Page 264 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

NOTES

CHAPTER I stage of Mesopotamian prehistory in the south. It
was succeeded by the Protolitcratc Period. In the
p. I 1. The word ‘protolitcratc ^has been adopted in nortli there arc no exact equivalents for the Warka
parallelism to ‘ protodynastic . We retain it, al- and Protolitcratc Periods, and prehistoric conditions
though it is a hybrid, to avoid confusion. The Pro- persisted for some considerable time (Gawra
tolitcratc Period includes most of the Uruk Period Period). All the relevant material has been discussed
and all of thc ‘Jemdet Nasr Period* of thc older
by Ann Louise Perkins, The Comparative Strati-
litcraturc. See Dclougaz and Lloyd, Pre-Sargonid graphy of Early Mesopotamia (Chicago, 1949). A
Temples in the Diyala Region (Chicago, 1942), 8,n. 10. prehistoric settlement even more primitive than
2. Thence the modern designation ‘Sumerian’; Hassuna was found at Jarmo in Iraqi Kurdistan,
they called themselves ‘the black-headed people*. Even here clay figurines of men and animals were
Their language, Sumerian, is without demonstrable found. See Braidwood, in Sumer, vn (Baghdad,
affinities to any modern tongue. It is agglutinative 1951) and Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental
and not inflectional, and therefore neither Semitic Research, No. 124 (Baltimore, 1951).
nor Indo-European. The human skeletons dated to
5. This ware is fully discussed in Journal of Near
the fourth and third millennium b.c., when Sum­
Eastern Studies, in (1944), 48-72.
erian was the dominant language, cannot be dis­
tinguished from those of Semitic-speaking Asiatics. 6. See Sumer, in (Baghdad, 1947), 84 ff.; iv p. 2
At all times the population seems to have consisted (Baghdad, 1948), 115 ft.
of long-headed ‘Mediterranean’ plainsmen with a 7. Arthur J. Tobler, Excavations at Tepe Gawra, n p. 3
mixture of short-headed ‘Armcnoid’ mountaineers (Philadelphia, 1950), 30 ff., and plates xi, xii, and
due to a thin but continuous trickle of immigration xxxvii-xxxviii. There were three temples grouped
from thc East and North-east. round a court, showing variations of a typical plan
3. Hitherto unknown early stages of their painted which is best preserved in the one we reproduce,
pottery have been discovered recently at Abu 8. Toblcr, op. cit.t maintains that the absence of
Shahrein (ancient Eridu) confirming its south-west double recessed niches from the north-western or rear
Persian origin. In the absence of writing of this wall shows that the buttresses served an ornamental
period, we cannot prove that these Persian immi­ purpose.
grants were Sumerians, but the continuity of their 9. These earlier experimental phases are represen­
culture with that of the Protolitcratc Period suggests
ted by temples numbered vm and xvi which pre­
it. The only alternative would be to see Sumerians cede that of figure 3.
in the makers of red and grey pottery which first
10. H. and H. A. Frankfort, J. A. Wilson and Th. p. 4
intermingles with, then displaces, the Al ‘Ubaid
ware at the end of the Prehistoric Period. The Jacobsen,Before Philosophy (Harmondsworth, 1948),
makers of these vessels seem to have immigrated 159 ff
from the North or North-cast. The problem has 11. After Th. Jacobsen, in Journal of Near Eastern
often been discussed of recent years, but rarely with S/nd/es, v (1946), 140.
a sufficient appreciation of the continuity which I2- It survived as a sacred hill within the precincts p. 5
links the Protolitcratc and the Al ‘Ubaid Period, of a temple of Anu, built in Hellenistic times, 3,000
Ubaid culture, spreading along the rivers, years later,
fhr T ifui": throughout northern Mesopotamia 13. These stairs were built in a re-entrant angle of p. 6
the f,L f 3 3 CU of n°rtl1 Syrian affinities, was the mound, and seem to have continued through the
T, ° P!:CVai ™rouShout Mesopotamia. brickwork of the terrace, while a ramp led off to the
ramin ’1C ^C f ^“8® culture of north Mesopo- right and also mounted the terrace. In the draw-
Studics 1 v f a ^ ^assuna (Jounial °f Near Eastern ing of figure 4 the recesses in the slope of the
succeeded lwt-1 x“75)- It is mound have not been continued round the south-
Halaf in nortl ^ -3 a ^>cr^oc^ named after Tell western side because the ruins arc denuded there.
4Ubaid pconlc enryn34 i”8 dlis period thc Al The most rccent discussion of the building is by
Persia. Thc' aonc S°UtrlcmJMcsopotamia from Heinrich J. Lenzen, in Mitteilungen der Deutschen
marks thc succeedjITay/ 1 « grcf pottcry Orient-Gcsellschaft No. 83 (Berlin,November 1951).
g Warka Period. This is thc last who rejects the early date assigned to it by Perkins

235