Sumer—The First Agrarian Civilization

Sumer—The First Agrarian Civilization

Lecture 30

And one more detail that actually strikes a very modern ring. Around the edge of these cities, archaeologists have found evidence of sort of shantytowns—as immigrants from the countryside tried to make a living, often without great success, in the big cities.

How did the buildup of human and material resources described in the last lecture generate the rst tribute-taking states, the rst Agrarian civilizations, and the rst real cities? All these developments occurred, with surprising suddenness, just before 3000 B.C.E., in Sumer, at the southern edge of Mesopotamia. As with earlier thresholds, many different components were suddenly arranged into something new. Before we go further, we need to clarify dating systems. For several lectures, I have given dates as archaeologists do, in years “BP” or “before present.” However, historical scholarship is dominated by a different convention, derived ultimately from the Christian calendar, and from now on we will shift conventions, giving dates in years “B.C.E.” (before the Common Era) or “C.E.” (Common Era). This system is essentially identical to the older convention of dates “B.C.” (before Christ) and “A.D.” (anno domini) but re ects a (not entirely successful) attempt to be less culturally speci c. For better or worse, the convention now dominates scholarship in world history. To get from dates “BP” to dates “B.C.E.” or “C.E.,” you deduct 2,000 years. So 4000 B.C.E. is the same as 6000 BP. That’s where we start, somewhere near modern Basra.

In 4000 B.C.E., Sumer was a swampy backwater. However, lively trade networks traversed the region, and its rich soils attracted increasing numbers of immigrants. Between 4000 and 3000 B.C.E., climates became drier. This made it easier to farm the land as swamps began to dry out, but eventually it forced more and more people to settle in the region’s rapidly growing towns. These towns controlled increasingly scarce water supplies through large irrigation systems. In the centuries before 3000 B.C.E., 10–20 powerful cities appeared quite suddenly. They included Ur (Abraham’s home city, according to biblical tradition), Uruk, Nippur, Lagash, and Eridu. By 3000 B.C.E., Uruk

may have had 20,000 to 50,000 inhabitants. They lived in whitewashed mudbrick houses along narrow streets. At the center, on an arti cial mound 12 meters high, stood the “White Temple,” dedicated to the goddess Inanna, a goddess of both love and war. Around the main part of the city was a massive wall, more than 7 meters tall in some places. The Epic of Gilgamesh, the world’s oldest recorded epic, includes a description of Uruk, which though written down only around 1200 B.C.E., may capture something of the city’s appearance in the reign of King Gilgamesh, at about 2750 B.C.E. Modern archaeology also allows us to imagine what life in ancient Uruk may have Indeed, in Sumer, the been like. We have an ancient map of earliest rulers may have nearby Nippur dating from about 1500 been priests of some kind, B.C.E. The map shows the city’s walls, gardens, and canals, as well as a large as many of the earliest large temple complex.

buildings seem to have been

temples rather than palaces. Sumer’s rst cities were the densest and most complex communities that had ever existed. Uruk’s 20,000 to 50,000 people lived in just 2.5 square kilometers, an area that would barely have supported a single individual using the foraging technologies of the Paleolithic era. Unlike foraging communities or the villages of the early Agrarian era, cities were not self-suf cient, as many of their inhabitants were not farmers. So cities had to control nearby “hinterlands” of peasant villages. They also traded along Mesopotamia’s great rivers and across the seas. Now we discuss some of the distinctive “emergent” properties of the earliest Agrarian civilizations. Many city dwellers were specialists, dependent on markets for essential supplies. A document from about 2500 B.C.E., the “Standard Professions List,” mentions many different professions, including soldiers, farmers, priests, gardeners, cooks, scribes, bakers, coppersmiths, jewelers, snake charmers, and even the profession of king! Markets were also vital because southern Sumer lacked basic materials such as wood. So rulers supported merchants who traded within a “world system” reaching to Egypt, North India, Central Asia, and Anatolia. (A world system is a large region uni ed by extensive trade networks.)

Cities needed defensive walls and irrigation systems. These could be built and maintained only by powerful rulers capable of organizing huge labor levies. Rulers controlled labor through slavery or “corvée” (forced labor). Forced labor was important because in societies without modern energy supplies human beings were the most easily exploitable stores of energy. (From the point of view of rulers, humans were living, intelligent, “batteries,” a perspective that helps explain the pervasiveness of forced labor and slave labor in all Agrarian civilizations.) The discovery of crude, mass-produced beveled-rim bowls in Sumerian cities is evidence that the government provided rations for workers or slaves. To maintain the favor of the gods, it was necessary to build and supply temples. Indeed, in Sumer, the earliest rulers may have been priests of some kind, as many of the earliest large buildings seem to have been temples rather than palaces.

Rulers ruled through literate bureaucracies, powerful taxation systems, and paid armies, features that would reappear in all tribute-taking states. Just as farmers extracted ecological “rents” from their domesticated crops and animals, the rulers of Sumer’s city-states collected resources from their subjects. We call these “tributes” because, like modern taxes, they were raised in part through the threat of coercion. New, institutionalized hierarchies emerged, with the wealthy and powerful at the top and slaves and war captives at the bottom.

To keep track of their growing wealth, rulers needed new methods of accounting. These eventually evolved into the rst writing systems. At rst, accounts were kept using tokens representing objects. Then, marks were cut into clay using wedge-shaped papyrus stalks to represent objects such as sheep or units of grain. The step from accounting to a writing system that can imitate spoken language is associated with the “rebus” principle. The Sumerian symbol for an arrow looked like an arrow. But the word for “life” happened to sound like the word for “arrow” (“ti”), so the symbol for arrow could be used for the more abstract idea of “life.” By early in the 3rd millennium, such changes meant that writing could record chronicles and even poetry, some of which can still be read today. With such huge resources, rulers could hire paid enforcers or armies. This is the crucial step from “power from below” to “power from above.” Much early Sumerian writing describes wars fought by well-organized armies, and a Sumerian mosaic of

2600 B.C.E., known as the Standard of Ur, depicts the army of Ur, with its donkey-drawn chariots and large convoys of captives.

Inspiring awe by lavish displays of power was one of the keys to statehood. The royal tombs of Ur, from the late 4th millennium B.C.E., show the spectacular riches rulers could accumulate and the extraordinary expense lavished on tombs, temples, and palaces. As in the royal burials of many early Agrarian civilizations, servants of the ruler were often killed and buried to serve in the afterlife. From late in the 3rd millennium B.C.E., the typical form of monumental architecture in Mesopotamia would become the ziggurat, a stepped pyramid-like temple dedicated to the gods, of which the best preserved today is that of Ur.

Two more signi cant changes occurred about 1,000 years after the appearance of the rst states. Sumer’s city-states were united under a single ruler, Sargon, who ruled from c. 2370 to 2316 B.C.E. from a city called Akkad in northern Sumer. This pattern of imperial expansion would recur many times in later Agrarian civilizations. In the centuries after Sargon, Sumer’s population crashed, apparently as a result of over-irrigation, which led to salination and undermined the region’s fertility. This pattern, too, would recur many times in the history of Agrarian civilizations.

Voilà! A whole series of linked features came together to establish the rst tribute-taking city-states in ancient Sumer. In the next lecture we ask: How similar was the process of state formation in other early Agrarian civilizations?

Essential Reading

Christian, Maps of Time, chap. 9. Fagan, People of the Earth, chap. 15. Ristvet, In the Beginning, chap. 4.

Supplementary Reading

Questions to Consider

Fernandez-Armesto, The World, chap. 3. Nissen, The Early History of the Ancient Near East. Trigger, Early Civilizations.

1. What were the most important “emergent properties” of the earliest

Agrarian civilizations?

2. What were the crucial preconditions for the appearance of the rst tribute-taking states about 5,000 years ago?