The Sumerian World (Routledge Worlds)

J.-C. Margueron, trans H. Crawford

Figure 27.1 Plan of the Euphrates valley around Mari showing the four canals

(© Mission Archeologique de Mari)

The foundation of Mari was a political act. Even though it is not the oldest known
urban centre here, Habuba Kabira preceded it at the end of the Uruk period as a newly
founded city, it remains the oldest example of a town founded ex nihilo as the result
of the increasing importance of a region, and not as the result of colonisation.
The new town was designed with a circular plan (diameter 1.9 km) (Figure 27.3), not
for any symbolic or esoteric reasons, but to defend it from a variety of dangers:

• violent rains can rapidly erode mud-brick architecture if it is not protected and
  making the town round and slightly domical is one way of making sure the rain runs
  off to the edge of the mound

5i8

1: Canal to feed Mari itself

2: Transport canal on the left bank of the river

3: Irrigation canal on the right bank

4: Canal at the base of the cliffs

0 5 10 km