Ancient Iraq

by Georges Roux

  In a modest way, the present work aims at bridging the gap between these two kinds of publications: monographs and encyclopedias. Devoted entirely to Iraq,* it is a concise and in many respects incomplete study of the political, economic and cultural history of Mesopotamia in antiquity, beginning with the first manifestations of human presence in north-eastern Iraq during palaeolithic times, and ending with the ultimate collapse of the Sumero-Akkadian civilization at the dawn of the Christian era. In addition, two introductory chapters purport to acquaint the reader with the geography and ecology of Mesopotamia and with the techniques and results of archaeological excavations in that country.

  Ancient Iraq is intended not for scholars, but for laymen and students. Throughout the world there exists a growing number of persons from all walks of life who are deeply interested in history in general and in the ancient Orient in particular. Cultured and eager to learn, these persons have not yet found gathered in one volume of reasonable size all the information they desire on a country which, with very good reasons, fascinates them. It is for this enlightened public that this book has primarily been written. But among those kind enough to look with indulgence upon my articles in Iraq Petroleum were also several university professors. In private letters and conversation they expressed the opinion that a book written along the same lines as the articles would provide their students with a useful working instrument. In order to satisfy the requirements of this category of readers, I have enlarged on certain points, perhaps considered by many as of secondary importance, and provided each chapter with rather copious bibliographical and explanatory notes. The thought that this work could be of some help to young students of antiquity will, I hope, render the general public more tolerant to its occasional heaviness.

  I have endeavoured to make this work as simple, clear and readable as humanly possible, but at the same time accurate and up to date. Needless to say that this was not an easy task. Writing for non-specialized readers on scientific matters is like walking on a tightrope: one is always afraid of falling into pedantry or triviality, and I am by no means sure that I have succeeded in keeping my balance all the way. In the enormous amount of material available, I had to make difficult, often heart-breaking choices, but I have taken great care to avoid over-simplification and dogmatism. History, especially where antiquity is concerned, abounds in unsolved problems, and the truth of today may be the proven error of tomorrow. I have therefore taken the liberty of discussing at some length some of the more debated problems – such as the origin of the Sumerians – and I have underlined, on almost every page, the provisional character of our knowledge. On frequent occasions I have attempted to correlate historical events with previous events or with geographical and economic conditions. In other words, I have tried to ‘explain’ as much as to describe, for I feel that without such ‘explanations’ – no matter how tentative they are – history would be nothing but a meaningless and tedious collection of dates and data. Finally, I have given archaeology, art, literature and religion more importance than is usually expected in a work of this kind, and I have quoted as many texts as space would permit. The public nowadays wants to know how ancient people lived and what they thought at least as much as what they did, and the best way to make the past alive is perhaps to let it speak by itself.

  I wish to thank all those who have helped me in this work, particularly my learned friends Monsieur René Labat, Professor at the Collège de France, Paris, and Monsieur Georges Dossin, Professor at the Universities of Brussels and Liège, who gave me their encouragement; Mr T. E. Piggott, former editor of Iraq Petroleum, who published my articles and obligingly put the blocks at my disposal; Mr L. H. Bawden, who drew the maps with consummate skill and art; Monsieur P. Amiet, of the Louvre Museum, Dr R. D. Barnett and the Trustees of the British Museum, Professor W. Caskel, of the University of Cologne, Dr G. R. Meyer, of the Vorderasiatische Museum, Berlin, and Dr Faisal al-Wailly, Director-General of Antiquities to the Iraqi Government, who authorized the publication of photographs of the monuments from their respective museums. Above all, I owe a very special debt of gratitude to Dr D. J. Wiseman, Professor of Assyriology at the University of London, who was kind enough to read the manuscript and to offer much invaluable advice, and to my wife, without whose self-sacrifice, moral support and linguistic assistance I would have been unable to write this book.

  London, August 1963

  CHAPTER 1

  THE GEOGRAPHICAL SETTING

  Nowhere, perhaps, is the influence of geography upon history as clearly demonstrated as in the group of countries which extend from the Mediterranean Sea to the Iranian plateau and form what we call the Near East. In the great deserts and equatorial forests, or in the vicinity of the poles, man is overwhelmed by a hostile nature threatening his very existence. In temperate areas, on the other hand, man is almost everywhere at home in a favourable and challenging environment. But in the arid, sub-tropical Near East the balance between man and nature is more delicately poised. Man can live there and even thrive, yet his various activities are largely conditioned by the relief of the ground, the nature of the soil, the amount of rainfall, the distribution of springs and wells, the course and rate of flow of the rivers. These factors exert upon him a profound influence: they mark the paths of his trade and of his military ventures, incline him to settle as a farmer or condemn him to the wandering life of a nomad, contribute to his physical and moral qualities and, to some extent, command his thoughts and religious beliefs. The history of any Near Eastern country must therefore begin with a study of the map, and the antique land of Iraq is no exception to the rule.

  Since we possess no ancient treatise on geography, the following description will necessarily be based on present-day Iraq, though there is no doubt that it applies to antiquity with but minor amendments.1 While in some parts of the country the rivers do not follow exactly the same course as they did in the past, and while regions which were once fertile are now sterile and vice versa, the general pattern of mountains, plains and valleys remains obviously unchanged, and a comparison between ancient and modern faunae and florae,2 as well as the evidence obtained from geological and meteorological studies,3 indicate that climatic fluctuations over the last five thousand years have been so slight as to be practically negligible. Scientific proof of this kind, however, is almost superfluous, for any person with some knowledge of history who visits Iraq finds himself in familiar surroundings. Not only do bare mountains, stony deserts, fields of barley, palm-groves, reed-thickets and mud-flats form the landscape which ancient texts and monuments suggested, but living conditions outside the main cities are reminiscent of those of yore. On the hills shepherds straight from biblical ages graze sheep and goats; in the desert tribes of bedouins endlessly wander from well to well, as of old; in the plain peasants live in mud houses almost identical with those of the Babylonian farmers and often use similar tools, while fishermen in the marshes dwell in the reed-huts and punt the highprowed boats of their Sumerian ancestors. If the moon, the sun, the winds, the rivers are no longer worshipped, their power is still feared or welcomed, and many ancient customs and beliefs can be explained by reference to present conditions. Indeed, there are few countries in the world where the past is more strangely alive, where the historian's dead texts are provided with a more appropriate illustration.

  Our field of studies is a triangle covering an area of about 240,000 square kilometres, limited by arbitrary lines drawn between Aleppo, Lake Urmiah and the mouth of the Shatt-el-‘Arab. The political frontiers of today divide this triangle between Syria and Iraq, the latter having the better share, while parts of Turkey and Iran protrude in the north and east. But these frontiers are recent, and the whole region constitutes in fact one large geographical unit having for its main axis the valleys of two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. We may therefore call it ‘Mesopotamia’, though the word, coined in antiquity by Greek historians, is somewhat too restricted, meaning ‘(the land) between the rivers’. S
urprising as it may seem, the ancient inhabitants of ‘Mesopotamia’ had no name covering the totality of the country in which they lived, and the terms they used were either too vague (‘the Land’) or too precise (‘Sumer’, ‘Akkad’, ‘Assur’, ‘Babylon’). So deeply embedded in their minds were the concepts of city-states and of narrow politico-religious divisions that they apparently failed to recognize the existence of a territorial unity which to us is obvious.

  The geographical unity of Mesopotamia was matched in pre-Christian times by a striking cultural unity. Within our triangle flourished a civilization which in quality and importance was only equalled by the civilization of Egypt. According to the fashion of the day, we call it ‘Chaldaean’, ‘Assyro-Babylonian’, ‘Sumero-Akkadian’ or ‘Mesopotamian’ civilization, but these are one and the same thing. From roots set deeply in the darkness of prehistoric times, it slowly grew, blossomed in the dawning light of history and lasted for nearly three thousand years, remaining remarkably uniform throughout, though repeatedly shaken by political convulsions and repeatedly rejuvenated by foreign blood and influence. The centres which generated, kept alive and radiated this civilization over the entire Near East were towns such as Ur, Uruk, Nippur, Agade, Babylon, Assur and Nineveh, all situated on or near the Tigris or the Euphrates, within the boundaries of modern Iraq. At the beginning of the Christian era, however, the Mesopotamian civilization gradually declined and vanished for reasons which will be detailed in due course. Some of its cultural and scientific achievements were salvaged by the Greeks and later became part of our own heritage; the rest either perished or lay buried for centuries, awaiting the picks of archaeologists. A glorious past was forgotten. In man's short memory of these opulent cities, of these powerful gods, of these mighty monarchs, only a few, often distorted names survived. The dissolving rain, the sand-bearing winds, the earth-splitting sun conspired to obliterate all material remains, and the desolate mounds which since concealed the ruins of Babylon and Nineveh offer perhaps the best lesson in modesty that we shall ever receive from history.

  The Twin Rivers

  Herodotus's famous sentence ‘Egypt is a gift of the Nile’4 is often quoted. In many respects, it can also be said of Mesopotamia that she is a gift of the twin rivers. From time immemorial the Tigris and the Euphrates have deposited their alluvium on a bed of sedimentary rocks between the Arabian platform and the Iranian highland, creating amidst deserts a plain which in size and fertility has no equivalent in the 2,300 miles of barren land stretching from the Indus to the Nile. Was this plain also claimed from the sea? In other words, did the head of the Arabo-Persian Gulf reach the latitude of Baghdad in early prehistoric times, being gradually pushed southwards as millennia went by? Such is the classical theory long professed as a dogma and still to be found in most textbooks.5 In 1952, however, a new theory was put forward, which claims that the Tigris and the Euphrates unload their sediment in a slowly subsiding basin and that in consequence the line of the seashore has probably varied very little in the course of time.6

  However, further studies conducted in the 1970s, mainly on marine terraces and submarine sediments, have shown that this theory accounted for only part of a very complex process and that Pleistocene and Holocene changes in world climate were also major factors, being responsible for wide fluctuations in the level of the Gulf waters, which of course influenced the position of the shoreline and the gradient of river flow. Most scientists now agree that about 14000 B.C., at the peak of the last Ice Age, the Gulf was a deep and broad valley through which flowed the Tigris and the Euphrates united in a single river, and that this valley was gradually filled with sea water as the ice-cap melted. By 4000 – 3000 B.C. the level of the Gulf was approximately one or two metres above its present level, so that the shoreline lay in the vicinity of Ur and Eridu. Gradual regression combined with silting from the rivers brought it to where it is now.7 There is some archaeological evidence that around 1500 B.C. the sea-shore was roughly half-way between Ur and modern Basrah.8 But many other factors must have intervened, and we shall probably never know the entire story.

  Both the Tigris and the Euphrates have their sources in Armenia, the former to the south of Lake Van, the latter near Mount Ararat. The Euphrates, 2,780 kilometres long, first follows a zigzagging course across Turkey, while the Tigris, notably shorter (1,950 kilometres), almost immediately flows southwards. When they emerge from the Taurus mountains the two rivers are separated from each other by some 400 kilometres of open steppe. The Euphrates, which at Jerablus is only 150 kilometres from the Mediterranean, takes a south-easterly direction and leisurely makes its way towards the Tigris. Near Baghdad they nearly meet, being a mere thirty-two kilometres apart, but they soon diverge again and do not mingle their waters until they reach Qurnah, 100 kilometres north of Basrah, to form the Shatt-el-‘Arab. In antiquity, however, this wide, majestic river did not exist, the Tigris and the Euphrates then running separately into the sea. This general pattern of river courses can be divided into two segments. To the north of a line Hit-Samarra the valleys of the Twin Rivers are distinct. The two streams cut their way across a plateau of hard limestone and shale and are bordered by cliffs, with the result that the riverbeds have moved very little in the course of time, the ancient cities – such as Karkemish, Mari, Nineveh, Nimrud or Assur – still being on, or close by, the river banks, as they were thousands of years ago. But to the south of that line the two valleys merge and form a wide, flat alluvial plain – sometimes called the Mesopotamian delta – where the rivers flow with such a low gradient that they meander considerably and throw numerous side-branches. Like all meandering rivers they raise their own beds, so that they frequently flow above the level of the plain, their overflow tending to create permanent lakes and swamps, and they occasionally change their course. This explains why southern Mesopotamian cities, which were once on the Euphrates or on its branches, are now forlorn ruin-mounds in a desert of silt, several miles from modern waterways. Changes in riverbeds are extremely difficult to study in retrospect and to date with accuracy, but they certainly occurred in antiquity. It is, however, remarkable that the ancient Mesopotamians managed to keep their rivers under control, since the two principal branches of the lower Euphrates followed approximately the same course for about three thousand years, passing through Sippar, Babylon, Nippur, Shuruppak, Uruk, Larsa and Ur, that is to say from 25 to 80 kilometres to the east of its present main channel. As for the Tigris, all that can be said about its ancient course in southern Mesopotamia is that it probably was the same as the course of the Shatt el-Gharraf, one of its present branches: straight from Kut el-Imara to the neighbourhood of Nasriyah. It seems to have played a relatively minor role in that region, either because its bed was dug too deep into the alluvium for simple canal irrigation or because it was surrounded – as indeed it is now – by extensive marshes.

  The climate of central and southern Iraq is of the ‘dry, subtropical’ variety, with temperatures reaching 120° F. (50° C.) in summer and an average winter rainfall of less than ten inches. Agriculture therefore depends almost entirely upon irrigation, though the dimensions and profile of the plain, as well as the rate of flow of the rivers, preclude the cheap and easy ‘basin type’ of irrigation as practised, for instance, in Egypt, where the overflow of the Nile freely inundates the valley for a time and then withdraws. Since the combined flood periods of the Tigris and the Euphrates occur between April and June, too late for winter crops and too early for summer crops, the fields must be supplied with water at man's will, and this is achieved by a complex system of canals, reservoirs, dykes, regulator-sluices and the like (‘perennial irrigation’).9 To create an efficient network of canals and to maintain them against rapid silting-up are clearly colossal and unending tasks which require large labour forces and the cooperation of many communities – factors which contain the germs of both local strife and political unity. But this is not all: year after year, two grave dangers threaten the Mesopotamian farmer. The more insidi
ous of the two is the accumulation in flat, low-lying areas of the salt brought by irrigation and collected in the water-table which lies just beneath the surface. If no artificial drainage is installed – and it seems that such drainage was unknown in antiquity – fertile fields can become sterile in a comparatively short time, and in this way, throughout history pieces of land of ever-increasing size had to be abandoned and reverted to deserts.10 The other danger lies in the capricious rate of flow of the twin rivers.11 While the Nile, fed by the great lakes of East Africa acting as regulators, has an annual flood of almost constant volume, the volume of the combined floods of the Tigris and the Euphrates is unpredictable, for it depends upon the variable amount of rain or snow which falls on the mountains of Armenia and Kurdistan. If low waters over a few years mean drought and famine, one excessive flood often spells catastrophe. The rivers break through their embankments; the low land as far as the eye can see is submerged; the flimsy mud-houses and reed-huts are swept away; the crop is lost in a huge muddy lake, together with the cattle and the belongings of a large part of the population. It is a spectacle the horror of which will never be forgotten by those who witnessed the last great Iraqi inundation, in the spring of 1954. Thus Mesopotamia constantly hovers between desert and swamp. This double threat and the uncertainty it creates as regards the future are believed to be at the root of the ‘fundamental pessimism’ which, for some authors, characterizes the philosophy of the ancient Mesopotamians.