the effort invested in buildings are the materialised expression of resource availability
and control. Control of space, control of manpower and availability of building
materials indicate powerful builders. According to the texts available from the third
millennium BConwards, the kings controlled these relevant resources. A king is a
‘public person’ and as such he built ‘public buildings’, serving to represent the ruling
power and demonstrating the economic ability of the community, this in turn was
presented as the result of a good reign.
If archaeological research, however, takes the aspect of monumentality and the
additional features discussed as fundamental parameters for identifying public
buildings, it is at risk of overlooking those buildings that formally do not stand out
from the building stock of a city, that have not been segregated, but integrated into
the built environment of a village, town or city but do, nevertheless, serve public
functions – as shown with the Small Temple in Khafajah. The heterogeneity, which is
behind the phenomenon of ‘public buildings’, makes it difficult to answer the question
of how archaeology recognises public buildings, but at the same time opens up a
pioneering area of research.
To seek out which is a palace or a temple among the public buildings in the
Sumerian world also seems unlikely to lead to definitive answers, regardless of whether
we support our arguments with material evidence or by consulting texts, as was the case
in Ur. The problem of the lack of clarity could be due to the fact that we are looking
for a functional exclusivity that never existed in this form. To assume ‘multi-
functionality’ as a starting point for future research might provide new solutions.
Who where the builders and who where the ‘users’ of public buildings – and how
could we possibly find answers? The builders – and their intentions – have been more
or less explicitly identified when it comes to the monumental architecture. Unlimited
access to the resources of a community is the prerequisite for the implementation of
appropriate construction projects –and this access is limited to the local elites, a
scenario, that furthermore partly answers one of our opening questions addressing the
communal order and the political organization of communities that need public
buildings. That there might have been a basic change in the elites responsible for the
spatial design and layout of public areas and architecture – in brief, the priests or the
kings – has been hinted at in Uruk.
To deduce from formal aspects, especially of the access to public buildings, the circle
of those who might have been allowed into the buildings or kept outside led to no
solution. The variety of references to potentially ‘open access’ and ‘easy to reach’,
buildings and public areas of towns and cities, versus ‘closed’ and ‘segregated’ was
instead very informative concerning the control options each entrance design poten-
tially offered and each function seemingly needed.
The insight offered above into the Sumerian world’s public architecture does not
intend to give an overview of the built environment throughout the so-called Sumerian
world nor does it strive for a detailed comparison of the architectural evidence from
this Sumerian world. Rather, the intention was to hint, on the one hand, at the
seemingly contradictory circumstances of locally materialised solutions for the
representational demands of the elites and the underlying general principles of building
and space design, regardless of time and space; and, on the other hand, hinting at the
existing dichotomy between interregional shared spiritual and ideological traits and the
local expressions of the built cultural features visible in each example shown.
–– Marlies Heinz ––