Mesopotamian Politics

I. The Argument
The Narrative

Part I
Chapter 1

The Coming into Being of Society

Marco De Pietri – October 2023

1.1 Nature and Dynamism of Tensionality

Here comes the first substantial concept of the volume, i.e. that of “tentionality”, described as a dynamic process which implies the creation, by way of a kind of “agglutinative/aggregative” phenomenon, of the first societies, i.e. groups of individuals (formerly detached each other) bound by physical contacts; this feature, shared by all animals, is a particular feature of humankind.

Even if this dynamism is shared by animals (like ants or bees) and humans, the latters present two peculiarities:

they are characterized by a historic dynamics, i.e. a long sequence of historical transformation which can be divided into different patterns (or paradigms), a phenomenon of which humankind is, at least partially, aware of: it is the human concept of history vs. the less structured and conscious animal notion of mere continuity in time;
there is in human history a demographic dynamics, leading to a progressive, numeric expansion of individuals who, recognizing themselves as members sharing common features, group into a specific society.

These two concepts are well exemplified in 4^th millennium Mesopotamia, the cradle (or one of the cradles) of the so-called “urban revolution”, labeled and defined as such at first by V. Gordon Childe (see Childe 1950 Urban).

1.2 The First Axial Age

A coherent evolution of the phenomena described above led to historical radical changes, involving both geographical and historical axes, in the period between 15,000 BC to the 4^th millennium BC, a period which could be considered as the first Axial Age, a term denoting a timespan when important events strongly re-shaped a particular region – the term, in the original German Achsenzeit, has been created by Karl Jaspers to define the timespan between the 8^th and the 2^nd century BC, when many religious and philosophical innovations strongly affected many regions of the ancient world (see Jaspers 1953 Origin; cf. excerpts). This very long-time process finally ended in the explosion of the urban revolution in ancient Mesopotamia.

1.3 The Three Fundamental Characteristics

Cf. Chapter 2.6.

From factual data, we can infer three basic features of the phenomenon described above:

a development and increasing of the complexity of perception, leading to the formation of an intuitive “para-perceptual” system (different from simple reflection) implying a super-sensory awareness and a conscious symbolic expression of reality; this capability (which is a dimension of instinct) originated from the capacity of associating diverse and remote perceptions;
a progressive distancing from nature, modifying the environment and building up conceptual super-structures ending in new mental and physical constructs;
a kind of goal-directness or projectuality, i.e. the ability to predict specific results, anticipating future events; this implies the discovery of the consequentiality of things and past or present (and even future) events, uncovering their causal network(s).

1.4 The Extrinsication of Faculties

The capacity of para-perception and projectuality allowed human beings to abstract from nature and to realize functional objects created by modifying nature, in a process characterized by the repetition of typological elements (i.e., programmed sequences = patterns; cf. CAR, Wynn 1989, with the related monograph), with a specific purpose; a general feature of this phenomenon is that the produced objects serve as extension of physical capabilities.

There was in the end a growth in complexity, encountered in two moments:

production;
use.

This process entails and implies the concept of chaîne opératoire, where “the single segments of a sequence can be intuitive, but the sequence as a whole, the production chain, might have such complexity that it requires a higher level of reflection and a consequent, very complex, level of communication” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 16). This is, in the end, the very concept of spatial competence (the capacity to conceive of volume ratios that can be modified [Buccellati, Origins, p. 17]).

The whole coherence of the process described above is particularly exemplified by the plastic arts and mural representations, possible just if we consider the capability of abstraction, along with those of phantasy and imagination (not to mention the need for communication, implying the necessity of a fairly articulated language).

This extrinsication of an ‘imaginative mind’ and the repetition of patterns also led to the creation of a sense of hierarchy, since from the para-perception to the actual realization of a functional object or a mural representation, it looks very likely that at the same time also a ‘hierarchical mind’ (i.e. ordered in time and sequences) was already at work.

[This is important to be stressed, since the formation of a hierarchical society is specifically what happened in Mesopotamia with the urban revolution.]

1.5 The Invention of Time

Some very ancient archeological artifacts have been interpreted by archaeologists as tools on which transcribe observations of the lunar phases: they were, most likely, the first primitive calendars (see e.g. Buccellati, G. 2014, pp. 27-31). Analyzing the incisions, it turns out clear that these signs were the result of a process repeated in time, probably connected in some ways to the beginning of agriculture (cf. Chapter 3.2).

The temporal sequence of subsequent observations and records on these ‘archetypical’ calendars are a clear clue for the awareness of the concept of temporal sequence, a process which shows a proper, inner syntax; this is evidently a manifestation of the para-perception discussed above.

In a way, this was the first ‘invention’^{Note 1} of time (for a wider discussion on G. Buccellati conception of time[s], see Buccellati 2014 Time).

Furthermore, graves are a first manifestation of the religious spirit (cf. e.g., Mes-Rel, note 6.4r) which involves the belief that human life does not end with physical death, suggesting either a reflection on the continuation of life (a concept tied with time) and a confrontation with the absolute^{Note 2}; this reflection and this confrontation are exemplified by rituals, which are, in fact, cultic actions repeated in time and, therefore, necessarily connected to the idea of time (and flow of time, even in a circular or linear perspective).

The two core aspects enucleated in this section, i.e. calendars and graves, are related to a cosmic time (the former) and an individual time (the latter); within this system, human life can be regarded as a paradigm of the discovery of time, conceived not as an amorphous flow, but, on the contrary, as a “very specific chain of segments that defines the development, segments that do not ‘exist’ as standalone physical realities, but are instead declared as forms of thought” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 18)^{Note 3}.

In short, time is “a conceptual morphology. It exists in itself as a flow, but it exists in the human mind as the whole of parts” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 18); the absolutely innovative product of the ‘invention’ of time is a new cluster of conceptual morphologies which, to be shared and communicated (and even transmitted through generations), requires another, new specific tool: an articulated language (see following section).

1.6 The Reification of Thought

Besides the possible and debated origins and datings of an articulated language, it is without any doubt that it is a process, thus, a phenomenon developed during a considerable period of time. Anyhow, we can state that this process happened 10,000 to 50,000 years BP^{Note 4}; more precisely, even if always approximately, 10,000 years BP can be considered as a first watershed, when the repertoire of language was already achieved and later documented in the 4^th millennium BC with the second watershed, the ‘invention’ of writing (cf. Chapter 4.2; cf. also, about the relationships between language and religion, Mes-Rel, note 1.1u and note 1.1u; see also Buccellati 2014 Time with the related excerpt).

This was a crucial moment in human history, since language allowed an “intrinsic capacity of language to externalize thought – to give it a shape, so to speak, capable of being communicated” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 19); this capability, in the end, brought about the reification of thought, in which two of the aforementioned factors are crossing each other: the complexity of perceptions (cf. Chapter 1.4) and the distancing from nature (cf. 1.3), two relevant aspects of the first Axial Age.

[On this topic, cf. also the Excerpts of Buccellati 2012 Coerenza in Mes-Rel.]

1.7 The Identifiability of People and Places

Articulate language also allowed the possibility of referring, without the need for a physical encounter (thus, leaving aside physical perception), to singular individuals with personal names and to places also with proper names (a first step towards onomastics and toponomy), in an unequivocal way, without doubts about identifiability, through names (cf. Mes-Rel).

This is a further detachment, in a way, from nature (cf. above), since referring to entities with their name, without the need of physical contact, is a “mono-referential criterion […] which defines and isolates a phenomenon in a super-sensory and para-percetptual (cf. above) way” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 19).

Proper names, the most ancient linguistic fossils of Mesopotamia, dating back to the ‘agricultural revolution’ (cf. Chapter 3.2), contributed to create a specific human world in which each entity is referred to with an univocal (but, sometimes, even ‘pluri-vocal’^{Note 5}) parallel identity which informs the human imaginary correlative system of naming (cf. note 1.7c).

This capability of creating and using names brings about two important phenomena:

the transferability and convertibility of identity (between res [nominanda] e res nominata (each name is an unicum reference for a singular entity);
the nominability, i.e. the possibility of naming something/someone even in the absence, both horizontal (geographically displayed) and vertical (absence due to death = vertical communication before world and Netherworld) of the named entity; the physical presence of the thing/person is no longer necessary, being it sublimated by the unicum name (cf. Chapter 4.4).

We are facing the phenomenon of the creation of a mental map of the (nameable) world.

1.8 The Group as Community

The development of an articulated language also allowed the creation of groups of people having a common identity: a sense of community which is, on the one hand, no longer tied to physically forced associations and, on the other hand, unified by awareness and sense of community.

These first communities have two fundamental characteristics:

the recognition of a substantial autonomy of the individual; this also led to the need for unity, forcing a commitment to integration;
the temporal continuity of these groups, leading to the growing of community awareness which is in a way prodrome to the sense of history.

Graves, in transcending time, can be regarded as clear evidence for this sense of community (i.e., continuation against the rupture of individual autonomy) and this sense of history (i.e., continuation beyond the rupture of relational reality.

1.9 Culture and Tradition

From the developments of the first Axial Age two important factors emerged about these innovations:

they spread over a vast geographical area, leading to the formation of different even if homogenous cultures (= expansion in space);
they consolidate increasingly over time, creating the first traditions (= expansion in time) which are strictly connected to apprenticeship (cf. above).

These two factors are typical of humankind, since animals (as far as we know) do not have this para-perceptual dimension.

Another phenomenon that influenced this way of perceiving reality and way of thinking was indeed the intergenerational relationship and encounter which, through tradition, connects distant moments and memories marking the beginning of historical reflection.

1.10 Presages of Politics

All in all, it was thanks to the development of an articulated language that the first mechanisms of control^{Note 6} eventually ended in the formation of the first forms of politics.

The three major factors involved in the process of formation of the first political systems can here be briefly resumed:

para-perception, which allowed the aggregation of the first communities (cf. above);
sense of a super-sensorial reality, a way to conceive super-structures, i.e. structures which are non existing in nature (cf. above);
ability to predict, enabling people to gain an ability to organize a community through a political control which is entrusted to a leader; this phenomenon also led to the hierarchization of the primordial societies (cf. above);
the swift from story – personal memory – to history, which is properly a memory shared by a community through tradition (cf. above).

Notes

Note 1: the term ‘invention’ has to be understood here in its twofold meanings, current and etymological, as clearly stated by G. Buccellati: “I use the term ‘invention’ in a dual sense – the current sense of ‘creation’ and the archaic sense of ‘finding,’ the latter derived from the original value of the Latin etymon invenire, as found, for example, in the title given by Vivaldi to his opus 8, Il cimento dell’armonia e dell’inventione [Vivaldi 1725 Cimento] (twelve concertos of which the first four take their title from the four seasons)” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 17, fn. 1). Cf. also the dedicated Theme _{Back to text}
Note 2: on the concept of absolute, a cornerstone of G. Buccellati book about religion (i.e. Buccellati 2024 When), see Mes-Rel. _{Back to text}
Note 3: we could maybe advance an equation or, at least a comparison, between this ‘chain of time’ and the well-known ‘chain of rhapsodic inspiration’ told by Plato (see Ion, 533d-534a). _{Back to text}
Note 4: for a cronological overview, refer to Tables; for this specific period, look particularly at Table 1. _{Back to text}
Note 5: I use here this definition of ‘pluri-vocal’ vs. univocal because I think we cannot exclude that the same place was referred to by the same human group with different names, as it happens, for instance, even today with the name of the city of Jerusalem, named as such by English speakers, while it is known by the Jews as יְרוּשָׁלַיִם, Y^erūšālayim (close to ‘Jerusalem’, even if grammatically a ‘false-dual’) but القُدس, al-Quds (‘the Holy’) by the Muslims (in any case, we would have to admit that this distinction is correlated to different ethnical/cultural identities and traditions) [maybe, add also the example of the Hittite Maraššantiya = classical Ἅλυς/Halys = Turkish Kızılırmak, where it is worth noticing the origin/etymology of the toponyms: from a divinity name the first, after (even with not certainty) a salt deposit in Ximene region the second, and after the color of its sand the third]; Note of Associate Editor. _{Back to text}
Note 6: the term ‘control’ is here used not in the sense of ‘verification’ but in the sense of ‘domination’ as in the expressions ‘self-control,’ ‘birth control,’ ‘access control,’ ‘put’ or ‘keep under control,’ and so on (cf. Buccellati, Origins, p. 22, fn. 2). _{Back to text}