DYNASTIES OF GUTIUM AND UR The dynasty of Agade was suppressed by the hill men of Gutium, but no archaeological evidence of the foreign domination can be adduced. Gudea, the issakku, "tenant farmer," or gov ernor of Lagash, and his immediate successor lived under this foreign domination, and an independent dynasty controlled Erech; the Sumerian cities in the south recovered the prosperity and liberty previously lost. The culminating point was reached under the 3rd dynasty of Ur when the kings of the south country estab lished an empire which included Elam and the Zagros range in the east, Assyria and Mesopotamia in the north, and Syria up to the Cilician gates in the west. This was a Sumerian reaction, not so much against the men of Semitic speech in Babylonia, as against a foreign domination from the east ; Akkadians permeated the south during this period, the last rulers of the 3rd dynasty of Ur bore Akkadian names, the civilization is derived from that of the Agade period. But the result of the transfer of the seat of power to Sumer was that, owing to the empire established in this, the most flourishing period of Babylonian history, a more definite Sumerian impress was given to the outlying provinces than could otherwise have been the case.
The Sumerian city of this period always included within its walls a "temple" which was actually a com plex of buildings, containing the temple of the city god, another of his consort, another perhaps used as the joint habitation of the two ; within each temple might be found the "shrines" of different gods, and a "shrine" might contain small "chapels," screened off for lesser deities. Within such temple-complexes dwelt the priests, among whom were the governor, the city judges, the scribes and chief administrative officials. No such temenos can be planned as yet for this period, but it is probable that the plan drawn on the slab held by the statue of Gudea from Lagash was intended for the wall of such a part of his city. The walls of a temenos were in effect the inner fortifications of a city; gateways receded for defensive purposes, the walls had towers and battlements. The city without these walls stood on a lower level; it is as yet impossible to give details as to the general plan of cities, and the remains of dwelling houses of this period at Eridu are simple brick-constructions, interesting because they show windows and a painted black and white decoration. Within the temple com plexes narrow streets led past the houses of the gods and of the priests. The larger buildings consist always of a main court with rooms opening off it, sometimes supplemented by a smaller court similarly arranged. The whole precinct was dominated by a tem ple tower or ziggurat, which might consist of seven, four, or only three stages. Steps up one side gave access to the top stage, which was a small cella, wherein the god was supposed to lie at night with the priestess he had chosen, according to Herodotus' account. The oldest and best extant tower of this kind is that at Ur; it was originally built by Ur-Nammu, the founder of the 3rd Ur dynasty. In later times the four stages were coloured, the lowest stage black, with bitumen, the second white, with gypsum, the third red, the colour of the brick, the fourth sky-blue, the result of glazing. Kings continually boast that they "raised" such structures "like heaven," and it may be that the temple tower corresponded to the conception of heaven's stages, varied between three. four and seven. (See RELIGION.) An important development of the period was the brick-built column. A group of these, curiously close together at Lagash, is definitely dated to the time of Gudea by the French excavators; the row of similar columns at Kish attributed to an early period by the excavators may also belong to about this date. These brick-built columns do not recur in Babylonian architecture, so far as is yet known, until Seleucid and Parthian times, when instances have been found at Babylon and at Kish.
Door constructions depended upon the use of a hard stone—or, in the case of private houses, a burnt brick,—securely wedged in a brick box some distance below the threshold. In a hollow there turned the metal shoe of the wooden post, and the door itself consisted of two wings securely fastened on to this. The question of building in storeys is still doubtful ; the evidence alleged from Ur in proof of an upper storey and a gallery, resembling the modern dwelling house of Iraq, is of doubtful value. Roofs seem to have been invariably of timber and mud.
Drainage was extensive and well conceived, at least inside the temple areas. Piping of pieces with bell-mouths, pierced cylin drical drums, and even brick pits of great depth were in use. Within the temples some of these drains unquestionably served ritual purposes.
The most favoured method was a return to carv ing in straight registers, and no attempt to copy Naram-Sin's stele has yet been found. The style of carving is rigid, but careful in detail and effective in grouping. A daring experiment, found on a bas-relief of Gudea, and repeated on the great stele of Ur Nammu, was the representation of flying figures, bearing the blessing of the holy-water flowing from pots. The dairy scenes of earlier times are repeated ; but the themes of the king setting out to build, of builders at work, of priests sacrificing or beating drums to drive off evil influences, are first treated on the Ur Nammu stele. A remarkable anticipation of a later device may be found on the Gudea vase, in which two serpents twined round a post are watched on either side by bird-headed winged monsters who hold magical staves. The constant appearance of astrological and astronomical symbols in bas-reliefs on pots is noteworthy as marking the increased importance of star-worship.
The complete seated figure of Gudea from Lagash retains the squat proportions of the early Sumerian style; the new kind of cloak, much like a chlamys, is less clumsy than the flounced skirt, but there is no attempt at modelling. But the head preserves the correct proportion of the Agade period. A standing figure of the same city governor betrays the same characteristics from the front, but the back view shows very careful modelling in broad masses, to render the natural con tours of the human figure. A headless statuette of his son, Ur Ningirsu, shows a slimmer figure. There are a number of broken figures, all repeating these characteristics, and the male heads of this period often repeat the rather plump conventionalized features of Gudea ; but the modelling of the nostrils and mouth is finely done, and in some cases it is difficult to distinguish male stone and clay heads of this period from work done under Greek influ ence. The best heads are those of women, one from Lagash, one from the city of Ashur, two from Ur; these are portraits of indi viduals, modified perhaps by the current conception of beauty. In one case the inset eyes are still extant. It has been well said of one of these heads that it is a "spiritual sister" of certain early Athenian female heads of the 6th century. Babylonian sculp ture never reached this level again. Casting in metal was also exceedingly good; a copper figure of a city governor, standing rigidly like Gudea, shows an ability to render drapery and follow the line of the human form beneath, together with a sense of proportion, which renders it the best male statuette yet found in Sumer. This art had an influence in the north. A statue dedi cated by Puzur-Ishtar, son of Tura-Dagan, governor of Mari, a city west of the Euphrates below the Khabur, is carved in this style ; the only variant feature consists in the elaborately curled beard, a custom of the Assyrians.
The length of the cylinders in this period was consid erably shortened, the execution rather less detailed, and, in con formity with current taste, the postures more rigid than in the Agade times. The most favoured theme was the introduction of a human suppliant, conventionally rendered, to a god or goddess. The inscriptions are very formal; of the type "God . . ., X son of Y, thy servant," but in certain cases are longer and include the reigning king's name and titles. A great variety of coloured stones was employed.
The custom of placing small copper figures, the bottom of which is shaped as a peg, in foundations, had commenced in the time of Ur-Nina of Lagash in the early Sumerian period; these were accompanied by small stone tablets in the form of a plano-convex brick, and were placed in a burnt brick box in the four corners of temple walls. At an earlier date the stone tablets were so placed without the copper figure. In some cases at a later date these copper figures bore a clay brick on their heads. In the Gudea-3rd Ur dynasty period the top of the copper nail is shaped into the head and bust of a man carrying a pointed ov?.l object, perhaps representing a brick. The bottom of these nails is generally inscribed. A peculiar feature at Lagash was that the nail was left separate, held by a half kneeling, half-running figure of a god, marked by the horned headdress. The phallic interpretation of these figures is quite erroneous. This custom of placing figures in the foundation lasted into the next period and then apparently ceased ; it was a Sumerian practice not adopted by the Amorite 1st dynasty of Babylon. In one case the foundation deposit consisted of round-topped stelae bearing inscriptions of Pur-Sin. A rather different kind of de posit consisted in the insertion of small clay cones into the inner core of walls, with the object of perpetuating the name of the builder.
A marked feature of the period was the development of a law code, drawn up probably by Shulgi, the second king of the 3rd Ur dynasty, which was the basis of the Hammurabi code. This code entailed a regularization of business and scribal custom ; tablets, to receive legal recogni tion, had to be sealed, were then inscribed and wrapped in en velopes, also sealed and inscribed with the same text. The observ ance of this practice in Cappadocia is a proof that the kings imposed their laws upon distant provinces. Commercial docu ments relating to sales, adoptions and other private business appear beside the records of temple administration. This was a great formative period in the development of social life and in the progress of civilisation.
Gudea secured his materials by very extensive trade relations; timber came from the Lebanon, gold dust (i.e., alluvial gold) from the Taurus, diorite and other stones from the Zagros, copper from the Median plateau and from Magan. The kings of the 3rd Ur dynasty were, however, engaged in constant warfare along these trade routes without apparently increasing their available sources of supply by contact with a wider area. The inference, justified by historical considerations, seems to be that the incursion of various new peoples into districts along the trade routes tended to shut the inlets into Babylonia, so that these were only partially kept open by an extension of direct authority. The widespread trade of the early Sumerian period was no more.
The kings of Ur were satisfied to appoint the city governors in various districts; they did not attempt to alter the administration of the area they governed by national institutions. Some of the governors were pluralists, and towards the end of the dynasty one alone held nearly all the districts east of the Tigris. Submission was secured by the annual appearance of these governors bringing tribute. The effect of the system seems to have been beneficial; the governors indulged in building schemes within their own cities, and such a provincial capital as the city of Ashur flourished and received an abiding impress from this period. A curious feature of later nomenclature may be traced to this epoch, which illustrates its importance; temples devoted to the worship of the same god in different cities had the same Sumerian name, a custom doubtless due to direct derivation only probable under Shulgi, and walls, gateways, statues were also given Sumerian names, doubtless because the custom was derived from the era of Sumerian governors.
