The Birth of Civilization in the Near East

by Henri Frankfort

The task of the ensi in the main was to co-ordinate the temple communities within the city. To each he assigned a share in the common tasks on buildings, canals, and dikes. These corvées were then divided among the guilds and individual members of a community by its sangu or nubanda. The ensi dealt, furthermore, with matters of defence and trade, in other words, with foreign affairs. The professional soldiers were under his direct and personal command and formed an important source of his power within the city. Like every other citizen, he received an allotment for his sustenance; but his fields were part of the Common and were cultivated by the people as part of their communal task. Here, again, was an opportunity for abuse of power. Moreover, it became customary to acknowledge the ensi’s exalted position by offering him presents on the festivals of the gods. He also took a fee for making legal decisions or decreeing a divorce, and imposed certain taxes. While he administered the main temple of the city, he appointed members of his family to head other temple communities.

Although the assembly seems not to have been superseded entirely, the effective power of the ensi was preponderant; and what had been the original strength of Sumerian society, its integration with the temple organization, became its weakness when the leaders of the temple communities utilized the need for leadership, which the growth of the cities called forth, to oppress the people. We know, for instance, that one ensi sequestered fields assigned to him on the Common and used them to build up an independent “estate of the palace,” modelled on that of the temple. The tablets from Fara show how varied an assortment of people had become directly dependent upon the ensi: scribes, chamberlains, heralds, pages, cupbearers, butlers, cooks, musicians, and all kinds of craftsmen.[116] An equalitarian society had been thoroughly transformed, and the power assumed by the ruler was reflected in the presumptions and extortions of his officials. In fact, the Early Dynastic period ends, in Lagash, in an abortive attempt to move against the current and restore the theocratic form of its ideal prototype to Sumerian society. An ensi, called Urukagina, states that he “contracted with the god Ningirsu (the city god of Lagash) that he would not deliver up the orphan and the widow to the powerful man.”[117] He also put a stop to specific abuses: “he took the ships away from the master of the boatmen; he took the sheep and asses away from the head-herdsman.... He took away from the heralds the tribute which the sangus paid to the palace.” These “changes,” and many like them, listed in the so-called reform texts, mean that the prerogatives usurped by the foremen and officials were abolished and that these rights were vested once more exclusively in the temple as a vital organ of the community.

Urukagina also ended abuses introduced by his own predecessors; he forbade, to use his own words, “that oxen of the god plough the onion plot of the ensi.” He lowered the fees for interments and for prayer services. He vindicated the right of the lowly man to his property:

When a good donkey has been born to a royal soldier (?), and his foreman has said to him, “I will buy it from thee”—if he then lets him buy—he shall say: “Weigh out unto me silver as much as is pleasing to my heart.” And if he does not let him buy, the foreman shall not molest him.

It is, of course, possible to suppose that Urukagina, by curbing the power of prominent people, was trying, not only to restore the temple communities to their original purity, but also to win the support of the common people for himself. In any case, factors outside his control interfered with his plans. He was attacked by the ruler of the neighbouring city of Umma and destroyed.

The abuses Urukagina tried to abolish were, in essence, those which vitiate the realization of any political ideal. Weaknesses peculiar to Mesopotamia, however, became clear when serious attempts were made to establish a unified state comprising all the separate cities. This change was attempted by Sargon of Akkad and his successors ([Fig. 22]).[118] Sargon had been a high official under a king of Kish, and about 2340 B.C. he founded a city of his own, Akkad. He defeated Lugalzaggesi, the conqueror of Urukagina, and other city rulers who opposed him, until he was paramount throughout the country. Similar successes had been achieved before his time, but they had always been short-lived. And while Sargon’s rise to power conformed entirely to the older pattern, a piecemeal subjection of other cities, he struck out a new course in consolidating his position. This time the state survived its founder for several generations. The novelty of his approach may be due to the fact that he represented a northern element in the Mesopotamian population which now became dominant for the first time. This is indicated by the inscriptions: royal inscriptions and many business documents began to be written in the Semitic language which is called Akkadian. This change, in particular, is responsible for the opinion held by some scholars that the rise of Sargon represents a foreign conquest;[119] and it is true that the language points to the middle Euphrates and adjoining territories as its country of origin. But this region had been permeated by Mesopotamian culture for centuries, and people from that quarter cannot be called foreigners in the ordinary sense of the word. Already in Protoliterate times Sumerian civilization had moved northwards along the two rivers, as the Al Ubaid culture (probably also Sumerian) had done in prehistoric times. As Roman influence in barbaric Europe can be traced by means of coins, the influence of Protoliterate Mesopotamia throughout the ancient Near East can be traced by the distinctive cylinder seals of the period. They are found as far to the north as Troy, as far to the south as Upper Egypt, as far to the east as middle, or even north-east Persia.[120] At Brak, on the Khabur in northern Syria, 500 miles north of Erech, has been discovered a temple built on the plan of those in the south, containing similar objects and decorated with cone mosaics.[121] Later, in Early Dynastic times, Ishtar temples at Mari on the Euphrates and at Assur on the Tigris were equipped with statues of Sumerian style, representing men in Sumerian dress.[122] Thus it is obvious that there existed along the two great rivers a cultural continuum within which people could move without creating a disturbance in the fabric of civilization. And the change of language to which we have referred, points to a gradual but continuous drift of people towards the south, as if the cultural influences emanating from Sumer attracted those who had come under its spell. Evidence of this movement is contained in Early Dynastic inscriptions. The thoroughly Sumerianized people of Mari, who had adopted the Sumerian script, inscribed their statues in Akkadian. The same seems to have happened at Khafajah near Baghdad. At Kish, a little farther to the south, the population seems to have been bilingual.[123]

These observations in the field of language are valuable pointers; there may have been other, intangible, differences between the northern and the southern elements in the population of Mesopotamia, differences which would distinguish two strains with distinct cultural traditions. And although the old view that the accession of Sargon of Akkad represents a foreign conquest is untenable, his reign truly marks a new beginning. In the arts a new spirit finds magnificent expression, and in statecraft an entirely new attempt is made to create a political unity which would comprise the city states but surpass their scope, and which had no precedent in the past.[124] The house of Sargon appears as a succession of rulers consistently claiming kingship over the whole land; and it is possible that their political ideal was not unrelated with the fact that they were free, as their predecessors were not, from the traditional viewpoint which grasped political problems exclusively in terms of the city. For among most semitic-speaking people kinship provides the supreme bond. It is possible that the Akkadian-speaking inhabitants of middle and northern Mesopotamia had always acknowledged loyalties which went beyond the city proper. In Sumer there is no sign of the existence of such loyalties, nor was there a political institution which over-arched the sovereignty of the separate cities. But of Sargon a chronicle reports: “He settled his palace folk for thirty-three miles and reigned over the people of all lands.”[125] The first part of this entry suggests that Sargon allotted parts of lands of temple communities to his own followers, thus overriding the age-old local basis of land rights. No conqueror could rely on the loyalty of the defeated cities, and it seems as if Sargon built up a personal following, perhaps exploiting kinship ties in the wide sense of tribal loyalty. Under his grandson Naramsin, governors of cities styled themselves “slave of the king.”

Sargon also seems to have made a bid for the loyalty of the common people. This appears from a change in the formula for oaths.[126] The name of the king could now be invoked alongside the gods. This had a definite practical significance: if an agreement thus sworn to was broken, or if perjury was committed, the king was involved and would make it his business to uphold the right of the injured party. This was of the utmost importance, for the judge had originally been merely an arbitrator, whose main task was the reconciliation or satisfying of both parties. He had had no power to enforce his decisions; and if a man without personal prestige did not have a powerful patron to “overshadow him,”[127] there was little chance of his finding satisfaction in court. The new oath formula put the king in the position of the patron of all who swore by his name; in practice he constituted a court of appeal for the whole land, independent of the cities—a step of the greatest importance in the development of Mesopotamian law and society. Another step towards unification of the country was the introduction of a uniform calendar. Hitherto each city had had its own, with its own month names and festivals. Finally, the existence of a single monarch, who styled himself “King of the Four Quarters of the World,” served as a perpetual remainder of the unity of the state.[128]

If pressure from the outside world could be relied upon to bring about national unity, Mesopotamia would no doubt have become a single state on the lines laid down by the kings of Akkad. For the country was at all times exposed to great dangers. Civilized and prosperous, but lacking natural boundaries, it tempted mountaineers and steppe dwellers with the possibilities of easy loot. Raids could be dealt with by the cities, but the large-scale invasions, which recurred every few centuries, required a strong central government to be repelled. The safeguarding of the trade routes, too, went beyond the competence of individual cities, and one would expect them to have co-operated in a national effort. Indeed, we find an epic, “The King of Battle,” which describes how Sargon of Akkad, at the request of Mesopotamian merchants trading in Anatolia, went there with an army to champion their cause. The story may well reflect an actual occurrence, for Sargon’s grandson, Naramsin, built a strong castle at Brak on the Khabur, and the lumber used in its construction included not only poplar and plane, but also ash, elm, oak, and pine, which must have been imported.[129] The Akkadian kings thus undertook a task which occupied all succeeding rulers of the land. Even in the first millennium, the annual sweep of the Assyrian army up into the mountains of Armenia and down towards the west was a sustained and systematic attempt to keep the mountaineers in check; for, with the unlimited possibilities of retreat into their remote valleys, it was impossible to subject them permanently. From Sargon of Akkad on, kings knew that it was necessary to maintain a unified and centralized state; it was necessary to dominate the borderlands sufficiently to meet aggression there; in short, imperialism was the only guarantee of peace.

One would expect to find the people rallying to the new order imposed by the Akkadian kings, especially since a feeling of national coherence did exist. The Sumerians had a phrase, “the black-headed people,” to designate themselves as an ethnic unit; and the gods Enlil and Anu, among others, were worshipped throughout the land. But this feeling had never found expression in a political form; it remained without effect, it seems, on the country’s history. The particularism of the cities was never overcome. At each new accession of a king in Akkad, the land rose in revolt. Far from rallying against the barbarians, the people attempted to revert to the local autonomy which had been the rule before the rise of Sargon. Similar conditions persisted throughout the country’s history. For example, the discoveries at Tell Asmar (ancient Eshnunna) illustrate the prevalence of local over national considerations. The ruler of that city collaborated with the Amorites who ravaged the country after the fall of the Third Dynasty of Ur; the barbarians were tolerated, and perhaps even assisted in their attacks on neighbouring towns, which were incorporated into the state of Eshnunna after the Amorites had looted them.[130]