society,’”“The First Schools,” “The First Case of‘Apple-Polishing,’” and “The First Case ofJuvenile Delinquency.” Rounding out the 39are “The First Aquarium,” “The First Experi-ment in Shade-Tree Gardening,” “The FirstLong-Distance Champion,” and “The FirstPharmacopoeia.”

The length and variety of Kramer’s list is asolid demonstration of the creative genius ofthe Sumerians, the founders of the world’s ear-liest civilization.

But being first is not necessarily the same ashaving an enduring influence on later ages.

Some innovations may be forgotten, or may bereinvented later by others oblivious of theirforebearers.

For example, in 1936 a clay jar was found inancient ruins at Baghdad. Dating to between250 B.C.E. and 250 C.E., the jar housed a hollowcopper tube containing a vertical iron rod heldin place by asphalt. If the empty space in thetube had been filled with an acid (such as vine-gar), the object would have functioned as aprimitive battery capable of generating a half-volt current. All that was missing were the wireconnections. Yet the principle would be forgot-ten, and it would not be until 1800 that Alessan-dro Volta would “invent” the electric battery.

To assess the true legacy of Mesopotamia,then, we will need to trace the continuity of itsideas and the longevity of its accomplish-ments. Only then will we be able to determineMesopotamia’s actual influence upon us andour world. Yet to fully appreciate the answer,we must first understand the process of trans-mission that explains how these ancient con-cepts survived for millennia, often againstgreat odds.

CONTINUITYAND CHANGE

The ancient lifeline that explains the trans-mission and survival of Mesopotamian lore isthe writing system the Sumerians invented.Without writing that can give them perma-nence, ideas can perish along with the peoplewho first conceived them; endowed with per-manent form, however, they can transcendthe millennia.

The cultures of Akkad, Babylon, and Assyriarecognized the importance of writing and went


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on to master and adapt the system the Sumeri-ans had devised. But, in addition to merelybecoming literate in cuneiform, each successivenation also respected the cultural achievementsof its predecessors. Thus the knowledge andwisdom of Mesopotamia were reverentiallypreserved by each new generation, and theygrew by accumulation.

The Sumerian language posed a specialchallenge because the Sumerians, unlike theirpolitical successors, spoke and wrote a non-Semitic tongue. But so highly regarded werethe Sumerians as the inventors of civilization,mastering their language and literature becamea prerequisite for any Mesopotamian whowished to be considered educated and eligiblefor social advancement. As a consequence,Sumerian became the classic language ofancient Mesopotamia, with a status andlongevity comparable to that of Latin inmedieval and Renaissance Europe. The archae-ological testimony to Sumerian’s stature andpersistence is found in bilingual cuneiform dic-tionaries, schoolroom exercises, royal libraries,and the durability of literary classics like theEpic of Gilgamesh. In the second millenniumB.C.E., Semitic Akkadian became an interna-tional language of commerce and diplomacy,and the language helped spread cuneiformand its intellectual riches beyond the Tigrisand Euphrates. Indeed, when the Indo-Euro-pean Persians conquered the Neo-BabylonianEmpire, they adopted the cuneiform script fortheir archives and public inscriptions, therebyembracing a visible symbol of continuity withthe pre-Persian cultures they ruled.

Though cuneiform continued to be taught inacademies and studied by Mesopotamian schol-ars as late as the first century C.E., it was eventu-ally supplanted by the alphabet, a streamlinedscript that was far easier to learn and use. By thattime Aramaic had become the new lingua francaof the Mideastern world, as would Arabic cen-

turies later, and both were written in versions ofthe new script. As a consequence, the multimil-lennial chain of continuity with the linguisticand literary traditions of Mesopotamia wasfinally broken. Cuneiform inscriptions becameillegible to the Mesopotamians themselves, whowere now barred by illiteracy from drinkingfrom the river of ancestral wisdom. Yet, likeancient time capsules, the baked clay tablets andstones would preserve this store of wisdom untilit could be unlocked by the code-breakingscholars of a later world.

The Memory of Foreigners

Even though its most ancient languages andliteratures might no longer be spoken or readby its own people, the cultural legacy ofMesopotamia was kept alive in the minds offoreigners.

BIBLICAL TRADITION

The first and most influential of these peopleswere the ancient Hebrews. As we saw in theprevious chapter, the Hebrew scriptures bearwitness to the military power of Mesopotamiaand its cultural impact. Because the Old Tes-tament was preserved and revered by Jews andChristians, images of Mesopotamia—like cul-tural artifacts caught and irradiated in thespiritual amber of biblical prose and poetry—endured down through all later ages of West-ern civilization. As a result, the “Garden ofEden,” the “Tower of Babel,” “Noah and theArk,” and the fateful “Writing on the Wall”seen by King Belshazzar live on in our culturalmemory to this day.

But the Hebrews were not the only foreignpeople to be influenced by Mesopotamia and tobe impressed by its power. The classical Greeksand Romans also collaborated in preservingMesopotamia’s legacy.

T H E L E G A C Y O F M E S O P O T A M I A

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THE FATHER OF HISTORY

Paradoxically, Mesopotamia is rememberedthanks to one of the most celebrated wars inhistory, but a war in which the people ofMesopotamia played only a marginal role. Inthe fifth century B.C.E., the greatest conflictbetween Europe and Asia took place since theTrojan War made famous by Homer. Calledthe “Persian Wars” by the later Greeks, it was aDavid and Goliath conflict in which the mas-sive might of the Persian Empire was pittedagainst the small city-states of Greece. ThePersians attempted to swallow up Greece butwere driven back by Greek patriots defendingtheir native land and political freedom. HadPersia triumphed, the Golden Age of Athensand the artistic and literary achievements itinspired never would have taken place.

In the aftermath of the Hellenic victory, aGreek named Herodotus set about researchingand writing a history of the war. Herodotusembodied a personality trait emblematic of hispeople: curiosity. Not content with just record-ing a list of battles, he probed the causes thathad led to the war’s origin. Since Persia inthose days was the political and military masterof the Near East, Herodotus wondered howthe Persians had risen to such a position of pre-eminence. This, in turn, led him to wonderabout the various cultures the Persians had tri-umphed over, including the kingdoms ofMesopotamia.

In the course of his investigation, Herodotusinterrogated and read the works of Persian his-torians and traveled to the Near East to see itslands and peoples firsthand. He did not viewthe Persians and their allies as villains despitethe fact that Babylonian and Assyrian troopshad been part of the invasion force. Instead, hesaw the high purpose of his inquiry “to preservethe remembrance of what men have done fromdecay and to prevent the great and marvelousactions of both the Greeks and the Barbarians

(as he called them) from losing their full mea-sure of glory.” It is because of Herodotus’s gen-erosity of spirit that he recounted theachievements of those who had sought to robhis own people of their way of life. As humanbeings living a different way of life, the barbar-ians were a continuing source of fascination tohim. Thus, in the very first volume of his his-tory, he describes the land of Mesopotamia, theglorious city of Babylon and its rulers, and thecurious customs of its people.

Western civilization would later callHerodotus “the father of history” because hiswas the first scientific attempt they knew ofto assess the causes and consequences of his-torical events rather than merely to list themin chronological order. Herodotus not onlyinfluenced later historians of Greece andRome but also subsequently the educated cit-izenry of Europe who regarded his work as atrue classic of Western literature. For cen-turies, those who read the opening chaptersof his history marveled, as did Herodotushimself, at the lands of the Tigris andEuphrates and their past glories.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT

After the Persian Wars, the next great con-frontation between East and West came in thefourth century B.C.E. In retaliation for the inva-sion of Greece, Alexander, the 20-year-old kingof Macedonia, declared war against Persia. Butit was a personal war as well that Alexanderwaged, a war to prove his valor and gain incom-parable glory. Having defeated the Persianking, Alexander developed a bold plan for rul-ing the largest empire the world had everknown, an empire that reached from Greece inthe west to India in the east. His plan to insureits durability was to racially integrate theadministration of both his army and his govern-ment, blending Persian with Macedonian andGreek into a new ethnic amalgam. In addition,


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he encouraged his soldiers to intermarry withnative women and founded new cities through-out his realm to disseminate Hellenic cultureunder the stimulus of the East. For his adminis-trative capital he chose Babylon, where he diedin 323 B.C.E. just short of his 33rd birthday.Though his conquests were quickly divided upamong his successors, the cultural revolution hehad set in motion lived on in what is known asthe Hellenistic Age.

LATER GREEK HISTORIANS

Before Alexander became king of Macedonia, aGreek physician named Ctesias served in thecourt of the Persian king Artaxerxes II. Fasci-nated with Persian civilization, he compiled ahistory of the empire and its rulers. He visitedand described the city of Babylon, and hedevoted special attention to the careers of twoextraordinary Mesopotamian monarchs: Semi-ramis, Babylon’s reputed founder and firstqueen, and Sardanapalus, reportedly Assyria’slast king.

Semiramis played a man’s role, supervisingawesome works of engineering and construc-tion and boldly and aggressively waging war;Sardanapalus, for his part, acted the role ofa woman in dress and speech, until hisdeviancy and moral depravity brought ruin tohis kingdom.

Ctesias was the first historian to exploreBabylonian and Assyrian history in depth, buttoday his work survives only in fragments.Nevertheless, his account—especially his por-traits of the power-loving Semiramis and thepleasure-loving Sardanapalus—made a lastingimpression on later Greek historians.

Fragments survive of three other historianswho were contemporaries of Alexander theGreat: Cleitarchus, Aristobolus, and Berossus.A native of Mesopotamia, Berossus was thefirst writer to devote an entire work to the his-tory of Mesopotamia. His purpose was to

introduce the Greeks of the Hellenistic Age tohis culture. As a priest of the god Marduk ofBabylon, Berossus could read cuneiform andhad access to temple archives.

In the third century B.C.E., Philo of Byzan-tium drew up a list of the “Seven Wonders ofthe Ancient World.” Numbered among themwere the astounding Hanging Gardens ofBabylon, already celebrated by Ctesias.

Mesopotamia continued to attract the atten-tion of a variety of Greek writers as a newpower, Rome, began to flex its imperialisticmuscles and cast its eyes to the east. Notableamong these authors from the reign of Augus-tus Caesar were the historian Diodorus Siculusand the geographer Strabo, authors whosecomprehensive works survive and who wroteextensively on Babylonia and Assyria.

Meanwhile, the erotic poets Propertius andOvid chose Semiramis as a standard of irre-sistible femininity against which they measuredtheir own mistresses’ beauty. In the Metamor-phoses, moreover, a poem that had a profoundeffect, in later centuries, on the creative imagi-nation of Europe, Ovid placed the poignantlove story of Pyramus and Thisbe in the city ofBabylon, making the tomb of King Ninus thescene of their tragic tryst.

Roman prose writers themselves soon tookup the theme of Mesopotamia, like the firstcentury C.E. polymath, Pliny the Elder, whocompiled an encyclopedia of the world inRoman times, and Quintus Curtius Rufus, whoauthored a biography of Alexander the Great.

Even the second century C.E. Christianphilosopher Athenagoras got into the act bybranding Semiramis lewd and diabolical.

All these classical writers helped to sustainMesopotamia’s reputation as a land of sensualriches and seductive wealth in an era when itsactual cities were becoming mere tokens oftheir former selves. Through literature a mythof Mesopotamia was born that would nourishits legacy to later ages.


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BORROWED WORDS

Long before classical authors were using wordsto describe Mesopotamia, Mesopotamianwords were entering the languages of ancientGreece and Rome. Because Greek and Romancivilization shaped the later civilization ofEurope, many of these same words are now apart of the English language. Thus the legacyof Mesopotamia is woven into the fabric of ourthought and speech.

The main mechanism for this transfer wascommerce, for as Mideastern commoditiestraveled west in caravans and ships, their namestraveled with them as well.

Most are associated with plants: the crocusand the poppy; the cherry and the carob; andsuch ingredients as cumin and saffron, sesameand aromatic myrrh. Add to these the mineralsjasper and gypsum, and naphtha. All in all,there are about 50 words in ancient Greek thatare not Greek in origin but can be traced ety-mologically to Akkadian and, in some cases,back to Sumerian. Even the word “gum” maybe Sumerian, a shortened form of ancient“shim-gam-gam-ma.” Surprisingly, the com-mon English words “sack” and “cane” may alsohave Sumerian ancestries.

It is hard to say how old the transfer is, but itmay reach back to the second millenniumB.C.E. and the age of Homer’s heroes, whenMycenaean Greeks maintained a trading sta-tion on the Syrian coast at Ugarit, for thewords “sesame” and “cumin” have been foundinscribed in Linear B tablets uncovered inBronze Age Greece. Still others may havemade the journey across the Aegean in theholds of the eighth-century B.C.E. Phoenicianmerchant ships.

SURVEYING THE SKY

Before the earliest histories, the study of thestars may also have migrated from east to west.The pictures the Sumerians saw in the sky

when they connected stellar dots became thenames of their constellations, names which theastronomers of Babylonia reverentially repeated.Ten of these later became fixtures in the cosmicthinking of Greece and Rome: what the Sume-rians perceived as a bull became Taurus; twins,Gemini; a crab, Cancer; a lion, Leo; balance-scales, Libra; a scorpion, Scorpio; an archer,Sagittarius; a creature resembling a goat,Capricorn; a man bearing water, Aquarius; anda dragon, Hydra. The Sumerians were also thefirst to describe the galactic stars spilling acrossthe night sky as the “Milky Way.” And whenthe three Magi followed the Star of Bethlehem,they were also following the celestial teachingsand lore of the Babylonians who had precededthem in studying the heavens and their signs.

TRAVELERS IN AN ANTIQUE LAND

More than a thousand years after the ThreeWise Men journeyed from Persia to Bethle-hem, other travelers of the Middle Ages andRenaissance—like Benjamin of Tudela, JohnEldred, and Leonhart Rauwolff—journeyedfrom Europe to the Near East. Informed bythe teachings and stories of the Bible, they vis-ited the once-proud cities of Mesopotamia—Babylon, Nineveh, and Khorsabad—and stoodupon their ruins, conjuring up in their imagi-nations the Tower of Babel and the palaces ofBabylon’s kings. The memoirs of their travelswould stir the imaginations of their readerswith visions of lost splendor and fallen glory.

The 10th-century Arab geographer al-Masudi and the 14th-century Berber geogra-pher Ibn-Battuta likewise had described andmarveled at the crumbled gates of Nineveh andits toppled statues.

By the early 1700s the ruins of Mesopotamiawere infused with new life thanks to the firstEuropean translation of the Arabian Nights.Viewed through the gauzy filter of fantasy “astrange but compelling landscape emerged,


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Mesopotamian and Arabian, where BiblicalBabylon and Nineveh flourished in the days ofthe great caliphs” (McCall 1998: 187).

ROMANTIC ESCAPE

Europe’s fascination with the Mideast continuedduring the 19th century as Western imperialismbrought the two worlds into proximity. ForEuropeans, the sensuous image of the Mideastoffered an escape from the regimentation of theIndustrial Revolution and, in England, from theemotional repression of the Victorian Age. Ashistorian John Maier has written,

Orientalism, the fascination with an exoticEast, intensified under the Romantic revolt

against “civilization.” . . . As the Europeannations came to exert dominance over the cul-tural “other,” the East was available for theprojection of primitive fears and desires (with-out the West’s losing the assurance of its supe-riority). (Maier 1995: 11)

The public’s fascination with the Orient wasfurther intensified by the discoveries made inMesopotamia by 19th-century explorers andarchaeologists. Egypt’s splendors had alwaysbeen visible, but now a new world of awesomemajesty and mystery—foreshadowed in theBible—was being unearthed.

In the British Museum, the Louvre, and theBerlin Museum, the solemn sculptures of theBabylonians and Assyrians kept silent watch


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13.1 One of the colossal bulls of Nineveh shipped to London by Layard. It stands 14 feet high. (Layard,A Second Series of the Monuments of Nineveh, 1853)

alongside a philosophical bull that, in 1851,was miraculously endowed with the power ofspeech by an imaginative writer namedW. H. Stone:

I am the Bull of Nineveh. I was born in thequarries beside the river, the great river. . . .As a shapeless block was my substance borneto its place; there did the hands of cunningworkmen fashion me; . . . the chisel carvedmy ear, and I heard; the tool opened my eyes,and I saw. . . . Beside me was a companion likemyself; we two guarded the threshold . . . Ifelt myself the guardian of the nation’s his-tory, the emblem of its power, and thethought stamped itself on my features in asmile that has endured until now, proud atonce and solemn. . . . The sound of musicstrikes my ear, singing and the voluptuousdance; no more the battle-car, the crash ofarmies, and the shout of victors. . . . Long didforeigners hold us; and by degrees the beautyof the ancient work faded: walls crumbled,roofs decayed. . . . At length, the building tot-tered and fell; elsewhere, fire had completedthe work of the conqueror; we were left tosilent ruin. . . . At length the shrouding earthfell. . . . Presently came one [the archaeolo-gist] who seemed a lord. . . . Joy was in hisface as he gazed on me . . . in the silent steadygaze, I read my changed condition . . . mylong slumber, my inglorious waking, and Ifelt my fallen state. And my shame was clear. . . I was sad, for my pride was fallen. I wasborne down beside my own ancient river . . . Iwas tossed many days on the heaving waters.Now I stand in a strange land [England]. . . .They say I am far from my violated home, ina city [London] prouder, greater, more glori-ous than my native realm; but boast not, yevainglorious creatures of an hour. I have out-lived many might kingdoms, perchance I maybe destined to survive one more. (McCall1995: 196–97)

Thus, an effusive bull from Nineveh bespokethe fate of the British Empire.

INSPIRATION ANDIMAGINATION

Mesopotamia and Western Art

For many European artists living in an age ofmercantile empire, the theme of the rise andfall of imperial power was expressed throughthe imagery of ancient Mesopotamia.

To those familiar with the Bible, the Towerof Babel taught a lesson about the conse-quences of reckless human ambition. ButPieter Breugel, both Elder and Younger, sawthe Tower rising in the midst of the 16th-century Flemish city in which they lived, andso painted it in a Renaissance setting of a latter-day ambition. Other artists portrayed thefamed tower with less moral relevance but withgreater historical accuracy as a towering fea-ture of Babylon’s grandeur. The 17th-centuryDutch engraver Olfert Dapper took his cuefrom descriptions of the Greek historians,while the 18th-century German engraverJohann Bernard Fischer von Erlach drew uponhis training in the history of architecture.

In the 19th century, Gustave Doré throughengraving and J. M. W. Turner through water-color offered archaeological illustrations of theBible, including scenes set in Mesopotamia.But in the Romantic age, sensual imaginationwon out over dry fact. In lush oils, EugèneDelacroix and Edgar Dégas retold the tales ofSemiramis and Sardanapalus, and DanteGabriel Rossetti and Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema summoned up the goddess Astarte andfertile Spring. Of his visionary canvasses ofNineveh and Babylon, John Martin pro-claimed: “Without demanding the clear day-light of truth, . . . the mind is content to find


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delight in the contemplation of the grand andthe marvellous” (McCall 1995: 189).

Mesopotamia and Western Literature

The most famous European authors to beinspired by Mesopotamia were men of very dif-ferent temperament: the 18th-century Frenchsatirist Voltaire and the 19th-century EnglishRomantic poet Lord Byron.

Voltaire used ancient Babylonian life as abackground for two satirical novels, Zadig andThe Princess of Babylon. Like Candide, both theseworks pointed up the foibles of man and theabsurdity of human society. Voltaire’s mostpopular work on a Mesopotamian theme, how-ever, was a tragedy entitled Semiramis.

Three of Byron’s Hebrew Melodies dealtwith Mesopotamia’s connection with Jewishhistory: “The Destruction of Sennacherib,”“By the Rivers of Babylon We Sat Down andWept,” and “Vision of Belshazzar.” LikeVoltaire, Byron’s most popular work on aMesopotamian theme was a tragedy. EntitledSardanapalus, it explored the story of a man(not unlike Byron himself) who rose fromindolence to action, from self-indulgence toself-sacrifice.

Both plays did not seek to recapture theauthentic flavor of ancient times as much asthey sought to use the past as a stage setting onwhich to comment upon contemporary societyand the human condition.

The ancient artifacts and literature ofMesopotamia continued to inspire writers ofthe 20th century, among them ArmandSchwerner, A. R. Ammons, John Gardner, andDenise Levertov. The modern translation ofcuneiform texts had special impact as writersexplored the primal power of vanished civiliza-tions and the need to reclaim a lost truth hid-

den beneath the detritus of a forgotten world.Playing a distinctive role in the writers’ questwere the literary figures of Ishtar (a symbol ofwomanly power) and Gilgamesh (a man whosearched for permanence and saw it slip irre-trievably from his grasp). As in centuries past,so in the modern—or even postmodern—era:the legacy of Mesopotamia has become a stim-ulus to articulate questions of enduring andtranstemporal relevance.

Mesopotamia and Western Music

The legacy of Mesopotamia was also given amusical dimension by Western composers whowere motivated to bring its “unheardmelodies” back to life.

Relying on Herodotus and the Book ofDaniel, Handel used the theme of Belshazzarto create his grandest oratorio.

Both Mozart and Beethoven planned, butnever completed, works on Mesopotamianthemes: Mozart, an opera based on the life ofSemiramis (and inspired by Voltaire’s play); andBeethoven, a companion piece to The Ruins ofAthens set in Babylon.

Like Mozart who had been inspired byVoltaire’s play, Rossini went on to completean opera, Semiramide. And both Berlioz andLiszt wrote pieces about Sardanapalus:Berlioz, a prize-winning cantata, and Liszt,an opera. The most famous opera on aMesopotamian theme, however, is by Verdi.Based on the career of Nebuchadnezzar,Nabucco features a noble chorus composed ofHebrew prisoners of war.

In the 20th century, Prokofiev and Martinuwere among the composers who were influ-enced by the rediscovery of Mesopotamian civ-ilization. As in the case of 20th-centuryliterature, the century’s music was especially


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affected by the images of Ishtar and Gil-gamesh, whose personalities had been revivedthrough new decipherments and translations.

Mesopotamia in the Movies

When it comes to movies, ancient Egypt haswon more Oscars than Mesopotamia. Thereare no Tigris-and-Euphrates monarchs, noteven Semiramis, who can hold a candle (or anoil lamp) to Cleopatra. And thanks to the disin-tegration of Mesopotamian corpses, no mum-mies endure to act out the role of monster.

Mesopotamia does, however, rank in cine-matic history as the setting of one of the mostfamous silent films of all times, W. D. Griffith’sclassic epic Intolerance. Filmed on a 250-acreHollywood lot, Intolerance literally had a cast ofthousands, including 4,000 extras for Babylon-ian crowd scenes and 16,000 for battle scenes.The set included a mock palace with 50-footcolumns topped by elephants, still standing toawe visitors as late as 1931.

The script of the film interwove four stories,the earliest set in Babylon, that illustrated thepersistence of bigotry in human history.

AN ENDURINGLEGACY

The works of art, literature, music, and cinemathat we have already met represent creative actson the part of individuals who were consciouslyinfluenced by the legacy of Mesopotamia. Butthe legacy of Mesopotamia also works its willupon individuals who are unconscious of itsvery existence. Indeed, it is in its unconscious

effects that Mesopotamia has exerted its mostprofound influence upon our culture.

Our culture, for example, would not bewhat it is without the Sumerians’ invention ofthe world’s first wheeled vehicles. Thus, notHenry Ford but a nameless Sumerian, is theultimate father of the automobile and of themechanical complications it has added to oureveryday lives.

The Sumerians are also the first people weknow of who sought to measure time with pre-cision. Their sexigesimal system of counting isthe basis of our 60-minute hour and, by exten-sion, the 60-second minute. They or, accord-ing to Herodotus, the Babylonians were thefirst to invent the sundial and to divide day andnight into multiples of six: 12 units of daylight,12 units of night, and 24 hours of the two com-bined. As a result, the hand of Mesopotamiastill determines the hourly length of the tradi-tional workday and even the length of our elec-tronic entertainment (half-hour or hour TVshows) when our workday has stopped. Indeed,not only our notion of time but also our con-cept of space is still sexigesimal: witness the360-degree circle and its application to mea-surement and navigation.

Furthermore, the rapt attention millionsgive to their daily newspaper horoscopes is aform of unconscious homage that the 21st cen-tury pays to the priests who, unaided by tele-scope, scanned the skies of Babylonia 4,000years ago and more. Some of the astrologicalsigns we were born under still bear names,albeit in Latin, that recall the stellar imagesthey drew.

On Earth, the idea of the city is theirs toclaim as well. The teeming metropolis wasborn not along the thin edges of Egypt’s Nile,but on the broad alluvial plains of the Tigrisand Euphrates. It was the pulsing city thatcreated the critical mass of talent out of whichcivilization grew and the arts first flourished.Indeed, so massive were ancient Babylon and


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Nineveh that their muddy ruins still defyannihilation.

And what would civilization be withoutwriting, another Sumerian invention? In fact,would civilization “be” at all without the abil-ity to record and pass on the experience of thepast? Though this book is printed in an alpha-bet, the oldest alphabet ever found (at SyrianUgarit) was composed of cuneiform charac-ters arranged in the same sequence that ourown ABC’s still follow. If, then, the Sumerianscannot claim to have invented the alphabetthemselves, we must give them credit for dis-covering the raw materials out of which a truealphabet was later constructed.

But writing alone does not explain civiliza-tion. Civilization requires an abiding continu-ity for which education is essential so that theknowledge and values of the past can be trans-mitted to a new generation. For thousands ofyears the people of Mesopotamia recognizedthe social importance of education and con-ceived of it not in narrow vocational terms butin broader humanistic ones. “Because you did-n’t nurture your humanity,” wrote one scribe tohis son, “you broke my heart.”

We cannot know if this respect for educa-tion was passed on to later ages. But the highvalue Judaism assigns to education—the worditself in Hebrew means “dedication”—and theveneration Judaism gives to the written wordmay in part stem from its contact withMesopotamian beliefs. In similar fashion, wecannot know if the respect for law in Judaismand the classical world was, in part, a reflex offamiliarity with Mesopotamian legal codes andthe role of Mesopotamian law in building amore just and stable society. But even ifMesopotamian thought did not have sucheffects, the people of Mesopotamia were never-theless trailblazers on the path to higher civi-lization. To the extent that we are theirbeneficiaries, we are enriched by their legacyand owe them our thanks.

DETROIT OFTHE CHALDEES

Abraham, the peripatetic patriarch, traced hislineage to “Ur of the Chaldees,” and thus pro-claimed his Mesopotamian origins. OtherChaldaeans, but of a much later date, havetraveled farther than Abraham could have everdreamed. Not by caravan but by boat and planethey came, crossing both the Mediterraneanand Atlantic to reach a new world of opportu-nity, the United States.

Today, they number over 75,000, a mere 10percent of those still living in Iraq, but theyform a vital component of America’s popula-tion. They brought with them the sturdyequipment of most Old World immigrants,abiding family loyalty and a strong work ethic,coupled with a trait they shared with their mer-cantile ancestors from old Babylonia, a coura-geous entrepreneural spirit.

The Chaldaeans immigrated to Americabeginning in the early 1900s and then ingreater numbers in the 1960s and 1970s whenU.S. immigration laws were liberalized. Mostsettled in Detroit, Michigan, where autoassembly lines held out the promise of steadywork. After the riots of 1967 when much ofDetroit’s inner city was torched, they took upthe economic slack and became grocers andparty-store owners in locations where othersdared not open their doors. Today, 80 percentof America’s Chaldaean families still live inmetropolitan Detroit, where they play animportant role in the city’s business and profes-sional life. Thanks to their contributions, aChaldaean cultural center, the first in theWestern Hemisphere, is being constructed inthe Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield.

Like Abraham’s father and grandfather,most of Detroit’s Chaldaeans can trace their


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ancestry to northern Mesopotamia, to a clusterof villages north of Mosul centered around thevillage of Telkaif, a name in Arabic that means“the hill of good life.”

But though many Chaldaeans can speakArabic, the major language of Iraq, their nativetongue is Aramaic, the language of their Baby-lonian ancestors. Nor is their religion Islam,the dominant religion of Iraq and most of theMiddle East. Instead, it is Catholicism, becauseof the missionary activity of Thomas the Apos-tle and his disciples. In their liturgy, they usenot the Latin of the Roman Church but theclassic Aramaic that Thomas—and even Jesushimself—once spoke.

In Aramaic, in fact, the Arabic village ofTelkaif, “the hill of good life,” is calledTelkeppe, “the hill of stones.” To many Chal-daeans in decades past, “good life” was not tobe found on a hill of stones but in a newnation across the sea. And so Mesopotamianlife was transplanted from the Near East tothe New World.

TWIN LEGACIES

In 1937 long before the atomic age, Americanauthor Stephen Vincent Benét wrote a sciencefiction tale about civilization’s future. In thestory a young man, the son of a priest, journeysacross a nuclear wasteland toward the sacredruins of the “Place of the Gods.” What he findsis not a place of the gods at all but a city thatwas once inhabited by men, men who werehungry and “ate knowledge too fast,” invitingtheir own destruction and the devastation ofthe world.

In a sealed room in a skyscraper, the youngman finds the body of a “god” sitting in a chair,gazing out a window as he had done just beforethe final holocaust.

You could see that he would not have runaway. He had sat at his window, watching hiscity die—then he himself had died. But it isbetter to lose one’s life than one’s spirit—andyou could see from the face that the spirithad not been lost. I knew that, if I touchedhim, he would fall into dust—and yet, therewas something unconquered in that face.(Benét 1942: 482)

Benét entitled his story “By the Waters ofBabylon,” recalling the ancient verse fromPsalm 137: “By the rivers of Babylon, therewe sat down, yea, we wept, when we remem-bered Zion.”

The legacy of Mesopotamia is, on the onehand, a legacy of creative cooperation.Through such cooperation the first civilizedcommunities arose. But the legacy of Meso-potamia is also a legacy of destructive con-quest. The legacy of Mesopotamia is thus notone legacy but two, and between them thefuture leaders of modern Iraq—and theworld—must choose.

Like a sword, every legacy has two edges.The Middle East is the place where civi-

lization began, but—according to biblicalprophecy—it is also the place where civiliza-tion will end. Armageddon, the site of the finalconflict, is an actual place in Israel: HarMegiddo, the mount (“har”) that is all that isleft of the ancient fortress-town of Megiddo.

Should a nuclear Armageddon ever come,life may someday return to our planet. Inthose remote days, the young may journeyacross an atomic wasteland, questing for anew home. Should that time ever come, itwill be well-watered, fertile valleys that theywill seek out on which to rebuild civilization.The valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates willthen beckon to them even as they welcomedthe first settlers on their soil millennia ago.And so, Mesopotamian life will be reborn,and new cities—hopefully, wiser cities—willrise again.


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Someday, a postnuclear pioneer mayuncover an ancient statue in the dust and,touching it, recognize “something uncon-quered in that face.”

READING

Continuity and Change

Gordon 1987: linguae francae and forgottenscripts.

The Memory of Foreigners

Dalley 1998: influence on Israel and theBible; influence in the Sassanian period andearly Islam; Dalley and Reyes 1998: contactand influence in the Greek world; Drews1973: the Greek historians; Geller 1995:influence on Hellenistic Judaism; Kuhrt1995: influence on Greek and Hellenisticthought; Larsen 1995: “Babel/Bible” contro-versy; Lundquist 1995: Babylon in Europeanthought; Maier 1995: the ancient Near Eastin modern thought; McCall 1998: rediscov-ery and aftermath; Schmandt-Besserat 1976:creativity and influence.


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13.2 A pile of architectural fragments dating to Roman times lie on the ground at Uruk, one of themost ancient of Sumer’s cities. (William Kennett Loftus, Travels and Researches in Chaldaea and Susiana,1857)


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Inspiration and Imagination

Maier 1995: influence on creative thought;McCall 1998: inspirational power.

An Enduring Legacy

Black and Green 1998: zodiac; Kramer 1967:pillars of civilization; Kramer 1981: Sumerianinnovations; Hallo 1996: modern Westerninstitutions; James and Thorpe 1994: the“Baghdad battery”; Pingree 1998: astrologyand astronomy; Thompsen 1960: the debt of

Europe to Babylon, with special attention tovocabulary.

Detroit of the Chaldees

Kamoo 1999: bibliography of ancient andmodern Chaldaean history; Sengsong 1999:Chaldaean-Americans and ethnic identity.

Twin Legacies

Benét 1942: short story.

The table below details the major tech-nological changes and political and

military events that affected people’s livesin ancient Mesopotamia. Developments inother areas—such as literature and art orspiritual outlook—are described elsewhere inthis book.

Because our evidence for chronology tendsto be more hazy or incomplete the farther backinto time we go, earlier dates cited in this tableare generally less certain than later ones. Also,all rounded-off numbers should be regarded asapproximations.

For further discussion of the events and per-sonalities that are mentioned in the table, seechapter 2, “Archaeology and History,” andchapter 3, “Government and Society.”

Besides simplification and clarification, anadditional virtue of this table is chronologicalcompression. Viewing Mesopotamian historyin “fast forward” reveals the devastating give-and-take that characterized the country’s expe-rience: repeatedly, invaders and armies sweptacross its landscape, leaving only destructionbehind. In the light of such persistent destruc-tion, the resilience of ancient Iraq’s people is allthe more remarkable. In the face of death andloss, life went on.

Palaeolithic Period (70,000–9000 B.C.E.)

The Palaeolithic is the earliest period forwhich evidence exists of human beings inhabit-ing Mesopotamia. During this period, peoplesurvive by gathering food through hunting,fishing, and picking wild edible plants, and theymake their most durable tools from stone. ThePalaeolithic is also the longest chapter ofhumanity’s early history.

Mesolithic Period (9000–7000 B.C.E.)

The Mesolithic is a period of transition linkingthe Old Stone Age (Palaeolithic) with the revo-lutionary changes of the New Stone Age(Neolithic).

Neolithic Period (7000–5800 B.C.E.)

As they had been for tens of thousands of years,tools and weapons continue to be made ofstone. But with the domestication of plants andanimals, a more mobile life based solely onhunting, fishing, and gathering ends and amore settled village life based on farming andraising livestock begins. During this time, thefirst pottery and the first bricks are made.

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CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

Ubaid Period (5800–4000 B.C.E.)

Farmers in northern Mesopotamia employ irri-gation canals to water and enlarge their culti-vated fields. The earliest brick temples arebuilt. Metallurgy begins as copper starts toreplace stone as the principal material for toolsand weapons.

5000 B.C.E.

Farmers from the north settle in southernMesopotamia.

Uruk Period (3750–3150 B.C.E.)

Semitic nomads from the deserts of Syria andnorthern Arabia invade southern Mesopo-tamia, producing a mixed population.

3500 B.C.E.

The Sumerians settle in southern Mesopo-tamia. One of their communities, Uruk, devel-ops into the world’s first city. Other settlementsbecome bustling urban centers as well. Writingis invented and cylinder seals are used. In addi-tion, the plough, the potter’s wheel, and thefirst wheeled vehicles are devised. Because ofits added hardness and durability, bronzereplaces copper in weapons and tools.

Early Dynastic Period (2900–2334 B.C.E.)

Hereditary monarchies arise in individualSumerian city-states and vie for militarysupremacy in the south. Among the most pow-erful of these cities are Kish, Uruk, Ur, Lagash,and Umma. The Royal Graves of Ur (about2600–2500 B.C.E.) date to this period.

2500 B.C.E.

The Elamites from Iran invade and briefly rulesouthern Mesopotamia but are driven out byan alliance of Sumerian cities.

Akkadian Period (2334–2193 B.C.E.)

Sargon the Great (2334–2279 B.C.E.), the kingof Semitic Akkad, conquers the cities of Sumerand founds the world’s first empire, with Agadeas its capital. Under his grandson, Naram-Sin(2254–2218 B.C.E.), the empire extends toArmenia and Iran.

Invading Gutians from Iran conquer Sumerand destroy Agade. Gudea (2141–2122 B.C.E.)of Lagash leads his city to prosperity. Underthe leadership of Uruk, the Gutians areexpelled.

Neo-Sumerian Period (2112–2004 B.C.E.)

Ur-Nammu (2112–2095 B.C.E.) founds the glo-rious Third Dynasty of Ur. Under his son,Shulgi (2094–2047 B.C.E.), Ur’s power reachesto Elam and the Zagros Mountains. Later, itspower declines and the city is destroyed by theElamites.

Old Babylonian and Old Assyrian Period(2000–1600 B.C.E.)

Individual city-states (Isin and Larsa in thesouth; Assur and Mari in the north) assert theirautonomy.

Sumer is conquered by Semitic Amoritesfrom the Syrian desert. Around 1900 B.C.E.,the first Amorite dynasty is established in thecity of Babylon. Despite competition fromMari, Hammurabi (1792–1750 B.C.E.), Baby-lon’s sixth Amorite king, gains control overmost of Mesopotamia. The dynasty ends, how-ever, when Mesopotamia is invaded by the Hit-tites from Turkey.

Middle Assyrian Period (1600–1000 B.C.E.)

In the aftermath of Hittite destruction, theKassites take control of Babylon.

In the north, the Hurrians establish aMitannian empire and rule Assyria. But whenthey are defeated by the Hittites in the


340

14th century B.C.E., Assyria reclaims itsindependence.

The Assyrian king, Tukulti-Ninurta I(1244–1208 B.C.E.), captures Babylon, but it islater retaken by the Kassites.

The Elamites invade Babylonia, bringing anend to Kassite rule. Later, the Elamites are dri-ven out by the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnez-zar I (1124–1103 B.C.E.).

Assyria reaches new heights of imperialisticsuccess under Tiglathpileser I (1115–1077B.C.E.). Upon his death, his empire is smashedby Aramaean tribesmen and insurgents fromthe Zagros Mountains.

Iron supplants bronze as the metal forweapons and tools.

Neo-Assyrian Period (1000–605 B.C.E.)

Based in northern Mesopotamia, the Assyriansreestablish and expand their empire under aseries of aggressive kings: Ashurnasirpal II(883–859 B.C.E.), Shalmaneser III (858–824B.C.E.), Tiglathpileser III (744–727 B.C.E.), Sar-gon II (721–705 B.C.E.), Sennacherib (704–681B.C.E.), Esarhaddon (680–669 B.C.E.), andAshurbanipal (668–627 B.C.E.). Babylonia,Syria, Israel, and Egypt all surrender to theirarmies. However, the Assyrians overextendthemselves, and the Assyrian Empire falls preyto a coalition of Medes from western Iran andBabylonian Chaldaeans who in 612 B.C.E. sackits capital, Nineveh.

Neo-Babylonian Period (625-539 B.C.E.)

From his capital city of Babylon, the Chal-daean king Nebuchadnezzar II (604–562

B.C.E.) regains control over Syria and Israel,destroying Jerusalem’s Temple and transport-ing Jewish prisoners of war to Babylon (the“Babylonian Captivity”). During his 42-yearreign, he builds the fabled “Tower of Babel”and presides over a Babylonian culturalrenaissance.

The Persian Period (539-331 B.C.E.)

Nevertheless, in 539 B.C.E., the Persian kingCyrus the Great succeeds in capturing Babylonfrom Nabonidus (555–539 B.C.E.) and absorbsits former territories into his empire.

The Hellenistic Period (331–126 B.C.E.)

Leading a combined army of Macedonians andGreeks, Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.E.)defeats the Persian army and takes Babylon,which he plans to make the capital of his newworldwide empire stretching from Greece toIndia. When he dies in Babylon eight yearslater at the age of 32, his generals divide up hisconquests. One of these, Seleucus, establishes adynasty that rules Mesopotamia until 126B.C.E., when the Parthian king Artabanus II(128–124 B.C.E.) seizes Babylonia.

Parthian Period (126 B.C.E.–227C.E.)

The Parthians rule Mesopotamia and Iran.

Sassanian Period (227–651 C.E.)

After defeating the Parthians, the Sassanianshold sway over Mesopotamia until its conquestby the militant forces of Islam.

C H R O N O L O G I C A L T A B L E

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FranceParis: The Louvre

GermanyBerlin: Staatliche Museen

IraqBaghdad: Iraq Museum

United KingdomLondon: British Museum

United StatesChicago: Oriental Institute (University of

Chicago)New York: Metropolitan Museum of ArtPhiladelphia: University Museum (University

of Pennsylvania)

LIST OF MUSEUMS WITH MAJORMESOPOTAMIAN COLLECTIONS


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Adams, R. McC. The Evolution of Urban Society: EarlyMesopotamia and Prehispanic Mexico. Chicago:Aldine-Atherton, 1966.

———. Heartland of Cities. Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1981.

———. Land behind Baghdad. Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1965.

———. “The Origin of Cities.” Scientific American203, no. 48 (September 1960): 153–55, 276+.

———, and H. J. Nissen, The Uruk Countryside:The Natural Setting of Urban Societies. Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1972.

———. The Age of God-Kings: TimeFrame 3000–1500B.C. (TimeFrame series). Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1987.

Ahmed, S. S. Southern Mesopotamia in the Time ofAshurbanipal. The Hague: Mouton, 1968.

Note to the Reader

A number of general works are excellentsources of information about life in ancientMesopotamia. Handy, one-volume worksinclude P. Bienkowski and A. Millard, Dictionaryof the Ancient Near East (Philadelphia: Univer-sity of Pennsylvania Press, 2000); G. Contenau,Everyday Life in Babylon and Assyria (New York:St. Martin’s Press, 1954); K. R. Nemet-Nejat,Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia (Westport,Conn.: Greenwood, 1997); Susan Pollock,Ancient Mesopotamia (New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1999); and H. W. F. Saggs,Everyday Life in Babylonia & Assyria (New York:Dorset, 1965). Multivolume sets include E. M.

Meyers, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeol-ogy in the Near East. 5 vols. (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1997), and J. M. Sasson, ed.,Civilizations of the Ancient Near East. 4 vols.(New York: Scribner’s, 1995). See also M. Roaf,Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the AncientNear East (New York: Facts On File, 1990).

Other general works of interest, as well asmore specialized books and articles, are listedbelow.

Ongoing research and new discoveries canbe followed in the pages of such periodicals asArchaeology, the American Journal of Archaeology,the Journal of Cuneiform Studies, the Journal ofNear Eastern Studies, and the Journal of theAmerican Oriental Society.

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376

A

A-annepadda 73Abba 116Abi-eshuh 73, 75, 90Abirattash 73Abi-sare 73Abraham 36, 316–317, 324,

335Abu Salabikh 8Abu Shahrain 20Abzu/Apsu 116Adab 8Adad. See IshkurAdad-apla-iddina 73Adad-nirari I 74, 104Adad-nirari II 74Adad-nirari III 74, 102Adad-shuma-iddina 74Adad-shuma-usur 74Adam and Eve

Book of Genesis 314,323

Adams, Robert McC. 40

addaedubba 302administration of justice

70–71adultery 71The Adventure of Etana (epic)

85, 163–164Afghanistan 5afterlife. See immortality,

concept ofAgade 8, 10Agga (Akka) 74agriculture 244–245Agum I 74, 90Agum II 81Agum II Kakrime 74Agum III 74Akalamdug 74Akiti 130Akitu 130Akka. See AggaAkkad 10

military affairs 262statues from 216–219

Akkadian Empire 56

Akkadian language 10, 143,233, 257

Akkia 74Akshak 10Akurgal 74Alala 116Aleppo Museum 21Alexander III the Great 6,

10, 14, 74–75Darius III and 83death of 58Greek coin portraying

75flegacy of Mesopotamia

and 328–329successors 19, 101temples 193

Alexander Severus 75Al-Hadr 21Al-Masudi 45, 330Amarna letters 177Amar-Sin 57, 75Amel-Marduk 75Amentohep II 77, 91

I N D E X

377

INDEX

Boldface page numbers indicate major treatment of a subject. Page numbers in italics with suffix fdenote a figure, suffix m denotes a map; and suffix t denotes a table.

Amentohep III 108, 177Amentohep IV 108, 177American School of Oriental

Research 43Ammi-ditana 75Ammi-saduqa 75–76Ammondt, Jukka 298Ammons, A. R. 333Amurru. See MartuAn 116Anabasis (Xenophon) 49Anchor Brewing Company of

San Francisco 292The Ancient Engineers

(de Camp) 203Ancient Iraq (Roux) 54, 131Ancient Near East 3mancient sites, names of 6–8Andrae, Walter 40, 192animal husbandry 246–247

reading 250animals

autopsies 171–172injured 221f

Anni 76Annunaki 116Annunitum 116Anshar and Kishar 116Antiochus I 76, 101Antiochus II 76, 101Antiochus III 76Antiochus IV 76Antiochus VII 76Antiochus XIII 76Anu. See AnAnunnaki. See AnnunakiAnzu. See ImdugudAphrodite 26, 129Apil-Kin 76Apil-Sin 76Apocrypha 322

reading 324Appian Way 210

Apsu 63–64Aqar Quf 17aqueducts. See canals and

aqueductsArabian Nights 330Aramaic language 233Arbil 10archaeology and history

39–59dating the past 49–51,

59digging 51–54, 59discoverers 40–49, 59narratives 54, 59rulers, key 58–59survey of history 54–58,

59arch (construction) 190arch (Ctesiphon) 16farchers, warfare 267farchitecture and engineering

185–211bridges 207–209, 211building materials and

houses 186–188, 210canals and aqueducts

203–207, 211city, transition from

village to 191,210–211

city planning 201–202,211

domestic architecture188–190, 210

palaces 198–201, 211reading 210–211roads 209–210, 211techniques of

construction 190temples 191–194, 211walls 202–203, 211ziggurats 194–198, 211

archives 149

Ardeshir 76Arik-den-ili 77army, organization of

265–267cavalry 266chariots 265–266command 265logistic support 267reading 271

Arsaces (Arshak) 77art

clothing, portrayal290–291. See alsospecific types of art

marriage, portrayal279f, 280f

Western art, legacy ofMesopotamia332–333

Artabanus I 77Artabanus II 77Artatama I 77Artatama II 108Artaxerxes I (Persian king)

77Artaxerxes I (Sassanian ruler).

See ArdeshirArtaxerxes II 77, 329Artaxerxes III 77artist, role of 214

reading 241arts

materials 214warfare, portrayal of

267–270f, 268–270,272

Aruru 116Asag 116Asarluhi 116–117Asharid-apal-Ekur 77ashipu 306Ashnan 117Ashur 10–11, 66, 91, 117


378

Ashurbanipal 77, 103art work portraying 78f,

222clothing 290

Ashur-bel-kala 77–78Ashur-bel-nisheshu 78Ashur-dan I 78Ashur-dan II 78Ashur-dan III 78Ashur-etil-ilani 79, 106Ashur-nadin-ahhe I 79Ashur-nadin-ahhe II 79Ashur-nadin-apli 79Ashur-nadin-shumi 79Ashur-narari I 80Ashur-narari II 80Ashur-narari III 80Ashur-narari IV 80Ashur-narari V 80Ashurnasirpal I 79Ashurnasirpal II 22, 23,

79–80, 220Ninurta and (relief) 114fportrait of 64fsculpture of 79f

Ashur-rabi I 80Ashur-rabi II 80Ashur-rem-nisheshu 80Ashur-resh-ishi I 80Ashur-resh-ishi II 80Ashur-uballit I 80Ashur-uballit II 80Asinum 81Aspu. See Abzuassault on enemy city 220fAsshur. See AshurAssyria 10

clothing 290Assyria, images from

220–223Animals, injured 221fassault on enemy city

220f

fortification walls, attackon 221f

laborers transportingstone bull 222f

winged human-headedlion 222f

Assyrian Dictionary Project42

Assyrian Empire 10Assyrian lion 46fAssyrian palace 200fAssyrians 5, 15Assyriologists 142Astabi 117Astarte. See Inannaastrology 169–171astronomy 330Athenagoras 329Augustun Age of Rome 277awilum 62Aya. See SheridaAzuzum 81

B

Baba-aha-iddina 81Babylon (Babil[a]) 11–14

clothing 290excavations 11–12fgeography 4Hanging Gardens 11,

201House of the Uplifted

Head 13Ishtar Gate 14fmap 13mmilitary affairs 5, 10, 262name, history 11reconstruction, artist’s

263fRoyal Palace of

Nebuchadnezzar II12f

ziggurat 13, 196–198

Babyloniaca (Berossus) 54Babylonian Flood Story 15The Bacchae 99Bad-tibira 14–15Baghdad 17

American School ofOriental Research 43

Iraq Museum 270Balawat 220. See Imgur-EnlilBalikh River 2Balili 81Bal-shar-usur 81baru 132Battle of Arbela 10Ibn-Battuta 40Bazaia 81beasts of burden 254–255Beauchamp, Abbé de 41Beethoven, Ludwig van

333Before Philosophy (Jacobsen)

65–66Behistun Rock 140–141,

140fBel 117Belakum 81Belet-ekallim 117Belet-seri 117Bell, Gertrude 41Belshazzar 328.

See Bal-shar-usurBelu-bani 81Benét, Stephen Vincent 336,

337Beni Hasan 290Benjamin of Tudela 41,

330Berlin Museum 202Berlioz, Hector 333Berossus 42

Babyloniaca 54biblical tradition 327–328Bilalama 29, 81

I N D E X

379

Bilgames. See also The Epic ofGilgamesh

“Bilgames and Agga” 64Birs Nimrud 15birth 284–285

anxiety and 284–285lullaby, ancient 285reading 309

bit akitu 193bitumen 4, 188“Black Obelisk” 318f, 319f“Blue Suede Shoes” (song)

298board games 299–300boats 252–253Book of Daniel 321–322

reading 324Western music and 333

Book of Esther 321reading 324

Book of Exodus 317–318,324

Moses, birth of317–318

Ten Commandments318

Book of Genesis 312–317Abraham, Isaac, and

Jacob 316–317, 324Adam and Eve 314, 323creation 312–314, 323the Flood 314–316,

323–324Garden of Eden

313–314, 323reading 323Tower of Babel 316

Book of Jonah 320Book of the Dead 131Borsippa 15, 40fBotta, Paul Emile 42boundary stone 93fBraidwood, Robert J. 42

brick building materials andhouses 186–188, 187f

domestic architecture189–190, 285–286,287f

bridal auctions 277, 277bridges 207–209

reading 211British Museum 46f, 297,

305Bronze Age 55–56Buccellati, Giorgio 171building materials and houses

186–188bitumen 188brick 186–188limitations 186

bulls in artIshtar Gate, bulls

guarding 228flaborers transporting

stone bull 222fwinged bull 46f

burial 281–282infant burial 282finterment 282preparations 281–282tombs, royal. See royal

tombsBurnaburiash I 78, 81, 99Bur-Sin 81business correspondence

177Byron, Lord 333“By the Waters of Babylon”

(Benét) 336

C

Caesar, Julius and Augustus104–105

California, University of142

Cambridge University 312Cambyses II 81–82Camelot 290Camp, L. Sprague de 203canals and aqueducts

203–207defensive earthworks

204irrigation methods

204–205levees 204nature of rivers 203projects and

management 204reading 211

Caracalla 82carbon–14 analysis 53Carchemish 15

battle 95cargo, transportation by

kelek 253fCarrhae 82Carter, Howard 34Carus 82carved ivory 236–237

reading 241cavalry 266CD-ROMs 214Chagar Bazar 15Chalcolithic Period 55Chaldaeans 335–336

reading 337Chardin, Jean 42chariots 265–266Chicago, University of

Oriental Institute 19,20, 26, 42, 45

Chiera, Edward 42Choga Mami 16Christian religious art 226Christie, Agatha. See

Mallowan, AgathaChristie


380

Chubb, Mary 216cities

descriptions of 8–37map 9mnames of 6–8planning 201–202,

211transition from village to

191, 210–211clay tablets 4clothing 288–291,

290–291art, testimony of

290–291commoners 290–291dyes 289early textiles 289invention 288–289reading 310sandals 291fSumerian elite 290symbolism 288–289textile production

289Code of Hammurabi 81,

167–168, 219–220carving 69fclothing 290described 68–70excavation 45homes, deconstruction

288marriage 275orphans 279penalties 71, 288slave as property 275social classes 62stone 167fsurgeons 308

coinage 256–257Collon, Dominique 221Come, Tell Me How You Live

(Christie) 45

community medicine308–309

cones, painted 226Constantius II 82construction

architecture andengineering 190

homes 285–286Kalhu 80techniques 190temple, of 109f

contracts 168Cooper, Frederic 42cosmetics and perfume 291

reading 310couriers hoisting tankards of

beer 292fcrafts 248

reading 250creation

Book of Genesis312–314, 323

crimes, administration ofjustice 70–71

Croesus 82, 255Ctesias 329Ctesiphon 16–17cuneiform characters 302,

327cuneiform cylinder 82fCuneiform Digital Library

Initiative 142cuneiform tablets 28cylinder seals 231–235, 241

aesthetic value231–232

archaeological value 231decorative themes

234–235durability 231Gilgamesh and Enkidu

234fhistory 232–233

manufacture 233materials 233–234signatures 232fuses and users 235

Cyrus II the Great 10, 81,82, 318

cuneiform cylinder 82f

D

Dadusha 82Damascus Museum 19Damgalnuna 117Damiq-ilishu 82–83Damkina. See DamgalnunaDamu 117Daniel. See Book of DanielDapper, Olfert 332Darius I 83, 110, 140Darius II 83Darius III 10, 58, 75, 83dating the past 49–51

reading 59Dead Sea Scrolls 97death

burial and 281–282marriage and 278–279reading 309tombs, royal. See royal

tombsdeath penalty 71–72, 288decipherments 138–142

Assyriologists 142Behistun Rock

140–141inscriptions 139Persepolis 139–140reading 182secrets of Sumerian

141–142Defeat of Zu (epic) 162Delacroix, Eugène 332Delitzsch, Friedrich 42

I N D E X

381

dendrochronogy 53dentistry 308The Descent of Inanna and

Dumuzi’s Death (tale)159–160

“The Descent of Ishtar”(poem) 240

Detroit, Michigan 335–336,337

Detroit Institute of Arts217

Diadumenian 83Dilbat 17Dinmuzi 118discoverers 40–49

reading 59disease, diagnosis 306divination 132–133

reading 136divination texts 168–172

animal autopsies171–172

astrology 169–171reading 183

divorce 277–278Diyala River 2domestic architecture

188–190brick houses 189–190reading 210

Doré, Gustave 332dowery 276dragon from Ishtar Gate

121fDrehem. See

Puzrish-Dagandrink. See food and drinkDumuzi 83, 117Dumuziabzu 117Dura-Europos 19, 226Dur Katlimmu 17Dur-Kurigalzu 17–18

ziggurat 17f

Dur-Sharrukin 18–19, 29,101, 102

horses, groom leading255f

jewelry 240fKhorsabad (palace) 18f

The Dynasty of the Sea-Land 57

E

Ea. See EnkiEa-gamil 83Eannatum 83, 218, 219fEarly Dynastic Period 56,

187Ecclesiastes. See Job and

Ecclesiasteseconomy 243–250

animal husbandry246–247, 250

crafts 248, 250definition 244, 250farming 244–246, 250fishing and hunting

247–248, 250gardening 245–246irrigation 246orchards 245–246professions 248, 250reading 250significance 244, 250structure 244, 250wages and prices

248–250Edison, Thomas 138education 300–304

civilization, sustaining304

curriculum 302–303faculty 301–302goals 303–304history of schooling 301

humanity, cultivating304

pedagogical method 303reading 310school calendar 302schoolhouses 301student body 301“tablet house” 301vocational training 303

Egyptmilitary affairs 262

Elam 82Eldred, John 42, 330Elili 83Eliot, T. S. 157elite, clothing 290Ellil. See EnlilEmisum 83en 128enameled brick 226Enannatum I 83Enannatum II 83Enbi-Ishtar 83Enbililu 117“Enduring House” 15En-entarzi 84engagements 276engineering. See architecture

and engineeringEnglund, Robert K. 142En-hegal 84Enki 116, 118, 121Enkidu 129

cylinder seal, portrayedon 234f

Enkimdu 118Enlil 118Enlil-bani 84Enlil-kudurri-usur 84Enlil-nadin-ahhe 84Enlil-nadin-shumi 84Enlil-nasir I 80, 84Enlil-nasir II 84


382

Enlil-nirari 84Enmebaragesi 84Enmerkar 84, 174Enmesharra 118Ennugi 118En-shgakush-anna 84Entemena (Enmetena) 84entu 128Enuma elish 170, 312–313Epic of Creation 63–64, 116,

120, 131, 157–158, 170The Epic of Gilgamesh 86,

129, 149–162, 327Adam and Eve 314Babylonian 153–157Defeat of Zu 162Descent of Inanna and

Dumuzi’s Death159–160

the Flood 314immortality, concept of

281Romance of Nergal and

Ereshkigal 160–161Story of Enki and

Ninhursag 161–162Sumerian Tales of

Bilgames 150–153Wrath of Erra 161

epic poetry 149–162reading 182

The Era of Isin and Larsa 57

Ereshkigal 118, 123Eriba-Adad I 84–85Eriba-Marduk 85Eridu 19–20, 191–192Erishum I 85Erishum II 85Erishum III 85erotic poetry 180–182

reading 184Erra. See Nergal

Esagila 13Esarhaddon 85, 103Esau 317Eshnunna 20, 29

wages 249Esther. See Book of EstherEtana 85“Etemenanki” 196The Eternal Present (Giedion)

191Eulmash-shakin-shumi 85Euphrates River 203

Babylon, shape of city12

bridges 208century-ago view 2fcharacteristics 252described 2flow of 3

everyday life 274–310birth 284–285, 309clothing 288–291, 310cosmetics and perfume

291, 310death and burial

281–282education 300–304,

310food and drink

291–294, 310health and medicine

304–309, 310homes 285–288,

309–310immortality, concept of

281, 309marriage and family

275–280, 309music 294–298reading 309–310royal tombs 282–284slavery 274–275, 309sports 300, 310

toys and games298–300, 310

work 274, 309Evil-Merodach. See Amel-

Mardukexchange mediums 256–257Exodus. See Book of Exodusexorcism 132–133, 307

reading 136The Exorcist 125“Eye” temple 31Ezida 15

F

family life. See marriage andfamily

farming 244–246reading 250

feast, attendants carryingdelicacies for 245f

festivals 130–132reading 136

First Dynasty of Babylon 57,74, 75

Fischer von Erlach, JohannBernard 332

fish, food 293–294fishing 247–248

reading 250Flandin, Eugène 18the Flood

Book of Genesis314–316, 323–324

historical evidence315–316

food and drink 291–294couriers hoisting

tankards of beer 292ffruits and vegetables

293grain and by-products

291–292

I N D E X

383

livestock and fish293–294

reading 310spices and herbs 293

fortifications 262–263readings 271walls, attack on 221f

Fort Shalmaneser 23Four Quartets (Eliot) 157fragmentary epics 162–165Frankfort, Henri 20, 42–43,

216Assyria, images from

220fruits and vegetables 293fusion welding 238

G

Galla 118games. See toys and gamesGandash 86gardening 245–246Garden of Eden

Book of Genesis313–314, 323

location 313–314Gardner, John 333“Gate of the Gods” 106Gatumdug 118gazetteer

names of cities 6–8reading 37–38

Geme-Ninlila 105Genesis. See Book of Genesisgeography 2–38

descriptions of cities8–37

military affairs and 262,271

names of cities 6–8natural resources 4–5,

37

reading 37–38rivers 2–4, 37surrounding countries

5–6, 37Geshtinanna 118Gibbon, Edward 16–17Gibil 119Giedion, Sigfried 191Gilgamesh 36, 64, 74, 86,

129cylinder seal, portrayed

on 234fThe Epic of Gilgamesh

86, 129, 149–162literary figure 333social satire 179

Girra. See GibilGirsu 20–21, 25Gishbare 119Giza 36glass 229–231

colors and designs 230history 229reading 241techniques 229–230technology and faith

230–231uses 229

glazed tile 227fgods. See religion and myth;

specific godGoetze, Albrecht 43Gordian III 86Gordon, Cyrus Herzl 43governance of world 115

reading 135government and society

61–112justice and law 68–72,

112kingship 63–67, 112stratification of society

62–63, 112

structure of civilization62, 111

taxation 67–68, 112grain and by-products

291–292“Great Death Pit” 36great decipherments. See

deciphermentsGreat Lyre 296–297fGreat Zab River 2, 10Griffith, W. D. 334groom leading two horses

255fGrotefend, Georg Friedrich

43, 139–140, 141Guagamela 10Gudea 21, 86, 193f, 217,

218fguffa 252Gugulanna 119Gulkishar 86Gungunum 86, 106Gushkin-banda 119Guti 10Guzana 21

H

Hadad. See IshkurAl-Hadr 21Hadrian 105Haggai 320Haia 29Halaf 21Hammurabi I 12, 22, 25–26,

86–87Code of Hammurabi.

See Code ofHammurabi

death of 108grandson 75great-grandson 75Mari, attack on 111


384

reign of 57stela of Hammurabi

219–220successor 89wages 249

Hanging Gardens of Babylon11, 201

Hanukkah 76Hanun-Dagan 87Harbashihu 87harp 296fHarran 36, 80, 82, 96, 99,

123, 125Hassuna 32Hatra 21health and medicine

304–309. See also medicinereading 310

Hebrew Melodies (Byron) 333Hebrew prophets 318–320

historical background318–319

message of 319–320reading 324

Hellenistic Period 58warfare 267

Hellenistic Seleucid dynasty16

Hendursanga 119Herodotus 43

Babylon, described 11,132

Egypt, on 4“the father of history”

328prostitution, on 129

Hezekiah 102high priest 65Hilal-Erra 87Hilprecht, Herman Volrath 43Hincks, Edward 43historical chronicles 165–167

reading 182–183

History Begins at Sumer(Kramer) 133–134

Hitler, Adolf 170Hittites 15, 57, 74, 108holy days and festivals

130–132reading 136

Homer 135, 328homes 285–288

bricks 189–190,285–286, 287f

deconstruction 288excavating information

288furnishing 287garbage 288heating and lighting 287materials and

construction 285–286native reed hut 286fplans 287reading 309–310reeds, bundles of

188–189, 285ruins and resurrection

288sanitation 287–288walls, windows, and

doors 286horses, groom leading 255fHouse of the Uplifted Head

13Hulagu Khan 207Humbaba. See Huwawahunting 247–248

lion hunt 247freading 250

Hurrian language 143Hussein, Mazahim Mahmud

43Huwawa 119hymns and prayers 172–173

reading 183

I

Iahdun-Lim 87, 111Iahsmah-Addad 87–88Ibal-pi-El I 88Ibal-pi-El II 88Ibbi-Sin 88Ibiq-Adad I 88Ibiq-Adad II 88Iblulsil 88Ibn-Battuta 40Iddin-Dagan 88, 132Iddin-Ilum 88Iddin-Sin 178Ididish 88Iggid-Lim 87Igiga (or Igigu) 119Ikin-Shamagan 88Ikinum 88Ikum-Shamas 89Ilaba 119Ilshu 89Iluma-ilum 57, 89Ilum-Ishtar 89Ilushi-ilia 89Ilushuma 89Imdugud 119–120Imgur-Enlil 22Iminbi 120immortality, concept of

134–135, 281art and 214–215reading 136, 309

Inanna 26, 28, 118, 120,126

New Year holiday 132incest 278Indus Valley 255infant burial 282finfidelity 277–278inheritance 278–279inscriptions 139intaliare 232

I N D E X

385

Internet 142Intolerance (film) 334Inzak 120Iptar-Sin 89Iqish-Tishpak 89Iran

Zagros Mountains 10Iraqi Antiquities Service 41Iraq Museum 35, 270Irhan Bahriyat 22Ir-Nanna 89Irra-imitti 89irrigation 246

methods 204–205Isaac 317, 324Ishara 120Ishar-ramashshu 89Ishbi-Erra 89Ishkibal 89Ishkum-Addu 89Ishkur 120Ishme-Dagan 89Ishme-Dagan I 89Ishme-Dagan II 89Ishtar 8, 10, 25, 225, 321.

See Inannaliterary figure 333

Ishtaran 120Ishtar Gate 14f, 121f, 202,

226, 228fIshtar-Kititum 26Ishtar of Nineveh 108Ishtup-Ilum 89Ishu-II 89Ishum. See HendursangaIsimud 120Isin 22Isma-Dagan 89Isqi-Mari, 89. See

Lamgi-MariIter-Mer 120Iterpisha 89Itti-ili-nibi 89

Itti-Marduk-balatu 90Ivory, carved 236–237, 241

J

Jacob 317, 324Jacobsen, Thorkild 65–66,

142, 182Jarmo 32. See Qalat JarmoJebu 319fJemdet Nasr 22–23, 55Jerablus 15Jerusalem, siege of 5,

267–268, 318Jerwan aqueduct 206, 207jewelry 237–240, 241

discoveries 239–240Dur-Sharrukin 240ffusion welding 238materials and

manufacture 238Puabi 239, 240ftrade 238–239tudittum 239types and uses 239

Jewish traditionnames 82religious art 226

Jewsexile 318return to homeland 320

Job and Ecclesiastes 321reading 324

Johnson, Jotham 171Jonah 22, 26, 27. See also

Book of JonahJordan, Julius 40Jovian 90Julian II the Apostate 90justice and law 68–72

administration of justice70–71

law codes 68–70,167–168

penalties 71–72political leaders,

biographies 72–111,112

reading 112

K

Kalhu 23–24, 220Assyrian temple 42fconstruction 80glazed tile 227fstanding figure of

Assyrian king 67fview of 23f

Kämpfer, Engelbert 43–44

Kandalanu 90, 95Karahardash 90Karaindash 78, 90kariz 205Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta 24Kasashman-Enlil I 90Kasashman-Enlil II 90Kasashman-Harbe I 90Kasashman-Turgu 90Kashtiliash I 90Kashtiliash II 90Kashtiliash III 91Kashtiliash IV 91Kassite Dynasty 57, 108Keats, John 294kelek 252–253Kesh 8Khabur River 2, 15, 21Khnumhotep 290Khorsabad 18f, 42, 220. See

also Dur-SharrukinKhorsabad King List 19Khosr River 33Ki 120Kidin-Ninua 91Kikkia 74, 91


386

kingship 63–67divinity 66lists of kings 50–51, 65officials 67reading 112substitute king 67symbols and duties

66–67Kingu 120Kirikiki 91Kirta 91Kish 24, 84Kishar 116knife-blade 15Koldewey, Robert 11, 26,

44, 196palaces 201

Koran 323reading 324

Kramer, Samuel Noah 44,133–134, 142, 321

Krigalzu 17Ku-Baba 91Kudur-Enlil 91kudurru 93fKulla 121Kumarbi 121Kurigalzu I 90, 91Kurigalzu II 80, 84, 91Kusuh 121Kutha 24Kuyunkik

interior of mound 44ftunnel 44f

L

Labashi-Marduk 91laborers transporting stone

bull 222fLachish 27

siege of 319fLagash 21, 24–25

Lahmu and Lahamu 121Lama 121Lamashtu 121Lamassu. See Lamalamentations 173–174

reading 183Lamgi-Mari 91–92land transportation 253–255

reading 258roads 253–254

language 138Akkadian language 10,

143, 233, 257decipherments

138–142, 182Hurrian 143major languages

142–144, 182Sumerian language

142–143, 327lapis lazuli 5Larak 25Larsa 100La-tarak and Lulal 121Lawrence, T. E. (“Lawrence

of Arabia”) 15, 49Layard, Austen Henry 23,

42, 44–45assistant to 47Assyria, images from

222portrait of 45f

legacy of Mesopotamia325–338

Alexander the Great328–329

biblical tradition327–328

Chaldaeans 335–336,337

continuity and change326–327, 337

descriptions of 330

enduring nature of334–335, 337

foreigners, memory of327–332, 337

Herodotus as “father ofhistory” 328

historians 328–329inspiration and

imagination 332–334,337

movies 334reading 337–338romantic escape

331–332stars, study of 330travelers 330–331Western art 332–333Western literature 333Western music

333–334legal documents 167–168

reading 183legal issues

marriage and family275–276

letters 174–178business correspondence

177content 176–178delivery 175gods, to 177–178origin 174–175personal letters 178preservation 175reading 183scribal exercises 177style 175tone 175–176

Levertov, Denise 333Libaia 92libraries 149Lightfoot, John 312Limmu 50–51

I N D E X

387

lions in artcarved ivory 237flion hunt 247fwinged human-headed

lion 222fwounded lion 248f

Lipit-Enlil 92Lipit-Ishtar 22, 92, 110, 168

Code of 68Lisin 121lists of kings 50–51, 65Liszt, Franz 333literary tradition 148literature 149–182

divination texts168–172, 183

epic poetry 149–162,182

erotic poetry 180–182,184

fragmentary epics162–165

historical chronicles165–167, 182–183

hymns and prayers172–173, 183

lamentations 173–174,183

legal documents167–168, 183

letters 174–178, 183proverbs 178–179, 183social satire 179–180,

183Western literature,

legacy ofMesopotamia 333

Little Zab River 2, 10livestock 293–294Lloyd, Seton 17, 45, 48,

216Loftus, William Kennet 45love songs 297–298

Lubalanda 92Lucian 45lugal 65, 66Lugalbanda 92Lugalbanda and the

Thunderbird (tale) 165Lugal-dalu 92Lugal-ira and Meslamta-ea

121Lugal-kinishe-dudu 92Lugal-shag-engur 92Lugal-ushumgal 92Lugalzagesi 92, 174Lugulbanda 124Lu-kirlaza 92lullaby, ancient 285Lullaia 92

M

Macrinus 83Maier, John 331Malachi 320Mallowan, Agatha Christie

45Mallowan, Max E. L. 22, 23,

45Mamitu 121Mandeville, Sir John. See

d’Outremeuse, JeanManishtusu 92Mar-biti-ahhe-iddina 92Mar-biti-apla-usur 92Marco Polo 40Marduk 13, 66, 87, 121, 122,

126, 131, 312statute 130

Marduk-apal-iddina I 92,94

Marduk-apal-iddina II92–93, 245

Marduk-apla-usur 93Marduk-balassu-iqbi 81, 93

Marduk-bel-zeri 93Marduk-kabil-ahhesu 93Marduk-nadin-ahhe 93–94Marduk-shapik-zeri 94Marduk-zakir-shumi I 94Marduk-zer-x 94Margueron, Jean-Claude

26Mari 25–26, 225

letters 111Markurk 192–193marriage and family

275–280bridal auctions 277business of marriage

275–277ceremonies 276death 278–279, 309divorce 277–278dowery 276emotional dimensions

279–280engagement, seriousness

276husband and wife figure

280fincest 278infidelity 277–278inheritance 278–279legal framework

275–276prolonged separation

278reading 309sacred marriage 280sexual embracing couple

279fsterility 277–278

Martin, John 332Martinu 333Martu 121–122Al-Masudi 45, 330me, implementation of 115


388

medicine 304–309beginnings of 304community medicine

308–309dentistry 308diagnosis 306disease 306divine powers 305doctors, types of 305early texts 304–305exorcism and 307magic versus 307practice of 305–306pregnancy test 306preparation and use of

305–306prognosis 307reading 310sin, function of 307specialists 306spiritual healing 306–307surgeons 307–308

Me-durba 94Melishpak 94merchants 256Merodach-Baladan. See

Marduk-apal-iddina IIMesannepadda 94Meshkiangasher 94Meshkilak 122Mesilim 94Meskalamdug 35, 94Meskiagnunna 94Meslamta-ea 121, 122Metamorphoses (poem) 329Micah 319military affairs 261–272

ancient monuments270–271, 272

armed Assyrian soldiers264f

army, organization of265–267, 271

art of war 268–270, 272evidence 262, 271fortifications 262–263,

271geography, influence of

262, 271modern warfare

270–271, 272organization of the army

265–267, 271psychological warfare

267–268, 272reading 271–272siege warfare 267, 272weapons and equipment

263–265, 271Mitanni 15, 31Mithridates I 94, 99monkeys 26“The Monument Drowned

by the Sea” 22morality 71Morgan, Jacques de 45mosaic 226–228

reading 241Moses, birth of 317–318movies, legacy of

Mesopotamia 334Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus

333Mul Apin 170multiplicity of gods

114–115reading 135

Münter, Friedrich 47Murder in Mesopotamia

(Christie) 45murder trial 72mushkenum 62music 294–298

Great Lyre 296–297fharp 296fimportance of 294–295

love songs 297–298orchestra with strings

and woodwinds 295fpercussion instruments

295recapturing sounds 294reconstructing ancient

music 297string instruments

295–296types of instruments

295–296Ur, discoveries 296–297Western music, legacy of

Mesopotamia333–334

wind instruments 295Mut-Ashkur 94myth. See religion and myth

N

Nabonassar. See Nabu-nasirNabonidus 47, 81, 82, 91.

See also Nabu-naidNabopolasser. See Nabu-

apla-usurNabu 19, 121, 122, 124,

130–131Nabu-apla-iddina 95Nabu-apla-usur 80, 95Nabucco (opera) 333Nabu-kudurru-usur I 84, 95,

321–322defeat of 107

Nabu-kudurru-usur II 11,15, 58, 95–96, 226

Nabu-mukin-apli 96, 99Nabu-mukin-zeri 96Nabu-naid 96–97. See also

NabonidusNabu-nasir 96, 97

daughter of 171

I N D E X

389

Nabu-shuma-ishkun 97Nabu-shuma-libur 97Nabu-shuma-ukin 97Nahum 319names and functions of gods

115–126reading 136

names of cities 6–8Nam-mahazi 97Nammu 122Namtar/Namtaru 122Nana 122Nanaya 122Nanna 104, 126, 128Nanna/Sin or Suen 122–123Nanshe 26, 123Naplanum 97Naram-Sin (early ruler of

Akkad) 10, 56, 66, 97Naram-Sin (Assyrian king)

97–98narratives 54

reading 59Narses 98Nattuptum 105natural resources 4–5,

255–256reading 37

Nazimaruttash 98Nebuchadnezzar I. See

Nabu-kudurru-usur INebuchadnezzar II. See also

Nabu-kudurru-usur IIRoyal Palace 12fsuccessor 75

Neo-Assyrian Empire 57Neo-Babylonian Empire 12Neo-Babylonian Period

57–58Neolithic Revolution 191Nergal 123Nergal-shar-usur 75, 98Neribtum 26

Neriglisaros. SeeNergal-shar-usur

Neriglisser. SeeNergal-shar-usur

New Stone Agetextiles 289

New Testament 322–323reading 324

New Year’s festival 131, 132Nidaba 29Niebuhr, Karsten 43, 47Nina-Sirara 25, 26Ninazu 123Nineveh 222. See also

Ninuacolossal bulls of 331ffall of 319–320

Ningal 123Ningirin 123Ningirsu 21, 25, 123Ningishzida 123Ninhursag (or Ninhursaga or

Ninhursanga) 123–124Ninildu 124Ninisina 124Ninisini 117Ninkarrak 33Ninkasi 292Nin-kisalsi 98Ninlil 124Ninmah 124Ninmar 124Ninshubur 124Ninsianna 124Ninsun 124Nintu (or Nintur) 124Ninua 15, 26–27

burial site of Nineveh43f

Kuyunkik, interior ofmound 44f

palatial sculptures,Nineveh 41f

Ninurta 24, 114f, 124Ninurta and Agag (epic) 164Ninurta-apal-Ekur 98Ninurta-apla-x 98–99Ninurta-kudurri-usur 99Ninurta-nadin-shumi 99Ninveveh, fall of 220Nippur 27–28, 304Nisan 130Nisasa (or Nidaba) 124Noah 30

Book of Genesis314–316

Noldeke, Arnold 40Numushda 124Nungal 124–125Nur-Adad 99Nur-ahum 99Nur-ili 99Nur-mer 99Nusku 125Nuzu 28, 317

O

Odenath 99, 111“Ode on a Grecian Urn”

(Keats) 294Old Testament 312–322,

328Book of Daniel

321–322, 324, 333Book of Esther 321,

324Book of Exodus

317–318, 324Book of Genesis 23,

312–317Book of Jonah 320Hebrew prophets

318–320, 324Job and Ecclesiastes

321, 324


390

psalms and proverbs321, 324

reading 323opera 333Oppenheim, A. Leo 47,

263Oppert, Jules 47orchards 245–246orchestra with strings and

woodwinds 295fOriental Institute 19, 20, 26

Assyrian DictionaryProject 42

excavations 45Orodes II 99orphans 278–279d’Outremeuse, Jean 47Ovid 329

P

Pabilsag 125“Painted Temple” 32painting 224–226

cones, painted 226enameled brick 226glazed tile 227freading 241wall paintings 224–226

palaces 198–201Assyrian palace 200fdesign 198examples 198–201reading 211Sennacherib 199f

Papsukkal. See Ninshuburpapyrus 144Parattarna 99Parrot, André 47Parthian Period 58Pazuzu 125penalties 71–72, 288

surgeons 308

perfume 291reading 310

Persepolis 42, 47, 139–140Persian Gulf 2Persian Gulf War (1991)

270–271Persian Period 58“Persian Wars” 328personal letters 178personal piety 133–134

reading 136Pertinax 99Pescennius Niger 99Peters, John P. 47Pethahia of Regensberg 47Philip II 74Philo of Byzantium 201, 329phonogram 145Phraates II 99pictogram 145Pirig-me 99Place, Thomas Victor 47Planck, Max 142Poebel, Arno 47, 142poetry

epic 149–162, 182erotic 180–182, 184

political leaders, biographies72–111

reading 112Porter, Robert Ker 47Postgate, J. N. 68pottery 223–224

aesthetic value 223–224archaeological value 223reading 241

“Prayer of Nabonidus” 97“The Prayer to the Gods of

the Night” 171, 172pregnancy test 306Presley, Elvis 298prices. See exchange

mediums; wages and prices

priests and kings 63priests and priestesses

128–130reading 136

Processional Way 226professions 248

reading 250Prokofiev, Sergei 333Propertius 329property

slave as 275prophets. See Hebrew

prophetsprostitution 129proverbs 178–179

reading 183psalms and proverbs 321

reading 324psychological warfare

267–268reading 272

Ptolemy II 76Puabi 35, 239, 240f, 292public worship, places of

126–127reading 136

Purim 321Puzrish-Dagan 28Puzur-Ashur I 99, 102Puzur-Ashur II 99Puzur-Ashur III 78,

99–100Puzur-Ishtar 100Puzur-Nirah 100Puzur-Sin 100pyramids

ziggurats and 197–198

Q

Qalat Jarmo 28–29Qalat Sherqat 10

I N D E X

391

qanat 205–206Qingu. See KinguQuala Sherqat 10

R

Rassam, Hormuzd 22, 47Rauwolff, Leonhart 47, 330Rawlinson, George 129, 196Rawlinson, Henry Creswicke

48, 141Reade, Julian 220Red Sea 255reed houses 188–189, 285,

286freligion and myth 113–136

divination and exorcism132–133, 136

governance of world115, 135

holy days and festivals130–132, 136

immortality, concept of134–135, 136

multiplicity of gods114–115, 135

myths, generally 126,136

names and functions ofgods 115–126, 136

personal piety 133–134,136

priests and priestesses128–130, 136

public worship, places of126–127, 136

reading 135–136residences. See homesRevelation 322–323Rich, Claudius James 48Rim-Sin I 25, 83, 100, 105Rim-Sin II 100Rimush 100

rivers. See canals andaqueducts; geography

roads 209–210, 211,253–254

Romance of Nergal andEreshkigal (tale) 160–161

romantic escape legacy331–332

Rosetta Stone 140Rossetti, Dante Gabriel 332Roux, Georges 54, 57, 79,

131Royal Asiatic Society 48Royal Cemetery of Ur 56,

282–284, 291, 299Royal Graves of Ur 34Royal Palace of

Nebuchadnezzar II 12fRoyal Standard of Ur 36,

227, 293royal tombs 282–284

buried treasure 283–284Sumerian rulers 282Ur, royal graves

282–284Rufus, Quintus Curtius 201The Ruins of Athens (opera)

333rulers, key 58–59

S

Sabium 76, 100sacred scripture 311–324

Apocrypha 322, 324Koran 323, 324New Testament

322–323, 324Old Testament

312–322, 323reading 323–324

Safar, Sayid Faud 48Saggs, H. W. F. 148

Samana 125Samium 100Sammuramat. See SemiramisSamsi-Addu. See Shamshi-

AdadSamsu-ditana 100Samsu-iluna 29, 73, 89, 100sandals 291fsanga 128sanitation

homes 287–288Sapor. See Shapur ISarcophagus, excavated

282fSardanapalus 329, 333Sargon I 101, 119Sargon II 8, 18, 19, 56, 101,

102board games 299palace 198

Sargon of Akkad 29, 34, 66,92, 100–101

Army, creation of 265portrait 101f, 218son 97

Sarpanitum 121, 125, 132Sarzac, Ernest de 48Sassanian Period 58Sassanians 16, 21Sauer, Jonathan D. 292Saustatar 101Schmandt-Besserat, Denise

48, 145Schwerner, Armand 333scribes

role of 147–148scribal exercises 177“scribe of counting”

302“scribe of Sumerian”

302“scribe of the field” 302warfare and 268f


392

sculpture and other arts213–241. See also specific arts

Akkad, statues 216–219art and immortality

214–215artist, role of 214, 241Assyria, images from

220–223carved ivory 236–237,

241cylinder seals 231–235,

241Eannatum 218, 219fglass 229–231, 241Gudea of Lagash 193f,

218fjewelry 237–240, 241materials 214, 241mosaic 226–228, 241painting 224–226, 241paints 215pottery 223–224, 241purposes 216reading 241statues 216–219stela of Hammurabi

219–220stela of Ur-Nanshe

218subjects 216Sumer, statues

216–219Tell Asmar, votive

statuettes 217ftypes and techniques

215–216Second Dynasty of Isin 57,

99Seleucus I 101Seleucus II 101Semiramide (opera) 333Semiramis 102, 104, 329Semiramis (Voltaire) 333

Sennacherib 10, 26, 85, 102,205, 220

coinage 256Jerusalem, attempt to

capture 267, 318Lachish, siege of 319fpalace 199fpalace, artwork 270on throne 102f

separation, marital 278Septimus Severus 102Setittu. See IminbiSeven Wonders of the

Ancient World 329shaduf 204–205, 207, 246Shaduppum 29Shagarakti-Shuriash 91, 102Shala 125Shallim-ahhe 102–103Shalmaneser I 103, 108Shalmaneser II 103, 220Shalmaneser III 22, 23, 94,

103, 104“Black Obelisk” 318f,

319fShalmaneser IV 103Shalmaneser V 103Shamash 68, 69fShamash-mudammiq 103Shamash-shum-ukin 103Shamshi-Adad I 29, 34, 74,

103–104Shamshi-Adad II 104Shamshi-Adad III 104Shamshi-Adad IV 104Shamshi-Adad V 93, 102,

104shangu 128Shapur I 104Shapur II 82Shara 125Shar-kalli-sharri 104Sharma-Adad I 104

Sharma-Adad II 104Sharria 104Sharru-kin. See Sargon I;

Sargon II; Sargon of AkkadShatt-al Arab 3Shattiwaza 108Shattuara I 104Shattuara II 104Shaushga 125sheep 293sheep’s liver, clay 133fShekna. See Shubat-EnlilSherida 125Shubat-Enlil 29–30, 32Shu-Dagan 104Shu-ilishu 104Shulgi 57, 104–105, 265Shulgi-shimti 105Shulmani-ashared. See

Shalmaneser IShulpae 125Shuruppak 30Shushi 105Shu-Sin 105Shuttarna I 105Shuttarna II 105Shu-Turul 105Siculus, Diodorus 196, 201

bridges 208, 209siege warfare 267

reading 272signatures 232fSili-Adad 105Simbar-shipak 105Sin. See Nannasin, function of 307Sin-ahhe-eriba. See

SennacheribSin-eribam 105Sin-iddinam 105Sin-iqisham 105Sin-magir 105Sin-muballit 86, 105

I N D E X

393

Sin-shar-ishkun 106Sippar 30Sippar-Amnanum 30slavery 274–275

causes of 274–275employment 275property, slave as 275reading 309

Smarra 29Smith, George 15, 27, 47, 48social classes 62–63social mobility 62–63social satire 179–180

reading 183soldiers. See also military

affairsAssyrian 264fchariots, in 266f

sow herding young 246fSpeiser, E. A. 48spices and herbs 293spiritual healing 306–307sports 300

reading 310standing figure of Assyrian

king 67fstela of Hammurabi 219–220stela of Ur-Nanshe 218Stele of the Vultures 34sterility 277–278Stone, W. H. 332Stone Age 54–55Story of Adapa (tale) 163Story of Atrahasis (tale) 163Story of Enki and Ninhursag

(tale) 161–162Strabo 48, 129, 201stratification of society

62–63reading 112social classes 62–63

Sud. See NinlilSuen. See Nanna

Sumer. See also specific cityCivilization, birth of 5statues from 216–219

Sumerian King List 50, 65Sumerian language

141–143, 327Sumerians 4Sumu-Abum 106Sumu-El 106Sumu-la-El 106sun-dried brick, making

187fsurgeons 307–308

fees 308liability 307–308operations 308penalties 308

surrounding countries 5–6reading 37

survey of history 54–58reading 59

Syria 10Jerablus 15

Syrian Desert 2

T

Tablet Hill 28“tablet house” 301Tablet of Destinies 115, 121Talbot, William Henry Fox

48Tammuz. See DumuziTashmetu 125taxation 67–68

reading 112Taylor, J. E. 20, 48–49Tell al-Abyad 17Tell al-Hiba 24Tell al-Oueli 31Tell al-Rimah 31–32Tell al-Ubaid 32Tell Arpachiyeh 30–31

Tell Asmar 233votive statuettes 217f

Tell Bismaya 8Tell Brak 31Tell es-Sawwan 32Tell Fakhariyeh 31Tell Halaf 21Tell Hariri 25, 47, 92Tell Hassunah 31Tell Ibrahim 24Tell Kuynijik 270Tell Leilan 32Tello 20Tell Qalinj Agha 31Tell Senkereh 25Tell Taya 32Tell Uquair 32–33“Temple Oval” 34temples 191–194

construction of 109ffoundation deposits

193–194origins and development

191–194reading 211

Ten Commandments 318Tepe Gawra 33Terqua 33terra-cotta toys 298fTeshub 126textiles. See clothing

elusiveness of evidence289–290

thermoluminescence 53–54Third Dynasty of Ur 56–57Thomas, Félix 18Thureau-Dangin, François

49, 142Tiamat 63, 126Tiglathpileser I 106–107Tiglathpileser II 107Tiglathpileser III 97, 103,

107–108, 226chariot 106f


394

Tigris River 203biblical description 2bridges 208characteristics 252flow of 3

Til Barsip 33, 226Tiptakzi 108Tiradates I 108Tirigan. See TiriqanTiriqan 108Tishpak 126tombs, royal. See royal tombsTower of Babel 196, 316ftoys and games 298–300

board games 299–300reading 310terra-cotta toys 298f

trade 255–257crafts 248exchange mediums

256–257jewelry 238–239merchants 256natural resources

255–256reading 258–259weights and measures

257–258Trajan 108transportation 252–255

beasts of burden254–255

land 253–255, 258reading 258vehicles 254water, by 252–253, 258

travelers to Mesopotamia330–331

tudittum 239Tukulti-Ninurta I 24, 74,

108Tukulti-Ninurta II 79, 108Tukulti-Ninurta Epic 165

tupshar 303Turam-Dagan 108Turner, J. M. W. 332Tushratta 108Tutankhamun 252, 299

tomb 34Tuttul 33–34Tutu 126Tutub 34

U

Ugarit 297Uhub 108Ulamburiash 108Umma 34Umm Dabaghiyah 34ummia 302UNESCO 214unir 126Unzi 108Ur 34–36

Arab tribesmen 34fChaldees 317“Flood Pit” 316fmusic, discoveries

296–297Royal Cemetery 56,

282–284, 291, 299Royal Standard of 36,

227, 293Third Dynasty of

56–57ziggurat 35, 194–195

Urash 126Ur-Baba 86, 108Urdukuga 109Ur-gar 109Ur-gigera 109Ur-Nammu 109, 168

widows and orphans279

ziggurat built by 126f

Ur-Nanshe 21, 109–110stela of 218

Ur-nigina 110Ur-Ningirsu 110Ur-Ningizzida 110Ur-Ninkimara 110Ur-Ninsuna 110Ur-Ninurta 110Uruinimgina. See UrukaginaUruk 36–37, 55Urukagina 110Ur-Utu 30Ur-Zababa 110Urzigurumash 110Ushpia 74, 110Ushshi 110Usmu. See IsimudUssher, Archbishop James

312Usur-awassu 110Uttu 126Utu 126Utu-hegal 110

V

Valle, Pietro della 49Van de Mieroop, Marc

201–202Van Dijk, J. J. A. 134vehicles 254vocational training 303Voltaire 333

W

wages and prices 248–250wall paintings 224–226

discoveries 225–226religious art 226subjects 225techniques and materials

225

I N D E X

395

walls 202–203. See also wallpaintings

reading 211Warad-Sin 110Warassa 110Warka Vase 37wars. See military affairsWasasatta 110Washukanni 31water transportation

252–253boats, types of 252–253reading 258rivers, characteristics

252water travel 252weapons 263–265, 271weights and measures

257–258reading 259

Western art, legacy ofMesopotamia 332–333

Western literature, legacy ofMesopotamia 333

Western music, legacy ofMesopotamia 333–334

“White Temple” 192widows 278–279winged bull 46fwinged human-headed lion

222fWoolley, Charles Leonard

34, 36, 49, 74, 94board games 299Early Dynastic Period

and 56

the Flood 315–316jewelry 239royal cemetery at Ur

283–284work 274

reading 309wounded lion 248fWrath of Erra (tale) 161writing 144–149

archives 149cuneiform characters

146–147fdevices 144libraries 149literary tradition 148origins 144phonogram 145pictoram 145reading 182scribe, role of

147–148style 144–145technique 145–147

X

Xenophon 49Xerxes I 110–111

Y

Yadin, Yigael 265Yaggid-Lim. See Iggid-LimYahdun-Lim. See Iahdun-

LimYale Culinary Tablets 293

Yale University Art Gallery19

Yarim Tepe 37Yasmah Addu. See Iahsmah-

Addad

Z

Zababa 8, 24, 126Zabaia 111Zagros Mountains 10, 16Zarins, Juris 49Zarpanitum. See SarpanitumZechariah 320Zenobia 99, 111ziggurats 194–198

Babylon 13, 196–198Dur-Kurigalzu 17fDur-Sharrukin 19inspiration and function

197pyramids and 197–198reading 211Ur 35, 194–195Ur-Nammu, built by

126fzigguratu 126Zimri-Lim 25, 26, 88, 111,

225palace 198

Zinu, Lady 178Zu-bird. See ImdugudZuzu 111


396