Uruk

Uruk (biblical Erech, modern Warka), Mesopotamian city located near a former branch of the Euphrates. It is the oldest city in the world and, in archaeological terms, its greatest importance pertains to the beginnings of urban life and state government, and the development of writing. These developments represent the foundations of Mesopotamian culture, which continued unbroken over the next 3,000 years.

The site was first inhabited in the 5th millennium bc, when several villages were established. These settlements grew and, during the Uruk period (4000-3100 bc), coalesced to form a single city which, by 3300 bc, covered about 2 sq km (• sq mi) and contained a population of perhaps 40,000. By 2800 bc (during the Early Dynastic Period of southern Mesopotamia), the city spread out to cover 5.5 sq km (2 sq mi). By comparison, Athens of the Classical period was only half the size of Uruk, and imperial Rome only twice the size.

Excavations carried out by the German Oriental Society, which began in 1912 and continued into the 1990s, uncovered the remains of the oldest part of the settlement: these were two temple precincts, the Eanna precinct (sacred to Inanna, the Sumerian equivalent of Ishtar) and the Abu ziggurat. The Eanna precinct contained a number of different buildings, many of which were set on individual platforms. These structures could be large; one covered an area 80 by 50 m (about 260 by 165 ft), the size of a football pitch. Many were decorated with coloured clay cones inserted in the walls in such a way as to create geometric patterns. The last phase of the Abu ziggurat consists of the White Temple, an impressive structure faced with bright white gypsum plaster rising from a massive mudbrick platform.

The temple precincts probably formed the political centre of the state government of Uruk and were doubtless also important in the economic life of the city. Specialist craftsmen made goods for officials of the temple (and others in the city), including mass-produced pottery, metal objects, and carved stone seals, ritual vessels, and statuary. Traders, perhaps employed by the temples, travelled into the mountains of Iran and Turkey to acquire exotic materials to supply the craftsmen.

The invention of the cuneiform writing system can be traced in various levels of the Eanna precinct dating from the second half of the 4th millennium bc. The script was developed to assist a nascent bureaucracy in recording the economic affairs of the temple.