- Irrigated agriculture
- Transportation
- Drinking water
- Waste removal
- Water for manufacturing.
These functions were serviced by a complex array of natural and artificial flows and
hydraulic installations some of which are recorded in texts and in the landscape, others
of which must be inferred.
SOURCE OF INFORMATIONThe source material for the Sumerian hydraulic landscape is substantial, but because
these sources are very uneven, they need to be interpreted with care. Consequently, it
is difficult to make a realistic reconstruction of the landscape of irrigation without
making a number of educated guesses or by employing ethnographic data to flesh out
the record and aid interpretation. Although there are evident differences between the
ancient and modern landscapes of modern Iraq, it is necessary to have a general
understanding of how the contemporary communities manipulated water and how the
soils were harnessed, and discussions of traditional Mesopotamian irrigation are
provided by Charles ( 1988 , 1990 ), Pemberton et al. ( 1988 ), Postgate ( 1990 ), Poyck ( 1962 )
and Fernea ( 1970 ).
Much basic information on irrigation terminology and labour organisation derives
from cuneiform administrative, mathematical and literary texts. Particularly engaging
are the mathematical texts which provide problems to be solved along the lines of: a
cistern was defined as of given dimensions and depth, therefore how much land could
a depth of X irrigate (Powell 1988 : 162 )? Of course, because these exercises were not
necessarily designed to be used for real-life situations, Powell regards these simply as a
‘paradigm for calculation’. Nevertheless, they provide valuable insights into the
excavation of canals, the types of excavation that took place (such as ‘throw-out work’
and ‘basket work’) as well as information on features such as dams and barrages and a
wide range of lists of terms used (Powell 1988 : 164 , 166 , 169 – 170 ).
Similarly, administrative texts provide valuable information on the role of irrigation
in agriculture, and especially useful is the so-called Georgicaor ‘Farmers’ Instructions’
(Civil 1994 : 134 ). Unfortunately, such texts were often rather partial in the amount of
information they conveyed and many were simply intended to calculate the costs of
labour, earth moving and related activities. Usually the scribes of the Ur III period
preferred to focus upon the amounts of earth extracted and piled up rather than on the
cross-sections of the water courses themselves, because such volumes are more amenable
to computation (Civil 1994 : 135 ). Nevertheless, these mundane administrative concerns
with earth moving find significant parallels in the landscape where visible features
such as mounds of up-cast sediment are particularly conspicuous. Such mounds can
sometimes be more conspicuous than ‘negative features’ dug into the ground.
Overall, there is a lack of reference to officials or offices related to water manage-
ment (Rost 2010 : 14 ) as well as a dearth of irrigation accounts or calendars. This situ-
ation contrasts with, for example, the qanat/falajbooks that detail the allocation of
irrigation water in, for example, post-medieval Oman (Wilkinson, J.C. 1977 ).
–– Tony J. Wilkinson ––