some Proto-Indo-European speaking people who moved from their Eurasian homeland into the Balkans, Anatolia, Iran and India. As elsewhere around 2400 B.C.E., the first signs of a warming and drying climatic phase were accompanied by the decline, the destruction and the abandonment of some large highland towns.
5.4
In addition to the aboriginal fishermen dwelling in the swamps and related with the Halafian culture further north, the basic population were the farmers and horticulturists from the foothills of the Fertile Crescent probably speaking Sumerian. During the cold periods, people arrived from the northern high- lands, bringing metallurgy skills, as well as relations with the people of the metalliferous provinces. The arid periods, on the other hand, saw the immi- gration of pastoralists speaking Semitic Proto-Akkadian from the east and west, with their proficiency in dairy and wool production.
Initially, because the population growth was limited and the people could remain near the rivers, the dry phases towards the end of the fourth mil- lennium did not have a ruinous impact on the agriculture surrounding the urban centers. Crises developed with the most extreme climate changes: One occurring around 3600 B.C.E. which may have led to the end of the ‘Ubaid period, and the other around 3200 B.C.E. which marked the end of the Chal- colithic period in Syria-Palestine and the Uruk period in Mesopotamia. As the Euphrates and Tigris draw their water from the mountainous regions where precipitation rates are generally rather high, their flow was probably reduced but was sufficient to maintain the local population. The dry phases posed the greatest threat to the economy and safety of the people on the periphery for whom reduced precipitation meant little or no pastures and thus famine on the parched plains bordering the green irrigated lands.
The paleo-climatic scenario based on the available proxy-data from the first half of the 3rd millennium B.C.E. is of auspicious precipitation and conforms well to the socio-economic scenario. The ample water supply in the rivers of the plain enabled the inhabitants to expand the irrigated areas into the desert.
The low sea level, which resulted from a cold climate on a global scale during this period, enabled better drainage conditions in the most southern areas and an equally important precondition for a successful agriculture. Temperatures were moderate enough even during the winter to grow sub-tropical crops such as palm dates. In addition, the surrounding deserts became hospitable, so that the pastoral people prospered from their own resources, without the need of exaction from their farming neighbors. Thus, both communities could benefit from the exchange of food and goods, which brought prosperity to the people of Sumer. The wealth accrued by the ruling class was invested in temples, enlarging their cities, and surrounding them with walls.
Cities have been growing in a process of centrifugal consolidation of a ruling class headed by a king and supported by a priesthood that owned lands and extracted a mounting income from the peasantry. As suggested earlier, this might have begun with the steady infiltration of a pastoral warring society that quickly gained sovereignty over the farming society. This process may have begun during the Uruk period in the second half of the fourth millennium and gained momentum during the Jemdet-Nasr Period at the end of the fourth and beginning of the third millennium. After a reversal of climatic conditions ca.
2700 B.C.E. (Fig. 3a), the end of Early Dynastic I, it reached ‘take off velocity’
during the Early Dynastic II, during the mid-part of the third millennium.
Not only the population in the urban centers increased but also the number and size of villages in their periphery. Needless to say, that various theories
and models were advanced to explain this remarkable urbanization process20 none taking the factor of an optimal climate regime into consideration which provides the only logical explanation for the “surplus of products” component and allowed the concentration of resources in the hand of the ruling class. As the rural population lost its independence and became subjects of the temples, the production system may have initially become more efficient once the ruling class had at its disposal the tools for administration – particularly writing, which was developed specifically for this purpose. The prosperity enabled a great part of the urban population to be employed in administration, in the temples and in the production of non-elementary products.
Local and foreign artisans and traders engaged in exchange of some utilitar- ian but mostly ostentatious luxury goods with neighboring cities and distant countries. In due time an army was needed to protect the city and even to try to enlarge its estate and sources of water. A class of managers, scribes and priests in charge of the temple warehouses was established, kept the records and, along with the gods and kings, enjoyed the fruits of the peasants’ labor.
They had leisure time to create literature and, eventually, to write down their hymns, myths, laws and the achievements of their royal patrons. Growing es- tates required more managers and written orders for subordinates, resulting in a mass of documents, archives and written directories. In many aspects, the invention of writing did for the Sumerian society what the invention of the computer and its binary script did to the international industrial and banking agglomerates toward the end of the twentieth century.
Each city had its own god, king, and army. The latter were needed to protect the inhabitants of one city-state from the others when disputes about borders, land parcels and canals could not be solved peacefully. There is quite explicit written and monumental evidence of these wars, despite the optimal econom- ical conditions, indicated by the growth burst of cities, temples, irrigation networks and trade which fuelled the ambitions of local dynasties.
This historical fact contradicts the simple deterministic materialistic para- digm, which says that wars are a result of stress and the fight of survival in order to secure limited resources. In the case of Sumer this contradiction is sharpened by the fact that during this period Sumer became a kind of league of city-states, sharing the same language, pantheon, and belief in belonging to such a league, which they calledKengirwhich became Shumer or Sumer in later pronunciations.21 In many ways this resembles the situation in archaic and classical Greece and Italy during the first half of the first millennium B.C.E. before Rome overpowered the various ethnic groups. Thus, although the written and monumental documents are in Sumerian, and give the impression of cultural unity, the ethnic substrata did not blend entirely. Each ethnic group
20R.McC. Adams,Heartland of Cities: Surveys of Ancient Settlement and land Use on the Central Floodplain of the Euphrates, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. pp. 88–89 (1981).
The reader may find an elaborate discussion of the processes of urbanization in Chaps. 5–8 of C.K.
Maisels,The Near East, Routledge, London (1993).
21The earliest “lean” logogrammic inscriptions can actually be read in any language, in some ways similar to ancient Chinese. Only after grammatical endings had been added to the logogram one can be sure of the language involved.
maintained a certain part of the country where it continued to worship its ancestral gods. These sometimes were given a new title and were married to or proclaimed a descendant of one the conqueror’s gods, but they remained the chief god of the city-state where the pre-invasion population predominated.
Thus, ethnic-cultural differences as well as local patriotism may explain some of the tension and the wars between the city-states.
This situation could explain, for example, the story about the war between Agga, the king of Kish, and Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk. According to the Sumerian King List the city of Kish received “kingship” from heaven after the Flood. As we have seen, the proxy data show that after the two periods of extreme rains, either ca. 3100 or 2900 B.C.E., one or both of which could have been the period of the Flood or Floods, came periods of extreme drought, most probably causing the encroachment of the pastoral Semitic people into Mesopotamia. They settled in the region north of Sumer, calling it Akkad, and later, Babylon. Indeed, the Sumerian King List tells us that the First Dynasty of Kish on the border of Akkad includes among its kings some with Semitic names. This was not the case in Uruk/Erech, in spite the assumption that Semites largely inhabited this city. Although the principal goddess of both cities was Inanna, probably inherited from the ‘Ubaidians, Uruk was also the city of An, the sky god, and later Enlil. An, most probably, was the chief god of the first Sumerians.
The story of the war between these cities is found on a tablet containing some hundred fifteen lines. It does not involve mythological figures or deified personalities, but is, rather, a historical document that has not been allegorized and adorned with mythological characters. It starts with the story of the envoys of Agga, the son of Enmebaraggesi, both kings of Kish, who arrived at Uruk/Erech and continues with Gilgamesh’s words to the elders of Erech:
“To complete the wells, to complete all the wells of the land, to complete the wells, the small bowls of the land, to dig the wells, to complete the fastening ropes. Let us not submit to the house of Kish, let us smite it with weapons.”22
Although these lines are obscure to most, to a hydrogeologist they are quite clear: Gilgamesh urges the elders of Sumer to prepare for siege, which will involve the cutting off the water supply to the city by damming and diverting its canals. He suggests digging wells and getting groundwater using ropes either to climb down the wells or to bring up the water in buckets. The elders are not enthusiastic about the plan and repeat Gilgamesh’s words:
“To complete the wells, to complete all the wells of the land, to complete the wells, the small bowls of the land, to dig the wells, to complete the fastening ropes?” and conclude with, “Let us submit to the house of Kish, let us not smite it with weapons.”23
22S.N. Kramer,The Sumerians, p. 187.
23Ibid.
Although there is no question mark in cuneiform writing, the elders’ repetition most probably indicates a question, as though asking Gilgamesh, “Are you in your right mind to think that such a non-conventional water supply will be of any help?” Old and experienced, they preferred to submit rather than to rely on innovation. Gilgamesh then approaches the “men” of the city, and they vote for war, aware that a long siege is inevitable, as their army is no match for that of Kish. They remind Gilgamesh that Uruk is protected not only by Inanna residing in her “house of Heaven”, the temple of Eanna, but also by the great sky god An, who built its walls. The war, after some exploits by the hero, has a “happy ending”. According to the story, Agga raises the siege from Uruk and departs with his army for Kish after being awestruck by the sight of Gilgamesh. Objective historical reporting is not a strong point of these ancient stories, leaving the question as to whether king Agga’s decision to depart, with all due honor to Gilgamesh’s prowess, was not helped by a payment from the treasures of Uruk’s temples.
Another possibility is that some citizens of Uruk, who were captured by Agga and tortured, were envoys sent to the kings of the neighboring Sumerian cities, such as Ur, to ask for help. Indeed, another tablet tells that the king of Ur replaced the king of Kish in the hegemony over Sumer. One can learn it from the history of Tummal, a district in Nippur, which had a temple to Enlil and a shrine consecrated to the Goddess Ninlil, his wife.24 This complex of shrines, first constructed by Agga, fell into ruin and was rebuilt by a king of Ur named Mesannepada, who established the First Dynasty of Ur. Mesannepada later triumphed over Agga, putting an end to the Dynasty of Kish, and signed with the royal seal of Mesannepada, the King of Kish. The control of Enlil’s and Ninlil’s cult center at Nippur seems to have become a symbol for the control over Sumer. After falling into ruin again, it was reconstructed by Gilgamesh king of Uruk/Erech, only to be destroyed again and reconstructed a total of five times – the last by kings who are not mentioned in the canonical list of kings of Sumer.
Thus, after Kish, Ur became the dominant Sumerian city, followed by Uruk, with Gilgamesh its king. The great epic about this king, originally composed in Sumerian and expanded and translated into Akkadian, represents one of the earliest works of world literature. It probes basic philosophical questions of courage, friendship and the quest for eternal life, and, incidentally, contains the story of the Flood.
The positive influence of the colder and more humid climate on the economy of Mesopotamia had also a darker side: catastrophic floods. I In such years they may easily have destroyed one or more cities, bringing havoc on the rural population and their fields and palm date orchards – disasters to be remembered for millennia as the “Flood” or the “Deluge” mentioned in the Gilgamesh story, the Bible and other ancient folklores. In such times, the deep cyclonic troughs of the westerlies climate system arriving from the Atlantic
24Ninlil was affianced to Enlil by raping her, which convinced her to marry him despite the punishment afflicted on him by the other gods. She thus became the “mother goddess”, a trick to “Sumerize”
the Ubeidian mother goddess Inanna?
over Europe and the Mediterranean would be extremely beneficial for the desert areas of the Near East to the west and southwest of Mesopotamia, as well as the Iranian plateau.
Flood sediments devoid of artifacts were found in some layers of the exca- vated ancient tells of Sumer. These sterile layers were inter-bedded within layers containing potsherds and tools. One of the earliest findings was in the 1920s during an excavation of the ‘tell’ of the ancient city of Ur by Sir Leonard Wool- ley’s team. Between layers containing ‘Ubaidian artifacts of the mid-fourth millennium B.C.E., they discovered a layer of clay about 3–4 meters thick de- posited by a river flood. It was found in deposits that for many centuries had been dumped outside the walls of this ancient city. Such layers were also found at other sites of Mesopotamia, such as at Kish, Uruk, and Lagash, dating to the Early Dynasty period, i.e. 2700–2400 B.C.E. whereas at other sites, for instance at Eridu, none were found.
The existence of these layers can be interpreted from the point of view of paleo-hydrology as evidence of periods of extremely high floods. We suggest that the flood stories serve as a kind of “proxy-proxy-data” which is in confor- mity with the paleo-climatic proxy-data. It is conceivable that extreme flood peaks of the two rivers brought disaster on some of the ancient cities, becoming part of the Mesopotamian mythology, whence reaching the Hebrew Bible and part of Christian traditions.
It can be surmised that during the peaks of the cold periods, Arabia, inner Syria and Iran down to Baluchistan in the south were considerably less arid than today, and evidence is piling up over the last years. At the same time, even though the northwestern part of the Indian Peninsula had weaker mon- soon rainstorms in summer, it also enjoyed winter rains. This climate enabled a passable land bridge between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley as well as the Hindukush and Himalaya mountains rich in mineral and precious stones documented by the finds of proto-Elamite commercial documents all over the Iranian highlands. At a later stage, the climate enabled the development of the Indus civilization, which benefited from a milder monsoon climate and a tem- perate winter precipitation, perhaps the legendary Magan and Meluhha. Thus the prosperity of southern Mesopotamia is founded not only in the fertility of its soil and water resources, but also on the prosperity of the surrounding countries whose wealth was largely due to the optimal climatic conditions and were, therefore, able to engage in profitable commerce. To the west were the pastoral communities of the Syrian-Transjordanian Plateau and beyond them the incipient urban centers and ports of the Levant. To the south and south- west were the pastoral communities of the Arabian Peninsula and the urban communities around the Persian Gulf. Finally, to the east were rural pastoral and urban centers on the Iranian Plateau extending to Afghanistan, the source of lapis lazuli and soapstone for sacred vessels, and the Indus Valley. In the same time, the rain-fed region of northern Mesopotamia benefited from the optimal climate conditions and from its location at the periphery of the richly irrigated countries to the south.
Such, the neighboring rain-fed agricultural and pastoral provinces shared the prosperity that Lower Mesopotamia enjoyed during the good four to five
centuries of the early and mid-third millennium. Moving upriver and westward to the Levant, this socioeconomic prosperity peaked in northern Syria. Here the city-state of Ebla, situated between the Euphrates and the Orontes rivers, thrived between the 27th and 24th centuries B.C.E. and continued to prosper even into the following centuries. Documents from Ebla’s royal archives show that the city’s economy was based on the manufacture of wool and metals, whereas that of Lower Mesopotamia was based on agriculture. The raw mate- rials for the metal products were imported, probably from the metalliferous mountain provinces to the north and northeast, while the manufacture of wool was based on a local surplus of sheep’s wool. Gelb analyzed the environmental and economical differences between Lagash and Ebla. The great literate sheep- raising civilization blossoming at Ebla and other sites in the region during the middle of the third millennium B.C.E. led him to change his opinion that to flourish, civilizations of the Middle East had to be situated along a river. He suggests that higher forms of civilization were achieved in early historical times on the basis of leisure provided by the surplus of two kinds of commodities, a surplus of grain in the case of Lagash and Babylonia and a surplus of wool in the case of Ebla and northern Syria.25The present authors would like to add that one of the most important preconditions for agricultural surpluses in the Near East is abundant precipitation, and the precondition for this is a cold and humid climate, which characterized the period described by Gelb.
The pastoralists’ pride in their dairy products becomes evident in a poem describing the courting of Inanna by the shepherd Dumuzi.26 It begins with the sun-god Utu recommending Dumuzi to his sister Inanna. He assures her that the suitor is rich with precious stones, possesses date-wine and oil, and is a protector of the king, perhaps referring to the employment of some nomadic pastoral people as mercenaries. When Inanna refuses, and insists favoring the farmer Enkimdu, because his plants and grain grow abundantly, Dumuzi recites a list of the many wonderful products of his herds. Against the black and white garments of the farmer he will bring forth black and white ewes;
against the farmer’s date wine he will pour an assortment of milks; against the farmer’s bread and beans he will give honey-cheese and small cheeses, more than anyone can eat. This abundance seems to overwhelm the farmer. He begs Dumuzi not to start a quarrel and proposes a compromise in which Dumuzi’s sheep will be allowed to graze in the farmer’s meadowland and field and drink water from his canal. Surprisingly, the shepherd does not agree to a friendly
25C. Bermant and M. Weitzman,Ebla, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London (1979).
I.M. Diakonoff, “The importance of Ebla for History and Linguistics”Eblaitica2:3–31 (1990).
I.J. Gelb, “Ebla and Lagash: Environmental Contrast” in:The Origins of Cities in Dry Farming Syria and Mesopotamia in the Third Millennium B.C., ed. Weiss. 157–167.23. This scheme is still upheld in some recent publications, such as E. Porada, “The Chronology of Mesopotamia, ca. 7000–1600 B.C.”
inCOWA.
Other scholars might have slightly different chronology, such as W.W. Hallo and W.K. Simpson, The Ancient Near East, A History, Harcourt Brace (1998) on page 37, suggest ED I 2900–2700, ED II 2700–2500, ED III 2500–2300.
26For a translation see S.N. Kramer,The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character, Appendix E, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. pp. 328–331 (1963).