Page 51 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART ONE: MESOPOTAMIA

the gate in the outer wall, which was flanked by two towers (Plate 12). On the left, when
one entered the forecourt, there was a separate building, resembling in plan a large
private house, but it contained a little shrine, and it probably housed the offices of the
temple administration. These were situated round an open court reached by a passage
at the foot of the outer enclosed wall of the oval.
From the forecourt of the temple a few steps led to the deep, well-protected gate of
the inner enclosure. The inner court was spacious; it contained a well and circular basins
of baked brick lined with bitumen. These probably served for ritual ablutions. At the
foot of the platform upon which the temple stood there was an altar where animal sacri­
fices were offered. The platform was about twelve feet high; this can be calculated by
the steps which are preserved. The temple which originally stood upon it is entirely lost.
What appears in our reconstruction shows the standard type in its simplest form, which
was well preserved at Tell Asmar. The shrine has been given an arched doorway, such
arches having been found in a private house of the period at Tell Asmar.17
The rooms roimd the court of the temple oval were not used for the cult, or, at least,
served it indirectly. Some were workshops of stone-cutters or copper-workers, others
bakeries, stores for agricultural implements, and so on. The great temple complex which
appears in plate 12 as the centre of the settlement cannot be properly understood by re­
ferring to religious practice alone. It requires some knowledge of the peculiar relation­
ship which was believed to exist between society and the superhuman powers on which
it depended. The gods were powers manifest in nature and worshipped throughout the
land. But there was no political entity comprising the nation. The effective political unit
was the city-state, and each of the gods owned one or more of the cities. Their earthly
rulers were stewards of the divine overlord, and their people were dedicated to his ser­
vice and looked to him for protection against their enemies and against such natural
calamities as floods and drought, marsh fires and storms which threatened civilized life
in Mesopotamia and were all regarded as manifestations of specific divinities. The god
who owned the city was its advocate in the assembly of the gods. The doctrine of the
divine overlordships had far-reaching consequences in the political and economic
spheres. It resulted in a planned society best described as theocratic socialism. All the
citizens, high and low, laboured in the service of the god and fulfilled allotted tasks. All
tilled his fields and maintained the dykes and canals required for irrigation. Resources
and labour were effectively pooled - seed corn, draught animals, ploughs, and other
implements were supplied by the temple. Craftsmen kept this equipment in order and
regularly presented a quota of their produce to the temple. So did fishermen and gar­
deners, and indeed all other artisans. They were organized in guilds under foremen. The
harvest of the gods’ fields and orchards, gardens and cane-brakes, was likewise stored in
the temple and regularly distributed to the community in the form of periodical and
special (festival) rations. The rooms round the inner court of the temple oval at Khafaje
were stores and workshops required for such purposes.
At the time when texts became numerous enough to throw light on the working of
this system - that is, towards the end of the Early Dynastic Period - it was already in dis­
solution. The leaders who still called themselves ‘stewards of the god’ were in practice

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