RITING AND C ITY L IFE T HEMES IN W ORLD H ISTORY been a major population shift. Significantly, Uruk also came to have a defensive wall at a very early date. The site was continuously occupied from about BCE to about CE , and by about BCE it had expanded to hectares. War captives and local people were put to work for the temple, or directly for the ruler.
This, rather than agricultural tax, was compulsory. Those who were put to work were paid rations. Hundreds of ration lists have been found, which give, against people’s names, the quantities of grain, cloth or oil allotted to them. It has been estimated that one of the temples took , men working hours a day, five years to build.
With rulers commanding people to fetch stones or metal ores, to come and make bricks or lay the bricks for a temple, or else to go to a distant country to fetch suitable materials, there were also technical advances at Uruk around BCE . Bronze tools came into use for various crafts. Architects learnt to construct brick columns, there being no suitable wood to bear the weight of the roof of large halls. Hundreds of people were put to work at making and baking clay cones that could be pushed into temple walls, painted in different colours, creating a colourful mosaic.
In sculpture, there were superb achievements, not in easily available clay but in imported stone. And then there was a technological landmark that we can say is appropriate to an urban economy: the potter’s wheel. In the long run, the wheel enables a potter’s workshop to ‘mass produce’ dozens of similar pots at a time. * Steles are stone slabs with inscriptions or carvings.
Top: Basalt stele* showing a bearded man twice. Note his headband and hair, waistband and long skirt. In the lower scene he attacks a lion with a huge bow and arrow. In the scene above, the hero finally kills the rampant lion with a spear (c.
BCE ). Impression of