Response Paper to Uruk (Ch.1 and Ch.2)

Ronak Patel

Near Eastern Studies R1B

Response Paper; Uruk (Ch.1, Ch.2)

Mario Liverani’s gives an overview of the origin of cities in the Near East in his book Uruk: The First City. He ponders over a collection of interesting ideas from neo-evolutionism and continuity to complexity and transition in these original cities, but I found the counterpoint Liverani made to Heichelheim’s theory of interests and loans to be the most interesting. Liverani made the point that “records show that usury, debt, and private capitalism were secondary developments (7). Liverani claims that the initial transition to a city or centralized structure had to come from the “primitive accumulation of capital” (6). Therefore, “It is necessary that a given society has the ability first of all to produce and accumulate a substantial surplus, and second, it then decides to utilize this surplus, not for consumption within the family, but for the construction of infrastructures and for support of specialists and administrators” (6).

This point seems to make sense, but then this brings up an interesting topic to think about; the possibility of the food itself being used as a means of capital in Uruk.

Liverani mentions the different technological innovations such as the clay-sickle, seeder-plow, threshing sledge and long field that revolutionized agriculture and then goes on to present an interesting chart on page 21 about the principal flow and secondary flow. The chart supports Liverani’s point of concentration of capital at the helm of the temple, but it leaves out the possibility of initial crop yields being used for loans outside the private family to the greater community, thus, creating a network that would eventually lead to the creation of the temple and a more centralized administration that could regulate the transition of food, taxes, and services with population growth.

In essence Heichelheim’s point of capital being the “mainspring of progress (Liverani, 7) may be accurate at a more miniscule scale in Uruk based on primitive economic connections between individual families preceding the centrality of the temple. Of course, this is just a counter view to the idea that Liverani provides, but it is worth thinking about.