Petr Charvát - Mesopotamia Before History (2008, Routledge)

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Figure 5.12 This Late Uruk grave from Jemdet Nasr (Matthews 1990, 36, 38–39, Fig. 12 on p. 39) attests to the significance of commensality in the period of emergence of the first statehood. For his or her journey into the nether world the deceased received a bitumen-coated basket, a stone bowl and a pot, all filled in with shells. At least one spouted vase and two, presumably, drinking cups completed the ‘table service’.

bitumen-coated basket with pots filled with shells, as well as a drinking service consisting of at least one spouted vase and two cups. For later (OB) social dimension of commensality practices see Charpin 1990, 81 and Matthews 1990, n. 51. Of exceptional interest is the sign ŠAKIR(?) (ZATU No. 509, p. 282), likely to have denoted a vessel or a container and combining the UKKIN and DUB signs. If there indeed existed ‘tablets of the assembly’, the community may well have introduced some collective form of procedure or proceedings involving written records. Several possibilities are open: some of the texts could have recorded in a visible and hence controllable form the resolution(s) of the assembly; texts prepared before the occasion could have been approved or rejected by the assembly; written records of some transactions could have been checked by the assembly who may have had the right to demand a public account of running the community affairs; etc., etc. A parallel may be constituted by the later, Jemdet Nasr age NI+RU ‘fund’ which had a registrar (SANGA NI+RU, Charvát 1997, 16). Of course,

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nobody is perfect and there is probably no need to idealize the ‘consensual democracy’ of the Uruk culture period. Nevertheless, the facts that the UKKIN sign survived this epoch and that the KINGALs retained their positions and did not merge with the Uruk culture élite do show that the assembly managed to defend its position in public life.

As to the holding of outlying regions, the Uruk culture bearers left the existing structures in place and only superimposed the uppermost administrative layer (Lupton 1996, 57–58). Of course, the Sumerian overlords took care to insert their own agencies at vital points of the system, keeping them under their control. One such ‘supervision point’ has recently been excavated above the middle Euphrates ford at Hacinebi, Urfa province, south-east Turkey (Stein et al. 1996).

An attempt to discern the Uruk culture conceptualization of the social order may now be made, however theoretical and perhaps far-fetched it may sound. We have noted on several occasions the importance of the white-red-black colour triad for the Uruk culture. Now this triad seems to have influenced also the deliberate choice of materials and scenes of cylinder seals (Asher-Greve and Stern 1983). White correlates here with fish, pseudofish and animal rows, red with pigtailed figures, animal rows, vessels and vessels on stands, and black also with pigtailed figures. Let us now recall the decoration of the ‘temple’ of Tepe Gawra XI in which the front ‘cella’ wall with the single niche, clearly in the most important position, bore white paint while the short wall segments separating the ‘cella’ from the ‘nave’ displayed, turned into the ‘nave’ space, coatings of red paint. As noted above, white colour tends to be associated with divinity, purity and fertility while red carries the symbolism of life, energy and sex (Bruce Dickson 1990, 206). White may thus allude to the world of Uruk period gods, concerned principally with the fertility of all forms of the earth’s organic life, and perhaps to the sphere of EN and NIN. The other two colours may stand for two ‘estates’ of the Uruk corporate entity, the élite (LUGAL, KINGAL—red) and the commoners (LÚ, MÚRUB, GURUŠ—black). Here, of course, the three-colour decoration of the court area of the Uruk-Eanna IVb structures (see p. 103), complemented by the black-and-white mosaic on the round pillars and black covering the façade of the staircase ramp, may be highly relevant. Were the individual areas ‘assigned’ by their colours to particular social groups? The lack of human depictions on white-colour seals may be symptomatic as early phases of religious systems tend to refuse images of the gods, referring to them by symbols only, as was undoubtedly the case in Mesopotamia (witness the symbolization of divinities in the script). On the other end of the social ladder, the later name by which the Sumerians referred to themselves, namely ‘black-headed people’ (sag-gig-ga, see Limet 1982, 259), might have originally belonged only to the lower echelon of the Uruk culture society and, by extension and the process of social ascent, might have later on referred to the people as a whole. Comparable cases close to the modern reader would include the German word ‘Mann’ (from the medieval designation Vassal’ to modern ‘man, male’) or Czech ‘člověk’ (from the medieval ‘subject, serf’ to modern ‘human being’). That, however, is hardly more than a hypothesis.

The professionally differentiated Uruk culture society thus may have been socially articulated into two strata, the élite and the commoners, The role of the élite, comprising perhaps the brahmana (EN, NIN) and ksatriya (LUGAL, KINGAL) segments of the Indian caste system, was a harmonization of the divine and human world both in time and space and the protection of their communities from obnoxious influences both spiritual

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and temporal. The commoners (LÚ, MÚRUB, GURUŠ), conceivable in the vaisya roles, were to work faithfully and honestly, ‘expected to do their duties’. The degree of cooperation and of group coherence remained high, consolidated by regularly held assemblies which continued the traditions of commensality of the preceding period. Any possible conflicts were turned against the outsiders to this system, who nevertheless posed a distinct threat to the Uruk community. A similar idea of Uruk culture social binarity has been developed by Mark Brandes (in his work on the Uruk ‘Pfeilerhalle’ mosaics, cited in Heinrich 1982, 51).

This social coherence of the Uruk culture sphere manifested itself most visibly in a conspicuous social phenomenon, the redistribution of surplus mobilized from the producers. Redistribution of goods produced in the centres of the Susiana plain and diffused over the countryside has been extensively studied and discussed (Wright and Johnson 1975, esp. pp. 279–281, 283; Johnson 1976; Wright, Redding and Pollock 1989, 106–107). I have argued elsewhere (Charvát 1988a and 1992a) that redistribution is to be inferred from the sealings of immovable storage spaces (‘lock’ sealings). Here something goes at first in and then, under somebody’s control, out. Sealing of doors, for the first time practised more systematically in the Uruk culture sphere (Torcia Rigillo 1991), is virtually coterminous with the invention of the cylinder seal sometime in Uruk VII–VI. This is likely to represent an emblem of a collective entity (pp. 142–143; Charvát 1992a) and was probably introduced first in—or even by—the major centres of the period. In more recent excavations, redistribution is also attested by cases in which seals and sealings from a single site do not match one another. This has been documented at Habuba Kabira (Strommenger 1980b, 485), Tell Kannas (Finet 1975, 159) and Jebel Aruda (van Driel 1983, 34f). More detailed information has been secured by Henry T.Wright and his team at Tepe Shaffarabad (Wright, Miller and Redding 1980, 278–281; Wright, Redding and Pollock 1989, 110–112). In addition to the proof that goods brought to the site had been sealed elsewhere (find of a pot sealing on non-autochthonous clay), evidence has been brought forward for impressions of the same seal on mobile containers and storeroom doors. I argue (Charvát 1992a, 282) that such a practice is compatible with employment of travelling seals in cases when all these impressions have been found on a single site. A seal that normally closes a storeroom door leaves its home base and goes forth to mark goods destined for its owner. Then it returns and carries on sealing the storeroom in which the goods, sealed with it outside and ultimately arriving on the site, are themselves deposited. This assumption of a surplus collection area consisting of two concentric zones alludes to the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ sectors of the Uruk culture economy delineated above according to the texts. Both types of evidence may well point to one single historical phenomenon.

Any enquiry as to how much of the output of singular households could have been siphoned off for redistribution must remain a futile undertaking. Ethnographic data give us a bare outline: in pre-conquest Mexico, for instance, every household contributed about 10 per cent, possibly up to 16 per cent, of its total output. Of the overall quantity thus collected, the part going to the centre of the system is supposed to have amounted to about 29–46 per cent of the mobilized surplus while the rest was retained by the regional offices, through which the levy took contributions from individual households and the remainder was conveyed to the central office (Steponaitis 1984, esp. pp. 145–147).

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Another facet of the redistribution processes is represented by the clay symbols of delivered commodities, the now famous tokens. Denise Schmandt-Besserat has worked extensively on these (the most recent works that have reached me are Schmandt-Besserat 1988a and b and 1991) and while the stretching of the token (= symbolic) system back into the Mesolithic would require a great deal more source criticism than that which has been presented up to now (on this see also Lieberman 1980, esp. pp. 353–354, and Glassner 2000a, 87–112), the significance of the Uruk period tokens as a recording device cannot be denied. To a certain extent, tokens reduplicate textual data and they might have possibly accompanied deliveries of goods playing specific roles. Why such commodities were not accompanied by written texts is not clear but several possibilities again present themselves. The accompanying texts might not have survived because their vehicles were of organic, and therefore perishable, matter (see p. 152). Alternatively, these deliveries might have reached the Uruk centre via another input than the GA2+DUB, where the consignments seem to have been registered in writing. However that may be, a comparison of signs displayed by inscribed tokens and of some token shapes with textual data summarized above will perhaps bring out some interesting details. A few tokens bear the ŠE sign (SchmandtBesserat 1979, 33, Type VI, No. 3d; 37, Type XI, sub No. 4) and the last of the signs, resembling a rake or a pitch, may also be connected with grain treatment (a winnowing instrument?). Such tokens, accompanying grain deliveries, may thus have been arriving at the centres via one of the ‘outer zone’ inputs employing the shelters denoted by signs ZATU Nos. 651–658 on pp. 316–317. The important thing is that two such tokens come from Uruk and one from Habuba Kabira. Redistribution systems involving these symbolic devices could thus be based on any of the major centres and the practices applied might have been identical. Another such case concerns a bedstead-shaped token interpreted by Denise Schmandt-Besserat (1979, 40, Type XV:2) as BANŠUR, elsewhere (ibid. 48, sub Type XV) as NA2. The sign agrees neither with BANŠUR (ZATU No. 49, p. 180) nor with NA2 (ZATU No. 379, p. 250) but it could be related to the sign ZATU No. 750, turning up in the tax lists, which would fit our context well. Some similar examples may be adduced from among the Uruk finds (Schmandt-Besserat 1988a). Here the signs borne by the tokens consist of names of geopolitical units, most probably communities like ADAB (ibid. 23 and 121, No. 553) or ŠENNUR (Schmandt-Besserat 1979, 100, Type 442 and 116, Type 539=ZATU No. 522, p. 286), of designations of single craft activities like DIM6, metal-smelting (SchmandtBesserat 1988a, 23=ZATU No. 582, p. 303) or DIN, a liquid container, wine? (perhaps ibid. 121, No. 554) and of titles of the Uruk hierarchy such as ZATU No. 749c, p. 331 (ibid. 119, No. 551), SUKKAL (?, ibid. 24) or even DIN:NIMGIR (ibid. 119, No. 552=ZATU No. 349, p. 242, see also Glassner 2000a, 95, Fig. 1c). This comparison brings at least some points home. In addition to the community and office designations likely to have accompanied deliveries of goods in the function of tags identifying the despatcher, the signs DIM6 and DIN suggest consignments dovetailing into the supply schemes illuminated by the texts. Written data pertain especially to disbursements of animal products, deliveries from particular locations and offices (or for them?) and only to a lesser extent supplies of grain. As against this, the tokens represent the grain supplies, which manifestly were not concentrated particularly in the GA2+DUB receptor agency, and therefore were not likely to have been put down in writing, as well as the income from the metallurgical workshops and of gardening/orchardry establishments,

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which, as we have just noted, are missing from written texts. At least a part of the tokens thus represent recording systems supplementing writing and enabling registration of data concerning inputs of energy into the system by other receptors than those reserved for supplies recorded in the texts.

A problem of an even more complicated nature is represented by the so-called bullae, or clay envelopes, containing tokens (Schmandt-Besserat 1980; Amiet 1994; Glassner 2000a, 108–110). Probably of Middle Uruk date at the earliest (ibid. 364) and turning up with common everyday domestic necessities at Susa (Schmandt-Besserat 1986, 108), these display seal or cylinder seal impressions all over their surface (2–3 seals, 2 cylinder seals, one cylinder seal and one seal, three cylinder seals, or two cylinder seals and a seal), presumably to prevent unauthorized access to the contents. One of the Susa bullae contains tokens that may imitate sheep knuckle bones, and as one of the rooms of Tepe Gawra VIII contained a deposit of sheep knuckle bones and as a stone imitation of such a bone comes from Tepe Gawra XA (see p. 110), this may represent another manner of recording a particular type of contribution, at least in some cases perhaps of animal products.

Even written texts do occasionally hint at redistribution, mentioning, for instance, ‘rations’(?, see 118, 141) of many vegetable, animal and other substances (Green 1980, 7). Surplus mobilization carried out by tax collectors, picking out their shares from the harvest or stationed at roadside posts to levy a toll on the passing goods, starts at this early period (Green 1984). On the other hand, there are reasons to believe that redistribution could accompany—or even constitute a component ofmajor social gatherings or religious events. This is indicated by imprints from seals ‘quoting’ the great Uruk vase which may have denoted commodity transfers occurring in connection with the ceremony depicted on that work of art (Brandes 1986, esp. p. 53) as well as by a cylinder seal from the Erlenmayer collection, bearing an inscription(?) containing the signs EZEN and MUŠ3, which could also denote supplies taking place on such occasions (N.C.-H.N. 1991, 44, Fig. 5a on p. 45). Were such supplies brought in recompensation for the NA2 rite performed by EN and NIN?

In short, redistribution en masse constituted a dominant feature of the Uruk corporate entity, and indeed, goods are likely to have percolated along the land and water routes like life-giving

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Figure 5.13 Brick masonry of the ‘great residence’ at Jemdet Nasr. Though the techniques of bricklaying became well-established around 3000 BC, the long horizontal join running between the bricks along the longitudinal axis of the building’s wall must have posed a threat to the wall’s stability and have ultimately led to its collapse. This shows how errors can occur at any historical time and place—a notion that perhaps brings our Mesopotamian predecessors closer to us, revealing their human failures.

blood in the arteries of a living organism. Outlying sites had their own catchment areas, on whose surplus they regularly drew, concentrating it and sending (a part of?) it down the line towards major centres. These received a great variety of supplies of most diverse goods from all directions and by all means, and it must have required considerable administrative skill to take care of all the commodities, to despatch them to their destinations, to watch over proper recompensation of their suppliers and to keep track of all the movements of the individual goods categories. Indeed, Uruk culture managers successfully passed the test for imperial administration.

Nevertheless, there is still something missing in this sketch of Uruk culture society. The statement that in most cases we can hardly descend deeper into the structure of

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component communities of the Uruk corporate entity holds true insofar as it pertains to the Uruk culture sphere proper. A notable exception that will instantly spring to the mind of anyone well acquainted with the subject concerns, of course, Tepe Gawra. This site does not fall within the sphere of Uruk material culture (Algaze 1986, esp. pp. 125–126, 131) and, by displaying a socio-cultural pattern completely different from the Uruk one, reminds us that we will do well to remember that as with a number of similar early systems, the Uruk culture settlement pattern was discontinuous and its density varied, leaving here and there pockets to accommodate human groups organized along completely different lines. Needless to say, in this aspect also, archaeological studies are likely to add some precision to the relations between Gawra and the Uruk culture sphere, as the Gawra assemblage had, in fact, preceded the Late Uruk expansion (Gut 1992, 32 and 1995). The reader has without doubt noticed that with Uruk culture society, a version of a primeval ‘welfare state’, the keyword was not display—that was reserved for the gods—but corporate undertaking and corporate consumption. Everyone worked according to his or her appointment and everyone received his or her remuneration accordingly. The gods commanded time, space and fertility, the cardinal categories of the Uruk world, and received the earth’s most desirable goods—precious metals, stones and the like. People bowed to them and, at the very best, only discharged the mysterious lifegiving force belonging to the realms of the guardians of heaven through the persons of EN and NIN. They nonetheless made the calculations and schedules, arranged things, administered, wrote out lists, vouchers and receipts, kept a vigilant eye on the enemy, sweated over the plough handles or cast fishermen’s nets, grew almost deaf from incessant hammering on metal, and dared the devils of faraway mountains and gorges to bring home the desired goods. They all received what the gods measured out for them. Theirs was a world of community, a world to be shared out like the same kind of cake baked in the same manner by the same procedure thousands of kilometres apart. Tepe Gawra was different and, to our eyes, much more normal. After the last egalitarian period of XIA, the layers XI–IX were characterized by the emergence of ascribed social status, expressed by means of ostentatious display of wealth brought in (also) as the result of surplus collection in the form of reciprocity (sealing of mobile commodity containers). Intra-group solidarity was maintained by means of commensality and, in less successful periods (XI, possibly an initial period of the emergence of a new social order, and IX) by institutionalized redistribution (sealing of storage spaces) which, however, instantly vanished in times of plenty when each of the local social foci drew its wealth from its own source, falling back to (unilateral? negative?) reciprocity (layers X and VIII, sealing of mobile containers). In Uruk the most precious materials went to the shrines. In Gawra they bedecked the living incarnations of law and order, fashioned into ornaments and articles of personal attire. The system was carried a step farther in Tepe Gawra VIII. At that time, the solidarity of the local élite groupings must have been high as most of the residences obviously shared one and the same supply source (impressions of the same seal at several findspots). On the other hand, the surplus collection sphere of Gawra was extended and new resources were tapped, their contributions marked by travelling seals (sealings on non-local clay). In this case the evidence suggests a composite élite group capable of amassing a considerable quantity of surplus which it converts into visible legitimation of its superiority, maintaining its status successfully over a long period of time and even extending its ‘catchment area’ farther. Identification of the source from

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which the Gawra élite drew its wealth is, of course, pure guesswork but military, nomadic or merchant aristocracies represent some viable alternatives. In fact, not even a connection with the Uruk culture world is entirely excluded; the Gawra lords may have supplied rare commodities to the Uruk theocracy or, alternatively, might have offered military protection to caravans supplying the lowland centres, for instance.

The Uruk culture social sphere is somewhat peculiar. The development and diversification of settlement, including military installations and first steps towards urbanization, cannot be denied. On the other hand, the vast corporate entity headed by Uruk does display a most varied structure. Almost half of its component communities derived their names from man-made architectural creations and are thus likely to denote more complex social bodies than kin-based structures. The centres are accompanied by satellite sites sheltering production facilities and, to some extent, supplying individual offices within the Uruk culture administrative setup. Unfortunately, the level of these component groupings of the Uruk corporate entity is the last to which the texts permit us to descend in detailed analysis. These communities possibly claimed all their cultivated and uncultivated environment as property and contributed to the common cause by discharging (parts of?) their surplus into the supply-line network of the Uruk culture sphere. Uruk period economy, discernible only at the centre, relies on a variety of ‘inner’ establishments, probably founded and directed by the centre which disposes of their produce in the ‘demesne’ manner, comprising the EN-cum-NIN realms and administered possibly by LUGAL(s), as well as on a system of ‘outer-zone’ receptors of types not limited to the Uruk centre, by which energy is fed into its circulation system. Pronounced professional differentiation is still embedded in a relatively homogeneous social matrix. Hardly more is discernible than élites, whose task it is to harmonize the divine and human worlds and to ward off all evil menacing their communities, and suppliers of all kinds of goods, catering for the material needs of the system. Social distances are kept at a minimum by relatively important congregational activities, which probably developed out of the traditional commensality, and, above all, by the huge and complex redistribution machine, conveying goods registered in writing, symbolized by tokens free or enclosed in clay bullae, or merely sealed, to the centres where they are taken in charge, consumed, processed or sent farther while a stream of other commodities rushes back to reciprocate and to reward the original suppliers. Precious goods are systematically siphoned off to embellish the holy tabernacles. This huge and essentially egalitarian Leviathan, guarded by well-built and apparently well-garrisoned forts, may be watched from a distance by paramount chiefs who direct their communities in the traditional fashion. On this other side of the social frontier, wealth is not concealed in temples but proudly displayed to legitimize status. Careful redistribution counting how much to whom and for what gives way to contribution collection without any further questions asked. Power walks hand in hand with glory here and the relatively small holdings within sight of the dominant political configuration, so reminiscent of the native states of the British Raj, still dare to face it and to defy its challenge.

Metaphysics

As in other aspects, so too in this sphere the Uruk culture society approaches the threshold of a fundamental change. Indeed, spiritual matters may have undergone a most

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systematic transformation over this period of time. The first and most conspicuous feature of this situation pertains to the sphere of burial.

Figure 5.14 Large round kilns in one of the annexes of the Jemdet Nasr ‘great residence’. When discovered, they were perfectly clean and without any trace of ashes. Were they maintained so scrupulously clean during the proto-historic age as well— or have they been used for some special purpose, such as, for instance, firing tablets?

To cut a long story short, an overwhelming majority of Uruk culture interments must be simply missing (Vértesalji 1987, 492). A few isolated graves occur throughout the land, from southern sites like Abu Salabikh (Pollock 1990a, 86) via the central region where such a grave turned up recently at Jemdet Nasr (Matthews 1990, 36, 38, 39, Fig. 12, Pl. Va) and Tell Rubeidheh in Jebel Hamrin (McAdam 1982) as far north as Erbil (Hirsch 1968–1969; Hirsch 1970, 148) or Tell al-Hilwa in the Mosul region (Wilkinson and Matthews 1989, 264). The thousands of dead bodies which must have been left behind by agglomerations of the size of Uruk or Habuba Kabira, however, have evaporated. Let us take notice of the excellent parallel which is offered by the Pre-dynastic capital of Upper Egypt, Hierakonpolis, where the overall count of the deceased laid to rest in the municipal cemeteries amounts to 1,804–8,047 graves (M. Hoffmann, cited in Hendrickx 1990, 646) and even this is considered a poor record since the estimate of the total goes

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up to some 22,000 individuals. This bears out most eloquently the anomalous situation of the Uruk culture but, at the same time, supplies interesting historical data. The manner of disposal of the dead bodies must have possessed a character leaving no discernible traces in the archaeological record. As a matter of fact, a number of ethnographic cultures actually display post-mortal treatment patterns which would present major obstacles to archaeological recognition. Some of the possibilities, such as throwing the ashes of the burnt corpses into the rivers or their exposure in the desert parts of the hinterland of major sites, are self-evident. Let us not forget that inhabitants of the slightly later Early Bronze Age towns along the Dead Sea coast buried the excarnated remains of their dead in collective ossuaries of considerable size (Rast 1987; Schaub and Rast 1989; Schaub 1997). In addition to this there is another important aspect. The few surviving graves seem to belong to middle-status individuals but any funerary monuments of the creators and architects of the Uruk system, who must have enjoyed particular prestige in their days, are absent. All members of the Uruk corporate entity may thus have been entitled to one, single and uniform post-mortal treatment, regardless of whether they had been major political figures or mere swineherds. Nothing exemplifies better the truly revolutionary transformation of the Uruk culture attitude to the world than this radical departure from age-old veneration of the dead. This fact contrasts with the traditionality of Tepe Gawra, where the deposition of the dead, in accordance with the earlier custom (predominance of children) provided with fabulously rich grave goods and frequently in sophisticated funerary constructions, points in the direction of ancestral cults (Forest 1983a, see also Akkermans 1989a, esp. pp. 357–363).

Of course, the major and capital innovation which Uruk culture Mesopotamia contributed to the cultural heritage of mankind is one of the first scripts of the world, thanks to which the Mesopotamian culture, so long buried under mute heaps of clay, has suddenly acquired the ability to address us in intelligible words. The Berlin team, headed by Professor Hans Nissen, has gained much merit by its systematic work on the most ancient texts, as have other scholars who have contributed to the theme (see Nissen 1985a, 1986a and 1986b; ZATU; Damerow, Englund and Nissen 1988a and 1988b; Damerow, Englund and Lamberg-Karlovsky 1989; Green 1991; Englund and Nissen 1993; Englund 1994; Englund and Matthews 1996; Veldhuis 1997; Glassner 2000a). Evidence for the use of this earliest script has come from the entire Uruk culture sphere (Strommenger 1980b; for Jebel Aruda see van Driel 1982), but it is not excluded that even the northern regions participated in the discovery (Tell Brak: Oates 1982, 191, Pl. XVc; Finkel 1985, 187– 189). The surviving documents on clay seem to represent only a part of all the written evidence that once existed and has since perished. The earliest form of the sign denoting