Urban uprisings in Southern Mesopotamia (24th – 18th century B.C.)

Abstract

The history of Great Mesopotamia in early antiquity was to a large extent shaped by the interaction of two different cultural and economic groups that inhabited the South (Southern Mesopotamia) and the North (Northern Mesopotamia and northwestern Syria) of the region. The early model of social organization formed in the fourth millennium BC in the South was that of a city as an egalitarian self-ruling economic system. At the same time, centralized territorial structures of the North were governed by hereditary royal power. For almost 1,500 years, when the two models co-existed, the North attempted repeatedly to include the southern cities in its own centralized system. But these attempts at formal integration for two societies with different systems of power, production and distribution were unsuccessful. The urban population of the South, the old elite of the cities in the first place, responded to integrationist attempts with recurrent uprisings (24 th , 23 rd and 18 th centuries BC). The uprisings were being severely suppressed by the northern central power, but its slightest weakening triggered the processes of disintegration of newly made administrative structures and re-establishing of local power institutions. The cities of the Southern Mesopotamia then reverted to their traditional existence. This pattern recurred continually but after the last suppression of a southern uprising (18 th century BC), southern resources were depleted beyond regeneration and the cities of the South disappeared from the political map of Mesopotamia.

Keywords:

early antiquity, Southern Mesopotamia, urban systems, centralized state, urban uprisings