People: Almost 75% of Iraq's population live in the flat, alluvial plain stretching southeast toward Baghdad and Basrah to the Persian Gulf. The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers carry about 70 million cubic meters of silt annually to the delta. Known in ancient times as Mesopotamia, the region is the legendary locale of the Garden of Eden. The ruins of Ur, Babylon, and other ancient cities are here. Iraq's two largest ethnic groups are Arabs and Kurds. Other distinct groups are Turkomans, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Iranians, Lurs, and Armenians. Arabic is the most commonly spoken language. Kurdish is spoken in the north, and English is the most commonly spoken Western language. Most Iraqi Muslims are members of the Shi'a sect, but there is a large Sunni population as well, made up of both Arabs and Kurds. Small communities of Christians, Mandaeans, and Yezidis also exist. Most Kurds are Sunni Muslim but differ from their Arab neighbors in language, dress, and customs.

Sex ratio: at birth 1.05 males/female, under 15 years 1.03 males/female, 5-64 years 1.03 males/female, 65 years and over 0.88 males/female,  total population 1.02 males/female (2002 est.). Infant mortality rate: 57.61 deaths/1,000 live births (2002 est.). Life expectancy at birth: total population 67.38 years , female 68.5 years (2002 est. , male 66.31 years. Total fertility rate: 4.63 children born/woman (2002 est.). HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate: less than 0.01% (1999 est.). HIV/AIDS - people living with HIV/AIDS NA. HIV/AIDS - deaths NA. Nationality: Noun Iraqis, adjective Iraqi. Ethnic groups: 1-Arab 75%-80%, 2-Kurdish 15%-20%, 3-Turkoman, Assyrian or other 5%. Religions: 1-Muslim 97% (Shi'aa 60%-65%, Sunni 32%-37%), 2-Christian & other 3%. Languages: 1-Arabic, 2-Kurdish (official in Kurdish regions), 3-Turkoman, 4-Assyrian, 5-Armenian. Literacy: definition age 15 and over can read and write total population 58% male 70.7% female 45% (1995 est.)

IRAQ: HISTORY BACKGROUND

In the narrow sense, Mesopotamia is the area between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, north or northwest of the bottleneck at Baghdad, in modern Iraq; it is Al-Jazirah ("The Island") of the Arabs. South of this lies Babylonia, named after the city of Babylon. However, in the broader sense, the name Mesopotamia has come to be used for the area bounded on the northeast by the Zagros Mountains and on the southwest by the edge of the Arabian Plateau and stretching from the Persian Gulf in the southeast to the spurs of the Anti-Taurus Mountains in the northwest. Only from the latitude of Baghdad do the Euphrates and Tigris truly become twin rivers, the Rafidain of the Arabs, which have constantly changed their courses over the millennia. The low-lying plain of the Karun River in Persia has always been closely related to Mesopotamia, but it is NOT considered part of Mesopotamia as it forms its own river system. Mesopotamia, south of Ar-Ramadi (about 70 miles, or 110 kilometers, west of Baghdad) on the Euphrates and the bend of the Tigris below Samarra' (about 70 miles north-northwest of Baghdad), is flat alluvial land. Between Baghdad and the mouth of the Shatt al-'Arab (the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, where it empties into the Persian Gulf) there is a difference in height of only about 100 feet (30 meters). As a result of the slow flow of the water, there are heavy deposits of silt, and the riverbeds are raised. Consequently, the rivers often overflow their banks (and may even change their course) when they are not protected by high dikes. In recent times they have been regulated above Baghdad by the use of escape channels with overflow reservoirs. The extreme south is a region of extensive marshes and reed swamps, Hawrs, which, probably since early times, have served as an area of refuge for oppressed and displaced peoples.

Photo: Sitting figure, Hassuna, 6000 B.C.

The supply of water is not regular; as a result of the high average temperatures and a very low annual rainfall, the ground of the plain of latitude 35 N is hard and dry and unsuitable for plant cultivation for at least eight months in the year. Consequently, agriculture without risk of crop failure, which seems to have begun in the higher rainfall zones and in the hilly borders of Mesopotamia in the 10th millennium BC, began in Mesopotamia itself, the real heart of the civilization, only after artificial irrigation had been invented, bringing water to large stretches of territory through a widely branching network of canals. Since the ground is extremely fertile and, with irrigation and the necessary drainage, will produce in abundance, southern Mesopotamia became a land of plenty that could support a considerable population. The cultural superiority of north Mesopotamia, which may have lasted until about 4000 BC, was finally overtaken by the south when the people there had responded to the challenge of their situation. The present climatic conditions are fairly similar to those of 8,000 years ago. An English survey of ruined settlements in the area 30 miles around ancient Hatra (180 miles northwest of Baghdad) has shown that the southern limits of the zone in which agriculture is possible without artificial irrigation has remained unchanged since the first settlement of Al-Jazirah.

 The availability of raw materials is a historical factor of great importance, as is the dependence on those materials that had to be imported. In Mesopotamia, agricultural products and those from stock breeding, fisheries, date palm cultivation, and reed industries [in short, grain, vegetables, meat, leather, wool, horn, fish, dates, and reed and plant-fiber products] were available in plenty and could easily be produced in excess of home requirements to be exported. There are bitumen springs at Hit (90 miles northwest of Baghdad) on the Euphrates (the Is of Herodotus). On the other hand, wood, stone, and metal were rare or even entirely absent. The date palm--virtually the national tree of Iraq--yields a wood suitable only for rough beams and not for finer work. Stone is mostly lacking in southern Mesopotamia, although limestone is quarried in the desert about 35 miles to the west and "Mosul marble" is found not far from the Tigris in its middle reaches. Metal can only be obtained in the mountains, and the same is true of precious and semiprecious stones.

WORLD CULTURE, ART AND CIVILIZATION

IRAQ: HISTORY BACKGROUND

Photo: Jar, Obied, 4000 B.C.

Later, the Greeks adopted all kinds of fabulous tales about King Ninus, Queen Semiramis, and King Sardanapalus. These stories are described mainly in the historical work of Diodorus Siculus (1st century BC), who based them on the reports of a Greek physician, Ctesias (405-359 BC). Herodotus saw Babylon with his own eyes, and Xenophon gave an account of travels and battles. All later historians, however, wrote at second or third hand, with one exception, Berosus (b. c. 340 BC), who emigrated at an advanced age to the Aegean island of Cos, where he is said to have composed the three books of the Babyloniaka. Unfortunately, only extracts from them survive, prepared by one Alexander Polyhistor (1st century BC), who, in his turn, served as a source for the Church Father Eusebius (d. AD 342).Berosus derided the "Greek historians" who had so distorted the history of his country. He knew, for example, that it was not Semiramis who founded the city of Babylon, but he was himself the prisoner of his own environment and cannot have known more about the history of his land than was known in Babylonia itself in the 4th century BC. Berosus' first book dealt with the beginnings of the world and with a myth of a composite being, Oannes, half fish, half man, who came ashore in Babylonia at a time when men still lived like the wild beasts. Oannes taught them the essentials of civilization: writing, the arts, law, agriculture, surveying, and architecture. The name Oannes must have been derived from the cuneiform U'anna (Sumerian) or Umanna (Akkadian), a second name of the mythical figure Adapa, the bringer of civilization.

Photo, far left: Gameboard, UR 2660 BC.  Photo, left: A Sumerian woman, UR 2650 BC.

The second book of Berosus contained the Babylonian king list from the beginning to King Nabonassar (Nabu-nasir, 747-734 B.C.), a contemporary of Tiglath-pileser III. Berosus' tradition, beginning with a list of primeval kings before the Flood, is a reliable one; it agrees with the tradition of the Sumerian king list, and even individual names can be traced back exactly to their Sumerian originals. Even the immensely long reigns of the primeval kings, which lasted as long as "18 sars" (= 18 3,600 = 64,800) of years, are found in Berosus. Furthermore, he was acquainted with the story of the Flood, with Cronus as its instigator and Xisuthros (or Ziusudra) as its hero, and with the building of an ark. The third book is presumed to have dealt with the history of Babylonia from Nabonassar to the time of Berosus himself. Diodorus made the mistake of locating Nineveh on the Euphrates, and Xenophon gave an account of two cities, Larissa (probably modern Nimrud [ancient Kalakh], 20 miles southeast of modern Mosul) and Mespila (ancient Nineveh, just north of Mosul). The name Mespila probably was nothing more than the word of the local Aramaeans for ruins; there can be no clearer instance of the rift that had opened between the ancient Middle East and the classical West. In sharp contrast, the East had a tradition that the ruins opposite Mosul (in north Iraq) concealed ancient Nineveh. When a Spanish rabbi from Navarre, Benjamin of Tudela, was traveling in the Middle East between 1160 and 1173, Jews and Muslims alike knew the position of the grave of the prophet Jonah.

The credit for the rediscovery of the ruins of Babylon goes to an Italian, Pietro della Valle, who correctly identified the vast ruins north of modern Al-Hillah,(60 miles south of Baghdad); he must have seen there the large rectangular tower that represented the ancient ziggurat. Previously, other travelers had sought the Tower of Babel in two other monumental ruins: Birs Nimrud, the massive brick structure of the ziggurat of ancient Borsippa (modern Birs, near Al-Hillah), vitrified by lightning, and the ziggurat of the Kassite capital, Dur Kurigalzu, at Burj 'Aqarquf, 22 miles west of Baghdad.  Pietro della Valle brought back to Europe the first specimens of cuneiform writing, stamped brick, of which highly impressionistic reproductions were made.

             Photo: Gold lamp, UR, 2600 B.C.                                                                                              Photo: Leaves necklace made out of pure gold, UR, 2650 B.C.

WORLD CULTURE, ART AND CIVILIZATION

IRAQ: HISTORY BACKGROUND

Thereafter, European travelers visited Mesopotamia with increasing frequency, among them Carsten Niebuhr (an 18th-century German traveler), Claudius James Rich (a 19th-century Orient list and traveler), and Ker Porter (a 19th-century traveler). In modern times a third Middle Eastern ruin drew visitors from Europe-- Persepolis, in the land of Persia east of Susiana, near modern Shiraz, Iran. In 1602, reports had filtered back to Europe of inscriptions that were not in Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Georgian, or Greek. In 1700 an Englishman, Thomas Hyde, coined the term "cuneiform" for these inscriptions, and by the middle of the 18th century it was known that the Persepolis inscriptions were related to those of Babylon. Niebuhr distinguished three separate alphabets (Babylonian, Elamite, and Old Persian cuneiform). The first promising attempt at decipherment was made by the German philologist Georg Friedrich Grotefend in 1802, by use of the kings' names in the Old Persian versions of the trilingual inscriptions, although his later efforts led him up a blind alley. Thereafter, the efforts to decipher cuneiform gradually developed in the second half of the 19th century into a discipline of ancient Oriental philology, which was based on results established through the pioneering work of Emile Burnouf, Edward Hincks, Sir Henry Rawlinson, and many others.

Photo from L to R: #1: Iraqi gold Helmet, UR 2600 B.C. Photo #2: Golden Lyer Detail, UR 2600B.C . Photo #3: Woman, UR 2600B.C.  Photo #4: Gold Dagger, UR 2600 B.C.  Photo #5: Ornament, UR 2650 B.C.

Today this subject is still known as Assyriology, because at the end of the 19th century the great majority of cuneiform texts came from the Assyrian city of Nineveh, in particular from the library of King Ashurbanipal in the mound of Kuyunjik at Nineveh.

The emergence of Mesopotamian civilization

The Late Neolithic Period and the Chalcolithic Period. Between about 10,000 BC and the genesis of large permanent settlements, the following stages of development are distinguishable, some of which run parallel :-

1. The change to sedentary life, or the transition from continual or seasonal change of abode, characteristic of hunter-gatherers and the earliest cattle breeders, to life in one place over a period of several years or even permanently.

2. The transition from experimental plant cultivation to the deliberate and calculated farming of grains and leguminous plants.

3. The erection of houses and the associated "settlement" of the gods in temples.

4. The burial of the dead in cemeteries.

5. The invention of clay vessels, made at first by hand, then turned on the wheel and fired to ever greater degrees of hardness, at the same time receiving almost invariably decoration of incised designs or painted patterns,

6. The development of specialized crafts and the distribution of labor.

7. Metal production (the first use of metal--copper--marks the transition from the Late Neolithic to the Chalcolithic Period).

WORLD CULTURE, ART AND CIVILIZATION

IRAQ: HISTORY BACKGROUND

 Photos from L to R: Inana Temple, Uruk Warka, 2900 B.C.  Vase, Warka, 3000 B.C.

The finds included querns (primitive mills) for grinding grain (whether wild or cultivated is not known), the remains of huts about 13 feet in diameter, and a cemetery with grave goods. The presence of copper beads is evidence of acquaintance with metal, though not necessarily with the technique of working it into tools, and the presence of obsidian (volcanic glass) is indicative of the acquisition of non indigenous raw materials by means of trade. The bones found testify that sheep were already domesticated at Zawi Chemi Shanidar. At Karim Shahir, a site that cannot be accurately tied chronologically to Shanidar, clear proof was obtained both of the knowledge of grain cultivation, in the form of sickle blades showing sheen from use, and of the baking of clay, in the form of lightly fired clay figurines. Still in the hilly borders of Mesopotamia, a sequence of about 3,000 years can be followed at the site of Qal'at Jarmo, east of Kirkuk, some 150 miles north of Baghdad. The beginning of this settlement can be dated to about 6750 BC; excavations uncovered 12 archaeological levels of a regular village, consisting of about 20 to 25 houses built of packed clay, sometimes with stone foundations, and divided into several rooms. The finds included types of wheat (emmer and einkorn) and two-row barley, the bones of domesticated goats, sheep, and pigs, and obsidian tools, stone vessels, and, in the upper third of the levels, clay vessels with rough painted decorations, providing the first certain evidence for the manufacture of pottery. Jarmo must be roughly contemporary with the sites of Jericho (13 miles east of Jerusalem) and of Çatalhüyük in Anatolia (central Turkey).

Photo: Roll stamp, UR 3200 B.C. 

Those sites, with their walled settlements, seem to have achieved a much higher level of civilization, but too much weight must not be placed on the comparison because no other sites in and around Mesopotamia confirm the picture deduced from Jarmo alone. Views on the earliest Neolithic in Iraq have undergone radical revisions in the light of discoveries made since the 1970s at Qermez Dere, Nemrik, and Maghzaliyah.  About 1,000 years later are two villages that are the earliest so far discovered in the plain of Mesopotamia: Hassuna, near Mosul, and Tall Sawwan, near Samarra'. At Hassuna the pottery is more advanced, with incised and painted designs, but the decoration is still unsophisticated. One of the buildings found may be a shrine, judging from its unusual ground plan. Apart from emmer there occurs, as the result of mutation, six-row barley, which was later to become the chief grain crop of southern Mesopotamia. In the case of Tall Sawwan, it is significant that the settlement lay south of the boundary of rainfall agriculture; thus it must have been dependent on some form of artificial irrigation, even if this was no more than the drawing of water from the Tigris. This, therefore, gives a date after which the settlement of parts of southern Mesopotamia would have been feasible.

WORLD CULTURE, ART AND CIVILIZATION

IRAQ: HISTORY BACKGROUND

    Saragon or Nari, Nineve, 2300 B.C.                  Nipuur-Enlil temple, 2100 B.C.      Man face, Aqarquf 1400 B.C.

The emergence of cultures

UR 2100BC - Stone Tablet

For the next millennium, the 5th, it is customary to speak in terms of various "cultures" or "horizons" distinguished in general by the pottery, which may be classed by its color, shape, hardness, and, above all, by its decoration. The name of each horizon is derived either from the type site or from the place where the pottery was first found: Samarra' on the Tigris, Tall Halaf in the central Jazirah, Hassuna Level V, Al-'Ubaid near Ur, and Hajj Muhammad on the Euphrates, not far from As-Samawah (some 150 miles south-southeast of Baghdad). Along with the improvement of tools, the first evidence for water transport (a model boat from the prehistoric cemetery at Eridu, in the extreme south of Mesopotamia, c. 4000 BC), and the development of terra-cottas, the most impressive sign of progress is the constantly accelerating advance in architecture. This can best be followed in the city of Eridu, which in historical times was the centre of the cult of the Sumerian god Enki. Originally a small, single-roomed shrine, the temple in the Ubaid period consisted of a rectangular building, measuring 80 by 40 feet, that stood on an artificial terrace. It had an "offering table" and an "altar" against the short walls, aisles down each side, and a facade decorated with niches. This temple, standing on a terrace probably originally designed to protect the building from flooding, is usually considered the prototype of the characteristic religious structure of later Babylonia, the ziggurat. The temple at Eridu is in the very same place as that on which the Enki ziggurat stood in the time of the 3rd dynasty of Ur (c. 2112-c. 2004 BC), so the cult tradition must have existed on the same spot for at least 1,500 to 2,000 years before Ur III itself. Remarkable as this is, however, it is not justifiable to assume a continuous ethnic tradition. The flowering of architecture reached its peak with the great temples (or assembly halls?) of Uruk, built around the turn of the 4th to 3rd millennium BC (Uruk Levels VI to IV). In extracting information as to the expression of mind and spirit during the six millennia preceding the invention of writing, it is necessary to take account of four major sources: decoration on pottery, the care of the dead, sculpture, and the designs on seals. There is, of course, no justification in assuming any association with ethnic groups. The most varied of these means of expression is undoubtedly the decoration of pottery. It is hardly coincidental that, in regions in which writing had developed, high-quality painted pottery was no longer made.

WORLD CULTURE, ART AND CIVILIZATION

IRAQ: HISTORY BACKGROUND: The Mesopotamian proto-history

Attempts have been made by philologists to reach conclusions about the origin of the flowering of civilization in southern Mesopotamia by the analysis of Sumerian words. It has been thought possible to isolate an earlier, non-Sumerian substratum from the Sumerian vocabulary by assigning certain words on the basis of their endings to either a Neolithic or a Chalcolithic language stratum. These attempts are based on the phonetic character of Sumerian at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, which is at least 1,000 years later than the invention of writing. Quite apart, therefore, from the fact that the structure of Sumerian words themselves is far from adequately investigated, the enormous gap in time casts grave doubt on the criteria used to distinguish between Sumerian and "pre-Sumerian" vocabulary. The earliest peoples of Mesopotamia who can be identified from inscribed monuments and written tradition--[people in the sense of speakers of a common language]--are, apart from the Sumerians, Semitic peoples (Akkadians or pre-Akkadians) and Subarians (identical with, or near relatives of, the Hurrians, who appear in northern Mesopotamia around the end of the 3rd millennium BC). Their presence is known, but no definite statements about their past or possible routes of immigration are possible.

Photo: Fox, Isinlarsa, 2000 B.C.

At the turn of the 4th to 3rd millennium BC, the long span of prehistory is over, and the threshold of the historical era is gained, captured by the existence of writing. Names, speech, and actions are fixed in a system that is composed of signs representing complete words or syllables. The signs may consist of realistic pictures, abbreviated representations, and perhaps symbols selected at random. Since clay is not well suited to the drawing of curved lines, a tendency to use straight lines rapidly gained ground. When the writer pressed the reed in harder at the beginning of a stroke, it made a triangular "head," and thus "wedges" were impressed into the clay. It is the Sumerians who are usually given the credit forr the invention of this, the first system of writing in the Middle East. As far as they can be assigned to any language, the inscribed documents from before the dynasty of Akkad (c. 2334-c. 2154 BC) are almost exclusively in Sumerian. Moreover, the extension of the writing system to include the creation of syllabograms by the use of the sound of a logogram (sign representing a word), such as gi, "a reed stem," used to render the verb gi, "to return," can only be explained in terms of the Sumerian language. It is most probable, however, that Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC, just as in later times, was composed of many races. This makes it likely that, apart from the Sumerians, the interests and even initiatives of other language groups may have played their part in the formation of the writing system. Many scholars believe that certain clay objects or tokens that are found in prehistoric strata may have been used for some kind of primitive accounting.

WORLD CULTURE, ART AND CIVILIZATION

IRAQ: HISTORY BACKGROUND

 The Dedicatory - Neo-Babylonian Inscription.

Photo: Nimrud 880 B.C. Stele Assur Nasir.

These tokens, some of which are incised and which have various forms, may thus be three-dimensional predecessors of writing. Sumerian is an agglutinative language: prefixes and suffixes, which express various grammatical functions and relationships, are attached to a noun or verb root in a "chain." Attempts to identify Sumerian more closely by comparative methods have as yet been unsuccessful and will very probably remain so, as languages of a comparable type are known only from AD 500 (Georgian) or 1000 (Basque)--that is, 3,000 years later. Over so long a time, the rate of change in a language, particularly one that is not fixed in a written norm, is so great that one can no longer determine whether apparent similarity between words goes back to an original relationship or is merely fortuitous. Consequently, it is impossible to obtain any more accurate information as to the language group to which Sumerian may once have belonged. The most important development in the course of the 4th millennium BC was the birth of the city. There were precursors, such as the unwalled pre-pottery settlement at Jericho of about 7000 BC, but the beginning of cities with a more permanent character came only later. There is no generally accepted definition of a city. In this context, it means a settlement that serves as a centre for smaller settlements, one that possesses one or more shrines of one or more major deities, has extensive granaries, and, finally, displays an advanced stage of specialization in the crafts. The earliest cities of southern Mesopotamia, as far as their names are known, are Eridu, Uruk, Bad-tibira, Nippur, and Kish (35 miles south-southeast of Baghdad). The surveys of the American archaeologist Robert McCormick Adams and the German archaeologist Hans Nissen have shown how the relative size and number of the settlements gradually shifted: the number of small or very small settlements was reduced overall, whereas the number of larger places grew. The clearest sign of urbanization can be seen at Uruk, with the almost explosive increase in the size of the buildings. Uruk Levels VI to IV had rectangular buildings covering areas as large as 275 by 175 feet. These buildings are described as temples, since the ground plans are comparable to those of later buildings whose sacred character is beyond doubt, but other functions, such as assembly halls for non-cultic purposes, cannot be excluded. The major accomplishments of the period Uruk VI to IV, apart from the first inscribed tablets (Level IV B), are masterpieces of sculpture and of seal engraving and also of the form of wall decoration known as cone mosaics. Together with the everyday pottery of gray or red burnished ware, there is a very coarse type known as the beveled-rim bowl. These are vessels of standard size whose shape served as the original for the sign sila, meaning "litre." It is not too rash to deduce from the mass production of such standard vessels that they served for the issue of rations. This would have been the earliest instance of a system that remained typical of the southern Mesopotamian city for centuries: the maintenance of part of the population by allocations of food from the state. Historians usually date the beginning of history, as opposed to prehistory and proto-history, from the first appearance of usable written sources. If this is taken to be the transition from the 4th to the 3rd millennium BC, it must be remembered that this applies only to part of Mesopotamia: the south, the Diyala region, Susiana (with a later script of its own invented locally), and the district of the middle Euphrates, as well as Iran.

End of the article.