Ancient Mesopotamia – Universal History

In this region there are several cities that appeared about 6,000 years ago. The inhabitants of these settlements were skilled and intelligent people who made several vital discoveries. They are believed to have invented the wheel, the metal-bladed plow and, most important of all, the art of writing..
The lands surrounding the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were low plains where the soil was deep and fertile. Every year in spring the rivers flooded their banks depositing a rich layer of silt on the land. Despite this, however, the region (now part of Iraq) was too dry to be ideal agricultural terrain. In summer little or no rain fell and the land became dry and hard. Without water the crops could not grow. Mesopotamia could only be cultivated successfully when its inhabitants learned to control and regulate the rise of the life-giving waters.
Sometime around 5000 BC, the people of the land of Sumer in southern Mesopotamia learned how to do it. They built dams, canals, and pools to store water and bring it to their fields.. This allowed them to grow dates, vegetables, barley and wheat. The crop could be stored and consumed long after it was harvested, relieving people from the danger of starvation. So the ancient Sumerians prospered, their numbers increased, and their communities grew larger.
Thanks to irrigation, Mesopotamia became a land of plenty. People fished in the rivers, hunted wild birds in the marshes, and raised animals such as pigs, sheep, and goats.. As they irrigated and plowed their land, their crop production increased, eventually generating a surplus. This meant that some members of each community could abandon agricultural work and take up other occupations, becoming priests, administrators, artisans and merchants. This specialization is one of the first signs of civilization.

the beginnings of trade

Specialization also meant that artisans could produce goods that could be traded.. Mesopotamian potters transformed local clay into vessels for eating and drinking. They also produced weights for looms, tools, and beads for ornaments. Sumerian merchants began to travel widely, establishing trade ties with distant regions such as Anatolia, Syria, and India.. These merchants could trade Mesopotamian crops and goods for raw materials they lacked, such as wood, building stone, and metals.
As the canal network increased, the towns began to cooperate in its maintenance. Society became more complex. At the same time, warfare became more common, as villages were raided by neighboring settlements or tribes from outside the region.. More and more people were forced to live in large settlements for protection; the settlements began to be fortified with high walls. This is how, around 4500 BC, some of the world’s first cities arose. A new, urban era had been born, which took its name from one of the largest settlements in the region..

the city of uruk

The settlement in question is Uruk, which around 4500 BC was home to a thousand citizens. Around 3,000 BC it had already become a large city with a surface area of ​​100 hectares, which served as a home for thousands of people. The settlement was protected by 9 km of solid brick walls. The great temples built on the mound dominated the city. They were dedicated to Ani, the sky god, and Inanna, the goddess of love and war. The main characteristic of the temples were the powerful columns decorated with nail-based drawings -painted black, red and white- inserted into the plaster.. Archaeologists excavating at Uruk found priceless treasures, including a woman’s head carved from white marble, possibly representing Inanna, and a tall alabaster vase depicting religious scenes.
In times of war, the men of Uruk and other cities came together to form armies.. They chose chiefs, called lugals, to lead them in battle. Most likely, these warlords ended up becoming the first Sumerian kings, who soon ruled the cities. At the same time, each city came to dominate the region around it, forming a small kingdom.
In the cities, most houses were built of adobes, sun-dried mud bricks.. The king and important citizens such as priests and nobles may have lived in large dwellings; but the most impressive buildings were the temples, which were built on mounds of earth that raised them high above the settlement and the surrounding lands. Some of them were gigantic: the terrace of the Uruk temple took up a third of the city.
Some archaeologists believe that at first the temples were warehouses where the harvest was kept. As they also contained the sacred objects of the community, they ended up becoming the center of religious ceremonies and trade. Therefore, the priests were not slow to take responsibility for the proper government of the city. Every year, the farmers brought their crops to the temple and gave a part to the priests as an offering to the gods. The priests also controlled trade and even the canal network.

Great discoveries in Mesopotamia

Around 4000 BC the Uruk civilization entered a new phase, characterized by many brilliant discoveries. By then Sumerian metallurgists had learned to extract copper from their ore by heating it to high temperatures.

Metallurgy

About 3500 BC they were already making bronze, a more resistant metal, which was an alloy of copper and tin. Craftsmen made tools, ornaments, and weapons by pouring copper, bronze, and gold into molds.. Around the same time, farmers improved the plow, which until then had been drawn by people, by attaching it to oxen teams. Metal blades made plows even more efficient, allowing farmers to cultivate more land..

The wheel

Around 3500 BC, Uruk artisans invented the potter’s wheel, a wooden table that could be turned and facilitated the heavy task of shaping clay. Some 300 years after that discovery, the wheel was already used in wooden carts drawn by oxen, the first means of wheeled transport. The wheels were made of solid sections of wood, so early carts must have been heavy and clumsy. But even so, a cart drawn by a mule or donkey carried three times more grain than a farmer could load on the back of those same animals.

Writing

Around 3300 BC, the Mesopotamians invented writing. The first written texts were commercial records and lists of agricultural products delivered to the temples.. To create these records, scribes made marks on soft clay tablets with a pointed tool called a stylus, and then hung the tablets out to dry in the sun.
This simple recording system gradually evolved into a more sophisticated form of writing, which meant that people could send messages and instructions over great distances and pass information from one generation to the next.
It took approximately another 500 years to go from this signed script to a more complex system. The oldest forms were simple signs (pictograms), which represented images of real objects.. Thus, for example, a bull was represented by drawing its head. But little by little the sign of the bull came to mean the idea of ​​strength, in addition to the animal itself. Finally, a wedge-shaped system of signs, called cuneiform writing, eventually appeared. The new signs were phonetic, that is, they represented the sounds of language, whether they were whole words or syllables. It was a very important step towards the writing system we use today.

cylinder-seals

Cylinder-seals appeared in ancient Uruk at about the same time as writing.
They were small cylinders of stone or ivory in which images were engraved that left an impression when rolled on fresh clay.. They were used to seal official documents, as well as jars, trunks, and doors, to indicate who owned the sealed property. A great variety of scenes were recorded in them, proof of the great skill of the artisans who created them. The images included scenes from daily life, as well as the lives of the gods and heroes of myths and legends. Like writing and other inventions, cylinder-seals soon became widely used outside of Mesopotamia.

ziggurats

In Mesopotamia many ziggurats were built. These large pyramid-shaped structures were used as platforms on which the temples were raised.. Like the one in Ur, built by the Babylonian king Ur-Nammuf, they were made of adobes that were later covered with fired bricks to protect them from the weather. The most famous ziggurat was dedicated to the god Marduk in Babylon. It had eight stories and many stairs leading to the top. The temple at the top was believed to contain a bed on which Marduk himself slept.. At night the temple was abandoned, except for the priests, who stayed in the building to keep the god company.