In the quarter or third of a millennium between Uruk Level IV and Enmebaragesi, southern Mesopotamia became studded with a complex pattern of cities, many of which were the centres of small independent city-states, to judge from the situation in about the middle of the millennium. In these cities, the central point was the temple, sometimes encircled by an oval boundary wall (hence the term temple oval); but nonreligious buildings, such as palaces serving as the residences of the rulers, could also function as centres.
Enmebaragesi, king of Kish, is the oldest Mesopotamian ruler from whom there are authentic inscriptions. These are vase fragments, one of them found in the temple oval of Khafajah (Khafājī). In the Sumerian king list, Enmebaragesi is listed as the penultimate king of the 1st dynasty of Kish; a Sumerian poem, “Gilgamesh and Agga of Kish,” describes the siege of Uruk by Agga, son of Enmebaragesi. The discovery of the original vase inscriptions was of great significance because it enabled scholars to ask with somewhat more justification whether Gilgamesh, the heroic figure of Mesopotamia who has entered world literature, was actually a historical personage. The indirect synchronism notwithstanding, the possibility exists that even remote antiquity knew its “Ninus” and its “Semiramis,” figures onto which a rapidly fading historical memory projected all manner of deeds and adventures. Thus, though the historical tradition of the early 2nd millennium believes Gilgamesh to have been the builder of the oldest city wall of Uruk, such may not have been the case. The palace archives of Shuruppak (modern Tall Faʾrah, 125 miles southeast of Baghdad), dating presumably from shortly after 2600, contain a long list of divinities, including Gilgamesh and his father Lugalbanda. More recent tradition, on the other hand, knows Gilgamesh as judge of the nether world. However that may be, an armed conflict between two Mesopotamian cities such as Uruk and Kish would hardly have been unusual in a country whose energies were consumed, almost without interruption from 2500 to 1500 bce, by clashes between various separatist forces. The great “empires,” after all, formed the exception, not the rule.
Emergent city-states
Kish must have played a major role almost from the beginning. After 2500, southern Babylonian rulers, such as Mesannepada of Ur and Eannatum of Lagash, frequently called themselves king of Kish when laying claim to sovereignty over northern Babylonia. This does not agree with some recent histories in which Kish is represented as an archaic “empire.” It is more likely to have figured as representative of the north, calling forth perhaps the same geographic connotation later evoked by “the land of Akkad.”
Although the corpus of inscriptions grows richer both in geographic distribution and in point of chronology in the 27th and increasingly so in the 26th century, it is still impossible to find the key to a plausible historical account, and history cannot be written solely on the basis of archaeological findings. Unless clarified by written documents, such findings contain as many riddles as they seem to offer solutions. This applies even to as spectacular a discovery as that of the royal tombs of Ur with their hecatombs (large-scale sacrifices) of retainers who followed their king and queen to the grave, not to mention the elaborate funerary appointments with their inventory of tombs. It is only from about 2520 to the beginnings of the dynasty of Akkad that history can be written within a framework, with the aid of reports about the city-state of Lagash and its capital of Girsu and its relations with its neighbour and rival, Umma.
Sources for this are, on the one hand, an extensive corpus of inscriptions relating to nine rulers, telling of the buildings they constructed, of their institutions and wars, and, in the case of UruKAgina, of their “social” measures. On the other hand, there is the archive of some 1,200 tablets—insofar as these have been published—from the temple of Baba, the city goddess of Girsu, from the period of Lugalanda and UruKAgina (first half of the 24th century). For generations, Lagash and Umma contested the possession and agricultural usufruct of the fertile region of Gu’edena. To begin with, some two generations before Ur-Nanshe, Mesilim (another “king of Kish”) had intervened as arbiter and possibly overlord in dictating to both states the course of the boundary between them, but this was not effective for long. After a prolonged struggle, Eannatum forced the ruler of Umma, by having him take an involved oath to six divinities, to desist from crossing the old border, a dike. The text that relates this event, with considerable literary elaboration, is found on the Stele of Vultures. These battles, favouring now one side, now the other, continued under Eannatum’s successors, in particular Entemena, until, under UruKAgina, great damage was done to the land of Lagash and to its holy places. The enemy, Lugalzagesi, was vanquished in turn by Sargon of Akkad. The rivalry between Lagash and Umma, however, must not be considered in isolation. Other cities, too, are occasionally named as enemies, and the whole situation resembles the pattern of changing coalitions and short-lived alliances between cities of more recent times. Kish, Umma, and distant Mari on the middle Euphrates are listed together on one occasion as early as the time of Eannatum. For the most part, these battles were fought by infantry, although mention is also made of war chariots drawn by onagers (wild asses).
The lords of Lagash rarely fail to call themselves by the title of ensi, of as yet undetermined derivation; “city ruler,” or “prince,” are only approximate translations. Only seldom do they call themselves lugal, or “king,” the title given the rulers of Umma in their own inscriptions. In all likelihood, these were local titles that were eventually converted, beginning perhaps with the kings of Akkad, into a hierarchy in which the lugal took precedence over the ensi.
Territorial states
More difficult than describing its external relations is the task of shedding light on the internal structure of a state like Lagash. For the first time, a state consisting of more than a city with its surrounding territory came into being, because aggressively minded rulers had managed to extend that territory until it comprised not only Girsu, the capital, and the cities of Lagash and Nina (Zurghul) but also many smaller localities and even a seaport, Guabba. Yet it is not clear to what extent the conquered regions were also integrated administratively. On one occasion UruKAgina used the formula “from the limits of Ningirsu [that is, the city god of Girsu] to the sea,” having in mind a distance of up to 125 miles. It would be unwise to harbour any exaggerated notion of well-organized states exceeding that size.
For many years, scholarly views were conditioned by the concept of the Sumerian temple city, which was used to convey the idea of an organism whose ruler, as representative of his god, theoretically owned all land, privately held agricultural land being a rare exception. The concept of the temple city had its origin partly in the overinterpretation of a passage in the so-called reform texts of UruKAgina, that states “on the field of the ensi [or his wife and the crown prince], the city god Ningirsu [or the city goddess Baba and the divine couple’s son]” had been “reinstated as owners.” On the other hand, the statements in the archives of the temple of Baba in Girsu, dating from Lugalanda and UruKAgina, were held to be altogether representative. Here is a system of administration, directed by the ensi’s spouse or by a sangu (head steward of a temple), in which every economic process, including commerce, stands in a direct relationship to the temple: agriculture, vegetable gardening, tree farming, cattle raising and the processing of animal products, fishing, and the payment in merchandise of workers and employees.