by Eckart Frahm
What can we say about the cities themselves? The biggest cities in Northern Mesopotamia were 100–125 ha large, with a maximum population somewhere between 6000 and 25,000 people (Wilkinson 1994). Most Northern Mesopotamian cities consisted of a single high mound, surrounded by a lower town which was delimited from the surrounding countryside by a city wall with multiple gates. Although some cities, like Mari and Rawda, were new foundations, many others, like Leilan, Hamoukar, Titriş, Kazane, and Mozan, grew to urban size through the construction of a lower town around an older high mound. These new cities exhibited different degrees of planning, along a spectrum from highly planned to unplanned. Evidence for planning includes urban form (earlier cities tend to be round, later ones are square), regular streets (radial or orthogonal), and standardized building lots (Meyer 2011; Pfälzner 2011) (Figure 2.2). The circular city of Tell Chuera falls on the planned side of the spectrum, with a combination of radial and circular roads. In the center of the city’s Upper Town, an open space, “the Anton‐Moortgat‐Platz,” provides a focus for the settlement. This square and Chuera’s main temples and palace are all arrayed along a central axis. Limited magnetometry at Mozan indicates that this city followed the same pattern. The octagonal city also had a radial street plan, a central plaza, and an Upper Town with religious and administrative buildings. Beydar (ancient Nabada) is a variation on this plan, with radial streets, but no central plaza. At Leilan and Titriş, there is evidence for straight, planned streets, which were laid before residential areas were built (Weiss 1990; Matney 2002: 26; Nishimura 2008). On the less‐planned side of the spectrum, at Kazane, a pattern of semi‐orthogonal streets has been interpreted as the result of “convenience rather than central‐planning” (Creekmore 2010).
Figure 2.2 Leilan Lower Town South, 1989, Worker’s Neighborhood (ca. 2300–2200 BCE).
The evidence for urban housing from 2600 to 2400 BCE may indicate the use of regular plots, with the frontages of most houses falling into standard dimensions, based on the Sumerian nindan measurement (equivalent to about 5m or 16.4 feet). Houses with frontages of 1, 1.25, 2, and 3 nindan have been identified at Chuera, Bderi, Abu Hafur, Melebiya, and Leilan (Pfälzner 2001). At Titriş, houses appeared to have been built on regular‐sized plots, either 7 × 12m or 11 × 11m (Matney 2002: 27). In general, there is evidence of central planning across the region, but not of the rigid type that led to orthogonal Roman military camps, Chinese Medieval capitals, or eighteenth‐century European cities. Some cities, particularly circular cities, were perhaps planned from above, while in other cities, perceived regularity may have resulted more from the actions of individual builders constructing houses in crowded urban spaces than from formal, centralized planning (Smith 2007: 13–16).
Cities were characterized by monumental buildings, especially palaces with associated temples. Small soundings of later third millennium palaces at Ebla and Leilan have revealed secular administrative architecture dating to around 2600–2500 BCE. At Ebla, excavations beneath Palace G have exposed its mid‐third millennium predecessor, Building G2, a storage facility (Dolce 2010). At Tell Leilan, excavations on the Acropolis Northwest have revealed a series of storage rooms, covering at least 300m2, which are associated with a 150m2 platform dating to 2600 BCE (Calderone and Weiss 2003). These two activity areas almost certainly comprised the southwestern quarter of an administrative building, a predecessor to the later Akkadian administrative building. By 2500–2300 BCE, there is evidence for palaces that combined several elements found in earlier “public architecture” according to a semi‐standardized groundplan (Bretschneider and Jans 1997). Palaces at Beydar, Chuera, Bi’a, Mozan, Leilan, Ebla, and Mari included storerooms, reception suites and cultic areas. At both Mozan and Leilan, for example, palaces abut platforms containing burnt altars, with associated mortuary structures and water installations. At Mozan, the stone platform was constructed along with a keyhole‐shaped stone structure that enclosed a deep shaft where offerings had been deposited. Marilyn Kelly‐Buccellati interprets this construction as an abi, a Hurrian “passage to the netherworld” (Kelly‐Buccellati 2002). At Leilan, an ossuary is located in a similar position southeast of the platform (Weiss 1997). The Palais Présargonique at Mari also includes cultic installations in the south of the palace (Margueron 2004).
Freestanding temples of this period have also been excavated at Mari, Beydar, and Mozan. The temples at Mari and Beydar are located close to these cities’ palaces; both institutions probably comprised one public district. At Beydar, the path leading to the official quarter was “lined with temples … creating a monumental entrance for visiting dignitaries and the elaborate processions accompanying them” (Bretschneider 2000). The relationship between temples and palaces in the mid‐third millennium in Northern Mesopotamia thus differs greatly from that in Southern Mesopotamia, where they were spatially segregated.
Excavations of administrative buildings mirror the ambiguity attested in the third millennium documentation with regard to kings and elders, institutions that could rule together or separately. Palaces in Northern Mesopotamia housed both single and communal leaders. The reception suite in the Beydar palace, for example, was remodeled during the course of phase 4. In the beginning of this phase, a podium was attested in the “throne‐room,” but when this area was rebuilt, its function changed, perhaps allowing it to serve as a community institution, once Beydar was incorporated into the kingdom of Nagar (Sallaberger and Ur 2004). Successive public buildings (6 and 7) at Tell Banat had stone foundations and were built on multiple levels, atop “White Monument 3,” a communal burial structure (Porter 2002). These buildings may also have been areas for local communal authority, like the smaller assembly buildings at Halawa and Sweyhat (Danti and Zettler 2007).
The cities and their monumental palaces were not the only places affected by this urban transformation. The appearance of cities and settlement hierarchies changed the nature of smaller settlements as much as it did larger ones (Schwarz and Falconer 1994). Unlike in Southern Mesopotamia during the fourth millennium, the urbanization process did not mean the decimation of the countryside; instead settled hectarage increased overall. In the area around Leilan, the growth of Leilan from a 15 ha to a 90 ha city inaugurated a four‐tier settlement hierarchy. From 2650–2300 BCE, between 58 percent and 68 percent of people lived in towns or cities larger than 10 ha (Ristvet 2005). A well‐developed network of second and third tier sites probably reduced transport costs and streamlined the administration of agricultural production. Other surveys in the East Jezira indicate similar trajectories of population growth and the centralization of the population in towns and cities. This might mirror a shift in land use from unified to dispersed field systems which can be correlated with less local control over agricultural land. To the south, west of the Middle Khabur, settlement expanded into the steppe with the foundation of circular cities that probably emphasized control of both agricultural and pastoral resources (Hole and Kouchoukos 1994). Along the Middle Euphrates, the urbanization of Mari was accompanied by the foundation of several settlements and cemeteries in the steppe. Along the Upper Euphrates and in Western Syria, there are similar patterns of increasing site numbers as well as larger sites throughout the third millennium, although the timing of these events differed across the region (Cooper 2007).
The Ebla World‐System (2400–2300 BCE)
Beginning sometime after 2400 BCE, the earliest tablets from Mari, Ebla, and Nagar provide insight into the political and cultural geography of Northern Mesopotamia. About 5000 tablets from Ebla come from an administrative archive that was preserved by the fiery destruction and abandonment of Palace G. The archives document a period of somewhere between forty and fifty years; the texts bear no date formulae, so determining their internal chronology has been a major research project (Biga 2003). Most of the documents are economic and administrative texts, including monthly and yearly summary accounts of textiles and metals received and distributed. But the ar
chive also includes some examples of royal correspondence and treaties with other Mesopotamian states, the oldest ones ever written anywhere. Finally, a few literary and educational texts show that there was a scribal school at Ebla, where teachers who had studied at Mari or Kiš could train student scribes. One mathematical list at Ebla may even have been written by a scribe from Kiš, in Central Mesopotamia, 800 kilometers (500 miles) away (Podany 2010). Other, smaller archives of tablets have been found at Mari and at Beydar, part of the kingdom of Nagar, indicating that writing was widespread across Northern Mesopotamia. The tablets depict a dynamic world, where nearly constant warfare meant unstable frontiers and shifting alliances. The three cities of Ebla, Mari, and Nagar used a number of different strategies to establish their dominance and to integrate smaller, previously independent communities into their spheres. We can examine these strategies on a number of scales, from the local to the international.
On the local level, the palace at Ebla provided rations or other sustenance for 15,000–20,000 people, most of whom probably lived at this city or in the nearby countryside, up to a two day walk away (perhaps 50 km at the furthest). These workers were first organized into units of twenty and then into larger teams. A supervisor was responsible for overseeing the work of several teams and providing them with regular rations. The texts use terms to designate these teams that are both territorial and administrative; workers may belong to a certain city gate (probably an urban ward), the palace, or “Ebla” itself, meaning a district outside of the city proper. Most palace‐owned fields, many of which were ceded to palace employees or relatives of the king as payment for service, were located within this inner area. The area around Ebla was densely settled; hundreds of villages are discussed in the archives, few of which, unfortunately, have been documented archaeologically (Milano 1995). The fields belonging to the palace and other large property owners were fragmented and dispersed among several villages, probably as a risk‐management strategy. Nonetheless, most of the grain that the palace received came from no more than 50 km away, and this same distance probably represented the area that Ebla controlled directly. A religious and perhaps even mythological landscape with Ebla and its kings at its center may have coincided with this local sphere (Ristvet 2011). The Ebla coronation ritual, with its pilgrimage to the city of Binaš, the site of a royal mausoleum, as well as offerings to the ancestral kings of Ebla at Darib, probably took place within an area of just a few days walk from the city. At Nagar and Mari, we have no texts detailing the administration of the city or the nearby countryside, but evidence from settlement patterns may attest to a similar inner core.
Beyond their immediate hinterlands, Ebla, Mari, and Nagar also interacted with a shifting number of dependent polities. During the forty to fifty years of the Ebla archives, the city’s political influence extended east to the Upper Euphrates and west to the Orontes Valley, although the limits of this influence shifted constantly. At various periods, this city controlled villages and farmland located further east, between the Baliḫ and the Euphrates. Ebla interacted with these smaller cities in several ways. We have records of gifts of textiles and metal objects that were sent to the kings and nobles of client cities on a regular basis. These gifts probably helped to seal diplomatic alliances, such as those documented by the treaties that we know Ebla contracted with Kablul and Burman, probably two cities on the Upper Euphrates (Fronzaroli 2003). In some cases, these gifts could be substantial. The alliance between Emar and Ebla involved gifts of large tracts of real estate, including entire villages, and a diplomatic marriage between a princess of Ebla and the king of Emar (Archi 1990). Kings and high officials of Ebla also participated in religious ceremonies in order to help integrate these client kingdoms into a larger, Ebla‐dominated world. Several members of a religious confraternity from Ebla made an annual journey to thirty‐seven different towns between Ebla and the Orontes in honor of the god ‘Adabal, the most important god in the west (Archi 2002). And urban authorities from a region called Ibal, probably northeast of Ebla, were brought to Ebla in order to make offerings of oil to Ebla’s chief god Kura, and swear allegiance to him and to Ebla in his temple (Fronzaroli 2003: ARET 13 14). Archaeologically, some of our best information about these client states comes from the excavations at Umm el‐Marra, perhaps ancient Tuba. A series of royal graves excavated there attest to the wealth of these client states (Schwartz, Curvers et al. 2006). Other wealthy third millennium graves have been excavated along the Upper Euphrates, particularly at Jerablus Tahtani, Tell Ahmar, and Banat (Cooper 2006). It seems likely that Mari, Nagar, and other major kingdoms interacted with their client states in similar ways, sometimes providing gifts, sometimes demanding tribute or troops, and always employing a range of diplomatic strategies.
Smaller cities were often caught up in the rivalry between the major powers. An unusual memorandum, found in the Ebla archives, records the arguments of a Mari envoy to the king of Haddu, located somewhere east of the Euphrates, about why he should shift his allegiance from Ebla to Mari (Fronzaroli 2003; Archi and Biga 2003). We do not, unfortunately, know if the king was persuaded. The archives found at Beydar indicate that the king of Nagar also devoted time and resources to securing and maintaining the loyalty of client states. Administrative texts dating to a visit from Nagar’s king illustrate that he was constantly on the move, demonstrating his personal control of this area (Sallaberger 2001). Beydar was probably just at the edge of the territory ruled by Nagar, whose kings, in all likelihood, also participated in other ritual processions, not attested in Beydar’s tablets. Images of religious processions are popular at Beydar and present at Nagar; together with a number of unusual cultic sites (like Hazna and Jebelet al‐Beda) they may provide additional evidence for a similar religious landscape (Bretschneider, Jans et al. 2009; Ristvet 2011).
Finally, Nagar, Ebla, Mari, Abarsal, and Kiš constituted an international sphere, marked by warfare, diplomatic alliances, and a shared written language. Indeed, much of Northern Mesopotamia, as well as some of the northern cities in Southern Mesopotamia, were part of a cultural sphere often called the “Kiš civilization.” These cities shared a writing system, calendar, measurement system, and aspects of a common religion, from Adab to Ebla (a distance of more than 900 km) (Gelb 1992). The Ebla archives clearly indicate that at the beginning of this period, Mari was the most powerful state in Northern Mesopotamia. A famous letter from the king of Mari, Enna‐Dagan, to an unknown king at Ebla lists Mari’s conquests and describes how Mari turned conquered cities into heaps of ruins, or perhaps of corpses. During Enna‐Dagan’s reign, Ebla paid huge quantities of tribute in gold and silver (more than 2000 pounds of silver and more than 100 of gold) to Mari, but later on, Ebla was able to establish equal status and no longer contributed to Mari’s coffers. The two city states continued to compete, however, particularly for access to the Upper Euphrates and areas further north and east.
Several treaties found at Ebla, particularly a well‐preserved text recording Ebla’s alliance with Abarsal, another strong state, provide us with evidence of international diplomacy. We know from references in administrative texts from Ebla that Ebla and Mari contracted at least two treaties (Archi and Biga 2003: 10–12). Nonetheless, the cities remained rivals, and Ebla sought to isolate Mari diplomatically by contracting alliances with Nagar and Kiš, sealed by the marriages of two Eblaite princesses, and to defeat it militarily. Although Ebla did win an important victory over Mari, just three years later, perhaps sometime shortly before 2300 BCE, the tables turned dramatically. The imposing Palace G on Ebla’s citadel was burned, preserving the city’s archives, and much of the Acropolis was abandoned. It seems most likely that the attackers came from Mari, and that this catastrophe, which destroyed Ebla’s pre‐eminence in Northern Syria, was simply the final stage in a longer military contest between the two cities (Archi and Biga 2003).
Archaeology provides another, often complementary source of evidence, which casts light on matters that th
e scribes did not record. In the Ebla tablets, Mari, Ebla, and Nagar emerge as the pre‐eminent city‐states or kingdoms, yet from excavation and survey we know several large cities existed further east, including Leilan, Hamoukar, Hawa, Taya, Nineveh, and Ashur, each of which probably controlled a kingdom. These places are absent from the Ebla documentation, probably hidden from view by the machinations of the elite of Nagar, the easternmost city from the point of view of Ebla. Ashur may be mentioned in three Ebla documents, but it is unclear if the toponym refers to the famous city on the Tigris, or a smaller place of the same name near Ebla (Archi and Biga 2003: 18, fn. 54). Although we do not have textual information about the society and economy of these cities, the view from archaeology indicates that they probably shared a common framework with their neighbors to the west. Textual data on Southern Mesopotamian cities, such as Kiš and Adab, is sparse too, but a hoard of precious objects found at Mari contains many that were made in the South, including a lapis lazuli bead with an inscription of Mesanepada, king of Ur (he also claimed the title king of Kiš), presumably indicating economic and diplomatic contact with this southern city. Together, the textual and archaeological evidence indicate the emergence of a cultural sphere that encompassed Greater Mesopotamia by the middle of the third millennium BCE.
