The Ancient Mesopotamian City.

• Author: CHAVALAS, MARK W.
• Position: Review

The Ancient Mesopotamian City. By MARC VAN DE MIEROOP. Oxford: CLARENDON PRESS, 1997. Pp. xv + 269. $72.

Van De Mieroop has provided an excellent and thoughtprovoking general study, one of the first by a Near Eastern historian to tell a story of urbanization in Mesopotamia that dispels many old chestnuts concerning the "oriental" city as absolute and despotic. It is also timely because of renewed interest in the theme and will give researchers important data on urbanism from the pre-Classical period. The book is written in layman's terms, with few citations, but has extensive bibliographies at the end of each chapter.

After a brief discussion of the origins of urbanism and of the Uruk expansion, Van De Mieroop concentrates on the later periods, stressing the continuity of Mesopotamian civilization, rather than focusing on political changes. He ends his study in the Hetlenistic period, most likely because the conquest of Alexander gives an arbitrary occasion by which to close a major chapter in the history of Mesopotamian urbanism, even though, as he concedes, the Mesopotamian city did not fade after the loss of political independence (see Susan Sherwin-White and Amelie Kuhrt, From Samarkand to Sardis [Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 19931).

Van De Mieroop has not written an exhaustive study of urbanism, but has distilled information on topics such as the origins of the city, city and countryside, urban landscape, social organization, urban government, feeding the citizens, crafts and commerce, credit and management, and religion and learning. He dismisses the theories of urban origins put forth by Paul Wheatley (as ceremonial centers: The Pivot of the Four Quarters [Chicago: Aldine, 1971]) and by Jane Jacobs (urbanism precedes agriculture: The Economy of Cities, 2nd ed. [Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1972]), and favors those of Robert M. Adams (slow evolutionary change: The Evolution of Urban Society [Chicago: Aldine, 1966]).

Van De Mieroop argues that only a handful of Mesopotamian kings are known to have founded new cities, that Dur-Sharrukin was the only city in pre-Greek Mesopotamia truly founded on virgin soil, and that Mesopotamian kings were reluctant to boast about building cities because it was considered an act of hubris. These are contestable statements, as there were a number of new settlements in the Old Babylonian period (e.g., Haradum and Mashkan-Shapir) and kings such as Yahdun-Lim boasted of creating cities...