City territory was considered sacred since the Sumerian believed it was the property of the city god, so that the main deity of Lagash was only called by the name ‘‘The Lord of Girsu,’’ Girsu being the quarter where the religious buildings of the city stood. Living there was a happy privilege. The city itself was a sanctuary that went back to primeval time; it follows that even the wars between two cities in the Early Dynastic Period were understood as hostilities between deities; so Nin-Girsu came into conflict with Siara, the god of Umma, as described in the text about the frontier of Sara (Sollberger and Kupper 1971: 91-3).
If the city suffered misfortunes or was invaded, when the inhabitants ran away and religious and economic practices collapsed, it was supposed that the city god caused this situation. According to the conventional wisdom the city was then neglected by its deities. It happened to Akkad: Inanna left her city for unknown reasons and brought about its downfall. Also this is the view of the Lamentation on the destruction of Eridu (Green 1978: section 6). The poet regrets that all the gods were compelled to run away and each of them lamented when he left his city (Michalowski 1989a: 201). A later text says the Guti brought damage and calamity to the people of Mesopotamia, and the chronicler blames them for not being able to honor the gods and not conducting the rituals and sacrifices (Grayson 1975: no. 19).
In order to be characterized as a city, a town had to have the essences, in Sumerian called the m e, from its city god. The word m e refers to an idea close to an essence and cannot be accurately translated into a modern language. The m e is a notion that may be more philosophical than religious, and it is certainly complicated for rational minds. These m e were numerous since they concerned any aspect of social life, public and religious offices, crafts of all kinds, breeding and farming. They could not be destroyed or distorted; trouble with the m e could result from the presence of enemy invaders in the city or from the animosity of the gods. The city could lose its own position and endure many misfortunes. The inhabitants ran away, houses and buildings were wiped out, and religious and economic practices disappeared. But fortunately the m e could be brought back to the city by a king who gained the favor of the gods and drove away the enemies. Such a king could rebuild the city, especially the temples, and the population would return; the city might recover its freedom and prosperity. Ishme-Dagan, for example, is supposed to have rebuilt and restored the city of Uruk (Green 1984: paragraph 112).
Though the Sumerian cities showed a sense of identity, they were already in early times aware of being part of a vast group. Already in the Early Dynastic II/III period, some documents found in Fara, ancient Shuruppak, record lists of workers with their foremen who lived in Shuruppak but came from other cities including Kish, Uruk, Adab, Lagash, and Umma, but never for some reason from Ur or Eridu, the cities farthest south. It is specified in the tablets that these workers lived in Sumer (K e - e n - g i) (Steible and Yildiz 1993). All this goes to show that the land of Sumer was already in very ancient times an area conceived as a separate place.
The kings of Akkad, by raiding into the Sumerian cities and by destroying the walls and making their populations obey, weakened the idea of independence but, paradoxically, consolidated the sense of unity in the country. The religion slowly became unified. Enki, Nanna, Inanna, and other gods were made welcome in all the cities and formed a ‘‘pantheon’’ which Enlil, the god of Nippur, dominated. This pantheon had also welcomed deities such as Sin, Ishtar, and Siamas, whose Semitic origin is unquestionable. That is why some gods had two names: the sun god was known as Sumerian Utu and Akkadian Samas.
When Utu-hegal succeeded in ejecting the Gutian army from Sumer, he announced that the independence of Sumer was restored: ‘‘the kingship came back into its hands.’’ Under the reign of his successors, the Ur III kings, religious unity increased and in the same way political unity grew. These kings proclaimed themselves ‘‘kings of Ur’’ as well as ‘‘kings of Sumer and Akkad.’’ They subdued the country of Sumer and some northern towns in Akkad. They appointed civil governors and a commanding military officer in each city. Their armies kept threatening and rebellious peoples at a distance in the east as well as the west.
The Ur kings established a very developed bureaucratic administration that is revealed by large numbers of documents, lists of people subject to forced labor, of craftsmen, and of animals; the texts reveal constant close watch over textile workshops and metal workers. We also see a good example of how unified Sumer worked, the system in which each major city had to supply in a monthly rotation animals to the central cattle-pen at Drehem for sacrificial purposes (Hallo 1960: 88).
Later, in the disturbances of the nineteenth century, in wars and sacks of the towns over which the poets lamented in elegies, we notice that the following cities belonged to the country of Sumer: Ur, Eridu, and Umma, and towards the north Nippur and Adab, and much further north Kish and Kazallu. In the collection of temple hymns poems were dedicated to the sanctuaries we think were situated in the traditional territory of Sumer. From the south to the north Eridu, Ur, Uruk, Kesh, Larsa, Lagash, Umma, Nippur, Adab, Isin, Kish, Sippar, and Akkad were commemorated. The kernel of this text is dated to the Sargonic period. This shows that the people were early aware of a Sumero-Akkadian ethnic group’s territory, although hymn number 8, mentioning the king of Ur, Shulgi, is obviously an addition inserted later into the text (Sjoberg and Bergmann 1969).
World History
