Ancient Mesopotamia

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The Uruk IV period in ancient Mesopotamia witnessed great strides being made in the transition from Neolithic farmer villages to the beginnings of urban settlement.

The end of the preceding Ubaid period in the Near East (see 'related links' in the sidebar) had witnessed a regression in the number of settlements, with some of the more prominent settlement sites being destroyed and abandoned (see Shakhi Kora as an example of abandonment).

Such a stepping-back from advanced society would take place more than once during the region's more difficult moments. The drive towards civilisation by no means had a guaranteed outcome.

The immediate future did look positive however. At the start of the Uruk IV period in the early fourth millennium BC (around 3900-3800 BC) the number and size of settlement sites vastly increased. This was especially the case in two regions in southern Mesopotamia: central and southern Sumer, the latter sitting close to the then-shoreline for the Persian Gulf.

The number of people in either region seems to have been about the same, but in central Sumer they lived in three centres which each occupied between thirty and fifty hectares of land.

In the south one major settlement dominated: Uruk, with about seventy hectares of land underneath it in the early Uruk IV period.

The rapid increase in settled population numbers at this time is yet to be explained. They seems to have risen too fast to have been the result of indigenous population growth alone, even if new agricultural processes promoted demographic expansion.

Instead it seems likely that groups which had formerly existed on the edges of sedentary farming practices now decided that the time was right to join this promising movement. As they largely fall outside of the archaeological record until they joined the population centres, only guesses can be made about their identity.

The late Uruk IV

Following this population growth, progress was steady until the late Uruk IV (although the Uruk IV was unable to penetrate Tepe Gawra and its sphere of influence in northern Mesopotamia - see links for more).

Then the process of late Uruk IV urban growth reveals differences between the centre and south of Mesopotamia. Increases in the centre were minor in terms of permanently settled population figures, and can be explained as being the result of natural growth.

Some of the earliest cities, such as Sippar, Borsippa, and Kish in the north, and Ur, Uruk, and Eridu in the south, formed the endpoints of what became the complex Sumerian network of cities and canals (click or tap on map to view full sized)

Around Uruk, however, late growth was enormous, expanding the city and its immediate surroundings from a size of eighty-one hectares in the middle Uruk IV (around 3600 BC) to a massive two hundred and ten hectares, a hundred of which were occupied by the city itself.

Reasons for this regional disparity are complex and not entirely clear. Partially it seems to have been down to Uruk's proximity to the marshes at the head of the Persian Gulf, and the abundant water supply from that area and from one or more branches of the Euphrates. Irrigation was vital here for agriculture, and also for fish, fowl, and the water buffalo which was herded for its milk. Nearby steppe territory away from the river made good grazing land for goats and sheep, along with good hunting territory.

Specialist farmers appeared around this time, each tackling the task which was best suited to their needs and the markets. The invention of the seed plough may also have required increased specialisation, but specialists need supply back-ups for the many areas in which they are no longer able to work, and those areas could then be handled by yet more new specialists.

Uruk was already a major city by 3300 BC, and it was here that Sumerian civilisation seems to have reached its creative and social peak, with many familiar urban human themes and groupings seemingly emerging here

The great majority of the population remained active in the agricultural sphere - even the city dwellers - but a small segment of the population again took the path towards becoming specialists by increasingly concentrating more on non-farming activities.

The city itself now needed to be serviced, whether it was in terms of upkeep of the built infrastructure or managing the all-important temple and delivering worship events. Pottery also became increasingly specialised.

At the start of the Uruk IV an undecorated utilitarian form appeared - the bevelled-rim bowl - probably as the result of a switch to early mass production methods. Large population growth meant many more homes and a massive demand for pots. Textile weaving (largely for clothing) became a major industry, with groups of women (probably) being recorded in certain images.

The cylinder seal was already an important method for keeping records, but now the earliest clay tablets appeared. These were inscribed with what is known as proto-cuneiform, an early form of the script which would later record all news, events, and stories in Sumer and the wider Near East for many centuries to come.

This was the first true writing (although some Egyptologists claim that honour), and it quickly developed at the very end of the Uruk IV and into the subsequent Uruk III period.

It seems to have been here and only here that this development took place. It was quickly shipped out to other cities, not only in Sumer but far and wide, to western Iran (Elam), northern Syria (Ebla and Mari amongst others), and southern Anatolia (Carchemish and others).

This stone bull dates from the late 'Uruk IV' period in Sumer (southern Mesopotamia), between about 3300-3000 BC, and probably originates from the then-culturally dominant city of Uruk

In the late Uruk IV the first monumental art also appeared, along with early statuary, all of which required specialisation. With all this specialisation and increased labour, positions of authority were required to oversee efforts. They required an ideological function which needed to be shared by all participants in the system or the process would not work. That ideology was provided by the Eanna temple and its later offshoots.

Temples became the biggest, most prominent buildings in the city. Alongside the Eanna temple complex, the less-archaeologically-explored Anu-ziggurat temple tower was the city's secondmost important site. In a very flat region like Uruk's immediate surroundings, these buildings would have stood out for quite some distance: a beacon of light and support to all about.

The Uruk phenomenon

Uruk's most striking and significant levels of archaeological excavation date from this period. It soon became clear that here was evidence of a very different culture, of which Uruk was a major centre. Archaeological Levels X to III represent a certain homogeneity and continuous development. As such they are representative of this separate cultural phase in Mesopotamia, one which was named for the city of Uruk itself.

Unlike the preceding Ubaid period, the Uruk IV phenomenon was not restricted to southern Mesopotamia.

It became increasingly clear through archaeology in the late twentieth century AD and early twenty-first century in areas which lay beyond present Iraqi borders, such as Syria, southern Turkey, and western Iran, that Uruk culture came to be prominent across a wide geographical area beyond the Mesopotamian heartland, from south-western Iran to northern Syria and southern Anatolia.

Small urban centres were built up in northern Mesopotamia too, such as at Nineveh and the little-known settlement site of Shakhi Kora.

Pottery found at the archaeological site of Shakhi Kora in north-eastern Iraq reveals the adoption of the Uruk IV cultural period and then the apparent abandonment of centralised authority in favour of individual farming

Uruk-period artefacts and buildings are immediately recognisable, with pottery which is characterised by its clearly-defined stylistic range, architecture which is characterised by its multifunctional and monumental buildings, and cylinder seals and tablets which are written in an early form of cuneiform script.

Uruk's bevelled-rim bowl style reached into early Elam where the people of that land started producing their own version to ship outwards even farther to the east, to cities across the Iranian plateau, up to the Hissar culture on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea, and over to the beginnings of the Indus Valley civilisation.

The Uruk period represents perhaps the most intriguing puzzle in Mesopotamian history due to the many questions which are raised by the unprecedented spread of one material culture over so wide an area, and the development of urbanism for which Uruk is the most striking and the grandest example, although by no means the only example.

The earliest notable archaeological levels in Uruk belong to the Uruk IV period. This means that the city was first settled and built up from village beginnings at the very start of human habitation in southern Mesopotamia, during the latter stages of the Pottery Neolithic.

Both clay tokens and the cylinder seal were invented in Uruk, the latter around 3600 BC. Monumental architecture began to appear around 3400 BC, somewhat later than the appearance of the Sumerian king list's 'first city' of Eridu.

Not uniquely, the Eridu area was abandoned following a shift in the course of the Euphrates, which allowed its archaeological landscape to remain remarkably intact, including the remains of an irrigation canal seen here inside the twin curved 'banks'

As early as 8000 BC, during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, small clay tokens of various distinctive shapes were being used by Near Eastern farmers to keep an inventory of their commodities. A cone-shaped token, for instance, may indicate that a farmer has a certain amount of barley in his granary.

By about 3900-3800 BC this already-ancient system was greatly expanded as the Uruk IV period enthusiastically got underway.

Eridu was already a millennium old, but now it was gradually surpassed in size by the nearby city of Uruk, with the Eanna mound being its oldest and most continuously inhabited part until the third millennium BC. Uruk would soon wrap itself around Eridu and absorb it.

Metalwork also appeared, marking the beginning of the Chalcolithic (Copper Age) and the fading of the stone age period which had seen Neolithic farmer practices transform human lives between about 10,000-4000 BC.

Uruk flourished as the only real urban centre in (southern) Sumer, and one which sat at the heart of a great trading and cultural centre. Building works reached a frenzy of succession and experimentation. New structures were continuously being erected, pulled down, and built up again.

The Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) lasted in the Levant until the middle of the sixth millennium BC, but the lack of pottery certainly did not prevent rapid advances in early farming techniques and the creation of settled town life, as shown by this sample PPN house at Beidha

Then this phase was superseded by more permanent building in mudbrick. Wall surfaces were often disguised by clay-cone mosaics with geometric patterns which are reminiscent of textiles. Buildings were set out at various angles around large terraces in well-planned public spaces.

Outwards expansion

Uruk influence spread throughout the region, reaching into southern and central Anatolia, much of Syria, early city states in Canaan, and the early eastern city states of western Iran (within Elam).

Levels of intensity differed regarding its absorption. In some places Uruk-inspired settlements of urban proportions were built on virgin soil. Habuba Kabira on the middle Euphrates became a densely-inhabited and fortified city. Its cultural assemblage was imported wholesale from Sumer.

Several other such settlements were built, and it has been assumed that settlers from Uruk itself were largely the driving force for this. In other locations Uruk people settled into existing villages and early cities, often creating 'Uruk folk' enclaves (Susa, already long-established, may have been one of these during its 'Susa II' period which is the local variation of the Uruk IV).

Then Uruk-type monumental architecture would start appearing, often with a flavour of local cultural traditions mixed in. At Tell Brak in today's north-eastern Syria a monumental temple was built which reveals a local cultic tradition in a Sumer-inspired architectural setting.

However, Uruk influence was often limited to a few buildings, even though those influences could be drastic. In southern Anatolia, such as at Arslan Tepe, local elites could adopt Uruk elements to inspire their own improved buildings and probably other areas of early city life.

During the second millennium BC, Hazor was one of Canaan's largest cities, including the upper city and the lower city, and extending to about eight hundred dunams in size

In time these influences would reach the early cities of the Hatti in central Anatolia, and probably also the little-known cultures to their east.

The reason for this great outwards push by the people of Uruk in particular, and Sumer in general, is not fully understood. Some of it was for resources which were hard to obtain in Sumer, especially wood, stone, and metals. But alternatives were available, so it has been assumed that something fundamental was occurring in Uruk.

The city's Eanna temple was a vital centre at this time, perhaps being part of an enthusiastic and popular shared belief in the 'rightness' of this brand new urban experiment. Uruk's people could well have been 'urban evangelists' who wanted to export their great success to the rest of the region, to all those poor people who had not yet felt the truth of advanced urbanism and a better way of life.

The city of Uruk continued to thrive in the subsequent Jemdet Nasr period (3100-2900 BC) but an entirely new complex of buildings was erected over the carefully-levelled remains of those of the previous period. The reason for this sudden change is unknown.

The attitude behind Uruk's building strategies in this period has to be assumed to be one which valued multi-functional, civic, and egalitarian design. The results openly allowed a wide range of activities to be carried out. Such social functionality was clearly undergoing a process of development and understanding as people learned how to be city dwellers for the first time.

Onlookers could watch events from a safe distance (the first audiences) in a society which largely appears to have been egalitarian, with its hierarchical administrative system still being fine-tuned and adapted.

Jemdet Nasr's 'Mound B' was further excavated in the 1980s, immediately prior to the First Gulf War, with the north-eastern area of that mound being examined here

Tensions and pressures

As the city grew larger and more populous (still as the only true city in the general Sumer region in southern Mesopotamia), attracting more and more people who were keen to escape the drudgery of subsistence farming in small village communities up and down the rivers, increasing demands were placed on the remaining farmers for more output.

Tension and potential protest seem to have been met with violent repression. A tentative move may already have been made towards establishing a military force. Seals carry images of groups of prisoners, hands bound behind their backs and forced to their knees by armed guards who carry clubs and spears. Mace heads from the Eanna depositories, along with sling-shot balls and arrowheads, support the idea of a military force.

The end of the fourth millennium BC shows a landscape which was receiving less water as the climate dried out to an extent. The rivers were providing reduced levels of irrigation, something which may have prompted even more farmers to head to the city for a fresh start.

Life in Uruk may have started to become precarious in cramped conditions, despite the city's huge size. Theoretically, Eanna could have been levelled at the end of the Uruk IV period following civil unrest and a restart of administrative practices under a potentially new regime.

Uruk's Anu ziggurat was constructed around 4000 BC, with what is known as the 'White Temple' being erected on top of it around 3500 BC

Cultural collapse

The end of the Uruk IV period came rapidly and seemingly without too much forewarning. Contacts suddenly ceased with locations which lay outside of Sumer.

The rapidly-developed Habuba Kabira city in Syria disappeared for reasons unknown. Older, local traditions re-emerged in places which had already taken on board Uruk influences. Village life again predominated in northern Mesopotamia, where the march towards creating cities was still in its early stages.

Only Nineveh and a few other very early cities survived this change. Uruk IV-type tablets ceased to be seen outside of Uruk itself and, to a great extent, writing disappeared there too other than in large administrative archives.

In Sumer itself writing actually increased, providing a good quantity of pointers towards events. The monumental buildings of Uruk were pulled down and the entire Eanna complex was levelled in preparation for something new. The 'urban evangelism' of the Uruk IV seems to have collapsed into disappointment and a desire for change. The subsequent Uruk III period saw Uruk itself being thoroughly reconstructed.

That destruction and rebuilding at this time within the core of Uruk, along with that of the other ancient city mound, Kullab, mark the end of one of history's most innovative periods.

The archaeological record is poor though, as a lot of material was cleared away and built over, but the city continued to grow into the subsequent Jemdet Nasr/Uruk III and 'Early Dynastic' periods.

By this time Uruk certainly was not the only city. Many others had sprung up and some would attempt to rival it during the third millennium BC period of Sumerian kings and priest rulers.

Uruk gained impressive city walls in this period, the early third millennium BC, although their construction was later ascribed to the 'Early Dynastic' ruler of the third millennium BC, Gilgamesh, who ruled around one or two hundred years later.

Main Sources

Gwendolyn Leick - Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City (Penguin Books, 2001)

Marc van der Mieroop - History of the Ancient Near East c.3000-323 BC (Blackwell Publishing, 2004, 2007)

Additional Sources

Amélie Kuhrt - The Ancient Near East, c.3000-330 BC  (Routledge, 2000, Vol I & II)

Clemens Reichel - Political Change and Cultural Continuity in Eshnunna from the Ur III to the Old Babylonian Period (Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, 11 June 1996)

Enrico Ascalone - Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians (Dictionaries of Civilizations 1, University of California Press, 2007)

J N Postgate - Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History (Routledge, 1994)

John Heywood - Historical Atlas of the Ancient World, 4,000,000 to 500 BC (Barnes & Noble, 2000)

Michael Road - Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East (Facts on File, 2000)

Online Sources

Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature

Ancient World Magazine

Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary Project (published between 2003-2021, part of the Babylonian section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology)

Maps and text copyright © P L Kessler. An original feature for the History Files.