Uruk

For uses in the fiction of Tolkien, see Uruk-hai, Erech (Middle-earth).

Uruk (Sumerian Unug, Biblical Erech, Greek Orchoë and Arabic وركاء Warka), was an ancient city of Sumer and later Babylonia, situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates, on the line of the ancient Nil canal, in a region of marshes, about 140 miles (230 km) SSE from Baghdad. The theory that the modern name of Iraq could be possibly derived from the name Uruk is not proven. At its height, Uruk probably had 80,000 residents living in 6 square kilometres of walled area, the largest city in the world at its time.

It was one of the oldest and most important cities of Sumer. It was the capital city of Gilgamesh, hero of the famous Epic. Its walls were said to have been built by order of Gilgamesh, or rather, his predecessor Enmerkar, who also constructed, it was said, the famous temple called Eanna, dedicated to the worship of Inanna (Ishtar). Its voluminous surviving temple archive of the Neo-Babylonian period documents the social function of the temple as a redistribution center. In times of famine, a family might dedicate children to the temple as oblates.

Uruk played a very important part in the political history of the country from an early time, exercising hegemony in Babylonia at a period before the time of Sargon. Later it was prominent in the national struggles of the Babylonians against the Elamites up to 2004 BC, in which it suffered severely; recollections of some of these conflicts are embodied in the Gilgamesh epic, in the literary and courtly form that has come down to us.

Oppenheim states, "In Uruk, in southern Mesopotamia, Sumerian civilization seems to have reached its creative peak. This is pointed out repeatedly in the references to this city in religious and, especially, in literary texts, including those of mythological content; the historical tradition as preserved in the Sumerian king-list confirms it. From Uruk the center of political gravity seems to have moved to Ur."

According to the Sumerian king list, Uruk was founded by Enmerkar, who brought the official kingship with him from the city of Eanna. His father Mesh-ki-ag-gasher had "entered the sea and disappeared". Other historical kings of Uruk include Lugalzagesi of Umma (now Djokha) (who conquered Uruk), and Utuhegal.

According to the Bible (Genesis 10:10), Erech, probably Uruk, was said to have been the second city founded by Nimrod. It also appears to have been the home of the Archavites, exiled by Asnapper to Samaria (Ezra 4:9-10). The sites mentioned in Ezra are all from Southern Mesopotamia, and it appears that Asnapper may be the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, who conducted a campaign against these Southern Babylonians.

Uruk was first excavated by a German team led by Julius Jordan before World War I. This expedition returned in 1928 and made further excavations until 1939, then returned in 1954 under the direction of H. Lenzen and made systematic excavations over the following years. These excavations revealed some early Sumerian documents and a larger cache of legal and scholarly tablets of the Seleucid period, that have been published by Adam Falkenstein and other German epigraphists.

External links and references

• The History of the Ancient Near East - http://ancientneareast.tripod.com/Uruk_Warka_Erech.html
• Earliest evidence for large scale organized warfare in the Mesopotamian world (Hamoukar vs. Uruk?) - http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/node/9508/print
• Map of the Fertile Crescent http://www.erin.utoronto.ca/~w3env100y/env/ENV100/hum/anth_gifs/fertilecrescent_L.jpg

References

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
• A. Leo Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia: portrait of a dead civilization.