An Idealised Layout of a Mesopotamian City and Its Surroundings

Mesopotamia has been called the “heartland of cities” and this is due to Mesopotamia being the oldest urban civilization in the entire world beginning in the 4th millennium BC (van de Mieroop 1997:1). By the 3rd millennium BC the majority of the Mesopotamian population was urban. Cities were the political centres of Mesopotamia and carried out roles as the seats for Gods in the Mesopotamian religion and as centres for local and long distance trade and commerce. As cities have mainly been excavated it is possible to see the main features that all cities should ideally have and be able to see a common layout. Maps such as that of Nippur dating from c. 1300 BC have been found, as has “The Description of Babylon”, which contains names of roads, temples and quarters in the city. All this evidence allows an idealised layout of a Mesopotamian city to be imagined.

The city and its surrounding hinterland were mutually dependent as the city’s inhabitants were engaged in activities other than food production. The surrounding countryside produced a surplus, which allowed specialization in the city to take place (Pollock 1999: 47). Gardens and orchards owned by urban residents grew date palms and other fruits. Kings planted exotic trees in orchards around inner city, planting exotic species collected from conquests. King Assurnasirpal is attested to have planted forty-one species of tree from campaigns in Kalhu, his capital city. Surrounding the city there was also the suburbs. These areas were partly residential and were occupied when the inner city’s population outgrew its walls and when the city was safe from violent attack. Little is known about suburbs as they do not promise the spectacular finds of monumental buildings and have since been ploughed over by continued agriculture (van de Mieroop 1997:69). Tell Taya is the only suburb in Mesopotamia to be studied in-depth. It contained residential and industrial areas but no public buildings, which were restricted to the walled inner city. Industry was placed in city suburbs as water and access to resources was better, there was more space not being confined within a wall and air pollution affected citizens less (van de Mieroop 1997:71).

Outside the city walls was where long distance trade took place in harbours known as Karum. In the south these were located on waterways and in the north on overland routes that passed cities. The only fully excavated Karum is in Anatolia at Nesha, but this can be seen to reflect what Mesopotamian Karums were like as it was founded by Mesopotamian merchants. The Karum contained workshops and dwellings and had its own defensive structures. It was outside the city walls so it became a neutral area allowing people from different regions to interact and trade without the supervision of urban political powers (van de Mieroop 1997:67).

Due to accumulated debris from the collapse of earlier mu-brick construction, the inner city was higher compared to the surrounding countryside (van de Mieroop 1997:72). A wall surrounded this elevation. The emphasis of walls in Mesopotamian art reveals city walls as a key characteristic of the city and Mesopotamian ideology. The Epic of Gilgamesh describes Uruk’s walls as a huge construction and excavation has confirmed these claims revealing the walls to be 9.5 kilometres long including nearly a thousand semi-circular towers (van de Mieroop 1997:75). All representations of cities include walls; the Assyrian palace reliefs depict rings of fortification with towers at regular intervals. Pictorial representations of violence and walls like the Stele of Vultures inply that city walls were built for protection. However, there was a huge element of monumentality inbuilt in city walls. At Abu Salabikh the wall was fifteen metres wide. This was not needed to perform defensive functions as much narrower city was have been discovered. Walls were symbolic of uniting the people inside the city and creating and providing a distinction between those inhabitants and the outside world. Rulers who boast of conquest always claim to destroy city walls, a huge part of the monumentality of a city.

The inner city was home to the cities’ monumental buildings. In Mesopotamian religion these religious buildings had to remain on the same site. At Eridu sixteen consecutive shrines were found on the same spot from the 6th to the 3rd millennium (van de Mieroop 1997:73). As well as this accumulation of deposits temples were raised on mud-brick platforms that were rebuilt over time, which made the shrines on top higher and higher. These were known as Ziggurats (Pollock 1999:50). This meant that temples and shrines gained a prominent, monumental position in the city’s landscape, being visible from all parts of the city as well as the surrounding countryside. Even though the temple was a visual focus for the city it usually occupied land at the edge of the city as at Kish and Sippur. Excavations at Tell al-Ubaid and other sites suggest the non-centric position of temples began with the very beginnings of urbanism. By the middle of the 3rd millennium temples with their elaborate constructions and buttressed and recessed facades had become “working temples” containing storerooms, kitchens and areas where craft activities took place (Pollock 1999:51).

Palaces were the second monumental building in cities, and were distinguishable from temples by their fortified nature. Palaces were also placed on mounds visible form the surrounding area and their massive construction added to the emphasis of royal might, which they possessed (van de Mieroop 1997:78). Palaces contained residential complexes along with storage rooms, workshops and kitchens and some rooms were for ceremonial and administrative functions. Palaces and temples were normally located at a significant distance from one another as at Uruk. Where they occupied the same site palaces occupied a space to the side of the temple. These two main institutions seem to have been symbolically separated and the location of palaces and temples in Mesopotamian cities reflects a pattern of opposition between religion and administration (Stone 1995:239). In the north, neo-Assyrian cities of the 1st millennium brought significant changes to this pattern of town layout. At cities, such as Nineveh, citadel mounds contained the temple and palace complex in one single architectural unit. This unit was still on the edge of the city next to the wall as had gone before. The physical separation that occurred in these cities was now between administration and war, the temple had lost its prominent position as a town’s focal point. Dur-Sharrukin was founded by Sargon II and contained a ziggurat and palace all in one complex, which was raised on an artificial platform, below in the rest of the citadel was the administration buildings and elite residences. A second fortified mound on the other side of the city was the imperial arsenal and contained weapons and booty (Stone 1995:245).

The internal layout of the Mesopotamian city was organic and contained dense architecture, winding lanes and streets (Pollock 1999: 48). Cities were divided into monumental and residential districts by systems of streets and canals, these distinctions were quite flexible and occasionally domestic property impinged on monumental areas (van de Mierop 1997:78). The Mashkan Shapir survey found different classes of material remains in five sections of the town. These sections were divided by the use of four canals. The evidence for ceramic productions in the form of kilns and potsherds around the edge of the site along with copper production and jewellery manufacture in different areas attests to this internal division. However, craft production also found in residential areas and it is possible that these craft propel produced for a local market whereas the major centres of production were for long distance trade. More streets subdivided sections of the city further. Legal documentation attests that streets had names so that different properties could be located. Houses were packed tightly together with their walls adjoining but richer citizens had larger houses with areas of space between their properties (van de Mieroop 1997:82).

The Mesopotamian city relied heavily on its hinterland for the production of food along with orchards and gardens for luxury foods such as dates. The main inner city was surrounded by a wall, which served a defensive purpose and was a piece of monumental architecture to unite the people inside the town wall. The suburbs sprang up in time of peace outside the city walls. The Karum was also outside the city walls for trading between different states and cities. Inside the walls monumental architecture in the form of palaces and temples were located in prominent positions, in opposite parts of the citadel until the 1st millennium in the north when military building took a prominent position in the cities layout. Roads and canals divided the city internally and industry took place at a low level in residential areas and on a large scale in specific industrial areas.

Bibliography

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4. Van de Mieroop, M. 1997. The Ancient Mesopotamian City. Oxford: Clarendon.