On to episode number two where we meet the successors of the Ubaid people, the Sumerians. After the Sumerians came on the scene, their civilization experienced what can legitimately be called an urban revolution, and we'll see the driving factors behind the rise of cities and the emergence of more defined social structures. With social structure came a ruling class, and we'll also see how these rulers contributed to the rise of trade in the Persian Gulf. As we round out the episode, we'll consider the archaeological evidence from the early dynastic period and see what it can tell us about boating and the extent of trade in pre-Akkadian Sumer. Thanks for tuning in to Episode 002 - Surplus Food, Big Buildings, and Power Hungry Lugals.

Episode Transcript

When we left off last time, the Ubaid people had managed to expand into southern Mesopotamia, where they improved their agricultural methods and began to flourish. Although they traded with fishing villages along the western shore of the Persian Gulf, Ubaid-period trade was conducted on a comparatively small scale, and it seems that most of their boating was done in the bitumen-coated reed boat that was prevalent in their culture. The Ubaid people sowed the seeds for societal expansion, but in time the Sumerians came on the scene and their society experienced dramatic growth on a scale that the world had not yet seen.

The first historical period of Sumer is called the Uruk period. This period began in the years around 4000 BC and at its outset Mesopotamia was made up of a collection of farming villages that were loosely associated with one another. Historians like to affix the term “egalitarian” to the Ubaid farming society as a way to say that the farming peoples were relatively equal, but the name ‘Uruk’ as a label for the post-Ubaid period actually says quite a bit about why there was transition and what form it took. You see, Uruk was also the name of a city in southern Mesopotamia, and although it’s impossible to definitively prove this, many historians like to call Uruk the first true city on earth. So how did a loosely connected band of farming people begin to turn their agriculturally based settlements into some of the first large cities in history? And how exactly does the rise of cities relate to maritime history?

Well I’m glad you asked, because we’re about to see that both maritime history and the rise of civilization were in fact intimately connected. Now as we saw last time, the Ubaid people were the first to settle in southern Mesopotamia, but because the region was arid, they were forced to improve their methods of farming. Their innovation consisted of building a complex series of canals to harness water and feed it to their crop fields for irrigation. In fact, there’s a very relevant passage in the Histories of Herodotus that describes Mesopotamia at a later period, but it’s just as applicable in our current discussion. Herodotus wrote:

Now the land of the Assyrians has but little rain; and this little gives nourishment to the root of the grain, but the crop is ripened and the ear comes on by the help of irrigation, not as in Egypt by the coming up of the river itself over the fields, but the crop is watered by hand or with swing-buckets. For the whole Babylonian territory like the Egyptian is cut up into channels, and the largest channels is navigable for ships and runs south-easterly in winter from the Euphrates to another river, namely the Tigris.

Herodotus, Histories, Book 1: 192-200.

Herodotus draws an important distinction that highlights a main factor in Mesopotamia’s transition to a city-based society. Egypt’s agriculture was wholly dependent on the Nile overflowing its banks and bringing the fertile soil to the crops. In Mesopotamia, the complex canal systems brought the life-giving water to the crops, but the main difference is this: in Egypt, the Nile did the bulk of the work, whereas in Mesopotamia the people did all of the work. The canal works allowed the Ubaid people to grow more crops than they ever had before, but where there are more crops and a more complicated way of growing them, more people are needed to keep everything running smoothly. As you can imagine, over time the population began to expand, and not only did it expand, it became more concentrated, thanks again to the fact that their irrigation system was complex, which forced them to exert a high level of communal effort and organization.

As society grew and became concentrated around the maintenance of complex canal systems, almost inevitably, a ruling class emerged. You could almost say that the act of irrigating the land itself led to the new institutional ruling class, because water in an arid climate is a commodity and someone has to administrate its equal apportionment among the people. The emergent rulers in Sumer were called either “lugal” or “ensi” and as the city-states grew, the lugal became the ancient equivalent of a king within his city, although some scholars believe that an ensi was the ruler of a city, while the lugal was more like a king and ruled over a confederation of cities.

Whatever the technical difference, we see archaeological evidence for the emergence of a ruling class during early Sumer by looking to the architectural changes that took place during the period. We have a wealth of archaeological info to glean from when we look at the development of cities such as Eridu, Uruk, and Lagash. An important evidence of the change in class structure is seen in the first monumental architecture in Mesopotamia. Monumental architecture, such as the Anu Ziggurat and the White Temple in Uruk, was built to impress but also to serve as a focal point for the local population. The development of a discernible settlement hierarchy can be seen as another evidence of change in class structure and the emergence of an elite class. While the cities were still largely independent, large cities were surrounded by smaller towns which were themselves surrounded by smaller hamlets, each level with a unique role in the production and distribution of goods.

The archaeological evidence within Mesopotamia demonstrates the development of a more structured society that solidified into the first city-states, but for our purposes, we’re more interested in how this growing society began to trade and to use the seas as a highway for transportation. Well, the growth of trade in early Sumer can be summarized quite simply: as cities grew in Sumer, so did the need for resources. Yes, they had plenty of crops to eat, but the region was fairly sparse when it came to the availability of other resources. Their innovation in agriculture allowed them to grow surplus grain, and in time the Sumerian rulers helped organize the expansion and trade that became quite intricate in the ancient world. 

There were plenty of enterprising merchants who also helped begin the first large scale trade in ancient Sumer, but the ruling class did not organize long-distance trade for entirely selfless reasons. Although the elites emerged at the top of the social ladder and held large amounts of power within their respective city-states, it is perhaps a fundamental tendency of human nature that a ruling class will seek a way to distinguish itself as such. The ruling class was comprised of religious and political leaders that held power together but were often in competition with one another, so the rulers began to use trade as a means to import luxury goods that functioned as displays of their wealth and power.

The religious rulers built their monumental temples and filled them with furnishings and decor that came from distant cultures and were awesome in the eyes of the common Sumerian. Political leaders likewise distinguished themselves through lavish displays of wealth in their palaces and their personal appearance, but the rulers also focused on the importation of practical natural resources such as copper. Copper was perhaps the most important resource that was imported following the rise of trade, and it was used to improve agricultural equipment and weaponry, but it was also used in artistic ventures as a show of power. Essentially then, “the vast majority of the goods that were imported into Mesopotamia, both raw materials and (semi-)finished products, can be classified as luxuries that were stockpiled and consumed within elite contexts.”

All of these indicators of change that we’ve seen in early Sumer were interrelated and, to a certain extent, once they grew to a self-sustaining level they all fed off of one another. Rulers organized trade and the continued growth of the cities, but as the cities grew and the ruling class needed luxury goods to display their status, the lower classes began to organize what were essentially professions, groups of people who learned a trade and excelled at that trade. Ancient Sumerian cities had common laborers and more skilled laborers who maintained the irrigations systems, but they also had skilled craftsmen in a variety of industries, merchants, traders, and on the list goes. I don’t want to get too bogged down in the admittedly fascinating intricacies of society in ancient Sumer, so I hope that this overview has given us a good base from which to work.

All right. Let’s get a bit more into how everything we’ve looked at so far actually relates to maritime history itself. If you’ve listened to the first episode, you’ll recall that the Ubaid people did a fair bit of trade within the Persian Gulf, probably using reed boats for the most part. As Sumerian cities grew up during the centuries directly following the Ubaid-period, trade seems to have subsided somewhat, and the theory is that efforts were more focused on the expansion and relation between and among Sumerian cities. Almost all of the boat depictions that come to us from the early and mid-Uruk period are of small river craft that are similar in structure and size, leading to the conclusion that Sumer still was heavily dependent on the reed-boat even after the Ubaid people were off the scene. Concrete evidence for the use of the sail is still absent from the historical record at this point in Sumerian history as well, we’re still talking about the years between 4000 and 3500 BC. In addition to pictorial evidence, all of the archaeological evidence from the Uruk period leads to the conclusion that small reed boats were prevalent, although boat models from the Uruk period are rare. 

Eventually though, as we’ve seen, a hierarchical structure began to solidify in Sumer. The need for resources to further expand monumental buildings and the desire to import luxury goods led to a rise in trade and the emergence of a merchant class in Sumer. This rise in trade began to occur during the tail end of the Uruk period and continued from the early-dynastic period out into the formation of the Akkadian Empire led by Sargon of Akkad.

One perfect example of the long-distance trade that began to emerge can be seen in an artifact that comes from the First Dynasty of Lagash, a dynasty that, despite its brevity, was one of the first empires in history. The first king of Lagash was Ur-Nanshe, a man who ruled around 2500 BC. He was a ruler commemorated for his building projects within the Sumerian city-state, and a perforated relief bearing his image gives us a tiny glimpse at the scope of trade in early dynastic Sumer. Perforated stone slabs carved with low reliefs are typical of the early Sumerian dynasties, and this particular one depicts Ur-Nanshe as builder and protector of Lagash. His image is distinguished from that of the people by its size, as the king is shown presiding over the ceremonies of the foundation and inauguration of a shrine.

The inscription reads "Ur-Nanshe, king of Lagash, son of Gunidu, built the temple of Ningirsu; he built the temple of Nanshe; he built Apsubanda.” 

Just as the other rulers in Mesopotamia had begun in their own city-states, Ur-Nanshe began the monumental building and established a veritable dynasty. The next inscription, however, is important to ancient maritime history. It continues by saying that "boats from the (distant) land of Dilmun carried the wood (for him)." In keeping with the theory that Mesopotamia was devoid of an abundant wood supply, the perforated tablet of Ur-Nanshe is one of the oldest known references to the country of Dilmun, a trade center comprising the modern-day island of Bahrain, into Kuwait and possibly even a portion of modern-day Saudi Arabia. It is likely that even in the early-dynastic period, Dilmun served as entrepôt, or a transit port and waypoint for stone, precious stones, building timber and metals from Oman and the Indus Valley Civilization. Although it was located in the central-Persian Gulf, Dilmun also factored heavily in Sumerian mythology and was referred to as “the place where the sun rises" and "the Land of the Living.” It was also mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh as the place where the deified Sumerian hero of the flood, Utnapishtim, was taken by the gods to live forever.

A few more pieces of archaeological evidence come from the Royal Graves at Ur, a burial ground in the center of Ur that was used during the early dynastic period and on into the Akkadian empire. As the graves at Ur were unearthed, they revealed a wealth of luxury items, most of which would have required importation into Sumer. The expense of the buried items attest both to the city of Ur’s importance, and to the extent of maritime trade that had been conducted in the Persian Gulf leading up to the dynastic period. Even though the trade took place between civilizations that lay at either extreme of the Persian Gulf, we can’t necessarily assume that Sumer was heavily reliant on sail technology. Even though it’s quite possible that they had early sail technology by this time, little evidence has been found and long distance trade could have easily been conducted through the combination of many small journeys along the coast. Basically then, we just don’t know the precise point at which sails came into prevalent use in the Persian Gulf. Our evidence of boating from the early dynastic period is devoid of sail technology and contains a clay boat model, a bitumen model, and a beautifully shaped silver boat model. All three of these models from Ur are relatively similar in shape. They certainly show stylistic improvement and leave the door open to the interpretation that wood had come into wider use as boat-building material, especially in conjunction with our knowledge that Sumer had begun importing wood from their southern neighbors.

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The last thing that I want to touch on is a crucial outgrowth that owes its creation to both urbanization and to the growth of trade, but also gives us more insight into just what was going on in ancient Sumer. That outgrowth is something that Sumer is well known for, the invention of one of the world’s oldest writing systems. Trade and boat travel predated cuneiform by centuries, but it was mainly due to the expansion of trade and society that the invention of writing became possible. After all, as Sumer began to grow surplus grain thanks to their well irrigated plains, they then had to worry about keeping track of it as it was stored and then traded out to other cities and civilizations in exchange for goods that weren’t as plenteous in Mesopotamia. It didn’t take long for the system of record keeping to develop into a more versatile cuneiform system, something that we’ve already seen used on the perforated relief of Ur-Nanshe. The generic Sumerian term for a boat was má, while the term magur was often used to denote the sacred or ceremonial boats of the gods and kings. Even from the earliest of records, mankind had a proclivity for naming his boats, as some of the sacred magur boats had wonderful names: the god Enki’s boat was called ‘The Crown, the ibex of the deep,’ and the goddess Ninlil’s boat was known as ‘The Quay, the ornament of the current.’

Sumerian cuneiform records give us quite a bit of detail concerning their terms for different boats, their construction materials, and their uses. Not much is revealed in the way of construction techniques, but we know that they used reed boats, wooden boats, and boats that combined the two materials. Although boats were fairly similar in shape, if we go from the archaeological evidence, cuneiform texts reveal the multitude of uses to which the boats were put, including fishing, travel, transport of various goods, and even rental. The description of the boat depends largely on the type of text that is dealt with, as economic texts focus mainly on the boats size in capacity, while other texts focus on the boats purpose in society. The bitumen that we looked at in episode one is also a recurring theme in Sumerian texts as it played a huge role in the maritime industry throughout Sumer’s history. 

Be sure to come back for episode three where we’ll meet the conqueror Sargon of Akkad and trace the rise and fall of trade in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea up until the emergence of the Hyksos. We’ll also take more detailed looks at a few texts from Mesopotamia including one text about the journey of Sumerian moon-god Nanna-Suen.

Until next time, fair winds and following seas. Thanks for listening to the Maritime History Podcast.

Sources

• Bitumen boat model, British Museum. [link]
• Bitumen boat model, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. [link]
• Carter, R.A., Watercraft, in A Companion to the Archaeology of the Near East 347 (D.T. Potts ed., 2012). [link]
• Casson, Lionel,  The Ancient Mariners: Seafarers and Sea Fighters of the Mediterranean in Ancient Times (1959).
• Clay boat model, British Museum. [link]
• Edens, Christopher, Dynamics of Trade in the Ancient Mesopotamian "World System," 94 American Anthropologist 118 (1992). [link]
• Fagan, Brian, Beyond the Blue Horizon: How the Earliest Mariners Unlocked the Secrets of the Ocean (2012).
• Johnstone, Paul, The Sea-craft of Prehistory (1980).
• Kramer, Samual N., The Sumerians: Their History, Culture and Character (1963).
• McGrail, Seán, Boats of the World: From the Stone Age to Medieval Times (2009).
• McGrail, Seán, Early Ships and Seafaring: Water Transport Beyond Europe (2015).
• Oriental Institute continues to support search for missing Iraqi artifacts a year after looting, University of Chicago Oriental Institute, 8 Apr. 2004. [link]
• Perforated relief of King Ur-Nanshe, Louvre. [link]
• Ur Digitization Project: May 2013 , Penn Museum Blog. [link]