The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire (46 page)

For the next few centuries, at a time when Halaf pottery was reaching its peak popularity at northern villages such as Arpachiyah, the architects of Eridu continued to build temples. Significantly, however, they do not seem to have built tholoi like their Northern Mesopotamian counterparts. And while they could not have been ignorant of what Halaf potters were producing, they continued to pursue their own Southern Mesopotamian painting style, referred to by Oates as ‘Ubaid 2.

By the time Temple 11 of Eridu was built, its architects had adopted the decorative pilasters, buttresses, and recesses that would become standard on Mesopotamian temples. Temple 11 had a central chamber more than 40 feet long. Similar to several of the earlier temples, it had ash from burnt offerings on its podium. Its pottery, defined by Oates as ‘Ubaid 3, dated to perhaps 6,000 years ago.

Sometime between the building of Temple 9 and the building of Temple 8, the architects of Eridu began to create temples like those of Level XIII at Tepe Gawra. Temple 8 had walls more than two feet thick and displayed a long narrow cella flanked by smaller rooms.

One of the most nearly complete temples in the sequence at Eridu was Temple 7 (
Figure 43, bottom
). Measuring 65 by 49 feet, it had been built on a mud-brick platform nearly five feet high. Its four corners were oriented to the cardinal directions. Seven steps provided access to the main door, which was on the southeast side. Near the southern corner of the building was a second door, which may have been a private entrance for the priests who served the temple. This private door led directly to the altar end of the cella. Worshippers using the main door, on the other hand, would have had to wait in an antechamber before entering the cella. Scattered around the clay podium of Temple 7 were fish bones that may have been the remains of burnt offerings. All in all, the ground plan of Temple 7 at Eridu was remarkably close to the plan of the northern temple in Level XIII at Tepe Gawra (compare
Figure 41
).

Temple 7 and its successor, Temple 6, were associated with pottery whose style of painting was called ‘Ubaid 4 by Oates. This was the final stage in the development of the ‘Ubaid style, and there were now strong similarities between the pottery vessels of Eridu and Gawra. Particularly similar were the incense burners, a number of which were found in Temple 6 at Eridu. In other words the evidence suggests that Northern and Southern Mesopotamia were largely on the same page when it came to ritual architecture and pottery.

A Possible Fishermen’s Ward

In an effort to learn more about the residential architecture of Tell Abu Shahrain, Safar carried out a series of excavations at some distance from the ritual buildings. Most residences seemed to have been built of mud-bricks similar to those used in the temples. A residential ward less than 90 yards southeast of the ziggurat, however, was different. The ‘Ubaid 3 residences in this ward, built around the time of Temples 11 through 9, had reed walls plastered on both sides with a thick layer of clay. They were, in other words, the Mesopotamian equivalent of the reed-and-clay houses of Mexico and Peru.

Safar found it significant that these reed-and-clay houses contained none of the vitrified clay sickles described earlier in this chapter. The reed houses did, however, contain two dozen fishing-net weights, as well as significant accumulations of fish bone. Safar and Lloyd therefore suspected that they had uncovered a residential ward of families that specialized in taking fish and waterfowl from the marshes and river channels of the lower Euphrates. It was not clear whether this type of house was associated with a separate ethnic group or only an occupational specialty.

The ‘Ubaid Cemetery at Eridu

In the course of their excavations outside the temple area, Safar and Lloyd also uncovered a cemetery of the ‘Ubaid 4 period, roughly contemporaneous with Temple 6. The area chosen for the cemetery lay near the northwest outskirts of the village. The archaeological crew had time to excavate only 193 burials. Safar estimated that the cemetery might have included four or five times that many.

By far the greatest number of graves had been excavated down to the clean sand below the village. A kind of rectangular box was then created around the corpse by building four mud-brick walls. The deceased lay full length on the clean sand layer, accompanied by his or her grave offerings. The box was then filled with earth and sealed with a mud-brick lid.

Most graves contained only one individual. There were, however, a significant number of family burials, cases in which a mud-brick box had been reopened so that the husband or wife of the original occupant could be added. Occasionally the body of a child accompanied one or both parents. More often, however, children were given their own small brick boxes and offerings of miniature pottery.

Exceptions to the normal burial ritual included a number of individuals laid to rest without brick boxes. Safar believed that these burials might represent people “of more humble social status.” Burial 97 was also unusual. It consisted of the complete skeleton of an adult, accompanied by a dozen skulls from other people.

In the Eridu cemetery it was not uncommon to find burials accompanied by a substantial “table service” of dishes, cups, chalices, beakers, or spouted flasks. The beakers were among the finest products of the ‘Ubaid 4 potter. Almost as thin as an eggshell, they had a gracefully flaring rim and horizontal bands of painted motifs.

Many burials wore bead necklaces or bracelets, and one (believed to be a woman) had an ornamental belt and the beaded fringe from a long-disintegrated skirt. One adult man was accompanied by the clay model of a sailboat, with a socket for the mast and holes for the stays. Burial 185 tugged at Seton Lloyd’s heart because it contained a youth 15 to 16 years old, accompanied by his faithful dog; the dog had even been buried with a bone near its mouth.

In the 1980s archaeologists Henry Wright and Susan Pollock reanalyzed the ‘Ubaid burials at Eridu. They found no conclusive evidence for differences in rank. Wright and Pollock caution, however, that only 20–25 percent of the cemetery has ever been excavated. Their caution is wise, given what we saw earlier at Yarim Tepe in Northern Mesopotamia.

Recall that at Yarim Tepe, the highly ranked and “ordinary” individuals were not even buried in the same cemetery. The shaft-and-chamber tombs with the finest sumptuary goods were found at Yarim Tepe I. Most ordinary graves (including an Eridu-like family grave with two adults and a child) were found at Yarim Tepe II. There is thus no guarantee that the graves Safar excavated reflect Eridu’s full range of social categories.

Now let us consider another reason for caution, based on what we saw among the Apa Tani. The Apa Tani had an aristocracy without chiefs; they were led by a council of wealthy men drawn from aristocratic clans. A cemetery of Apa Tani aristocrats would include many wealthy clansmen; we doubt that an archaeologist could determine which ones had been council members.

Making the archaeologist’s task more difficult is the fact that some aristocratic Apa Tani clans had adopted former slaves as poor relations. Such poor relations might have been treated like Safar’s “people of more humble social status” at Eridu.

We would be skeptical of any claim that Southern ‘Ubaid society had no differences in rank. We would not, however, be surprised to learn that Southern ‘Ubaid society had forms of rank that were hard to detect archaeologically.

A Secular Public Building at Tell Uqair

Fifty miles south of Baghdad, and roughly equidistant from the Tigris and Euphrates, lay the ‘Ubaid 4 village of Tell Uqair. Its ruins consisted of two mounds, A and B, separated by a linear depression through which a canal might once have run.

Mound A of Tell Uqair, the older of the two, covered about 12 acres. Apparently founded on marshy ground, its deepest levels had thick layers of reed or bulrush matting. Some 5,600 years ago it had grown to be a substantial ‘Ubaid village with streets and mud-brick houses. Here Seton Lloyd and Fuad Safar recovered many of the chipped flint hoes and vitrified clay sickles that one might expect in an agricultural community. They also, however, found stone weights for fishing nets and impressive deposits of freshwater mussel shells.

The walls of the ‘Ubaid houses at Uqair were usually only one mud-brick wide. Across the main street from the ordinary residences, however, Lloyd and Safar discovered a more impressive building with walls almost three feet thick. Its mud-bricks were laid not in simple horizontal courses but interdigitated in order to strengthen the walls. This building may have had more than ten rooms; some were long and narrow, but there was nothing to suggest the ground plan, podium, or altar of a temple (
Figure 44
).

Archaeologists believe that this massive structure, located on what may have been the main street of Tell Uqair, was a secular public building. To be sure, we do not know what kinds of activities took place inside. The importance of the building lies in its hint that ‘Ubaid society had both secular and religious hierarchies. As we have seen in previous chapters, even the partial separation of these two paths to power could be a source of dynamic rivalry, an engine that drove political ambition.

Elite Houses at Tell Abada

The Diyala River, a major tributary of the Tigris, begins in the high mountains of Iran. Descending the long parallel ranges of the Zagros, it emerges from the piedmont and runs west to the Tigris. The Diyala region lies near the transition between Northern and Southern Mesopotamia. Restricted to ten inches of rain a year, the farmers of the Diyala relied on the irrigation of wheat and barley. The nearby Zagros piedmont provided pastures for sheep and goats.

Irrigation of the Diyala basin was under way in Samarran times, and by the late ‘Ubaid period a few villages exceeded 14 acres in size. Tell Abada, 20 feet deep and covering about seven acres, would be considered larger than average. During the late 1970s archaeologist Sabah Abboud Jasim was able to excavate an extraordinary 80 percent of the site.

From roughly 7,000 to 6,000 years ago, Tell Abada had grown emmer wheat, bread wheat, and barley and had raised sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs. With ready access to the abundant flint sources of the Zagros Mountains, its farmers had harvested their cereals with flint-bladed sickles rather than the overfired clay versions used on the lower Euphrates.

FIGURE 44.
   Not all public buildings of the ‘Ubaid period in Southern Mesopotamia were temples. One public building at Tell Uqair, found across the street from House A, lacks the ground plan of a temple; it may have had a secular function. This building’s full dimensions are unknown, but its walls were almost three feet thick.

The village of Level II, dating to 6,500 years ago, was especially well preserved. Here Jasim found 11 independent residential units separated by streets and narrow alleys. These were clearly houses for large extended families and showed repetitive use of a module consisting of small rooms surrounding T-shaped patios (
Figure 45
). While only one story had been preserved, there were stairways leading suggestively upward, implying that there had once been a second story.

One of the largest houses had a buttressed outer wall and three T-shaped patios or courtyards, flanked by 20 to 25 rooms. It also had a large backyard for outdoor activities, walled off in such a way that it could only be entered from the house. An antechamber gave indirect access to the residence, providing additional privacy.

The artifacts from Tell Abada reinforce the idea that we are dealing with families of privilege: included were six elegant scepters, polished from fine marble, which must have been symbols of office or rank. There were also stone cosmetic palettes, reflecting the kind of personal grooming one expects from elite families.

It is not surprising that the painted pottery of Level II was of craft-specialist quality. What is most interesting is that the pottery reflected two schools of painting. According to Joan Oates, it is clear that during this period in the Diyala region “there were potters working in both the Halaf and ‘Ubaid traditions, perhaps even side by side in the same villages.” This is neither our first nor last hint that some large prehistoric societies were conversant with the distinctive art styles of more than one ethnic group.

The Tripartite Building at Tell el-’Oueili

Thirty miles north of Eridu, and on the opposite side of the Euphrates, lay the ’Ubaid village of Tell el-’Oueili. The region of el-’Oueili is one that would have been irrigated by canals running east from the great river. The main cereal recovered by excavator Jean-Louis Huot was six-rowed barley. More than half of the identified animal bones belonged to cattle, a beast possibly used for plowing as well as meat. The villagers of el-’Oueili also took advantage of the carp, catfish, mullets, and occasional sharks to be found in the local watercourses.

In the uppermost level of the site, Huot discovered an interesting two-story building. Its walls were not only heavily buttressed but also supported by caissons and a terrace wall. The building’s upper story was divided into three symmetrical rooms, each measuring 31 by 9 feet. The lower story was divided into dozens of what were most likely grain-storage rooms.