Ancient Iraq (2 page)
Harp from the Royal Cemetery of Ur. (
Courtesy British Museum
)
Head-dress and necklaces found in Royal Cemetery at Ur.
Gold dagger from the Royal Cemetery of Ur. (
Courtesy British Museum
)
Fragment of the Stele of the Vultures, from Telloh. (
Courtesy Louvre Museum
)
Bronze head of Sargon (?), from Nineveh. (
Courtesy Iraq Museum
)
Statue of Gudea,
ensi
of Lagash, from Telloh. (
Courtesy Louvre Museum
)
The ‘Stele of victory’ of Narâm-Sin.
Central stairs of the ziqqurat of Ur. (
Courtesy Robert Harding Associates, London
)
Statue of Ebih-Il, from Mari. (
Courtesy Louvre Museum
)
Votive dog, from Telloh. (
Courtesy Louvre Museum
)
Head of a god, from Jabbul, Syria. (
Courtesy Louvre Museum
)
Sculptured upper part of the ‘Code of Hammurabi’, king of Babylon. (
Courtesy Louvre Museum
)
Façade of the temple of the Kassite king Karaindash in Uruk. (
Courtesy Iraq Museum, Baghdad
)
Relief from Tell Halaf. (
Courtesy Prof. W. Caskel, Cologne
)
Assyrian statue at Nimrud. (
Photograph by the author
)
Specimen of Assyrian writing on stone, from Nimrud. (
Courtesy Iraq Petroleum Company
)
Stele of Esarhaddon, from Zenjirli. (
Courtesy Vorderasiatische Museum, Berlin
)
Assyrian scene of war. Relief from Nineveh. (
Courtesy Louvre Museum
)
2. Typical buildings and objects from the Hassuna, Halaf and Ubaid periods.
3. Examples of decorated pottery from the Neolithic to Jemat Nasr period.
7. Investiture of Zimri-Lim as King of Mari by the goddess Ishtar.
11. The ziqqurat of Ur in the time of the Third Dynasty of Ur.
| I. | |
| II. | |
| III. | |
| IV. |
|
| V. | |
| VI. |
|
| VII. | |
| VIII. | |
| IX. |
TO THE THIRD EDITION
By the time this third edition of Ancient Iraq is published twelve years will have elapsed since the second edition (1980). During this relatively short period, Mesopotamian studies have made tremendous strides. In archaeology, generally brief but fruitful international ‘rescue excavations’ have been carried out on some 140
tells
, prompted by the building of three main dams on the Euphrates, the Tigris and one of its tributaries, radically altering our evaluation of prehistoric periods in particular, whilst digging was started, resumed and/or extended on such well-known sites as Mari, Isin, Larsa, Tell el-Oueili, Uruk, Tell Brak, Abu Salabikh and Sippar, to mention only the main ones. At the same time, Assyriologists were busy deciphering the inscriptions discovered in these excavations as well as revising and re-publishing hundreds of texts partially or inadequately published long ago, thereby modifying and improving our knowledge of the political, socio-economic and cultural history of ancient Mesopotamia. This was not routine work but a highly successful, unprecedented and, of course, computer-assisted revolution.
In 1980 I retired from my employment with a leading British pharmaceutical company. Having more time at my disposal and access to the university libraries of Paris, I wrote in my native language ‘La Mésopotamie’ (Le Seuil, 1985), largely based on Ancient Iraq but more comprehensive and relatively up-to-date. I realized then that some parts of my ‘British baby’ were badly in need of correction and improvement, and I had no difficulty in obtaining the agreement of Penguin Books (may the god Nabû bless them!) for an even more thoroughly revised and considerably enlarged third edition of Ancient Iraq, which indeed is now one step ahead of the French book on several points.
To the persons listed in the Introduction who encouraged and helped me in various ways I wish to add, for the second edition, Professor W. G. Lambert in England, Professors S. N. Kramer and J. B. Pritchard in the USA, Professor J. Bottéro, Madame Florence Malbarn-Labat and M. J. P. Grégoire in France and, for this edition, Professors David and Joan Oates, J. V. Kinnier-Wilson and H. W. F. Saggs in England, M. Olivier Rouault, Madame Sylvie Lackenbacher and Professor Dominique Charpin in France, Madame Duchesne-Guillemin in Belgium and Professor A. K. Grayson in Canada. Last but not least, I wish to thank my wife Christiane for the innumerable tasks she performed to assist me.
Saint Julien du Sault, France, November 1991
.
TO THE FIRST EDITION
This is a revised version, substantially enlarged and entirely rewritten, of the series of articles which appeared between September 1956 and January 1960 in
Iraq Petroleum
, the now defunct magazine of the Iraq Petroleum Company, under the title
The Story of Ancient Iraq
. Written in Basrah with no other source of documentation than my own personal library, these articles suffered from many serious defects and were far from even approaching the standards required from a work of this nature. In my view, whatever merit they possessed resided more in the lavish manner in which they were printed and illustrated than in the quality of their content. Yet, much to my surprise, the ‘Story’ received a warm welcome from a large and distinguished public. From Japan to California, a number of persons who, directly or indirectly, had access to the magazine took the trouble to write to the editor or myself asking for back numbers, spare copies or reprints, and suggesting that these articles be put in book form. I have now at last complied with their wish and I must say that, had it not been for the encouragement I received from their indulgent appreciation, I would never have had the courage to embark upon such a task.
For the unexpected success of these articles I can find only one reason: imperfect as they were, they helped to fill a regrettable gap. The Tigris-Euphrates valley – the region once called Mesopotamia and now mostly in Iraqi territory – forms a large, coherent, well-defined geographical, historical and cultural unit. Throughout antiquity, its inhabitants – Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians – shared the same brilliant civilization and played the leading role in Near Eastern politics, art, science, philosophy, religion and literature. During the last hundred years an enormous amount of archaeological research has been carried out in Iraq proper and in the eastern provinces of Syria. Impressive monuments have been unearthed, and museums have been filled with works of art and inscribed tablets recovered from the buried cities of Mesopotamia. No less remarkable results have been achieved in the field of philology: little by little, the two main languages of ancient Iraq – Sumerian and Akkadian – have yielded their secrets, and tens of thousands of texts have been translated and published. In university libraries the number of books and articles devoted to one aspect or other of Mesopotamian archaeology, history and civilization is positively staggering. Yet while several excellent and detailed histories of ancient Egypt, Iran, Syria, Palestine and Anatolia are offered to scholars or laymen, until H. W. F. Saggs in 1962 published
The Greatness That Was Babylon
it was impossible to find one single recent general history of ancient Iraq in English or, to my knowledge, in any other language.
That professional people are reluctant to undertake such a task can easily be understood. To deal thoroughly and competently with
all
the aspects of a civilization which had its roots in prehistory and lasted for more than thirty centuries would keep several scholars fully occupied for years and would fill many large volumes. Moreover, as almost every new discovery alters our knowledge of the past, even such a work would be in danger of becoming obsolete within a decade. Assyriologists and archaeologists in general prefer to plough their own fields. Most of their works are accessible only to other scholars or to advanced students. Those among these specialists who aim at a wider audience write on the subjects they know best. ‘Popular’ books, such as Woolley's monographs on Ur, Parrot's publications on Mari or Kramer's editions of Sumerian epics and myths cannot be too highly praised, but they are spotlights illuminating small areas in a very large picture. The layman often fails fully to appreciate their value simply because he is unable to place the sites, monuments, events or ideas described in their proper chronological or cultural context. Historians, on the other hand, have adopted precisely the opposite attitude. The works of L. King (
A History of Sumer and Akkad
, London, 1910;
A History of Babylon
, London, 1915), Sidney Smith (
Early History of Assyria
, London, 1928), A. Olmstead (
History of Assyria
, New York, 1923), B. Meissner (
Babylonien und Assyrien
, Heidelberg, 1925) and L. Delaporte (
La Mésopotamie
, Paris, 1923), excellent in their time and still very useful, though on many points outdated, have never been replaced. Instead, the French and Germans and, to a lesser extent, the British have given us, in more recent years, vast syntheses embracing either the whole of Western Asia or the entire Near East (Egypt included), or even the totality of the ancient world. E. Meyer's
Geschichte des Altertums
(1913 – 37), H. Schmökel's
Geschichte des alten Vorderasien
(1957), or the chapters written by G. Contenau and E. Dhorme for
Peuples et Civilisations
(1950), by L. Delaporte for
Les Peuples de l'Orient Méditerranéen
(1948) and by G. Goossens
for the Encyclopédie de la Pléiade
(1956), or again, the monumental
Cambridge Ancient History
(1923 – 5), of which a revised edition is being prepared, are invaluable monuments of erudition and lack neither detail nor perspective. But it is the kind of perspective one can expect in an art gallery where even a masterpiece tends to lose its individual character among other paintings. No matter what place they give to Mesopotamia, these books fail to do full justice to the remarkable cohesion and continuity of her history and civilization.