Georges Roux - Ancient Iraq: Third Edition

PENGUIN BOOKS

ANCIENT IRAQ

Dr Georges Roux was born at Salon-de-Provence in 1914. The son of an officer in the French Army, at the age of nine he accompanied his parents to the Middle East where he lived for twelve years in Syria and Lebanon before returning to France in 1935. He graduated in medicine at the University of Paris and practised in that city for several years; but he had by then become so interested in Ancient Near Eastern History that in his spare time he read assyriology at the cole du Louvre and the cole des Hautes tudes, subsequently pursuing his oriental studies side by side with his medical career. In 1950 he joined the Iraq Petroleum Company as a medical officer and served for two years in Qatar and seven years in Iraq. His original research work in southern Mesopotamia and the articles he wrote for specialized periodicals such as Sumer and the Revue d'Assyriologie have won him admission to the restricted circle of professional archaeologists and assyriologists.

Dr Roux now lives in Burgundy.

GEORGES ROUX

THIRD EDITION

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published by George Allen & Unwin Ltd 1864

Published in Pelican Books 1966

Second edition 1980

Third edition reprinted in Penguin Books 1992

Copyright George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1964, 1980, 1992

All rights reserved

The moral right of the editor has been asserted

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ISBN: 978-0-14-193825-7

By the time this third edition of Ancient Iraq is published twelve years will have elapsed since the second edition (1980). During this relatively short period, Mesopotamian studies have made tremendous strides. In archaeology, generally brief but fruitful international rescue excavations have been carried out on some 140 tells , prompted by the building of three main dams on the Euphrates, the Tigris and one of its tributaries, radically altering our evaluation of prehistoric periods in particular, whilst digging was started, resumed and/or extended on such well-known sites as Mari, Isin, Larsa, Tell el-Oueili, Uruk, Tell Brak, Abu Salabikh and Sippar, to mention only the main ones. At the same time, Assyriologists were busy deciphering the inscriptions discovered in these excavations as well as revising and re-publishing hundreds of texts partially or inadequately published long ago, thereby modifying and improving our knowledge of the political, socio-economic and cultural history of ancient Mesopotamia. This was not routine work but a highly successful, unprecedented and, of course, computer-assisted revolution.

In 1980 I retired from my employment with a leading British pharmaceutical company. Having more time at my disposal and access to the university libraries of Paris, I wrote in my native language La Msopotamie (Le Seuil, 1985), largely based on Ancient Iraq but more comprehensive and relatively up-to-date. I realized then that some parts of my British baby were badly in need of correction and improvement, and I had no difficulty in obtaining the agreement of Penguin Books (may the god Nab bless them!) for an even more thoroughly revised and considerably enlarged third edition of Ancient Iraq, which indeed is now one step ahead of the French book on several points.

To the persons listed in the Introduction who encouraged and helped me in various ways I wish to add, for the second edition, Professor W. G. Lambert in England, Professors S. N. Kramer and J. B. Pritchard in the USA, Professor J. Bottro, Madame Florence Malbarn-Labat and M. J. P. Grgoire in France and, for this edition, Professors David and Joan Oates, J. V. Kinnier-Wilson and H. W. F. Saggs in England, M. Olivier Rouault, Madame Sylvie Lackenbacher and Professor Dominique Charpin in France, Madame Duchesne-Guillemin in Belgium and Professor A. K. Grayson in Canada. Last but not least, I wish to thank my wife Christiane for the innumerable tasks she performed to assist me.

Saint Julien du Sault, France, November 1991 .

This is a revised version, substantially enlarged and entirely rewritten, of the series of articles which appeared between September 1956 and January 1960 in Iraq Petroleum , the now defunct magazine of the Iraq Petroleum Company, under the title The Story of Ancient Iraq . Written in Basrah with no other source of documentation than my own personal library, these articles suffered from many serious defects and were far from even approaching the standards required from a work of this nature. In my view, whatever merit they possessed resided more in the lavish manner in which they were printed and illustrated than in the quality of their content. Yet, much to my surprise, the Story received a warm welcome from a large and distinguished public. From Japan to California, a number of persons who, directly or indirectly, had access to the magazine took the trouble to write to the editor or myself asking for back numbers, spare copies or reprints, and suggesting that these articles be put in book form. I have now at last complied with their wish and I must say that, had it not been for the encouragement I received from their indulgent appreciation, I would never have had the courage to embark upon such a task.

For the unexpected success of these articles I can find only one reason: imperfect as they were, they helped to fill a regrettable gap. The Tigris-Euphrates valley the region once called Mesopotamia and now mostly in Iraqi territory forms a large, coherent, well-defined geographical, historical and cultural unit. Throughout antiquity, its inhabitants Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians shared the same brilliant civilization and played the leading role in Near Eastern politics, art, science, philosophy, religion and literature. During the last hundred years an enormous amount of archaeological research has been carried out in Iraq proper and in the eastern provinces of Syria. Impressive monuments have been unearthed, and museums have been filled with works of art and inscribed tablets recovered from the buried cities of Mesopotamia. No less remarkable results have been achieved in the field of philology: little by little, the two main languages of ancient Iraq Sumerian and Akkadian have yielded their secrets, and tens of thousands of texts have been translated and published. In university libraries the number of books and articles devoted to one aspect or other of Mesopotamian archaeology, history and civilization is positively staggering. Yet while several excellent and detailed histories of ancient Egypt, Iran, Syria, Palestine and Anatolia are offered to scholars or laymen, until H. W. F. Saggs in 1962 published