by Georges Roux
Narâm-Sin was of the same stamp as his grandfather Sargon and like him became a hero of legend. His long reign (2254-2218) was almost entirely filled with military operations, and they all took place at the periphery of Mesopotamia. In the west he ‘slew Arman (Aleppo?) and Ebla with the weapon of the god Dagan’, partly destroying the palace of Mari on his way. And ‘he overpowered the Amanus, the Cedar Mountain’.19 In the north a campaign against the Hurrians is attested by a royal relief carved in the rock at Pir Hussain, near Diarbakr, and a royal city was built at Tell Brak, a key position in the heart of the Khabur basin, which controlled all the roads of Jazirah.20 In the extreme south Magan (Oman) probably revolted, for Narâm-Sin ‘marched against Magan and personally caught Mandannu, its king’. But the main campaign was directed against the powerful Lullubi. The Akkadian victory over them is commemorated by another rock sculpture at Darband-i-Gawr, near Sar-i-Pul (Iran) and by a masterpiece of Mesopotamian sculpture: the famous stele found at Susa and now the pride of the Louvre museum.21 There Narâm-Sin, armed with the bow and the horned tiara of the gods on his head, is shown climbing a steep mountain and treading upon the corpses of his enemies; his infantry, pictured on a smaller scale, follows him. The gods, who dwarfed the humans in Early Dynastic Sumerian sculpture, are now, significantly, reduced to discreet symbols: two stars in the sky.
Did the reign end in semi-disaster? A document known as ‘the Cuthean Legend of Narâm-Sin’ shows the King of Akkad ‘bewildered, confused, sunk in gloom, sorrowful, exhausted' from an overwhelming invasion;22 but, here again, the mixture of facts and fancy calls for extreme caution. There is no doubt, however, that Narâm-Sin was the last great monarch of the Akkadian dynasty. No sooner was he dead than the pressure at the frontiers of the empire became formidable. Throughout his reign Elam and Mesopotamia had lived on friendly terms: the king had bestowed his favours upon Susa, and the energetic governor of Elam, Puzur-Inshushinak, had subdued on his behalf the tribes of the southern Zagros. But under Narâm-Sin's successor, Shar-kali-sharri, Puzur-Inshushinak declared himself independent, abandoned the Akkadian language for his own tongue, Elamite, and dared take the supreme title ‘King of the Universe’. The King of Agade, whose name, ironically, meant ‘King of all Kings’, was powerless to intervene, so busy was he with the repression of revolts in Sumer and with wars against the Lullubi, the Guti and the nomads of Syria, the Amorites whom we shall soon meet again.
Shar-kali-sharri, like Rimush and Manishtusu, disappeared in a palace revolution (2193 B.C.), and the Akkadian empire collapsed as rapidly as it had been built up. The state of anarchy in the capital was such that the Sumerian King List simply says:
Who was king? Who was not king?
Was Igigi king?
Was Nanum king?
Was Imi king?
Was Elulu king?
Their tetrad was king, and reigned 3 years!
Several Sumerian cities became independent, following the example set by Uruk where a local dynasty (Uruk IV, five kings, thirty years) reigned from the last days of Narâm-Sin. From Elam Puzur-Inshushinak conducted a raid into Mesopotamia and reached the neighbourhood of Agade. In Kurdistan Annubanini, King of the Lullubi, carved his image on the rock with an inscription in Akkadian boasting of widespread conquests.23 Yet it was neither the Elamites nor the Lullubi, but the Guti who won the decisive battle, although we do not know how, where and when. Under the last puppet kings of Akkad they were already installed in Mesopotamia, and for about a century the Sumerians and Akkadians were to obey sovereigns who responded to such strange names as Inimagabesh or Jarlagab, but they did not feel responsible for the disaster. A long and moving Sumerian poem called ‘The Curse of Agade’ places the burden on Narâm-Sin who is accused of having destroyed Enlil's temple in Nippur – a sacrilege which could not pass unpunished.24
The rise and fall of the Akkadian empire offers a perfect preview of the rise and fall of all subsequent Mesopotamian empires: rapid expansion followed by ceaseless rebellions, palace revolutions, constant wars on the frontiers, and in the end, the coup de grâce given by the highlanders: Guti now, Elamites, Kassites, Medes or Persians tomorrow. A civilization based on agriculture and metal work in a country like Iraq required, to be viable, two conditions: perfect cooperation between the various ethnic and socio-political units within the country itself, and a friendly or at least a neutral attitude from its neighbours. Unfortunately, neither one nor the other ever lasted for any length of time. The narrow nationalism of the Sumerians, inherited from a distant past and founded on their attachment to the local gods, could not accommodate itself to obedience to a common ruler, always necessarily ‘foreign’. On the other hand, the treasures accumulated in the prosperous cities of the plain attracted the poor shepherds of the hills no less than those of the steppe, and they were bent upon pillage. It was not enough for the Mesopotamians to keep them at a respectful distance: they had to conquer them, to subdue them if they wished to keep open the vital arteries of their trade. In this endless guerrilla war on two fronts the kings of Akkad, as later the kings of Ur, Babylon and Assyria, used up their strength and, sooner or later, their empires collapsed.
The death of Shar-kali-sharri practically marks the end of the ‘Akkadian period’ as it is often called; but short as it was, this period exerted a deep and lasting influence on Mesopotamian history. The geographical horizon of Sumer was considerably enlarged. The Semitic language of the Akkadians found a wider audience, and the first two historical populations of Iraq were intimately blended for future destinies. The Sumero-Akkadian culture and its support, the cuneiform writing, were adopted not only by the people of northern Mesopotamia, but by the Hurrians, the Lullubi and the Elamites. Conversely, Mesopotamia was immensely enriched by the introduction of bronze, silver, wood and stone in large quantities, while numerous prisoners of war working as slaves provided cheap and abundant labour. Elam, Bahrain (Dilmun), Oman (? Magan) and the whole Gulf came under Mesopotamian influence, while Proto-Indian seals, vases and ornaments found in Iraq testify to commercial relations with the Indus valley (perhaps the Meluhha of our texts), where flourished the brilliant civilization of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro.25 In art the new tendencies were towards realism, and true portraits replaced the more or less conventional figures of Early Dynastic times. Politically, the period rings the knell of the small city-states and heralds the advent of large, centralized kingdoms. In the social and economic fields the Akkadian preference for private property and the constitution of large royal estates26 eroded the domain and power of the temples, at least in Sumer. Even the Sumerian reaction which succeeded the Akkadian interlude could not entirely revert to old-fashioned ideas and customs, and in many respects the kings of Ur followed the pattern laid down by Sargon and his dynasty.
CHAPTER 10
THE GREAT KINGDOM OF UR
About the Guti who overthrew the Akkadian empire and ruled over Mesopotamia for almost a hundred years we know next to nothing.1 The Sumerian King List gives ‘the hordes of Gutium’ twenty-one kings, but very few of them have left us inscriptions, and this, coupled with silence from other sources, points to a period of political unrest. The invaders were certainly not very numerous; they ravaged the country, probably plundered Agade and occupied Nippur and a few strategic points. Yet we know from a recently published inscription that at least one of their kings, Erridu-Pizir, fought against the Lullubi and the Hurrians of Kurdistan in defence of Akkad,2 and many cities must have enjoyed almost complete freedom, keeping alive a spirit of national resistance which, eventually, culminated in the liberation of Sumer and Akkad. When, in about 2120 B.C., Utuhegal, ensi of Uruk, mustered an army and rose against ‘the stinging serpent of the hills’ several princes in southern Iraq followed him. The hated foreigners were defeated; Tiriqan, their king, tried to escape, was captured and handed over to the Sumerian leader:
Utu-hegal sat down; Tiriqan lay at his feet. Upon his neck he set his foot, and the sovereignty of Sumer he restored into his (own)
hands.3
Nippur was no doubt recovered, and Uruk, the city which since the days of Gilgamesh had given Sumer no less than four dynasties, could stand once again at the head of the city-states. But its fifth dynasty was short-lived: after seven years of reign Utu-hegal was evicted by one of his own officials, Ur-Nammu,* governor of Ur, who took the titles ‘King of Ur, King of Sumer and Akkad’. Thus was founded the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2112 – 2004 B.C.), which represents one of the most brilliant periods in the history of ancient Iraq, for not only did Ur-Nammu and his successors restore the Akkadian empire throughout its length and breadth but they gave Mesopotamia a century of relative peace and prosperity and sponsored an extraordinary renaissance in all the branches of Sumerian art and literature.
Ur-Nammu and Gudea
Compared with the Sargonic period, the time of the Third Dynasty of Ur – the ‘Ur III’ or ‘Neo-Sumerian’ period, as it is sometimes called – is conspicuously poor in historical inscriptions and, much as we should like to, we cannot follow Ur-Nammu in the battles which served to enlarge his kingdom. The collapse of the Guti followed by the accidental death of Utu-hegal (‘his body was carried off by the river’) must have resulted in complete political vacuum, and we may assume that the whole of Mesopotamia fell into the hands of the King of Ur in a comparatively short time. The rest of the reign (2112-2095) was devoted to the fulfilment of more domestic but none the less urgent and important tasks: the restoration of order and prosperity and the care of the gods. Ur-Nammu ‘freed the land from thieves, robbers and rebels’ and has long been thought to have dictated what is considered to be the most ancient collection of laws in the world, although it appears from a newly found tablet that the true author was his son Shulgi.4 In its present state, this ‘code’ is incomplete, but what remains of the laws is of considerable interest, for it appears that at least some crimes (such as physical injury) were not punished by death or mutilation, as later in the Code of Hammurabi or the Hebraic law, but the offender was obliged to pay compensation in silver, the weight of which varied according to the gravity of the crime. This, of course, is the sign of a society far more polished and civilized than is usually imagined.5 Ur-Nammu
Reconstruction of the ziqqurat of Ur, as it probably looked at the time it was built by Ur-Nammu or Shulgi.
After Sir Leonard Woolley, Ur Excavations, V, 1939.
also revived agriculture and improved communications by digging a number of canals; towns were fortified against future wars, and an enormous amount of rebuilding was carried out. But in the minds of archaeologists the name of Ur-Nammu will for ever be associated with the ziqqurats, or stage-towers, which he erected in Ur, Uruk, Eridu, Nippur and various other cities and which are still the most impressive monuments of these sites.6
The best preserved of these stage-towers, the ziqqurat of Ur, may be taken as an example.7 Built of mud bricks, but covered with a thick ‘skin’ of baked bricks set in bitumen, the stage-tower of Ur measured at its base 60.50 by 43 metres. It had at least three tiers, and though only the first and part of the second tiers have survived, its present height is about twenty metres. Yet this enormous mass gives an astonishing impression of lightness due partly to its perfect proportions and partly to the fact that all its lines are slightly curved, a device long thought to have been invented by the Greek architects who built the Parthenon, nearly two thousand years later. Against the north-eastern side of the tower three long flights of steps converge towards a landing half-way between the first and the second platforms, and from this point other steps once led to the second and third stories and finally to the shrine crowning the whole structure. The ziqqurat stood on a large terrace in the heart of the ‘sacred city’ – the walled area reserved for gods and kings which occupied most of the northern half of the town. It cast its shadow over the great courtyard of Nanna – a low-lying open space surrounded by stores and lodgings for the priests – the temples of the moon-god and of his consort the goddess Ningal, the royal palace and other less important buildings. Towering above the walls of the capital city, it mirrored itself in the Euphrates, which flowed along its western side. Even now the rounded red-brown pyramid topping the enormous greyish mound of the ruins forms a landmark visible from many miles away. The ziqqurats of other cities are not so well preserved and differ from that of Ur in several details, but their shape, their orientation and their position in relation to the main temples remain essentially the same. What then, it may be asked, was the purpose of these monuments?
The pioneers of Mesopotamian archaeology naïvely thought that the ziqqurats were observatories for ‘Chaldaean’ astronomers, or even towers ‘where the priests of Bel could spend the night away from the heat and mosquitoes’, but this obviously does not make sense. Comparison with Egypt comes immediately to mind, and indeed, Sumerian architects may well have inspired their Egyptian counterparts; but it must be emphasized that the ziqqurats, contrary to the pyramids, do not contain tombs or chambers; they were built as a rule upon older, more modest structures erected during the Early Dynastic period, and these low, one-tiered, archaic ziqqurats derived, it is now generally believed, from the platforms that supported the temples of the Ubaid, Uruk and Jemdat Nasr periods. But why these platforms, why these towers? Philology throws no light on the problem, since the word ziqqurat (sometimes transcribed ziggurat or zikkurat) comes from a verb zaqaru, which simply means ‘to build high’, and we have the choice of several theories. Some authors believe that the Sumerians were originally highlanders who worshipped their gods upon the mountain-tops, and so built these towers to serve as artificial mountains in the flat Mesopotamian plain. Others, rejecting this over-simplified and questionable explanation, think that the purpose of the temple platform (and therefore of the ziqqurat) was to raise the main god of the city above the other gods and to protect him from the promiscuity of laymen. Yet another group of scholars sees in the monument a colossal staircase, a bridge between the lower temples, where the routine ceremonies of the cult were performed, and the upper sanctuary, half-way between heaven and earth, where men and gods could meet on certain occasions; and this, we believe, is nearer the truth. All considered, perhaps the best definition of the ziqqurat is given by the Bible (Genesis xi. 4), where it is said that the ‘Tower of Babel' (i.e. the ziqqurat of Babylon) was meant ‘to reach unto heaven’. In the deeply religious mind of the Sumerians these enormous, yet curiously light constructions were ‘prayers of bricks’ as our Gothic cathedrals are ‘prayers of stone’. They extended to the gods a permanent invitation to descend on earth at the same time as they expressed one of man's most remarkable efforts to rise above his miserable condition and to establish closer contacts with the divinity.
Judging from the dispersion throughout southern Iraq of bricks stamped with Ur-Nammu's name, it would appear that the building of temples was the king's privilege, and indeed it was, when the Ur III empire was firmly established, but before that we know of a city not far from the capital where a grandiose building programme was carried out by the local ruler with truly royal magnificence: this was Lagash under its famous ensi Gudea (c. 2141 – 2122 B.C.).
We have seen (Chapter 8) that Lugalzagesi of Umma had put an end to the protracted conflict between his city and Lagash by setting fire to the monuments of Girsu and turning it into a mass of ruins. But in the ancient Orient towns were rarely as completely destroyed as the texts would have us believe, and somehow Girsu survived. Towards the end of the Gutian period it was in the hands of energetic princes who apparently managed to remain independent and set themselves the task of reinvigorating the faded glory of their city. One of them was Gudea,* a contemporary of the last Gutian kings, whose numerous statues and inscriptions provide the most admirable examples of Sumerian achievement in art and literature.
Gudea built – or rather rebuilt – at least fifteen temples in the city-state of Lagash, but on none of them was he so lavish as on the E-ninnu, the temple of Ningirsu, the city-god of Girsu. On two large clay cylind
ers and on some of his statue inscriptions8 he explains at length why and how he built it, giving us, incidentally, invaluable details on the complicated rites essential to the foundation of sanctuaries in ancient Mesopotamia. It is typical of Sumerian thinking that the decision to erect a temple is given not as an act of will of the ruler, but as the fulfilment of a wish of the god expressed in the form of a mysterious dream:
In the heart of a dream, here was a man: his height equalled the sky, his weight equalled the earth… To his right and to his left lions were crouching… He told me to build him a temple, but I did not understand his heart (= his desire)…
Here was a woman. Who was she not, who was she?… She was holding in her hand a stylus of flaming metal; she was holding the tablet of good writing of heaven; she was immersed in her thoughts…
Troubled and perplexed, Gudea first sought comfort from his ‘mother’, the goddess Gatamdug, and then proceeded by boat to the temple of the goddess Nanshe ‘interpreter of dreams’. Nanshe explained that the man was Ningirsu and the woman Nisaba, the goddess of science; she advised Gudea to offer Ningirsu a chariot ‘adorned with shining metal and lapis-lazuli’:
Then, inscrutable as the sky, the wisdom of the Lord, or Ningirsu, the son of Enlil, will soothe thee. He will reveal to thee the plan of His temple, and the Warrior whose decrees are great will build it for thee.
