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Emergence of Civilizations / Anthro 341: Class 9

Mesopotamia: More on Uruk, Jemdet Nasr, and the origins of writing

ã Copyright Bruce Owen 2002

* Late Uruk (3400- 3100 BC; 300 years long)

* by this time the temples had piled up high enough to form tall
platforms: early versions of ziggurats
* stone sculpture

* sculpture was probably not new to this period, but some nice
examples help us imagine some features of Uruk society

* the elaboration of high-status life
* the elaboration of religious ritual
* the training, specialization, and support of craftspeople that
must have been necessary to produce these kinds of objects
* apparently most, if not all, of this production was connected to
the temple and/or high-status people related to the temple

* that is, specialists worked in temple shops or were otherwise
supported by the temple
* most of these things were not, apparently, results of independent
entrepreneurship

Warka vase, 1 m tall, with low reliefs around it showing
* plants and animals
* nude men with shaved heads carrying offerings in baskets, jars,
etc.
* and a complex scene apparently of food offerings being presented
to a goddess

Marble head (8" high)
* originally with inlaid eyes and eyebrows, copper hair
* probably from a composite wood and stone statue

* back is flat, with mounting holes

very naturalistic

Statuette, Khafje, 4 inches high

Offering stand, Uruk. Stone ram with silver rod support for offering
stand or incense burner

Cup holder, Tell Agrab
* the figure holding the lions is a recurring theme in Sumerian art;
may refer to a character named Enkidu who appears in the Gilgamesh
stories
* See the brief Gilgamesh story in the Reader

Stela, Uruk (granite)
* note the environment that this scene implies!

"Monster", Uruk period

also small-scale stonework apparently for personal use, like amulets

Late Uruk period relief with a reed house
* virtually identical to modern Marsh Arab houses!

invention of writing (more on this later)
* clearly was related to increasingly intense economic activities

* production, collection, storage, redistribution, exchange

like the workshops and other economic features, writing was
associated with the temple

the city of Uruk was joined by four other competing city-states that
were getting large
* Ur, Nippur, Kish, and Eridu
* although none was as big as Uruk

Example Uruk period city: Uruk itself
* the modern placename of the site of Uruk is Warka
* also mentioned as Erech in the Bible (Genesis 10:10)

* a surprising amount of the Old Testament is derived from
Mesopotamian traditions and/or written sources, including many
details of the flood
* Erech is one of the cities in the first kingdom mentioned in
Genesis, ruled by Nimrod, a descendent of Noah, who "began to be a
mighty one in the earth...and the beginning of his kingdom was
Babel, and Erech, and Accad..."

located by the Euphrates river

initially settled in 'Ubaid period

and continued to be occupied long after the end of Uruk period

Uruk was probably the biggest, most impressive city in Mesopotamia
(i.e. on Earth) for 400 years or more (3200-2800+ BC)
* New York should be so lucky

up to 80 ha (200 acres) during the Uruk period
* about 90% of the entire SSU campus, from the residence halls to
the stadium (~1130m x 780 m; = 87 ha)

population at the end of the Uruk period (about 3100 BC) estimated
from 10,000 to 50,000 or more, and it probably grew even larger in the
following centuries

surrounded by city walls

mostly the temple precincts have been excavated

one of the important temples was the "Anu ziggurat"
* as at Eridu, they built over and over again on the same site
* after 6 rebuildings over a span of 500 years, the accumulated
stack of buildings and rubble stood 16 meters (over 50 feet) above
the ground surface
* on this platform was built the "white temple" (just one of the
sequence of rebuildings)

* white color
* on a high platform with steps and ramps
* offering of a leopard and a lion in lowest course of bricks
* similar plan to late 'Ubaid temples

* central cella
* freestanding rectangular pedestal with a semi-circular step with
evidence of burning
* high platform at one end of cella with steps leading up to it:
base of a statue?
* many interior niches
* many exterior buttresses

called "Anu" temple because it is close to later temples that can be
historically linked to Anu, the Sumerian sky god

estimated 7,500 person-years to build Anu ziggurat (i.e. monumental
architecture)

Anu ziggurat was just one of several temple complexes at Uruk

Eanna ceremonial precinct at Uruk
* the ceremonial precinct alone covered 9 ha, over twice the entire
site of Jericho; 2/3 the size of all of Çatal Hüyük
* near historical temple to the goddess Inanna, Uruk's principal
patron deity
* Limestone temple

* built on foundation of dressed limestone from Arabian plateau 60
km away
* 30 X 76 m (about the same width as Darwin Hall, but only 3/4 as
long)
* Exact symmetry, elaborate nitching and buttressing

Pillar temple
* contemporary with Limestone temple
* several buildings
* freestanding round pillars, 2.6 m diameter (over 8 feet)
* made of mud bricks stacked radially, thickly plastered with clay
* into wet clay were pushed clay cones with painted ends in red,
white, and black, forming geometric designs
* Later rebuildings were as wide as Stevenson Hall and over 3/4 as
long (60 X 80 m)

Temple compounds had not only the classic temple structure on a tall
mound, but also major economic functions
* large complexes of storage rooms, apparently for agricultural
produce

* apparently used to support hundreds of laborers and craft
specialists associated with the temple

the first examples of writing (pre-cuneiform) are from the Eanna
temple precinct
* they clearly have to do with accounting of goods in storage,
payments, lists of workers, and so on

implications of temples, ziggurats, etc.
* these are really big, elaborate, expensive buildings

* even by today's standards

required a huge labor force to build

required skill in planning the building and organizing logistics

repeated rebuildings imply that this level of organization and use
of resources was an ongoing feature of society, not an unusual result
of some extraordinarily talented leader or unique circumstances

all suggest:
* an institutionalized, stable hierarchy

* that is, not just one successful, charismatic leader, but a
society organized around powerful institutions (like the temple)
with leaders, generation after generation

mobilization of large economic resources

organization of many laborers and craftspeople

legitimation of institutions through association with impressive
monuments and ceremonies

presence of architects, specialized planner-organizers: a
"knowledge" class
* that is, people with "esoteric" knowledge
* possibly with formal training or apprenticeship
* probably with control of access to knowledge and skills
* the buildings and the institutions would have lent a permanence
and legitimacy to this class

the storage, production, and administrative features suggest a major
role of the temple in
* the flow of agricultural produce
* the direction of at least some of the labor of much of the
population
* the training and support of specialized craftspeople
* the training and support of specialized administrators, including
eventually scribes

all together, the temple seems to have been the institution around
and through which a complex social hierarchy and real political and
economic power finally developed

even so, settlement patterns seem to suggest that each big city only
controlled the production of the small hamlets in its immediate
vicinity
* that is, at this point there was no larger-scale integration
between cities
* Uruk society was organized into city-states (more or less)

* walled
* often competing or even fighting, sometimes allied or coexisting

success sowed the seeds of destruction:
* beginning of salinization

* salinization is the accumulation of salts in the soil due to
evaporation of water from the surface of poorly drained, soggy
soil
* as the soil gets saltier, it becomes less fertile for farming

late Uruk records show that wheat and barley were grown in equal
amounts; 1000 years later, Early Dynastic records show 6 times as much
barley as wheat
* Barley is more salt-tolerant than wheat

this is an indication that poor drainage from intensive farming was
already beginning the process of salinizing the landscape

which would eventually convert much of Sumer into desert and
scrubland fit only for grazing animals

* Jemdet Nasr (3100 - 2900 BC; 200 years long?)

* poorly defined, short
* sometimes called "protoliterate" period, since cuneiform was just
developing and literacy was still limited mostly to accounting
* mass-produced pottery became important, using fast wheel
* stone artwork continued
* temple rebuilding continued
* writing improved and became more common
* basically, this was a transitional period that is poorly known

* it is identified by a style of ceramics, but it is not clear that
there was a separate period in which this style was used over a
large area
* or whether maybe it was a style that coexisted with other styles
at some places and not others

in any case, we don't know much about it that is very distinct from
the preceding and following periods
* for our purposes you can generally jump directly from the Uruk
period to the beginning of the Early Dynastic period, which
follows Jemdet Nasr

Origins of writing
* Why is writing important?

* storage of information, more detailed, exact, and voluminous than
memory allows
* transmission or access by different people at different times

* that is, information can be transmitted and acted on without
needing face-to-face contact
* people involved don't need to be in the same place
* or even dealing with the information at the same time
* this opens up possibilities for much greater flexibility and
efficiency

facilitates comparison, summary, analysis, impersonal consideration
* written information is not affected by personality and
presentation as much as spoken information is
* and it can be re-read, the reader can jump back and forth, make
comparisons, etc.
* so presumably more complex information and decisions can be
managed

allows a different kind of handling of complex ideas and data, the
visual aspect of seeing it all on the page
* some people believe that information that is seen is processed
differently from information that is heard

implies formal training and specialists

many definitions of civilization include writing as an important
characteristic of civilization

Denise Schmandt-Besserat: The token theory of the origin of writing
* This explanation has its critics, but it is probably at least
partially right
* Clay tokens found at many neolithic sites around SW Asia

* cones, disks, spheres, partial spheres, etc.
* variable size, average around 2 cm (1 inch) high

example: Jarmo, 8,500 BC: a modest early agricultural village
* 1,153 clay spheres, 206 disks, 106 cones found in excavations
(1465 objects total)
* generally found in clusters of 15 or more
* generally found in storage areas in houses
* i.e. counters representing stored goods, herds, etc.?

also found at other sites, starting around the time of initial use
of agriculture
* found at sites that generally don't have much evidence of
pastoralism
* nor of trade
* so if these tokens were the beginning of record keeping, it
started with cultivating and storing cereals -- not keeping track
of herds or trade

similar tokens continued in use for thousands of years, up to a bit
after 2000 BC -- that is, some 6,500 years!
* very stable for close to 5000 years until Uruk times, with only
minor additions to 20-28 shapes and variants
* In the Uruk period, many new complex shapes were added, also more
incisions, appliques, etc.

* May indicate increasing number of types of goods to record, due to
imports, craft specialization, etc.

* many of the new, more complex variants resemble later precuneiform
symbols for manufactured goods
* like bread, oil, beer, perfume, metal, spun fibers, garments
* so the expansion of the token system probably reflected the
increasing number of goods made by craft specialists that had to
be kept track of

The new, complex tokens were apparently limited to cities, not found
in small hamlets
* another hint that they may relate to things produced by
specialized craftspeople who lived in the larger towns

also, at some point the tokens seem to have been extended to stand
for numbers
* this is suggested because some tokens seem to correspond to known
precuneiform symbols for numbers
* small cone=1, circle=10, larger cone=60, etc.
* so the token system was already more complex than just one token
standing for one item

In the Uruk period, two means of keeping groups of tokens together
appeared
* pierced tokens

* apparently to keep on strings
* the knot of the string was covered with clay, which had one or
more seal impressions pressed into it

unpierced tokens were encased in a clay "envelope" ("bulla", plural
"bullae")
* most had two different seal impressions, suggesting transactions
or contracts between two people

both kinds of grouping were presumably to record a transaction or
contract
* such as giving a shipment of goods to someone to transport without
diverting any
* both plain and complex tokens were pierced and put in bullae; both
storage systems were used for both simple and complex tokens

* although most bullae contained mostly plain tokens

problem with bullae: you had to break them open to verify the
contents, and once opened, they were no longer sealed and tamperproof

so they began marking the bullae on the outside by pressing the
tokens (or similar ones) into the clay
* in some examples, the tokens inside fit the impressions outside
perfectly
* but most examples have representations of the tokens made with a
finger or stylus (probably a cut reed or wooden stick)

with the outside marked, the tokens inside the bullae were not
really necessary

so they gradually stopped bothering with the tokens at all, using
just the impressions on small clay slabs, or "tablets", to record the
information

the symbols became more complex, and writing emerged

so the emergence of a complex economy drove the development of
writing

Earliest "writing" by 3400 BC, beginning of Late Uruk period
* writing on clay tablets

signs were initially made by scratching lines into the clay
(incised): this was Uruk period "pre-cuneiform"
* fewer than half were clearly pictographic: hand, head, barley,
etc.
* from the beginning, more than half were totally abstract
* even in Uruk times, already some phonetic signs, based on
monosyllabic words
* only some can be read, by extrapolating back from later, better
understood cuneiform
* Uruk period pre-cuneiform used at least 1,500 different signs

Over the next 500 years, the pictographic system was simplified
* by the Early Dynastic period (2900 BC - 2373 BC), it had developed
into cuneiform
* cuneiform symbols are modifications of the incised symbols, made
by pressing a pointed stylus, rather than dragging it; the
impressions give a "cuneiform" (wedge-shaped) look
* it was faster to write by pressing cuneiform symbols than
scratching pictographic symbols
* but the pictographic quality of the signs was lost; they became
very abstract
* the number of signs declined to around 700 signs
* read left to right, top to bottom, in columns
* a much later version of cuneiform was "cracked" by intense study
of a tri-lingual inscription of the Persian king Darius I, in 516
BC

* Old Persian, Elamite, Babylonian
* this allowed epigraphers (writing experts) to work backwards to
decipher the earlier forms of cuneiform, and some of the
precuneiform symbols

the symbols were initially for numbers, nouns, and a few adjectives
* they were for accounting records

later, additional syllabic signs increased to add other elements of
language

an early common application was for contracts
* sometimes sealed in a clay envelope with the same text written on
the outside
* continuing the traditional bulla concept of verification

an example of fully developed cuneiform writing (this example is
actually later, one of the "Amarna letters" found in Egypt, around
1400s BC)
* "Shawardata, prince of Hebron, stands alone and needs a large
force to rescue him."

context and content of Uruk writing
* tablets are found in temples
* and in some private houses, associated with seals and sealings

* suggestive of storage and trade

the most common signs are bread, beer, sheep, cattle, clothing
* suggestive of storage and transaction records

incidentally, the reader says that cuneiform is mostly found on
seals. This is false
* seals are used over and over to make a repetitive ID mark, like a
signature or a rubber stamp with your name on it

* some have writing on them, some don't
* the content of the writing is secondary; the point is the
identification of the user
* this could be done by an abstract symbol, a coat of arms, etc.,
with no need for recording speech

an essential feature of writing is that it is flexible, able to
record a wide variety of different statements
* not just identify an individual
* a thumbprint or arbitrary sign could do that - or a seal

the vast bulk of pre-cuneiform and cuneiform writing is actually on
tablets
* which record accounts, records, letters, and practice work by
scribes in training
* these are different from the seals, in that they express different
information in every phrase, rather than standing for the same
thing over and over

So: writing developed out of recordkeeping and contracts for
storage, transportation, and exchange of goods
* and continued to be used mostly for that
* these tablets with accounts and administrative records are mostly
found in archive rooms

* initially archives were only in temples
* later, as palaces arose, they too had archives

as time passed, it was gradually extended to other uses like
* diplomacy (such as letters between kings)
* law (such as land ownership agreements, codes of crimes and
punishments)
* recording myths, poetry, etc. (the Gilgamesh epic and others)

it remained a highly specialized skill that was formally taught with
standardized exercises and practice texts
* this formal training implies a close control of esoteric knowledge
(the method of reading and writing)