Sumerian City States and Cities: Uruk, Lagash and Girsu | Middle East And North Africa

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SUMERIAN CITY-STATES

Uruk cylinder seal
The Sumerians didn’t establish an empire like the Romans did. They lived in a bunch of independent city-states like the Greeks. The first cluster Mesopotamian settlements were established in ancient Sumer around 3,500 B.C. These settlement grew into the city states of Ur (home of Abraham and the Chaldees in the Bible), Eridu, Uruk (Biblical city of Erech), Lagash, Nippur, Umma, Sippar, Larsa, Kish, Adab, and Isin.

Around 3000 B.C. powerful local leaders became the kings of the city-states. Kingdoms were forged by these kings whose armies conquered neighboring city states with lances and shields. The city-states battled each other. Strong rulers were able to conquer their neighbors. Weak rulers were defeated. As time went on different city-states — such as Lagash, Uruk, Ur — were dominant. In general, however, the Sumerians appeared to have relatively peaceable during their 1,200 years of dominance in Mesopotamia. They didn’t make an effort create a large empire.

Sumer's independent city-states amassed great agricultural wealth by harnessing the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers into irrigation canals that they used to raise crops. Each city was seen as the property of one of the gods in the Sumerian pantheon, and the city’s ruler served as that god’s representative. The most important and prominent structure in a Sumerian city was the temple to its main god. [Source: Daniel Weiss, Archaeology magazine, January-February 2020]

Websites on Mesopotamia: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Mesopotamia sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago isac.uchicago.edu ; University of Chicago Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations nelc.uchicago.edu ; University of Pennsylvania Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations (NELC) nelc.sas.upenn.edu; Penn Museum Near East Section penn.museum; Ancient History Encyclopedia ancient.eu.com/Mesopotamia ; British Museum britishmuseum.org ; Louvre louvre.fr/en/explore ; Metropolitan Museum of Art metmuseum.org/toah ; Ancient Near Eastern Art Metropolitan Museum of Art metmuseum.org; Iraq Museum theiraqmuseum ABZU etana.org/abzubib; Archaeology Websites Archaeology News Report archaeologynewsreport.blogspot.com ; Anthropology.net anthropology.net : archaeologica.org archaeologica.org ; Archaeology in Europe archeurope.com ; Archaeology magazine archaeology.org ; HeritageDaily heritagedaily.com; Live Science livescience.com/

Uruk: The First City

Uruk (near Nasiriyah, 150 miles south of Baghdad) is regarded as the largest and oldest Sumerian city cities and is regarded by many scholars as humanity’s first great urban center and city. Built on a marshy delta of the Tigris and Euphrates and mentioned in the Bible as Erech, it dominated Mesopotamia from 3500 to 3000 B.C. when it featured hand-dug canals filled barges and boats, limestone temples, decorated palaces , luxurious gardens. Tens of thousands of people — including craftsmen, scribes, merchants, priests, laborers — lived in mud brick homes built along the Euphrates. The city was so famous one scribe said it was “like the rainbow, reaches up to the sky as the new moon standing in the heavens.

Uruk archeological site at Warka, Iraq

Uruk was so large and important it gave its name to an entire age of Sumerian history. The oldest known examples of writing were found here. It legendary king Gilgamesh was the subject of the oldest known epic. The great city wall that surrounded it said to have been built by Gilgamesh after his quest for eternal life failed. “Climb up in the wall of Uruk,” the story goes. “Walk along it, I say; regard the foundation terrace and examine the masonry; is not the burnt brick good?” The wall was discovered by German archaeologists in the late 19th century.

Marcos Such-Gutiérrez wrote in National Geographic History: The very first city-state to rise to prominence was Uruk (called “Erech” in the Bible). According to the Sumerian King List, it was founded by King Enmerkar around 4500 B.C. At its peak, Uruk numbered some 40,000 inhabitants—a huge population that drove significant economic development. [Source: Marcos Such-Gutiérrez, National Geographic History, August 25, 2023]

The city’s wealth was reflected in its monumental architecture. Uruk’s ziggurat, dedicated to the Sumerian sky god Anu, was completed by the late fourth millennium B.C. Topped with its White Temple, its soaring form, resplendent in sunshine, would have soared high many centuries before Egypt’s Great Pyramid.

Excavations in the 20th century by German archaeologists revealed Uruk’s richness, with evidence of large-scale gold-, silver-, and copper-working. Other massive structures were uncovered, including smaller brick temples and a defensive wall. Archaeologists recovered troves of clay tablets as well as works of art.

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art: “For thousands of years, southern Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq) was home to hunters, fishers, and farmers, exploiting fertile soil, rivers, and abundant animals. By around 3200 B.C., the largest settlement in southern Mesopotamia, if not the world, was Uruk: a true city dominated by monumental mud-brick buildings decorated with mosaics of painted clay cones embedded in the walls, and extraordinary works of art. Large-scale sculpture in the round and relief carving appeared for the first time, together with metal casting using the lost-wax process. [Source: Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art. "Uruk: The First City", Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 2003 \^/]

History of Uruk

The first inhabitants of Uruk arrived around 10,000 years ago, when the Euphrates branched into a vast marsh. The early inhabitants lived in mud-and-reed houses like those used by the Marsh Arabs today. Over time the marshes were turned into fertile agricultural areas with sophisticated irrigation systems and drainage canals and this in turn nourished a large city-state led by priest kings. A temple complex made with mud bricks honored deities such as Inana, the goddess of fertility, were built. A vast trade network was established. Uruk-style mosaics, made of baked clay cones, have been found as far away as Turkey and Egypt. At its height Uruk was home to about 40,000 people.

Uruk lasted until the late third millennia B.C. when it was invaded from the north by an alliance of Akkadians, Gudeans and Elamites. One ancient scribe wrote: “They seize your wharf and your borders. Shouts rang out, scream reverberated...Battering rams and shields were set up, they rent is walls.” The city was rebuilt and occupied by a succession of dynasties and endured to A.D. 300. By that time the Euphrates had moved several kilometers away.

Uruk map

Today the ruins of Uruk are spread out over an area of two square miles, with some some villages and homesteads interspersed with ruins and mounds. There are remains of mud brick buildings and some stone foundation but even many of them are remains of building built on top of ancient Uruk. A ziggurat to the sky god Anu is one of the best preserved structure but it looks like a sand castle had has been left out in the rain. Among the other remains are sections of the crumbled Western wall and piles of potsherds. The base of Enlil's great ziggurat is covered by dark fertile sand. The area is mostly desert. The Euphrates moved to the west long ago.

Uruk was excavated at the turn of the 20th century by German archaeologists. In recent years archaeologists with the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin have used magnetometers to map out many of the city’s canals and roads.

Uruk and the Bible

It is also believed Uruk is the biblical Erech (Genesis 10:10), the second city founded by Nimrod in Shinar. Genesis 10:10 in the King James Version of the Bible reads: 10 And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.

Genesis 10: 1-14 in the King James Version reads; 10 Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth: and unto them were sons born after the flood. 2 The sons of Japheth; Gomer, and Magog, and Madai, and Javan, and Tubal, and Meshech, and Tiras. 3 And the sons of Gomer; Ashkenaz, and Riphath, and Togarmah. 4 And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. 5 By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations. 6 And the sons of Ham; Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Canaan. 7 And the sons of Cush; Seba, and Havilah, and Sabtah, and Raamah, and Sabtechah: and the sons of Raamah; Sheba, and Dedan.

8 And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. 9 He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. 10 And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. 11 Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and the city Rehoboth, and Calah, 12 And Resen between Nineveh and Calah: the same is a great city. 13 And Mizraim begat Ludim, and Anamim, and Lehabim, and Naphtuhim,

Uruk temple

Did Uruk Fight It Own People 5,500 Years Ago Near Tell Hamoukar

Discoveries announced in 2010 at a settlement near Hamoukar shed more light on the 3500 B.C. battle — and raised more questions. The settlement it seems was a colony of Uruk. Owen Jarus wrote in The Independent: It’s a small site, probably occupied by no more than a few hundred people. Its pottery remains were scattered over a hectare. When researchers analysed the pottery they found that much of it consisted of Uruk pottery. “It’s the same stuff that you would find in Southern Mesopotamia, almost 700 kilometers to the south,” said Reichel. .[Source: Owen Jarus. The Independent, September 24, 2010]

Researchers believe that this colony was there to facilitate trade, but was probably not controlled by Uruk’s rulers. “I’m tending more to them being sub-state entities,” said Reichel, private entrepreneurs, perhaps like the British East India Company of more recent colonial times.

Itit appears the Uruk colony was destroyed in the same conflict that destroyed Hamoukar. Pottery remains discovered at the settlement suggest the two events happened at the same time. “We found evidence of burning, we found sling bullets... and we found some remains of human bodies,” said Professor Reichel. He added, “this is highly preliminary, and more work needs to be done on that. But the fact that we have dead bodies, some destruction and sling bullets, suggests that these guys put up some resistance,” said Reichel.

Ur

Ur (eight kilometers, five miles from Nasiriyah, Iraq, near the town of Muqaiyir) ) was a great Mesopotamian city and the traditional birthplace of Abraham, the patriarch of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Founded in the 5th millennium B.C., it covers around 120 acres and was originally on the Euphrates River, which now lies several miles to the north.

The Bible refers to “Ur of the Chaldees” as the place where Abraham lived before heading off to Canaan. Archaeologists have said their isn’t much evidence that the Mesopotamian Ur was the one mentioned in the Bible. A house said to belong to Abraham was built by Saddam Hussein after Pope John Paul II said he in the 1990s he interested in visiting it.

The Ur’s ziggurat is a pyramid-like brick tower built in 2100 B.C. as a tribute to Sin, the moon god. It originally rose 65 feet from a base measuring 135 by 200 feet and had three platforms, each a different color, and a silver shrine at the top. About a third of it remains. Reaching a height of about 50 feet, it looks sort of like a castle wall filled in with dirt and ascended by a staircase. Some regard best preserved structure similar to the Tower of Babel.

Nippur: the Religious Center of Mesopotamia

Nippur (pronounced ‘nĭ poor’) was a major religious center of Mesopotamia. Established by the pre-Mesopotamian“Ubaid” people around 4,500 B.C., Nippur was seat of the cult of Enlil, one of the most important Mesopotamian gods. It was never an important city-state and was ruled by other city-states. It is possible, but improbable, that Nippur was the "Calneh" mentioned in Genesis 10 of the Old Testament. Nippur is located 160 kilometers south of Baghdad, 100 kilometers east of present-day Najaf, and 80 kilometers southeast of Babylon on the canal Sha al-Nil, which was at one time, perhaps when Nippur was founded, was a separate branch of the Euphrates River.

According to the Oriental Institute ofThe University of Chicago: “In the desert a hundred miles south of Baghdad, Iraq, lies a great mound of man-made debris sixty feet high and almost a mile across. This is Nippur, for thousands of years the religious center of Mesopotamia, where Enlil, the supreme god of the Sumerian pantheon, created mankind. Although never a capital city, Nippur had great political importance because royal rule over Mesopotamia was not considered legitimate without recognition in its temples. Thus, Nippur was the focus of pilgrimage and building programs by dozens of kings including Hammurabi of Babylon and Ashurbanipal of Assyria. Despite the history of wars between various parts of Mesopotamia, the religious nature of Nippur prevented it from suffering most of the destructions that befell sites like Ur, Nineveh, and Babylon. The site thus preserves an unparalleled archaeological record spanning more than 6000 years. [Source: Oriental Institute of The University of Chicago ^^]

Uruk expansion

“Objects can often tell us things that were not written down. Elaborately designed items made of precious metals, stones, exotic woods, and shell allow us to reconstruct the development of ancient Mesopotamian art, as well as the far-flung trading connections that brought the materials to Babylonia. Egyptian, Persian, Indus Valley, and Greek artifacts also found their way to Nippur. Even after Babylonian civilization was absorbed into larger empires, such as Alexander the Great's, Nippur flourished. In its final phase, prior to its abandonment around A.D. 800, Nippur was a typical Muslim city, with minority communities of Jews and Christians. At the time of its abandonment, the city was the seat of a Christian bishop, so it was still a religious center, long after Enlil had been forgotten.” ^^

Lagash

Close to the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Lagash flourished from 2900 B.C. to 2300 B.C. in the Early Dynastic period as a political, religious and industrial population center. It was dubbed the "garden of the gods" by the ancients for its fertility and gave rise to a string of Sumerian cities dating back to the early dynastic period. "Lagash was one of the important cities of southern Iraq," Iraqi archaeologist Baker Azab Wali told AFP "Its inhabitants depended on agriculture, livestock, fishing, but also on the exchange of goods," he said. Lagash is about 320 kilometers (200 miles) southeast of Baghdad. The archaeological site in Lagash is massive, with remains stretching across 6.5 kilometers (four miles) according to the University of Pennsylvania. [Source: CBSNews, February 16, 2023]

Located midway between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southeastern Iraq, Lagash (modern Telloh) was one of the most important capital cities in ancient Sumer, According to Encyclopaedia Britannica: “The ancient name of the mound of Telloh was actually Girsu, while Lagash originally denoted a site southeast of Girsu, later becoming the name of the whole district and also of Girsu itself. The French excavated at Telloh between 1877 and 1933 and uncovered at least 50,000 cuneiform texts that have proved one of the major sources for knowledge of Sumer in the 3rd millennium B.C. Dedicatory inscriptions on stone and on bricks also have provided invaluable evidence for assessing the chronological development of Sumerian art. [Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica]

Lagash was founded in the prehistoric Ubaid Period (c. 5200–c. 3500 B.C.) and was still occupied as late as the Parthian era (247 B.C.–A.D. 224). In the Early Dynastic Period the rulers of Lagash called themselves “king” (lugal), though the city itself never was included within the official Sumerian canon of kingship. Among the most famous Lagash monuments of that period is the Stele of the Vultures, erected to celebrate the victory of King Eannatum over the neighbouring state of Umma. Another is the engraved silver vase of King Entemena, a successor of Eannatum. Control of Lagash finally fell to Sargon of Akkad (reigned c. 2334–2279 B.C.), but about 150 years later Lagash enjoyed a revival.

Lagash prospered most brilliantly under Gudea, who was probably a governor rather than an independent king and was nominally subject to the Guti, a warlike people who controlled much of Babylonia from about 2230 to about 2130. Lagash was endowed with many temples, including the Eninnu, “House of the Fifty,” a seat of the high god Enlil. Architecturally the most remarkable structure was a weir and regulator, once doubtless possessing sluice gates, which conserved the area’s water supply in reservoirs.”

Layout of Lagash

Daniel Weiss wrote in Archaeology Magazine: The traditional model of early Mesopotamian urban development holds that cities were compact settlements that expanded out from a central monumental religious complex. However, a recent remote-sensing survey of the ancient Sumerian city of Lagash in present-day southern Iraq has established that it was composed of several discrete sections, each bounded by walls or waterways. The survey was conducted by University of Pennsylvania archaeologist Emily Hammer in conjunction with Lagash Archaeological Project directors Holly Pittman and Augusta McMahon. It included drone photography of the entire 750-acre site. [Source: Daniel Weiss, Archaeology Magazine, January/February 2023]

Relief of Ur-Nanshe, king of Lagash

The results revealed that some of the people of Lagash, lived on a pair of elongated mounds, each surrounded by substantial walls. One of these mounds, in the east, measured 100 acres, and the other, in the west, covered 220 acres. People also lived on an unwalled mound in the north that spanned 140 acres and was crisscrossed by waterways. A much smaller fourth mound in the northeast was dominated by a large temple.

Hammer was able to detect the details of Lagash’s early layout because the city was largely abandoned by the end of the Early Dynastic period. Thus, unlike many other early cities in the region, it was not built up over the millennia in a manner that would have obscured its original layout. During the Early Dynastic period, the Persian Gulf extended much farther to the northwest than it does today, creating a marshy environment that may have led Lagash’s early inhabitants to settle on stretches of high ground. The gulf retreated southeast, toward its current position, after most of Lagash’s population had departed. “It’s entirely possible that a lot of southern Mesopotamian cities that we see as continuous circular or oval entities only appear that way because they continued to be occupied into the second and first millennium B.C. or even later,” says Hammer. “Because the gulf had retreated, these cities were no longer constrained by waterways and marshy areas, so they could be spatially contiguous. Some of the southernmost Mesopotamian cities may have looked like Lagash at some point in their evolution.”

Girsu

Girsu was a major city in the city-state known as Lagash. It was discovered in 1877, Ernest de Sarzec, a French diplomat who began excavating at a site known in modern Arabic as Tello. Over half century, de Sarzec and several successors unearthed thousands of inscribed clay tablets, multiple statues, and the remains of many buildings. Girsu, along with the Sumerian centers of Uruk and Eridu, has come to be recognized as one of the world’s earliest cities, dating to around the same time. [Source: Daniel Weiss, Archaeology magazine, January-February 2020]

Daniel Weiss wrote in Archaeology magazine: The excavations have uncovered evidence that Girsu was connected to the far-reaching trade networks that would have been necessary to provide the materials included on the Gudea cylinders. From Afghanistan, there is lapis lazuli, a blue mineral used for cylinder seals, beads, pendants, amulets, and eyes in votive statues made of alabaster. From the Indus Valley, there are precious stones such as carnelian, which was used in decorative panels and inlays, and from Iran, hard stones such as green steatite for statues and mace heads. The previously discovered statues of Gudea are made of diorite, a hard black to dark-green stone from Oman.

Of particular interest are fragments of unusual vessels carved from fne honey-colored limestone imported from eastern Iran that was polished until almost translucent, resembling alabaster. The vessels were inscribed with Gudea’s name and had traces of deliberate abrasion around their rims. This suggests they were once encircled by metal bands that were also likely inscribed. In addition, a weight of the sort used by Indus Valley merchants was found in a surface survey near the temple. “That single fnd proves that Girsu was plugged into the Persian Gulf trade network,” says St. John Simpson, deputy director of the British Museum’s Iraq Scheme, which oversees the Girsu excavations. “It also suggests the presence of a little Indus Valley merchant colony sitting somewhere in the city in the shadow of the temple.”

Girsu Palace

Girsu’s God Ningirsu

Daniel Weiss wrote in Archaeology magazine: Each city was seen as the property of one of the gods in the Sumerian pantheon, and the city’s ruler was that god’s representative. Girsu belonged to Ningirsu, the heroic warrior god charged with combating demons and maintaining the cosmic order. A number of the chaos-inciting demons that Ningirsu fought were believed to inhabit a mountain in the northeastern reaches of the Sumerian world, in the region of present-day Turkey where the Tigris and Euphrates originate. [Source: Daniel Weiss, Archaeology magazine, January-February 2020]

“By defeating the demons in this mountain, Ningirsu tames the two rivers and makes irrigation possible on the food plain,” says Rey. “Thus, he is considered a god of irrigation and agriculture, as well as the personifcation of foods.” One of the creatures Ningirsu was renowned for vanquishing was Imdugud, a thunderbird, or an eagle with the head of a lion. Rather than killing Imdugud, though, Ningirsu tamed it and adopted it as his avatar.

The most important and prominent structure in a Sumerian city was the temple to its main god. Rey says that the earliest tablets excavated at Girsu suggest that its original temple to Ningirsu predated the city itself, and served as a nucleus around which the urban center developed. Over the centuries, the temple was rebuilt multiple times, and, from the beginning, the tablets indicate, its name was “Eninnu, the White Thunderbird.” Eninnu, which means House Fifty, refers to the 50 divine powers of Enlil, the chief Sumerian god, who granted them to his son, Ningirsu. “When they say ffty powers, it’s equivalent to infnity,” says Rey. “You could translate it as the ‘almighty house’ or the ‘house of infnite powers.’” On the other hand, “White Thunderbird” identifed the temple as the embodiment of Ningirsu.

Gudea’s Dream

Gudea (r.ca. 2150–2125 B.C.) was the ruler of Girsu, Many of the statues that depict him show him with hands interlocked in a position of devout prayer. Daniel Weiss wrote in Archaeology magazine: More than 4,000 years ago, Gudea had a dream. Before him, flanked by lions, appeared a man as large as the heavens and the earth, with the head of a god, the wings of a thunderbird, and a lower body in the form of a food wave. The man uttered something about building a house. A woman consulted a tablet depicting heavenly stars. On a lapis lazuli plate, a warrior outlined the plans of a building. Birds in a poplar tree twittered away, and a stallion pawed at the ground. [Source: Daniel Weiss, Archaeology magazine, January-February 2020]

Unsure what to make of his vision, Gudea traveled by canal to the temple of Nanshe, a goddess known to interpret dreams for other gods. She explained it to him thus: The man fanked by lions was Ningirsu, the chief god of Girsu, and he wanted Gudea to build his temple, called the Eninnu. The woman with the tablet was a goddess indicating that a bright star augured well for the endeavor. The warrior was a god laying out the temple’s design. The noisy birds suggested the ruler would not be able to sleep until he had completed the project. And the stallion was Gudea himself, anxious to lay the frst brick.

aerial view of a Girsu water flume

In a second dream, Ningirsu was more direct. “Laying the foundations of my temple will bring immediate abundance,” the god told Gudea. “The great felds will grow rich for you, the levees and ditches will be full to the brim for you, the water will rise for you to heights never reached by the water before.Under you more oil than ever will be poured and more wool than ever will be weighed in Sumer.” Upon waking, Gudea mobilized his people to build Ningirsu’s temple.

Palace on Girsu’s Tablet Hill

Daniel Weiss wrote in Archaeology Magazine: At the site of the ancient Sumerian city of Girsu in present-day Tello, in southern Iraq, stands a mound known as Tablet Hill. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, French archaeologists excavated tens of thousands of cuneiform tablets there. Looters made off with thousands more. These tablets were known to have been the administrative archives of a palace that had never been located. Given the extent of the looting that had taken place at the site, many believed there were no significant archaeological remnants left. [Source: Daniel Weiss, Archaeology Magazine, July/August 2023

Based on his experience excavating a nearby temple to the warrior god Ningirsu, however, British Museum archaeologist Sebastien Rey had a hunch that the earlier archaeologists’ spoil heaps might have protected portions of the site. “We tend to say that the big sites excavated in the nineteenth century have been excavated away, that there’s nothing left to find,” he says. “But there are many treasures that we can still discover—and it’s our responsibility to go back to these sites with the technologies that we have to salvage what can be salvaged.”

Using drone photography, a team of British and Iraqi archaeologists led by Rey identified potential structures at Tablet Hill. They then dug a single trench across the mound, revealing a section of palace wall dating to the beginning of the second millennium B.C., around the time the city was abandoned. A few feet deeper, at the other end of the trench, they identified a portion of wall dating to the mid-third millennium B.C. The team also excavated and conserved more than 200 additional cuneiform tablets. Rey suspects that, like many large ancient Mesopotamian mudbrick structures, the palace was heavily renovated or even rebuilt over the centuries.

Erbil, the World’s Oldest City?

Erbil in Iraq, some claim, is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, occupied for more than 6,000 years, making it about a thousand years older than Damascus, which is usually considered the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Erbil has a high ''tell,'' an archaeological marvel consisting of layered towns that were built one on top of the other over thousands of years. Modern Erbil is the capital of Iraq’s autonomous province of Kurdistan. Home to 1.3 million people, mostly of Kurds, it is boomtown economy thanks to Kurdistan’s oil wealth.

In ancient times Erbil was known Arbela. It’s strategic location between the great Mesopotamian cities to the west and south, and the Zagros Mountains to the east, placed it at the heart of the ancient Near East’s most important cities and empires. The first mention of Arbela is found on clay tablets dating to about 2300 B.C. but what allow’s the city to make its claim as the world’s oldest are the layers that lay underneath those thought to date to 2300 B.C.

aerial view of Erbil citadel

Andrew Lawler wrote in Archaeology magazine: “The 100-foot-high, oval-shaped citadel of Erbil towers high above the northern Mesopotamian plain, within sight of the Zagros Mountains that lead to the Iranian plateau. The massive mound, with its vertiginous man-made slope, built up by its inhabitants over at least the last 6,000 years, is the heart of what may be the world’s oldest continuously occupied settlement. At various times over its long history, the city has been a pilgrimage site dedicated to a great goddess, a prosperous trading center, a town on the frontier of several empires, and a rebel stronghold. [Source:Andrew Lawler, Archaeology, September-October 2014]

Yet despite its place as one of the ancient Near East’s most significant cities, Erbil’s past has been largely hidden. A dense concentration of nineteenth- and twentieth-century houses stands atop the mound, and these have long prevented archaeologists from exploring the city’s older layers. As a consequence, almost everything known about the metropolis—called Arbela in antiquity—has been cobbled together from a handful of ancient texts and artifacts unearthed at other sites. “We know Arbela existed, but without excavating the site, all else is a hypothesis,” says University of Cambridge archaeologist John MacGinnis.

A team from Sapienza University of Rome recently used ground-penetrating radar to examine what lies under the center of the citadel, and found intriguing evidence of two structures buried some 50 feet below the surface. “This is the rubble of large stone buildings,” says Novacek, who believes this material may sit in late Assyrian levels, and could prove to be remnants of the electrum-coated temple. However, excavating a 50-foot-deep trench in the center of a high mound poses immense engineering and safety challenges, says Cambridge’s MacGinnis, who is advising the Iraqi-led team. Thus, instead of focusing on the center of the citadel and the possible remains of the temple, the excavators started work last year on the citadel’s north rim with an eye to exposing the ancient fortification walls. At the time, an abandoned early-twentieth-century house had recently collapsed, giving researchers a chance to remove and see beneath the most recent layers. Thus far, 15 feet of debris has been cleared away and investigators have uncovered mudbrick and baked brick architecture, medieval pottery, and a sturdy wall that may rest on top of the original Assyrian fortifications. Next the team will tackle two other small areas nearby before returning to the citadel to attempt the much trickier task of delving into the mound’s central interior. [Source: Andrew Lawler, Archaeology, September-October 2014]

“The earlier fortifications include a 60-foot-thick wall that likely had a defensive slope and a moat. The city’s formidable construction, says Novacek, resembles that found at Nineveh and Assur, and places it “unambiguously among Mesopotamian mega-cities.” The layout differs from that in other Assyrian cities, where the walls were rectangular, with a citadel as part of the protective fortifications. Arbela, however, had an irregular round wall entirely enclosing both the citadel and the lower town. That design is more typical of ancient southern Mesopotamian cities such as Ur and Uruk—a hint, Novacek says, of Erbil’s ancient urban heritage. “This conjecture desperately needs empirical verification,” he cautions. Yet, if it can be proven, ancient Arbela might rank among the earliest urban areas and challenge the idea that urbanism began solely in southern Mesopotamia.

“Other researchers are looking further afield, outside the city limits. A team led by Harvard University’s Jason Ur began to survey the area around Erbil in 2012. “It’s one of the last broad alluvial plains in northern Mesopotamia to remain uninvestigated by modern survey techniques,” says Ur, who also made use of old spy satellite photographs to identify ancient villages and towns that could then be explored. Examining 77 square miles, the team mapped 214 archaeological sites dating as far back as 8,000 years. One surprise was that settlements from between 3500 and 3000 B.C. contain ceramics that appear more closely related to southern Mesopotamian types than to those of the north. Ur says this may mean that the plain, rather than being peripheral to the urban expansion that took place in cities such as Ur and Uruk, was related in some direct way to the great cities of the south. This evidence further boosts Novacek’s theory that Arbela was, in fact, an early urban center.”

History of Erbil

Andrew Lawler wrote in Archaeology magazine: “Geography has been both the city’s blessing and curse in this perennially fractious region. Inhabitants fought repeated invasions by the soldiers of the Sumerian capital of Ur 4,000 years ago, witnessed three Roman emperors attack the Persians, and suffered the onslaught of Genghis Khan’s cavalry in the thirteenth century, the cannons of eighteenth-century Afghan warlords, and the wrath of Saddam Hussein’s tanks only 20 years ago. Yet, through thousands of years, the city survived, and even thrived, while other once-great cities such as Babylon and Nineveh crumbled.[Source: Andrew Lawler, Archaeology, September-October 2014]

“The first mention of Arbela is found on clay tablets dating to about 2300 B.C.. They were discovered in the charred ruins of the palace at Ebla, a city some 500 miles to the west in today’s Syria that was destroyed by the emerging Akkadian Empire. These tablets, some of the thousands found at the site in the 1970s, mention messengers from Ebla being issued five shekels of silver to pay for a journey to Arbela.

Erbil Citadel

“A century later, the city became a coveted prize for the numerous ancient Near Eastern empires that followed. The Gutians, who came from southern Mesopotamia and helped dismantle the Akkadian Empire, left a royal inscription that boasts of a Gutian king’s successful campaign against Arbela, in which he conquered the city and captured its governor, Nirishuha. Nirishuha, and possibly other inhabitants of Arbela as well, was likely Hurrian. Little is known about the Hurrians, who were members of a group of either indigenous peoples or recent migrants from the distant Caucasus. This inscription provides our first glimpse into the identities of the multiethnic people of Arbela.

“In the late third millennium B.C. the southern Mesopotamian city of Ur began to build its own empire, and sent soldiers 500 miles north to subdue a rebellious Arbela. Rulers of Ur claimed, in contemporary texts, that they had smashed the heads of Arbela’s leaders and destroyed the city during repeated and bloody campaigns. Other texts from Ur record beer rations given to messengers from Arbela and metals, sheep, and goats taken to Ur as booty. Three centuries later, in an inscription said to have come from western Iraq, Shamshi-Adad I, who established a brief but large empire in upper Mesopotamia, tells of encountering the king of Arbela, “whom I pitilessly caught with my powerful weapon and whom my feet trample.” Shamshi-Adad I had the monarch beheaded.

“By the twelfth century B.C., Arbela was a prosperous town on the eastern frontier of Assyria, which covered much of northern Mesopotamia. Over the next centuries, the Assyrians, a tight-knit trading people who built an independent kingdom just to the west and south of Arbela, became the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful empire the world had seen. This empire eventually subsumed the city, which became an important Assyrian center, although the city’s population seems to have retained a mix of ethnicities throughout this long era, which lasted until 600 B.C.

“At the core of Arbela’s religious, political, and economic life in this period was the Egasankalamma, or “House of the Lady of the Land.” Assyrian texts mention the temple, dedicated to Ishtar, as early as the thirteenth century B.C., though its foundations likely rest on even older sacred structures. In Mesopotamian theology Ishtar was the goddess of love, fertility, and war. Martti Nissinen of the University of Helsinki has closely examined the 265 references to the goddess in Assyrian texts, and he suggests that the roots of this version of Ishtar may lay deep in the ancient Hurrian pantheon.”

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons except Girsu images from the British Museum

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Mesopotamia sourcebooks.fordham.edu , National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, especially Merle Severy, National Geographic, May 1991 and Marion Steinmann, Smithsonian, December 1988, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated June 2024