History of Sumer - Earliest City-states

Earliest City-states

Permanent year-round urban settlement may have been prompted by intensive agricultural practices. The work required in maintaining irrigation canals called for, and the resulting surplus food enabled, relatively concentrated populations. However, this analysis, often identified with Karl Wittfogel's theories on the Asiatic mode of production, is hotly contested, and few archaeologists or historians today accept it as a sufficient explanation for the first cities. The centres of Eridu and Uruk, two of the earliest cities, had successively elaborated large temple complexes built of mudbrick. Developing as small shrines with the earliest settlements, by the Early Dynastic I period, they had become the most imposing structures in their respective cities, each dedicated to its own respective god. From south to north, the principal temple-cities, their principal temple complex, and the gods they served, were

• Eridu, E-Abzu, Enki
• Ur, E-kishnugal, Nanna (moon)
• Larsa, E-babbar, Utu (sun)
• Uruk, E-anna, Inana and An
• Bad-tibira, E-mush, Dumuzi and Inana
• Girsu, E-ninnu, Ningirsu
• Umma, E-mah, Shara (son of Inana)
• Nippur, E-kur, Enlil
• Shuruppak, E-dimgalanna, Sud (variant of Ninlil, wife of Enlil)
• Marad, E-igikalamma, Lugal-Marada (variant of Ninurta)
• Kish, ?, Ninhursag
• Sippar, E-babbar, Utu (sun)
• Kutha, E-meslam, Nergal

Historians until recently agreed that before 3000 BC the political life of the city was headed by a priest-king (ensi) assisted by a council of elders and based on these temples, but some more recent authors have asserted that the cities had secular rulers from the earliest times. The development of a sophisticated system of administration led to the invention of writing of numbers about 3500 BC and ideographic writing about 3000 BC, which developed into logographic writing by about 2600 BC.