cities: The Middle East cient Near East, which were primarily ritual centers with a religious and ceremonial function, and not major economic magnets of surplus production Still, the early development of such ritual sites as Eridu in Sumer (ca 5000 b.c.e.) no doubt depended on the management of a surplus by an elite class of temple priests serving theocratic rulers in an increasingly stratified and hierarchical society The growth of such ritual centers with “temple economies” would culminate in the formation of independent Sumerian city-states (eventually about 12), each of which would develop under the protection of a different Mesopotamian deity The religious and ritual nature of the ancient city thus cannot be overestimated: The basic function of the city and its populace was to ensure the blessings and support of the deities, who were understood to control everything from the seasons to the course and flow of the two life-giving rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates ERIDU AND MYTHICAL ORIGINS The importance of polytheistic religion and myth as the driving force behind the development of the ancient city is nowhere better seen than in Eridu, the mythical place of origin not just for the Sumerians but for all of civilization For the Mesopotamian people, Eridu represented the prototype for the idea of the city as a sacred place It was here, according to the myth elaborated by the Babylonians, that the god Marduk created not only the world and humankind but also the first city from the primordial marshland He did so by spreading mud upon a reed frame to form a platform for a temple (the god’s abode), to be placed on a mound of dry land surrounded by the swampy water of a lagoon called the abzu Eridu’s 211 unique geographic position at the edge of the marshes and the alluvial river plain of southern Sumer (15 miles south of Ur) parallels its symbolic function as a transitional space where land and water came together to form a human civilization made possible by the gods The abzu became synonymous with the religious core of the city Eridu was not only the cult center of the gods of freshwater but also, according to traditions recorded in texts going back to the fourth millennium b.c.e., the oldest shrine and most sacred city Its very first building, a small and primitive chapel of sun-dried mud-brick, dates to 4900 b.c.e., but there is little evidence of monumental buildings beyond temple structures, among them, a ziggurat, or temple tower As in the city of Uruk, later temple structures reveal the use of limestone, sandstone, and gypsum for wall structures and clay cone mosaics covered with thin copper plating for the decoration of the main temples But Eridu never really became a fully functioning city or a center of political or economic power with its own kings; its importance was primarily symbolic, as a sanctuary and a holy place where land and water were brought together by the gods to enable humanity to take the first steps toward civilization URUK AND THE URBAN MATRIX The first site in the ancient Near East to demonstrate the basic elements of a fully functioning city with both political and ceremonial components was Uruk, the biblical Erech, known to the Arabs as Warka The Sumerian word for city was uru, which may have been the root for the Latin urbs and thus the origin of our modern term urban Uruk has often been considered the “mother of cities” because of its Panels with striding lions, Neo-Babylonian, during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II (r 604–562 b.c.e.), when Babylon reached its full glory as a city; this relief of a lion is one of a series of striding lions that lined the most important city street, the Processional Way, and guided ritual processions from the city to the temple (Copyright the Metropolitan Museum of Art)