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Introduction to Ancient Mesopotamia

© Ian Lawton 2000

Emergence

Lying within the western regions of modern-day Iraq, Mesopotamia -
literally 'The Land between the Rivers' - is the name given since
ancient times to the great alluvial plain built up by the silt
deposits of the Euphrates in the west and the Tigris in the east. It
extends from north of Baghdad down to the mouth of the Persian Gulf,
and is bordered in the north and east by the vast mountain ranges
stretching down from Kurdistan to the Zagros in Iran, in the west by
the Syrian desert.

The land is rich and fertile, ensuring high yields for farmers
especially in ancient times. Indeed it has been identified with the
biblical 'Garden of Eden', especially since the Euphrates is one of
the rivers quoted in Genesis 2:14 as flowing out of it. However this
is to over-simplify the matter. The annual flood levels are entirely
dependent on the degree of inundation coming down from the surrounding
mountain ranges, and this is highly variable - unlike, for example,
the Nile plains in northern Egypt. The resulting alternation between
drought and devastating flood made the area at worst highly vulnerable
to famine, and at best an unpredictable place to live. Small wonder,
say the traditionalists, that the early settlers revered their gods
and prayed so much for favourable conditions.

This unpredictability was coupled with the inhospitable terrain
surrounding the plains, which harboured many well-protected potential
enemies and ensured escape was difficult. Furthermore the land was
lacking in fundamental resources for building work; stone, timber and
metal were in short supply unless brought in from surrounding areas
some distance away. It was not therefore the paradise for the earliest
civilisations on earth to develop and flourish which some commentators
would have us believe.

Although there are those who are beginning to provide strong arguments
that the earliest signs of modern civilisation are to be found in the
Indus Valley to the east^1 or in Anatolia to the west^2, the bulk of
conventional opinion continues to support the contention that it was
the Sumerians who first introduced the identifiable elements of
civilised life, as distinct from the less advanced and communalised
farming life that had preceded it for many millennia. The emergence of
civilisation in Sumer, whose name is derived from the Babylonian name
for Southern Mesopotamia, is dated under this paradigm to somewhere
between the middle and end of the 5^th millennium BC, although there
remains some difficulty in tying this date down further. Certainly
most scholars currently agree that the other most commonly discussed
early civilisation, that of Ancient Egypt, did not develop properly
until some time later, and possibly not until towards the end of the
4^th millennium BC.

The dating process for Sumer works broadly along the following lines:
reliable links between the archaeological and documentary evidence can
be established as far back as approximately 2500 BC. This date is
recessed somewhere between 1500 and 2000 years based on the extent of
stratified remains unearthed before virgin soil is encountered in
excavations of the oldest occupied sites. However the respected
Assyriologist Samuel Noah Kramer, of the University of Chicago, has
indicated that this approach is further confused by geological
arguments about the extent to which the Persian Gulf at one time
extended into Southern Mesopotamia; about the timing of its recession;
and also about the underlying levels of the water table on the land.^3
These factors can evidently render any assumption about reaching
virgin soil inaccurate, and may imply a 'false bottom' which masks
earlier evidence of civilisation.

In a number of books published in the 1950's and 60's, the most
influential of which is The Sumerians, Their History Culture and
Character published in 1963, Kramer has provided what is still the
most extensive catalogue of the elements of civilisation that were
introduced by the Sumerians. Let us take a brief look at their
achievements:^4

Waterways and Irrigation:
In order for some stability to be brought to bear on the irrigation of
this area, extensive and complex systems of canals, weirs, dikes and
reservoirs were built; these feats required advanced engineering
skills, including accurate surveying and measurement. Furthermore
these waterways required considerable annual maintenance to ensure
they did not become clogged up with silt. Such tasks required
significant levels of co-operation between neighbours over an extended
area. Indeed the orthodox view is that it was this very necessity for
extended co-operation which led to the emergence of civilisation in
the area.

Shipping and Transport:
Given their reliance on waterways, it comes as no surprise to find
that the Sumerians list many types of shipping vessel in their
records. Kramer also supports the relatively modern view that from
early times they were undertaking significant sea voyages (assumed
until recently to be impossible at that time), engaging in trade with
places such as Egypt and Ethiopia in order to acquire materials that
their own region did not provide.^5 According to the current orthodoxy
they were also the first to introduce the wheel, from which they
developed both the cart and chariot.

Architecture and City-States:
These developed from the smaller towns and villages at the latest by
the start of the 3^rd millennium BC, and housed populations of
anything up to 100-200,000 people. The complexity of housing
construction varied according to status, with the poor occupying
single-story houses built usually of reinforced clay or mud bricks,
while the better-off enjoyed grander dwellings of two or occasionally
even three stories. However the concept of town planning was not
particularly advanced, with private houses muddled together along
usually narrow and jumbled streets and alleyways. Nevertheless the
imposing and often monumental stepped temple or ziggurat of the patron
god, and in later times the palace of the ruler (the ensi or lugal),
were splendid affairs made of more expensive materials, and highly
decorated inside and out with columns, arches and mosaics. These
buildings, sometimes combined with large and ornate city gates, wide
boulevards and walkways, and central public squares which were a focal
point for recreation, dominated the city. So successful was this
prototype of civilised life that in subsequent millennia the
city-state thrived from the Indus Valley in the east right through to
the Mediterranean in the west, based largely on the Sumerian model.
Indeed our modern western city-based culture owes much to this
original Sumerian influence as against that of, for example, Ancient
Egypt, which never adopted the city-state concept.

Agriculture and Farming:
There is evidence that the Sumerians experimented with both crops and
livestock, introducing new varieties and strains of both which were
not originally native to the area. Detailed instructions about
agricultural activities throughout the year have been found on a
tablet called The Farmer's Almanac.^6

Writing and Printing:
The Sumerians were the first race of people to develop a system of
writing by imprinting on clay tablets using a stylus. A form of
printing was a similar first: they carved 'negative' images onto
'cylinder seals'; these were stone cylinders, usually between 2 to 6
cm long, which could then be repeatedly rolled over fresh clay to
produce the 'positive' inscription. As forerunners of the rings used
to imprint wax seals in later times they were used to identify
possessions such as pottery, to seal written tablets to guarantee
their authenticity, and to protect other valuables via clay stoppers
on containers such as bottles, urns and leather bags. With details of
over 6000 already published, and many more residing in unpublished
private collections, they provide an abundant source of information -
especially since they portray scenes including gods (usually
identified by horned headgear) and mortals, as well as including
inscriptions^7 (particularly in later times).

Culture and the Arts:
Not only did the Sumerians produce complex stone sculptures including
inscribed stelae, and highly decorated pottery and clothing, but they
also developed musical instruments such as the harp and lyre which
were used to accompany the recital of their many epic literary works.
They developed the concept of the library, assiduously collecting and
cataloguing their mass of not only literary but also administrative,
scientific and historiographic texts. And there are some indications
that they indulged in vigorous debates both in public and private.

Legal and Political Systems:
Textual evidence indicates that they had a form of congress or
assembly for making key political decisions using a consensual
approach; and that they held courts to make legal judgements over such
things as house ownership, divorce and inheritance settlements, and
slave rights. This legal and political system was at least in later
times enshrined in a regularly published Law Code - effectively the
earliest 'bills of rights' - which formed the prototype for later
Greek and Roman systems. That they also developed some understanding
of economics is attested by evidence of price-setting agreements.

Metalwork and Smelting:
The Sumerians used many metals in the construction of buildings,
household objects and jewellery; these included gold, silver, tin,
lead, copper and bronze. They were also familiar with a wide variety
of techniques for working with metals, such as annealing, granulation,
riveting and filigree.

Schools and Education:
Centres of scholarship or edubbas were set up in most city-states at
the latest by the middle of the 3^rd millennium BC. Primarily these
provided education for the offspring of the better-off, and their main
aim was to train the pupils to become specialist scribes. Given the
complexities of the Sumerian language which by then existed,
graduating from the edubba was no mean feat. Learning how to write the
language, made harder because it was not alphabetic or phonetic, was a
multi-stage process: students started with vocabulary, for example
learning and copying 'scientific' lists of botanical, zoological and
mathematical words, each of which could extend into the hundreds or
even thousands; they then progressed to mastering the complexities of
Sumerian written grammar. But the edubba was at the same time a
'centre of learning' where, as now, lecturers and senior scholars also
engaged in original research to add to the extant body of knowledge in
many areas. Furthermore, even in the literary areas, writing was not
only directed towards learning, copying and preserving, but also
occasionally towards the creation of new epics.

Astronomy and Mathematics:
The Sumerians developed a highly-advanced quasi-sexagesimal system of
mathematics, and a highly accurate lunar calendar with adjustments to
reconcile it to the solar calendar. As to their broader astronomical
knowledge, orthodox opinion holds that they knew of only about 25
stars which were presented in simple lists, and that their knowledge
of the other planets in our solar system was limited or non-existent.
However this view has of course been challenged by the new breed of
alternative historians.

Medicine:
The majority of the hundreds of medical tablets currently excavated
date only to the early part of the 1^st millennium BC, and are written
in Akkadian.^8 Nevertheless these utilise many Sumerian words and
phrases which indicate their heritage, and a few similar tablets have
been found which date as far back as the start of the 2^nd millennium
BC. It has been suggested that these ancient pharmacopoeias, which
describe a variety of illnesses and cures, would probably be
remarkably similar to one compiled only a couple of hundred years ago.
But although the texts describe fundamentally practical procedures,
these tend to be couched in a moral framework which views disease as a
punishment for wrongdoing; as a result we regularly come across
'supernatural' elements in Sumerian medical thinking, including for
example exorcism. It would also appear that their medical knowledge
did not develop a great deal over several millennia. However this
should not detract from the evidence that they researched a great many
herbal remedies, many of which apparently worked, and indeed they were
perhaps more aware than many modern practitioners of the 'healthy
mind, healthy body' approach, and the possibility of psychosomatic
illness.

Science in General:
Both the Sumerians and their successors in Mesopotamia were highly
curious and lovers of knowledge, often just for its own sake. They
were particularly methodical, and therefore arguably made good
scientists. To say as some have that Mesopotamian science was a
'science of lists' is to do it a grave disservice; although textbooks
did not exist (or if they did they have not yet been found), evidence
suggests a strong reliance on lectures for teaching and explanation.

Brewing:
Since beer is a subject close to my heart, I cannot help but record
that brewing was an issue of such importance to the Sumerians that it
had its own patron goddess - Ninkasi, 'The Lady who Fills the Mouth'.
Indeed one medical remedy insists that 'if a man has a stone of the
bladder this man will drink beer, and the stone will dissolve; if this
man instead of drinking beer drinks much water, he will go to his
destiny.' Even if they were wrong, at least he would die happy...

But what of the character of the Sumerians, which can become neglected
when one is engrossed in archaeological and linguistic details?
Kramer's view is that the Sumerians loved life and wanted to extend it
as much as possible, at least in part because they believed death led
them to the rather uninviting and dreary netherworld.^9 He suggests
that in adopting this approach they appear to have had little concept
of a utopian heaven, or an abominable hell for that matter, nor indeed
of reincarnation. My own view is that this needs more thought, and
that they may have been more spiritually advanced than Kramer allows,
albeit that they do not appear to have developed anything like the
esoteric wisdom of the Ancient Egyptian and Vedic civilisations.

Nevertheless one does form an impression that they were fundamentally
materialistic, competing aggressively for pre-eminence, social
standing and prestige. Combined with the fact that as citizens they
identified with their city-state more than with Sumer itself, this
trait lead the city-states into perpetual wars with each other in the
struggle for ascendancy - to such an extent that dominant rulers
always struggled to keep Sumer united. Indeed their civilisation was
ultimately brought down by being weakened from within in this way,
rendering them vulnerable to attack from external invaders. Vanity and
lack of humility were also highly evident in their make-up, especially
in the self-laudatory royal hymns of the ensis. And yet they seemed at
the same time to have had a great sense of morality, prizing truth,
compassion, law and order, justice and freedom, wisdom and learning,
and courage and loyalty. Enigmatic people indeed!

Excavation, Discovery and Decipherment

The Mesopotamian city-states were repeatedly abandoned and reoccupied
in ancient times. Either water levels rose, or over time the rivers
changed their course, (for example, in places the course of the
Euphrates is now as much as 50 kilometres to the west of its position
c. 2000 BC^10), either of which could render their continued
occupation untenable. And of course the in-house rivalry for supremacy
between them, let alone invasions by foreign usurpers, meant that they
were often attacked and destroyed. When sites were later reoccupied,
the old ruins were simply levelled and used as foundations. Hence the
'levels' referred to by archaeologists.

When they were finally abandoned the mainly mud-brick buildings
collapsed, leaving piles of rubble which rapidly became covered with
sand or vegetation. Despite their often impressive size, the resulting
mounds or tells rising out of the by now primarily arid desert
attracted little attention over the intervening millennia - until a
few travellers in the 17^th century began retrieving the odd brick,
and isolated fragments of tablets bearing 'unknown inscriptions'.
Western interest in the area grew, and in 1842 the French consul in
Mosul, Paul Emil Botta, undertook the first proper excavation at
Kuyunjik in northern Mesopotamia. When initially nothing was found he
switched his attentions to nearby Khorsabad, and was duly rewarded
when he discovered the ruined palace of the Assyrian King Sargon II,
dating to the latter part of the 8^th century BC.

Then in 1845 Englishman Sir Austen Henry Layard began digging at both
Nimrud and Kuyunjik. This time he struck archaeological gold, because
the latter site turned out to be the infamous biblical city of
Nineveh; and there he uncovered the ruins of the Royal Library of King
Ashurbanipal, the great-grandson of Sargon II, which contained
literally thousands of tablet-fragments which would subsequently prove
to be collations of the vast body of literary and administrative texts
of the Ancient World, written in the wedge-shaped or cuneiform script
of the period. In fact Layard and his colleagues Hormuzd Rassam and
George Smith continued their work at this site for the next 25 years,
unearthing a total of between 25 and 30,000 fragments which it is
estimated represent as many as 10,000 complete tablets.^11 A similarly
valuable source of tablets were the libraries at Ashur, unearthed by a
German archaeological team between 1902 and 1914.

However we are jumping ahead of ourselves. At the time of Layard's
initial discovery the unusual script on the tablets was still
undeciphered. In fact to trace how the script was decoded we need to
go back to the trilingual inscriptions found on the ruins of a
magnificent palace at Persepolis in Iran. From the writings of various
travellers it is clear that these were known to the western world as
far back as the beginning of the 16^th century. However it wasn't
until the end of the 18^th century that scholars established that the
first language or 'Class' was Old Persian, and alphabetic. But
translation of the other two proved impossible because the
inscriptions were too short and consisted of mostly proper names.

Then in the 1830's, a British Army officer who was to become arguably
the most historically influential figure in the understanding of
cuneiform script, culminating in his heading up the Department of
Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum, entered the fray. Sir
Henry Creswicke Rawlinson started work on some similar trilingual
inscriptions carved into the rock outcrops at Behistun, which were far
lengthier and therefore allowed greater scope for understanding the
languages involved. Often risking his own neck because the
inscriptions were several hundred feet off the ground, Rawlinson
meticulously copied them down over a number of years. By 1850, and
with the help of other scholars - in particular Irishman Edward Hincks
and Frenchman Jules Oppert, the three becoming known as cuneiform's
'holy triad' - the decipherment of both the first and second Class
(which proved to be Elamite) was more or less complete.

These three then turned their attention to the third Class, and
realised that the huge number of symbols and variants thereof were
caused by the fact that the language and its symbols were both
syllabic and ideographic - the latter meaning that whole words could
be written with one symbol. They also realised it was polyphonic, in
that the same sign could have more than one sound or value. Finally
they were assisted by the discovery of syllabaries at Nineveh which
the ancient scribes had prepared to assist understanding of the
language. And by 1859 Oppert was able to publish a study of the
language, now known as Akkadian, which was so authoritative that the
foundations of its understanding were complete. This launched a tidal
wave of scholarly effort directed towards the increasing numbers of
Akkadian tablets being found at Nineveh and elsewhere, the translation
of which from a linguistic point of view is now reasonably assured.

However at about this time Hincks was already turning his attention to
another mystery. The Assyro-Babylonians who inhabited Mesopotamia for
the bulk of the 1^st and 2^nd millennia BC were a Semitic race, this
term deriving from the name of Noah's son Shem from whom all Semites
are thought to be descended; and yet the syllabic values of the
Akkadian script could not be linked with Semitic counterparts. He
began to suspect that the script must have derived from one developed
by previous non-Semitic inhabitants of Mesopotamia. Then in 1869
Oppert delivered a lecture in which he noted that inscriptions
contained the phrase King of Sumer and Akkad - and thus the Sumerians
were formally rediscovered.

Any lingering doubts about the existence of this non-Semitic race were
soon dispelled by the recommencement of excavations, this time in
southern Mesopotamia. In 1877 the French began excavations at Telloh
(now recognised as the Sumerian city of Lagash), which were continued
by successive French teams right through to 1933. In 1887 an American
team began work at Nippur, where over the next decade one of the
largest sources of mainly Sumerian texts was unearthed; in all some
30,000 fragments were removed from its sacerdotal library. A German
team, working at Uruk (the biblical Erech) for nearly 50 years from
the turn of the century, discovered 1000 tablets dating as far back as
the start of the 3^rd millennium BC; as yet these remain the oldest
tablets found, and they contain the earliest forms of Sumerian
'pictographic' script. The Germans also dug a proper test pit some 20
metres deep which assisted the understanding of chronological
development at this site from the earliest times. Another German team
worked at Shuruppak from 1902-3; a French team at Kish from 1912-14;
an Anglo-American team again at Kish from 1923-33, under Stephen
Langdon; and a British team at Ur (the biblical home of the patriarch
Abraham) from 1922-34, under Sir Leonard Woolley.

Having taken some time to build up from humble beginnings, the Iraqi
Directorate of Antiquities was by the time of the second world war a
well-established outfit quite capable of organising its own
excavations. One of its earliest and most notable achievements was the
re-discovery of Eridu, the oldest known Sumerian city, in 1946; here
they excavated the patron god Enki's temple down to its earliest
incarnation c. 4000 BC - although unfortunately no tablets came to
light. And although in the 1950's an American team under Harvard
professor Thorkild Jacobsen was allowed back to Nippur, where they
uncovered two temples dedicated to the patron deities Enlil and
Inanna, and 1000 more mainly literary tablet-fragments, since the war
years the responsibility for continued excavation in Mesopotamia has
rested primarily, although not exclusively, with the Iraqis
themselves.

But let us return to the issue of the Sumerian language. Once tablets
had been found, for example at Nippur and Uruk, which contained
non-Akkadian cuneiform script, the decipherers faced a new challenge.
But in some senses they faced an easier task than before. The
Akkadians and later Assyrians not only borrowed the Sumerian script,
they also treasured its literary inheritance. Not only did this mean
that in their edubbas they copied hundreds of Sumerian texts into
their own language and script to preserve them - albeit with some
political and religious editing over the centuries which we will
consider in a subsequent paper - but they also prepared detailed
Sumerian-Akkadian dictionaries and lexicons which considerably
assisted the Sumerologists in the translation of words and
understanding of grammar. Many of these had already been found at
Nineveh. Furthermore, the excavations at Nippur yielded numerous
lexicons concerned with Sumerian vocabulary and grammar in its own
right. This allowed scholars such as Francois Thureau-Dangin, Arno
Poebel, A.H. Sayce, R.E. Brunow, and J.D. Prince to complete
rudimentary modern Sumerian lexicons at the beginning of this century.
However the language is complex, and our understanding of it still
leaves much to be desired - again a topic to which we will return in a
subsequent paper.

As a result of the profusion of archaeological activity over the last
150 years, hundreds of thousands of fragments of tablets have now been
unearthed; indeed some put the estimate as high as half a million. The
fact that so many apparently fragile tablets have survived at all,
albeit fragmented, is in part due to the unfortunate fate that befell
many of the sites in which they were preserved. When the city-states
were attacked by enemies they were usually set on fire, which meant
that although buildings were destroyed, the clay tablets were fired
and better preserved for our archaeologists to find. This wealth of
written information is backed up by hundreds of pictorial
representations of early events engraved on temple walls, stone
stelae, and decorative friezes. Although no doubt some are housed in
inaccessible private collections, the majority of the tablets and
carvings can be viewed in university and museum collections all around
the world - for example in the British Museum, the Louvre Museum in
Paris, the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul, the Iraq Museum in
Baghdad, the Vorderasiatische Museum in Berlin, the Friedrich-Schiller
University of Jena in East Germany, and the Philadelphia University
Museum.

Many of the texts which the tablets represent are still incomplete in
varying degrees, and many more fragments undoubtedly remain as yet
undiscovered. But we already have a vast inheritance, and it is of
course not only due to the efforts of the linguists who originally
deciphered the Akkadian and Sumerian scripts that we are able to read
them now. Arguably even greater scholarly effort has had to be
expended in piecing together the fragments. This job is far more
difficult than completing a conventional jigsaw. Remember that the
pieces were often found at different times by different expeditions,
and sometimes taken to be housed in different collections in different
countries. Imagine that you have a jigsaw where you don't know the
complete size and shape, where the pieces can be mutilated at the
edges, and where the picture is very uniform (that is, all writing).

The only saving grace was that multiple copies of especially literary
texts were often found, many of which were, for example, exercise
tablets from edubbas that were preserved for us by being dumped and
used as in-fill for building foundations. Although this in turn
presented problems in that the scholars had to attempt to identify any
errors made by poor or inexperienced students, it did mean that where
one copy was incomplete, another might fill in the gaps if it
overlapped enough to be recognisable as the same text. One other
factor which assisted the identification process was that colophons
were often inscribed at the end of each tablet to identify them: these
recorded the title of the text (which was not a separate title but
based on the opening line); the number of the tablet within the series
(equivalent to a page or chapter number); and an 'identifying phrase'
which was usually made up of several lines of the text which would be
repeated at the beginning of the next tablet.

In any case, the decades of painstaking work undertaken on Akkadian
and Sumerian tablets by scholars such as George Smith, L.W. King,
Stephen Langdon, E.A. Speiser, Alexander Heidel, Samuel Noah Kramer,
W. Lambert, A. Millard, Adam Falkenstein, Thorkild Jacobsen and
Stephanie Dalley, among others, has ensured that the multiple pieces
of the various jigsaws have been progressively slotted into place. And
among the wealth of information revealed has been concrete proof that
some of the biblical versions of early events in mankind's history are
edited highlights of far earlier versions which contain considerably
greater detail. Most obvious of these is the story of the Deluge, and
we will examine all of the main texts in subsequent papers.

Reconstructing History

There are two main paths to follow in reconstructing early
Mesopotamian history. The first is the conventional archaeological one
of digging down into successive layers of remains at key sites. Anyone
who has watched the popular television programme 'Time Team' on
Channel 4 in the UK will by now have become familiar with this
approach, which involves digging test trenches and sinking test pits.
Once a trench or pit has been dug in the correct place, now often
revealed by geophysical surveys, the various artifacts discovered at
each level are dated by reference to finds at other sites. However
when archaeologists commenced their investigations of Ancient
Mesopotamia they did not have this cross-referencing capability, since
the whole area was a 'green-field' site. So to what could they turn
for assistance with date verification?

Radiocarbon dating of animate remains is often used under these
circumstances, but it tends to be more useful for older remains where
accuracy to, say, the nearest couple of hundred years is acceptable.
However in the case of Ancient Mesopotamia scholars have been looking
for better results than this, and they have had a second path to
follow which is not always available elsewhere, especially when going
back to the 3^rd and 4^th millennia BC: and that is the written
evidence. We have already seen that the considerable written heritage
of Mesopotamia contains not only literary texts (on which we will
concentrate in subsequent papers but which are of lesser importance
here), but also administrative and historiographic texts which have
provided scholars with an invaluable source of information with which
to construct a chronological framework. The following are the major
types of non-literary document which have been bequeathed to us, as
listed by Kramer:^12

Votive Inscriptions:
From at least as far back as c. 2750 BC the ensis of the various
city-states had personal memorials inscribed just about everywhere: on
stone and clay tablets, building bricks and stones, stelae and
plaques, statues and statuettes, and bowls and vases. Echoing the
self-laudatory tone of their hymns, these inscriptions listed the
ensi's major accomplishments in terms of subjugating other races and
cities, and of building, rebuilding and refurbishing temples and
palaces. Not only did they often include useful descriptions of
religious offerings and ceremonies, but they also indicated which gods
were being worshipped in a given place at a given time. Prime examples
of these include the Sargon Inscriptions, a contemporary record of all
the inscriptions on statues and stelae in the reign of the first king
of the Akkad Dynasty c. 2300 BC, prepared meticulously by a scribe and
found on tablets at Nippur; and the Gudea Temple Inscriptions,
consisting of two long tablets of 54 columns, found at the city of
Lagash over which Gudea ruled c. 2100 BC. These inscriptions often
included 'date-formulas', used from c. 2500 BC by the Sumerian
scribes, which commemorated significant religious and political events
not via an absolute year reference but by the number of years into an
ensi's reign in which they occurred.

Royal Lists:
By contrast these contained lists dealing with more than one ruler.
Examples include the Tummal Inscription, which catalogued the rulers
in charge of the building and rebuilding of the patron god Enlil's
temple complex at Nippur; and the Lagash Inscriptions, which listed
the various rulers of Lagash starting with Ur-Nanshe c. 2500 BC. This
is just as well, because indubitably the most important royal list of
all, the Sumerian King List, records the rulers of all the
Sumero-Akkadian dynasties except those of Lagash and Larsa - perhaps
because these dynasties were not regarded as ruling the whole of
Sumer-Akkad. This latter list, compiled from about 15 different but
fragmented copies found mainly at Larsa and Nippur, has played a
pivotal role in the development of the chronology of Ancient
Mesopotamia - albeit that the task was complicated by the fact that
the dynasties it records sometimes overlapped considerably.

Law Codes:
We have already mentioned these briefly, but the major texts of this
type are as follows: The Urukagina Reform Text, prepared at the
instigation of the ensi of Lagash c. 2350 BC, describes how the common
people were freed of the burden of unnecessary taxes, and records laws
for the punishment of various crimes. This was followed by the similar
Law Code of Ur-Nammu, the founder of the 3^rd Dynasty of Ur c. 2100
BC; the Law Code of Lipit-Ishtar, a ruler of the Isin Dynasty c. 1900
BC; and the Law Code of Hammurabi, the great conqueror who established
the Assyro-Babylonian empire in the early 18^th century BC. The latter
three all follow a similar format, with a prologue, the laws
themselves - which lay out basic rules regarding such issues as
property, slaves, marriage and inheritance - and an epilogue.

Royal Letters:
The earliest of these date to c. 2400 BC. Particularly useful is the
correspondence of the last ruler of the 3^rd Dynasty of Ur, Ibbi-Sin,
revealing how his one-time courtier turned rival Ishbi-Erra built up
the Dynasty of Isin until Ibbi-Sin was forced to capitulate at the
beginning of the 2^nd millennium BC.

Court Decisions:
Also known as ditillas, these contained judgements regarding divorce,
land, livestock and other disputes.

Admittedly some of these records were of an administrative nature, and
assisted the understanding of cultural more than of chronological
history; and even the historiographic records were insufficient on
their own. However, when enough of them had come together it proved
possible to attempt to work backwards from independently verified
history. The chronology from 911 BC onwards is more or less exact in
that it was possible to corroborate astronomical records of eclipses
on Assyrian tablets with those recorded by the Greek Ptolemy. Although
when working backwards from here some of the pieces of written
evidence seem to contradict each other, and it is not always clear
whether events are consecutive or overlapping, the current orthodox
view appears to be that dates going back to c. 3000 BC can vary from
source to source, but not materially for the purposes of most
research.

In order that the various references to periods and rulers in
subsequent papers may be placed in context, the results of this
reconstruction are summarised in the following table. The dates are
taken from the chronological tables prepared by Georges Roux, a former
medical officer with the Iraq Petroleum Company turned Assyriologist,
in his excellent reference work Ancient Iraq.^13 Although his book was
originally published in 1964, this information is taken from the
updated third edition published in 1992.

Period or Era

Approx. Date BC

Description and Key Events

Prehistoric

Pre-3000

Earliest occupation at Eridu c. 5000 BC

Early Dynastic (Sumerian)

3000-2300

Sumerian dominance, primarily under dynasties of Kish I-II-III-IV,
Uruk I-II-III and Ur I-II

Heroes of epics rule in early dynasties; e.g., Etana and Aka during
Kish I; Enmerkar, Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh during Uruk I

Alternation of power caused by warring between city-states, whose
inhabitants felt more allegiance to their city than to Sumer as a
whole; various rulers attempt to keep it keep it united, but Sumer's
power gradually weakened by these internal disputes, leaving it open
to attack by external invaders

Dynasty of Akkad (plus Gutium and Ur III)

2300-2000

Akkadians from north conquer Sumer under Sargon the Great c. 2334 BC

Gutians from further north conquer Sumer-Akkad c. 2150 BC

Ur III briefly comes to prominence c. 2112 BC until fall of Ur c. 2004
BC signals end of Sumer's predominance as political force in
Mesopotamia

Isin-Larsa

2000-1750

Dynasty of Isin commences under Ishbi-Erra

Old Assyro-Babylonian

1750-1600

Hammurabi conquers whole of Assyria and Mesopotamia and rules from
Babylon, signalling final collapse of weakened Sumerian civilisation
as an independent political force

Assyro-Babylonian Empire forms a Semitic state built on a Sumerian
foundation

Kassite-Hittite

1600-1150

Babylon conquered by Hittites c. 1595 BC

Middle Assyro-Babylonian

1150-750

Babylon continues its pre-eminence

Late (Neo-) Assyro-Babylonian

750-500

Sargon II and Sennacherib transfer power to Nineveh c. 700 BC; set up
Royal Library which contains copies of many Sumerian texts

Ashurbanipal adds to library at Nineveh c. 650 BC

Sumerian cultural influence still in evidence; like Latin now,
Sumerian language still used in some scholarly and liturgical
documents even though it had not been spoken for over a millennia

Source References

1. For example, see Georg Feuerestein, Subhash Kak and David Frawley,
In Search of the Cradle of Civilisation (Quest, 1995).

2. For example, see Andrew Collins, Gods of Eden (Headline, 1998),
Chapter 15, pp. 212-230.

3. Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians (University of Chicago Press,
1963), Chapter 2, pp. 39-40.

4. The information that follows comes primarily from ibid., Chapter 3.

5. Ibid., Chapter 8, p. 276. Kramer argues that Magan and Meluhha,
which are frequently mentioned in texts from earliest times as places
with whom Sumer had important trade connections, correspond to Egypt
and Ethiopia. Previously scholars had attempted to get round the
problem that this implied an advanced seafaring capability by claiming
that, originally, these names referred to lands on the much nearer
east and south-east Arabian coasts, and that their usage was
subsequently translocated. Kramer finds this unlikely, as do I. It is
interesting to note that Sumerologist Thorkild Jacobsen goes as far as
to say that "modern scholars tend to think that in earlier times it
(Meluhha) denoted India", which would make the seafaring capability
all the more impressive (Jacobsen, The Harps that Once..., Yale
University Press, 1987, p. 363, Note 7).

6. Ibid., Appendix I, pp. 340-2.

7. Of the form "Name of owner's patron god, or ruler; owner's name;
owner's father's name; owner's title".

8. A brief introduction as to the various terminology used is
appropriate at this point for those unfamiliar with Mesopotamian
history. The Sumerians were pre-eminent, especially in Southern
Mesopotamia, in the 4^th and most of the 3^rd millennia BC. However
for much of that time they co-existed with the Akkadians, so-called
after their capital city of Agade or Akkad, who lived to the north.
They in turn came to dominate the area for the latter part of the 3^rd
millennium BC, but their reign was short-lived, lasting only a few
hundred years before they were usurped by the Assyrians, also known as
the Babylonians after their capital city of Babylon. Hence the
compound terms often used: 'Sumero-Akkadian' and 'Assyro-Babylonian'.
However, to further complicate matters, it was the Akkadian language
which was still used for writing in the Assyro-Babylonian era; indeed
on occasion the Sumerian language was still used in some formal
writing at this late stage as well - or at least certain Sumerian
words were still used. This parallels the way in which Latin continued
as a dominant written language long after the collapse of the Roman
Empire, with certain words still used by us today. Both the Akkadian
and Sumerian languages were written using the distinctive wedge-shaped
script which is known as 'cuneiform'. Note also that scholars of
Ancient Mesopotamian history are often referred to as 'Assyriologists'
because Assyrian artefacts and texts were those first discovered
during excavations, even though the term is now used to cover the
study of earlier civilisations.

9. As expressed in Kramer, op. cit., Chapter 7.

10. See Map 2 in Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq (Penguin, 1992).

11. The distinction between the numbers of tablets and fragments is in
my view worth making, if only because many sloppily written books fail
to - leaving one with the initial impression that far more complete
tablets have been found than is in fact the case.

12. Kramer, op. cit., Chapter 2.

13. Roux, op. cit., "Chronological Tables".