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THE LAND OF THE TWIN RIVERS

As the large number of ancient sites testifies, Mesopotamia was not always as barren as it appears today. In the past, the region, bounded and watered by the twin rivers Tigris and Euphrates, was as productive as any modern agricultural area. It was a region of intensive farming and breeding, truly a garden of plenty, as the Old Testament records: “And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. . . . And the fourth river is Euphrates.”1 The ancient Sumerian word for the open pastureland of the lower Mesopotamian plains was eden, and it is probable that these ever-fertile lands formed the basis of the early legend of human origins.

Modern research indicates that the weather conditions of the area have not altered significantly over the last few thousand years; the rainfall and the river flow seem very similar to that of the past. What has changed is the fertility of the soil: it has greatly deteriorated.

In the past these lands not only produced vast quantities of grain but also supported a great number of animals, both wild and domesticated. Yet the resulting wealth remained vulnerable, for it was dependent upon the steady flow of the rivers. Unfortunately, despite their size, these rivers could not always be relied upon to produce regular and sufficient irrigation. In addition to this, over the years, the water courses of the rivers changed. In many cases this has caused the modern-day rivers to move many miles from those cities that once lay upon their banks. Unlike the Nile, for instance, with its regular flooding of the Egyptian farmlands with rich mud from the upper regions, the twin rivers of Mesopotamia were highly unpredictable. One year they might flood disastrously, causing immense damage to both crops and water-control mechanisms; the next year there might be an equally destructive drought. It has been observed that Mesopotamia seems to hang forever in the balance between a desert and a swamp.

It was always important, then, from very early times, to seek some reliable method of controlling the supply of water for the needs of irrigation. Although some rain did fall in the south—about ten inches per year, the same as in modern times—this was insufficient for the needs of agriculture. Early cultures quickly discovered that efficient control of water by means of terraces and channels could produce the net effect of a far higher precipitation. Crops could be grown that, in an uncontrolled region, would need a rainfall perhaps five times greater.

Of necessity then, from at least the fifth millennium BCE, canals and reservoirs were developed. This eventually gave rise to a widespread and elaborate irrigation system covering the entire region. Some of the canals that were constructed in the past were so large that small ships could sail upon them. The ever observant Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BCE, records that the largest of these canals, one that joined the Tigris to the Euphrates, was so wide that it had to be crossed by boats.2

The result of this highly efficient irrigation system, when in good repair, was the facilitation of an agricultural yield sufficient to support several million people living in an increasingly centralized manner. The waterways tended to silt up regularly, and a large bureaucratic administration evolved to ensure that they were kept in good working order and to construct new facilities when necessary. Unfortunately, like all such national enterprises then and now, the system never operated at maximum efficiency. The thousands of canals still to be seen in ruins were never all in use at any one time, despite the high priority accorded to their repair by successive Mesopotamian kings.

An unfortunate result of this extensive irrigation, coupled with a lack of adequate drainage, which was carried out over so many thousands of years, has been the gradual increase in the salt content of the soil. In a freely running river this salt is swept into the sea; when a river is controlled, dammed, and pushed through canals, the salt remains in the earth, slowly destroying its ability to bear crops. The effects of this process were first noticed during the first dynasty of Babylon. Today, four thousand years later, because of this increased salinity, much of the once-prosperous land has become sterile, its ruined topsoil scattered by the winds.

One of the crucial social changes in the history of humankind was from nomadic hunter to settled farmer, from being a food collector to being a food producer. This latter settled stage in human history is termed the Neolithic and is considered to last until the discovery of the use of metal. Evidence of the Neolithic period is found generally in the remains of permanent communities, of huts or houses, for these farmers, both male and female, had to live a stable life in order to tend their animals or crops. The cultivation of plants and the domestication of animals led to the growth of permanent communities, which typifies this period in history. In addition, by remaining stable, farmers began to understand their land, to learn the rudiments of irrigation and soil fertility and to demand regular delineation of ownership—property boundaries needed to be arranged, marked, and recorded in some manner. The development of ritual aimed at appeasing those divine rulers whose task it was to ensure the continued fertility of the soil can be seen as very probably originating in this period. All the evidence points to this worship being centered upon some unknown and ancient mother goddess.

The concept outlined above is exemplified in the Neolithic community of Jarmo, which developed in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains on the border of Iraq and Iran. Remains found there have been carbon dated to sometime around 6750 BCE. Even at this very early time, long before the development of writing, the inhabitants of this community apparently had a well-developed religion. Small clay statuettes of a pregnant woman—assumed to be a mother goddess—have been found in large numbers, suggesting that each household contained at least one example. Unfortunately, nothing further can be said about the organization or cultic practices of this religion—if this is indeed what it was. We do not know whether they had linked their goddess to any planet, perhaps to Venus, or perhaps to the moon, and neither do we know whether they had developed any associated mythology. That they had would seem probable, but without written records there is no way of telling. One thing is virtually certain, though: that all the later cults of Mesopotamia, in which the mother goddess took a prominent role, would have had their roots somewhere in the preliterate period, in some Neolithic cult such as that seen at Jarmo.

Written history begins about 3,500 years later, in the south of Mesopotamia. On the flat alluvial plains through which the twin rivers meander in their final descent to the sea, a highly complex and sophisticated culture arose. With this marked increase of complexity arose the concurrent necessity for a method of recording—initially commercial—activity.

The earliest traces of this culture are seen in the crumbled cities of Ur, Uruk, Babylon, and others that date from around 3000 BCE. By this time there were already kings and priests who ruled over a highly stratified society comprising skilled workers, artists, merchants, civil servants, scribes, and all the other occupations found in a cosmopolitan city. Writing had been developed, apparently with considerable enthusiasm, for some 250,000 tablets have so far been found. On these, in addition to records of commercial transactions, was recorded the mythology of a highly complicated religion utilizing many different gods. This southern civilization, distinguished primarily by its language, which bears no resemblance to any other known speech, was that of the Sumerians. It is with them that recorded history begins.

The process by which this culture developed out of the much less complex Neolithic communities is unknown, for the evidence is sparse. However, archaeology, despite its limitations, can demonstrate that such a development did undoubtedly take place. It has been found that every major Sumerian city arose out of a small town or village built during a much earlier period, called, in academic circles, the Ubaid. This period can be dated to around 4000 BCE. Traces of these early communities are discovered when archaeologists excavate to the very lowest levels, far below the remaining Sumerian cities—themselves often many meters below the ground.

One remarkable feature of these very ancient communities is that they were all, so far as archaeology can tell us, apparently built around a central temple, which was, without exception, the grandest building in the town. This reveals a degree of cultural centralization that may also reflect a religious centralization. And if this is so, then it may be a demonstration of a process that will be explored later: the process by which certain of the many gods became dominant, thus creating a “centralized” mythology.

In the late 1940s, excavations at the Sumerian city of Eridu revealed that beneath the ziggurat, which itself dates to 2100 BCE, lay the remains of seventeen earlier temples, all built one on top of another. The fourteen upper levels revealed varying traces of the Ubaid and the later Uruk cultures. The three lowest temples date from a culture even earlier than the Ubaid. This indicates that the same site had been used for religious practices from as early as 5000 BCE. It is certainly possible, if not indeed probable, that the same religion continued in essentially the same form during this period, but without any written records it is impossible to draw firm conclusions. Unfortunately, it is just as possible that invaders may have taken the city and imposed their own imported cultic practices upon the area, utilizing preexisting sacred buildings. Yet, despite this uncertainty, an important aspect of this early culture has been revealed: it is evidence of the very early beginning of a religion as a prominent, potentially wealthy, and organized city cult necessitating a centrally situated sacred building, thus, of course, also providing evidence of its social and cultural prominence.

Archaeology, then, does not support the belief, popular in the twentieth century, that the Sumerian civilization appeared suddenly and mysteriously, fully developed, upon the Mesopotamian plains, having been transported in its entirety from another, as yet unknown, land. While it is true that there remain many enigmas surrounding this early civilization, no evidence has yet been found that could lend support to such a romantic view of Sumerian origins. Yet, while dispelling this myth, it is fair to point to at least one area of mystery that remains.

The Sumerians wrote about their past; these stories are an uncertain blend of fact and mythology, but they all agree upon certain themes. The Sumerians themselves wrote that they came from the island of Dilmun, where resided the descendants of the kings who lived “before the flood.” Today, following upon considerable archaeological investigation, it is certain that this island of legend is in fact modern-day Bahrain Island.

In April 1954 the Danish archaeologist Geoffroy Bibby, having set out to excavate some of the large number of grave mounds on the island, unearthed a Sumerian-period temple beneath a sandy mound. Two years later, having returned for a third season of excavations, he investigated a tell covering about forty acres—roughly the same size as the city of Ur. Almost immediately he came upon the remains of a large city wall. Over the next six years he excavated, discovering it to be a well-planned symmetrical city with an effective public water supply. He unearthed seals and other commercial objects similar to those that had been found both in Ur and in Mohenjo-Daro on the west bank of the Indus River in Pakistan.3

Thus Bibby’s findings suggest that Bahrain had been a large trading center between Ur and Mohenjo-Daro, with a city as large as any in Sumer. Widening his view, he found associated remains as far afield as Kuwait, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, and a site two hundred miles into the deserts of Saudi Arabia. This was proof that the state of Dilmun, perhaps centered upon the island of Bahrain, was large, wealthy, and important.

In addition, beneath the surface of the desert, perhaps twenty feet below the sand, Bibby discovered an extraordinary construction. The ancient engineers had built hidden water channels underground. These were walled and roofed and ran for many miles under the sand.4 Similar water channels have also been found in the deserts of Oman, along with a small Sumerian-type temple.5

It is clear, then, that the Sumerian civilization extended across the sea, not only to Oman but farther. Excavations in the Indus Valley civilization in Pakistan have proved contact between the latter and Mesopotamia. Perhaps the Sumerian kings of the historical dynasties did indeed come from elsewhere “before the flood.” But from where? The Indus Valley or farther afield? Or could these legends reflect not an influx of new people but rather an influx of a new ruling dynasty or class that carried with it the writing and technology?

In the literature of the Sumerians we find a more recognizable point of contact, the origins of Western mythology as it is recorded in the opening chapters of the Old Testament. The Sumerians, it seems, first wrote the story of the creation of the earth together with humankind in a poem of seven tablets called the Enuma Elish (When on High). It appears too that elements of the Adam and Eve story similarly existed, but they have unfortunately not yet been found by the archaeologists. Perhaps, though, this story is extremely old. From the area of Lake Van in Turkey come small statuettes of a woman and a snake looking at each other, all one body in the shape of a crescent moon. Is this not a representation of the heart of the story of Eve—that both she and the snake were aspects of the feminine? The esoteric teachings of the Gnostics maintained a legend to this effect.6

The kingdom of Sumer was essentially a confederation of powerful city-states each under its own particular king and god, the former being the terrestrial representative of the latter. Interestingly, early Sumer had thirteen city-states—could this relate to the thirteen lunar months? Could this be the origin of the later significance of this number thirteen—often recorded as a group of twelve plus one? Could unity have been perceived as the sum of thirteen parts?

Each of these cities was large, holding with its associated villages and suburbs perhaps thirty thousand people. The city god was considered to own the state as well as having control over its population. This naturally gave the temple and its priests great powers over the available finance and workforce.

The Sumerians were extremely precise in their bureaucratic methods, recording every detail and transaction upon their sun-dried clay tablets. It is from these tens of thousands of tablets that it has been possible to build a rich portrait of daily life in a Sumerian city, for these tablets record details of business contracts, accounts, wages, lists of products to be sold or shipped, and types and numbers of animals being traded in the markets.

To judge from these tablets, all the workers in each of these city-states were organized into various trade guilds, each apparently having a leader. Indeed, the picture that emerges is one of a highly organized, rigidly structured society. This is perhaps the explanation for the success of the great public works programs that built the temples and canals.

The first known royal inscription is that of the king of Kish around 2700 BCE. There can be no suggestion, though, that this was the first royal dynasty; surviving documents are able only to record a cultural pattern already in existence, not its beginning. We can merely conclude from this first regal inscription that by this stage in history, the king of Kish had been recognized as the dominant personality in Sumer, ruling over the entire territory of the thirteen cities.

This dominance of Kish did not last, however, for in about 2400 BCE a distinct change occurred. For centuries another group of people linguistically distinct from the Sumerians had gradually been moving into Mesopotamia from the south and west; they now produced a great leader and, under his command, overthrew the Sumerian civilization. These people were the Semites, and their great leader was King Sargon.

In 2400 BCE Sargon, king of Akkad, built the first great Mesopotamian empire. For the first time Sumer in the south and Akkad in the north were unified under the same crown. This established the political pattern for the next two thousand years. The kingdom of Akkad, in northern Iraq, now dominated Mesopotamia, and for this reason the Semitic language of this newly emergent people was known as Akkadian. But even though Akkadian was a totally different tongue from Sumerian, the Akkadians continued to use the Sumerian cuneiform script to write their language. This is perhaps evidence that there had been a long period of intermixture between the cultures before Sargon’s dominance. The later languages, Babylonian and Assyrian, are variant dialects of Akkadian, using a modified version of the Sumerian pattern of cuneiform.

After this initial coalescence, empire followed empire as the different regions of Mesopotamia assumed, then lost, prominence over the region. The period during the great empires of Babylon and subsequently Assyria, from about 1800 BCE until about 800 BCE, saw the methodical development and codification of science, mathematics, and astrology. The result was an established corpus of technical literature for each of the various disciplines, much of which was to find its way into the library uncovered by Hormuzd Rassam in the 1800s, the royal library of Ashurbanipal in his capital, Nineveh.

The destruction of the region began in the seventh century BCE. In 612 BCE the Assyrian capital, Nineveh, was destroyed, and once again Babylon became the imperial capital. This was during the neo-Babylonian dynasty. Then, in 539 BCE, Babylon itself was captured by the Persians under King Cyrus, thus ending forever the great Semitic empires of Mesopotamia. However, despite the devastation wrought by constant warfare and invasion, the region continued to remain fertile and productive well into classical times.

The Greek historian Herodotus visited Babylon following its capture by Cyrus and wrote an account of the city’s fertility and wealth. He claimed a huge size for the city—it was square, he said, with sides almost fourteen miles long, giving a circumference of nearly fifty-six miles. To him it was the most impressive city in the world. Archaeology has proved that the city itself was much smaller than Herodotus suggested, the circuit of the walls being about ten miles—still, nonetheless, very impressive, and if all the suburbs of Babylon were to be included, then Herodotus’s account may have been close to the truth.

Time was running out for the declining Babylonian culture. Following Alexander the Great’s invasion in the fourth century BCE, the center of the ancient world was to shift gradually from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean. This process was hastened by Alexander and his successors, who founded a series of Greek cities in the conquered lands. In time these new cities replaced the once important cities of the old empires. Although Babylonia continued to be heavily populated, its power was broken forever, and with the formation of the Greek Seleucid Empire, the administrative capital was moved to a new city, Antioch, founded in 300 BCE near the Mediterranean coast. Subsequently, renewed waves of invasion ravaged the land, breaking down every attempt to maintain a stable central government and adding to the increasing ruin of the old cities.

For Babylon in particular, the beginning of the decline came in the third century BCE with the transfer of administrative power to Antioch and trade to Seleucia on the Tigris, both newly founded Greek cities. The latter soon became the largest city in Mesopotamia, reaching an eventual population of around six hundred thousand.

Babylon’s decline further intensified when, in 126 BCE, after yet another invasion—this time by the Parthians—the city fell and was yet again occupied by a foreign race bringing their new gods and customs. But this time Babylon’s day was over; it no longer had a population of sufficient resilience, or a position of sufficient importance, to regain its former dynamism and recover. From this point the city began a rapid slide into obscurity and ruin. When in 199 CE the Roman emperor Septimus Severus entered the city, he found it deserted—the mammoth walls were still standing, but they enclosed only ruins. Later still, in the fourth century CE, the historian Zosimus mentions the existence of a huge “king’s park” in the area, describing walls surrounding it and a huge palace with lands standing in the center. This park was said to be well stocked with wild animals for the hunting pleasure of the Persian kings. Historians consider that Zosimus is here speaking of the remnants of Babylon, its walls now enclosing a game park.

By the seventh century CE, wars and infertile soil had virtually ruined all of Mesopotamia, and the administration that for so long maintained the all-important irrigation canals had finally collapsed. As the water vanished from the towns and cities, the population rapidly dispersed. Within a comparatively short period of time, both the cities and the farmland became covered by desert sand, and the world all but forgot the existence of the great ancient empires.