Introduction
Settlement studies provide an important tool for understanding past societies and their organization. The raw materials for such studies are mainly the distribution and nature of artifacts collected from both excavations and surface surveys; recently this evidence has been supplemented by studies of the environment and of the micromorphology of sites. The Gulf War of 1991 and the decade of sanctions isolated Iraq from the many recent advances in settlement archaeology and cut short several projects focused on the study of entire urban layouts. The fall of Saddam Hussein now offers Iraqi archaeologists the opportunity to become familiar with new techniques, but the utter devastation in the aftermath of the war of liberation could well mean that little survives for them to investigate.
Earlier regional surveys shed considerable light on prehistoric land use and settlement hierarchy but far less on those of the historical period, although for this there is also some documentary evidence such as land-sale and inheritance documents, and kudurrus and other records of land grants. The settlement terms used in Mesopotamian texts are often ambiguous: Both the Sumerian word uru and its Akkadian equivalent, alum, denote a settlement regardless of size, from farmstead to city, giving a valuable insight into the Mesopotamian worldview, but providing no information on settlement hierarchy, for which it is necessary to turn to archaeological evidence regarding the size, layout, facilities, and relative positions of the settlements within an area. However, erosion has removed traces of some settlements, dunes and alluvium have buried others, and deep tells mask earlier occupation in long-lived settlements, making it impossible for the picture of settlement patterns through time to be complete.
Spatial analysis within settlements can be a potent tool for understanding social organization, but the vast scale of tells means that only in relatively short-lived sites, such as Abu Salabikh, can whole settlements be studied. The spectacular remains of palaces and temples have attracted most archaeological attention, and domestic architecture has been investigated in only a handful of sites, such as Old Babylonian Nippur. The documentary record is also patchy and not always straightforward. These factors can produce a skewed picture of settlement patterns.
Settlement Surveys and Settlement Patterns
Mesopotamia was an urban land par excellence. Its literature firmly contrasts the ordered and civilized existence of the fortunate denizens of town or city with the lot of their uncouth pastoral neighbors who "dwell in tents" or the turmoil of the soldier's life in camp and on the battlefield. Southern Mesopotamia especially was heavily urbanized, with cities and towns so close together that they were intervisible. The classic study of the landscape around Uruk by Adams and Nissen (1972) provides the most detailed picture of the changing pattern in the distribution and nature of settlements through time. Environmental reconstructions indicate that southern Mesopotamia during the fifth to early third millennia b. c.e. developed from a landscape dissected by small watercourses to one with a few much larger rivers, branches of the Euphrates and to a lesser extent the Tigris. Thereafter the branches of the Euphrates shifted their course on occasion, but the pattern otherwise changed less drastically.
Small early settlements were scattered through the landscape, taking advantage of favorable situations along streams and on marsh edges. By the late fourth millennium, larger settlements were emerging in various locations in Babylonia, Uruk being the first to attain the size and complexity that qualify it to be called a city. At this time the area surveyed by Adams and Nissen contained the city of Uruk, around 120-200 hectares in extent, and 107 villages. In the population explosion of the subsequent Jemdet Nasr and Early Dynastic I periods, Uruk grew to ca. 400 hectares; four sizable towns of more than 50 hectares appeared, along with some twenty-four small towns and around 140 villages. The increasing population brought competition between settlements, particularly for water, which was the critical resource in Babylonia, and during the later ED period the greater part of the population in the Uruk survey area moved into towns and cities, which were now defended with walls. In the ED II-III periods Nissen and Adams identified only seventeen villages and six small towns, while Umma developed into a city and there were now eight large and three medium-sized towns.
The Babylonian political, economic, and social landscape now consisted of city-states set along the river branches, with a network of irrigation channels the extent and sophistication of which was dependent on the power of the state to organize their construction and maintenance and to mobilize the necessary workforce. The uncultivated steppe outside their territories was home to pastoralists whose nomadic lifestyle and "barbaric" ways were seen as strongly contrasted to the civilized life of the city dweller or rural inhabitant of the city-state. The villages of the latter remained few in number, the majority of the population living in the city or its unwalled suburbs. The city-states vied with each other to control larger areas but maintained their identity even during periods when they were incorporated into larger empires.
With the fall of the Ur III Empire, the Uruk survey area saw a decline in the number of settlements and in the size of those that remained. After the reign of the Old Babylonian king Samsu-iluna, the economic and environmental decline that had been sweeping over the region finally brought the virtual abandonment of the south, and northern Babylonia, to which the focus of settlement had shifted in the early second millennium, became and remained the heartland of the region. In the later second millennium the south saw some local revival under the Kassites who founded new settlements and resettled earlier ones, but the scale of occupation was and remained far below that of the region's third-millennium heyday, and a greater proportion of the population lived in rural settlements. From the ninth century Assyrian kings forcibly resettled prisoners of war in depopulated areas, although only in the final century under the Neo-Babylonian Empire did the region see real urban regeneration. Investment in irrigation canals improved local productivity, and the area around Uruk itself was extensively developed as state-run date plantations; the surrounding marshy region provided rich pasturage as well as fish, waterfowl, reeds, and other resources, but favored dispersed settlement.
The Uruk region was precocious in its early development; surveys in the region around Ur and Eridu show substantial urbanization considerably later, in the mid-third millenium, whereas in the Diyala region, although some towns and cities developed, the bulk of the population continued to live in villages. Elsewhere in Sumer and in Akkad the pattern of early development was equally varied, but from the later third millennium most of the south underwent a similar pattern of growth and decline to that experienced by Uruk.
In Assyria, where arable land was more widespread but less intensively productive, settlement was more dispersed and population growth slower. Urbanism came later here and was never as well developed as in Babylonia. Although there were a number of towns and cities, some in the Neo-Assyrian Empire being on a huge scale, the bulk of the population was rural and the landscape was not carved up between city-states. Nevertheless in Assyria, as in Babylonia, the notion of the city as the focus of civilized existence was central to the Mesopotamian view of the world, reflecting a country that was much more heavily urbanized than any other early states, such as those of the Greeks.
The ebb and flow of population and settlement were dependent on both environmental and political conditions, particularly in regions on the margins such as the foothills of the Zagros. The drastic contraction and abandonment of settlement in southern Babylonia and its subsequent reoccupation at a lower density is only the most extreme example of the dramas played out in many parts of Mesopotamia over the centuries. Natural fluctuations in the availability of water from river or rainfall and changes in temperature and vegetation affected the viability and density of settlement generally; in the areas where conditions were more marginal and settlement more precarious, these effects were more strongly felt. In addition, these areas were more vulnerable to the depredations of similarly affected nomads living on their doorstep. Strong central government could to some extent counteract these effects, constructing networks of irrigation channels and long feeder canals linking cities and their hinterland with distant sources of water. Kings boasted of such endeavors, which brought civilization and prosperity to hitherto unsettled land, for example Sargon II who created canals and orchards for his new capital of Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad). Governments and major landowners could take financial risks not open to the small private entrepreneur, bringing marginal land into cultivation, often for specialized crops such as timber; the government could also provide military protection for new settlements and their fields against raiders. Conversely, the collapse of central authority would result in the reversion to smaller-scale economic units—rural settlements with little infrastructure, greatly at the mercy of environmental and climatic fluctuations and marauders. While major state and private landowners could weather some setbacks and tenants were able to move to other, more productive land, the small landowner was the first to suffer since all his investment of labor and resources was in his own land, and he stood and fell with it.
The City
Palaces and temples were the heart of the Mesopotamian city. In first-millennium Assyria these were generally close together on a citadel surrounded by a wall, situated in one corner of the city. In contrast, in Babylonian and earlier Assyrian cities, the palace and the temples were often located in different parts of the city: The temple precincts, which might be surrounded by their own separate walls, were at the city's heart, and palaces were constructed where an adequately sized piece of ground could be found, often on the outskirts of the city. Housing occupied much of the remaining area enclosed within the city wall, although cities and towns in the north seem to have been less densely settled than those in the south.
Walls had been built around the first cities, not merely for defense but also as a potent symbol of the city's power and prestige, and they remained a vital element of a city's design, while their destruction by enemies symbolized the city's loss of autonomy and vitality. They also divided city from countryside, although suburbs set among gardens and fields often grew up outside the walls. A biblical reference (Jonah 3:3) claimed that the Assyrian city of Nineveh was "three days' journey in breadth," indicating extensive suburbs. Villages within the city's territory might also have been regarded as part of the city. The later third-millennium Hurrian town of Tell Taya in the north, one of the few sites investigated as a whole, had an inner town of ca. 5 hectares enclosed within the city wall, with a further 2 hectares' extension. Dense suburbs covered a further 65 hectares, and more dispersed settlement in the surrounding 90 hectares was also part of the town.
Within the city itself there were often rivers or canals, sometimes with quays, parks, private gardens, and even fields, as well as areas of waste ground, particularly in periods when the city's population fell and only parts of the intramural city were occupied. At other times, however, the population rose and housing was at a premium, dwellings crammed close together (see photo p. 72), houses sharing party walls and sometimes subdivided. Estimating the population of the towns and cities is not easy. The extent of suburban occupation is hard to determine, as is the density of settlement inside
The remains of a substantial structure in the center of Uruk which can claim to be the world’s first city. Most early Mesopotamian architecture was of mud brick, a practical, cheap, and durable material but one that produced buildings that are not visually as impressive as the stone monuments of other regions. (Nik Wheeler/Corbis)
The walls. Even an accurate assessment of the extent of this occupation, however, only provides a starting point for population estimates, since the number of occupants in a house could vary and the houses themselves might or might not have more than one story. Census and tax records, which could be very helpful in answering such questions, are lacking, and only a few settlements have yielded some details of household composition. Different scholars, consequently, often produce widely different figures for a settlement's population at any given period. Nevertheless crude estimates of area give some impression of the huge scale of Mesopotamian urbanization. At its height, for example, Babylon covered around 1,000 hectares and Kalhu 325—compared with 225 hectares for Athens at the peak of its power. Uruk at the beginning of the ED period had an extent of 400 hectares.
Residential areas have been investigated in only a few towns and cities. The streets were generally unpaved and winding, although they could be uniform in width. Raised thresholds prevented the rubbish dumped in the streets from being washed into the houses by rain. These were built up repeatedly as the street level rose.
Town houses generally followed a plan that was widely adopted in the ancient Near East and is still usual in the region today. Architects' plans of some survive, from the later third millennium onward. The entrance passage led into a central courtyard, often offset or turning a corner so that the interior of the building was shielded from view and from the dust of the street outside. In the Mesopotamian climate, stiflingly hot for much of the year, the courtyard provided a welcome combination of fresh air, shade, and light, allowing much of life to be lived out of doors but in privacy. In Ur's houses, the courtyard floor sloped inward to a central drain, allowing rain to run off. Water jars, filled from the public wells, stood in one corner.
Houses could vary greatly in size. In the smallest, one room would be used for storage and the other for all the functions of normal domestic life, including cooking, washing, and sleeping. Larger houses had substantial blocks of rooms opening from three or four sides of the courtyard and might even have more than one courtyard; these were the homes either of wealthier families or of extended families. Guests were entertained in a public room facing the entrance to the courtyard. Mats were provided for them to sit on, with cushions and, at night, mattresses. Other rooms opening from the courtyard would include the kitchen, furnished with a quern for grinding grain, a hearth for cooking, and a bread oven; storerooms; sometimes a bathroom and perhaps a toilet—some were found in Ur; and in some houses, there were also stalls for animals. The private family rooms might also lead off the courtyard, or the house might have a second story on which these rooms were located, accessible from a stair and opening from a balcony supported on pillars around the edge of the courtyard. In the far south, the scarcity of wood for construction would have made it difficult to build houses with an upper story, and it is not established for certain that they existed here, although in Sippar farther to the north, legal documents referring to their lease makes it clear that upper stories were built. In the fifth century, after the fall of the Babylonian Empire, Herodotus speaks of houses in Babylon with three or four stories: These may well have existed here in earlier centuries, too.
Stairs, or alternatively a ladder, led also to the flat roof—a place to sleep in the heat of summer, to dry clothes or food for storage, and to carry out many other domestic activities. Some houses, particularly in second-millennium Ur, also included a private domestic shrine, with an altar and sometimes figurines of deities. It was not uncommon also to bury family members beneath the house floor.
The houses were generally constructed of mudbrick, although the foundations and lowest courses were often of the more durable baked brick in Babylonia or stone in Assyria. Floors were generally of beaten earth, but many were plastered, as were the walls. The few surviving traces of windows indicate that they had wooden frames and shutters made of reeds. Wooden beams supported the roof (see photo p. 60) and formed the intermediate floor in two-story buildings; in southern Mesopotamia wood was so valuable that doors and roofbeams appear as inheritance in wills. Wood was also used for the simple furniture of the houses, usually no more than a table, some chairs or stools, and one or two chests in which to store clothing and other household items. Cupboards and shelves might be built into the thickness of the walls. Cushions and rugs enlivened the house's appearance and contributed to its comfort, and on occasion there were pots of flowers.
Some houses seem to have included rooms that functioned as workshops. In Neo-Babylonian times at least, references to such places as "the city of metalworkers" shows that parts of the city might be given over to the practitioners of particular crafts. Evidence from the short-lived city of Mashkan Shapir indicates that particular craft activities could be both concentrated in individual locations and scattered throughout the settlement. Woolley claimed to have also identified shops; many scholars now think this unlikely. However the literature does record taverns; these were often also brothels, decorated therefore with erotic pictures and suggestive prayers to the goddess of love.
Although shops may not have existed, there may have been markets and other commercial activity in the open area immediately inside the city gates. These were probably also used for meetings of the ward assembly, and it was here that the garrison was stationed. Cities were divided into administrative wards (babtum), apparently corresponding to the city gates.
Housing continued in suburbs outside the city walls. Here also lay the karum, a term originally meaning "quay," the heart of trading activity, where merchants and other travelers from other cities and regions were accommodated. Other strangers included the nomads who often worked for or with the city dwellers while often retaining a separate identity. They dwelt in tents, in encampments outside the city walls that sometimes became permanent settlements, as for instance, around the city of Sippar, probably a port of trade.
Our knowledge of rural housing is far more limited, but some village dwellings have been excavated. Early Dynastic rural settlements had rectangular or sometimes round houses set within large compounds enclosed by a wall: These were probably the homes of extended families, structures being erected within the compound for each nuclear family as required. By the second millennium b. c.e., however, the evidence from two excavated rural sites, Haradum and Shaduppum (Tell Harmal), suggests that many villages had adopted the urban arrangement of contiguous courtyard houses.
The Palace
The palace (Sumerian e. gal, Akkadian ekallum) was the residence of the royal family in city-states and imperial capitals, such as Mari and Nineveh, and of governors in provincial cities and towns, such as Eshnunna. It was also an administrative, industrial, and economic center. A few buildings of the Uruk period, notably in the Eanna complex at Uruk itself, may have been the residences of the ruler or chief priest, but their function is uncertain. In the ED period a possible palace was situated beside the temples at Kish (palace A) and a much larger complex (Plano-convex Building) at some distance in another part of the city, and a possible palace was also found at Eridu. Most later cities probably contained a palace although very few have been excavated.
Palaces followed domestic architecture in being arranged around courtyards. At Eshnunna, the "Governor's Palace," dated around 2000 b. c.e., lies between the temple of Shusin and a similar but smaller private chapel, both of which could be entered either from the street or from inside the palace. An entrance near the temple led into a narrow set of guard rooms running the width of the palace, and from the far end the visitor entered a courtyard surrounded on two sides by rooms. On the right an entrance led into the throne room, which ran the length of the palace and from which a second courtyard was accessed. This became the standard layout of palaces: a suite of public rooms off an outer courtyard (babanu), an inner courtyard giving access to residential and service areas (bitanu), and a throne room used by the ruler as an audience chamber and the focus of propagandist decoration as early as ED times.
The palace at Mari followed the same division of areas but was much larger; built and added to over a period of three centuries, in its final form under Zimri-Lim it had around 260 ground-floor rooms and an extensive upper story. The archive here and the well-preserved structures that survive to a height of up to 5 meters make it the best-known example of early palace architecture. The entrance gate led through a series of rooms into the main courtyard, which gave access to the shrine of Ishtar and the great sanctuary in the southeast quarter of the palace and from which opened the gateway into the official quarters in the northwest. A corridor led from here into a large courtyard with an artificial palm tree of wood clad in bronze and silver at its center and a number of real palm trees. On the walls around the court were painted scenes including a sacrificial procession and, on the far wall under a colonnade, the investiture of the king. Beyond lay an antechamber with a statue of the goddess of the flowing vase and then the throne room. These constituted the public areas of the palace, where visitors would be received. The royal apartments occupied two parts of the rest of the palace: the chambers of the king and his staff and the separate apartments of the royal women. Elsewhere in the complex were kitchens, workshops in which a variety of crafts were practiced, including textile manufacture, administrative offices and archives, and a large number of storerooms, as well as mausoleums.
Other second-millennium palaces included those of King Sinkasid at Uruk, Shamshi-Adad at Shubat-Enlil, and the Kassite kings at Dur-Kurigalzu, and the governor's palace at Nuzi, which had more than a hundred rooms, including bathrooms and toilets. Wall paintings, mosaics, marble paving, stone sculptures, wall hangings, and other sumptuous fittings often adorned the palaces. Most magnificent were the first-millennium palaces of the Neo-Assyrian kings at Kalhu, Dur Sharrukin, and Nineveh, and the Neo-Babylonian kings in Babylon. The Assyrian palaces were situated in a separately walled citadel, alongside the major temples, with an adjoining complex of administrative buildings and housing for the elite. Kings often built themselves a new palace, competing in magnificence with those of their predecessors: The citadel at Kalhu housed palaces built by Ashurnasirpal (North-West Palace), Shalmaneser III, Adad-Nirari III, Tiglath-Pileser III (Central Palace), and
Esarhaddon (South-West Palace). Shalmaneser also built a separate Review Palace, or arsenal ("Fort Shalmaneser"), in a different part of the city. At Dur-Sharrukin, Sargon II built a monumental pillared entrance portico (bit hilani) to his palace, following the fashion of the lands to the west: It had cedar pillars supported on the backs of bronze lions. Like earlier palaces, those of the Assyrian kings had outer courtyards and rooms for public functions, including reception rooms, storerooms, administrative offices, and the residential quarters of officials. These courtyards led through doorways flanked by gigantic stone statues of winged bulls and lions, originally painted, into the throne room, dominated by the throne on its monolithic stone slab. The largest and most magnificent room of the palace, the throne room was decorated with reliefs depicting the king victorious in war and successful on the hunting field, monumental enterprises such as the creation and transport of the huge statues, and processions of tribute bearers and religious scenes, while the floors may have been covered with fine carpets. Reliefs, glazed wall tiles, and wall paintings might also ornament other major and private rooms within the palace.
Beyond the public apartments lay the bitanu, which included the harem. Domestic suites with well-appointed living room, cupboards, and bathroom make up the bitanu of Ashurnasirpal's palace at Kalhu, perhaps the most completely preserved example. Vaulted underground chambers beneath the private apartments here seem to have been the treasuries of the royal ladies, and elsewhere in the palace were small stone-paved strongrooms, which were only accessible through other rooms and which could be barred. A number of princesses' burials were found beneath the domestic quarters of the Kalhu palace. Other rooms within the bitanu included kitchens.
At Babylon, the main palace complex lay beside the Ishtar Gate. To the south of the city wall was the "Southern Citadel," five courtyards with attached reception rooms and the throne room opening from the middle courtyard, perhaps the scene of the biblical Belshazzar's Feast. The facade of the throne room was decorated with a magnificent frieze of glazed bricks, depicting lions at the bottom, stylized palm trees above, and crenellations at the top, with geometric floral patterns filling in the rest of the space. Blue enameled bricks adorned the upper walls of the palace; the doors were of cedar and other luxury timbers, such as sissoo and ebony; and gold, silver, lapis lazuli, and ivory were also used in the construction of the palace. Numerous administrative and residential rooms, storerooms, and workshops made up the rest of the substantial complex. The Western Outwork, a massive mudbrick construction, protected the palace against erosion by the river flowing by its side. Immediately to the north, outside the wall, was the "Northern Palace," of which two courtyards survive. Its eastern wall ran along the Processional Way and was decorated outside with glazed brick friezes of lions. Among the remains in the Northern Palace was found Nebuchadrezzar's museum, a collection of earlier antiquities made by Nebuchadrezzar and his successors (see photo p. 24). Finally in the angle of the outer city wall at the extreme north of the city was the Summer Palace, of which the main surviving element is the system of ventilation shafts that enabled the palace to be kept cool in summer.
Literary and pictorial evidence shows that private gardens were incorporated into or attached to palaces: These contained pavilions and a great variety of fruit trees, as well as plants and trees imported from conquered or more distant lands, including such exotica as incense bushes and cotton plants, and might also have housed some small animals such as deer.
World History
