SUMMARY

By 2350 BC, the city was already firmly established in southern Mesopotamia as the center of social, economic, and political life. Owned by the gods, administered for them by kings, Sumerian cities controlled their regional agriculture and water supplies, promoted industries, and participated in the long-distance trade that ensured provisions of raw materials unavailable locally. The cities themselves were fortified nuclei located on agricultural land and their life-giving watercourses. Dominating the city, the temple of the tutelary deity was the city’s original religious, economic, and administrative center. During the ED period the royal palace first appeared, the focus of the rising rival power of the earthly ruler. The town would be further divided into neighborhoods by canals, streets, and walls, but not according to any general pattern repeated from one Sumerian city to the next. Social and economic aspects of the early Sumerian city include — and here we can remind ourselves of Childe’s list of ten criteria for the true city — a hierarchical society; a variety of non-agricultural occupations; the development of scientific observation, especially to assist agricultural practice; an expanded range of monumental architecture; figural art with extensive royal and religious imagery; and writing, by 2350 BC recording not only the economic data that inspired its initial development but also myth, ritual, and historical and contemporary events. If the Neolithic period gave rise to the embryonic city, in southern Mesopotamia in the fourth and third millennia BC the full-fledged city was born.