Page 62 - Introduction to Tourism

needs only a track, ” but a vehicle needs a road.

There were not many early roads that could take

wheeled traffic. A king of Ur bragged that he went

from Nippur to Ur, a distance of some 100 miles,

and back in a day. This boast, sometime around

2050 B.C.E. , implies the existence of a carriage
road. 10 Even the best of the highways, however,

were minimal. Paving was almost nonexistent
until the time of the Hittites, who paved a mile

and a third of road between their capital and a
nearby sanctuary to carry heavily loaded wagons

on festal days. Even then their war chariots, light

horse - drawn carts invented for war, rolled over

the countryside on dirt roads. Also, bridges were

rare in a land that experienced frequent flooding.

A hymn tells of King Shulgi exulting “ ‘ I enlarged

the footpaths, straightened the highways of the

land ’ . . . but not every Mesopotamian monarch

was a Shulgi, and there must have been long

periods with nobody to ‘ straighten ’ the roads.

Roads were better on the island of Crete, where

the Minoans flourished from 2000 to 1500 B.C.E.

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