Nicholas Postgate wrote:
Stability and disruption:
The most obvious sources of social change are the periodic disruptions in the political order, the ‘Dark Ages’ or ‘Zwischenzeiten’ (‘between-times’). These are invariably accompanied by the end of a dynasty and the dissolution of centralized political authority … There may indeed be climatic factors at work, but political ones are equally relevant. In a marginal environment a satisfactory agricultural regime can be sustained provided there is back-up from elsewhere. In the northern plains any large land-owner spreads his investment: a core of fields well within the dependable rainfall zone, round Nineveh or another major city, will provide the capital reserve to permit the chancier exploitation of marginal lands, and the same applies on a larger scale to a state. Moreover, the state has the political muscle to provide secure storage in the marginal areas, and to give military protection to crops, standing and harvested, which could well be vulnerable in times of disruption. At a private level, contractual or family relationships between the marginal farmer and his more secure landlord or cousin in the heartland will also permit the maintenance of agriculture out in this danger zone. Farmers on their own in these environments do not have a secure prospect: one or two years of poor rainfall, or the destruction of the local political set-up, will force them off the land, either back to a desert nomadism with their surviving sheep, or up to the mountains to seek a free niche there …
… With the breakdown of government any agriculture dependent on the scale and resilience of a state-run enterprise would rapidly be abandoned – the exploitation of marginal land at the fringes of the irrigation system, specialized cultures such as timber which needed the demand created by general prosperity and a reliable employer to support the cultivators, and any field cultivation supplied by irrigation projects under central political control. Historians have in recent years tended to discount the paramount necessity of highly centralized organization to sustain the water regime … Where an irrigation system had come under, or was created by, the direct control of the state, rather than the traditional local authorities, and especially where the scale of the works required a geographical control beyond the reach of local authorities, the agricultural regime must have rapidly deteriorated.
These cataclysmic trends have also to be set in context against the more subtle effects of agricultural deterioration and social change. The Arabic proverb ‘one skein [of geese] has flown, one skein has raised its neck’ (raff ţār u raff šāl ar-rugba) refers to share-croppers fleeing the impossible demands of their landlords: just as there is a downward spiral for the average peasant, and the economic edicts suggest that this was normality, so the landlords themselves face a similar dilemma. Poor land or inadequate irrigation reduces both the tenant’s and the landlord’s share. When conditions get bad enough, unless political control is extremely tight, nothing can stop the farmers from leaving their homes and their debts. In pre-revolutionary Iraq, decamping tenants drifted to the town, but there is ample evidence in the ancient sources for fugitives either seeking a continuation of their way of life in a fresh context, or becoming outlaws, bands of whom worried the fringes of civilized society. Then the landlord will be left with poor land and no one to farm it. Modern conditions suggest that in fact the lot of the tenant is, ironically, not as bad as that of the small independent farmer. The tenant of an institution or a large land-owner may be moved from field to field as his landlord dictates, but at least the spread of the landlord’s holdings means that if a particular field or area becomes saline or loses its water allowance, there is somewhere else to go. The small farmer has no such option, and, if yields are diminishing on his land because of increasing salinity and poverty of the soil, the only way to wring more food from the ground is to sow more thickly or to violate the fallow regime and use some of the land two years in succession. This of course merely compounds the problem, and the downward spiral to ruin is accelerated.
Hence … the standard response to political unrest can only be the widespread abandonment of villages and smaller rural settlements. This can be observed in the archaeological record as well; and the opposite side of the coin can be seen, which is the resettlement of the countryside in times of greater stability. Signs of this are clear in the textual record too: kings refer to their resettlement projects, and after the Mitannian interregnum at Assur, city families established rural outposts to the west of the city, named simply after their first settler or owner …
… The literature of early Mesopotamia reflects the population’s keen awareness of the effects of a breakdown in social order. Contemporary responses describe political calamities through the lamentations over Ur and other cities, and environmental disasters through the Flood story, which includes famine as well as flood, and seeks to give some explanation of the gods’ destructive decisions. The consequences of natural or political disaster are death and starvation, leading to a diminution of the population. Hence divine determination to destroy mankind is blamed on the disturbance of the gods by the prosperous clamour of the cities, and the subsequent re-establishment of order is tempered by devices to keep the population under control in future: celibate priestesses, barren women, homosexuals … Archaeologists have suggested that the growth of settlement in the fourth millennium BC exceeds what could have been achieved by the natural increase of a stable population, leading to theories of large-scale immigration, which cannot be discounted. On the other hand, the propensity of the rural population to adopt a more mobile lifestyle and of the nomads to settle makes it extremely difficult to assess the real significance of apparent fluctuations.
Polarization and diffraction:
When order is restored, and the dust has settled, how much is new, and how much of the old order survives? This question can be addressed by both historian and archaeologist, and each can detect different aspects. The changes most accessible to the archaeologist are those of standardization and diversification: we know from royal inscriptions and economic documents that when The Land was reunited under a strong regime attempts were regularly made to standardize the instruments of government, law and trade. It is most conspicuous in the Akkadian metrological system and in Šulgi’s reforms of the weights and measures, the calendar, the transport system, scribal and accounting practices, etc., but the same applies to other dynasties, such the 1st Dynasty of Babylon under Hammurapi, and to other areas of life.
The kings are not reticent about their attempts to impose some degree of uniformity, and one of the benefits they bring to the people is ‘unanimity’. Such a concern is natural. Human nature requires that legal norms within a single realm should be consistent – even when, as probably reflected in the Code of Hammurapi, a harsher desert code of morality comes into conflict with the more commercial traditional urban approach. A new regime will wish to use a single set of bureaucratic and fiscal procedures throughout its territory, and it is natural that when the instruments of that control coincide with the normal instruments of daily life in the private sector, the state should seek to impose its own standards. Conversely, the local interests will wish on their part to adapt themselves to facilitate the exploitation of the new regime.
There are of course other less rigid forces of assimilation at work during periods of strong central control: within a single political frontier intercourse is easier, and still more eased by a common acceptance of a central norm. Individuals can move independently wherever the king’s writ runs, and members of the administration and military will be appointed to different parts by the state itself, introducing not only common practices detectable in the cuneiform documentation, but also an artefactual repertoire and aesthetic preferences which could surface in the archaeological record. Hence we can observe a standardizing tendency in the script (compare the ‘chancery’ styles of the courts of Akkad, Ur III and Hammurapi), in language (and indeed, within a language, in grammar), but also in arts and technology.
If stable government polarizes the culture in this way, the reverse process of diffraction associated with instability is just as significant. Geographical horizons contract and centralized direction evaporates. Standards of accuracy in metrological matters require not only common acceptance of, but also access to and enforcement of the norm, a luxury which a peasantry in turmoil will be unlikely to indulge in. The arm of the centralized bureaucracy will reach no further, and probably less far, than the political power of the moment, and indeed the individual administrative cells (provincial governorates), which were previously staffed by minions or adherents of the fallen regime, may have disintegrated altogether, leaving the field open to other institutional players.
Moreover, not only the supply but also the demand for standardization disappears – all the currents which previously encouraged it flow in reverse: contact between cities is atrophied because of insecurity in the countryside; the commercial and administrative pressures for goods of dependable quality in uniform packing can no longer operate; and the strength of the judiciary and state to suppress dishonesty and cheating is much reduced. When all this is united with the disruption caused by economic uncertainties and population shifts, the disintegrating consequences are easy to imagine.
Archaeologists have been slow to consider these issues in the Mesopotamian context. It is obvious that the changes in pottery style and technology on which ceramic corpuses and hence ceramic chronologies are built up must have been radically affected by changes of this sort. The supreme example of centralized control is … the Ur III Dynasty, and the homogeneity of the cylinder seals of the time is a clear instance of this. Again, the pottery is not sufficiently studied, but we can speculate as to what we might see. The effect of a new dynasty could be expected to be visible first as a major upheaval in local repertoires followed by a period during which a common standard is established throughout the realm, and the pace of change slackens, since bureaucracies like to keep to the status quo once they have established the form. Both fine luxury wares and standardized utilitarian containers would be expected to become more frequent. The advent of a period of disorder would reverse the process: the luxury wares would very likely cease to be made, local standards of size would begin to diverge, and much of the ceramic industry would revert to domestic needs and styles, with potting techniques gradually differentiated …
The cultural continuum:
With so many disruptive influences at work, we may be surprised that Mesopotamian civilization retained any coherence over its three millennia or more. The forces of cultural conservatism resided in the cities, and are expressed in the antiquity and strength of the scribal tradition. In the seventh century Be, Assurbanipal of Assyria boasts of reading inscriptions ‘from before the Flood’, and Assyrian kings report on the exact number of years since a temple was previously restored, basing themselves in some cases on the foundation inscriptions of rulers a thousand years before. The Nco-Babylonian kings were also antiquarians, keeping antiquities in their palace, collecting ancient cuneiform tablets, and reporting on discoveries in the foundations of temples.
The hallowed nature of the traditional temple certainly had much to do with the persistence of tradition. Already in the Early Dynastic period sites like Tell Ubaid and Tell Uqair, which had once been population centres in the Ubaid period, survived as holy places, capped by a temple and providing the focus for a cemetery. When major cities fell into disuse, their sites were still remembered …
… During all the ‘dark ages’ in Mesopotamia, we are confronted with an absence of written information, which is obviously symptomatic of conditions but also veils from us the nature of the events. The puzzle is how the cities transmitted their scribal culture to later generations when they were themselves moribund.
… Whatever the temporary consequences of a change of regime, the newcoming dynasty’s interests were best served by continuity in the life of the city and countryside. The real hiatus is the consequence of total abandonment, and abandonment did not come as a result of instability alone; as we have seen, it might be as much the consequence of environmental factors …
The role of the institutions:
While the temples had a central role in the preservation of the culture’s ideological identity, both they and the palaces gave society an economic buffer against the worst effects of disruption. Quite apart from their role as economic patrons and employers, whether in agriculture, industry or trade, the scale and diversity of their own resources gave them a resilience which imparted an element of stability to the society as a whole. For the society’s long-term survival the institutions’ role may well be crucial: where natural forces led to the drying of a major river course, the capital investment required to counteract this effect or relocate urban society to another stream would have been beyond individual villages.
In the case of a complete relocation there would have followed a significant shift in the balance of economy to the favour of the institution. Fields along the old river-course would have been in the hands of the traditional private sector, whereas those newly brought into cultivation would become prebend land of the temple or palace, or at the least assigned where those in charge chose, giving the institutions influence over an important new slice of the economy.
These general points apply equally to temple or palace, although it seems likely that in the early third millennium the temples would have been the principal actors, but later increasingly the palace. Indeed, while the balance of power between the institutions and the private sector is difficult to document, there do seem to be various indications during the period 2500–1500 BC of the formal transfer of power from the temples to the palace. This could be either by default, in that the palace regimes were better placed to recoup their position after a period of disturbance, or by deliberate reform by the secular ruler. Tension between temple and palace is first expressed in UruKAgina’s reform texts, but the clearest example is perhaps Šulgi’s ‘nationalization’ of the temples. Ur III scholars are now agreed that the major temples of LagaŠ, and no doubt other cities, were placed under the supervision of secular officials (Šabra) and used as an arm of the state economy. We even have one case where a secular institution was adapted to become a temple for the purposes of bureaucratic standardization. A similar state usurpation of local institutions was undertaken by Hammurapi, no doubt in part in a concern for conformity. The temples had state accountants assigned to them, and the judicial functions which had often been exercised by the local temples were arrogated to the royal judges.
Of course the administration of justice had been in the hands of the state already in the Ur III period, and it was only thereafter that the temples assumed—or, perhaps more likely, resumed—a judicial role. This is a reminder that administrative functions can be transferred in the opposite direction too. When state authority breaks down, social order can be maintained if some of its functions are assumed by some other agent. This is the context of the rise of the kārum [society of merchants]. In the fragmented state of the country, the merchant community was still needed, and it seems likely that the kārum was formed by the urban elite in the absence of strong state direction into a chamber of commerce to regulate their affairs. Indeed in some cities it became a public organization and was invested with some of the former roles of the state, including political and legal decisions.
The different sectors of society also borrowed procedural mechanisms from one another. One of the most persistent legacies of any social order will tend to be its habits, its manner of doing things, its bureaucratic idiosyncrasies … In ancient Mesopotamia, the ways of doing things are also passed on to later generations long after the political order which instituted them has disappeared …
… Palaces borrowed the terminology and probably the system of prebend land from the temples, and as time proceeded they increasingly adopted the commercial procedures and vocabulary of the private sector. More significantly still, the consensus administration of village and city communities constitutes a procedural pattern which was adopted both through time and space and across different sectors of society. Thus the amphictyony reconstructed for the early third millennium, if it is not a complete figment of modern scholars, would have as its subconscious, but perhaps also its conscious, pattern the communal organization of the individual city-states. Although political initiative was firmly in the hands of the secular regimes by the second millennium, and the role of the local assemblies surfaces in the documentation almost exclusively in legal contexts, we have seen that political ideology acknowledges the importance of popular consent, and I believe that this was not mere lip-service, but reflects the survival of a strong communal ideology, in both city and countryside.
The geographical context:
When describing the collapse of civilization and the dissolution of social order, the Sumerian poet is in no doubt that it is the mes of Sumer that are dissolved. As we have already seen, the limits of The Land are clearly perceived and broadly coincide with the southern alluvial plain. The cities of Sumer and Akkad shared a conceptual and material amalgam which can be observed in the written record and in the homogeneity of the artefactual remains. At times we may detect a divide between northern and southern regions, in language, social structure, or artistic style, but the similarities greatly outweigh the differences. The idea of a cultural unity which transcends any political entity is of course familiar from other seminal civilizations, such as Classical Greece and Renaissance Italy, and the phenomenon has been often observed, and recently dubbed ‘peer polity interaction’ [Colin Renfrew’s book with this title]. The definition of a sphere of interaction places its neighbouring cultures outside it …
… Nevertheless, the links between north and south were of a different order from the internal coherence of Sumer and Akkad, as their own ideology makes plain. As far as our evidence takes us at present, it is in the south that the extremes of literacy, urbanization and bureaucracy were conceived and from there that they were diffused to the rest of the ancient Near East and beyond.
Further reading:
Little has been written on long-term historical trends in Mesopotamia, but two stimulating contributions are those of Adams 1978 and N. Yoffee in N. Yoffee and G.L. Cowgill (eds), The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations (University of Arizona Press, c. 1988).
The Source:
Nicholas Postgate, Early Mesopotamia, Routledge 1992 [Chapter 16 ‘Order and Disorder’]
Evolutions of social order from the earliest humans to the present day and future machine age.