NCERT Summary: The Early Societies (Theme 2: Writing & City Life) | NCERT Video Summary: Class 6 to Class 12 (English) - UPSC PDF Download

Introduction

• City life began in Mesopotamia, the land between the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers that is now part of the Republic of Iraq.
• Mesopotamian civilization is known for its prosperity, city life, its voluminous and rich literature, and its mathematics and astronomy.
  Mesopotamia Civilization
• Mesopotamia’s writing system and literature spread to the eastern Mediterranean, northern Syria, and Turkey after 2000 BCE, so that the kingdoms of that entire region were writing to one another, and to the Pharaoh of Egypt, in the language and script of Mesopotamia. 
• The first known language of the land was Sumerian. It was gradually replaced by Akkadian around 2400 BCE when Akkadian speakers arrived. This language flourished till about Alexander’s time (336-323 BCE), with some regional changes occurring. 
• From 1400 BCE, Aramaic also trickled in. This language, similar to Hebrew, became widely spoken after 1000 BCE. It is still spoken in parts of Iraq. 
• Mesopotamia was important to Europeans because of references to it in the Old Testament, the first part of the Bible. Travelers and scholars of Europe looked on Mesopotamia as a kind of ancestral land, and when archaeological work began in the area, there was an attempt to prove the literal truth of the Old Testament.

Mesopotamia and its Geography

• Iraq is a land of diverse environments. Here, agriculture began between 7000 and 6000 BCE. In the north, there is a stretch of upland called a steppe, where animal herding offers people a better livelihood than agriculture.
• To the east, tributaries of the Tigris provide routes of communication into the mountains of Iran. 
• The south is a desert – and this is where the first cities and writing emerged. This desert could support cities because the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, which rise in the northern mountains, carry loads of silt (fine mud). When they flood or when their water is let out on to the fields, fertile silt is deposited.
• After the Euphrates has entered the desert, its water flows out into small channels. These channels flood their banks and, in the past, functioned as irrigation canals: water could be let into the fields of wheat, barley, peas, or lentils when necessary. 
• Of all ancient systems, that of the Roman Empire included, it was the agriculture of southern Mesopotamia that was the most productive, even though the region did not have sufficient rainfall to grow crops.
• Not only agriculture, Mesopotamian sheep and goats that grazed on the steppe, the north-eastern plains, and the mountain slopes (that is, on tracts too high for the rivers to flood and fertilize) produced meat, milk, and wool in abundance. Further, fish was available in rivers and date-palms gave fruit in summer.

The Significance of Urbanism

• Cities and towns are not just places with large populations. It is when an economy develops in spheres other than food production that it becomes an advantage for people to cluster in towns. 
• Urban economies comprise besides food production, trade, manufactures, and services. City people, thus, cease to be self-sufficient and depend on the products or services of others (city or village) people.
• The division of labor is a mark of urban life. Further, there must be a social organization in place. Fuel, metal, various stones, wood, etc., come from many different places for city manufacturers. Thus, organized trade and storage are needed. 
• There are deliveries of grain and other food items from the village to the city, and food supplies need to be stored and distributed. Obviously, in such a system some people give commands that others obey, and urban economies often require the keeping of written records.

Movement of Goods into Cities

• However rich the food resources of Mesopotamia, its mineral resources were few. So we can surmise that the ancient Mesopotamians could have traded their abundant textiles and agricultural produce for the wood, copper, tin, silver, gold, shell, and various stones from Turkey and Iran, or across the Gulf. These latter regions had mineral resources, but much less scope for agriculture. 
• Besides crafts, trade, and services, efficient transport is also important for urban development. The canals and natural channels of ancient Mesopotamia were in fact routes of goods transport.

The Development of Writing

• The first Mesopotamian tablets, written around 3200 BCE, contained picture-like signs and numbers. These were about 5,000 lists of oxen, fish, bread loaves, etc. – lists of goods that were brought into or distributed from the temples of Uruk, a city in the south. 
• Clearly, writing began when society needed to keep records of transactions – because in city life transactions occurred at different times, and involved many people and a variety of goods.
• Mesopotamians wrote on tablets of clay. Once dried in the sun, the clay would harden and tablets would be almost as indestructible as pottery.
• By 2600 BCE or so, the letters became cuneiform, and the language was Sumerian. The writing was now used not only for keeping records, but also for making dictionaries, giving legal validity to land transfers, narrating the deeds of kings, and announcing the changes a king had made in the customary laws of the land.
• Sumerian, the earliest known language of Mesopotamia, was gradually replaced after 2400 BCE by the Akkadian language. Cuneiform writing in the Akkadian language continued in use until the first century CE, that is, for more than 2,000 years.

The System of Writing

• The sound that a cuneiform sign represented was not a single consonant or vowel (such as m or an in the English alphabet), but syllables (say, -put-, or -la-, or –in-). 
• The writing was a skilled craft but, more important, it was an enormous intellectual achievement, conveying in visual form the system of sounds of a particular language.

Literacy

• Very few Mesopotamians could read and write. Not only were there hundreds of signs to learn, but many of these were also complex.
• For the most part, however, writing reflected the mode of speaking. A letter from an official would have to be read out to the king.

The Uses of Writing

• The connection between city life, trade, and writing is brought out in a long Sumerian epic poem about Enmerkar, one of the earliest rulers of Uruk. Enmerkar is associated with the organization of the first trade of Sumer.
• It can be inferred that in Mesopotamian understanding it was kingship that organized trade and writing. Besides being a means of storing information and of sending messages afar, the writing was seen as a sign of the superiority of Mesopotamian urban culture.

Urbanization in Southern Mesopotamia: Temples and Kings

• From 5000 BCE, settlements had begun to develop in southern Mesopotamia. The earliest cities were of various kinds: those that gradually developed around temples; those that developed as centres of trade; and imperial cities.
• Temples were the residences of various gods: of the Moon God of Ur, or of Inanna the Goddess of Love and War. Constructed in brick, temples became larger over time, with several rooms around open courtyards.
• The god was the focus of worship: to him or her people brought grain, curd, and fish (the floors of some early temples had thick layers of fish bones). The god was also the theoretical owner of the agricultural fields, the fisheries, and the herds of the local community. 
• In time, the processing of produce (for example, oil pressing, grain grinding, spinning, and the weaving of woollen cloth) was also done in the temple. 
• The organizer of production at a level above the household, employer of merchants, and keeper of written records of distributions and allotments of grain plough animals, bread, beer, fish, etc., the temple gradually developed its activities and became the main urban institution. 
• The archaeological record shows, villages were periodically relocated in Mesopotamian history due to both natural as well as man-made problems. The early Mesopotamian countryside saw repeated conflict over land and water.
• When there was continuous warfare in a region, those chiefs who had been successful in war could oblige their followers by distributing the loot and could take prisoners from the defeated groups to employ as their guards or servants.
• In time, victorious chiefs began to offer precious booty to the gods and thus beautify the community’s temples. This gave the king-high status and the authority to command the community.
• At Uruk, one of the earliest temple towns, we find depictions of armed heroes and their victims. Significantly, Uruk also came to have a defensive wall at a very early date. War captives and local people were put to work for the temple, or directly for the ruler. This, rather than agricultural tax, was compulsory.
• Those who were put to work were paid rations. Hundreds of ration lists have been found, which give, against people’s names, the quantities of grain, cloth, or oil allotted to them. 
• By 3000 BCE Bronze tools came into use for various crafts. Architects learned to construct brick columns, there being no suitable wood to bear the weight of the roof of large halls. In sculpture, there were superb achievements, not in easily available clay but in imported stone. And then there was a technological landmark that we can say is appropriate to an urban economy: the potter’s wheel.

Life in the City

• We know from the legal texts (disputes, inheritance matters, etc.) that in Mesopotamian society the nuclear family was the norm, although a married son and his family often resided with his parents. The father was the head of the family.
• When the wedding took place, gifts were exchanged by both parties, who ate together and made offerings in a temple. When her mother-in-law came to fetch her, the bride was given her share of the inheritance by her father. The father’s house, herds, fields, etc., were inherited by the sons.
• Narrow winding streets at Ur indicate that wheeled carts could not have reached many of the houses. Sacks of grain and firewood would have arrived on donkey-back. It also indicates an absence of town planning.
• There were no street drains of the kind we find in contemporary Mohenjo-Daro. Drains and clay pipes were instead found in the inner courtyards of the Ur houses and it is thought that house roofs sloped inwards and rainwater was channelled via the drainpipes into sumps in the inner courtyards.
• The light came into the rooms not from windows but from doorways opening into the courtyards: this would also have given families their privacy.
• There were superstitions about houses, recorded in omen tablets at Ur: a raised threshold brought wealth; a front door that did not open towards another house was lucky.

A Trading Town in a Pastoral Zone

• After 2000 BCE the royal capital of Mari flourished. The agriculture and animal rearing were carried out close to each other in this region.
• Some communities in the kingdom of Mari had both farmers and pastoralists, but most of its territory was used for pasturing sheep and goats.
• Through Mesopotamian history, nomadic communities of the western desert filtered into the prosperous agricultural heartland. A few gained the power to establish their own rule. These included the Akkadians, Amorites, Assyrians and Aramaeans. 
• Mesopotamian society and culture were thus open to different people and cultures, and the vitality of the civilization was perhaps due to this intermixture. 
• Located on the Euphrates in a prime position for trade – in wood, copper, tin, oil, wine, and various other goods that were carried in boats along the Euphrates – between the south and the mineral-rich uplands of Turkey, Syria and Lebanon, Mari is a good example of an urban centre prospering on trade.
• Most important, tablets refer to copper from ‘Alashiya’, the island of Cyprus, known for its copper, and tin was also an item of trade. As bronze was the main industrial material for tools and weapons, this trade was of great importance.
• Thus, although the kingdom of Mari was not militarily strong, it was exceptionally prosperous.

Cities in Mesopotamian Culture

• Mesopotamians valued city life in which people of many communities and cultures lived side by side. The most poignant reminder to us of the pride Mesopotamians took in their cities comes at the end of the Gilgamesh Epic, which was written on twelve tablets. 
• Gilgamesh is said to have ruled the city of Uruk sometime after Enmerkar. He admired the foundations made of fired bricks that he had put into place. After the death of his friend, takes consolation in the city that his people had built.

The Legacy of Writing

• While moving narratives can be transmitted orally, science requires written texts that generations of scholars can read and build upon. Perhaps the greatest legacy of Mesopotamia to the world is its scholarly tradition of time reckoning and mathematics. 
• Dating around 1800 BCE are tablets with multiplication and division tables, square- and square root tables, and tables of compound interest.
• The division of the year into 12 months according to the revolution of the moon around the earth, the division of the month into four weeks, the day into 24 hours, and the hour into 60 minutes – all that we take for granted in our daily lives – has come to us from the Mesopotamians. 
• These time divisions were adopted by the successors of Alexander and from there transmitted to the Roman world, then to the world of Islam, and then to medieval Europe. Whenever solar and lunar eclipses were observed, their occurrence was noted according to year, month, and day. 
• None of these momentous Mesopotamian achievements would have been possible without writing and the urban institution of schools, where students read and copied earlier written tablets.

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