Petr Charvát - Mesopotamia Before History (2008, Routledge)

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Figure 5.15 A proto-cuneiform text from Uruk, likely to date to the Uruk III stage (after Damerow, Englund and Nissen 1988a, 75)

a tablet, DUB (ZATU No. 86, p. 188), consists of a rectangular handled frame filled in by a lattice pattern of intersecting oblique lines. The model for this sign must have been a tablet of some hard but probably organic material (wood or bone) bearing the crossed lines provided for better adherence of the soft writing surface, most probably a wax filling into which individual signs were incised. Such a tablet of wood has been found in the much later shipwreck of Ulu Burun, Turkey (fourteenth century BC: Payton 1991). That the tablets could also have been cut from bone is indicated by data concerning the most ancient annals of Egypt (Kaplony 1991, 198).

Why the Uruk culture intellectuals invented the script, or rather introduced it on a large scale, is not so difficult to guess. By its most complex and structured character the Uruk corporate entity constituted an elaboration of the principles of the earlier, more or less self-sufficient Chalcolithic communities, jealously preserving their rights and prerogatives, that surpassed them all and ascended to a qualitatively different social level. Tradition doubtless commanded an insistence on equality and fair shares for everybody,

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in relation to the particular position that the individual in question occupied in the community. Corporate consumption of the fruits of human labour; assignation of responsibilities and positions directed by regard for common benefit; decisions of important matters in the assembly; and finally, theoretically absolute equality even in death, such were the social principles inherited to a great part from the Chalcolithic ancestors. Nevertheless, the complex movement of a great quantity of commodity types required careful checking of this flow, the more so as the authorities guarded well the principle of ‘differing contributions but equal remunerations’. If redistribution, socially anchored and institutionalized by means of systematic supervision of the storage facilities incarnated in the ‘lock’ sealings, was to work, if the managers were to make reliable calculations of the volume of goods to be consumed by the community and to be traded for other necessities, they simply had to know what was on hand. A good example of the problems with which the Uruk culture managers might have had to cope is the evidence from the Tepe Shaffarabad excavations (Wright, Redding and Pollock 1989, 112–113). The rubbish strata deposited there in the course of the second, perhaps famine year (ibid. 110) contain more mobile-container and ‘lock’ sealings. Facing a calamity, the local population opened more storerooms but also appealed for help to an external agency which reacted in due course, sending in contributions in sealed containers. Now the central office administrators would have been confronted with problems of this kind every now and then, their task being rendered even more complex by the fact that the economic base of Uruk culture was fairly extensive and far from concentrated in one single centre or site (see Charvát 1997). Moreover, the fact that the economic processes seem to have been run not by individuals but by offices or corporate groups (cylinder seals as emblems of agencies, Charvát 1992a) might have put information possessed by one individual but not by others in jeopardy. I believe that all these reasons converged in the emergence of a need for more complex recording devices of which several types were tested (sealings, tokens, envelopes, script) until the script was finally adopted. Its purpose was thus practical but at the same time it could also have fulfilled tasks of cultic character as a set of sacred signs by which ritual operations could be performed. Most ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs worked this way, representing both the ‘divine word’ in their essential character and a practical recording device in their existential form (Kaplony 1983, 150–151, 157). The patron deity of the earliest Egyptian scribes of the first half of the First Dynasty, Aker, was imagined in the form of a lion hunting game, its prey being likened to taxes and contributions recorded by the scribes (ibid. 158). This parable may help us to understand a little better the ideas connected with the earliest scripts of mankind. Needless to say, such parallels are to be used with caution since the earliest scripts may issue out of quite different sources. The Harappan script, for instance, records with all probability names and social affiliations of individuals (Fairservis 1991, 111– 112). The considerable dimensions of the operational range of the Uruk culture script as well as its systematic character and stability in time all imply that scribal tradition must have been systematically cultivated, most probably as one of the prerogatives of the Uruk élite. This is borne out by the introduction of the lexical list tradition in this period. It may be added that the introduction of literacy exercises a benign influence on human capacities for more thorough reasoning and argumentation, for abstract thought and for viewing the past as unchanging and different from the present (Stevenson 1989, 159f.). In

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this aspect the Uruk culture intellectuals initiated a development that was to bear fruit for millennia to come.

Figure 5.16 A spindle whorl from Jemdet Nasr with a sign of protocuneiform writing, likely to denote a large unit of weight (Nissen, Damerow and Englund 1991, 64, EN-system E, probably N-10, N-11 or N-12). Having been set into a rotating motion in use, the whorl turned the sign around and thus presumably ‘activated’ its magical capacity with the aim of bringing abundance and plenty to the initiator of the action. Again, a perfect example of interpenetration of sacred and profane activities in proto-historic Mesopotamia.

Alternatively, however, the invention of script, or rather the introduction of a universally comprehensible set of visual symbols may be viewed in the perspective of a climax of the Uruk culture determination to manipulate the world. The Uruk élite designed and organized the structure and functioning of the visible section of the universe. They appointed all men and women to their posts, they assigned them remuneration for their labours, they saw to it that all received regularly the necessities of their lives. They even

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dared to manipulate the past and future by a radical change in burial customs. Would it be too presumptuous to think that in the script, their domination of the visible world infringed on the borders of the spiritual, introducing a device to manipulate even the invisible world to comply with their concepts?

Uruk culture tradition is the most ancient Mesopotamian one that allows us to catch at least a glimpse of the earliest pantheon of the land. Indeed, the complex hierarchy of the Uruk corporate entity presupposes a major role of religion: ‘hierarchy implies divinity, the hierarchy itself may mirror the divinity’ (Glass 1988, 67). Individual communities might have viewed themselves as one of the forms of manifestation of the existence of a particular local deity who, at the same time, represented the ultimate source and first cause of such phenomena as the local shrine, the adjacent settlement and probably also the surrounding landscape and its various forms of wildlife. The divinities were in most cases visualized in the form of symbols venerated in temples (on those of archaic Uruk see Szarzyńska 1992; on the symbols or emblems see Szarzyńska 1996), out of which the toponymy of the various anthropogeographical and geographical units ultimately evolved. In some instances, divine substances could be incarnated in very humble objects. The earliest occurrence of the divine name Enlil (Englund 1988, 131–132, n. 9) makes this god, in fact, EN:KID, the sign KID assuming the form of an oblong filled in with a checkerboard motif. The lexeme KID, however, may also denote a reed mat (ibid. 170, n. 43) and this reminds us instantly of the matting on which the central pedestal of the Uruk VI ‘Steingebäude’ rests (see pp. 101–102). Here, however, the key role is undoubtedly played by the checkerboard pattern, employed in numerical systems to construct artificially high numbers (ibid. 131–132, n. 9), which may point in the direction of the sememe ‘everything, everybody, all things and beings’—indeed, a fitting audience over which Enlil could have exercised his EN-ship (see also Glassner 2000a, 200). The production of checkerboards is one of the few traces of professional activity recorded at Habuba Kabira (Strommenger 1980a, 57–58) which might have thus acknowledged the supremacy of Enlil. Of course, checkerboard patterns turn up at large in the decoration of Halaf period pottery (see figs on pp. 61–70) and they might thus represent another component of the Chalcolithic spiritual world which, like the white-red-black colour triad, survived into the age of the first civilization. Other divinities might have played roles of considerable importance in the social sphere. Inanna was (also) conceptualized as ‘nu-gig’, ‘the lofty, unapproachable one’, transferring her possession of the land and the kingly office to earthlings (Zgoll 1997). This seems to be very close to the role played by the Sumerian NIN, especially in the later periods (Charvát 1997, esp. pp. 85–89). In fact, a close connection between the worlds of spiritual powers and of actual social reality is sometimes interpreted in a manner opposite to what has been asserted by many until recently—cosmology is not supposed to reflect economy but vice versa, economy is developed to meet the needs of cult and ritual (Howe 1991, esp. p. 448—Bali). The Uruk culture with its essentially Chalcolithic economy differing only by extension of its application and by its experimentation, with its considerable role of religion as a socially constructive factor elaborating upon mental achievements of the preceding age and with its strong egalitarian bias manipulating the lives and even the deaths of its bearers (and, with their post-mortal treatment, even the past and future), offers extremely interesting prospects for such an interpretation.

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time segments (and what else?). This complex vision of the world once enjoyed widespread popularity and to elucidate it, it suffices to borrow a few examples from various European languages. ‘Deutsche Morgenlandische Gesellschaft’ includes the word ‘Morgenland’, in literal translation both ‘southern land’ and ‘morning land’. In Polish, ‘pólnoc’ means both ‘midnight’ and ‘north’ and ‘poludnie’ both ‘noon’ and ‘south’. Essential unity of understanding of a geographical area and its human population is exposed by the grapheme KALAM/UN (ZATU No. 282, p. 228), still not differentiated into the sememes KALAM (= land) and UN (= people) (see Limet 1982, esp. pp. 259– 260). Of course, this multiplicity, fluidity and, should some prefer the expression, evasiveness of the manner of expression of facts of real life must have entailed the definition and application of certain basic principles by means of which the essentials of the organization and functioning of the world could have been articulated. One such principle is undoubtedly the fivefold division of the world into its civilized centre and the ‘oneirique’ four outer districts (Glassner 1984, esp. pp. 29–30; Wiggermann 1996, esp. pp. 208–209), already present in the Uruk culture period (EZEN=ZATU No. 150, p. 201). This cosmological structure is universal in early cultures of the Old World, appearing in India (Dubuisson 1985, esp. p. 118) and China (Hisashi 1990). The Indian example, in which the centre and each of the four quarters are individually correlated with a particular season of the year, divinity, religious notion and a material substance, evokes particularly well the kind of ideas that may have circulated in this connection in ancient Mesopotamia. Its local incarnation may nevertheless have been somewhat different, as no more than two non-Sumerian names—Dilmun and Aratta, too conspicuously placed not to wake the suspicion of having been chosen as the two poles of the world—actually turn up in the earliest Mesopotamian texts (Nissen 1985b, esp. pp. 228–230). In later times, such a conceptualization of the world is perceptible in Mesopotamia itself: in Sennacherib’s times, the east was entrusted to a guardian in the form of a bison-man, the west (or, alternatively, the north) to that in the form of a scorpion man, the south to one in the form of a fish-man and an alternative figure symbolic of the west might have been the vulture (Huxley 2000). Another universal principle of this kind may have been constituted by the white-red-black colour triad which might have been operated to express a number of individual cases of which the tripartite social division of the community of gods and two ranks of humans, as delineated above, might have been one. In fact, the colour triad does appear in Uruk texts (ZATU No. 391, p. 253). Of course, a third example of application of such a principle may be seen in the funerary practices of the period. If all humans received the same post-mortal treatment, regardless of their actual achievements and of the communities’ claims to their territories, human bondage must have been seen as following out of one single general principle, relating to everyone. Incidentally, this might well have been the most revolutionary of the Uruk culture spiritual achievements. It is pointless to repeat here the frequent statement as to how well-suited religion is for the role of a social welding agent bringing about the emergence of new societies. Examples from medieval India (Durga and Reddy 1992) point out to what extent the seemingly impossible, namely a synthesis of hunter-gatherer and highly sophisticated intellectual social milieux, can actually be achieved.

Of particular ritual usages, let us note the first hoard find of personal ornaments, especially necklace components, which was to become popular in subsequent periods, at

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items do bear out a non-negligible function of dance (a pin with a head in the form of two nude female dancers from Tello: Genouillac 1934, 46, Pl. 10:2–5, a; on dance in general Delavaud-Roux 1993, Kilmer 1995, esp. pp. 2608–2612; on Uruk age musical instruments Eichmann 1995, esp. p. 111). The fact that in the ‘Curse of Agade’, Inanna assigns dancing as a distinguishing feature to young women (Cooper 1983, 52–53, lines 29–33 and p. 238) could indicate the existence of age grades or age groups as early as this period, but the matter needs further consideration. The NIN is referred to as a seasoned performer of harp music and this exercise thus seems to have had its place in fertility rites (Charvát 1997, 85). A peculiar feature seems to be the rarity of anthropomorphic clay figurines (Spycket 1992, 16), though animal depictions, especially those of the most frequent and useful domesticates such as sheep (in considerable quantities, reproducing even whole herds with shepherds and watchdogs), turn up widely at some sites (Uruk period Tello: Genouillac 1934, 37–38).

Figure 5.19 Fresco painting of a leopard dating to the Late Uruk age from Tell Uqair (after Spycket 1988, 292, Fig. 3)

May I be excused for closing these remarks with a renewed note of caution repeated from the epilogue of the preceding section. Attempts at ethnic or linguistic classification of the Uruk culture and the persistent Sumerian problem re-emerge over and over again. Archaeological material alone cannot give evidence of ethnic affiliations save for very particular cases in which abundant and comprehensible non-archaeological evidence is available (for a good recent treatment of the problem see an example of the virtually invisible Jewish culture in Rome of Late Antiquity: Rutgers 1992; see also Esse 1992, Fleming 1989, 176 and Vansina 1995, 195). As I hope to have demonstrated, textual data

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may refer to a number of communities of most diverse ethnic backgrounds. Who laid down the actual foundations on which the Uruk culture was built, and what language this population group spoke, is most difficult to decide, and it is questionable how far it is relevant to truly historically oriented research. Their contribution to human history is capital and unquestionable. Whoever they may have been, their labours will always be with us, as long as humans have cultures.

CONCLUSIONS

This review of the Uruk culture developments, crucial in terms of the birth of one of the most brilliant civilizations of the ancient world, attempts a somewhat less traditional view. In all spheres of society the principle of universality and equality comes to the fore and struggles with the particular and concrete manifestations of the visible world in order to make way for human advance. In the spiritual sphere, the torrents, twists and turns of mythopoeic thinking in symbols embedded in reality are surmounted, if not straightened out, by applications of universal principles and rules. The world, perceived as unity in diversity, is accordingly organized into a social whole. The natural variability of communities, in most cases linked principally by the factor of co-residence and accompanied by industrial sites and service holdings interspersed by groupings that see themselves as manifestations of divine will, communities divided among élites and commoners, is constantly levelled. The material standard of living is equalized by means of redistribution, external threats are eliminated by garrisons posted to ward off any attack. Everyone is close to everyone else, people meet in assemblies to discuss and decide matters of common interest with at least some of the resolutions put down in writing. All receive the same treatment, both in life and in death. The world is an organized place where the economy thrives because all the discoveries and inventions of the previous ages are now put into practice and systematically exploited. Unity of purpose drives the best brains of the epoch to experiments both economic, some of which fail, and social and spiritual, some of which succeed. The flow of goods throughout the community is directed and scheduled. Vigilant eyes guard the assignation of ‘suum cuique’—the most precious materials go to the gods concerned with the highest categories of the Uruk culture corporate entity, masters of time, space and fertility. All consumables are assigned to those who will ultimately also be consumed by the Great Unknown. Distribution of goods is subject to public control, in time gradually assuming a permanent form, as writing is adopted from among all the recording techniques put to test. The world is weighed, measured, disposed of and organized from cake-baking to manipulations of time and space.

To a considerable extent the Uruk culture heralds the advent of a new era. Building on the traditional principles of the corporate social entity as the highest ideal, architects of the Uruk culture applied them in dimensions surpassing all that had been known before. A grandiose success of this kind could nonetheless not have failed to create, in the matrix of traditionally oriented society, seeds of the new order, releasing human capabilities to such an extent that some tension must have been felt even then. The Uruk culture was no revolution. It represented the final stage of evolution of the traditional society, when the strength of age-old traditions in people’s minds still prevented the new elements from

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prevailing over the ancient order. Some smaller communities approached the threshold of the new age individually, with the ‘natural’ social stratification involving the representation of acquired status by ostentatious display of wealth mobilized from the community in question. These groups, however, lacked the means to step into history by themselves. Nevertheless, elements of the new order were there, awaiting their future destiny