As regards the art of the Protoliterate period, the vast majority of the extant works deals with religious matters. Sometimes ritual acts were depicted, sometimes an ornamental pattern was built up of religious symbols; and occasionally it is impossible to be certain whether the one or the other was intended. But the reference is, in all cases, to the gods. Among the symbols—on seals[94] and in the mural decoration of temples—plants and animals, especially those upon which man depends for his livelihood, were by far the most frequent. These were the emblems of the great goddess worshipped at Erech and throughout the land. They occur singly or in combination (for instance an ear of barley and a bull [[Fig. 14]; cf. [Fig. 44]]), the vegetable kingdom often being represented by rosettes. Friezes of sheep or cattle covered the walls of the Protoliterate temples—painted at Uqair, inlaid or carved in stone at Erech (Figs. [17], [18]).[95] Implements used in the cult, such as stands for offerings, were likewise decorated with animals, as were also sacred vessels: a trough ([Fig. 5]), from which the temple flock was presumably fed, shows sheep near their fold—a reed structure (srefe) like those still built by the Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq ([Fig. 6]); and the building is crowned by two curiously bound reed bundles which correspond to the oldest form of the sign with which the name of the mother-goddess was written. Vases and seal designs showing the performance of ritual acts (Figs. [15], [44]) are also common. Like the symbols used in decorative art, these acts point consistently to the worship of deities manifest in nature.
The gods were also symbols of a collective identity. Each city projected its sovereignty into the deity which it conceived as its owner. There seems to be a contradiction here: the nature gods whom the Protoliterate monuments celebrate would seem more suitable for worship by countrymen and farmers than by townsmen as we know them. But our contrast “town versus country” is misleading.[96] While it is true that the city in Mesopotamia was an outstanding innovation of the Protoliterate period, the great divergence between city and countryside, between rural and urban life, is, in the form in which we are familiar with it, a product of the “industrial revolution,” and emphasis on this contrast mars our perspective when we view earlier situations.
About 400 B.C. roughly three-quarters of the Athenian burghers owned some land in Attica,[97] and as recently as the European Middle Ages our contrast “urban-rural” was unknown. At that time the city was as distinct a social institution as it has ever been, but it was intimately related with the land. Trevelyan writes:
In the Fourteenth Century the English town was still a rural and agricultural community as well as a centre of industry and commerce ... outside lay the “townfields,” unenclosed by hedges, where each citizen-farmer cultivated his own strips of cornland; and each grazed his cattle and sheep on the common pasture of the town.... In 1388 it was laid down by Parliamentary Statute that in harvest-time journeymen and apprentices should be called on to lay aside their crafts and should be compelled “to cut, gather and bring in the corn”; mayors, bailiffs and constables of towns were to see this done.[98]
In Mesopotamia, then, many of the townspeople worked their own fields. And the life of all was regulated by a calendar which harmonized society’s progress through the year with the succession of the seasons. A recurring sequence of religious festivals interrupted all business and routine at frequent intervals; several days in each month were set aside for the celebration of the completion by the moon of one of its phases, and of other natural occurrences. The greatest annual event in each city, which might last as long as twelve days, was the New Year’s festival, celebrated at the critical point of the farmer’s year when nature’s vitality was at a low ebb and everything depended upon a turn of the tide. Society, involved to the extent of its very life, could not passively await the outcome of the conflict between the powers of death and revival. With great emotional intensity it participated by ritual acts in the vicissitudes of the gods in whom were personified the generative forces of nature. The mood of these urban celebrations, as late as Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian times, shows that the main issue was still the maintenance of the bond with nature.
We do not know for what reasons certain of the nature gods became connected with a given city. We only know that the city, as soon as it became recognizable, appears as the property of one god, although other deities were worshipped there as well. The city god was sometimes viewed as an absentee landlord, always difficult of approach and apt to express himself somewhat casually in signs and portents, dreams and omens of dubious meaning. Yet a misunderstanding of the commands thus conveyed was likely to provoke the calamity of divine anger.
It is in keeping with the tenor of Mesopotamian religiosity at all times that the relationship between the city and its divine owner could be conceived only as one of complete dependence.[99] Throughout we meet with the sombre conviction that man is impotently exposed to the impact of a turbulent and unpredictable universe. This feeling was rationalized in theology, which taught that man was created especially to serve the convenience of the gods. In the Epic of Creation man was brought into being after Marduk, the creator, had remarked casually:
Let him be burdened with the toil of the gods that they may freely breathe.
The same view is implied in an older, Sumerian, myth in which Enlil breaks the earth’s crust with a pickaxe so that men may sprout forth like plants. And the other gods surround Enlil and beg him to allot to them serfs from among the Sumerians who are breaking forth from the earth.[100]
The belief that man fulfilled the purpose of his being by serving the gods had very remarkable consequences for the structure of early Sumerian society. Since the citizens projected the sovereignty of their community into their god, they were all equal in his service. In practice this service took the form of a co-operative effort which was minutely organized. The result was a planned society, and the remains of the Protoliterate period show that it existed then, although it is better known from Early Dynastic times.[101]