Sarah Dawson
AE0120
06-Apr-07
The Ancient Mesopotamian City: A Model Considered
“Despite the fact that all Mesopotamian inner cities had the above-mentioned characteristics in common, we can distinguish four major variants in their layouts.”[1]
In the chapter, “The Urban Landscape”, Van de Mieroop attempts to ascribe a universal model to ancient Mesopotamian cities. Reading this chapter with a critical eye, the benefits of an urban model are obvious. A scholar of urban planning or ancient cities, however, may find this categorization of ancient urban features too simplistic, particularly when the differences seem to outweigh the similarities. The above quote highlights the difficulties of such a model. Although all inner cities have similar features, inevitably differences manifest themselves in diverse contexts. The question then becomes, can there be a useful, general model, when such profuse variations abound. Comparing Van de Mieroop’s idea of the ancient Mesopotamian city with those of Eleanor Barbanes and Zeynep Çelik, these divergent social interests and urban definitions of an ancient city cannot be conglomerated into a singular mold. At this time, a catchall model is not possible.
Van de Mieroop’s ancient Mesopotamian city has four common, identifiable features (in order of approach): 1) a harbor district, 2) orchards and gardens, 3) suburbs, and 4) the inner city.[2] He does not identify these cities as capitals, but rather “the centre of urban settlement.”[3] Once a visitor to the ancient city arrived at the inner city, he could expect to find another set of common features alerting him to his position. These features included a higher elevation, a defensive enclosure wall, monumental gates, a moat, monumental buildings, residential quarters, streets, industrial sectors, open space, and burials beneath buildings.[4] This is a rather extensive list of features, but Van de Mieroop believes these are common to all Mesopotamian cities. Other scholars reveal a more multi-tonal picture.
Eleanor Barbanes and Zeynep Çelik, two scholars of Mesopotamian cities, propose different models. Barbanes investigates the Neo-Assyrian capital and its urban vocabulary, while Çelik is concerned with non-Western cities in the postclassical period. Unlike Van de Mieroop and Çelik, Barbanes is concerned primarily with the elite building program, which helps foster doubt on the applicability of Van de Mieroop’s previously constructed model.
Barbanes advances an important conclusion in her work, “Planning an Empire: City and Settlement in the Neo-Assyrian Period.” She infers that all cities in Mesopotamia are imperial. While Barbanes never says this outright, her avoidance of non-imperial cities leads the reader to this conclusion. Her insistence on an imperial program contrasts vividly with Van de Mieroop’s exclusion of imperial patronage. In fact, Barbanes puts forth her own model of an ancient Mesopotamian capital city.
Barbanes’ model includes only three of Van de Mieroop’s urban features: elevation, an enclosure wall, and open space. It is important to note that she does not include the harbor district, the gardens, or the suburbs. Barbanes does add settlement size, a citadel, riverine location, a geometrically shaped lower town, and a quadrilateral-shaped city. As with Van de Mieroop, the application of this model to any number of case studies would likely prove it ineffectual.
Çelik assumes the task of deconstructing the “Islamic City” model in the postclassical age. The very term “Islamic City” presupposes a set of specific urban components, both social and spatial. Previous scholars have “attributed to it a fixed physical pattern, defined by the separation of residential and commercial sections, irregular street networks, and a characteristic repertoire of public buildings.”[5] While this model may be broad enough to encompass a wide range of cities, the rhetorical dichotomies used in Islamic city discourse narrows the relevance of such models for the post classical world as well. According to Çelik, new techniques, materials, and theoretical underpinnings all help locate differences in city structure and planning. With the Islamic city, a model is easily overturned.
While a model for the cities of Mesopotamia would be useful in identification and categorization of urban landscapes, based on the three authors cited in this paper, it is not yet feasible. The urban and social complexity of these cities prevents a precise separation between suburb and city, imperial and common, secular and Islamic. Jean-Charles Depaule sums up the conundrum nicely. The project of urban spatial identification is “not a global, homogenous, unilinear project,” but rather “a compound of fragments whose coherence stems from their interrelationships.”[6] Perhaps with further scholarship into the everyday existence in cities, these fragments will begin to coalesce.
Works Cited
Barbanes, Eleanor; 2003. “Planning an empire: city and settlement in the Neo-Assyrian period,” Bulletin of the Canadian Society of Mesopotamian Studies 38: 15-22.
Çelik, Zeynep; 1999. "New Approaches to the "Non-Western" City" The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 58/3: 374-381.
Van de Mieroop, M.; 1997. “The urban landscape,” The ancient Mesopotamian city. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 63-100.
1
[1] Van de Mieroop 1997: 83.
[2] Van de Mieroop 1997: 65.
[3] Van de Mieroop 1997: 72.
[4] Van de Mieroop 1997: 72-83.
[5] Çelik 1999: 375.
[6] Depaule in Çelik 1999: 375.