Mesopotamia: land and people (3rd millennium BCE)
Mesopotamia is a Greek word meaning 'between rivers'. It lies between the Tigris and the Euphrates, in today's Iraq region. The 3rd millennium BCE means the years 3000 to 2001 BCE.
Two kinds of land
- North and north-east: green plains and hills with enough rain for farming, and grassland for sheep and goats.
- South: very little rain, but soil left by the rivers is very fertile. The Euphrates carried water; farmers dug canals to bring it to fields.
With canals, the south grew lots of barley and wheat, and dates. Herders gave milk, wool and meat. Rivers gave fish and were roads for boats. The south was the first place where cities appeared, around 3500 BCE.
How do we know?
Archaeologists have dug in many old mounds (tells). The clay tablets they found, in their thousands, tell us about prices, work, laws and kings.
Growth of towns
Cities need more than farms. They need enough extra food to feed people who do not farm, and organisation to collect and share it.
Temples first
Early settlers built small shrines. Over time, temples were rebuilt on the same spot, bigger each time, until they became the high stepped ziggurat. A temple owned land, herds and workshops. It collected grain, wool and oil, and gave rations to workers. So the temple became a centre of the town.
Then kings
Villages sometimes fought over land and water. A successful war leader shared loot and brought captives to work. Slowly such leaders became permanent kings. Kings built city walls and palaces, gave gifts to temples, and organised big works like canals.
Examples of towns
- Uruk: one of the earliest and biggest cities; about 3000 BCE it spread over some 250 hectares and had a strong wall.
- Ur: a city of narrow winding streets with no town plan; famous royal graves full of treasure.
- Mari (later, about 2000 BCE): a royal city on the Euphrates, upstream, where farmers and herders met and traded.
So towns grew from three things: food surplus from canals, temple organisation, and the power of kings.
Early urban society
Division of labour
In a city, people do different jobs: farmers, herders, potters, weavers, metal workers, seal cutters, boatmen, merchants, scribes, priests and officials. This is division of labour. A metal worker needs a trader to bring copper, and food from farmers. So city life means depending on each other.
Ranks in society
Society was not equal. A small elite (king, priests, officials, rich merchants) owned most wealth. Royal graves at Ur had gold, jewels and even servants buried with the ruler. Most people were farmers and workers who got rations of barley.
Family and houses
The nuclear family (father, mother, children) was the usual unit. The father was the head. Marriage involved gifts between the families; the son usually inherited the house. At Ur, houses had no windows on the street, a central open courtyard, and drains leading into pits inside the house.
Trade and seals
The south had no metal, stone or good timber. Traders brought copper and tin (for bronze), stone and wood from far lands, and sent grain, cloth and oil out. A cylinder seal (a small carved stone tube) was rolled on the wet clay that closed a bag or jar. The picture it left showed who sent it and that it had not been opened.
The beginning of writing
Writing grew out of counting. First, small clay tokens stood for goods. Then, about 3200 BCE, signs for things (like sheep or grain) and numbers were drawn on clay tablets at Uruk.
Soon scribes pressed a sharp reed into soft clay to make wedge-shaped marks. This is cuneiform (Latin cuneus = wedge). A tablet was dried in the sun and could last thousands of years.
Cuneiform had hundreds of signs, and each sign stood for a syllable or a word, not a single letter. So learning to write took years of training in a school for scribes. The language first written was Sumerian; later Akkadian was also written in cuneiform. Cuneiform was used for about 3,000 years.
Debate on the uses of writing
What was writing used for?
- Accounts: the first and largest group of tablets are lists of grain, cattle, cloth and wages. Temples and palaces had many transactions to remember.
- Government: kings recorded victories, gifts to gods and orders. Later rulers set out law codes; Hammurabi of Babylon (about 1750 BCE) is famous for one.
- Letters and contracts: sales, loans and marriages were written down, sealed and kept.
- Literature: epics such as the story of Gilgamesh, a king of Uruk, kept memories of the city and its heroes.
- Knowledge: maths based on 60, lists of stars and eclipses. Our 60-minute hour, 60-second minute and 12-month year trace back to this.
Who did writing serve?
Historians argue about this.
- View 1: a tool of record. City life had too many dealings to hold in memory. Writing made trade, taxes and contracts reliable.
- View 2: a tool of power. Very few people could read. Scribes worked for temples and kings. Written laws and victory records showed the king as powerful and just. Ordinary people depended on scribes even to read their own letters.
- View 3: a tool of memory. Stories and king lists created a shared history for the city.
A fair conclusion: writing grew from the needs of cities, but because it was hard to learn, it mostly helped those who already held power. Even so, it also preserved knowledge that later peoples used.
Key formulas and definitions
- Mesopotamia = land between Tigris and Euphrates
- 3rd millennium BCE = 3000 to 2001 BCE
- First cities ~3500 BCE (south); writing ~3200 BCE (Uruk)
- Cuneiform = wedge-shaped signs pressed with a reed on clay
- Ziggurat = stepped temple tower
- Cylinder seal = carved stone tube rolled on wet clay
- Town growth = canal surplus + temple + king
- Division of labour = each person does one kind of work
- Uses of writing: accounts, laws, letters, literature, science
Worked examples
1. Why did the first cities grow in the dry south of Mesopotamia and not the rainy north?
The south had very fertile river soil. Canals from the Euphrates watered it, giving a big surplus of grain. That surplus could feed people who did not farm, so cities grew there.
2. Trace how a village became a city, using a cause-and-effect chain.
Canals → surplus grain → temple collects and shares it → more non-farmers (crafts, priests) → wars between settlements → war leaders become kings → walls, palaces, bigger population → city.
3. Why was the cylinder seal useful in trade?
A trader rolled his seal on the wet clay closing a bag. The print showed the owner and, if unbroken, proved the goods had not been opened on the way.
4. Why were the first written texts lists and accounts, not poems?
Temples handled huge amounts of grain, animals and wages. People could not remember every deal, so they needed records. Stories were still remembered and told aloud.
5. How many years was cuneiform in use if it started about 3200 BCE and the last known tablet is from about 75 CE?
3200 + 75 − 1 = 3274, so about 3,300 years.
6. Give one argument that writing was a tool of power.
Only trained scribes could read. They worked for kings and temples, and kings used writing to record laws and victories, showing their authority. Ordinary people had to rely on these few.
Common mistakes
- Thinking Mesopotamia means one country. It means the land between two rivers, with many city-states.
- Saying writing was first used for literature. The first texts were accounts and lists.
- Thinking cuneiform had letters like ABC. It used hundreds of signs for words and syllables.
- Thinking all Mesopotamian cities were planned like Harappan cities. Ur, for example, had narrow winding lanes.