chariots at the expense of water transport) meant that the valley of the Euphrates was
no longer a crucial axis in the Middle Eastern world.
Bearing in mind the ideas which accompanied the rediscovery of the Sumer over the
last 150 years, we have to ask if Mari belonged to the Sumerian world or not. This world
saw the beginning of the urban era in the south of Mesopotamia from about the middle
of the fourth millennium. It was thought, naturally enough, that the urban centres
like Uruk, which emerged in the delta of the Tigris and Euphrates, then spread along
the rivers. Sixty years ago it was possible to write that Mari was a beacon of Sumerian
civilisation in western lands without realising that Mari could not have existed without
its own network of resources and certainly could not be regarded as the result of
colonisation. During the third millennium, the short-lived supremacy of first
Agade and then of Ur, left Mari on the margins of their world. The expansion of
Hammurabi’s power in the eighteenth century appeared to follow the same pattern.
This does not take into account the geography of the Mesopotamian basin, split in to
a northern and a southern region separated by Babylonia; these regions are linked
together by two major routes – one towards the Gulf and southeast Asia and the second
towards the Mediterranean and Anatolia. The northern regions, which above all
furnished essential raw materials to both the centre and the south, could not have been
simply an offshoot of the south. Even if some traits (the round plan and the canals
for example) link the city of Mari to Sumer, its position, the originality of its
architecture and its art show Mari to have been the dominant creative centre in north
Mesopotamia.
Finally, Mari is a wonderful example of the birth of a city in a very specific
geographic, economic and human situation. Because men saw the advantages of a
geographic position which allowed it to control an extremely profitable exchange
network, they engaged in a bold development in a harsh geographic setting. As long
as the conditions remained the same, Mari flourished; when conditions changed, she
disappeared – an astonishing historical lesson.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gasche, H., Armstrong, J.A. and Cole, S.W. 1998. Dating the Fall of Babylon. Ghent and Chicago:
University of Ghent and Oriental Institute.
Geyer, B. and Monchambert, J.-Y. 2003. La basse vallée de l’Euphrate syrien du Néolithique à
l’avènement de l’Islam, 2 vol., BAH 166. Beyrouth: IFPO.
Margueron, J.-C. 2002. Le Temple de Shamash de Iahdun-Lim à Mari. In Of Pots and Plans: Papers
presented to David Oates.Al-Gailani Werr et al. (eds). London: Nabu Publications.
—— 2004. Mari, métropole de l’Euphrate aux IIIeet IIemillénaires. Paris: Picard.
—— 2007. Mari et la chronologie: acquisitions récentes et problèmes. In From Relative Chronology
to Absolute Chronology: The Second Millenium BC in Syria-Palestine, P. Matthiae,
F. Pinnock, L. Nigro, L. Peyronel (eds), pp. 285 – 301. Rome.
–– The Kingdom of Mari ––