GLIMPSES OF MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY

Fifteen thousand years ago, in the ocean shorelines were 300 feet lower. The foothills of the Zagros Mountains of Tigris and Euphrates flowed through northeastern Mesopotamia, our ancestors separate green valleys, emptying into the began experiments that would change Gulf of Oman. Then 15,000 years ago, the mans' destiny. The flint tools they left world warmed, ice caps melted, and the behind provide for a trained archaeological oceans began to rise. The slowly rising detective, an outline of when and where Gulf squeezed populations northwards for they did it. But even experts can only 10,000 years. As people were driven speculate how. slowly from their lost paradise, they Barley, sprouting from a bit of brought with them, to Mesopotamia epics, spilled grain, perhaps inspired a normal myths, and memories of the flood that gatherer to plant his own crop; thinning drowned their land, of the Eden they lost. herds of wild goats and sheep maybe During the fourth millennium B.C, tempted a hunter to trap a pair for breeding the Mesopotamian mix began to tame stocks. Whatever sparked the process, alluvial plain and marshlands between the mans' first great revolution had begun as two rivers, the land we call Sumer, with slowly as the hunter learned to exploit his roads and canals. Here Sumerians farm environment. By 6000 B.C, here at Tell villages evolved into small city-states, each Es-Sawwan near Baghdad, farmers and clustered around a temple and ruled by an shepherds were building rectangular ensi or "priest-ruler". Mankind was poised houses and complete with courtyards, for another momentous leap forward. kitchens with hearths and granaries, and Mans' first attempt to record his corals for there livestock and wearing thoughts came as mere jottings, lines and beads and bracelets and rings of bone, dots on patties of clay, to tally sheep, or clay, and stone. Now these small votive fish, or sheaves of barley. Archaeologists statues offered clues to early religious uncovered the oldest of these at Uruk and beliefs. Most were found in the graves of Ur. Later, notes or workers' rations and children, suggesting each served as a long lists of temple offering appear, using substitute mother for the helpless child on more sophisticated pictographs: a head to his eternal journey. signify "man" a bowl to stand for "food", a By the 5th millennium B.C lower human foot could mean "foot" or "to Mesopotamia was already a melting pot. walk". By 3000 B.C. the scribes of People from the north, Hassuna, Tell Es- summer had perfected grammar and Sawwan, Jarmo, filtered down both the vocabulary using phonetic cuneiform Tigris and Euphrates bringing their ("wedge-shaped") characters. On durable knowledge of farming, architecture, clay tablets they recorded waybills, religion, and art. Other groups pressed recipes, building dedications, math lessons, northwards from the East Arabia and the and later epics, proverbs, legends, laments Arabian Gulf. and love songs. The hundreds of thousand Most geologists agree that the of surviving cuneiform tablets document shallow Arabian Gulf was dry land in intimate day-to-day life in civilizations Lower Paleolithic times. The world was long turned to dust. Now, with the cooler, passing though an ice age, and invention of writing, history formally A rich prize, at the crossroads of began. Asia, Mesopotamia constantly suffered In 2350 B.C. King Sargon welded invaders. Hittites swooped through with nearby city-states of Sumer to those northern Syria to snuff out Babylon. After of his own Semitic Akkadians, to rule from looting the temple treasures they quickly his capital, Akkad near Babylon. His retreated back to their native Anatolia, armies pressed south toward the Gulf, east Kassites, originally from the Zagros, filled into Elam, in present-day Iran, and into the political vacuum left by Babylonians northwest Syria, for the first known fall to rule for 400 years. At the Kassite Empire. His grandson, Naram Sin ruins of Dur Kuriigalzu, 20 miles outside demarcated the dynasty's authority with Baghdad, the tallest ziggurat surviving lavish inscribed victory stele like those we from ancient times still stands, 180 feet found at Sippar, west of Baghdad, and in high. Early travelers mistook it for Biblical the eastern mountain borderlands. "Tower of babel". Eastern Zagros Mountain tribes, the Kassite rulers were contemporaries Gutians, ended Akkadian rule for almost a of Egypts' Amenhoteb IV well known as century, laying waste to much of the Akhnaton, with whom they exchanged countryside. In 2120 B.C. Utu-Higal, ruler princesses in marriage. Letters, cuneiform of Uruk, rose up against the Gutians and tablets, found in the Pharaoh's library at with the help of other Sumerian cities Tell el-Amarna, arranged the nuptials. drove them out, in the earliest liberation By this time the Assyrians in the war on record. From their seat at Ur, his north were consolidating military and successors revived the Sumerian Culture political power. These Assyrians, perhaps and power for more than one final an ancient group from the Arabian flourishing century. Peninsula, entered the north of Iraq at the The Amorites, the "dwellers of the beginning of the 3rd millennium, mingling west", may have had origins in Arabian with the local inhabitants. By the Peninsula. After the fall of Sumer they beginning of the first millennium B.C. they migrated into Mesopotamia establishing had the strongest army in the ancient cities at Mari on the Syrian Euphrates, world. Sargon II (721-705 B.C.) spread an Assur on the upper Tigris, Larsa in the empire across most of the ancient Middle south, finally uniting their holdings to form East, as far as Egypt. Masterpieces of the first dynasty of Babylon, Babylon's Assyrian sculptures and room-sized bas- King Hammurabi, during the first half of reliefs from Khorsabad, Nineveh, Nimrod the 18th century B.C. established today, grace many of Europe's museums. Mesopotamian's second empire and Splendid ivory panels, removed from an promulgated the first comprehensive law Assyrian well in Nimrud display the work statuettes, the famous "Code of of craftsman brought from Egypt, and Hammurabi". About this time a minor Phoenicia. Nor did the Assyrians neglect tribal sheikh set out with his people from scholarship. King Asurbanipal's royal Ur. His departure probably caused little library excavated in the late 19th century fanfare; Babylonian history accords him no yielded a trove of cuneiform literature, mention at all. But his name was Abram some 25,000 tablets in all. At Khorsabad I and he marched west across the desert laid bare a long buried temple for Assyrian toward a new land, and history. scribes. Its stone furniture survived intact, the dais of the teacher and rows of stools Mesopotamia each season: Iraq has trained and desks for the students. more than 500 archaeologists of its own. Combined forces of the chaldeans Hundreds of Tells dot our landscape and Medians burned Nineveh in 612 B.C. waiting for the patient spade and brush. along with Nimrod, Assur, and other Even old digs continue to yield surprises. Assyrian cities. The Chaldean king The Iraqi State Board of Nebobolasser founded a second dynasty in Antiquities and Heritage was working in Babylon, inheriting all the land from the the NW Palace of Assurnasirpal II in the gulf to Syria the Assyrians had ruled. city of Nimrod, to prepare for preservation His son Nebucadrassar widened Chaldean and restoration, digging below the floors of (New Babylonian) dominion over all of some rooms, the Iraqi team found several Syria to Mediterranean then started graves, one was for two women, a queen ambitious building program in his capital perhaps and her daughter. One possibly a Babylon. He strengthened the city's double wife of Sargon II, they were decked in walls, raised palaces, widened streets, and gold material, gold earrings, bracelets, installed the world famous Hanging anklets, headdress, crowns, bowls, cups Gardens making Babylon into the world and utensils, all in beautiful imperial gold, metropolis of its day, Babylon of the Old almost 63 Kilos of Gold!! Testament. The empire declined after his As an archaeologist, I can think of death, weakened by internal religious few professions more rewarding than the differences. In 539 B.C., Cyrus I of Persia study of history, of man and his society. occupied the city. For the next millennium, But Mesopotamia is more than a history of Mesopotamia languished, under the rule of Iraq. Anyone who can read and write or the Parthians, Greeks, Romans and who tills the soil, anyone who cherishes Sassanians. religion, practices law, or studies the stars The unfolding of our long history owes a silent thanks to those who has only begun. Experts from around the pioneered along the Euphrates. world continue to converge on