large-scale architecture. One can easily see this as an administrative building, without
being able to say if it belonged to the palace or the temple sectors. The edge of another
monument was also recognised in the heart of the city, but it is not possible to say,
without enlarging the area excavated, if it was a platform decorated with niches or a
wall more that 3 m thick, decorated in the same way.
Domestic architecture of some originality was also studied in the workmen’s
quarters; a main rectangular room of 3 x 8 m, stores, and a place for baking bread all
stood round a courtyard, apparently without upper floors. This plan which is not
specifically urban was repeated half a dozen times, and was also known elsewhere; for
example, at Tell Mohamed Arab in the Jazirah.
ConclusionFrom its foundation, Mari and the regional improvements associated with it, seems to
be an essential pivot between northern Syria, from Assyria to the Mediterranean, and
the Sumero-Babylonian region.
CITY IIWe do not know how City I ended because in remaking the foundations, the City II
builders destroyed the evidence. In the twenty-sixth century (ED III in Mesopotamia)
it seems that a new authority at Mari decided on a complete remodelling of the city.
Urbanism had developed on the plains of the Khabur and in western Syria (at Ebla for
example), and as, since the beginning of the third millennium, transport by donkey
caravan or carts was more common, the new settlements were no longer so dependent
on the waterways.
The kingdom of Mari, as we have seen, lay at the junction of the Euphrates and the
Khabur and ultimately of the Iranian world, the Sumerian world and the Arabo-
Persian Gulf to the south. The internal organisation of the kingdom does not seem to
have changed, there is no other new city (Figure 27. 2 ). Only Mari shows us its
greatness.
The refounding of Mari and the new urban characteristicsThe builders of City II decided to reconstruct the city on the same lines as its pre-
decessor, City I (Figures 27. 3 and 27. 4 ), with the same overall plan and they also
brought back into use the same water system. No changes were made in either the canal
for transport or that for irrigation, they were simply cleaned out; the rebuilding of
the city was of necessity accompanied by the refurbishment of the infrastructure
throughout the region so that it was once more in working order.
The city kept many of the same characteristics, the same circular external wall
measuring 1. 9 km in diameter, the same interior one with the rebuilding of the gate
into the town, a gate which had already been unearthed in City I, the same layout of
roads leading from the centre to the periphery in order to drain off surplus water
(Figure 27. 3 ). The external dyke saw the erection on top of its bank of a wall only about
2 m thick whose function remains uncertain. It is too thin to have been defensive and
may, perhaps, have been a shield for archers to stand behind as they fired at the enemy
–– The Kingdom of Mari ––