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Iraq
Index
Contemporary Iraq occupies the territory that historians
traditionally have considered the site of the earliest civiliza-
tions of the ancient Near East. Geographically, modern Iraq
corresponds to the Mesopotamia of the Old Testament and of other,
older, Near Eastern texts. In Western mythology and religious
tradition, the land of Mesopotamia in the ancient period was a
land of lush vegetation, abundant wildlife, and copious if
unpredictable water resources. As such, at a very early date it
attracted people from neighboring, but less hospitable areas. By
6000 B.C., Mesopotamia had been settled, chiefly by migrants from
the Turkish and Iranian highlands
(see
fig. 2).
The civilized life that emerged at Sumer was shaped by two
conflicting factors: the unpredictability of the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers, which at any time could unleash devastating
floods that wiped out entire peoples, and the extreme fecundity
of the river valleys, caused by centuries-old deposits of soil.
Thus, while the river valleys of southern Mesopotamia attracted
migrations of neighboring peoples and made possible, for the
first time in history, the growing of surplus food, the
volatility of the rivers necessitated a form of collective
management to protect the marshy, low-lying land from flooding.
As surplus production increased and as collective management
became more advanced, a process of urbanization evolved and
Sumerian civilization took root.
Sumer is the ancient name for southern Mesopotamia.
Historians are divided on when the Sumerians arrived in the area,
but they agree that the population of Sumer was a mixture of
linguistic and ethnic groups that included the earlier
inhabitants of the region. Sumerian culture mixed foreign and
local elements. The Sumerians were highly innovative people who
responded creatively to the challenges of the changeable Tigris
and Euphrates rivers. Many of the great Sumerian legacies, such
as writing, irrigation, the wheel, astronomy, and literature, can
be seen as adaptive responses to the great rivers.
The Sumerians were the first people known to have devised a
scheme of written representation as a means of communication.
From the earliest writings, which were pictograms (simplified
pictures on clay tablets), the Sumerians gradually created
cuneiform--a way of arranging impressions stamped on clay by the
wedge-like section of a chopped-off reed. The use of combinations
of the same basic wedge shape to stand for phonetic, and possibly
for syllabic, elements provided more flexible communication than
the pictogram. Through writing, the Sumerians were able to pass
on complex agricultural techniques to successive generations;
this led to marked improvements in agricultural production.
Another important Sumerian legacy was the recording of
literature. The most famous Sumerian epic and the one that has
survived in the most nearly complete form is the epic of
Gilgamesh. The story of Gilgamesh, who actually was king of the
city-state of Uruk in approximately 2700 B.C., is a moving story
of the ruler's deep sorrow at the death of his friend and of his
consequent search for immortality. Other central themes of the
story are a devastating flood and the tenuous nature of man's
existence. Laden with complex abstractions and emotional
expressions, the epic of Gilgamesh reflects the intellectual
sophistication of the Sumerians, and it has served as the
prototype for all Near Eastern inundation stories.
The precariousness of existence in southern Mesopotamia also
led to a highly developed sense of religion. Cult centers such as
Eridu, dating back to 5000 B.C., served as important centers of
pilgrimage and devotion even before the rise of Sumer. Many of
the most important Mesopotamian cities emerged in areas
surrounding the pre-Sumerian cult centers, thus reinforcing the
close relationship between religion and government.
The Sumerians were pantheistic; their gods more or less
personified local elements and natural forces. In exchange for
sacrifice and adherence to an elaborate ritual, the gods of
ancient Sumer were to provide the individual with security and
prosperity. A powerful priesthood emerged to oversee ritual
practices and to intervene with the gods. Sumerian religious
beliefs also had important political aspects. Decisions relating
to land rentals, agricultural questions, trade, commercial
relations, and war were determined by the priesthood, because all
property belonged to the gods. The priests ruled from their
temples, called ziggurats, which were essentially artificial
mountains of sunbaked brick, built with outside staircases that
tapered toward a shrine at the top.
Because the well-being of the community depended upon close
observation of natural phenomena, scientific or protoscientific
activities occupied much of the priests' time. For example, the
Sumerians believed that each of the gods was represented by a
number. The number sixty, sacred to the god An, was their basic
unit of calculation. The minutes of an hour and the notational
degrees of a circle were Sumerian concepts. The highly developed
agricultural system and the refined irrigation and water-control
systems that enabled Sumer to achieve surplus production also led
to the growth of large cities. The most important city-states
were Uruk, Eridu, Kish, Lagash, Agade, Akshak, Larsa, and Ur
(birthplace of the prophet Abraham). The emergence of urban life
led to further technological advances. Lacking stone, the
Sumerians made marked improvements in brick technology, making
possible the construction of very large buildings such as the
famous ziggurat of Ur. Sumer also pioneered advances in warfare
technology. By the middle of the third millennium B.C., the
Sumerians had developed the wheeled chariot. At approximately the
same time, the Sumerians discovered that tin and copper when
smelted together produced bronze--a new, more durable, and much
harder metal. The wheeled chariot and bronze weapons became
increasingly important as the Sumerians developed the institution
of kingship and as individual city-states began to vie for
supremacy.
Historians generally divide Sumerian history into three
stages. In the first stage, which extended roughly from 3360 B.C.
to 2400 B.C., the most important political development was the
emergence of kings who, unlike the first priestly rulers,
exercised distinct political rather than religious authority.
Another important feature of this period was the emergence of
warring Sumerian city-states, which fought for control of the
river valleys in lower Mesopotamia. During the second phase,
which lasted from 2400 B.C. to 2200 B.C., Sumer was conquered in
approximately 2334 B.C. by Sargon I, king of the Semitic city of
Akkad. Sargon was the world's first empire-builder, sending his
troops as far as Egypt and Ethiopia. He attempted to establish a
unified empire and to end the hostilities among the city-states.
Sargon's rule introduced a new level of political organization
that was characterized by an even more clear-cut separation
between religious authority and secular authority. To ensure his
supremacy, Sargon created the first conscripted army, a
development related to the need to mobilize large numbers of
laborers for irrigation and flood-control works. Akkadian
strength was boosted by the invention of the composite bow, a new
weapon made of strips of wood and horn.
Despite their military prowess, Akkadian hegemony over
southern Mesopotamia lasted only 200 years. Sargon's great-
grandson was then overthrown by the Guti, a mountain people from
the east. The fall of the Akkadians and the subsequent
reemergence of Sumer under the king of Ur, who defeated the Guti,
ushered in the third phase of Sumerian history. In this final
phase, which was characterized by a synthesis of Sumerian and
Akkadian cultures, the king of Ur established hegemony over much
of Mesopotamia. Sumerian supremacy, however, was on the wane. By
2000 B.C. the combined attacks of the Amorites, a Semitic people
from the west, and the Elamites, a Caucasian people from the
east, had destroyed the Third Dynasty of Ur. The invaders
nevertheless carried on the Sumero-Akkadian cultural legacy.
The Amorites established cities on the Tigris and the
Euphrates rivers and made Babylon, a town to the north, their
capital. During the time of their sixth ruler, King Hammurabi
(1792-1750 B.C.), Babylonian rule encompassed a huge area
covering most of the Tigris-Euphrates river valley from Sumer and
the Persian Gulf in the south to Assyria in the north. To rule
over such a large area, Hammurabi devised an elaborate
administrative structure. His greatest achievement, however, was
the issuance of a law code designed "to cause justice to prevail
in the country, to destroy the wicked and the evil, that the
strong may not oppress the weak." The Code of Hammurabi, not the
earliest to appear in the Near East but certainly the most
complete, dealt with land tenure, rent, the position of women,
marriage, divorce, inheritance, contracts, control of public
order, administration of justice, wages, and labor conditions.
In Hammurabi's legal code, the civilizing trend begun at
Sumer had evolved to a new level of complexity. The sophisticated
legal principles contained in the code reflect a highly advanced
civilization in which social interaction extended far beyond the
confines of kinship. The large number of laws pertaining to
commerce reflect a diversified economic base and an extensive
trading network. In politics, Hammurabi's code is evidence of a
more pronounced separation between religious and secular
authority than had existed in ancient Sumer. In addition to
Hammurabi's legal code, the Babylonians made other important
contributions, notably to the science of astronomy, and they
increased the flexibility of cuneiform by developing the
pictogram script so that it stood for a syllable rather than an
individual word.
Beginning in approximately 1600 B.C., Indo-European-speaking
tribes invaded India; other tribes settled in Iran and in Europe.
One of these groups, the Hittites, allied itself with the
Kassites, a people of unknown origins. Together, they conquered
and destroyed Babylon. Hittite power subsequently waned, but, in
the first half of the fourteenth century B.C., the Hittites
reemerged, controlling an area that stretched from the
Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. The military success of
the Hittites has been attributed to their monopoly in iron
production and to their use of the chariot. Nevertheless, in the
twelfth century B.C., the Hittites were destroyed, and no great
military power occupied Mesopotamia until the ninth century B.C.
One of the cities that flourished in the middle of the Tigris
Valley during this period was that of Ashur, named after the
sun-god of the Assyrians. The Assyrians were Semitic speakers who
occupied Babylon for a brief period in the thirteenth century
B.C. Invasions of iron-producing peoples into the Near East and
into the Aegean region in approximately 1200 B.C. disrupted the
indigenous empires of Mesopotamia, but eventually the Assyrians
were able to capitalize on the new alignments of power in the
region. Because of what has been called "the barbarous and
unspeakable cruelty of the Assyrians," the names of such Assyrian
kings as Ashurnasirpal (883-859 B.C.), Tiglath-Pileser III (745-
727 B.C.), Sennacherib (704-681 B.C.), and Ashurbanipal (669-626
B.C.) continue to evoke images of powerful, militarily brilliant,
but brutally savage conquerors.
The Assyrians began to expand to the west in the early part
of the ninth century B.C.; by 859 they had reached the Mediter-
ranean Sea, where they occupied Phoenician cities. Damascus and
Babylon fell to the next generations of Assyrian rulers. During
the eighth century B.C., the Assyrians' control over their empire
appeared tenuous, but Tiglath-Pileser III seized the throne and
rapidly subdued Assyria's neighbors, captured Syria, and crowned
himself king of Babylon. He developed a highly proficient war
machine by creating a permanent standing army under the adminis-
tration of a well-organized bureaucracy. Sennacherib built a new
capital, Nineveh, on the Tigris River, destroyed Babylon (where
citizens had risen in revolt), and made Judah a vassal state.
In 612 B.C., revolts of subject peoples combined with the
allied forces of two new kingdoms, those of the Medes and the
Chaldeans (Neo-Babylonians), effectively to extinguish Assyrian
power. Nineveh was razed. The hatred that the Assyrians inspired,
particularly for their policy of wholesale resettlement of
subject peoples, was sufficiently great to ensure that few traces
of Assyrian rule remained two years later. The Assyrians had used
the visual arts to depict their many conquests, and Assyrian
friezes, executed in minute detail, continue to be the best
artifacts of Assyrian civilization.
The Chaldeans became heir to Assyrian power in 612 B.C., and
they conquered formerly Assyrian-held lands in Syria and
Palestine. King Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 B.C.) conquered the
kingdom of Judah, and he destroyed Jerusalem in 586 B.C.
Conscious of their ancient past, the Chaldeans sought to
reestablish Babylon as the most magnificent city of the Near
East. It was during the Chaldean period that the Hanging Gardens
of Babylon, famed as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient
World, were created. Because of an estrangement of the priesthood
from the king, however, the monarchy was severely weakened, and
it was unable to withstand the rising power of Achaemenid Iran.
In 539 B.C., Babylon fell to Cyrus the Great (550-530 B.C.). In
addition to incorporating Babylon into the Iranian empire, Cyrus
the Great released the Jews who had been held in captivity there.
Data as of May 1988
Figure 2. Ancient Mesopotamia
Source: Based on information from George Roux, Ancient Iraq,
Cleveland, 1965.
Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, and Assyria
Contemporary Iraq occupies the territory that historians
traditionally have considered the site of the earliest civiliza-
tions of the ancient Near East. Geographically, modern Iraq
corresponds to the Mesopotamia of the Old Testament and of other,
older, Near Eastern texts. In Western mythology and religious
tradition, the land of Mesopotamia in the ancient period was a
land of lush vegetation, abundant wildlife, and copious if
unpredictable water resources. As such, at a very early date it
attracted people from neighboring, but less hospitable areas. By
6000 B.C., Mesopotamia had been settled, chiefly by migrants from
the Turkish and Iranian highlands
(see
fig. 2).
The civilized life that emerged at Sumer was shaped by two
conflicting factors: the unpredictability of the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers, which at any time could unleash devastating
floods that wiped out entire peoples, and the extreme fecundity
of the river valleys, caused by centuries-old deposits of soil.
Thus, while the river valleys of southern Mesopotamia attracted
migrations of neighboring peoples and made possible, for the
first time in history, the growing of surplus food, the
volatility of the rivers necessitated a form of collective
management to protect the marshy, low-lying land from flooding.
As surplus production increased and as collective management
became more advanced, a process of urbanization evolved and
Sumerian civilization took root.
Sumer is the ancient name for southern Mesopotamia.
Historians are divided on when the Sumerians arrived in the area,
but they agree that the population of Sumer was a mixture of
linguistic and ethnic groups that included the earlier
inhabitants of the region. Sumerian culture mixed foreign and
local elements. The Sumerians were highly innovative people who
responded creatively to the challenges of the changeable Tigris
and Euphrates rivers. Many of the great Sumerian legacies, such
as writing, irrigation, the wheel, astronomy, and literature, can
be seen as adaptive responses to the great rivers.
The Sumerians were the first people known to have devised a
scheme of written representation as a means of communication.
From the earliest writings, which were pictograms (simplified
pictures on clay tablets), the Sumerians gradually created
cuneiform--a way of arranging impressions stamped on clay by the
wedge-like section of a chopped-off reed. The use of combinations
of the same basic wedge shape to stand for phonetic, and possibly
for syllabic, elements provided more flexible communication than
the pictogram. Through writing, the Sumerians were able to pass
on complex agricultural techniques to successive generations;
this led to marked improvements in agricultural production.
Another important Sumerian legacy was the recording of
literature. The most famous Sumerian epic and the one that has
survived in the most nearly complete form is the epic of
Gilgamesh. The story of Gilgamesh, who actually was king of the
city-state of Uruk in approximately 2700 B.C., is a moving story
of the ruler's deep sorrow at the death of his friend and of his
consequent search for immortality. Other central themes of the
story are a devastating flood and the tenuous nature of man's
existence. Laden with complex abstractions and emotional
expressions, the epic of Gilgamesh reflects the intellectual
sophistication of the Sumerians, and it has served as the
prototype for all Near Eastern inundation stories.
The precariousness of existence in southern Mesopotamia also
led to a highly developed sense of religion. Cult centers such as
Eridu, dating back to 5000 B.C., served as important centers of
pilgrimage and devotion even before the rise of Sumer. Many of
the most important Mesopotamian cities emerged in areas
surrounding the pre-Sumerian cult centers, thus reinforcing the
close relationship between religion and government.
The Sumerians were pantheistic; their gods more or less
personified local elements and natural forces. In exchange for
sacrifice and adherence to an elaborate ritual, the gods of
ancient Sumer were to provide the individual with security and
prosperity. A powerful priesthood emerged to oversee ritual
practices and to intervene with the gods. Sumerian religious
beliefs also had important political aspects. Decisions relating
to land rentals, agricultural questions, trade, commercial
relations, and war were determined by the priesthood, because all
property belonged to the gods. The priests ruled from their
temples, called ziggurats, which were essentially artificial
mountains of sunbaked brick, built with outside staircases that
tapered toward a shrine at the top.
Because the well-being of the community depended upon close
observation of natural phenomena, scientific or protoscientific
activities occupied much of the priests' time. For example, the
Sumerians believed that each of the gods was represented by a
number. The number sixty, sacred to the god An, was their basic
unit of calculation. The minutes of an hour and the notational
degrees of a circle were Sumerian concepts. The highly developed
agricultural system and the refined irrigation and water-control
systems that enabled Sumer to achieve surplus production also led
to the growth of large cities. The most important city-states
were Uruk, Eridu, Kish, Lagash, Agade, Akshak, Larsa, and Ur
(birthplace of the prophet Abraham). The emergence of urban life
led to further technological advances. Lacking stone, the
Sumerians made marked improvements in brick technology, making
possible the construction of very large buildings such as the
famous ziggurat of Ur. Sumer also pioneered advances in warfare
technology. By the middle of the third millennium B.C., the
Sumerians had developed the wheeled chariot. At approximately the
same time, the Sumerians discovered that tin and copper when
smelted together produced bronze--a new, more durable, and much
harder metal. The wheeled chariot and bronze weapons became
increasingly important as the Sumerians developed the institution
of kingship and as individual city-states began to vie for
supremacy.
Historians generally divide Sumerian history into three
stages. In the first stage, which extended roughly from 3360 B.C.
to 2400 B.C., the most important political development was the
emergence of kings who, unlike the first priestly rulers,
exercised distinct political rather than religious authority.
Another important feature of this period was the emergence of
warring Sumerian city-states, which fought for control of the
river valleys in lower Mesopotamia. During the second phase,
which lasted from 2400 B.C. to 2200 B.C., Sumer was conquered in
approximately 2334 B.C. by Sargon I, king of the Semitic city of
Akkad. Sargon was the world's first empire-builder, sending his
troops as far as Egypt and Ethiopia. He attempted to establish a
unified empire and to end the hostilities among the city-states.
Sargon's rule introduced a new level of political organization
that was characterized by an even more clear-cut separation
between religious authority and secular authority. To ensure his
supremacy, Sargon created the first conscripted army, a
development related to the need to mobilize large numbers of
laborers for irrigation and flood-control works. Akkadian
strength was boosted by the invention of the composite bow, a new
weapon made of strips of wood and horn.
Despite their military prowess, Akkadian hegemony over
southern Mesopotamia lasted only 200 years. Sargon's great-
grandson was then overthrown by the Guti, a mountain people from
the east. The fall of the Akkadians and the subsequent
reemergence of Sumer under the king of Ur, who defeated the Guti,
ushered in the third phase of Sumerian history. In this final
phase, which was characterized by a synthesis of Sumerian and
Akkadian cultures, the king of Ur established hegemony over much
of Mesopotamia. Sumerian supremacy, however, was on the wane. By
2000 B.C. the combined attacks of the Amorites, a Semitic people
from the west, and the Elamites, a Caucasian people from the
east, had destroyed the Third Dynasty of Ur. The invaders
nevertheless carried on the Sumero-Akkadian cultural legacy.
The Amorites established cities on the Tigris and the
Euphrates rivers and made Babylon, a town to the north, their
capital. During the time of their sixth ruler, King Hammurabi
(1792-1750 B.C.), Babylonian rule encompassed a huge area
covering most of the Tigris-Euphrates river valley from Sumer and
the Persian Gulf in the south to Assyria in the north. To rule
over such a large area, Hammurabi devised an elaborate
administrative structure. His greatest achievement, however, was
the issuance of a law code designed "to cause justice to prevail
in the country, to destroy the wicked and the evil, that the
strong may not oppress the weak." The Code of Hammurabi, not the
earliest to appear in the Near East but certainly the most
complete, dealt with land tenure, rent, the position of women,
marriage, divorce, inheritance, contracts, control of public
order, administration of justice, wages, and labor conditions.
In Hammurabi's legal code, the civilizing trend begun at
Sumer had evolved to a new level of complexity. The sophisticated
legal principles contained in the code reflect a highly advanced
civilization in which social interaction extended far beyond the
confines of kinship. The large number of laws pertaining to
commerce reflect a diversified economic base and an extensive
trading network. In politics, Hammurabi's code is evidence of a
more pronounced separation between religious and secular
authority than had existed in ancient Sumer. In addition to
Hammurabi's legal code, the Babylonians made other important
contributions, notably to the science of astronomy, and they
increased the flexibility of cuneiform by developing the
pictogram script so that it stood for a syllable rather than an
individual word.
Beginning in approximately 1600 B.C., Indo-European-speaking
tribes invaded India; other tribes settled in Iran and in Europe.
One of these groups, the Hittites, allied itself with the
Kassites, a people of unknown origins. Together, they conquered
and destroyed Babylon. Hittite power subsequently waned, but, in
the first half of the fourteenth century B.C., the Hittites
reemerged, controlling an area that stretched from the
Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. The military success of
the Hittites has been attributed to their monopoly in iron
production and to their use of the chariot. Nevertheless, in the
twelfth century B.C., the Hittites were destroyed, and no great
military power occupied Mesopotamia until the ninth century B.C.
One of the cities that flourished in the middle of the Tigris
Valley during this period was that of Ashur, named after the
sun-god of the Assyrians. The Assyrians were Semitic speakers who
occupied Babylon for a brief period in the thirteenth century
B.C. Invasions of iron-producing peoples into the Near East and
into the Aegean region in approximately 1200 B.C. disrupted the
indigenous empires of Mesopotamia, but eventually the Assyrians
were able to capitalize on the new alignments of power in the
region. Because of what has been called "the barbarous and
unspeakable cruelty of the Assyrians," the names of such Assyrian
kings as Ashurnasirpal (883-859 B.C.), Tiglath-Pileser III (745-
727 B.C.), Sennacherib (704-681 B.C.), and Ashurbanipal (669-626
B.C.) continue to evoke images of powerful, militarily brilliant,
but brutally savage conquerors.
The Assyrians began to expand to the west in the early part
of the ninth century B.C.; by 859 they had reached the Mediter-
ranean Sea, where they occupied Phoenician cities. Damascus and
Babylon fell to the next generations of Assyrian rulers. During
the eighth century B.C., the Assyrians' control over their empire
appeared tenuous, but Tiglath-Pileser III seized the throne and
rapidly subdued Assyria's neighbors, captured Syria, and crowned
himself king of Babylon. He developed a highly proficient war
machine by creating a permanent standing army under the adminis-
tration of a well-organized bureaucracy. Sennacherib built a new
capital, Nineveh, on the Tigris River, destroyed Babylon (where
citizens had risen in revolt), and made Judah a vassal state.
In 612 B.C., revolts of subject peoples combined with the
allied forces of two new kingdoms, those of the Medes and the
Chaldeans (Neo-Babylonians), effectively to extinguish Assyrian
power. Nineveh was razed. The hatred that the Assyrians inspired,
particularly for their policy of wholesale resettlement of
subject peoples, was sufficiently great to ensure that few traces
of Assyrian rule remained two years later. The Assyrians had used
the visual arts to depict their many conquests, and Assyrian
friezes, executed in minute detail, continue to be the best
artifacts of Assyrian civilization.
The Chaldeans became heir to Assyrian power in 612 B.C., and
they conquered formerly Assyrian-held lands in Syria and
Palestine. King Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 B.C.) conquered the
kingdom of Judah, and he destroyed Jerusalem in 586 B.C.
Conscious of their ancient past, the Chaldeans sought to
reestablish Babylon as the most magnificent city of the Near
East. It was during the Chaldean period that the Hanging Gardens
of Babylon, famed as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient
World, were created. Because of an estrangement of the priesthood
from the king, however, the monarchy was severely weakened, and
it was unable to withstand the rising power of Achaemenid Iran.
In 539 B.C., Babylon fell to Cyrus the Great (550-530 B.C.). In
addition to incorporating Babylon into the Iranian empire, Cyrus
the Great released the Jews who had been held in captivity there.
Data as of May 1988
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