Response Paper to Uruk: The First City (Ch3, Ch4, Ch5) - Ritik Malhotra

Ritik Malhotra

Near Eastern Studies R1B Lecture 4

Response Paper: Uruk (Ch3, Ch4, Ch5)

In the continuation of the detailed uprising of Uruk, author Mario Liverani depicts the emergence of the complexity of Uruk’s society in chapter three to five in his book, Uruk: The First City. While covering many different aspects of the new, complex society, Liverani’s masterful descriptions of the society and its new functions bring about a stark difference in the way Uruk’s governance changed. As I wrote about in my last response paper, Uruk was primarily socialistic, and almost anarchical, with a governmental body, the Temple, that wasn’t using hands-on enforcement tactics, but rather, relied on “religious enthusiasm” (Liverani, 6) to empower the urban revolution; however, with the complexity of Uruk increasing over time, in chapters three to five, Liverani depicts new functions of society which clearly combat those from the socialistic ones from before. In the complex society, we see a new capitalistic form of operation that churns and advances Uruk, starkly different from the socialistic one that Uruk thrived upon before.

Liverani quickly points out that “within the complex society of the early state,” trade had to be “administered by specialists (‘merchants’)” and that this facet added an “element in the economic and administrative complexity” (40) to Uruk. The economic market had diverged from one in which farmers who garnered “a surplus above their domestic needs” used their excess crops to “nourish [the volunteers] while at work” (6) while they built and advanced Uruk from its primitive state, to one in which there was an “administered segment that dealt with the relations between the administration and the merchants” and a “free segment that related to the external activity of the merchants” (42). This new trade mechanism that Uruk had developed was primarily to gain access to certain materials that were not available in the nearby resource, which included “copper […] perfumes, oils, spices” (42) and more. This need for trade set up an economic system in which merchants now did things to “gain the maximum profit” and to “gain as much personal income as possible” (43).

This change from previously socialistic behaviors to capitalistic ones depicts the urgent need for reform. Uruk, a rapidly developing and advancing city, had to start covering all its bases in terms of minerals, textiles, food items, and other goods, many of which were not found in the nearby area. This lack of resource brought about a change primarily in the way the administration was run, with the administration taking on a more personal, hands-on, approach with the economy (ironically, this was the more capitalistic way to do things rather than socialistic!). This truly brings about an interesting point about the way economies and cities naturally advanced in history – capitalism had to become the primary driving force behind these cities in order for them to survive and continue growing or else the cities would be left resource-less, as was the case with the primitive form of Uruk. Indeed, the change from socialism to capitalism was a necessary one, and was one of Uruk’s saving grace in maintaining the complexity and advancements that it was going through in historical times.