Mesopotamian Politics

I. The Argument
The Narrative

Part II
Chapter 8

Impulses Beyond the Territorial Base

Marco De Pietri – December 2023

8.1 The Institutional Impulse

The expanded territorial state was configured as an “expansion” and the relationship of individuals is different from the situation in the nuclear territorial state (cf. Chapter 7.3): the physical and perceptual distance from the center implies that the ties of solidarity were based on factors that were less immediately apparent, but still sufficiently strong to guarantee the cohesion of the social group. This implies two features:

an aggregative push developed from the base, causing individuals to recognize a commonality among themselves that found a seal in the state structure;
an aggregative force from on high developed through which individuals are coopted as structural elements of a pre-existing organization.

“These two distinct and complementary impulses mark the history of the institutional development of the two following millennia, the first in a direction that we can define as ethnic, the second in an administrative direction” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 108).

Nevertheless, we remain substantially in the world of state-cities in the specific sense I have already referred to (cf. Chapter 7.3), through which the city still remains the hub of the state 8.3.

8.2 The Three Ecumenes

Inexorably, there were considerable differences in this great new world that exploded over the course of a few centuries at the end of the millennia and millennia of gestation. We can in fact envisage three different ecumenes^{Note 1}, i.e. three geographical and cultural regions that include the whole world that was characterized by the institutional development.

There are numerous factors that serve to define these three regions, in particular socio-political, ideological, geographical, linguistic, and ethnic factors, even if clear boundaries cannot be stated (cf. Map 5).

Hereafter is a list of the three main ecumenes:

the Sumerian ecumene (cf. Map 7);
the scribal ecumene (cf. Chapters 7.6.-7.7);
the urban ecumene (cf. Chapters 7.8.-7.9);

8.3 The Two ‘Urbanizations’

The term “first urbanization” refers to the foundation of new settlements as the direct consequence of the urban revolution between the end of the fourth and the beginning of the third millennium (6.10-6.11).

The term “second urbanization” refers to a very different phenomenon. There were no new foundations, but just a resumption of urban centers that already existed around the middle of the third millennium, where development was weakened in the immediately preceding centuries. This is therefore not, on closer inspection, “urbanization” if we take the word to mean a transformation of the territorial fabric, through which cities emerged that did not exist before. This is also why there were no new foundations: the cities remained as such and there was no intermediate space that allowed for the creation of new centers.

8.4 The Bipolar Dimension of the Expanded Territorial State

The phenomenon of the “second urbanization” suggests considerations concerned with political structure as such, with two opposite features:

on the one hand, we can attribute, at least partly, the urban weakening, or crisis, to the internal structure of the expanded territorial state;
on the other hand, the other pole refers instead to the aggregative function of the expanded territorial state. Its internal dynamism was validated by the creation of an organism that broke the barrier of the direct perceptual relationship between individuals and the center of power, the city.

8.5 Expansionist Factors in the Nuclear State

It was not just the expanded state that suggested the possibility of political structures that transcended the limits of the urban horizon. Nonetheless, two aspects deserve to be better outlined:

on the one hand, there is a dynamics that tends to the consolidation of the internal cohesion of the social group through a reduction of the impact of external and therefore foreign factors. This is translated into a tendency to affirm one”s own space to live (Lebensraum);
on the other hand, the directional centers of the social group developed an impulse that could be called instinctive to construct an increasingly large base at that pyramid, with a tendency to incorporate external but contiguous organisms, especially with the advent of the universal state, the empire (cf. 9.2). This was translated, even when every possibility of political independence had broken down, into an explicit force aimed at maintaining at least an administrative self-management and a certain level of fiscal accommodation (cf. 19.2).

8.6 Like the Earth Seen from the Moon

The diffusion of models of production deeply affected the relationships between individuals in the fourth millennium BC; three feature of this phenomenon can be stressed:

the development of a symmetrical system;
the great distances involved;
the consolidation of ideological landscapes.

This movement also impled a major perceptual transformation: individuals came to be in contact in a recurring manner with different landscapes.

While in the prehistorical period there were just unidirectional movements, now, after the fourth millennium BC, movements are also conceived along bidirectional itineraries.

“The motherland could then be seen seen from afar as its own entity, receiving a ‘definition’ that, coming from without, proposed a physiognomy that was different and equal at the same time different because it was seen as a self-contained entity; and yet equal because being isolated in a ‘foreign’ land strengthens the sense of original belonging. It was the way an astronaut may look today at the earth from the moon. […] The inhabitants of the cities of origin developed a form of perceptual geography that reflected this new landscape in ways that were not just fantastic but somehow anchored in concrete reality. These were only mental ‘maps,’ without a cartographic consistency^{Note 2} […]” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 113).

8.6.1 From Expansion to a Symmetrical System: the Colonies

After the urban revolution (cf. Chapter 2.1), the Mesopotamian experiments spread in different cities showinh a similar material culture.

The term “expansion” has become something of a technical term to define the nature of this movement: a real system develops, and the centers of this expansion are arranged as intermediate stations along well-defined trajectories, constituing a well planned control over the territory with a conceptualization of the entire sequence.

We can speak of “colonies” when the centers maintained an internal coherence in the material culture. The most important expansion, reflecting an asymmetrical system involving centers like Susa, Nagar, Habuba Khebira and Jebel Aruda, is known as “Uruk expansion” from the name of the most important city of the period (cf. Chapter 6.10.1).

During the third millennium BC, the system changed reaching a nearly total symmetry: “the colonies as such disappeared, but the commercial network subsisted, founded on the urban and state centers that are independent from a concrete Sumerian presence. This transformation finds confirmation in the transfer from Uruk to Ur (cf. Chapter 6.10.4) as the predominant commercial center in the south. An inevitable component of this new symmetrical system […] is the situation of conflict between the various centers and the creation of great blocks of alliances that oppose one another” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 114).

8.6.2 Long Distance Trade

The great Syro-Mesopotamian rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, were kind of “highways” for travelling; the first river used for commercial needs (already in the fourth millennium BC) was the Tigris, especially in the Khabur area; at the beginning of the third millennium BC, with the advent of Mari (cf. Chapter 6.11.2), also the Euphrates was exploited likewise. In this respect, Mari was not a colony, but a symmetrical counterpart of the Sumerian cities in southern Mesopotamia.

This new long-distance commercial network required a series of intermediate passages, starting from the identification of the goods until their delivery to the final destination, leading to the organization of precise and well-controlled trade routes. For this reason we can describe “market” as another consequence of para-perceptual requirements (cf. Chapter 3.1).

Furthermore, “the “merchant”^{Note 3} is not necessarily the one who travels and transports the goods, but the one at the apex of the organization, controlling even its furthest branches” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 115).

Two small settlements of the fourth millennium BC in the region of Mari, namely Qraya and Ramadi (for which cf. Chapters 6.11.1-6.11.2 with note 10), can be interpreted as “which are clearly not urban in nature, as small posts expressly created by the urban centers of Khabur (in particular Nagar/Tell Brak) for the provision of salt and fish. […] the production of salt at Qraya is due to an initiative from without, given that there are no traces of a local market […]. The industrial aspect of this approach reveals a very high level of sophistication in the management of the needs resulting from the structure of the new urban society (see above, 5.12)” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 115).

Another important long-distance trade route was that leading to Iran and Afghanistan, covering a distance of ca. 400 km (cf. Chapter 7.9); along this route there were no intermediate urban centers and thus the travel required an adaptation of techniques of transport.

To the West, the commercial trades did not go farther then the much closer Cyprus; to the South, they reached Dilmun; to the South-East, they reached the coasts of India up to Lothal; to the North, the Tărtăria tablets (typologically similar to the proto-scribal tablets of Jemdet Nasr^{Note 4}) suggest possible remote contacts with the Danube valley.

8.6.3 Ideological Landscapes

The great transformations described in the previous chapters reshaped the geographical image of Mesopotamia; here, there were no non-urban interstices between cities and their surroundings (see above; cf. Map 6).

“The urban landscape is therefore not just that of the city settlements as such, but the territorial whole that results from the reciprocal relationship between adjacent city-states. Thus, a real cultural landscape took shape, one that was superimposed over the physical landscape, even if it obviously remained strictly tied to it” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 116).

There was no cartographical mentality, but only mental maps which represented a comprehensive perspective developing an ideological landscape echoed in mythology and epics.

This “mythological landscape” was very wide:

to the West,it reached the mountains of Lebanon, where Gilgamesh and Enkidu faced Huwawa, in the “Forest of Cedar”^{Note 5} (see e.g. George 2000 Gilgamesh, pp. 39-47 [see excerpt]);
the the East, it speaded to Iran, named Aratta in some texts (cf. Chapter 6.10.1);
to the South, it faced the Gulf and the Bahrain, where Dilmun was probably located;
to the South-East, it encountered the Indian subcontinent, with Magan and Meluhha (later texts, speak of these lands in the way of an ideological manifesto, not dissimilar to the Greek Iliad, on eastern colonies, and Odyssey, about western colonization).

[Cf. this ideological landscape to the actual commercial routes described above: the borders and edges of the geographical mindset deeply vary.]

On the one hand, some gaps are significant, namely Cyprus and the Tur-Abdin; on the other hand, Meluhha or Aratta (rich in natural resources) were absent in this ideological landscape.

The absence of urban centers in the scribal ecumene from Ebla (cf. Chapter 6.11.4) to Urkesh (cf. Chapter 7.6.1) and Nagar (cf. Chapter 6.10.6 and above) is even more noteworthy.

Moreover, from the Sumerian King List, “it seems that the northern boundaries from Mari to Hamazi proposed an effective limit to geographical imagination, with the only exception of the forest of Lebanon” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 117).

8.7 Realignment of Structural Elements

Besides the expansion of the territorial perception described in the previous section, we can also outline three aspects of realignment:

the pairing of two state-cities; i.e. agglutination adjacent to one another;
a federative formula that associated a greater number of state-cities institutionally;
a process of homogenous aggregation where a hegemonic city-state institutionally assimilated other city-states into a single administrative structure.

Moreover, two other significant aspects must be emphasized:

the fact that these phenomena were manifested exclusively on the level of the nuclear territorial state, the state-city; on the contrary, the ethnic and tribal developments (cf. cf. Chapter 16) can be traced to the structure of the expanded territorial state;
one additional, much more radical, experiment took place, which marked the beginning of the following period: it is the imperial experiment that took the form of a process of heterogeneous aggregation (cf. Chapter 12.1).

8.7.1 Agglutination: Lagash, Uruk

On the agglutinate system applied on the shape of pre-urban settlements, see mostly Hodder 2010 Emergence; cf. also Schmidt 2011 Costruirono.

[Associate editor’s note: since this section is very brief, it is reported here verbatim in its entirety.]

“The simplest type is characterized by the joining of two (or more) neighboring cities, through a type of agglutinative pairing that substantially derives from the physical proximity of the settlements. It is the case of Lagash and Girsu^{Note 6}: the first corresponds to the modern site of Al-Hiba, the second to the modern site of Tello, which was identified with Lagash itself at the beginning of the excavations. With the passage of time, Nina (modern Surgul) was also included in the state of Lagash. An analogous case is perhaps that of Uruk, which includes two immediately adjacent settlements (without surroundings that divide them) which were possibly originally distinct, Eanna and Kullab” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 118 = section 8.7.1).

8.7.2 The Federative Formula: Nippur and the Kengir League

The Kengir “league” (Sumerian KI.EN.GI = “league”, literally, “lordship on the totality of the land”), of which is told about in later texts, is a phenomenon datable to the beginning of the third millennium BC.

Mythology tells us about the assembly of the gods gathered to elect the head of their community; in the myths, the city of Nippur (cf. Chapter 6.10.2), which has been never the seat of a “king”, became the sacred center of such a league.

“In a euhemeristic perspective, the mythical narrative is therefore seen as the transfer of a concrete political reality to the divine sphere, which in turn would be inspired by the “democratic” situation of the first city-states: especially in cases of danger, or, in any case, in response to specific circumstances, the assembly of free men would nominate an individual as a lord (en in Sumerian) or a military chief (lugal)^{Note 7}, who would then have followed certain explicit instructions from the assembly” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 118).

The historical entity of this league can be further supported by the attestations of the concept of “Sumer” (the Akkadian equivalent of Kengir) or even of title like “king of Sumer”, i.e. “lugal Kengir” (carried by Enshakushana of Uruk, middle of the third millennium BC); later on, the land of Akkad will be added to this royal title in the form KI.EN.GI KI.URI (for Ki-Uri, i.e., “[the] land [of] Akkad” see also here).

8.7.3 Homogenous Aggregation: Kish

Kish (for which cf. also Chapter 6.10.3) can be pinpointed as an example of an homogenous aggregation; this phenomenon shows three principal characteristics:

the entities aggregated as a single new political reality were structurally homogenous; from this concept, also the very notion of provinces came up, i.e. “a center with an administrative but not political role that can be considered equivalent to the hegemonic city (administratively) but subordinate to it (politically)” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 119); later on, this concept will lead to the development of imperial provinces, under the Assyrian Empire (cf. Chapter 22.2);
the new concept of capital city emerged, sometimes involving the creation of new-founded cities (i.e., cities founded ex novo, from the very scratch; cf. Chapter 9.3);
this new aggregated entities were geographically contiguous (cf. Chapter 7.1); the perceptual belongings in no longer anchored to a specific close and visible monument (like the ziggurats, for which cf. Chapter 5.4) but to the sense of belonging to a social-political group.

A clear example and historical manifestation of this phenomenon resides in the city of Kish (for which cf. also Chapter 6.10.3), which emerges as the first true “Mesopotamian” state, denoting an univeral sovereignity at least up to the Assyrian Empire (for which cf. Chapter 22.2).

“This is the “Kish tradition” that came to mean, in modern nomenclature, the primary role of this center in the consolidation of a conscience which could be called pan-Mesopotamian” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 120).

Notes

Note 1: “The term is a transposition from the Greek oikoumene ‘the inhabited (world),’ which by its nature is normally found in the singular” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 109). For the meaning of the Greek term οἰκουμένη, see the related lemma in the T L G. _{Back to text}
Note 2: for a discussion about Mesopotamian conception of the cosmos and related first maps of the world, see e.g. Masetti- Mora 2002 Mondo. _{Back to text}
Note 3: the Akkadian term used to define this role was tamkārum, a loan word on the Sumerian damgar. One of the best examples of commercial trades in the Ancient Near East, despite belonging to the beginning of the second millennium BC, is the Paleo-Assyrian network established between Aššur and some colonies (known with Akkadian term kārum) in Anatolia (the most important was Kanesh/Kültepe, see Trolle Larsen 2015 Kanesh); on this topic, see e.g. Burke 2021 Mercenaries. _{Back to text}
Note 4: about the “Tărtăria tablets” see e.g. Makkay 1968 Tartaria and Paliga 1993 Tartaria; for the “Jemdet Nasr tablets”, see Jemdet Nasr and Matthews 1992 Jemdet Nasr. _{Back to text}
Note 5: it seems interesting, at least to me, that the memory of Lebanon as the “Land of Cedar” is alive still today (just have a view at the national flag of the country, where it is clear how the cedar is the national emblem of Lebanon, a memory also preserved in the official coat of arms Maronite Church); this is a very well-documented examplification of how a far in time, but even long-lasting memory, can tie past and present together. _{Back to text}
Note 6: cf. Chapter 6.10.5. _{Back to text}
Note 7: on these Sumerian terms referring to leadership/lordship, cf. Chapter 6, note 4. _{Back to text}