According to Mario Liverani, author of Uruk: The First City, one of the key features that enabled a place like Uruk to grow was its use of a central agency, in this case, in the form of a religious temple. Although Liverani does not go into too much detail on how the temple came to have so much power (he simply assumes that the reader understands that religion can have the awesome power of influence and authority), I think it safe to assume that the temple did own some sort of command over the people. Not only was the temple a place of worship (probably), but it also was the center for the economic system of redistribution and accumulation that is thought to have taken place in Mesopotamia. With so much power concentrated in one entity, a thought came to mind: could it be possible that among all of this grandeur of development and prosperity that the advent of “government” corruption was also taking place? Despite Liverani’s “assurance” that the ‘great organization’ and the productive family units worked hand-in-hand and could not survive without the other, it seems to me that someone was getting a bigger end of the bargain.
Take for example, the system of agriculture. According to Liverani, most farmers would sacrifice a little of their farming ‘freedom’ by giving up a set amount of their products to help feed the entire community, and outside through a system of exchange. In return, farmers were given a different type of food or raw materials to begin the cycle of production for the city all over again. This is all well and good, but then Liverani makes mention that the temple used a type of hired corvée labor from the village population to work on different agricultural projects that required the manpower of hundreds of workers. Essentially, the temple issued a system of slavery and the only compensation that these men received were with rations. I say ‘slavery’ because the work that corvée labor was used for was for the “most labor-intensive phases of work” like reaping in farming and shearing with wool (38). Not only that but it seems that a system of child labor was also introduced! Apparently, because children and women were “considered [a] better fit” for the domestic activity of spinning and weaving, that is what they were expected to do. As the administrative head of the city, the temple’s use of this system of labor was exploitative to the citizens of this so-called egalitarian society that they were meant to serve.
I also find that the temple’s use of “guards and overseers” to supervise the mode of agricultural and textile production to be reminiscent of what we do today in order to force order and control; it’s becoming clear that Uruk was no utopia. According to Liverani, the city also had an army (which was based on corvée duty) and whose responsibilities entailed defending the palace walls and the city in the case of war. One of their main duties, however, was to protect the storerooms and the “conspicuous concentration of wealth” that comprised of luxury goods, foodstuffs, and craftwork (51). It was clear that the guards’ main objective was “[to protect] the central wealth from the population” (51). Such a statement that Liverani made makes me wonder whether the temple had the best intentions for Uruk, or whether those who managed to be the head of the central agency was growing too comfortable with the power they possessed.
Unfortunately, we may never know if this system of (the beginning of) “government” corruption really happened because most of what remains from Uruk are texts that speak of the city’s economic management. Besides, any document found would have been written by the government and any hint of exploitation there is unlikely. Based on the research of Liverani, this theory of the advent of corruption coming about simultaneously with the beginning of the city is a theory of mine that I may continue to ponder about. One thing, however, is for certain: Uruk was by no means a “perfect place,” but its success of being one of the world’s first cities has influenced and shaped the type of society that we live in today.
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