canals must have served multiple functions so that when, for example, dams were
inserted to guide water into canals they must have interfered with the movement of
boats.LEGAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE ASPECTS OF IRRIGATION
Canal construction was frequently a royal undertaking and many canals are credited to
specific kings (Walters 1970 : 144 ). Thus cuneiform texts not only demonstrate the
concerns of the kings to provision the populace with good water and to create new
agricultural lands (Potts 1997 : 21 ) but they also provide insights into the layout of the
canals. For example, canals are sometimes referred to as being extended to the sea (Potts
1997 : 21 ; Cooper 1986 : 70 ; Jacobsen 1960 : 174 – 185 ). In other cases, canals may have
operated as boundaries (Jacobsen 1960 : 178 ); however, because the term ‘ég’,which is
often interpreted as a canal, was probably a bank of up-cast from a canal, features which
represented boundaries between states, such as that between Umma and Lagash, may
simply have been linear banks (Postgate 1994 : 182 – 183 ).
Moreover, the generosity of both gods and the king as suppliers of abundance was
celebrated:
that the vast fields might grow rich, that the ditches and canals of Lagash be full to
the brim, that in the plain... the grain goddess... might proudly look up.. ., that
after the good fields have brought barley, emmer and all kinds of pulses, enormous
grain heaps, the whole yield of the land of Lagash might be heaped up.
(Edzard 1997 : 75 – 76 cited in Winter 2007 : 120 )Although fundamentally a communal enterprise that requires human cooperation in
order to function, irrigation systems were also the focus of disputes that needed to be
resolved within a legal framework (Bruun in Wikander 2000 ). For example, according
to the law code of Hammurabi, if a farmer failed to maintain the banks of his irrigation
canals or let water flow on to another man’s fields thereby causing damage to crops,
the farmer at fault was expected to pay damages (Bruun 2000 ; Postgate 1994 : 182 ).
Although these laws as written were Babylonian, they may have been based on
Sumerian precedents.
Irrigated lands and estatesAlthough there is explicit evidence for the role of the king in the construction of major
water works, most scholars accept that the temple was not the state (Postgate 1994 : 115 ;
Gibson 2010 : 86 – 87 ), and its role in the organisation of the entiresystem of irriga-
tion is now questioned (Rost 2010 ). Nevertheless, much irrigation was harnessed to
supply large institutional estates, many under the administration of the king, and it is
therefore important to understand how such estates developed from earlier small-scale
agriculture.
The tendency for certain types of field and garden areas to evolve through time can
be inferred from the work of agricultural consultants in the 1950 s. Poyck ( 1962 : 75 ),
for example, makes the counter-intuitive point that tenant farmers enjoyed a higher
standard of living than most owner occupiers. This is because they sowed relatively
–– Hydraulic landscapes and irrigation systems ––