The Babylonian World (Routledge Worlds)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

LOOKING DOWN

THE TIGRIS

The interrelations between Assyria

and Babylonia



Hannes D. Galter

INTRODUCTION

A

ssyria and Babylonia – the two parts of Mesopotamia – were different in many
ways: there were different ecological and economical situations, different dialects
of the Akkadian language and different historical developments. Northern Meso-
potamia, which comprises the highlands of the Syrian djeziraas well as the foothills
and hilly flanks of the Taurus and Zagros mountains, has a wetter climate, allowing
for dry-farming. It belongs to the eastern part of the ‘Fertile Crescent’ that stretches
from Palestine through Syria and Northern Mesopotamia to South-east Iran. It was
here in the north that the first farming villages in Mesopotamia emerged around
8000 BCE. In the flat alluvial plain of Southern Mesopotamia, agriculture needed
artificial irrigation. Settlements occurred later here than in the north. During the
third millennium BCE, the Sumerian culture developed in the south starting from
urban centres such as Uruk or Ur. The population of Southern Mesopotamia consisted
of a mixture of Sumerian- and Akkadian-speaking groups together with peoples from
the east and (later) Amorites from the west. The Sumerian culture was an urban one
based on agriculture and irrigation and with a social structure characterised by
functional stratification and strong institutional ties and loyalties. Over the centuries
the Sumerian political units developed from city states to larger administrative
networks. This development reached its peak in the empire of Ur III towards the
end of the millennium. Under the kings of Ur, most of Mesopotamia was under
Sumerian control.
At the same time in the north the political unit remained the central city with a
number of dry-farming villages in its surrounding. The population was mainly
Akkadian-speaking with substantial Hurrian groups in the west and peoples from
the Zagros Mountains in the east. The economy consisted of rain-fed agriculture,
husbandry and, to a substantial degree, of material exchange, since the political units
in the north remained smaller than those in the south. The society, it seems, was
structured along genealogical lines with strong family ties and clan loyalties. By the
end of the third millennium most of Northern Mesopotamia was part of the Ur III
Empire and under southern control. After the collapse of this Sumerian state around