The first cities, the first writing, the first empires and the first written laws — all between the Tigris and Euphrates.
Stop 01 · c. 3300–3000 BCE
The First Cities
In southern Mesopotamia, today's Iraq, the Sumerians built some of the world's first cities on the plains between the Tigris and Euphrates. Uruk grew from two smaller settlements into a city that, at its peak around 3100 BCE, may have held up to 50,000 people, with 80,000 to 90,000 more in the country around it. Its Eanna precinct, sacred to the goddess Inanna, held some of the largest buildings of the age. To keep track of grain, livestock and labour, temple administrators turned the clay tokens long used for accounting into cuneiform, the earliest known writing system; the first clear tablets date from about 3300 BCE. Outposts of Uruk's culture spread far up the rivers.
In southern Mesopotamia, today's Iraq, the Sumerians built some of the world's first cities on the plains between the Tigris and Euphrates. Uruk grew from two smaller settlements into a city that, at its peak around 3100 BCE, may have held up to 50,000 people, with 80,000 to 90,000 more in the country around it. Its Eanna precinct, sacred to the goddess Inanna, held some of the largest buildings of the age. To keep track of grain, livestock and labour, temple administrators turned the clay tokens long used for accounting into cuneiform, the earliest known writing system; the first clear tablets date from about 3300 BCE. Outposts of Uruk's culture spread far up the rivers.
In the Early Dynastic period, roughly 2900 to 2350 BCE, Sumer was a patchwork of rival city-states such as Ur, Uruk, Lagash and Umma, each a large city ruling the farmland around it; further north, around Kish, Semitic-speaking peoples were dominant. Writing spread and society grew more unequal. Lagash and Umma fought for generations over the land between them, and the Stele of the Vultures, now in the Louvre, celebrates a Lagash victory. At Ur, Leonard Woolley excavated about 2,000 burials between 1922 and 1934. Sixteen 'royal' tombs of around 2600 BCE held gold, lapis lazuli and lyres, along with soldiers and women apparently sacrificed to accompany their masters. Later legend set the hero-king Gilgamesh of Uruk in this age.
Around 2334 BCE Sargon of Akkad defeated Lugalzagesi of Uruk, tore down its walls and conquered the Sumerian city-states, creating what is often called the world's first empire. Bowing to the god Dagan, he took Mari and Ebla in the north, 'as far as the Cedar Forest', so that his realm stretched from the Persian Gulf toward the Mediterranean. His daughter Enheduanna served as high priestess of the moon god at Ur. Akkadian, his people's Semitic language, would come to fill most of the surviving cuneiform record. The empire lasted about two centuries before breaking up amid revolts and Gutian attacks; the Sumerian city of Ur then revived to rule the region until around 2004 BCE, when the neighbouring Elamites sacked it.
Decades after Akkad fell, Ur-Nammu of Ur reunited southern Mesopotamia around 2112 BCE and founded the Third Dynasty of Ur. He began the Great Ziggurat of Ur, a stepped temple platform about 64 metres long for the moon god Nanna, which his son Shulgi completed. Ur-Nammu's name is attached to the oldest known surviving law code, written in Sumerian, which shows concern for widows, orphans and the poor. Shulgi, who reigned for about 48 years and proclaimed himself a god, ran a highly centralised state, and some 120,000 of its administrative tablets have been unearthed. Revolts, food shortages and conflict with Amorites and Elamites wore the kingdom down, and around 2004 BCE Elamite troops dealt Ur the final blow.
Hammurabi of Babylon (reigned c. 1792–1750 BCE) conquered the rival kingdoms of Larsa, Eshnunna and Mari and united almost all of Mesopotamia, turning Babylon into a leading city. Around 1753 BCE he issued one of the earliest written law codes, carved on a 2.25-metre basalt stele now in the Louvre; at its top, a god, probably Shamash, hands him the symbols of kingship. Modern scholars divide it into 282 laws covering trade, property, family and crime, with punishments that depended on the social rank of victim and offender: gentleman, commoner or slave. His dynasty lasted until about 1595 BCE, when the Hittite king Mursili I sacked Babylon and left it to his Kassite allies, who ruled for four centuries.
BattlesLarsa, conquered by Hammurabi · Mari, conquered by Hammurabi
In the Late Bronze Age, great powers — Egypt, the Hittites of Anatolia, Babylon, Assyria and Mitanni — exchanged letters, princesses and gifts as an early 'international system'. About 350 of their letters, written mostly in Akkadian cuneiform, the diplomatic language of the day, were found at Amarna in Egypt. The Hittites, ruling from Hattusa, fought Ramesses II's Egypt at Kadesh on the Orontes in 1274 BCE, probably the largest chariot battle ever, with some 5,000 to 6,000 chariots; the result was inconclusive. Around 1259 BCE Hattusili III and Ramesses made one of history's earliest surviving peace treaties. Around 1200 BCE this world collapsed in the Late Bronze Age collapse, and the Hittite empire broke apart.
From its heartland on the upper Tigris, around Assur and Nineveh, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew from 911 BCE into the largest empire the world had yet seen, reaching from Egypt to Iran by the 7th century BCE; many historians call it the first world empire. Its kings deported conquered peoples on a vast scale, resettling them as labourers and farmers across their lands. Nineveh became the capital in 705 BCE and grand palaces rose there, and Ashurbanipal assembled a library of more than 30,000 clay tablets. After his death civil wars tore the empire apart. In 612 BCE an alliance of Babylonians and Medes, with Scythians, destroyed Nineveh; the last Assyrian stand, at Harran, ended in 609.
Under Nebuchadnezzar II (reigned 605–562 BCE) Babylon became one of the largest cities in the world, and perhaps the first ever to pass 200,000 people. He built the Ishtar Gate, faced with blue-glazed bricks and dragons, and a great ziggurat, Etemenanki, often linked with the Tower of Babel. His armies took Jerusalem in 597 BCE and destroyed it after a revolt in 587, carrying thousands of Judeans into exile. But in 539 BCE Cyrus the Great of Persia won at Opis and entered Babylon on 12 October, by Babylonian accounts without battle, and Mesopotamia became part of the Achaemenid Empire: the end of three thousand years of native Mesopotamian kingdoms. In 538 Cyrus let the exiles go home.
Two centuries of Persian rule ended when Alexander the Great of Macedon defeated Darius III, the last Achaemenid king, at Gaugamela on 1 October 331 BCE and occupied Babylon. Under Alexander the city flourished again as a centre of learning and trade. In 323 BCE, according to Arrian, Chaldean priests warned him that entering Babylon would be fatal; he went in anyway, fell ill with a fever, and died in Nebuchadnezzar's palace on 10 or 11 June, aged 32. His generals carved up the empire. Seleucus I made Seleucia on the Tigris his capital around 305 BCE and forced almost all of Babylon's people, except the temple priests and their workers, to move there. The ancient city slowly faded.