Uruk

History

The first traces of occupation go back to the end of. She experiences a significant development at at which time she gave her name, the Period of Uruk (C. 4100-3000). She is then more the big city of the world. According to the tradition sumérienne, Uruk would have been born from fusion between two villages, Eanna and Kullab, under the reign of the king Enmerkar who thus founds the first dynasty of Uruk. The city then occupies a prevalent place in Sumer until the king of Ur Mésannépada détrône Lugalkigin. The city loses of its importance when Sargon d' Akkad conquers it and shaves its walls. Nevertheless it preserved its role of Holy City until the time Séleucide. Its decline started with the Parthes and was accelerated by the displacement of an arm of the Euphrate little before the Arab invasion.

Archeology

The site of Uruk was localized in the middle of the 19th century, thanks to its ruins remained imposing in spite of sand recovering them, by the English geologist William Kenneth Loftus, who undertook the first excavations in 1849 and 1853. Starting from 1912, they are carried out under the responsibility of the “Deutsche the East-Gesellschaft” (DOG), founded German scientific company in 1898 with Berlin, following the interest expressed at the end of the 19th century for the new discoveries concerning the “ country of the Bible ”. It is thus specialized in the study of the countries of the the ancient Middle East. The principal directors of these excavations were successively: Robert Johann Koldewey, the discoverer of Babylon, Julius Jordan, Arnold Nöldeke, Ernst Heinrich, Heinrich Lenzen Jacob, H.J. Schmidt and since 1980 To groove Michael Boehmer.

Structure

As of the level V (3500 {{avjc}}) and certainly quite front, it is certain that the agglomeration of Uruk is not any more one village but became a city. One cannot describe the organization of the city because the excavations practiced in the sector of Eanna and in that of the temple Blanc do not give any indication on the structure, nor on the components of the agglomeration. The city is girdled by a long wall of almost 10 kilometers.

Eanna

In the center of Eanna is a Ziggourat massive, of 52 side m, high today of eight meters and built under the reign of Ur-Nammu (-2112 with -2095). It recovers a large temple on platform built during the Period of Djemdet Nasr. The remainders of at least seven temples superimposed or juxtaposed, dating from second half of the Period of Uruk, have summers found with the foot of the Ziggourat. They are remarkable by their size. The Calcareous temple , (level V), is built on a base in blocks of limestone according to the tripartite form developped at the point at the period of Obeid but of imposing proportions: 30 m on more than 80 m, with a broad central room of 12 Mr. the temple are next to a large court of which a formed east coast of a gantry of eight raw brick columns 2,32 m in diameter. The walls of the court, the columns and their base are entirely covered cones of terra cotta inserted in the clay coating forming a black, white and red mosaic geometrical. Another temple owes its name of " red temple " with the paint which recovered its walls.

Levels VI-IV of Eanna would have been occupied, according to the German archeologists, by temples. No palate, with the direction where this term is employed for the time of the antiquated dynasties was released. The situation of Habuba Kabira and Djebel Aruda in Syria of North is apparently identical.

Temples or palate?

The iconography of the level V, which comes for the greatest part from the seals, frequently offers the silhouette of a bearded character to the girded head of a stringcourse, with the hair brought back to the back in chignon, generally barechested, and vêtu of a loose skirt. It appears in scenes of hunting, of offering of food to the animals, near buildings where one wants to generally recognize temples, sometimes in position of winner in the presence of overcome enemies. One generally speaks about it like “king-priest”, which confers a particular status compared to the historical king to him. Apparently Uruk would have been under a theocratic mode, but none the released buildings presents the least pertaining to worship installation and were identified as temples that compared to the shape the building of which it with been able to be established that it was not specifically nun. In addition, a comparative analysis of the iconography of this “king-priest” and of the king of the antiquated dynasties shows that, if the supports change, the topics and the actions differ little and in a not very significant way. There is thus no reason to think that a theocracy reigned in Uruk. Eanna must be well regarded as the center of the capacity, i.e. a palate, even if architecture is different from that which will appear at the time of Djemdet Nasr. The character represented was perhaps hardly different from the king of the historical times who had some religious functions.

Kullab has

To 500 m of Eanna draws up the Ziggourat Anu, narrower, but still high of about fifteen meters. It is crowned of a sanctuary of 18 m out of 7 m, whose walls were preserved on three meters in height, the " White temple " , the period of Djemdet Nasr. The excavations revealed that the ziggourat recovers a whole series of former temples, and below, a ziggourat and two very large sanctuaries of the period of Obeid.

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