Uruk: War and Ruin
Welcome to Cosmographia — a history of the earth and the stars. For the full map of posts, see here.
This is the fourth part of a series on Uruk, the world’s first Great City. You can read part I here, part II here, and part III here.
While Uruk was reigning supreme as the dominant power in Sumer between the years 3500-3000 BC, other settlements did not sit idle. Slowly but surely, a constellation of other Sumerian cities grew large enough to challenge Uruk’s dominance. First to rise was a city called Kish, which was located about 150 kilometres, or 93 miles, further north, not far from where the Euphrates and Tigris rivers seem to pinch closer together. One Sumerian poem tells the story of Kish’s most famous king, a warrior named Aga. He was said to have marched a great army southwards, sweeping towards Uruk. He laid siege to the famous city, putting its famed walls to the test. But Aga failed to reckon with one thing: Uruk’s king, the heroic Gilgamesh, did not lose battles. Gilgamesh broke Kish’s armies and restored Uruk’s dominance over the lands and cities of Sumer.
But Ur would prove a different sort of challenger. This city lay to Uruk’s southeast, at the point where the Euphrates River used to meet the Persian Gulf, when the sea levels were higher than they are today. Ur’s location meant it emerged as the great seaport of Sumer, with ships laden with goods from Arabia, southern Iran, and even as far away as India, coming to make berth in its harbour. As we have seen, Sumer had an abundance of clay and farmed food, but it was rich in few other natural resources. The entire region, including Uruk, needed to import metals, stone, and wood from elsewhere.
Just as the Israelite kings described in the Bible would centuries later, Sumerians sourced their cedarwood from Lebanon and their spices from Arabia. From Afghanistan they got their tin and lapis lazuli, from India their gold, from the Taurus Mountains of Turkey their silver, and from Cyprus they procured their copper. All these goods passed through Ur’s port, and the commerce made the city rich. Presumably, it was this money that helped fund the defeat of Uruk in battle somewhere around the year 2550 BC.
We don’t know any details of this battle, not where it was, nor most of the combatants. All we know is the name of Ur’s leader, Mesannepada, and its outcome. Ur took the kingship and eclipsed Uruk as the regional heavyweight. Perhaps it was in honour of this great victory that the people of Ur crafted what is perhaps the most beautiful object in all Sumerian culture.
The Standard of Ur is a hollow box made of wood, upon which is inlaid a dazzling mosaic of white seashells, red limestone, and blue lapis lazuli. On one side of the standard are rich images of the Urians at war, brandishing spears and daggers, riding donkey-pulled wagons and leering at badly injured prisoners, perhaps the vanquished soldiers of Uruk. On the reverse side, the imagery is more peaceful, with some Urians enjoying the music of a lyre and drinking wine, while other figures till the fields and shepherd flocks of sheep. It’s not quite known what this object was made for, but it has been suggested the twin sides depicting peace and war might reflect the duties of kingship. Thousands of other objects of immense value, like richly decorated gold daggers, diadems, and statuettes, have been recovered from Ur’s Royal Cemetery, showing the vast wealth the city’s elites were able to accrue. But treasure can do only so much. Soon, Ur would be eclipsed by another.
The city of Lagash lay to the north of Ur and to the east of Uruk, on the banks of the River Tigris. Like Ur, Lagash was an entrepôt of trade, but in this case the city specialised in one particular commodity: slaves. As has probably become clear, the lands of Sumer during the third millennium BC were an exceptionally violent place to be. Burgeoning city states made war on one another and terrorised the rural hinterlands that lay between them, fighting over the most fertile stretches of land.1 For a city like Lagash, war and banditry meant a regular supply of slaves, upon whose bodies it built its power.
About a century after Ur had defeated Uruk in battle, the city of Lagash had gone to war with a smaller neighbour-city called Umma. Lagash’s ruler, a man named Eannatum, defeated the army of Umma, and laid waste to the city. One Sumerian tablet, known as the Stele of Vultures, describes the victors diverting the water away from vanquished Umma, setting fire to its temples, and putting its soldiers to the sword. The victory seemed to give Eannatum a taste for battle, for he soon conquered vast swathes of Sumer, forging what is arguably the first multi-city empire in recorded history. He even ventured into the eastern lands of Elam, in modern Iran, where he laid waste to the great city of Susa, a city which would in later centuries become the capital of the Persian Empire. It’s not known if Eannatum conquered Uruk militarily, there’s certainly been no evidence discovered to indicate so, but it seems the first great city of Sumer did submit in some form or another, probably paying tribute to Lagash.
Eannatum appears to have ruled his bloodied empire much in the same way he conquered it: with an iron fist. And as happens so often through history, an iron fist tends to sow with its violence the seeds of rebellion. The city of Umma, so ruthlessly crushed by Eannatum, would have its revenge. Cities all over Sumer soon began to rise up in revolt at the oppressive rule, and Lagash’s empire began to totter. Umma’s ruler, a man called Lugalzagesi, seized this chance for vengeance. His armies quickly conquered a swathe of smaller cities loyal to Lagash. Then they took Kish, and then the great city of Ur, and then even the mother-city herself, Uruk. Then and only then, when Lugalzagesi had made himself the supreme ruler of Sumer, did he turn on his most bitter enemy. His forces stormed Lagash’s walls and laid the city to ruin. Its buildings were levelled and thousands of its inhabitants murdered. Even by the standards of Sumerian warfare, the destruction wrought upon that city was considered shocking at the time. Indeed, scribes recorded that the desecration of Lagash’s temples would soon bring the wrath of gods upon the heads of those responsible.
For now though, Lugalzagesi was the most powerful man in the entire Near East. And for his newly conquered empire, which now encompassed all of Sumer, he would need a fitting capital. Only one city would do: the city of Uruk. It speaks to Uruk’s storied history as the greatest city in Sumer, in the world, in fact, that the conqueror from Umma would choose it to be the focal point of his empire. But, though Lugalzagesi ruled from the city, he didn’t leave much of a mark upon it. Apart from a few scattered inscriptions, he left no identifiable buildings, no monuments in the fabric of the city. The Urukians weren’t to know it, but Lugalzagesi’s brief, war-struck reign, was to be the last time their city enjoyed such preeminence over all the lands of Sumer. It would never again reach these heights.
Lugalzegesi spent much of his twenty-four years as King of Uruk, King of Kish, King of the Land, as his titles read, out on campaign, fighting skirmishes with rebel cities and conquering new swathes of territory. But the man from Umma made the same mistake as the kings of Lagash. Ever greedy for new lands, he overextended himself, and stretched his armies too thin. Sumer was ripe for the taking. But who would take it?
Thank you for reading. If you’d like to support this work and learn more about the world, please consider taking out a paid subscription. You’ll get:
3x articles per week on art, history, and mythology
Unlimited access to the entire archive (250+ articles and essays)
A 16th-century woodcut of Edinburgh for your wall (for annual subscriptions only!)
