The Creation of the World, by Fernand Leger (Date: 1923)
Administration 9000-2000 BC, Uruk
From: Hans Jörg Nissen, The Early History of the Ancient Near East, 9000–2000 B.C., University of Chicago Press 1988
[Nissen is still one of the most regularly cited in contemporary texts.]
[This book] follows the development of Mesopotamian civilization [covering] the period from approximately 9000 B.C. to approximately 2000 B.C.
The date 2000 B.C. … merely signifies the end of a long span of time that, in spite of many diversions and occasional periods of regression, saw steady progress toward more complex organizational structures.
At the same time, it signifies the beginning of a phase of consolidating what had been achieved, especially a refining of administrative structures. A new dimension was only reached more than a thousand years later with the formation of empires. …
… The terms village, city, and state, which are normally used in the archaeological literature, are so changeable that one would really prefer to do without them. …
… The main terms that must then be used are center and surroundings, which together form a compact system, insofar as both parts of a settlement system are permanently dependent on each other.
The people living in the surrounding area are dependent on the “central functions” in the center, such as, for example, temples, warehouses, and the administration or social leadership. On the other hand, the center requires compensation for its services in the shape of tribute or taxes paid by the inhabitants of the surrounding area. Such interdependence between the inhabitants of a central settlement and those in the surrounding area first becomes comprehensible … when the people living in the surrounding area have also organized themselves into settlements.
The place where the central functions are carried on for settlements of this sort is on a higher organizational level precisely because of its centralized functions and may thus be called the center of the settlement system. Since this mutual relationship provides us with a lowest common denominator, we may define this place as a “center of the first order” and call the system a simple, or two-tier, settlement system …
Such a system works only if the settlements are close enough together to make continuous exchange possible. Hence there are optimal limits. On the one hand, there are maximal limits, determined by transportation between the center and the remotest dependent settlement, and, on the other, minimal limits, determined by the area required for the central functions to have sufficient clients to employ them to capacity.
… If … a settlement lies within the “force field” of two neighboring centers, this can have positive as well as negative effects on the settlement. The opportunities for exploiting the competitive situation in the economic sphere are completely positive, since a lower price for goods that are needed or a better offer for one’s own products can be sought. From this point of view it is advantageous if facilities for transportation are, wherever possible, equally good in both directions. The ideal case is when the settlement is situated exactly midway between the two centers.
It is a different matter if questions of administration or political power have a role to play, because then a settlement situated midway between two centers would very soon find itself being torn apart. In such a case, the creation of an unequivocal relationship with one center alone would be the only solution. To put it concretely, the settlement must not be at a site in the area between two centers if both centers can lay claim to the site: it should be in an area that clearly belongs to one center.
If the main emphasis of the relationship between center and hinterland is preponderantly in the administrative or political sphere, a zone empty of settlements emerges. …
Conflicts, rules
… Living together in such close quarters meant that conflicts had, rather, to be actively controlled, leading to the setting up of rules for resolving conflicts.
As we have already seen, situations where people lived together in close proximity could only arise in the intensively cultivated irrigation areas.
… irrigation systems … did in fact require a complex administrative system … The existence of complicated irrigation systems can definitely be ruled out for the early periods. …
… we can cite the specific characteristics of the great southern plains, particularly their size and their need for irrigation, as the reasons for the uneven development of parts of the Near East …
… The need to establish rules enabling people or communities to live together is far more important in encouraging the higher development of civilizations than the need to create purely administrative structures.
Developments
… Strata from the Late Uruk period have, for the first time, brought to light those things we consider characteristic of Mesopotomian culture in general: writing, cylinder seals, large-scale works of art, and monumental architecture. In the last two cases we should bear in mind that there may be examples from the earlier period that have not yet been found only because the older strata that have been uncovered are very limited in size. However, if cylinder seals and writing had existed before, they would have had to have been discovered. Both at first appear to belong to the artistic or literary sphere, but were in reality concrete components of economic administration, a fact established in both cases by an analysis of their use.
… we have further evidence leading us to the assumption that the highly developed economic organization during the period of early high civilization required not only abstract methods of control but also other organizational aids. Given a highly developed division of labor and a well-defined hierarchy in the administration, the professions, and the political leadership, the stage of the village economy had been abandoned long before. In addition to the seals already referred to, further examples of this high level of development are provided both by one of the oldest pieces of written evidence and by the site of a former workshop area in the city of Uruk.
… We know from written texts of later periods that the enormous armies of workers in large economic units were paid in kind—that is, in daily rations. The major part of these rations was made up of grain … [T]he special characteristics of these bowls point to their being containers for the distribution of the grain ration, but the capacity of one of these vessels corresponds almost exactly to what we know to have been a laborer’s daily ration. In addition, this is supported by the theory that the symbol for “to eat” in the most ancient texts is made up of the pictorial reproduction of a human head and a bowl that has the same shape as the bevel-rimmed bowl.
Consequently, these bowls not only provide direct evidence of one aspect of economic organization, but are also indirect proof that units of measurement were already fixed some time before the period when standardization of units of measurement, which must certainly have also existed in other fields, can be included unequivocally among the methods of economic control (a development that can be irrefutably confirmed with the aid of the earliest written documents).
… It seems almost incredible that what was obviously already a very complex administration should have managed to survive for long using simple methods of control we have been dealing with up to now. Hence we can well imagine that an attempt would have been made to expand the system of methods available to facilitate control.
In fact, during the Late Uruk period, we see the emergence of several different methods of this kind, until finally, at the end of this era, writing appears in its first form. In this case, too, the relevant discoveries are almost exclusively from the excavations of Uruk …
… It is not only the existence of writing that bears witness to the complex structure of economic administration.
The texts themselves that describe almost exclusively economic processes also come to our aid … we can make some assertions on the basis of the organization of the tablets. Thus, we find numerous tablets where the information is clearly separated into different units. On the obverse we find many different entries in the shape of numbers, together with written symbols that may stand for what was being counted, but might also be personal names. In a second section, the same entries are grouped according to specific criteria, recognizable by the partial addition of individual numbers. … Here, too, we see a strict bookkeeping mentality, and there is no difficulty in matching this to the examples already quoted.
Turning to the later periods …
[Wiki: Ur-Nammu ruled c. 2112 BC – 2094 BC … founded the Sumerian Third Dynasty of Ur, in southern Mesopotamia … His main achievement was state-building, and Ur-Nammu is chiefly remembered today for his legal code, the Code of Ur-Nammu, the oldest known surviving example in the world.]
… A large number of the bricks used for … buildings bear stamped inscriptions. Apart from telling us the name of the builder, Ur-Nammu, they also tell us the name of the city in which the temple was erected, the name of the god who was worshipped there, and the name of the temple. The fact that such labor-intensive building works were erected in many of the larger cities of southern Babylonia allows us to conclude that there was obviously comprehensive control through a central body. In addition, in the light of the conflict between central government and local priesthood, the fact that the central ruler began with such an unusual building program in the former local centers soon after establishing his rule, thus making it clear that he was concerned with the local deities, seems extremely important.
However, at the same time, Ur-Nammu made it unmistakably apparent where the actual power lay by central planning of building and organization, by his building inscriptions, and probably in other ways of which we know nothing.
There are two further pieces of evidence for a high degree of central administration; on the one hand, we observe that the system of year names used in Ur was used almost without exception throughout the whole of Babylonia, and on the other hand, a lengthy text, something like a state land register, lists the administrative districts of Ur-Nammu’s kingdom. …
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