great antiquity (going back to the fi ft h millennium b.c.e.), its
impressive size (3.4 square miles—bigger than Athens in the
fi ft h century b.c.e.), and its provision of a matrix or pattern
for future urban development. Possessing the earliest, largest,
and most numerous monumental buildings in Mesopotamia,
dating mostly from the fourth to the fi rst millennium b.c.e.,
Uruk was the birthplace not only of monumental Sumerian
architecture and planning but also of the cuneiform writing
system (revealed on clay tablets and cylinder seals, engraved
seals used to make impressions on clay) and a government
bureaucracy with centralized, theocratic control. Represent-
ing the fi rst phase of Mesopotamian urbanization, known as
the Uruk Period (4000–3100 b.c.e.), Uruk appears to meet the
basic criteria for both the fi rst city and the fi rst civilization of
the ancient Near East.
Uruk’s somewhat experimental urbanism is character-
ized by large, multifunctional buildings with diverse plans,
arranged with a concern for open and fl uid space and appar-
ently designed for ease of access and circulation. Accurate de-
scription of individual buildings at any given point in time
is complicated, however, by the tendency for later structures
to cover over those of the earlier building phases, which were
sometimes deliberately preserved or expanded upon. Th e most
important structures date from the Uruk Period or later and
are concentrated on the two largest mounds: Eanna (precinct
of the goddess Inanna), which is the oldest and central part of
the ruin, and Kullab (precinct of the sky god An), the western
and highest mound, dominated by a towering ziggurat.
Excavations on the Eanna mound reveal that new ma-
terials and building techniques were used beginning with
the Middle Uruk Period (ca. 3400 b.c.e.), most notably clay
cone mosaics for wall decorations and especially imported
limestone for foundations and walls, which tended to be both
tall and thick—as in the Stone Cone Temple and the some-
what later Limestone Temple of Eanna. Th e most famous
Uruk building, the White Temple, stood on a tall, archaic
ziggurat—a sort of man-made mountain—towering high
above the Kullab mound. Th e ziggurat and White Temple
were dedicated to the sky god An, the father of all the gods.
Th e temple takes its name from the coating of white gypsum
plaster that covered its massive walls. Much of Uruk archi-
tecture thus conspicuously breaks with the local tradition of
building with basic mud-brick that was favored both before
and aft er the Middle Uruk Period.
At Uruk we fi nd the prototypes for a wide variety of
Mesopotamian temple designs. Th e basic plan was roughly
symmetrical, consisting of a central rectangular or T-shaped
chamber, possibly vaulted, with fl anking corridors or attached
rooms, some of which also opened to the outside. Within this
basic formula, there was considerable variation in the layout,
apparent function, and dimensions of the structures. A no-
table feature, especially on Eanna, is the tendency to arrange
the buildings at diff erent angles around large, open terraces
faced with monumental colonnades of massive semicircular,
engaged pillars decorated with mosaic patterns. Th e spatial
arrangement and structural system used at Uruk thus fore-
shadow those of the great terraces and temples of ancient
Egypt and Greece.
Despite the archaeological excavations that provide basic
information about the site, we actually know very little about
life in Uruk. For instance, there is no evidence of residential
quarters, graves, or commercial buildings or neighborhoods.
Th e most important urbanistic episode in the city’s history
concerns the construction of its famed ramparts, undertak-
en during the Early Dynastic Period (fi rst half of the third
millennium b.c.e.), when the city was at its height, with a
population of about 50,000. Th e walls extended about miles
around the site and stood more than 23 feet tall. Th e tab-
lets of the Gilgamesh epic credit Gilgamesh, king of Uruk,
with this undertaking and describe the wall, “the likes of
which no one can equal,” as having “a foundation of baked
brick” and being “as straight as an architect’s string.” Th is
wall protected not only the sacred precincts of the gods and
their pious worshipers but also the growing population of
a place described by Mesopotamian poets as a festive city
of singing and dancing, with a “population of beautiful and
voluptuous women, women with luxuriantly curly hair and
available women in general.” Th e late Babylonian poem Erra,
for example, talks about Uruk as a “city of prostitutes, cour-
tesans, and call-girls,” deprived of their husbands by Ishtar,
who becomes associated with the rising “mother goddess”
of Uruk, Inanna, and a cult of free love that witnessed erotic
adventures in the city’s streets and possibly even the institu-
tion of “sacred prostitution.” Th e libidinous energy of Uruk
looks forward to the infamous licentiousness of Babylon and
the likes of modern Amsterdam.AKKAD, UR, AND THE RISE OF THE
MESOPOTAMIAN CAPITAL CITY
Th e continuing importance of the cult of the goddess Inanna
for the development of Mesopotamian cities is clearly illus-
trated in a famous literary text, Th e Curse of Agade, written
ca. 2000 b.c.e. Th e text deals with the rise of the city of Agade
(Akkad) as the center of a successful international trading
empire and the great capital of a powerful centralized state
founded by the Akkadian king Sargon, who ruled from 2340
to 2284 b.c.e. Although the site of the city has not yet been
identifi ed, there is ample evidence of its existence and great-
ness in written documents and cuneiform inscriptions found
at other sites and dating back to the third millennium b.c.e.
Th e imperial state forged by Sargon during his 56-year re-
gime incorporated all the formerly independent Sumerian
city-states, including Uruk, whose impressive walls were no
challenge to the military might of the Akkadians. Sargon’s
Akkad, believed by some experts to lie somewhere beneath
modern-day Baghdad or in its vicinity, was the fi rst city in
ancient Mesopotamia to function as the true capital of a state
and an empire.
Like Akkad, Ur became the capital of a powerful cen-
tralized state with grandiose city walls, rich furnishings,212 cities: The Middle East