The Babylonian World - Historia Antigua

— Gwendolyn Leick —
debates and issues. Some authors interpreted their topic in a manner that conveyed
their ‘take’ on the subject within an academic discourse, others were more interested
in providing an account of facts and data. The ‘Babylonian’ framework was also
interpreted in different ways. Some scholars have participated who normally are more
at home in the pre-Babylonian era; their contributions are justified on the grounds
that Babylonian technology or administrative practices followed traditions that were
established at an earlier phase of Mesopotamian history. There are also chapters by
specialists in other areas of the Ancient Near East who were invited to reflect on the
relationship between ‘their’ cultures and the Babylonians. Such shifting viewpoints,
from far and near, from below and beyond, from the periphery to the centre, provide
a greater diversity of angles onto the ‘Babylonian World’, a kaleidoscopic rather than
panoramic show, which might make us see patterns and bright fragments and so
reveal aspects of the ‘lost world’ in unexpected ways, without the inherent delusion
of the magisterial omniscience of an encyclopedia.
Part I introduces the land and techniques of working the land, the preconditions
for the emergence of Mesopotamian civilization. The understanding that this civilization
was a primarily urban one is based on the fact that the surviving written
documents inevitably came from urban centres, the product of an urban literary
culture, and that archaeological excavations generally targeted conspicuous and
promisingly large mounds, remains of ancient cities. In the last twenty years, due to
various factors, not least the absence of funding for long-term excavation projects and
the political instability in the country, new archaeological techniques have developed.
When the results of aerial and other surveys are calibrated with the textual records,
especially the administrative documents that record a great variety of place names,
we get a very different understanding of settlement patterns. Seth Richardson’s chapter
explicitly refers to the plurality of ‘countrysides’ in the title of his contribution to
emphasize the constantly shifting configuration of Mesopotamia’s rural areas. He not
only corrects the outdated view of Babylonia’s primarily urban configuration but
traces patterns of state involvement in rural areas and the ideological claims made
by rulers in connection with the countryside across the main phases of Mesopotamian
history. Lucia Mori draws on her research in a much more localized environment, the
upper Euphrates valley which, though not within the ‘Babylonian heartland’, was for
centuries closely connected politically and culturally with the Mesopotamian south,
especially during the Old Babylonian period. The most important and richest archive
of this era comes from the palace of Mari, situated in the Middle Euphrates region.
The letters and documents of this collection provide detailed information on how the
arable and pasture land was managed in order to make optimal use of this particular
eco-sphere. Blahoslav Hrusˇka concentrates on the alluvial plains of Babylonia, known
as ‘Akkad and Sumer’ in the third millennium. He provides a survey of the agricultural
techniques that were perfected during this time, to remain almost unchanged for
millennia. Sumerian compositions, such as the ‘Farmer’s Almanac’ – instructions for
a ploughman – as well as economic texts from large estates and temples, contain
invaluable references to the vital tasks of husbandry and agriculture, on which the
whole economy was reliant. A Babylonian city was always a compound of its extramural,
agricultural land and pastures, with the residential and public spaces, gardens, orchards,
and waterways enclosed by the city walls. The ‘countryside’, as pointed out by
Richardson, for which there was no emic terminology, was the area beyond those
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