Production and Producers
In early times most artifacts were made within the household, but by the late sixth millennium some were the specialist products of artisans who worked part or full time in a craft: Of these pottery has survived best, but there were probably others. The beginning of metallurgy also required some degree of specialization, at least by those who obtained and smelted copper ore, although smithing may have been practiced within the community. Specialization was well advanced by historical times, with some products being mass-produced in workshops where individuals had responsibilities for different parts of the production process: In pottery workshops, for example, the various tasks of preparing the clay, throwing the pots, and decorating them were probably undertaken by different people, managed by a supervisor. Texts reflect the range of occupations. Early examples of the Standard Professions List refer to jewelers, potters, smiths, and bakers, as well as various grades of official. In the town of Nuzi under the Mitanni, artisans included potters, glassmakers, leatherworkers, carpenters, stonemasons, and bronze and coppersmiths manufacturing tools, weapons, armor, and fittings for wheeled vehicles. Not all artifacts were made by specialists; households would probably make their own reed baskets, their own wooden tools, and perhaps their own workaday pottery; wool might also be spun and textiles woven at home.
The status of artisans varied with time, region, and craft. In Alalakh, for instance, lapidaries, masons, and carpet makers enjoyed a higher status than weavers or potters. In the first millennium young slaves were sometimes apprenticed to learn a craft. Artisans might also use slaves to undertake the menial tasks involved in their work, such as preparing clay or stoking furnaces and kilns. Although most artisans were not slaves, they were often employed as servants for life by a temple or king and were at the disposal of their patron, obliged to work wherever he required. They might be sent to places within a kingdom to undertake particular commissions or be lent or given to foreign rulers. It was expected that they would be well treated, but many became homesick or unhappy with their conditions and occasionally they fled; conversely, artisans who had been lent to a ruler might be induced to stay with their new patron instead of returning home, to the dissatisfaction of their original master. Some of the acrimonious correspondence between Shamshi-Adad and his son Yasmah-Addu, viceroy of Mari, concerned skilled people who had fled to the easygoing conditions of Yasmah-Addu's court and had not been sent back.
There are some representations of artisans making textiles and working stone or wood, and occasionally the artifacts in burials suggest the occupation of the person buried there. A few workshops have been confidently identified, such as one at Eshnunna that belonged to a sculptor: They are recognized from clues such as half-finished objects, pieces that went wrong (such as the kiln full of abandoned ill-fired pottery at fifth-millennium Tell Ziyadeh), equipment such as tools, workbenches, and kilns, working debris such as flint chips and glass or metal slag, and materials for recycling. Pots filled with salvaged materials such as scrap metal, broken stone objects, and old seals whose surface would be ground down for reworking have been found in a number of sites. Since many materials were imported, little was wasted. Workshops might be scattered throughout a settlement or concentrated in one part of the town or in an area outside it, such as the OB terra-cotta plaque production site in the Diqdiqqeh area northeast of Ur, situated on a canal (supplying both transport and the water needed for mixing clay). While some craft activities were undertaken in large establishments, such as the temple textile "factories," others might be performed by individuals on their own small premises: An Uruk text, for example, refers to an amount of gold issued to a goldsmith, the finished object to be returned in five days' time. Workshops that produced noxious by-products, such as potting and metalworking, were often located on the outskirts of settlements, but the maintainance of external workshops outside the city, and sometimes deep in the countryside, required stable political conditions.
Art and Technology
The modern distinction between artisans and artists was not one made by the people of ancient Mesopotamia. Objects were valued mainly for their materials and their significance, though skill was appreciated and an object's quality contributed to its fitness for the purpose for which it was created. Materials such as precious metals, glass or glazed brick, and alabaster and other lustrous stones enhanced buildings and objects by imparting light, radiance, and brilliance to them, qualities that reflected the divine. That there were skill and artistry can be seen in many media: the exquisite craftsmanship of the jewelry from the royal tombs of third-millennium Ur and eighth-century Nimrud, the miniature perfection of some of the engraved seals, the drama and sensitivity of the lion-hunt reliefs from Nineveh (see photo p. 106), the power and realism of the bronze head of an Akkadian king, or the quality of the ivory depiction of a woman at a window that has earned it the nickname "Mona Lisa." Expertise was appreciated, but there was no linguistic distinction made between artists, artisans, and those with other skills such as cooks and physicians. Nevertheless, the quality of workmanship could increase the worth of an object beyond the value of its materials by as much as a third. Much of the credit for the creation of fine objects went to the designer rather than the artisan who executed the design. Those who commissioned the work, such as kings or priests, were often closely involved in the design themselves, and the god himself might be consulted on proposed details of a divine image via an oracle. Workers were often defined by the material they worked rather than the type of artifacts they produced. For instance a jeweler would make not only beads and ornaments but also vessels and figures of precious metals, as well as decorating furniture with sheet gold. Workshops might be used by a variety of workers with a shared interest in particular equipment, such as a furnace for heating glass and metal. On the other hand, artifacts that were made of different materials were often submitted to a series of workshops for the individual elements to be incorporated: Chariots, for example, were constructed by carpenters, wheelwrights, leatherworkers or basket weavers, and bronze smiths.
Many technological innovations, including advances in metallurgy and pottery manufacture, were invented by the people of Mesopotamia. Others, such as developments in glassworking around 700 b. c.e., also took place on Mesopotamian soil but were likely to have been the work of foreign craftsmen taken captive in the Assyrian wars.
The secrets of the artisan were closely guarded. Surviving technological texts contain an admonition to the initiate reader not to allow the noninitiate access to the information that "belongs to the tabooed things of the great gods" (Lamberg-Karlovsky 1993 quoting Saggs 1962). To this end recipes for the manufacture of glass and glazes, for example, abound in jargon that is difficult to penetrate. Often trade secrets and skills were handed down through families, with children being trained by their parents to pursue the same craft; long-established families of carpenters, metalworkers, and goldsmiths are known, and it has been suggested that myopia, which is associated with exceptionally good near vision, was a inherited disability that benefitted seal-cutters, given the tiny scale at which they worked.
World History
