Ur

Type of Government

Ur was a Sumerian city-state in southern Mesopotamia, in what is now modern-day Iraq. The city was governed by autocratic rulers who sometimes established hereditary monarchies. At various times different Mesopotamian city-states, including Ur, dominated the entire region.

Background

Located in the Tigris-Euphrates valley in Mesopotamia, an area also known as the Fertile Crescent, the Sumerians established one of the earliest known civilizations. They developed sophisticated irrigation methods that enabled them to cultivate large areas of land, and by approximately 5000 BC these agricultural advancements led to the development of villages, where farmers traded their goods. To record their transactions, the Sumerians developed the first known written language—the cuneiform script—which consisted of pictographs, numbers, and syllabic symbols. The Sumerians are also thought to be among the first civilizations to have developed the wheel.

The village settlements of the Fertile Crescent prospered, and by 3500 BC a series of independent city-states had developed, each controlling an urban center and surrounding agricultural holdings. The most significant of these city-states were Adab, Agade, Bad-Tibira, Borsippa, Erech, Eridu, Girsu, Issin, Kish, Lagash, Larsa, Mari, Nippur, Shuruppak, and Ur.

What is known about the government of Ur comes from archaeological studies of the remains of the city and from surviving texts of the period. One of the most important of these is the List of Sumerian Kings, which purports to list the various rulers of Sumer. The list shows some of the limitations of archaeological study, because legendary rulers with impossibly long tenures (e.g., Ennenluana of Bad-Tibira is shown to have ruled for more than forty-three thousand years) are listed alongside independently confirmed historical rulers with more plausible terms of office, whereas some historical rulers—such as the priest-kings of Lagash—are omitted altogether. Because the list is not a reliable document, all dates referenced in any chronology of the Sumerian civilization are considered approximations.

Government Structure

Sumerian city-states such as Ur were built around a ziggurat (temple tower) that was dedicated to the city’s patron god. The patron deity of Ur was Nanna. The ensi (temple priest) controlled the city’s administration and finances. Written records found in Ur show that the city possessed a sophisticated administrative bureaucracy for the administration of resources, such as the rationing of grains and other foodstuffs; the collection of bala (regional taxes); and the settlement of property disputes by mashkim (magistrates).

In the third millennium BC the role of the ensi began to be supplanted by lugals—usually translated as “kings,” but most often they were simply large landholders. The Sumerians found themselves in a state of near-constant warfare as the rulers of various city-states attempted to gain control of larger areas. The List of Sumerian Kings shows that through alliance or conquest, various lugals claimed to rule the Sumerians as a group, with the “capital” of Sumer moving to different city-states depending on the provenance of the ruler.

Political Parties and Factions

The people of Ur were Sumerian speakers for much of the city-state’s history, but from 2450 to 2250 BC, Ur—and most of Sumerian Mesopotamia—was dominated by the Semitic-speakers of the Empire of Akkad. The Akkadians worked hard to assimilate the people of the empire to their language, with lasting effect. Even during the Sumerian “revival” of the Ur III Dynasty, it is believed the Akkadian Semitic dialect continued to be the common language of Ur, as attested by the fact that the last three kings of that dynasty each used the Akkad name “sin” (the Akkadian name for the moon god) in their names, rather than the Sumerian “nanna”.

Major Events

Perhaps the height of the Sumerian civilization came near its end, with an empire known as the Ur III dynasty. This dynasty was founded by a general, Ur-Nammu, who united the city-states of Mesopotamia from his capital in Ur. The Ur III dynasty marked a revival of Sumerian as the language of royalty and government.

The empire was administered by provincial governors who were accountable directly to the king. The first written code of laws is attributed to Ur-Nammu or to his successor, Shulgi (twenty-first century BC). This code established the king as the ultimate arbiter of justice by divine right. The Ur III dynasty endured for more than forty years after Shulgi’s death in approximately 2047 BC.

Aftermath

In roughly 2004 BC the Sumerians were overrun by two Semitic nations, the Elamites and Amorites, and they were soon eliminated as a political power. Their legacy lives on in their innovations, including their systems of writing and irrigation and the use of the wheel. Many of the principles of Ur-Nammu’s legal code were reflected in the later (and better-known) Babylonian Code of Hammurabi. The administrative bureaucracies of Ur and other Sumerian city-states, as well as the gubernatorial/provincial system for controlling large empires, influenced many of the governments that followed.

Kramer, Samuel Noah. History Begins at Sumer: 39 Firsts in Man’s Recorded History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981.

Postgate, John Nicholas. Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Woolley, C. Leonard. The Sumerians. New York: Norton, 1965.