CIVILISATION BEGINS

Neil Faulkner reports on a new Getty Villa exhibition focused on the huge cultural contribution of the world’s oldest civilisation – Mesopotamia.

- Neil Faulkner

He lived more than 4,000 years ago, at the dawn of civilisation. He was war leader, high priest, hydraulic engineer, and first minister – all rolled into one – of the Sumerian city-state of Lagash from 2144 to 2124 BC. His name was Gudea, and, because we know a surprising amount about him, he looms large in the new Getty Villa Museum exhibition Mesopotamia: civilisation begins.

Gudea adopted the title ensi, which might be translated ‘city-king’ or ‘city-governor’. He had married into the royal house of Lagash, and in due course succeeded to the supreme position. But Sumerian city-state rulers cannot be equated with the kings and princes of later ages. What chiefly characterised a man like Gudea was the extraordinary combination of roles combined in one person.

Let us set him in context. Ancient Sumer – the biblical land of Shinar – lay astride the Tigris and Euphrates river system of Lower Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq). In the Early Copper Age (or Chalcolithic), the mid 4th millennium BC, it was a region of vast swamps, of slow, sluggish, muddy rivers and streams, of towering reeds and date palms; it teemed with fish, fowl, and other wild game. Compared with the desert wastes on either side, this watery jungle was a paradise for hunters. But let it once be tamed, let the waters be canalised and the swamps drained, and the result would be fields of alluvial soil of such exceptional richness that Sumer might become a veritable Garden of Eden.