CIVILIZATIONS OF ANCIENT IRAQ Benjamin R. Foster Karen Polinger Foster PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS Princeton 6' Oxford CONTENTS Illustrations ix Preface xi 1. IN THE BEGINNING Of Tigris and Euphrates 1 The First Villages 7 From the Foothills to the Plains 12 2. THE BIRTHPLACE OF CIVILIZATION The First Cities 15 From City to State 27 Sumerians Abroad 29 Setting Words on Clay 30 The Uruk Phenomenon 33 3. EARLY CITy-STATES New Polities 35 Ur and the Royal Graves 36 When Kingship Came down from Heaven 39 Shuruppak, City of Wisdom 40 A Tale of Two Cities 42 4. KINGS OF THE FOUR QUARTERS OF THE WORLD The First Empire 51 Naram-Sin: When Kingship Went up to Heaven 55 A Golden Age of Sumerian Culture 61 Management and Crisis 67 5. THE AGE OF HAMMURABI The Amorites 71 Rim-Sin, King of Larsa 73 v vi CONTENTS Shamshi-Adad, King ofUpper Mesopotamia 74 Hammurabi, King of Babylon 76 Arts of the Table and Bedroom 81 The Epic ofGilgamesh 83 The End ofAmorite Rule 85 6. BABYLONIA IN THE FAMILY OF NATIONS The Kassites 87 Kassite Statecraft and Sociery 90 The Club of Great Powers 93 Science and Literature 94 The Hurrians 99 The End ofKassite Rule 100 7. THE ASSYRIAN ACHIEVEMENT The Rise ofAssur 105 The Middle Assyrian Empire 109 The Neo-Assyrian Empire 113 Assurnasirpal II and Nimrud 115 Sennacherib and Nineveh 119 The Library ofAssurbanipal 123 The Fall ofAssyria 126 8. THE GLORY OF BABYLON The Last Babylonian Empire 129 Nabonidus, King of Babylon 132 Learning and Memory in Babylonia 134 Works and Days 140 The Persian Empire 142 9. MESOPOTAMIA BETWEEN Two WORLDS Alexander the Great and the Seleucids 147 Antiochus I Soter, King ofAsia 149 The Realm and Its Economy 152 The Culture ofHellenistic Babylonia 154 The Rise ofParthia 156 Mithridates I and the Reunification of Iraq 158 Parthian Iraq 160 CONTENTS vii Roman Armies in Iraq 164 The End ofMesopotamian Civilization 166 10. SASSANIAN IRAQ The Sassanian Empire and Religious Pluralism 168 By the Waters ofBabylon: Judaism in Iraq 173 Christianity in Iraq 176 Sassanian Society, Statecraft, and Economy 178 Arab Settlement in Iraq 180 Sassanian Art 182 Shapur I and Shapur 11 184 The Sassanians and Byzantium 187 Prelude to Conquest 189 EPILOGUE DISCOVERY AND DESTRUCTION OF ANCIENT IRAQ Exploration and Decipherment 191 Archaeology Past and Present 198 The Nation of Iraq and Cultural Heritage 201 The Gulf War and Cultural Destruction 205 The Iraq War and Cultural Devastation 206 Notes 211 Bibliography 231 Index 283.