Writing and City Life: Chapter 1 Class 11 History Notes

Mesopotamia is an ancient region located in modern-day Iraq. Its diverse geography included fertile plains, rugged mountains, and arid deserts. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers played a crucial role, providing agricultural irrigation and facilitating trade. Urban centers emerged, characterized by specialized labor, organized trade networks, and social structures. Mesopotamia’s rich food resources fueled its growth. Its trade connected it to distant lands, exchanging textiles, agricultural products, and raw materials.

Let us learn more about this region, their system of writing, and their city life.

Mesopotamia and its Geography

Mesopotamia was the ancient name for what is now Iraq. It is a land of diverse environments. Agriculture began in the region between 7000 and 6000 BCE. The agriculture of southern Mesopotamia was the most productive out of all the ancient systems. The Euphrates and Tigris rivers act as a source of irrigation.

• In the northeast lie green, undulating plains, gradually rising to tree-covered mountain ranges with clear streams and wildflowers, with enough rainfall to grow crops.
• In the north, there is a stretch of upland called a Steppe, where animal herding offers people a better livelihood than agriculture.
• To the east, tributaries of the Tigris provide routes of communication.
• The south is a desert, and this is where the first cities and writing emerged.

The Significance of Urbanism

Urban centers are involved in various economic activities such as food production, trade, manufacturing, and services. City people, thus, tend to be self-sufficient and depend on the products or services of other people. As one of the earliest civilizations, Mesopotamian urban centers emerged as bustling hubs of trade, commerce, and cultural exchange. The fertile lands nourished by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers facilitated agricultural abundance, laying the foundation for prosperous city life. With the rise of urbanization came the division of labor, as specialized artisans, traders, and administrators thrived in the interconnected networks of cities like Uruk and Ur.

There must be a social organization in Cities. Fuel, metal, various stones, wood, etc., come from many places for city manufacturers. Thus, the rulers controlled and supervised organized trade, storage, and deliveries of grain and other food items from the village to the city. The division of labor is a mark of urban life. For instance, the carver of a tone seal requires bronze tools that he cannot make and colored stones for the seals that he does not know where to get. He depends on others for his needs.

Movement of Goods into Cities

Mesopotamia, renowned for its food resources, faced a scarcity of raw materials and minerals crucial for various industries. To compensate for this deficiency, ancient Mesopotamians established extensive trade networks, leveraging their surplus textiles and agricultural produce as commodities of exchange. Mesopotamian merchants engaged in trade with neighboring regions like Turkey, Iran, and across the Gulf seeking essential resources such as wood, copper, tin, silver, gold, shell, and various stones. The canals and natural channels weaving through Mesopotamian landscapes served as vital means for the transportation of goods, facilitating trade between bustling urban centers and smaller settlements. This network of trade routes not only solved resource shortages but also fostered economic growth and cultural exchange in Mesopotamian society.

The Development of Writing

All societies have languages in which spoken sounds convey certain meanings. This is verbal communication. Writings too are verbal communication but in a different way. Let’s look into the developments made by the Mesopotamians in writing.

• The first Mesopotamian tablets, written around 3200 BCE, contained picture-like signs and numbers. There were about 5,000 lists of oxen, fish, bread loaves, etc.
• Mesopotamians wrote on tablets of clay. When a transaction was completed the tablet was thrown away, so each transaction, however minor, required a separate written tablet.
• By 2600 BCE writing was used for making dictionaries, recording land transfers, narrating the deeds of kings, and announcing any change in the laws of the land.
• Sumerian, the earliest known language of Mesopotamia was gradually replaced after 2400 BCE by the Akkadian language.

The System of Writing

Dating back to around 3200 BCE, Mesopotamian writing initially consisted of picture-like signs and numerical symbols inscribed on clay tablets. Over time, this script evolved into a complex system of hundreds of signs that required skilled scribes to handle wet clay tablets before they dried. Mesopotamian writing which was etched on clay tablets, served various purposes, including documenting transactions, recording land transfers, narrating historical events, and codifying laws.

One of the most significant development in Mesopotamian writing was the transition from pictographs to cuneiform script, characterized by wedge-shaped impressions made by a stylus on clay. This greatly enhanced the efficiency and versatility of written communication, allowing for the expression of abstract concepts and the recording of complex details.

Literacy and Uses of Writing

The Mesopotamian writing system was complex and comprised hundreds of signs, making it challenging for the average person to master. Additionally, literacy was a rare and privileged skill, accessible only to a select few within society. Merchants, craftsmen, and other skilled workers possessed basic reading and writing skills necessary for conducting business transactions. While the exact percentage of the population that could read and write is not known, it is believed that literacy rates were relatively low.

Writing was seen as a sign of the superiority of Mesopotamian urban culture. In Mesopotamia, writing served many essential functions that contributed to the organization, administration, and cultural development of society. These included:

• Record Keeping
• Communication
• Legal Documentation
• Cultural Expression
• Economic Transactions
• Historical Documentations

Urbanization in Southern Mesopotamia: Temples and Kings

From 5000 BCE, settlements began began to develop in southern Mesopotamia. These were of various kinds:

• That gradually developed around temples.
• They developed as centres of trade.
• Imperial cities.

Early settlers began to build and rebuild temples at selected spots in their villages. The god was the focus of worship, people offered grain, curd, and fish and god was also considered the owner of the agricultural fields, the fisheries, and the herds of the local community. The temple gradually developed its activities and became the main urban institution. Chiefs who became victorious in wars offered precious goods to the gods and renovated the community’s temples. Enmerkar, ruler of Uruk, got legitimacy in the community through this way.

Life in the City

A ruling elite had emerged, and a small section of society had a major share of the wealth, enormous riches buried with some kings and queens at Ur were found. In Mesopotamian society, the nuclear family was the culture, and the father was the head of the family. In Ur, narrow winding streets and the irregular shapes of house plots indicate an absence of town planning. There was no street drain, as found in Mohenjo-daro. There was a town cemetery at Ur in which the graves of royalty and commoners were found.

A Trading Town in a Pastoral Zone

After 2000 BCE the royal capital of Mari flourished. Some communities in the kingdom of Mari had both farmers and pastoralists, but most of its territory was used for pasturing sheep and goats. Located on the Euphrates in a prime position for trade between the south and the mineral-rich uplands of Turkey, Syria and Lebanon, Mari is a good example of an urban center prospering in trade. As bronze was the main industrial material for tools and weapons, this trade was of great importance.

The Legacy of Writing

The greatest legacy of Mesopotamia to the world is its scholarly tradition of time reckoning and mathematics. Tablets dating around 1800 BCE show multiplication and division tables, square- and square-root tables, and tables of compound interest. The Mesopotamians worked on:

• The division of the year into 12 months according to the revolution of the moon around the earth.
• The division of the month into four weeks.
• The day into 24 hours and the hour into 60 minutes.

Timeline

Let us look into a brief timeline of the Mesopotamian urbanization:

Date	Event
7000-6000 BCE	Beginning of agriculture in northern Mesopotamian plains
5000 BCE	The earliest temples in Mesopotamia built
3200 BCE	First writing in Mesopotamia
3000 BCE	Uruk develops into a huge city, increasing the use of bronze tools
2700-2500 BCE	Early kings, including, possibly, the legendary ruler Gilgamesh
2600 BCE	Development of the cuneiform script
2400 BCE	Replacement of Sumerian by Akkadian
2370 BCE	Sargon, king of Akkad
2000 BCE	Spread of cuneiform writing to Syria, Turkey, and Egypt; Mari and Babylon emerge as important urban centers
1800 BCE	Mathematical texts composed; Sumerian no longer spoken
1100 BCE	Establishment of the Assyrian kingdom
1000 BCE	Use of iron
720-610	BCE Assyrian empire
668-627	BCE Rule of Assurbanipal
331 BCE	Alexander conquers Babylon
1st century CE	Akkadian and cuneiform remain in use
1850s	Decipherment of the cuneiform script

Conclusion – Writing and City Life: Class 11 History

Ancient Mesopotamia was a vibrant civilization characterized by bustling urban centers and extensive trade networks. The development of a complex writing system played an important role in facilitating communication, record-keeping, and the dissemination of cultural knowledge. Although literacy remained a privilege confined to a select few, the widespread utilization of writing underscored its fundamental importance in governance, commerce, and cultural expression. Mesopotamia’s legacy as a hub of urbanism, trade, and intellectual innovation endures as a testament to its enduring impact on the course of human history.

FAQs on Writing and City Life: Class 11 History

What materials were used for Mesopotamian writing?

Mesopotamian writing was primarily inscribed on clay tablets using a stylus. Stone and wax were also occasionally used for writing.

What languages were used in Mesopotamian writing?

Sumerian was the earliest known language of Mesopotamia, used in the earliest writings. However, after 2400 BCE, it was gradually replaced by the Akkadian language, a Semitic language spoken in the region.

What were the earliest Mesopotamian tablets like?

The earliest Mesopotamian tablets, dating back to around 3200 BCE, contained picture-like signs and numerical symbols. These tablets were used primarily for basic record-keeping, such as lists of commodities like oxen, fish, and bread loaves.

What evidence of burial practices was found in Mesopotamia?

In Ur, archaeologists discovered a town cemetery containing the graves of both royalty and commoners.

What was the significance of the royal capital of Mari after 2000 BCE?

It served as a vital hub for trade and economic activity in the region, facilitating commerce between southern Mesopotamia and the mineral-rich uplands of Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon.