Uruk, World's first Megacity

choi

AJ Goldmann, The Ur-Metropolis; For more than 2,000 years, it was the largest city in the world. Wall Street Journal, May 21, 2012
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 61173770538266.html
(museum review on Uruk: 5,000 Years of the Megacity. Pergamon Museum; through Sept 8; the exhibition is "[o]rganized to mark the 100th anniversary of the first excavations at Uruk" by German Empire;

Quote:

"For more than three millennia, Uruk was one of the world's centers of science, culture and religion. Founded about 4000 BC, over the course of 800 years it underwent a dramatic shift from an assemblage of small villages to a large urban area with a highly developed administration, bureaucracy and diversified society. By the start of the third millennium BC, it had grown to two square miles in area and had roughly 40,000 inhabitants. For more than 2,000 years, Uruk was the largest city in the world, surpassed in size only by Babylon in the sixth century BC.

"About 3000 BC, Uruk had developed the technologies to sustain a massive population. The city's financial and administrative systems relied on the world's first known system of writing, cuneiform, which was used to record transactions, issue receipts and compile inventories. * * * This symbolic system of notation also has shown scholars how writing first developed to provide a permanent record of information rather than as a way to set down spoken language.

Note:
(a)
(i) Pergamon Museum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pergamon_Museum
(houses original-sized, reconstructed monumental buildings such as the Pergamon Altar and [others], all consisting of parts transported from Turkey; Established 1910)
(ii) Pergamon Altar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pergamon_Altar
(built during the reign of King Eumenes II [ruled 197–159 BC] in the first half of the 2nd century BC on one of the terraces of the acropolis of the ancient city of Pergamon)
(iii) Pergamon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pergamon
(an ancient Greek city; today to the north and west of the modern city of Bergama in Turkey)

(b) Uruk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruk

(c) "The exhibit wisely takes Gilgamesh as a point of departure. 'Very few people actually know about Uruk, but everyone's heard about Gilgamesh,' said Mr [Ralf] Wartke[, deputy director of the Museum of the Ancient Near East of Pergamon Museum], meaning both the king and the epic that contains a flood narrative similar to the Bible's."
(i) Gilgamesh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh
(fifth king of Uruk; placing his reign ca 2500 BC; According to the Sumerian king list he reigned for 126 years; central character in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the greatest surviving work of early Mesopotamian literature; his mother was Ninsun (whom some call Rimat Ninsun), a goddess; "In Mesopotamian mythology * * * [h]e is usually described as two-thirds god and one third man; "In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh is credited with the building of the legendary walls of Uruk. * * * Sargon [] claimed to have destroyed these walls to prove his military power")
(ii) Epic of Gilgamesh
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh
(The Epic of Gilgamesh was discovered by Hormuzd Rassam in 1853 [as]  cuneiform logographs)

In the British Museum.
(iii) Hormuzd Rassam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormuzd_Rassam
(1826-1910; a native Assyrian; became British citizen; a number of important discoveries, including the clay tablets that contained the Epic of Gilgamesh, the world's oldest literature)
(iv) flood myth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_myth

Quote: "Assyriologist George Smith translated the Babylonian account of the Great Flood in the 19th Century. Further discoveries produced several versions of the Mesopotamian flood myth, with the account that is closest to that in Genesis 6–9 found in a 700 BC Babylonian copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh. In this work, the hero, Gilgamesh, meets the immortal man, Utnapishtim, and the latter describes how the god, Ea, instructed him to build a huge vessel in anticipation of a deity-created flood that would destroy the world; the vessel was not only intended for Utnapishtim, but was built to also protect his family, his friends and animals.
(v) The Flood Tablet, relating part of the Epic of Gilgamesh; From Nineveh, northern Iraq, Neo-Assyrian, 7th century BC; The most famous cuneiform tablet from Mesopotamia. British Museum, undated.
http://www.britishmuseum.org/exp ... e_flood_tablet.aspx
(The Epic of Gilgamesh is [written] in Akkadian (the language of Babylonia and Assyria).
(vi) Akkadian language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian_language
(extinct; spoken in ancient Mesopotamia; "The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system, which was originally used to write ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate. The name of the language is derived from the city of Akkad, a major center of Semitic Mesopotamian civilization, during the Akkadian Empire (ca 2334–2154 BC), although the language predates the founding of Akkad")

(d) "Visitors to the show are greeted by an imposing figure long considered to be Gilgamesh. It is a replica of a statue from the palace of the Sumerian king Sargon that is now housed at the Louvre. In the Pergamon, it is positioned at the beginning of the processional road leading to the Gates of Ishtar"
(i) The Hero Overpowering a Lion, Louvre, undated
http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/hero-overpowering-lion
(often identified with the hero Gilgamesh)
(ii) Ishtar Gate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishtar_Gate
(eighth gate to the inner city of Babylon; constructed in about 575 BC; Dedicated to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar; section 2 Preservation

The real thing is in Pergamon Museum (with a few objects scattered in museums of the world. Saddam Husein built a smaller relica in Iraq.

(e) "He [Gilgamesh] certainly became the prototype of the ideal ruler, and the Sumerian kings claimed descent from him. This is illustrated by his inclusion in a clay list of Sumerian kings from 1740 BC on loan from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England."

Ashmolean Museum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashmolean_Museum
(world's first university museum; Its first building was built in 1678–1683 to house the cabinet of curiosities Elias Ashmole [1617-1692] gave Oxford University in 1677)

(f) "Representing Uruk's mass-produced goods are beveled-rim bowls"
(i) Jack Chen, Beveled-rim bowls. George Mason University, undated
http://chnm.gmu.edu/worldhistorysources/d/250/whm.html
(ii) beveled-rim bowls
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beveled_rim_bowls
(section 3 use)

(g) "Among Uruk's other advances was * * * the invention of cylinder seals. These cylindrical pieces of stone, some barely an inch in length, were incised with intaglio designs featuring gods and animals. When rolled across wet clay, the image would appear in relief, repeated more than once if the cylinder was rolled over any length. They were commonly used for trade, and could contain information about the origin or quantity of goods. Additionally, they were a way to guarantee authenticity and even served as antitampering devices. The most impressive example on display is a magnificent lapis lazuli seal with a carved bull for a handle."
(i) cylinder seal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder_seal
(ii) intaglio (n; Italian, from intagliare to engrave, cut, from Medieval Latin intaliare, from Latin in- + Late Latin taliare to cut — more at TAYLOR)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intaglio
(iii) lapis Lazuli
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapis_lazuli
(section 2 Etymology)

(g) "Inanna, ancient Mesopotamia's chief female deity (and a counterpart to the Akkadian goddess Ishtar)"

Inanna
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inanna
Lāzhward is in present Afghanistan.

(h) I've gotta go. Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is free for the three-day Memorial Day weekend. I want to see Samurai armory.