We must start by distinguishing two interlocking but distinct social institutions. The political unit was the city; the economic-religious unit the temple community. Each temple owned lands which formed the estate of its divine owners. Each citizen belonged to one of the temples, and the whole of a temple community—the officials and priests, herdsmen and fishermen, gardeners, craftsmen, stone cutters, merchants, and even slaves—was referred to as “the people of the god X.” Ideally one can imagine one temple community to have formed the original kernel of each city; but whether this situation ever prevailed we do not know, since the Early Dynastic tablets acquaint us with cities comprising several temples with their estates.[102]
1. Sickles of bone and wood with flint “teeth”: A, B, from Carmel, Palestine; C, from Sialk, Persia; D, from Fayum, Egypt; E, from Saqqara, Egypt.
2. Camp site at Hassuna.
3. Papyrus swamp on the Upper Nile. (Courtesy of American Museum.)
4. Chart of the sequence of predynastic and protodynastic remains by Dr. Helene J. Kantor.
