SUMERIA AND URUKSumeria: – the first “city” societies > the first “civilization”,
beginning 4000-3000 BCE – follows the neo-lithic [ new stone-age] agricultural
revolution in Mesopotamia 9000-5000 BCE ➢agriculture ➢domestication of animals ➢settled societies (permanent villages and towns)
Before this agricultural revolution, human communities lived as “hunters and gatherers”
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uncovering the history of civilization
19th-century archaeology: digging up Mesopotamia (Between the Rivers)
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What does Sumeria represent to the modern era?
a starting point of civilization: - the first 'city' societies - new technologies - the first writing
a story of progress:
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Stone Age > Bronze Age > Iron Age > . . .
Gilgamesh, the historical person:
•King of the city of Uruk about 2700 BC
Gilgamesh, the legend:
•represented in mesopotamian art
•the hero of epic poems – story poems
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But there is another new 'technology' that begins with Sumeria
a new social / political form:
hierarchy
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For the first time in human history: society is divided into classes, organized by class
Hier-archy [original meaning: rule by the high priest]
➢ organization by class or status.
➢ high status rules low status.
The higher class has the power to command. The higher class has political authority.
This conception of authority begins with Sumeria.17
Property stone: the king gives land to his warriors. The warriors take taxes from the peasants on that land.
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Since 4000 BC the basic elements of every well organized society exist:
Priests, slaves, police, and prostitutes.
And we do not know how or why this occurred.
-- Cornelius Castoriadis
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property [Latin: ‘proprius’ ] -- one’s own; what is proper (appropriate) to oneself; a quality or state that belongs to something (this stone is hard, this table is flat, etc)
Gilgamesh has the power “to bind and to loose” -- to determine the properties of his subjects, to decide what is proper / appropriate for each.
>> authority
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Shamash gives Hammurabi the right to rule
The gods told me, Hammurabi, to
bring about the rule of
righteousness in the land, to destroy
the wicked and the evil-doers; so
that the strong should not harm the
weak; so that I should rule over the
black-headed people like Shamash,
and enlighten the land… to further
the well-being of mankind.30
196. If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out.
198. If he put out the eye of a freed man [a former slave], or break the bone of a freed man, he shall pay one gold mina.
199. If he put out the eye of a man's slave, or break the bone of a man's slave, he shall pay one-half of its value.
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202. If any one strike the body of a man higher in rank than he, he shall receive sixty blows with an ox-whip in public.
203. If a free-born man strike the body of another free-born man of equal rank, he shall pay one gold mina.
204. If a freed man strike the body of another freed man, he shall pay ten shekels in money.
205. If the slave of a freed man strike the body of a freed man, his ear shall be cut off.
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209. If a man strike a free-born woman so that she lose her unborn child, he shall pay ten shekels for her loss.
212. If this woman die, he shall pay half a mina.
213. If he strike the female-servant of a man, and she lose her child, he shall pay two shekels in money.
214. If this female-servant dies, he shall pay one-third of a mina.
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URUK: the organization of difference.
houses
gardens
fields
temples
divided into three parts and sacred center34
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In Uruk he built walls, a great rampart, and the temple of blessed Eanna. Look at it still today
The Sumerian city: a representation of totalityInside the walls: food - shelter - authority
order > civilization
Outside the walls? Outside the circle?
Outside the walls:
Otherness • mythic space where human imagination is projected into the unknown, the uncontrolled: gods, monsters, unconquered Nature.
Outside the city: limits are discovered, tested, transgressed.
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In the Epic of Gigamesh, you won’t find the well-ordered society.
The Epic looks back to an earlier time — to the mythic pre-conditions of social order — a time when natural and political limits had to be discovered
• Nature < > Civilization • Order < > Disorder (just rule < > unjust rule) • Life < > Death (immortality < > mortality) These oppositions are represented in the epic, where
possibilities and limits are experienced and tested. 37