The Sumerian World (Routledge Worlds)

Hydraulic landscapes and irrigation systems

Figure 2.5

Ottoman irrigation system around

Qal’a Sussa on the Shatt al Kar

showing the inferred belt of irrigated

land (adapted from Adams and Nissen

1972: fig. 26).

5 km

Canals Archaeological sites

A landscape mosaic
Whereas the flat topography of lower Mesopotamia gives the impression that irrigated
landscapes could have extended over wide areas, the levee model suggests that the
irrigated area might have been rather limited. A similar picture is evident from Ur III
cuneiform records which suggest that out of the very roughly 2,000 sq km estimated
for the city of Ummas region, only some 127 sq km were recorded as in use for
cultivation (Adams 2008:10; after Dahl 2007: 36). The area actually cultivated may not
therefore have exceeded a half kilometre or so in depth, but at the yields resulting from
irrigation, this may have been sufficient to support the inhabitants of the city.
Alternatively, there may have been an 'invisible5 non-state sector providing the balance
required. The very modest ‘footprint’ of the ensi’s agricultural administration would
have been served by state-maintained (and irrigation taxed) canals and water courses:

No extended layouts of dendritic irrigation systems are in evidence, on the model

of those that came to characterize the Mesopotamian plain two and a half millennia

Inferred

zone of

irrigated

cultivation

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