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Introduction – Writing and City Life

• Mesopotamia – the land between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers that is now part of the Republic of Iraq.
• Mesopotamian civilisation is known for its prosperity, city life, its voluminous and rich literature and its mathematics and astronomy.
• Mesopotamia’s writing system and literature spread to the eastern Mediterranean, northern Syria, and Turkey after 2000 BCE, so that the kingdoms of that entire region were writing to one another, and to the Pharaoh of Egypt, in the language and script of Mesopotamia.
• In the beginning of recorded history, the land, mainly the urbanised south was called Sumer and Akkad.
• After 2000 BCE, when Babylon became an important city, the term Babylonia was used for the southern region.
• From about 1100 BCE, when the Assyrians established their kingdom in the north, the region became known as Assyria.
• The first known language of the land was Sumerian. It was gradually replaced by Akkadian around 2400 BCE when Akkadian speakers arrived. This language flourished till about Alexander’s time (336-323 BCE), with some regional changes occurring.
• From 1400 BCE, Aramaic also trickled in. This language, similar to Hebrew, became widely spoken after 1000 BCE. It is still spoken in parts of Iraq.
• Archaeology in Mesopotamia began in the 1840s. At one or two sites (including Uruk and Mari), excavations continued for decades. Not only can we study hundreds of Mesopotamian buildings, statues, ornaments, graves, tools and seals as sources, there are thousands of written documents.
• Mesopotamia was important to Europeans because of references to it in the Old Testament, the first part of the Bible. For instance, the Book of Genesis of the Old Testament refers to ‘Shimar’, meaning Sumer, as a land of brick-built cities.
• In 1873, a British newspaper funded an expedition of the British Museum to search for a tablet narrating the story of the Flood, mentioned in the Bible.
  • According to the Bible, the Flood was meant to destroy all life on earth. However, God chose a man, Noah, to ensure that life could continue after the Flood. Noah built a huge boat, an ark. He took a pair each of all known species of animals and birds on board the ark, which survived the Flood.
  • There was a strikingly similar story in the Mesopotamian tradition, where the principal character was called Ziusudra or Utnapishtim.

Mesopotamia and its Geography

• Iraq – Iraq is a land of diverse environments. In the north-east lie green, undulating plains, gradually rising to tree-covered mountain ranges with clear streams and wild flowers, with enough rainfall to grow crops. Here, agriculture began between 7000 and 6000 BCE.
  • In the north, there is a stretch of upland called a steppe, where animal herding offers people a better livelihood than agriculture – after the winter rains, sheep and goats feed on the grasses and low shrubs that grow here.
  • To the east, tributaries of the Tigris provide routes of communication into the mountains of Iran.
  • The south is a desert – and this is where the first cities and writing emerged. This desert could support cities because the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, which rise in the northern mountains, carry loads of silt (fine mud). When they flood or when their water is let out on to the fields, fertile silt is deposited.

• After the Euphrates has entered the desert, its water flows out into small channels. These channels flood their banks and, in the past, functioned as irrigation canals: water could be let into the fields of wheat, barley, peas or lentils when necessary. (Euphrates river channels acted as irrigation systems, enabling productive farming of wheat, barley, peas, and lentils.)
• Of all ancient systems, that of the Roman Empire included, it was the agriculture of southern Mesopotamia that was the most productive, even though the region did not have sufficient rainfall to grow crops.

The Significance of Urbanism

Cities and towns are not just places with large populations. It is when an economy develops in spheres other than food production that it becomes an advantage for people to cluster in towns.

• Urban Areas as Economic Hubs: Cities and towns develop when economies expand beyond food production to include trade, manufacturing, and services.
• Dependence and Specialisation: Urban dwellers are not self-sufficient; they rely on others for goods and services, leading to interdependence and specialisation of work.
• Division of Labour: A hallmark of urban life is the clear division of labour—different individuals perform specific tasks (e.g., carving, tool making, trading). The division of labour is a mark of urban life.
• Need for Social Organisation: Urban living requires coordinated systems for sourcing, transporting, and distributing raw materials and food.
• Organised Trade and Storage: Efficient trade networks and storage facilities are essential to support urban manufacturing and daily needs.
• Coordination of Multiple Activities: Urban economies involve the integration of diverse activities, necessitating careful planning and coordination.
• Hierarchy and Governance: Urban systems often include a structure where some individuals direct others, indicating social hierarchies.
• Written Records: The complexity of urban economies leads to the need for maintaining written records to manage trade, supply, and governance.

The earliest cities in Mesopotamia date back to the bronze age, c.3000 BCE. Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. Using bronze meant procuring these metals, often from great distances. Metal tools were necessary for accurate carpentry, drilling beads, carving stone seals, cutting shell for inlaid furniture, etc. Mesopotamian weapons were also of bronze.

Warka Head – This woman’s head was sculpted in white marble at Uruk before 3000 BCE. The eyes and eyebrows would probably have taken lapis lazuli (blue) and shell (white) and bitumen (black) inlays, respectively. This is a world-famous piece of sculpture, admired for the delicate modelling of the woman’s mouth, chin and cheeks. And it was modelled in a hard stone that would have been imported from a distance.

Movement of Goods and Cities

• Limited Natural Resources in Mesopotamia: Southern Mesopotamia lacked essential resources like stones, quality wood (Iraqi date-palm and poplar was not good), and metals needed for tools, ornaments, and transportation.
• Trade for Essential Materials: Mesopotamians likely traded surplus textiles and agricultural produce for wood, metals (copper, tin, silver, gold), shells, and stones from resource-rich regions like Turkey, Iran, and across the Gulf. These latter regions had mineral resources, but much less scope for agriculture.
• Social Organisation and Exchanges: Regular, long-distance trade required organised social systems to plan and to equip foreign expeditions and direct the exchanges were initiated by the people of southern Mesopotamia.
• Role of Transport in Urban Development: Efficient transportation was crucial; without it, cities couldn’t sustain themselves due to the high cost and time of moving goods like grain and charcoal.
• Water Transport as Most Efficient: River and canal transport was cheaper and more sustainable or cheapest than animal transport, as River boats or barges loaded with sacks of grain are propelled by the current of the river and/or wind, but animals required continuous feeding.
• Use of Rivers and Canals: Mesopotamian canals and natural water channels served as major trade routes connecting settlements.
• Importance of the Euphrates River: The Euphrates played a central role as a “world route” for transporting goods, highlighting its significance in regional trade and urban development.

Development of Writing

All societies have languages in which certain spoken sounds convey certain meanings. This is verbal communication. Writing too is verbal communication – but in a different way. When we talk about writing or a script, we mean that spoken sounds are represented in visible signs.

• Origin of Writing in Mesopotamia: The earliest writing appeared around 3200 BCE in Mesopotamia, contained primarily as pictorial signs and numbers used to record goods like oxen, fish, and bread. These were about 5,000 lists of oxen, fish, bread loaves, etc. – lists of goods that were brought into or distributed from the temples of Uruk, a city in the south.
• Purpose of Early Writing: Writing began to meet the need for record-keeping in urban societies because in city life transactions occurred at different times, and involved many people and a variety of goods.
• Clay Tablets and Cuneiform: Mesopotamians used clay tablets for writing. A scribe would wet clay and pat it into a size he could hold comfortably in one hand. A reed stylus was used to make wedge-shaped (cuneiform) signs on wet clay, which was then dried in sunlight and becomes hardened, thus tablets would be almost as indestructible as pottery.
• Abundance of Written Records: When a written record of, say, the delivery of pieces of metal had ceased to be relevant, the tablet was thrown away. Because each transaction required a separate tablet and dried clay couldn’t be reused, hundreds of tablets have been found at Mesopotamian sites, giving historians extensive insight into their society.
• Evolution of Script and Language:
  • By 2600 BCE, writing evolved into formal cuneiform script and the language was Sumerian.
  • Writing began to be used for not only keeping records but also for – dictionaries, legal documents, royal narratives, and announcing the changes a king had made in the customary laws of the land.
  • After 2400 BCE, Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as the dominant language of writing.
• Longevity of Cuneiform Writing: Cuneiform in the Akkadian language was used for over 2,000 years, until the 1st century CE.

Cuneiform is derived from the Latin words cuneus, meaning ‘wedge’ and forma, meaning ‘shape’. Cuneiform letters were wedge shaped, hence, like nails. A clay tablet written on both sides in cuneiform. It is a mathematical exercise – you can see a triangle and lines across the triangle on the top of the obverse side. You can see that the letters have been pressed into the clay.

The System of Writing

• Cuneiform Signs Represented Syllables: Unlike alphabets that use single consonants or vowels, cuneiform signs stood for syllables (e.g., -put-, -la-, -in-).
• Large Number of Signs: Mesopotamian scribes had to learn hundreds of signs, making writing a highly skilled task.
• Technical Skill Required: Writing had to be done quickly on wet clay tablets before they dried, requiring dexterity and precision.
• Writing as a Craft and Intellectual Feat: Beyond manual skill, writing was a major intellectual achievement, visually representing the complex sound system of a language.

Literacy

Very few Mesopotamians could read and write. Not only were there hundreds of signs to learn, many of these were complex. If a king could read, he made sure that this was recorded in one of his boastful inscriptions! For the most part, however, writing reflected the mode of speaking.

The Uses of Writing

• Uruk as a Model City: In Mesopotamian tradition, Uruk was considered the ideal or exemplary city, often referred to simply as “The City.”
• Link Between Kingship, Trade, and Writing: The epic of Enmerkar, an early ruler of Uruk, highlights that kingship played a central role in initiating and organising long-distance trade and the invention of writing. Enmerkar is associated with the organisation of the first trade of Sumer: in the early days, the epic says, ‘trade was not known’.
• Early Trade Challenges: Trade was initially unknown; Enmerkar’s attempt to obtain lapis lazuli and precious metals from a distant land (Aratta) involved difficult journeys and failed negotiations.
• Need for Writing: Repeated verbal communication led to confusion, prompting Enmerkar to create a clay tablet to record his message, symbolising the origin of writing in response to practical needs. This clay tablet by Enmerkar let the ruler of Aratta be in the frowned situation.
• Symbolism of Writing: Writing was viewed not only as a tool for record-keeping and communication, but also as a marker of urban sophistication and cultural superiority.
• Writing as a Mesopotamian Innovation: The story reflects the belief that writing was a significant intellectual and administrative advancement, born out of the needs of city life and governance.