Encyclopedia of society and culture in the ancient world ( PDFDrive ) 243

214 cities: Asia and the Pacific were both the hubs of military administration and royal government as well as the cultural and symbolic centers of multinational empire NIPPUR, BABYLON, AND CULTURAL METROPOLIS THE Just as the emergence of cities had depended on the specialization of labor within an evolving hierarchy of functions and classes, so too did the growth and spread of urban culture throughout the ancient Near East depend on the rise of a small group of elite centers of specialized, “symbolic” cultural production and religious privilege Foremost among these were Babylon, the first great cultural metropolis of the ancient world, and Nippur, an academic city of scribes and higher learning Although it was not the capital of a political or military empire, Nippur commanded its own kind of cultural power and religious prestige as the major center of Sumerian text production with a sizable “scribe quarter” and as the locus of an extensive religious precinct with a temple economy that employed hundreds of thousands of people in the service of the god Enlil Its growth unimpeded by the presence of a secular government, Nippur was well known for the ethnic diversity of its population and came to acquire a reputation as a city where peoples of diverse backgrounds could come together to live peacefully and intelligently Nippur thus stands as the paradigm of the “cultural” city and multicultural place, where the priorities of urban life involved much more than the wealth generated by a specific trade relationship or the politics of a particular dynasty The endurance of the cultural metropolis is best illustrated by the case of Babylon and the Babylonians, whose civilization flourished for centuries, despite multiple foreign invasions and changes of political regime The city of Babel of biblical fame was decadent, corrupt, and very worldly, but in fact it was here that the Bible was first written down, something that would not have been possible in a less-tolerant environment Babylon probably became a large city as late as the 19th century b.c.e., after the collapse of the Third Dynasty of Ur, and a world power by the 14th century b.c.e., when it covered an area of about three square miles, with broad, straight streets and a diverse population that spoke Aramaic It was the Neo-Babylonian Empire (625–539 b.c.e.) that triumphed over the Assyrians and became the main power of the ancient Near East King Nabopolassar undertook the reconstruction of the great ziggurat, a project continued by his son Nebuchadnezzar, who also developed the great Processional Way of Marduk (ca 605 b.c.e.) and the Ishtar Gate, now housed in partial reconstruction in a German museum In 539 b.c.e Babylon was taken over by the Achaemenid Persians under Cyrus II When Alexander the Great defeated the Persian king Darius in 331 b.c.e., he chose Babylon as the capital of his empire and, upon his death, left it under the control of one of his Macedonian generals, Seleucus I During the Roman Period, Babylon fell into decline and became a provincial town on the outskirts of the Roman Empire THE CITY AS A FORUM FOR EMPIRE AND POWER POLITICS The decline of Babylon saw the rise of the Persian Empire and its best-known palace complex, Persepolis, begun by King Darius I in 518 b.c.e and further developed during the subsequent reigns of Xerxes and Artaxerxes I This Aachemenid site was defi ned by a vast terrace, some 40 feet high, measuring 1,500 by 900 feet in area, and originally topped by a mud-brick wall about 50 feet high The complex was approached by a wide, gently graded stairway protected by a gatehouse with monumental sculptures of bulls and human-headed bulls, recalling the earlier lamassus (humanheaded winged bulls) of Assyrian palaces The interior of the complex featured a spacious audience hall, a throne hall, and the famous Hundred-Column Hall, all of which made extensive use of square spaces and distinctively carved columns and pillars, some topped with human-headed bull capitals The great stairways leading to the terraces and platforms on which these structures stood were decorated with bold carvings of a great procession of tribute bearers, which effectively modeled (or mirrored) the expected behavior of the human subjects entering the imperial precinct Like the Assyrian palace-complexes, Persian sites like Persepolis were essentially imperial centers that sought to promote the ceremonial and prestige of the emperor and his court The Persians’ manipulation of dramatic spatial sequences and the political potential of architectural sculptures, however, appear to have taken the propagandistic message of a vainglorious empire to even greater heights Polytheistic theocracy, with its temple economy and demanding ceremonial ritual, may have been the major driving force behind the initial growth of the ancient Near Eastern city, but over time there emerged a surprising and irrepressible diversity of form, function, and cultural personality among individual cities, as typified by places as diverse as Babylon and Persepolis This diversity has both challenged and ultimately reinforced the region’s prevailing religious and political conservatism It is this very duality—of attempting to uphold traditional religion and politics in the face of the multicultural diversity and modernization that would appear to destabilize it—that makes contemporary Near Eastern cities so dynamic and fascinating ASIA AND THE PACIFIC BY NANCY SHATZMAN STEINHARDT The date assigned as the beginning of urbanism in Asia and the Pacific varies from region to region Group settlement in extended families or larger units, in which certain aspects of hunting, gathering, or planting may have been shared, predated the formation or construction of cities in Asia, often by millennia Urban settlement also occurred in all parts of Asia before writing appeared, so that the dates assigned to cities have been derived from archaeological evidence Based