Chapter 26

Jonah Lynch – January 2023

Afterword

1 Around 2200 B.C. Naram-Sin assumed the title of king of the four banks (of the two rivers in Mesopotamia). This title reflected a territorial, political, and cultural reality. I retain the term Mesopotamia to refer to this reality as the term in its common meaning covers the same object that the ancients had in mind.

Politics

2 The history of Mesopotamia develops, in a way that is surprising because of its coherence, a process of progressive affirmation of the social group in its cohesiveness. The growth of the state in Mesopotamia shows in a paradigmatic way a close correspondence between the concrete social instances and the institutions that can shape and govern them.

Literature

3 The second volume deals with literary expression, which is studied through a structural analysis of expressive patterns and profound themes.

Art and Architecture

4 At the service of the social and political elite, an expressive artistic style was developed that gave shape to the phantastic vision of the world, with modalities capable of determining a continuity of vision even in the dynamics of ever new formal experiments. This dynamism is a central feature of the historical development of the Syro-Mesopotamian civilization, and the experimental spirit that underlies it is shown in the most significant ways in the forms of architecture and art. This is the subject of the third volume.