Encyclopedia of Society and Culture in the Ancient World

ment may indicate that the builders of the wall and tower

worshipped their ancestors and that the skulls represented

dead leaders or priests who could be consulted by the living.

An alternative possibility is that people thought they could

capture and hold prisoner the spirits of the dead, forcing

the spirits to do as they were ordered. Some art historians

think that the tradition of realistic depictions of human be-

ings found in such places as Egypt and ancient Greece derives

from a similar ancient tradition begun in Jericho.

ERIDU

Most archaeologists point to ancient Sumer, in what is now

southern Iraq, as the fi rst broadly infl uential culture of the

Near East, starting in the 4000s b.c.e., when city-states arose.

Th e ancient Mesopotamians believed the city of Eridu was the

oldest in the world and that it stood on the very spot where the

world was created. Ancient Mesopotamian writers claimed

that Eridu was founded before 72,000 b.c.e. Although it is not

nearly that old, the city does seem to be the oldest yet discov-

ered in the region of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. At the

bottommost layer of Eridu is a small shrine, which may mean

that the city was built on a site already considered sacred as

well as that the builders were very religious. Eridu was part of

a region archaeologists designate as southern Mesopotamia,

the lands approximately south of the Diyala River, a tributary

of the Tigris. Northern Mesopotamia, encompassing lands

mostly near the north of the Tigris, did not come into cul-

tural prominence until about 1900 b.c.e.

Many archaeologists dispute whether Eridu should be

considered a real city, because its population probably did not

exceed 9,000. To them Uruk just to the north, which at its

peak in about 2700 b.c.e. had a population of at least 50,000,

was the fi rst true city. In the 4000s b.c.e., however, Eridu was

the by far the largest settlement in a region in which villages

of 250 or so people were regarded as notable, and it must have

seemed crowded and metropolitan to the people of its era.

It also represented a more complex social organization than

would have been found in the villages of Mesopotamia. It did

not become a capital of an empire or kingdom, and it was not

even a great economic power, but it was the focus of religion

for the Sumerian culture, and it therefore remained an ex-

ample for the Sumerian cities that followed.

Many archaeologists have assumed that cities could not

have been built without centralized leadership—for example,

a king—because of the large public works projects required

for building and maintaining an urban center. For the ancient

Servants carrying food for the king’s tables, palace of Xerxes, Persepolis, Persia (modern-day Iran) (Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University

of Chicago)

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