Foreword

The aim of this post is to sum up the most important points made in Georges Roux' "Ancient Iraq" 5th chapter, in order to provide people material for their research. This is entirely written in the poster's own words, but because it conveys the work of a single author (with exceptions: when, for instance, the poster is clearly aware that informations are outdated, but those will be clearly indicated in the text as the poster's input), it does not qualifies as original research.

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The Origins of the Sumerian Civilization (based on ch. 5 "Birth of a Civilization")

During the subsequent 4th millenium BC, two phenomenons must be underlined: one is that the Ubaid culture (see "Pottery Neolithic") evolves through several more stages until the birth of the Sumerian civilization proper. The other is the fact that this evolution takes place exclusively in the southern half of Iraq, leaving the northern one behind in many respects. The reasons why are still a matter of debate, and the author warns us that the explanations he gives are merely tentative

This period in between the end of Ubaid and the beginnings of Sumer has been subdivided in two periods, somewhat artificially - the Uruk period (3,750-3,150 BC in Georges Roux's book; often though, it's rather dated 4,000 to 3,000 - see both The British School of Archeology in Iraq and the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative) and the Jemdat Nasr period (3,150-2,900 BC based on Georges Roux' book, 3,000-2,900 BC, see The British School of Archeology in Iraq). At any rate, there seems to have been no brutal transition from Ubaid to Uruk, indicating that we are faced with a cultural evolution rather than a foreign invasion. The Uruk ware, which is a grey or red undecorated, mass-produced ware made on the wheel, slowly replaced the Ubaid ware, while the Uruk temples were built above and with the same material and following the same plan as the Ubaid ones in the cities of Ur, Uruk or Eridu. The other cultural elements either find their roots directly in the previous period, or are likely due to the ingenuity of local cratsmen; a few might have been imported from northern Iraq as well

One of the main events during the Uruk period is the progressive concentration of people around some centers which can rightfully be called, by the end of that period, cities. This evolution finds certainly one of its most important explanations in the climatic changes occuring from the middle of the 4th millenium BC. It becomes increasingly drier and cooler, so that, thanks to now well-mastered irrigation technics, farmers begin to move towards the Lower Euphrates valley. During the first 300 to 400 years, villages grew around the older Ubaid settlements on the river banks. This steady increase in population and the need to feed it probably led to several inventions, among which the plough, the sled, the charriot and the sail. The subsequent increase in food production generated surplus which could be traded; parallely, the wheel and the casting of copper alloys mark the beginnings or industrial production. However, as the desiccation progressed, the once familiar landscape of marshes made way for one much similar to that of today, a succession of bands of palm-groves, fields and orchards in between which appear patches of desert or steppe. Many villages disappeared, their inhabitants joining the more important centers, which turned into cities. In order to increase the surface of cultivable areas, huge collective efforts were necessary in order to create and maintain the necessary irrigation systems; this, as well as the creation of a system of equitable distribution of water were in part responsible for the increase of power into the hands of the local chiefs, an evolution that would continue to turn those early cities into the city-states of ancient Sumer in the early 3rd millenium BC

The name for the Uruk period finds its origins in the site of a city (a result of the merger of two earlier towns, Kullaba, dedicated to An, and E-Anna, dedicated to Inanna) and located halfway between Baghdad and Basrah, and which is one of the most important in the region, both because of its size and because of its uninterrupted occupation from Ubaid to Parthian times. Its most famous feature, the ziqqurat of King Ur-Nammu, was built over an earlier Jemdat-Nasr temple, itself built in the same area, or just above previous religious buildings. The early Uruk temples were very similar to those of the Ubaid period in plan. Many were also built on brick platforms which increased in height and size in time; the successive Anu temples at Uruk illustrate this evolution particularly well. Wall mosaics and paintings reveal to us that bright colors were prefered for such buildings. On the other hand, little is known about houses in southern Iraq; most of our knowledge comes from other far-away sites reached later by the Uruk culture as it spread to cover pretty much the same area as the Ubaid culture before it. It appears regular street plans were common, with residential areas divided by main streets 2-3 meters wide and further intersected by smaller streets. Houses themselves were built using oblong bricks and consisted in three buildings around a courtyard or hall, each further divided into two to four rooms

Among the items recovered in buildings during that period, two are of capital importance. One is the cylinder-seals, which succeeded to the earlier stamp-seals. Not only were they beautiful objects, usually carved in semi-presious stone, pierced through their length so that they could be worn on a string, but their refined designs which, when rolled on clay, could be repeted infinitely, revealed much about the lifes and occupations of those who wore them, as they often represented entire scenes of everyday life during the Uruk period, the nature of which would depend on the occupation of its owner. But the most important discovery, dating back to the end of the Uruk period (around 3,400-3,300 BC) are the pictographic tablets found in the temple of Inanna of E-Anna (Uruk), as they illustrate the beginnings of writing. The pictographic system they illustrate was already too complex to have been a first attempt - they must have been preceded by pictograms engraved or painted on materials that would have perished in time, wood or animal skins, for instance. Both backed and unbacked clay tablets have been recovered, the former being near indestructable, while the latter would require great care before they would be dried and backed and therefore made equally resistent. In the early days, the scribes would draw on a lump of clean clay they would have previously shaped into a small cushion lines with a reed stalk in order to divide the surface into squares, each filled with pictograms. Later on, the drawings would become more compact, abstract, and the curves abandoned altogether for straight lines. The square system also disappeared as the characters would be aligned horizontally. One millenium later, the evolution towards cuneiform writing was completed

There isn't much to add regarding the Jemdat Nasr period, as it is mostly a seamless continuation of the Uruk period. The two exceptions to that are the pottery and sculpture: the Jemdat Nasr ware, mostly represented by thick jars covered in black or red geometrical or naturalistic designs, was usually found alongside Uruk pottery and in relatively small quantities. Sculpture presents a more interesting case as it made a brilliant comeback after having been virtually absent since the Samarra period. Examples of Jemdat Nasr scuplture are numerous and some beautifully executed, be they carved on vases or on mural plaques, or even on some rare late stamp-seals. But the most astonishing pieces, without rivals in this age, are an alabaster vase and a female mask in marble which artistic quality will remain unmatched until the classical period of Greek sculpture; both were found in Uruk

There is something highly intriguing in the way the late Uruk/Jemdat Nasr culture spread from southern Iraq. The Proto-Elamite script (south-west Persia) was most probably either inspired by the Sumerian or was invented by people related to this population; cities like Mari (middle Euphrates) or Ebla (northern Syria), when they grew and flourished, displayed strong sumerian cultural elements, even though the people were Semites. Even more surprising is the obvious inluence it had on Egypt, especially knowing how few the interractions between Mesopotamia and Egypt would be during ancient history; but the cylinder-seals (uniquely used as amulets since Egyptians did not use clay tablets), the traditional sculpted scenes and recessed façades all point towards southern Iraq. Therefore it is all the more astonishing that the northern half of Mesopotamia proper, the one that would later witness the rise of Assyria, lagged behind from Jemdat Nasr onward, to the point that it may be said that the north never truly made up for lost time througout ancient history. Even the most important center, Tepe Gawra, reveals that, during the Jemdat Nasr period in the south, not only did people not know writing (and that would remain so until the second half of the third millenium BC), but they didn't use the wheel either and were fighting "with mace and slings". That's not to say that their culture wasn't refined in other aspects - they drove charriots and burried their chiefs in burials much more magnificent than those known in the southern half of Mesopotamia