The first revolution -- farming -- led to the SECOND GREAT REVOLUTION in history. This revolution also occurred in MESOPOTAMIA and was THE BIRTH OF THE CITY.

• More people were located in clusters.
• They had a somewhat stable supply of food and a roof to sleep under.
• Tasks could become more specialized.
• There was enough stability that a variety of arts could be produced.
• People could think about trading with other regions.

By 2900 BC the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates were occupied by ten or twelve fiercely independent cities. One of the most important was:

URUK (ERECH)

Uruk was one of the earliest cities. It is now known as Warka and it is Erech in the Old Testament. Uruk was controlled by the Sumerians.

• Uruk had a city wall and palace
• Uruk had an assembly which controlled the city and a council of elders which gave direction to the businesses of the assembly and executed its commands (birth of a bureaucracy!!!?). In times of trouble, a leader was usually elected for the duration of the emergency, and at the end of the crises he was expected to resign. But this first city was so fraught with emergencies-wars, and other problems-that it was difficult to get the leaders to resign. Finally, by the last centuries of the Sumerian dynasties, rule was hereditary.
• A system of government and places of worship are two components that made Uruk one of the first civilized cities.

In the 1920's archaeology came into its own in Mesopotamia. Archaeologists from Germany and Britain made one unbelievable find after another. They found gold, silver, and lapis lazuli, and the remains of guards who had apparently been buried alive with the treasures. In some places they found as many as 15 layers of human occupation. And the excavating continues even now. This is how it looks from the bottom of a pit. Visit this site and find out more about the Tombs of UR -- another Sumerian city.

Archaeologists found writing tablets and pottery that gave clues about the ancient Sumerians. Pottery can also give clues to other ANCIENT WARES that have rotted away like WEAVING, LEATHER, or BASKETWORK. What the archaeologists discovered were WALLED CITIES of hard clay bricks. There were individual houses, shops, streets, and shrines. Houses only had tiny windows on the street...in the summer the family slept on the flat roof of the house.

The size, variety, and complexity of the architecture show that the buildings had been carefully designed for religious purposes and were built to IMPRESS the population with the wealth and power of those who built them. The heart of the complex was the TEMPLE. The temple included the dwelling for the patron deity and all the workshops for the supporting cast of workmen that it took to run the temple. Each temple was the household of a god or goddess that had a hierarchy of people and subordinate deities whose job it was to serve the principal god or goddess.

IMPORTANT: THERE WAS A STRICT ORDER or HEIRARCY. This hierarchy of the temple included deities, priests, diviners, and exorcists.

• DIVINERS - Readers of the future (i.e.-bird argurs in Oedipus).
• EXORCISTS - Their job was to cast out demons.

All of this required an appropriate building-a ZIGGURAT.

Ziggurats were very imposing structures. Imagine the power of a leader speaking from high on the side of this symbolic mountain of the gods. Check out this picture of a ziggurat at Ur -- 2113 B.C.

We don't know exactly when or how, but a distinctive architectural feature emerged and that was the ZIGGURAT or TEMPLE TOWER.

A ZIGGURAT was at the center of every Mesopotamian city-state and stood on a huge platform made from clay reinforced with brick and asphalt (mudbrick set in bitumen). These were solid structures filled with brick of previous structures and ramps and stairs connected these layers.

(There are 16 sites in Mesopotamia where ziggurats have been excavated.) As these ziggurats became larger and larger, they incorporated temples which had been built on the site earlier.

The ziggurat was a symbolic mountain. The altar at the top represented the territory right between heaven and earth where you could almost touch the gods. IMPORTANT CONNECTION-we see the same symbol later in medieval architecture in the fleche or steeple.

We've covered the architectural structure of the ziggurat, but that was only half of the story to the people of Sumer. The act of climbing up through the ziggurat was very significant and is called REVERENTIAL CLIMBING. Consider that the ziggurat soared upward in the flat river planes of Mesopotamia and also consider that it led upwards to the alter of the gods. So just getting to the ziggurat and up through it had significance to the Mesopotamians. Think of it this way: you are in a winding maze and the object of your quest is at the top. It's hidden from view and you don't know how to get there but you just have to keep plodding along. But if you survive the journey, you'll see the gods. The top of the ziggurat was the meeting place between mortals and the gods-meeting face to face with the gods is called an EPIPHANY. (You will see this later in Greek temples.)

There are two important ideas:

• One-There was an ORDER or HEIRARCHY to the religious system. (Many ancient belief systems relate to the ideas of creating order out of chaos.) To put people or ideas in order of importance is one way of doing that.
• Two-The Sumerian people had a process for worship. The ziggurat wasn't just a building to look at from afar-though it would have been quite impressive in the flat land of Mesopotamia-it symbolized a journey from earth to the Gods. This process is REVERENTIAL CLIMBING.