3 - Early Dynastic Period
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- Created by: Pinksoda
- Created on: 12-04-19 12:07
Why call it the Early Dynastic Period?
- First historical period - up until now archaeological
- Can be more specific now
- Gap in knowledge for sometime after Uruk
Why is it called the Early Dynastic Period?
- Excavations in Diyala valley - identified 3 types of stratta (phases of the dynastic period)
- Abu Temple sequence (excavated 1934-1935)
- Three distinct temple plans identified:
- Early Dynastic Archaic Shrine
- Square Temple - Worshippers on behalf of others 24/7
- Single-Shrine Temple
- These (& roughly associated sculpture) used to define ED I, II and III
- Archaism - not reliable as made to look old
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Early Dynastic Period Divisions
- Pottery in second level doesn't occur anywhere else - cannot get precise chronology
- Anything in 3rd millennium can be off by 200 years
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Defining the Early Dynastic Period
- Unlike many other historic periods in ancient Meso., Early Dynastic period =
- Neither the existence of a particular political entity (such as the Old Akkadian or the Ur III periods),
- Nor the extent of a particular cultural or ethnic group
- It is best to define the Early Dynastic period according to three different dimensions:
- (i) continuity of historical awareness
- (ii) political structure (including various kinds of leagues and amphictionies)
- (iii) archaeological remains
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Documents
- 3rd M BC (2600) leads to creation to other genres
- Could now talk about social history and not just literary genres
- E.g. Lagash gives explicit description of wars between them & Umma (VDM)
- At first only royal names on stones. e.g. Mebaragesi - King of Kush (VDM)
- Reveal State leaders interests only (VDM)
- Some words only understood due to later docs - may have changed context (VDM)
- Could now talk about social history and not just literary genres
- Early Dynastic literary and religious genres
- Administrative documents
- Largest - Girsu 1500 docs at end of period (VDM)
- Later found in Syria - e.g 40 tablets at Mari (VDM)
- Traditional lists of job titles, geographical locations and commodities
- A new list genre: the Faragod-list
- Temple hymns
- So-called Zami hymns (largely hymns to particular deities)
- The Instructions of Shuruppak(secular advice from father to son)
- .GAL.NUN literature
- Administrative documents
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God-Lists, Temple-hymns and Secular Advice
God Lists
- The Fara (ED IIIa) god-list - Anu, Enlil, Inanna, Enki, Nanna, Utu
- Same list lasts about 2000 years
Temple Hymns
- Would last for millennia - some longer than god
- Every city had a temple - temple hymns can create a map in S. (Postgate)
- Problem of decipherment - earliest dynastic temple hymn partially translated
Instructions of Shruppak - secular advice from father to son
- Don’t buy an *** that brays; it will split your yoke!... Don’t place a well in your own field; the people will turn hostile against you.”
- Alster, Wisdom of Ancient Sumer, pp. 58-59, nos. 14 and 17
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King Lists
- Sumerian King list
- written after but talks about the period (VDM)
- Rulers concurrent from other evidence (VDM)
- Listed as sequential as only 1 divinely legitimised ruler at a time (VDM)
- Kingship from heaven - supernatural to human lifespan. Kings of Uruk
- Original 'impossibly long' 3600 year life span - e.g. Dumuzi (VDM)
- Most famous = Emmerkar, Lugalbansa and Gilgamesh
- Later mentioned as heroes e.g. Gilgamesh - epic literature!
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Jacobsen's Political Phases
- No evidence for 1st phase, 2nd & 3rd phases are likely true
- 1) Primitive Democracy - Soverignty to assembly, Sumerian ukkin, crisis leadership to King
- Dry climate and immigration - secularisation of power (VDM)
- 2) Primitive Monarchy - Permanent army, Kingship via gods, constant war
- Gods imagined as having a similar hosehold to Kings
- Different bases of authority war and divine favour
- 3) Primitive Empire - Hegemonical Power in Sumer
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The Stele of Vultures (Geierstele)
- Shows increasing significance of Kingship and warfare
- Vultures with human parts in beaks - must have been in a battle
- Ningirsu holding onzu bird holding nets full of enemy soldiers from Umar
- When battle depicted, show god fighting the war
- Stelae depicts Lagash victory - first battle recorded
- 7 miles distance from city to be part of city state.
- Fighting over agricultural land to be more powerful state
- Umar actually rules S. Mesopotamia in the end
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Common Religious System (VDM)
- Attested about 3000BC
- Collective cult practice - tablets with multiple cities on them
- Shifted to Nippur
- Common Babylonian pantheon headed by Enlil (Nippur patron)
- Late 3rd Millenium all Babylonian cities to provide for the cult
- Early 2nd Millenium political control over it gave a king the right to claim sovereign rule
- At least 2 languages spoken
- Sumerian grammar influenced Akkadian - used both simultaneously
- Semmetic names but wrote in Sumerian - spoke different language at home
- Sumerian names prominent in South, Semetic in the North
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The Spectacle of the Royal Tombs of Ur
- Way for Kings to consolidate power
- Death - human sacrifice (only time this occurred)
- Royal tombs and death pits - 2-3k in small space
- Objects (lapis lazuli) and workers
- 16 out 2000 Wooley excavated Early Dynastic IIIa (2600-2450 BCE) = royal
- Normally have headdresses - high ranking women - must be priestesses? Seal words for Queen?
- One grave have crown prince - 2 queens -
- Also formed royal monuments
- Lenoard Wooley - holes in ground = wooden harps
- Often have bull names in Sumerian
- Self referential
- Looks like Uruk Vase but depicts netherworld not civilised/state world
- Bottom = scorpion-man from Gilgamesh
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Puabi's Tomb
- Puabi's Tomb PG 800
- Entrance - 4 bodies - guards buried - maybe a supernatural threat, protect from robbers
- Oxen and attendants to maintain chariots
- Big chest full of shelves
- 10 women wearing earrings - choir. Instruments buried with them
- Ostrich egg - imported and manufactured (lapis, carnelian and gold)
- Loaded
- Quite important as have trade networks
- Could employ skilled people
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Great Death Pit
- 74 People lined up like dominoes
- Wooley's theory
- Attendants marched willingly to accompany royal into afterlife
- Musician played to the end, drank poison but in a peaceful way
- Found that they were executed not voluntary deaths
- Some scared into submission while rest voluntary (Dickson)
- Support for Wooley's Theory
- Headdresses look like flowers (reference to poisoning people?)
- New technology - led to scans. Bodies examined would have been at different parts of hierarchies - maybe differences in how they died
- Bodies preserved in mercury - placed in specific places
- Both scans = similar killings - no struggle
- Would've been killed in different ways
- Palace working - idea need food in afterlife so better to do that die on streets
- Babylonia in early & uncertain stage, needed to confirm power (VDM)
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Burials - Ur as a City-State?
- Ur as city state
- Influential, wealthy, trade network, women seen as important enough to have good monuments (loyalty to Royals?!)
- Trade - Materials include gold carnelian and lapis lazuli
- Skilled labour - intricate goods - means to support these skilled labourers (not just have everyone on food)
- Hierarchy - established kingship - powerful enough to merit mass sacrifice
- Religious Practices - mass human sacrifice, burial of grave goods for afterlife, preservation
- Military guards need to protect goods
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Funerary Rites of Kings in Later Periods
- Royal funerals in admin docs
- Handing our beer/bread for lamenters
- Crucial evidence for dynastic continuity
- At festivals sacrificed rams for dead ancestors - on certain days
- Other documents were from much later (1800BCE)
- Death of Ur-Namma
- Theme of sacrificing animals continued
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Early Dynastic Society (VDM)
- 3rd Milennium - organisation of society into households
- Concept expanded form independent kinship groups as began to focus on gods/kings.
- Sumerian word for palace = egal - great household
- Individual elites had own households (e.g. Queen of Lagash)
- Households were hierarchical
- City-God Ningirsu = large than wife Bau
- Bau's = larger than 2 sons Shulshagana and Igalima
- Rations according to status of worker - Men = 2x as much as women
- Rations did not constiture a whole diet - veg and fish likely homegrown
- Provided them with a means of survival
- Centralised - barley provided 10k daily rations for a year
- High quotas - 1 woman had to produce 10 litres of flour/day
- Used to be thought that temples = most important
- Now acknowledge that there are likely undocumented economic participants
- Agriculture in Ebla responsibility of Villages but instiutional labour forces used in Babylonia
- Some inequality of wealth - 16 of 2k graves had elaborate chambers of stone/brick
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Scribal Culture (VDM)
- Signs became increasing standardised - did not reflect pictoral origins
- Growing use of syllabic signs made it possible to write languages other than Sumerian
- Outside Babylonia people had abandoned technology, but people in Syria starting to take it up again
- Ebla - use of Semmetic grammatical signs showed they pronounced the signs in the languages they spoke
- 3rd Milennium - Babylonia = intellectual center
- Syria/N. Meso adopted technique anew
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