The Birth of Mesopotamia, From the First Settlements to the First Empire
Dahl
17,416 views
How did Mesopotamia go from scattered settlements to cities, and from there to kings, and finally to the world’s first empire?
This long-form Sleep Edition follows the long and fascinating story from the Ubaid world through the city of Uruk, and through the Sumerian city-states, until finally landing on the one, the only, not just the Man and the Myth, but also the Legend: our very own Sargon of Akkad. Along the way we will look at households, irrigation systems, trade routes, early writing systems, religious temples, shifting kingship, increasing warfare, as well as the amazing cities of Sumeria - Ur, Lagash, Umma - and the bigger names out of the region, like Enheduanna and Naram-Sin, and last but not least, we'll look at the rise and the unraveling of the Akkadian Empire. Everybody's favorite.
Pacing is deliberately kept slow, with very restrained visuals and long holds for background listening, driving, or even sleeping, if you're like me. ;)
This video is also an experiment in a different kind of long-form history. Rather than constantly changing the screen, the visual side has been deliberately stripped back to just a small selection of archaeological objects, a few maps, and some visual reconstructions that can remain on screen for several minutes at a time. The aim is to make the narration the main event and simply let the visuals provide some context without demanding your attention. If it works, this is a format I’d like to use for more very long chronological histories in the future. Let me know what you think, and whether you’d like to see more videos made this way.
This is also the first part of an ongoing chronological history of the ancient Near East. The next part continues with the Fall of Akkad, before moving into the Gutians and ending with the Rise and Fall of Ur III. :)
SOURCES
Guillermo Algaze, The Uruk World System.
Robert A. Carter & Graham Philip (eds.), Beyond the Ubaid.
Benjamin R. Foster, The Age of Agade.
Douglas Frayne, Pre-Sargonic Period.
Douglas Frayne, Sargonic and Gutian Periods.
Sophus Helle, Enheduana.
Gwendolyn Leick, Historical Dictionary of Mesopotamia.
Gwendolyn Leick, Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature.
Mario Liverani, Akkad: The First World Empire.
M. E. L. Mallowan, The Development of Cities from Al-Ubaid to the End of Uruk 5.
Béatrix Midant-Reynes, The Prehistory of Egypt.
Hans J. Nissen, The Early History of the Ancient Near East, 9000–2000 B.C..
Hans J. Nissen, Peter Damerow & Robert K. Englund, Archaic Bookkeeping.
John Nicholas Postgate, Early Mesopotamia.
Daniel T. Potts, The Archaeology of Elam.
Walther Sallaberger & Aage Westenholz, Mesopotamien: Akkade-Zeit und Ur III-Zeit.
Marc Van de Mieroop, The Ancient Mesopotamian City.
David Wengrow, The Archaeology of Early Egypt.
Joan Goodnick Westenholz, Legends of the Kings of Akkade.
Uruk: 5000 Jahre Megacity.
Stanley Mayer Burstein, Berossus/Berosus, the Chaldean.
Kathleen Kuiper (ed.), Ancient Egypt: From Prehistory to the Islamic Conquest.
Primary texts and online resources:
Electronic Babylonian Literature — ebl.lmu.de
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature — etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk
Penn Museum — penn.museum
VISUALS & MUSIC
Archaeological images, museum objects, maps and site photography are drawn from public-domain and Creative Commons material, including Wikimedia Commons, the British Museum, Penn Museum, the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Iraq Museum, the Vorderasiatisches Museum, the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, the German Archaeological Institute and Artefacts Berlin.
Music by Scott Buckley, used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 where applicable.
#Mesopotamia #Sumer #Uruk #Akkad #AncientHistory #HistoryForSleep
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Introduction
00:48 The Ubaid World
03:50 Households, Before Cities
07:50 A Connected World
12:47 Toward Uruk
15:11 Uruk, the First True City
18:50 The Fourth Millennium BCE
23:56 The City Takes Shape
29:43 Administration in the City
35:29 Food, Work, and Power
38:39 The World Outside Of Uruk
42:54 The End of the Uruk World
46:25 The First Kings, Cities, and Their Rulers
48:51 The Kings Uruk Remembered
53:14 Enmebaragesi of Kish
54:49 Me-salim, King of Kish
57:40 The Houses of the Rulers
59:26 The Inherited Frontier
1:00:21 The Cities of Sumer, A World of City-States
1:00:57 Uruk and Ur
1:04:25 Lagash and Umma
1:09:18 Urukagina and Lugalzagesi
1:12:36 Sargon of Akkad, and the King in Chains
1:15:13 A Land of Kings
1:16:32 Sargon, The Cupbearer
1:21:54 The Armies of Mesopotamia
1:28:16 Fifty Rulers, But One King
1:33:47 The City That Ruled the Others
1:37:44 The Roads Out of Sumer
1:43:02 Enheduanna at Ur
1:47:38 Rimush, and the Violence of Rebellion
1:52:22 Manishtushu, Stone, and Land
1:55:28 Naram-Sin, and the Great Revolt
2:00:03 The God of Agade
2:04:29 Sharkalisharri and the Unraveling of Akkad
2:07:36 The Curse, and the Drought
2:13:21 The First Empire of the World
20 Comments
the bible said cain built about 5 cities....so did Ham based on reading the stars...give Nimrod a location of a pre flood cities.
all of the Nimrod cities r listed ......anyways i gave u a like n get back to ur vid,
Thracian kingdom of Varna 4340 BC is the earliest known world monarchy.
Good info though. I am an ANE researcher.
The Birth of Mesopotamia, From the First Settlements to the First Empire
Dahl
17,416 views
How did Mesopotamia go from scattered settlements to cities, and from there to kings, and finally to the world’s first empire?
This long-form Sleep Edition follows the long and fascinating story from the Ubaid world through the city of Uruk, and through the Sumerian city-states, until finally landing on the one, the only, not just the Man and the Myth, but also the Legend: our very own Sargon of Akkad. Along the way we will look at households, irrigation systems, trade routes, early writing systems, religious temples, shifting kingship, increasing warfare, as well as the amazing cities of Sumeria - Ur, Lagash, Umma - and the bigger names out of the region, like Enheduanna and Naram-Sin, and last but not least, we'll look at the rise and the unraveling of the Akkadian Empire. Everybody's favorite.
Pacing is deliberately kept slow, with very restrained visuals and long holds for background listening, driving, or even sleeping, if you're like me. ;)
This video is also an experiment in a different kind of long-form history. Rather than constantly changing the screen, the visual side has been deliberately stripped back to just a small selection of archaeological objects, a few maps, and some visual reconstructions that can remain on screen for several minutes at a time. The aim is to make the narration the main event and simply let the visuals provide some context without demanding your attention. If it works, this is a format I’d like to use for more very long chronological histories in the future. Let me know what you think, and whether you’d like to see more videos made this way.
This is also the first part of an ongoing chronological history of the ancient Near East. The next part continues with the Fall of Akkad, before moving into the Gutians and ending with the Rise and Fall of Ur III. :)
SOURCES
Guillermo Algaze, The Uruk World System.
Robert A. Carter & Graham Philip (eds.), Beyond the Ubaid.
Benjamin R. Foster, The Age of Agade.
Douglas Frayne, Pre-Sargonic Period.
Douglas Frayne, Sargonic and Gutian Periods.
Sophus Helle, Enheduana.
Gwendolyn Leick, Historical Dictionary of Mesopotamia.
Gwendolyn Leick, Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature.
Mario Liverani, Akkad: The First World Empire.
M. E. L. Mallowan, The Development of Cities from Al-Ubaid to the End of Uruk 5.
Béatrix Midant-Reynes, The Prehistory of Egypt.
Hans J. Nissen, The Early History of the Ancient Near East, 9000–2000 B.C..
Hans J. Nissen, Peter Damerow & Robert K. Englund, Archaic Bookkeeping.
John Nicholas Postgate, Early Mesopotamia.
Daniel T. Potts, The Archaeology of Elam.
Walther Sallaberger & Aage Westenholz, Mesopotamien: Akkade-Zeit und Ur III-Zeit.
Marc Van de Mieroop, The Ancient Mesopotamian City.
David Wengrow, The Archaeology of Early Egypt.
Joan Goodnick Westenholz, Legends of the Kings of Akkade.
Uruk: 5000 Jahre Megacity.
Stanley Mayer Burstein, Berossus/Berosus, the Chaldean.
Kathleen Kuiper (ed.), Ancient Egypt: From Prehistory to the Islamic Conquest.
Primary texts and online resources:
Electronic Babylonian Literature — ebl.lmu.de
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature — etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk
Penn Museum — penn.museum
VISUALS & MUSIC
Archaeological images, museum objects, maps and site photography are drawn from public-domain and Creative Commons material, including Wikimedia Commons, the British Museum, Penn Museum, the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Iraq Museum, the Vorderasiatisches Museum, the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, the German Archaeological Institute and Artefacts Berlin.
Music by Scott Buckley, used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 where applicable.
#Mesopotamia #Sumer #Uruk #Akkad #AncientHistory #HistoryForSleep
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Introduction
00:48 The Ubaid World
03:50 Households, Before Cities
07:50 A Connected World
12:47 Toward Uruk
15:11 Uruk, the First True City
18:50 The Fourth Millennium BCE
23:56 The City Takes Shape
29:43 Administration in the City
35:29 Food, Work, and Power
38:39 The World Outside Of Uruk
42:54 The End of the Uruk World
46:25 The First Kings, Cities, and Their Rulers
48:51 The Kings Uruk Remembered
53:14 Enmebaragesi of Kish
54:49 Me-salim, King of Kish
57:40 The Houses of the Rulers
59:26 The Inherited Frontier
1:00:21 The Cities of Sumer, A World of City-States
1:00:57 Uruk and Ur
1:04:25 Lagash and Umma
1:09:18 Urukagina and Lugalzagesi
1:12:36 Sargon of Akkad, and the King in Chains
1:15:13 A Land of Kings
1:16:32 Sargon, The Cupbearer
1:21:54 The Armies of Mesopotamia
1:28:16 Fifty Rulers, But One King
1:33:47 The City That Ruled the Others
1:37:44 The Roads Out of Sumer
1:43:02 Enheduanna at Ur
1:47:38 Rimush, and the Violence of Rebellion
1:52:22 Manishtushu, Stone, and Land
1:55:28 Naram-Sin, and the Great Revolt
2:00:03 The God of Agade
2:04:29 Sharkalisharri and the Unraveling of Akkad
2:07:36 The Curse, and the Drought
2:13:21 The First Empire of the World