The Uruk Period (c. 4000-2900 BC)

The following is a DW Ancient Babylon production. The 4th millennium, roughly between 4000 and 2900 BC, was a crucial period of time for mankind that led to many innovations of importance, including writing and the development of the city-state. Known as the Uruk period, this lasted for the whole of the 4th millennium. This culture acquires its name from the city of Uruk due to this site being thoroughly excavated. During this period, Uruk became the most urbanized city in the world, surpassing for the first time 50,000 inhabitants. In precisely what manner Uruk ruled the region, why and how it became the first city in the world, and in what manner it exercised its authority, is not fully known. Sumerian cities during the Uruk period were probably theocratic and were most likely headed by a priest-king known as an ensi, assisted by a council of elders, including both men and women. It is quite possible that the later Sumerian pantheon was modeled upon this political structure. The geographical center of developments in the Uruk period was in the extreme south of Mesopotamia, at the head of the Persian Gulf. There was little evidence of organized warfare or professional soldiers during the Uruk period and towns were generally unwalled. What constitutes a city is difficult to define, but it does have certain characteristics that differentiate it from a village. One is that a substantial number of people living in close proximity to one another have non-agricultural occupations. This requires them to be dependent on others for food and resources, while they themselves provide a specialized skill of service. Even more important, these specialized services are not limited to just the inhabitants of the city, but to the surrounding settlements as well. As a result, the city becomes the center for the geographical area. The specialization of productive labor led to the need for an authority to organize the exchange of goods as individual families were no longer self-sufficient. In Mesopotamia during the Uruk period, that authority was the religious temple. The goods were received by the god of the city and redistributed to the people. Far surpassing other settlements at the time, Uruk's dominant size made it a regional center. Continuing a trend that started in the early Ubaid period, temples in the late Uruk period became the most monumental buildings in the settlements. Two temple complexes existed simultaneously at Uruk, the Iona precinct and the Anu ziggurat, the temple tower. These structures of the Iona complex were the most elaborate and were rebuilt several times. Surrounded by a these enormous buildings were the main focus of the city. Within the walls were clay cones colored white, black, and red, which formed mosaics and geometrical patterns. One building contained cones made of stone, a more expensive material since stone was difficult to obtain in the region. These buildings had a cultic role in that goods were offered to the gods. One of the works of art for the period, the Uruk vase, pictorially expresses the role of the Iona temple. Also known as the Warka vase, the Uruk vase was discovered in a deposit of cult objects in the temple complex of the Sumerian goddess Inanna. Like the Narmer palette from Egypt, it is one of the earliest surviving works of narrative relief sculpture. The vase has four tiers of carving. The bottom register depicts the vegetation in the Tigris and Euphrates delta. Above this vegetation is a procession of animals such as oxen and sheep. The procession continues in the second register with nude males carrying bowls and jars of sacrificial elements. The top tier is a full scene rather than a continuous pattern that ends at the temple area. Inanna, one of the chief goddesses of Mesopotamia and later known as Ishtar in the Akkadian pantheon, stands by two bundles of reeds behind her. She is offered a bowl of fruit and grain by a nude figure. A subject in ceremonial clothing, presumably a chieftain or priest, stands nearby with the procession approaching him from behind. The specialization of labor that characterized the establishment of urban life in southern Mesopotamia caused a fundamental restructuring of society. This is particularly evident in a text called the Standard List of Professions. It appeared at the end of the late Uruk period and is amongst the first texts written. This text was faithfully copied for the next 1500 years. Written in several columns, the list provides titles of officials and names of professions ordered in a hierarchy starting with the highest rank. The titles include such terms as leader of the city, leader of the plow, great one of the cattle pen, and great one of the lambs. The list contains terms for priests, gardeners, cooks, smiths, jewelers, potters, and others. While not fully understood, it is clear that it provides an inventory of specialist professions within the cities. At the top of Uruk society was the priest-king, whose powers derived from his role in the temple. At the bottom of this social ladder were the people involved in production, both agriculture and otherwise. A state, although small, had developed by the late 4th millennium where the city held organizational controls. By the end of the Uruk period there existed a system of record-keeping with texts which laid the foundation for the subsequent cuneiform writing systems in ancient Mesopotamia. This Uruk system is called proto-cuneiform because the signs are drawn into clay with thin lines rather than being impressed with wedges as in later cuneiform script. This is the first time in history that writing was invented and the first evidence for real script comes from the city of Uruk itself. From the 7th millennium on stamp seals were impressed on jars or on lumps of clay attached to containers. In the middle of the Uruk period the stamp was replaced by the cylinder seal. Each seal belonged to an individual or administrative office and were used to guarantee shipment. The seals do not disclose the quantity or actual contents involved in a transaction. This information was covered through the use of tokens. These were stone or clay objects of many geometric shapes that were kept together in a clay envelope which was sealed to prevent tampering. The Near East always had people speaking various languages who lived side by side. All languages could be written in cuneiform script which was the dominant writing system in the region until it was later supplanted by the alphabet script of the Phoenicians. The most popular languages of Mesopotamia was Sumerian and Akkadian. The Sumerian language was spoken throughout the 3rd millennium in the south of Mesopotamia. By the early 2nd millennium it was only used by bureaucrats and cult personnel. The date of its disappearance as a spoken language remains unknown. Akkadian was the Semitic language related to Hebrew, Arabic, and many other languages of the Near East but of a different grammatical structure. Lower Mesopotamia is the core of the Uruk period culture and the region seems to have been the since this is where the principal monuments were found and where the obvious traces of an urban society were located. However this region is not well known archaeologically since only the site of Uruk itself has provided any evidence for cultural growth. At some other sites construction from this period has been found but they are usually only known as the result of soundages and have not been fully excavated due to the hostile political nature of the area. In the current state of knowledge it remains impossible to determine whether the site of Uruk was actually unique in the region or if it is simply an accident of excavation that makes it seem more important than the others. As a result the Uruk expansion theory remains a debated subject that lacks concrete evidence to either prove or disprove the theory. In a nutshell the idea of the Uruk expansion is that the Urukians established a collection of colonies outside Lower Mesopotamia first in Upper Mesopotamia then in the region near the city of Susa called Susiana in the Iranian plateau. This model has been criticized due to a lack of a complete picture of the region. What is known is that the Uruk period established settlements that achieved a new importance in population density as well as development of monumental civic architecture. They reached a level where they could properly be called cities. In the late Uruk period the urban site far exceeded all others. Its surface areas, the scale of its monuments and the importance of its administrative tools unearthed there indicate that it was a key center of power. It is therefore often referred to as the first city but it was the outcome of a process that began many centuries earlier and mostly outside Mesopotamia. The end of the Uruk period was swift and mysterious. This end came with the fundamental changes in Southern Mesopotamia and abroad. Those outside Southern Mesopotamia are the clearest to us as we see a sudden discontinuation of context. In places where local cultures had adopted Uruk practices, the older local traditions re-emerged. Village life and social organization became the norm again in Northern Mesopotamia and Syria. In the Susiana plain, the center of Susa seems to have been taken over by immigrants from the Zagros mountains. But instead of fragmenting like the north, the region maintained some Uruk traditions while also adapting them to local ones. This centralization of power in the region of Susa developed a competing state which then cut off Southern Mesopotamia's access to the Iranian plateau. What happened in Uruk itself is somewhat unknown. The monumental buildings that dominated the Iana complex were destroyed and the entire area was leveled. At some point newer buildings were constructed and Uruk continued to be substantial in size but other Southern Mesopotamian centers arose and began competition. This emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia would build the Sumerian civilization and establish the early dynastic period. Thank you for joining us. 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