Cities That Shaped the Ancient World

John Julius Norwich

• Publisher: Thames and Hudson Ltd
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9780500772386
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

When did humans first come together in cities and what were they like to live in? Illustrated with spectacular photographs of the sites of ancient cities today, as well as fabulous objects and works of art, this book provides a fascinating exploration of cities that shaped the ancient world. From the world's first cities, in Mesopotamia, to the spectacular urban monuments of the Maya in Central America, the cities described here represent almost three millennia of human history and development. Under John Julius Norwich's expert editorship, eminent historians and archaeologists with first-hand knowledge of each site bring these silent ruins to life as the teeming metropolises they once were.

THE NEAR EAST

It is appropriate that this book should open with the Near East, since that is where a great transformation in human life took place. It began with agriculture. Before humanity learnt to cultivate the land, people lived as hunters and gatherers, often on the move. They had to follow their prey wherever it might lead them, and even when that prey was plentiful it still made sense that one group of hunters should not live in too great proximity to the next. Agriculture, on the other hand, called for the opposite. If farmers were properly to tend their crops, sowing and reaping by turns with the seasons, it would be a good idea to live permanently near them. Thus they needed settled habitation, probably in rather more durable structures than those to which they had been accustomed.

Here, then, was the birth of architecture. People built themselves houses in groups, close to the land they cultivated. Then, gradually, over the centuries, there came the urge to create larger and more ambitious structures: storerooms, for example, in which they could keep their agricultural produce to see them through the year; temples where they could sacrifice to their gods; palaces from which they could govern and be governed; baths where they could refresh themselves after their labours; and before long, unfortunately, walls for their defence. Demand for prestige goods would stimulate trade and exchange, given the proximity of the sea – or, better still, a great river. And so the village became the town, and the town, if especially favoured, became the city.

The vast majority of the first cities that shaped the ancient Near East – from Uruk and Ur, Babylon and Troy to Persepolis and Pergamum, Petra and Palmyra, and most others described here – now lie abandoned. One only remains a living community: Jerusalem. But Jerusalem is an exception to every rule. Apart from Solomon’s great temple – of which tragically little remains – the city in the days of antiquity contained no magnificent monuments; by far the greatest building now standing, the Dome of the Rock, dates from the very end of the 7th century AD. No matter: the city’s primary position in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions has endowed it, despite its continuously unhappy history, with an aura possessed by no other city in the world.

Detail of a relief at Persepolis showing a procession of subject peoples bringing gifts characteristic of their homelands as tribute for the Persian king.

Iberfoto/AISA.

URUK

The World’s First City

MARGARETE VAN ESS

Climb Uruk’s wall and walk back and forth! Survey its foundations, examine its brickwork! … Did the Seven Sages not lay its foundations? A square mile is the city, a square mile date-grove … half a square mile the temple of Ishtar: three square miles and a half is Uruk’s expanse.

EPIC OF GILGAMESH

At the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, Uruk was a thriving city of some 30,000 to 50,000 inhabitants, standing on the river Euphrates on the northern shore of the delta with the Tigris, some 300 km (186 miles) south of modern Baghdad. Enclosing an area of 5.3 sq. km (2 sq. miles) within its great city wall, it was the largest metropolis of its day and maintained political and commercial relations with other nations and cities both near and far. Its brilliantly organized urban administration and its achievements in monumental architecture were well known, and were commemorated in several epics, notably that of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest of all literary works.

Although King Gilgamesh of Uruk may have been a historical ruler of the 27th–26th centuries BC, the heroic deeds narrated in that epic reflect events from earlier periods as well, and suggest that by his day the kingdom had attained a remarkably high degree of sophistication. Uruk could already look back on around fifteen hundred years of history, during which it had successfully adapted to the harsh living conditions of southern Mesopotamia. While older permanent human settlements existed elsewhere in the region, the flat, alluvial and often marshy land between the Euphrates and the Tigris had been inhabited only since the 6th millennium BC: the climate was too hot and the river waters, which flooded the flat lands, too difficult to tame.

The sanctuary of Ishtar, goddess of love and war, existed at Uruk for around 3,000 years. The preserved remains visible today belong mainly to the impressive temple built by king Urnamma around 2100 BC.

© Nik Wheeler/Corbis.

Secure life in this difficult region depended on a highly developed system of control. Such a system demands agreements first with neighbouring and then with more distant settlements; and as more villages and fields become involved, these agreements call for specialized negotiators. Archaeological evidence shows that by 3500 BC Uruk had become a large urban centre, with an efficient administration, organized religion and impressive public architecture – all hallmarks of a true city. There were farmers to ensure the food supply, artisans organized in the mass production of clothes, pottery and tools, as well as artists to create beautiful works of art for the city’s adornment.

Uruk developed from two smaller settlements, one on each bank of the river Euphrates, and had two major sanctuaries. Although the temple for Ishtar later became the main religious centre, the sanctuary of Anu, god of heaven, always received worship as well. Its high terrace, with the remains of a temple on top, was rebuilt at least 18 times during the 4th millennium BC.

© Nik Wheeler/Corbis.

Reconstruction model of the sanctuary of Anu – the ‘White Temple’ on top of the high terrace, which was built around 3500 BC.

© artefacts-berlin.de; material: German Archaeological Institute.

Southern Mesopotamia has few natural resources, and consequently a considerable import trade developed – in wood and metals from the Taurus, Zagros and Lebanon ranges, as well as semiprecious stones and lapis lazuli from as far away as Afghanistan. As the social hierarchy became more complex, the number of professions grew: to the administrators and soldiers were added priests, scientists and astronomers who made observations of the natural world. Then, around 3200 BC, came the earliest form of writing, created initially for the purposes of administration.

In Uruk’s early days its public buildings, raised up on artificial hills, impressed by their sheer size as well as by the splendour of their decoration. Visible from far away, they left onlookers in no doubt of the city’s wealth and power. But then, around 3000 BC, the entire centre was remodelled on a completely new design. At its heart, on a terrace, stood a single temple, dedicated to Ishtar, goddess of love and war; surrounding this were other, humbler buildings with spacious courtyards that were given over to the temple administration.

As the city prospered, its area steadily increased; and finally, probably in the time of Gilgamesh, it was enclosed by its celebrated wall, 8.7 km (5½ miles) long, reinforced by 900 buttresses. Construction of the wall meant that the rivers providing the city with water had to be canalized, and the resulting network of large and small channels facilitated the movement of traffic around and within the city. The sheer scale and sophistication of these monumental works ensured Uruk’s renown for the next 2,500 years.

The urban core continued to be inhabited until the 4th century AD, and as both a city and a religious centre, Uruk retained a certain importance, but it never recovered its former political power. Its ruins now lie isolated in the deserts of Iraq.

UR

Mesopotamian Centre of Power and Wealth

MARC VAN DE MIEROOP

Ur was indeed given kingship, but it was not given an eternal reign. From time immemorial since the land was founded, until the people multiplied, who has ever seen a reign of kingship that would take precedence forever?

LAMENT OVER THE DESTRUCTION OF SUMER AND UR, c. 1800 BC

When sometime in the 1st millennium BC the anonymous author of the biblical book of Genesis narrated the life of Abraham, the patriarch’s birthplace was identified as ‘Ur of the Chaldaeans’. To those who read or heard the story it was probably a city they had never seen, but the name must have triggered something in their imagination, almost certainly as a very ancient place. The site we now know to hold the ruins of Ur – Tell al-Muqayyar in the very south of modern Iraq – was abandoned around 400 BC at the end of a long history of probably more than 4,000 years. In that time it had known moments of greatness but also of decline and destruction – in the Lament over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur the god Enlil points out that no glory lasts forever. Because archaeologists in the 1920s and 1930s in particular excavated the site extensively, historians can reconstruct the city’s condition at various times. Among its peaks of prosperity were the 26th century BC, when its elites were buried in tombs with magnificent grave goods, the 21st century BC, when Ur was the capital of a state that firmly held together the entirety of Babylonia and the territories to its east, and the 19th to 17th centuries BC, when the city was an economic powerhouse with a citizenry of dynamic entrepreneurs. But there were also times of crisis, as after 1740 BC, when Ur was ransacked by Babylonian troops in revenge for its rebellion, or in the early 1st millennium BC, when the city and its surroundings were barely inhabited.

The temple platform, the ziggurat, was originally built in the 21st century BC and reconstructed after excavation in the 20th century AD. Towering over the ancient city of Ur, it must have been visible from the far distance in the flat surrounding countryside.

© Georg Gerster/Panos.

In the middle of the 3rd millennium BC Ur was one of a network of city-states spread across Babylonia and ruled by kings, some of whose names we know from very brief inscriptions on cylinder seals, beads and the like. The city’s history is shrouded in mystery then, except that its archaeological remains include a rich abundance of materials that inspire us to recreate the lives of at least its elites in some detail – or perhaps more accurately their deaths. Within the city walls at the edge of the sacred precinct more than 2,000 people were buried in a cemetery that was in use from 2600 to 2100 BC, known as the Royal Cemetery. Among them was a select number whose tombs were filled with such astounding grave goods that we must conclude tha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• About the Editor
• Other titles of Interest
• Contents
• Introduction: The Birth of Urban Life
• The Near East
• Africa
• Europe
• Asia
• The Americas
• Maps
• Contributors
• Further reading
• Sources of quotations
• Index
• Copyright