Part III
Chapter 10

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10.1 A Range of Perceptions

As already told in previous sections (1.5 and 2.5), there was in Mesopotamia an ‘invention’ of time and an ‘invention’ of territory, a process through which elements not contiguous in time or nature are associated each other (not necessarily implying the creation of symbols).

This section deals with the ‘invention’, thanks to a para-perceptual process, of the geographical concept of ‘Mesopotamia’.

The analysis is conducted within an -emic process, which differs from an -etic process of investigation.^{Note 1}

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10.2 Perceptual Geography

The concept of perceptual geography can be explained keeping into consideration three key points:

1. an -emic interpretation of the perceptual vision;
2. a para-perceptual vision which must be reiterated in time;
3. a symbolic association of space with non-geographical entities.

(1) Thus, in an -emic sense, Mesopotamia started to be split into two: an ‘upper Mesopotamia’ (to the North) and a ‘lower Mesopotamia’ (to the South),^{Note 2} referring to the direction of the Tigris and the Euphrates.

Similarly, also the indications ‘right’ and ‘left’ referred to the direction of the two rivers’ flow, a terminology frequently used to locate and determine human groups stationing on the two sides of the middle Euphrates (cf. e.g. below, section 16.4, about the ‘nomads’).

(2) The para-perceptual (-emic) vision allowed the Mesopotamians to clearly distinguish an area in northern Mesopotamia labelled as ‘upper land’ or ‘high country’ (mātum elītum), in Akkadian), labeling as such the northern plains of the Khabur river. The same reasoning is applied to define the Mediterranean as the ‘upper sea’ and the Gulf as the ‘lower sea’ (cf. above, section 9.8).

(3) At this step, it is possible that geographical entities assumed a symbolic value; for instance, the river could be regarded as a judge (in the case of trials)^{Note 3} or even evoked in spells as a means of purification.^{Note 4}

All in all, a new geo-political symbolism was born.

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10.3 The Directional Import of the Rivers

The flow and direction of the two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates^{Note 5} were always a physical reality, particularly during a flood (mīlum in Akkadian); on the one hand, this fact led people to exploit the water of the two greater rivers to build canals (see Liverani 2018 Paradiso, ch. 3.5) or dams (thus, changing the natural environment).

On the other hand, under an -emic perspective, Mesopotamian people also started inferring about, for instance, the source and the outlet of the rivers: in a way, we can speak in this case of ‘invention’ of the rivers (which were also, sometimes divinized), since a physical perception shifted to a para-perceptual thought.

Another important aspect of the rivers was that they, in a certain sense, unified the different human groups despite their differences in location and even cultural diversity.

This phenomenon led to the development of a specific awareness, i.e. that of being part of a whole (the ‘land of the four river banks’); a whole which was the background for the growth of commercial relationships, fostered by the use of the rivers as ‘roads’.

Even further, the para-perceptual vision brought about a symbolic value for the very rivers, in a geo-political sense: the rivers were, in fact, a way to reconfigure a landscape that was no longer that of the nuclear or territorial state.

A new supra-urban entity was in fact emerging, i.e. the ‘empire’ who “gathered a patchwork of different and truly heterogeneous territories that the new political will wanted to integrate into a new territorial unity – marked by the two rivers” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 146).

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10.4 The Royal Titles

Previously, royal titles referred to the territory, either that of a nuclear or an expanded state; in the pre-imperial periods (see chronological Table 3) the geographical horizon became broader (the land, kalam in Sumerian, of Sumer-and-Akkad) and the title ‘king of Kish’ was used in a historical value instead of a geo-political one.

The ‘empire’ of Akkad rooted on and identified itself with the new territorial reality: the title for the ‘king’ still remained the Sumerogram LUGAL^{Note 6} (read now šarrum in Akkadian) and did not exist terms for ‘emperor’ or ‘empire’ (cf. below, section 23.5).

The innovation is in the proper name of the territory; this came about with Naram-Sin, who self-deified himself and expanded Akkad’s borders at their maximum (on the deification of king in Mesopotamia, cf. also the excerpt from Buccellati 2024 When).

Anyhow, Naram-Sin did not take the title of ‘king of the Tigris and the Euphrates’ or ‘king of the Two Rivers’, but a new title which will be discussed in the following section.

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10.5 The ‘King of the Four Banks’

The new title coined by Naram-Sin was šar kibrātim arbaʿīm in Akkadian, corresponding to the later rendering with the Sumerogram LUGAL UB.DA.LIMMÚ.BA, literally meaning ‘king of the four river banks’.

This title did not refer to the new territorial setup, but even to the irrigable land on the two sides of the Tigris and the Euphrates.

We could retrace back in time some presages of this nomenclature already at the time of Lugal-zagesi, king of Uruk (but coming from Umma) and defeated by Sargon. In a royal inscription in Sumerian attested on several stone vessels from Nippur, the king says:^{Note 7}

When Enlil, the king of all the regions (kur.kur),
gave Lugal-zagesi the rule over the country (kalam),
he turned the eyes of the country (kalam) to him (in submission),
he put all the regions (kur.kur) under his feet
subjecting them to him from east to west.
On that day he secured the roads
(that go) along the Tigris and the Euphrates
from the lower sea to the upper sea.

Another term qualifying the new territorial entity is represented by the Akkadian aḫum, ‘side’, attested in later texts from Mari in the expression aḫ Purattim, ‘the side of the Euphrates’, applied to the middle Euphrates area.

The designation of the ‘four banks’ is an ‘invention’ of the new imperial territory with a strong semiotic connotation: the territory of the empire is now embedded into a physical form.

The historical relevance of this ‘invention’ is clearly stated by Naram-Sin, who chose as the eponymous event for a year of his reign this expression:

“The year when Naram-Sin reached the source of the Tigris and Euphrates (after his victory) over Shenam-inda”.

Even though it is not entirely clear what is meant by “sources of the Euphrates”, another document can help in better defining the “sources of the Tigris”: it is a fragment of a victory stela, found close to the sources of the Tigris (nearby the modern Pir Huseyn).^{Note 8} The Akkadian text of this stela tells how the god Ea eliminated all the enemies of Naram-Sin. The mention of Ea is relevant for two reasons:

1. Ea was the god of the groundwater; thus, he is also connected to the freshwater of the great Mesopotamian rivers;
2. Ea was also the main god worshiped at Eridu, the southernmost of the Mesopotamian cities; thus, a connection between the source and the outlet of the river can be argued.

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10.6 The ‘Four Boundaries of the World’

Besides the definition of the new geo-political reality as a ‘riparian region’, from the concept of the ‘four banks’ an innovative denomination was coined, that of the ‘four regions of the world’ (cf. below, section 11.3). This new definition implies an universal dominion over the four areas defined by the four cardinal points.

This semantic evolution replicates that of the ‘king of Kish’, a term that came to designate the Sumerian ‘ecumene’ as a whole, also if one considers the partial homophony of the Akkadian term kiššatum, meaning ‘control’.

About the aformentione Sumerogram UB,^{Note 9} it is not clear what it precisely means in this very context, since the original pictogram consist of a five-pointed star, a shape not suitable to refer to the four regions of the world.

Naram-Sin adopted this term as referring only to the territory of what we are calling Syro-Mesopotamia: the two great rivers, the adjacent irrigated regions and the drainage basins towards these rivers; this title will be in use until the end of this new ‘imperial’ reality (mid- second millennium BC; cf. below, section 18.2), when Syro-Mesopotamia spit into two: Assyria in the north and Babylon in the south.

Even though, Naram-Sin’s ‘empire’ did not encompass the whole world, since these ‘four regions of the world’ were not at all well-defined.

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10.7 ‘Mesopotamia’

Indeed, the term ‘four river banks’ reflects the -emic conception of the Syro-Mesopotamian ‘scribal ecumene’ (cf. above, section 8.2); it is, in fact, the Mesopotamian denomination for ‘Mesopotamia’.

The Greek term ‘Mesopotamia’^{Note 10} is not fitting ancient local inhabitants’ mindset both lexically and semantically, for two reasons:

1. the area between the two rivers is the least productive;
2. several of the most important sites are not between the two great rivers.

Therefore, a possible more suitable term could be ‘Parapotamia’, already attested in Pliny the Elder (25-79 AD), Naturalis historia 6:44, to designate a Roman province on the Tigris.

Another important consideration is that the title adopted by Naram-Sin had its roots, at least conceptually, already in the time of Sargon and ended with Naram-Sin successor, Shar-kali-sharri: basically, it lasted just four generations.

Thus, this term is appropriate just for the period (even long) of the Akkadian ‘empire’.

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Notes

• Note 1: on this topic, see mostly Buccellati 2006 Emic. _{Back to text}
• Note 2: interestingly enough, this is the opposite of the modern, academic subdivision of Egypt (reflected also in ancient texts) into an ‘upper Egypt’ (to the South) and a ‘lower Egypt’ (to the North); this opposition of perception is due in fact to the different flow stream of the Nile and the two Mesopotamian main rivers; in a document dated to Thutmose III (1479-1425 BC), it is also noteworthy to stress how the pharaoh, having reached the Euphrates, was surprised by the fact that the rivers in Mesopotamia flowed ‘on reverse’. On this topic, see e.g. Spalinger 1978 Thutmose and most of all Goedicke 1974 Inverted. _{Back to text}
• Note 3: In Mesopotamia, the river (nārum in Akkadian) could also be deified, such in the case of the river conceived as a judge in ordeal trials; in this instance, the river was appelled with the Sumerogram ^dÍD, i.e. Sumerian i₇-lú-ru-gú (literally, ‘the river that receives man’; cf. Edzard 1980 Id), probably read ‘Idlurugu’ or ‘Ilurugu’ (see e P S D 2 at this link; cf. the divine name here); see Rd Aonline, sub voce; cf. Sallaberger 1993 Kalender, p. 46 and Soldt 2005 Ordal, p. 124, also available online on Rd Aonline, at this link (cf. also Krebernik 2008 Richtergottheiten and Scurlock 2011 Rubbing, p. 94). _{Back to text}
• Note 4: About purification spells and rituals, see e.g. Scurlock 2011 Rubbing, p. 103. _{Back to text}
• Note 5: It is noteworthy to recall that, according to Old-Babylonian (but maybe even earlier) mythology, the two great rivers were dug by the Igigi-gods; moreover, it is also interesting that this task was then passed to humankind: in this case, the myth could reflect the actual and political action of digging canals for farming and transportation purposes. On this topic see a passage from the first tablet of Atrahasis, available in the excerpts (after Foster 2005 Before, pp. 230, 238-239, ll. 25-26 and 338; Italian translation in Ermidoro 2017 Atrahasis, pp. 77, 91, ll. 21-22 and 337). _{Back to text}
• Note 6: For the Sumerian lugal, ‘king’, see e P S D 2 at this link. _{Back to text}
• Note 7: For the texts of the so-called Res Gestae Sargonis, see Westenholz 1997 Legends (about the defeat of Lugal-zagesi by Sargon, see specifically on pp. 231-237). On Lugal-zagesi, see e.g. Liverani 2014 History, pp. 112-113, 133; cf. also Van De Mieroop 2016 History, pp. 54, 68. The text of Lugal-zagesi’s royal inscription is available, along with the transliteration from the original Sumerian, on E T C S R I at this link. _{Back to text}
• Note 8: An image of this stela (today in the Ancient Orient Museum, Istanbul) can be found on Mnamon, at this link. _{Back to text}
• Note 9: For this Sumerian logogram, see the e P S D 2 at this link. For its original pictorial sign, see Malbran Labat 1988 Cuneiform, pp. 138-139 (no. 306, see image). _{Back to text}
• Note 10: Needless to say, ‘Mesopotamia’ is not a Mesopotamian term, but a Greek one, meaning ‘the land between the two rivers (Μεσοποτᾰμία, a deadjectival nominalization coined on the adjective μεσο-ποτάμιος, ‘between rivers’; see L S J, sub voce). Interestingly, a same meaning is in the Arabic بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن Bilād ar-Rāfidayn or بَيْن ٱلنَّهْرَيْن Bayn an-Nahrayn, the Persian میان‌رودان miyân rudân, and the Syriac ܒܝܬ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ Beth Nahrain ‘(land) between the (two) rivers’); it has been argued that the term could be a calque of the older Aramaic term (byn nhryn), with the Aramaic term itself likely being a calque of the Akkadian birit nārim (see e.g. Finkelstein 1962 Mesopotamia). [Cf. also the Egyptian toponym ‘Naharina’, referring to the area of Mittani, i.e. Egyptian nhrn, a loanword from Semitic: see Wb, 2.287.1; cf. Hoch 1994 Semitic, no. 253]. On this topic, see also the theme “Mesopotamia”. _{Back to text}