The Sumerian World (Routledge Worlds)

Guillermo Algaze

question o f their exact function. Others, in turn, noting similarities in the proportions
o f the central halls o f many o f the structures and modern reed-built reception huts used
by traditional tribal chiefs in southern Iraq (Arabic: madhaif), suggest that they served
as cultic reception halls or meeting places, an idea traceable to Walter Andrae (1936).
Be that as it may, one fact immediately strikes the eye: while entrance to the structures
in the Anu Area appears to have been carefully controlled, this was not always the case
in the Eanna Area, where many o f the buildings had multiple entrances and must have
served purposes requiring the relatively free congregation o f large numbers o f people
(feasting as a mode o f social mobilization? See Dietler and Herbich 2001), as has been
noted by a number o f scholars (e.g., Crawford 2004; Dittmann 2007).
But if attempts to get at the function o f the structures exposed at the heart o f Uruk
yield little beyond broad generalities, there is still much that can be said about Uruk
society, and particularly about the ability o f its elites to command both labor and
resources, by looking at the energetics required to put those structures together in the
first place (Figure 4.1).
Most Mesopotamian scholars are quite familiar with early calculations made by the
excavators o f the White Temple complex, who estimated that it would have taken 1,500
laborers working on average ten hours per day for about five years (Heinrich 1939: 24,
note 2) to build the last major revetment o f its massive underlying terrace (43 x 60 m
at its base and 13 m in height = 33,540 m3, o f which the revetment occupied ca.
80 percent by volume = 26,832 m3).7 Using the same labor estimates for comparative
purposes, we can calculate the amount o f labor required to build some o f the con­
temporary structures in the Eanna Precinct. Lack o f space prevents a thorough analysis
here, but a few back-of-the-envelope calculations for some o f the larger successive
buildings erected in Eanna will serve to illustrate the point: the Limestone Temple

40 m20

B

Figure 4.1 Reconstructed plans (redrawn after Eichmann 2007) o f Late Uruk monumental

buildings in Eanna Area at Uruk/Warka. (a) “Limestone Temple” (Eanna V); (b) “Palace E ”

(Eanna IVQb); (c) “Temple D ” (Eanna IVa).

0

A C