[96]The same applies to the “urban revolution”—a phrase often used to describe the birth of civilization. This term has been introduced by V. Gordon Childe, whose great achievement has been the replacement of period-distinctions, which had only typological significance, by others which suggest socio-economic differences. However, in the later editions of his Dawn of European Civilization, in Man Makes Himself, and in What Happened in History, his point of view has assumed a Marxist slant which applies to ancient Near Eastern conditions inappropriate categories. His recent article, “The Urban Revolution,” in The Town Planning Review, XXI (Liverpool, 1950), 3-17, and his recent L. T. Hobhouse Memorial Lecture, “Social Worlds of Knowledge” (London, 1949), seem to embody, however, a change of viewpoint. As regards the term “urban revolution,” it can in no way be applied to Egypt, as we shall see, even if we should accept it, with the qualifications stated in our text, for the transition from prehistory to history in Mesopotamia.
[97]This matter has been studied by Professor Elizabeth Visser in her inaugural lecture “Polis en stad” (Amsterdam, 1947), who quotes Busolt-Swoboda, Griechische Staatskunde, II, 920 and also Zimmern, The Greek Commonwealth, 228: “Greek civilization is, in a sense, urban, but its basis is agricultural and the breezes of the open country blow through Parliament and the market place.”
[98]G. M. Trevelyan, English Social History (London, 1946), 28.
[99]We have discussed elsewhere the feeling of anxiety which pervades Mesopotamian religion: Kingship and the Gods (Chicago, 1948), 277-81.
[100]Journal of Near Eastern Studies, V (1946), 137.
[101]A. Deimel published and discussed the texts. See his “Die sumerische Tempelwirtschaft zur Zeit Urukaginas und seiner Vorgänger,” Analecta Orientalia, II (Rome, 1931), 71-113. His pupil, an economist, published a study on which we have largely drawn: Anna Schneider, Die Sumerische Tempelstadt, “Plenge staatswissenschaftliche Beitrage,” IV (Essen, 1920). The Protoliterate tablets offer a sufficient basis for the view that the organization of Early Dynastic times continued in most respects that which was created at the beginning of Mesopotamian history.
[102]The city god was, for political purposes, and often also as regards the importance of his temple, the chief god of the city. But “the chief god owned only his own temple’s land. His relationship to the other gods may most probably be compared to that of the headman of a village to other landowners and their holdings in the village.” (Thorkild Jacobsen in Human Origins, An Introductory General Course in Anthropology, Selected Readings, Series II (Chicago, 1946), 255.
[103]Schneider, op. cit., 35.
[104]The illustration shows a reconstruction, warranted in all essential details, of an Early Dynastic temple excavated at Khafajah by the Iraq Expedition of the Oriental Institute. The magazines were built against the inside of the oval enclosure wall. They surround entirely the platform supporting the shrine and the open space in front of it. See P. Delougaz, The Temple Oval at Khafajah (Chicago, 1940).
[105]Cambridge Ancient History, I, 499.