Urban Life

The favourable climatic conditions of southern Mesopotamia, coupled with human achievements, led to the creation of what we can reasonably call the first megacity. In the heyday of Uruk, about 50,000 people inhabited the walled area of two square miles. Back then, Uruk’s population represented a previously unheard of concentration of people, who naturally needed daily food deliveries. To make this possible, a dense network of waterways was constructed, which allowed for the transport of the large quantities of food needed by the city dwellers.

cylinder seal (vergrößerte Bildansicht wird geöffnet) +
Sketch of a cylinder seal, which depicts a ruler on a boat.

Although they hardly had any access to any other building materials than clay and reeds, they were the first to conceive the huge buildings that we have come to associate with megacities. For example, at the beginning of the second millennium BC, King Sin-kashid constructed a large palace. Since it once was the centre of Uruk’s political and economic life and had its own archive, numerous documents have been found here which provide us with an insight into this long-gone society.