In Mesopotamia a parallel development possessed a somewhat different character. It likewise affected every field of cultural activity at once, but it lacked the finality of its Egyptian counterpart. It cannot be said of Mesopotamia that its civilization evolved in all its significant aspects from the achievements of one short period, decisive as that had been. Mesopotamian history shows a succession of upheavals, at intervals of but a few centuries, which did more than modify its political complexion. For instance, the Sumerian language,[87] which was dominant throughout the formative phase of Mesopotamian civilization, was replaced by Semitic Akkadian during the second half of the third millennium. And the shift of the centre of power, in the third millennium, from Sumer in the extreme south to Babylonia in the centre, in the second millennium to Assyria, in the extreme north, brought with it important cultural changes. Yet notwithstanding all the changes, Mesopotamian civilization never lost its identity; its “form” was modified by its turbulent history, but it was never destroyed.
We shall now desist from comparisons and consider the formative age of Mesopotamia, which is called the Protoliterate period since it witnessed the invention of writing. To this period the earliest ruins of cities belong. Now one may say that the birth of Mesopotamian civilization, like its subsequent growth, occurred under the sign of the city. To understand the importance of the city as a factor in the shaping of society, one must not think of it as a mere conglomeration of people. Most modern cities have lost the peculiar characteristic of individuality which we can observe in cities of Renaissance Italy, of Medieval Europe, of Greece, and of Mesopotamia. In these counties the physical existence of the city is but an outward sign of close communal affinities which dominate the life of every dweller within the walls. The city sets its citizens apart from the other inhabitants of the land. It determines their relations with the outside world. It produces an intensified self-consciousness in its burghers, to whom the collective achievements are a source of pride. The communal life of prehistoric times became civic life.
The change, however, was not without its disadvantages, especially in a country like Mesopotamia. The modest life of the prehistoric villager had fitted well enough into the natural surroundings, but the city was a questionable institution, at variance, rather than in keeping, with the natural order. This fact was brought home by the frequent floods and storms, droughts and marsh-fires with which the gods destroyed man’s work. For in Mesopotamia, in contrast with Egypt, natural conditions did not favour the development of civilization. Sudden changes could bring about conditions beyond man’s control.[88] Spring tides in the Persian Gulf may rise to a height of eight to nine feet; prolonged southerly gales may bank up the rivers for as much as two feet or more. Abnormal snowfalls in Armenia, or abnormal rainfall farther to the south, may cause a sudden rise of level in the rivers; a landslide in the narrow gorges of the two Zabs or of the Khabur may first hold up, then suddenly release, an immense volume of water. Any one of these circumstances, or the simultaneous occurrence of two or more of them, may create a flow which the earth embankments in the southern plain are not able to contain. In prehistoric times when primitive farmers sowed a catch crop after the inundation, it was possible to adapt human settlement to the ever-changing distribution of land and water, even though the villages were frequently destroyed. But large permanent towns, dependent upon drainage and irrigation, require unchanging watercourses. This can be achieved only through relentless vigilance and toil; for the quickly running Tigris carries so coarse a silt that canals easily get blocked. Even when cleaned annually, they rise gradually above the plain as a result of precipitation; and the risk that they, or the rivers themselves, may burst through their banks is never excluded. In 1831 the Tigris, rising suddenly, broke its embankment and destroyed 7000 houses in Baghdad in a single night.[89]
Small wonder, then, that the boldness of those early people who undertook to found permanent settlements in the shifting plain had its obverse in anxiety; that the self-assertion which the city—its organization, its institutions, citizenship itself—implied was overshadowed by apprehension. The tension between courage and the awareness of man’s dependence on superhuman power found a precarious equilibrium in a peculiarly Mesopotamian conception. It was a conception which was elaborated in theology but which likewise informed the practical organization of society: the city was conceived to be ruled by a god.
Theocracy, of course, was not peculiar to Mesopotamia: Egypt, too, was ruled by a god. But this god was incarnate in Pharaoh; and whatever may be paradoxical in a belief in the divinity of kings, it at least leaves no doubt as to the ultimate authority in the state and subjects the people unreservedly to the ruler’s command. In Mesopotamia no god was identified with the mortal head of the state. The world of the gods and the world of men were incommensurate. Nevertheless, a god was supposed to own the city and its people. The temple was called the god’s house; and it functioned actually as the manor-house on an estate, with the community labouring in its service. We shall describe the organization of the temple community at the end of this chapter. It is necessary first to survey the actual remains of the Protoliterate cities—the earliest cities in Mesopotamia.
In Protoliterate ruins the temples are the most striking feature. We have seen how, in the Al Ubaid period, temples were erected at Eridu in the south and at Tepe Gawra in the north. But the edifices of the Protoliterate period at Erech are much more impressive. The temple of the god Anu (Figs. [8], [45]) was placed upon an artificial mound forty feet high and covering an area of about 420,000 square feet. It dominated the plain for many miles around. Near its base lay another great shrine, dedicated to the goddess Inanna. Several times changed and rebuilt, it measured, at one stage, 240 by 110 feet; at another it possessed a colonnade in which each column measured 9 feet in diameter (Figs. [9], [10]). Each of these, and also the adjoining walls and the sides of the platform supporting them, was covered with a weatherproof “skin” consisting of tens of thousands of clay cones, separately made, baked, and coloured. These formed patterns of lozenges, zigzags, and triangles, and so on, in black and red on a buff ground. The cones were stuck into a thick mud plaster which covered the brickwork. The patterning in colour enlivened a façade already richly articulated by complex systems of buttresses, recesses, and semi-engaged columns, and thus achieved an effect far beyond anything which the exclusive use of mud as building material would suggest as attainable.
The most characteristic feature of Mesopotamian temple architecture was the artificial mound, called a ziggurat or temple tower (Figs. [8], [11]), the tower of Babel being the best known, that of Ur the best preserved, example. However, ziggurats were not found in connection with all temples. The Protoliterate temple at Tell Uqair, which has the same plan and even the same dimensions as the contemporary temple on the ziggurat at Erech, stands on a platform only a few metres high.[90] I am inclined to see in this an abbreviated rendering of the ziggurat, but the possibility that the two differed in significance cannot be excluded. We cannot explain why some temples should lack ziggurats; but we can understand why so many great shrines were equipped with them, and why the staggering communal effort which their construction entailed was undertaken.
The significance of the ziggurats is revealed by the names which many of them bear, names which identify them as mountains. That of the god Enlil at Nippur, for example, was called “House of the Mountain, Mountain of the Storm, Bond between Heaven and Earth.” Now “mountain,” as used in Mesopotamia, is a term so heavily charged with religious significance that a simple translation does it as little justice as it would to the word “Cross” in Christian, or the words “West” or “Nun” (Primeval Ocean) in Egyptian, usage.[91] In Mesopotamia the “mountain” is the place where the mysterious potency of the earth, and hence of all natural life, is concentrated. This is perhaps best understood if we look at a rather rough relief of terra cotta ([Fig. 12]) which was found at Assur in a temple of the second millennium B.C., although similar representations are known on seals of a much earlier date. The deity represented is clearly a personification of chthonic forces. His body grows out of a mountain (the scale pattern is the conventional rendering of a mountainside), and the plants grow from the mountainsides as well as from the god’s hands. Goats feed on these plants; and water, indispensable to all life, is represented by two minor deities flanking the god. Deities like the main figure on this relief were worshipped in all Mesopotamian cities, although their names differed. Tammuz is the best known of them. As personifications of natural life they were thought to be incapacitated during the Mesopotamian summer, which is a scourge destroying vegetation utterly and exhausting man and beast. The myths express this by saying that the god “dies” or that he is kept captive in the “mountain.” From the mountain he comes forth at the New Year when nature revives. Hence, the mountain is also the land of the dead; and when the sun god is depicted rising daily upon the mountains of the East, the scene is not merely a reminder of the geography of the country. The vivifying rain is also brought from the mountain by the weather god. Thus the mountain is essentially the mysterious sphere of activity of the superhuman powers. The Sumerians created the conditions under which communication with the gods became possible when they erected the artificial mountains for their temples.
In doing so they also strengthened their political cohesion. The huge building, raised to establish a bond with the power upon which the city depended, proclaimed not only the ineffable majesty of the gods but also the might of the community which had been capable of such an effort. The great temples were witnesses to piety, but also objects of civic pride. Built to ensure divine protection for the city, they also enhanced the significance of citizenship. Outlasting the generation of their builders, they were true monuments of the cities’ greatness.
It is in these temples that we find the first signs of a new invention without which the undertaking of works of this magnitude, or, indeed, of communal organization on a considerable scale, would not have been feasible, that is, writing.[92] From the first it appears in the form of impressions made by a reed on clay tablets. The earliest of the tablets, found in the temple at Erech, were memoranda—aids for the running of the temple as the production centre, warehouse, and workshop of the community. The simplest were no more than tallies with a few numerals. Others bear, besides the numerals, impressions of cylinder seals to identify the parties or witnesses to the transactions recorded. Still others indicate the object of the transaction. For instance, a simple inscription may consist of the entry: so many sheep, so many goats. There even occurs a more complex type, namely, a wage-list with a series of entries—presumably personal names—followed by the indication “beer and bread for one day.” There is no reason to assume (as has usually been done) that these earliest tablets represent the last stage of a long development; the script appears from the first as a system of conventional signs—partly arbitrary tokens, partly pictograms—such as might well have been introduced all at once ([Fig. 13]). We are confronted with a true invention, not with an adaptation of pictorial art.[93]