# Everything Began in Uruk **URL:** \ **Category:** University of the East Pacific\ **Created:** [October 7, 2026, 1:12pm UTC](https://forum.theeastpacific.com/t/everything-began-in-uruk/20117 "2026-10-07T13:12:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
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Everything began in Uruk: the sparkle that lit civilization and imperialism By: [New Leganes](https://www.nationstates.net/nation=noflag); Published 2024 Translation from the final subject work “La ciudad-Estado de Uruk” (January 2018) * * * Abstract Uruk, named nowadays Warka in Arabic language, was the main city of a culture that, more than 5000 years ago, made essential inventions as the wheel, the plow or the first script system. Furthermore, its complex political and economic system made it possible to talk about the first authentic state ever known. The Uruk period, the age that this article is written about, can be considered the boundary between Prehistory and History. Keywords: Uruk period, Mesopotamia, Protohistory. 1. Introduction Around 10 kilometres north to the Euphrates river we can find some ruins which are given currently the name of “الوركاء” (el-Warka’), known in the rest of the world as simply “Warka”. This Warka, settled today in a practically deserted landscape, in a country devastated by wars for decades, was by the end of the 4th millenium BC the capital of a political, economical, trading and even religious system of a magnitude the world had not known before. This innovative system is included in what has been designated “Uruk Period” or “First Urbanization”. There is not a precise agreement about the exact chronology. Attending to the sources used as bibliography for this article, Lara Peinado (1989) locates the Uruk Period between 3750 and 3150 BC, while Postgate (1999) does between 4000 and 3200. Mario Liverani, renowned professor in the Sapienza University of Rome, presents two possibilities: in his work Uruk, la prima città (1998), divides the period in “Old Uruk”, from 4000 to 3500 BC, and “Late Uruk”, between 3500 and 3000; on the other hand, in L’origine delle città (1986) and El Antiguo Oriente. Historia, socieded y economía (1995) divides into “Old” and “Late Uruk” as well, but the proposed data are, respectively, from 3500 to 3200 and from 3200 to 3000. Pérez Largacha (2004) locates the period between 3500 and 3000 BC, and Guillermo Algaze (2004) includes the expansion of the Uruk system in between 3800 and 3100. Robert McC. Adams (1981), using as reference the archaeological evidence in Elam, divides the period in three: a first early phase which goes from 3750 to 3500; a second one, or “Middle Phase”, from 3500 to 3300; and a third or “Late Phase”, from 3300 to 3150. What we can surely state is the Uruk Period took place at some moment from the first 4th millennium centuries to the transition into the 3rd millennium BC. Near the aforementioned millennia transition comes a different phase called “Jemdet Nasr Period”. Generally it is treated as a different period as the Uruk one, but the differences between them are almost exclusively limited to the artistic area (Roux, 1987). Hence, Jemdet Nasr Period is also included in this article. In regards to the archaeological area the Uruk Period would be included in, Georges Roux (1987) settles the period in the transition from Chalcolithic to the Bronze Age, while Liverani (1995) describes this period as the beginning of the Bronze Age. 2. Territory and environment Uruk is located in the south of a region called, among other names, “Mesopotamian Alluvial Plain” or “Lower Mesopotamia”. This territory is bordered by two basic landforms: to the north, the narrowing between Tigris and Euphrates near Bagdad, and the union of both rivers into the Shatt al-Arab before they end in the Persian Gulf. Uruk is located on the banks of the Euphrates river, whose flow regime depended and depends on the total precipitation amount in each year over the mountains of the current day Armenia. Because of it, drought and semi desertization periods rotated with massive streambeds which possibly had influence into the Flood myth present in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the biblical texts. In non-salinized areas or areas controlled to avoid salinization, it would be usual to find flora as willows, poplars or licorice. Under their protection from the sun, diverse species such as boars, felines or deers would be able to live (Postgate, 1999). This biodiversity would serve as good for commercial exchange, together with the agriculture surplus. Nevertheless, it must be noted that the quality of the wood present in this area was not high, which answers the question of the constant Mesopotamian need to import Lebanese wood (Postgate, 1999). The region we are talking about is not precisely favourable in regards of climate: temperatures can reach levels near 50ºC in the hottest moments of the year, which, together with the abundance of marshy grounds in this place at the beginning of 4th millennium, would have derived into a hostile environment, with suffocating temperatures and humidity. Even when this marshy ground was not favourable for natural agriculture, it was for fishing and bird hunting; reeds were also abundant, and they were used for agriculture, vessels, furniture and even the styluses used in the first script forms (Roux, 1987; Postgate, 1999). Nissen presents a widely accepted hypothesis about the origin of these 4th millennium marshes and the consequences derived from them. The thaw that took place after the Last Glacial Maximum brought a precipitation and sea level grow, so the Persian Gulf expanded to the northwest, flooding the current day Shatt al-Arab, and the high amount of precipitation in Tigris and Euphrates’ sources and their tributaries played their part on the rest of the Mesopotamian Alluvial Plain. But near middle 4th millennium these lands suffered a desiccation, associated to a regression of the Gulf and the pluviosity. This caused that part of Northern Mesopotamia’s population, where stronger cultural trends than in the south were developing, and where the agriculture was rainfed and thus unpredictable, could move to a southern territory now less hostile and where a more reliable agricultural system would be developed and would last millennia (Postgate, 1999; Pérez Largacha, 2004). 3. Architecture and urbanism Even when the Warka archaeological site provides highly-valued information about Uruk Period’s urbanism, it is advisable to study the rest of cities and colonies of this period as well, because, as Antonio Pérez Largacha (2004:7) assures, “this is not about the rising of a single city, of a dominant centre over a territory more or less vast, but about a true urban bloom in the same geographical context and, basically, with the same demographic stratum”. Uruk suddenly emerged from the union of two different cores: Kullaba, dedicated to the great Sumerian god Anu, to the west; and Eanna, consecrated to Inanna, the Semite Ishtar, to the east (Roux, 1987). This disposition in neighbourhoods can be found in the almost entirety of the Uruk Period cities. It is known, through northern colonies such as Habuba Kabira, that the street disposition was grid, and a central street divided the two neighbourhoods (Lara, 1989). The exact area of Uruk during the homonymous period is, however, unknown, as the city was not delimited by any wall, but it is precisely from the area that the wall built in the Protodynastic period enclosed from which the approximate size of the city is calculated, this being 5.5 square kilometres (Nissen, 1988). This area is comparable to other Ancient Era cities generally more known than Uruk (Image 1). There are barely some rests of the Lower Mesopotamian domestic architecture, but we do acknowledge the one from Higher Mesopotamia. In Habuba-Kabira, quoted before, houses were made from raw bricks. The internal part was distributed in two or three rooms, a yard, a warehouse and a kitchen. The burials were placed beneath the houses, and were equipped with a rich trousseau, made of precious and semi-precious stones and figurines with animal and anthropomorphous shapes (Roux, 1987; Lara, 1989). The surplus from the primary sector and the production from the secondary sector were sold in a marketplace, similar to the current day souks of the Middle East (Tovar, 1963). But, without any doubt, the most remarkable architecture element were temples, located in the city centre, working as the heart of the administrative and religious activity. In Warka, at the bottom of the impressive ziggurat of the Eanna built by Ur-Nammu, first king of Ur’s Third Dynasty, seven superimposed temples from late 4th millennium have been found; they would constitute the “Sacred Area of the Eanna”, consecrated to Inanna (Liverani, 1995). Among them we must mention the following: the “Limestone Temple”, with an exceptional size of 80x30 metres, the “Columns Temple” or “Temple A”, built over a platform and with an access of two lines of four columns, and the “Temple B”, with a decorated and striking facade (Roux, 1987; Lara, 1989). The Jemdet Nasr period will see the building of the ziggurat of Anu in Kullaba, also known as the “White Temple” over the basis of several temples from the Uruk period and even the previous Ubaid period (Roux, 1987). Additionally, these temples were surrounded by areas assigned to different religious festivities (Liverani, 1995). The palace building, typical in Chalcolithic, will not appear until the Jemdet Nasr period, and even after that the temple will continue to be the administrative core of the city (Liverani, 1995). 4. Economy and trade system 4.1. Economy Several aspects contributed to the strong Uruk period economy, as the complex trade system and the administrative efficiency, but, quoting J. N. Postagate’s words (1992), “throughout history, whenever South Mesopotamia has fostered a flourishing society, this has been centred round an efficient agricultural regime, dependent on the controlled exploitation of the rivers”. Indeed, the key for the exceptional development of the Uruk system was agricultural production. Lower Mesopotamia would not be favourable for agriculture without a system of channels and embankments for guiding water from the rivers to the wanted places, as, in such a flat terrain, rivers would tend to describe too many meanders and to overflow, leaving useless lands for agriculture (Postgate, 1999). When the river channels were controlled, great inventions came into the scene. Plough left the hoe obsolete, and the wheel was applied to the four-wheeled chariot, which replaced the yarding sled. Metallic sickles helped in the agricultural tasks as well. The spears and arrowheads were also metallic, and the livestock, made of cattle and sheep, got stalled (Lara, 1989). All of those resulted in an enormous primary production. Innovations were not, however, limited to the primary sector: we must talk about the great industrial expansion in this period. Even when the lathe already existed in the previous Ubaid period, mass production of pottery during the Uruk period is very notable. The same applies to the metallurgical industry, on which we know several alloys of metals as copper or lead, but limited to the manufacturing of ordinary tools such as plates or weapons (Roux, 1987; Lara, 1989). This would turn into a craft that required a specialised workforce; that was the first time in History that this happened (Lara, 1989). 4.2. Trade system The previously mentioned industries required, indeed, raw materials which Uruk possessed to a great extent, but which could not be found in Lower Mesopotamia. So now we arrive at another aspect for which the Uruk period was the turning point: trade. Uruk held trade relations with its neighbouring cities in Lower Mesopotamia, with bordering regions as Upper Mesopotamia and the Zagros mountains, and even with considerably far regions such as Lebanon, where cedar wood was imported from, Oman, notable for its copper, or Egypt, which supplied alabaster and gold (Image 2). The most studied field on the Uruk period during the last years has been the trade relations, partially due to the impossibility to continue excavating in Iraq (Pérez Largacha, 2004). In this area the investigation of Guillermo Algaze is especially interesting. As we already said, Lower Mesopotamia lacked raw materials for its industry, materials for building such as stone and good-quality wood, as well as luxury products as precious and semi-precious stones. Those resources could be found in the Zagros or in Upper Mesopotamia, where local peoples had developed very primitive societies and economic systems when compared to Uruk’s ones (Algaze, 2004). Taking advantage of the lack of basic products these societies suffered of, Uruk offered its surplus in the primary sector (grain, leather, dates, salted fish), as well as several manufactured products such as pottery or cloth, while these peoples exported the wood, stone, metals, exotic stones and even the slaves that Uruk needed (Algaze, 2004). When these products could not be obtained by diplomacy, Uruk could go into action and use less unconventional methods, performing lootings in order to keep the constant resources supply (Algaze, 2004). To ensure their trade routes, Uruk built different settlements and outposts on them, in a similar way to the later Assyrian karum, near the settlements that provided the resources needed, and even over those settlements, probably after having taken them over by force (Algaze, 2004). Among these “colonies” of Uruk there are several relevant names, such as Habuba Kabira, in the northern area of current day Syria, or Malatya, beside the Turkish sector of the Euphrates. Another difference worth to note between Northern and Southern Mesopotamia are the means of transport. In Lower Mesopotamia, where another great invention by Uruk was sailing (Lara Peinado, 1989), they used the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, together with the channels around them, as the main way to carry goods, workforce, etc. On the other hand, Upper Mesopotamia and the rest of neighbouring regions were in the need to use a transport by land considerably slower and less effective; therefore, the Mesopotamian Alluvial Plain had more possibilities on hand to canalize the region’s trade (Algaze, 2004). This trend of Lower Mesopotamian rulers to control the different trade routes could also be seen in later periods such as the Akkadian Empire, hence it could be feasible that the Uruk period could actually be a “proto-empire” (Algaze, 2004). Algaze justifies his theory explaining that the real base for empires is economical domination, rather than social or political, over peoples with less developed economies. Nevertheless, the lack of deep investigations on the Mesopotamian periphery during the Uruk period makes these theories to not be completely accepted by the scientific community (Algaze, 2004). 5. Political system and society The Uruk period society was unequal (Liverani, 1995). Surpluses, work specialization and an extensive trade expansion brought a social system with a vertical nature, with a pinnacle which administered the economic goods and redistributed them among the rest of people according to the social position of each individual (Liverani, 1995). This redistribution was performed from temples (Tovar, 1963). This economy based on redistribution can be observed on a type of pottery similar to the cuneiform logogram for “ration”, given to officials and temple workers (Pérez Largacha, 2004). An unequal rationing did not please the less wealthy groups, such as farmers or craftsmen. In order to control them, the ruling core must take care of two essential aspects: managing a growing economy, and creating a religious ideology that justified these rulers’ power. This was the reason why bureaucracy and clergy were born, gathered in the cities (Liverani, 1995). Bureaucrats, mostly scribes, were in charge of redistributing the primary sector surplus, administrating the construction of infrastructures and handling trade relations. Clergy organized the different religious activities, both ordinary and extraordinary, and performed intermediary functions between gods and the population, while putting ruling classes and the mentioned deities in mutual relation and asserted the rulers’ power over society with the organization of a pantheon, assigning each god power over different life areas, and specific rituals to obtain those gods’ favour (Liverani, 1995). Mario Liverani explains the control methods by Uruk’s ruling classes in the following way: There is a need to introduce motivations of an idealistic nature to convince those who carry a higher weight that inequality is good for the development of the whole group, and that exploitation affects the exploited ones in a beneficial way (Liverani, 1995: 118). As a third element to maintain order, the army comes to the stage, used against enemies and rebels. It was divided into an elite body fully employed in military activity, and a militia levied only in case of war (Liverani, 1995). The highest authority in the Uruk system was the king. He was the administration’s director, the high priest and deities’ representative in the city, and commander in chief of the army (Tovar, 1963; Liverani, 1995). We barely know veridical data about these kings, as the Sumerian king lists, written in the 2nd millennium BC, mention reigns as longest as 1,000 years before the well-known Gilgamesh (Tovar, 1963). Despite the apparent despotic government, the population enjoyed certain freedoms, such as private property over lands (Tovar, 1963). His closeness to the lower classes in his position of high priest is worth to note, leading the collective ceremonies and intermediating between the population and their gods, as we can observe in several reliefs and scenes (Liverani, 1995). 6. Arts and culture The importance of religion, plus a great creativity describing often practical targets, resulted in the Uruk period in an art that, even when it did not lead to magnificent works, is certainly remarkable, and offers us highly important information about life and culture of Mesopotamia during these times (Roux, 1987). Pottery from the Uruk period substituted the one from the Ubaid period. It could have been designed after metallic prototypes that have not remained to this day. It was painted with a variety of colours, with the possibility to lack them completely as well, but in any case its decoration was poor and was limited to simple incisions (Lara Peinado, 1989). This is due to mass production: quantity was preferred over quality and it also saved time and cost (Liverani, 1995). We cannot talk about the Uruk period without mentioning cylinder seals (Image 3). These stone objects were small in size (between 2 and 8 centimetres long) with a perforation that allowed them to be carried as necklaces. A specific drawing was incised on their surface, which produced prints when it was rolled over wet clay. These objects were truly a “signature”, a different sign depending on each owner (Roux, 1987; Lara Peinado, 1989). The motifs and themes were diverse: offerings being carried to the temples, war scenes, real and fantastic animals, among others. It is worth to note the representation of ordinary people naked, while priests and military officials are dressed with long skirts and remarkable hairstyles (Roux, 1987). During the Jemdet Nasr period, seals will only be used as identification and their images will be simplified in forms (Liverani, 1995). In the sacred zone of Eanna, the walls of Temple A were decorated with some terracotta cones embedded into the still wet clay. The basis of those cones stood out of the wall, and it was painted in red, black or white. They were arranged in a way that formed a colourful geometric mosaic (Roux, 1987). Script was not developed until the Jemdet Nasr period, representing the same motifs as the cylinder seals. In this moment there are two relevant pieces that we should note: the “Uruk vase” or “Warka vase” and the “Lady of Warka”. The first case is an alabaster vase of nearly a metre high in which a procession is represented. This procession ends by giving an offering to a goddess, who could be the Sumerian Inanna (Image 4). The “Lady of Warka” is a marble mask which in origin would have been decorated with semi-precious stones such as lapis lazuli and nacre, and it could again be a representation of the goddess Inanna (Roux, 1987). Thanks to the trading system, Uruk’s culture had a very spread influence across territories. Cylinder seals have been found in considerably distant lands such as Lebanon, Palestine, Oman, Troy or in the Egyptian city of Naqada. Contacts with Egypt are a curious topic, as there are archaeological evidences of Mesopotamian origins in Egypt, such as creatures with long and intertwined necks, called serpopards, in the Narmer Palette; however, there is no Egyptian evidences of this kind in Mesopotamia, so this could be due to Mesopotamian settlements in Egypt more than to strictly trade contacts (Roux, 1987). 7. Script George Roux (1987) assured that, among all the inventions and discoveries of the Uruk period, the most relevant was, without any doubt, the script. The oldest tablets were found in the Eanna temples of Warka, and were dated around 3,300 BC (Roux, 1987). This script was made simply out of necessity, in order to administer an economy and a goods production in constant growth, as well as to register properties and trade exchanges (Lara Peinado, 1989; Pérez Largacha, 2004). Uruk period’s script was pictographic, with over a thousand known symbols, being 20% of the known tablets wordlists to give meanings to the different pictograms or logograms (Pérez Largacha, 2004). Script was normally elaborated over tablets of wet clay, spread until reaching the size wanted. The scribe made incisions on them with a reed stylus to draw the symbols wanted. Last, tablets were exposed to the sun or were baked in ovens, acquiring a great hardness and resistance. There were also inscriptions on stone, but in a lower amount, and it is possible that styluses were made of metal or other materials as well (Roux, 1987). The first tablets were composed by the different logograms, which represented elements such as human body parts, zoomorph motifs and different objects, together with some small holes that indicated numbers (Image 5). Without question, these indicated an accounting associated with administration or trade (Roux, 1987). It is possible that the origins of Uruk’s script were even previous, with engravings in wood or leather that have not reached the present day (Roux, 1987). It was not an easy task to draw round strokes on wet clay. As time went by, lines got more and more straight, until the only memory of the symbols’ shape that lasted were wedge-shaped incisions without almost any resemblance with the original logograms. This is how, at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, the cuneiform script would be born, widespreadly used in the ancient Middle-East (Roux, 1987). The Uruk period script influenced over other cultures right from its beginnings, such as the proto-Elamite, and some authors propose another possible influence over Egyptian hieroglyphs, which would actually be limited to a common idea between the two writing systems (Roux, 1987). 8. Conclusions The Jemdet Nasr period ends as suddenly as the Uruk period began. After the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC the trading system collapses, Lower Mesopotamia becomes withdrawn within itself and the colonies of Uruk disappear or turn into villages. This period is known as Protodynastic I, and the reasons for this collapse are still not well known. Nevertheless, the Uruk system did not happen in vain: certain technological innovations and aspects such as work specialization were kept in the old influence areas of Uruk (Liverani, 1995). Lower Mesopotamia kept its social, political and economical structures and will still show a rich culture, but its isolation could be observed in the lack of metals it suffered during this period (Liverani, 1995). Thereby, the Uruk world gave its place to the Sumerian city-states. The moment and way in which Sumerians settled in the Mesopotamian Alluvial Plain has been and is a matter of debate, being known as the “Sumerian problem”. Despite some authors already describing the population of the Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods as “Sumerian”, the exact date of their arrival to Lower Mesopotamia is debated. Probably the Uruk period tablets were already written in Sumerian, given the proven evolution from the archaic Uruk script into cuneiform, but it is not possible to guarantee this completely as we do not know the pronunciation of the Uruk logograms (Roux, 1987). Uruk and its economical and political system was the first urban and state experiment of human history. It seems like human nature and needs required the apparition of the inventions and innovations that were born in the 4th millennium Lower Mesopotamia, and, in fact, a few centuries later similar and equally great inventions became a thing in other places such as China or Egypt, but it is very probable that our current day world would not be the one it is without such a prosperous culture like the Uruk one was. Bibliography Adams, R. McC. (1981): Heartland of Cities. Surveys of Ancient Settlement and Land Use on the Central Floodplain of the Euphrates, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Algaze, G. (2004): El sistema-mundo de Uruk. La expansión de la primera civilización mesopotámica, Bellaterra, Barcelona. Diorki et al. (1978): “Enciclopedia universal del arte. Vol. I: Las culturas del mundo antiguo”, Plaza & Janés, S.A. Editores, Barcelona. Lara Peinado, F. (1989): La civilización sumeria, Historia 16, Madrid. Liverani, M. (1986): L’origine delle città, Editori Riuniti, Roma. Liverani, M. (1995): El Antiguo Oriente. Historia, sociedad y economía, Crítica, Aragó (Barcelona). Liverani, M. (1998): Uruk, la prima città, Editori Laterza, Roma-Bari. Nissen, H.J. (1988): The Early History of the Ancient Near East, 9000-2000 B.C., The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Pérez Largacha, A. (2004): “Los orígenes del mundo mesopotámico. El mundo sumerio”, Liceus, s.l. Postgate, J.N. (1999): La Mesopotamia arcaica. Sociedad y economía en el amanecer de la historia, Akal, Tres Cantos (Madrid). Roux, G. (1987): Mesopotamia. Historia política, económica y cultural, Akal, Torrejón de Ardoz (Madrid). Tovar, A. (1963): Historia del Antiguo Oriente, Montaner y Simón S.A., Barcelona. [Image Appendix (Google Docs).](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GKFeeuRDvPTlRn_MrIQF-iofqrYSbRASi2_ws2jAYhs/edit?usp=sharing)