9 ms·

Urban Gilgamesh: What the earliest epic tells us about living in an ancient city

137 points by Vigier 6y ago

idclip 6y ago
Poo and disease everywhere!
- kitotik 6y ago
  Some things never change, right?
  - andrepd 6y ago
    Fortunately they did! Cities were really insalubrious places for most of human history.
- MichaelMoser123 6y ago
  that's why they needed big city walls - to make sure that their own subjects won't run away (also to defend against Enkidu and his friends). The invaders used to come from the Zagros mountains and took over several times, but would invariably turn into the new elite - like the Hittites and the Kassites - and later the Sassanids. Actually ancient civilization used to be very fragile entities that were collapsing on a regular basis. Quite amazing that the state didn't disappear as a concept - the concept was attractive to rulers and states came back invariably after yet another deluge. i got this perspective from “Against the Grain - a deep history of the earliest states” by James C. Scott . Wikipedia has more about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_the_Grain:_A_Deep_History_of_the_Earliest_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_the_Grain:_A_Deep_Hist...
  - magicsmoke 6y ago
    The viewpoint that hunter gatherer societies had healthier diets and lifestyles than sedentary societies is something I've seen expressed in various places. But the argument that what initially promped hunter gatherers to become a farmers is coercion by the state isn't very fleshed out. In a world where everyone is a hunter gatherer, how did the first small and outnumbered proto-state have the power to coerce them into settling? The following is a hypothesis for how this could have occurred. 1. Hunter gathering requires a wider range of skills and knowledge than sedentary farming, such as knowing how to identify wild foods, being able to herd, ride, and hunt, and being self-sufficient with resources gathered on the move. If a generation of hunter-gatherers is prevented from living a nomadic lifestyle, this survival knowledge is lost and cannot be regained without costly and deadly trial and error. Moving from a nomadic to sedentary lifestyle is a one-way trip. 2. The environment hunter-gathers live in may suffer occasional periods of prey shortages due to unusual weather cycles causing ripples through the food chain. Although hunter-gathers can travel to find more food, there is a limit to how far they can search before resorting to drastic changes to their nomadic lifestyle in order to survive. The first sedentary civilization could have been a band of hunter gathers that, during a period of prey shortages or simply because they were less skilled at hunting than competitors, resorted to farming in order to survive and forgot the skills they needed to revert to a nomadic lifestyle. But once they locked down a piece of fertile land and built up a food surplus, they could force other hunter-gathers to settle and farm during times of prey shortages as they would be the only source of stockpiled food in the neighborhood. Their descendants would be the first sedentary civilizations, and although they had less nutritious food and more labor-intensive lifestyles, it was more resilient to black-swan events that would wipe out a hunter-gatherer tribe and required less skill and knowledge in return for a life of hard labor. Once the first sedentary civilizations had a stable foundation, their high population growth and the inability of sedentary peoples to switch to a nomadic lifestyle and escape their rulers would set the historical trend.
    - MichaelMoser123 6y ago
      > In a world where everyone is a hunter gatherer, how did the first small and outnumbered proto-state have the power to coerce them into settling? I read that in Mesopotamia what came first was an economy centered around the temple, kings and state were a later invention. so it was probably a gradual build up. The temple economy may have been slightly less coercive, Also there is the curious tale of Urukagina and his reforms - (has some parallels to the story of Akhenaten in Egypt) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urukagina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urukagina ; incidentially the reformer guy Urukagina was not quite as tough as his predecessor and lost out to his external competitors. Having been seen as a lenient ruler was probably not a winning strategy
  - MichaelMoser123 6y ago
    also keeping grain reserves was probably the killer application of ancient civilizations; (you can also read about that in the Bible - on Joseph and his brothers), being able to weather the occasional famine was probably worth much more than the increased risk of disease in crowded and dirty cities or the cost of bondage/servitude (in these times that is) - alternatively it may be that this perception was a matter of perceived risk vs. known risk; the certain risk of famine had more weight than the uncertain risk of disease and loss of freedom; hard to say. But these are all speculations.
- wickerman 6y ago
  Not sure about mesopotamia but there's evidence of indoor plumbing for sewage distribution in Knossos (Minoan civilisation - 3000 BC to 1100 BC). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_civilization#Plumbing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_civilization#Plumbing There's also plenty of examples of different kind of early toilets/sewage systems from 3000 BC in different cultures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_water_supply_and_sanitation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_water_supply_and_sa... I think you're conflating an image of victorian england with a world that existed 4000 years before. Edit: as says the wikipedia article: The Mesopotamians introduced the world to clay sewer pipes around 4000 BCE, with the earliest examples found in the Temple of Bel at Nippur and at Eshnunna,[13] utilised to remove wastewater from sites, and capture rainwater, in wells. The city or Uruk also demonstrate the first examples of brick constructed Latrines, from 3200 BCE.[14][15] Clay pipes were later used in the Hittite city of Hattusa.[16] They had easily detachable and replaceable segments, and allowed for cleaning.
mymythisisthis 6y ago
Don't throw a steak, you're barbecuing, at the face of the Goddess of love. They'll be consequences. 12 beers, and 12 prostitutes, repeated for 12 nights, is the civilizing process. As Enkidu discovered and Gilgamesh already knew. Take the stairway of a bygone era, draw near to Eanna, the seat of Ishtar the goddess, that no later king could ever copy! Climb Uruk's wall and walk back and forth! Survey its foundations, examine the brickwork! Were its bricks not fired in an oven? Did the Seven Sages not lay its foundations? [A square mile is] city, [a square mile] date-grove, a square mile is clay-pit, half a square mile the temple of Ishtar: [three square miles] and a half is Uruk's expanse.
there_the_and 6y ago
3000-2500 BCE is such an interesting time period. Civilization and technology somewhat inexplicably pick up throughout the world within just a few centuries. For example, coinciding with the Gilgamesh time period (around 2800 BCE to 2500 BCE) the major pyramids in Egypt pop up, and so do the Caral / Norte Chico pyramids and cities in Peru.
- NicoJuicy 6y ago
  Don't forget Greece, who might have invented the first analog computer 2000 years ago. ( In Antikythera )
  - messe 6y ago
    That's a couple of thousand years later.
- Swizec 6y ago
  History Channel says the only possible answer is aliens. Or maybe it’s an adjacent possible thing and the ancient world was far more connected by trade than we often think. It’s easy to forget that these were “just” neighboring countries/kingdoms back then. A lot like today. The illusion of linear progression we get from history class is largely an effect of “You can’t learn everything at once”
  - agustif 6y ago
    I'm actually just watching Aliens in the History Channel, lol. What would be the other plausible explanation though? Considering fermi paradox etc...
    - deadalus 6y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_mind
    - Ar-Curunir 6y ago
lordleft 6y ago
It’s interesting to consider the centrality of the city in ancient literature, and the equation of civilization with urban life. In modern American political discourse, it feels as if the city is constantly slandered or considered alien or “un”-American, in contrast to purported “authentic” rural areas. The city is seen as debauched and somehow apart
- Gibbon1 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_man,_one_vote#Historical_background_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_man,_one_vote#Historical_b... "Alabama's state legislature resisted redistricting from 1910 to 1972 (when forced by federal court order). As a result, rural residents retained a wildly disproportionate amount of power in a time when other areas of the state became urbanized and industrialized, attracting greater populations. Such urban areas were under-represented in the state legislature and underserved; their residents had difficulty getting needed funding for infrastructure and services. They paid far more in taxes to the state than they received in benefits in relation to the population."
  - derbOac 6y ago
    Taking that a step farther, the entire bicameral federal legislature could be seen as a weighting of rural over urban in the US.
- booleandilemma 6y ago
  Haven't cities always been centers of trade, power, and innovation?
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    See book reference in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23549551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23549551 I think the historical political reasons for favouring landed interests[1] is one of commitment: (a) as the spartan proposal of using a currency of iron implies, it's much easier for an urban magnate to "sell out" on short notice and continue trading in exile than for a rural magnate (consider the pejorative "rootless cosmopolitan"), and (b) that innovation is often greeted with scepticism: urban traders are sometimes interested in disrupting markets, agricultural[2] producers are almost always for the status quo. [1] from a game theory perspective, the urbanite would also prefer to defend their own city and either pay besiegers to go away or wait for their logistics to fail. if one is a monarch raising an army, rural dwellers would be more interested in travelling to defend their land (or even to acquire foreign land. cf "filibuster"). Compare "no viet cong ever called me", uttered by someone whose profession could be conducted anywhere there was a large venue. [2] if one believes US political memes, ag policies favour the "family farm" and small towns. if one follows the money, they tend to favour the likes of Archer Daniels Midland.
therockspush 6y ago
The thing that always stuck with me about the Gilgamesh story was the way gilg and enkidu fought. All of my best friends were people i had tension with first. Familiarity or something

137 points by Vigier 6y ago

idclip 6y ago

Poo and disease everywhere!

kitotik 6y ago
Some things never change, right?
- andrepd 6y ago
  Fortunately they did! Cities were really insalubrious places for most of human history.
MichaelMoser123 6y ago
that's why they needed big city walls - to make sure that their own subjects won't run away (also to defend against Enkidu and his friends). The invaders used to come from the Zagros mountains and took over several times, but would invariably turn into the new elite - like the Hittites and the Kassites - and later the Sassanids. Actually ancient civilization used to be very fragile entities that were collapsing on a regular basis. Quite amazing that the state didn't disappear as a concept - the concept was attractive to rulers and states came back invariably after yet another deluge. i got this perspective from “Against the Grain - a deep history of the earliest states” by James C. Scott . Wikipedia has more about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_the_Grain:_A_Deep_History_of_the_Earliest_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_the_Grain:_A_Deep_Hist...
- magicsmoke 6y ago
  The viewpoint that hunter gatherer societies had healthier diets and lifestyles than sedentary societies is something I've seen expressed in various places. But the argument that what initially promped hunter gatherers to become a farmers is coercion by the state isn't very fleshed out. In a world where everyone is a hunter gatherer, how did the first small and outnumbered proto-state have the power to coerce them into settling? The following is a hypothesis for how this could have occurred. 1. Hunter gathering requires a wider range of skills and knowledge than sedentary farming, such as knowing how to identify wild foods, being able to herd, ride, and hunt, and being self-sufficient with resources gathered on the move. If a generation of hunter-gatherers is prevented from living a nomadic lifestyle, this survival knowledge is lost and cannot be regained without costly and deadly trial and error. Moving from a nomadic to sedentary lifestyle is a one-way trip. 2. The environment hunter-gathers live in may suffer occasional periods of prey shortages due to unusual weather cycles causing ripples through the food chain. Although hunter-gathers can travel to find more food, there is a limit to how far they can search before resorting to drastic changes to their nomadic lifestyle in order to survive. The first sedentary civilization could have been a band of hunter gathers that, during a period of prey shortages or simply because they were less skilled at hunting than competitors, resorted to farming in order to survive and forgot the skills they needed to revert to a nomadic lifestyle. But once they locked down a piece of fertile land and built up a food surplus, they could force other hunter-gathers to settle and farm during times of prey shortages as they would be the only source of stockpiled food in the neighborhood. Their descendants would be the first sedentary civilizations, and although they had less nutritious food and more labor-intensive lifestyles, it was more resilient to black-swan events that would wipe out a hunter-gatherer tribe and required less skill and knowledge in return for a life of hard labor. Once the first sedentary civilizations had a stable foundation, their high population growth and the inability of sedentary peoples to switch to a nomadic lifestyle and escape their rulers would set the historical trend.
  - MichaelMoser123 6y ago
    > In a world where everyone is a hunter gatherer, how did the first small and outnumbered proto-state have the power to coerce them into settling? I read that in Mesopotamia what came first was an economy centered around the temple, kings and state were a later invention. so it was probably a gradual build up. The temple economy may have been slightly less coercive, Also there is the curious tale of Urukagina and his reforms - (has some parallels to the story of Akhenaten in Egypt) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urukagina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urukagina ; incidentially the reformer guy Urukagina was not quite as tough as his predecessor and lost out to his external competitors. Having been seen as a lenient ruler was probably not a winning strategy
- MichaelMoser123 6y ago
  also keeping grain reserves was probably the killer application of ancient civilizations; (you can also read about that in the Bible - on Joseph and his brothers), being able to weather the occasional famine was probably worth much more than the increased risk of disease in crowded and dirty cities or the cost of bondage/servitude (in these times that is) - alternatively it may be that this perception was a matter of perceived risk vs. known risk; the certain risk of famine had more weight than the uncertain risk of disease and loss of freedom; hard to say. But these are all speculations.
wickerman 6y ago
Not sure about mesopotamia but there's evidence of indoor plumbing for sewage distribution in Knossos (Minoan civilisation - 3000 BC to 1100 BC). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_civilization#Plumbing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_civilization#Plumbing There's also plenty of examples of different kind of early toilets/sewage systems from 3000 BC in different cultures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_water_supply_and_sanitation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_water_supply_and_sa... I think you're conflating an image of victorian england with a world that existed 4000 years before. Edit: as says the wikipedia article: The Mesopotamians introduced the world to clay sewer pipes around 4000 BCE, with the earliest examples found in the Temple of Bel at Nippur and at Eshnunna,[13] utilised to remove wastewater from sites, and capture rainwater, in wells. The city or Uruk also demonstrate the first examples of brick constructed Latrines, from 3200 BCE.[14][15] Clay pipes were later used in the Hittite city of Hattusa.[16] They had easily detachable and replaceable segments, and allowed for cleaning.

mymythisisthis 6y ago

Don't throw a steak, you're barbecuing, at the face of the Goddess of love. They'll be consequences. 12 beers, and 12 prostitutes, repeated for 12 nights, is the civilizing process. As Enkidu discovered and Gilgamesh already knew. Take the stairway of a bygone era, draw near to Eanna, the seat of Ishtar the goddess, that no later king could ever copy! Climb Uruk's wall and walk back and forth! Survey its foundations, examine the brickwork! Were its bricks not fired in an oven? Did the Seven Sages not lay its foundations? [A square mile is] city, [a square mile] date-grove, a square mile is clay-pit, half a square mile the temple of Ishtar: [three square miles] and a half is Uruk's expanse.

there_the_and 6y ago

3000-2500 BCE is such an interesting time period. Civilization and technology somewhat inexplicably pick up throughout the world within just a few centuries. For example, coinciding with the Gilgamesh time period (around 2800 BCE to 2500 BCE) the major pyramids in Egypt pop up, and so do the Caral / Norte Chico pyramids and cities in Peru.

NicoJuicy 6y ago
Don't forget Greece, who might have invented the first analog computer 2000 years ago. ( In Antikythera )
- messe 6y ago
  That's a couple of thousand years later.
Swizec 6y ago
History Channel says the only possible answer is aliens. Or maybe it’s an adjacent possible thing and the ancient world was far more connected by trade than we often think. It’s easy to forget that these were “just” neighboring countries/kingdoms back then. A lot like today. The illusion of linear progression we get from history class is largely an effect of “You can’t learn everything at once”
- agustif 6y ago
  I'm actually just watching Aliens in the History Channel, lol. What would be the other plausible explanation though? Considering fermi paradox etc...
  - deadalus 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_mind
  - Ar-Curunir 6y ago

lordleft 6y ago

It’s interesting to consider the centrality of the city in ancient literature, and the equation of civilization with urban life. In modern American political discourse, it feels as if the city is constantly slandered or considered alien or “un”-American, in contrast to purported “authentic” rural areas. The city is seen as debauched and somehow apart

Gibbon1 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_man,_one_vote#Historical_background_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_man,_one_vote#Historical_b... "Alabama's state legislature resisted redistricting from 1910 to 1972 (when forced by federal court order). As a result, rural residents retained a wildly disproportionate amount of power in a time when other areas of the state became urbanized and industrialized, attracting greater populations. Such urban areas were under-represented in the state legislature and underserved; their residents had difficulty getting needed funding for infrastructure and services. They paid far more in taxes to the state than they received in benefits in relation to the population."
- derbOac 6y ago
  Taking that a step farther, the entire bicameral federal legislature could be seen as a weighting of rural over urban in the US.
booleandilemma 6y ago
Haven't cities always been centers of trade, power, and innovation?
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  See book reference in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23549551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23549551 I think the historical political reasons for favouring landed interests[1] is one of commitment: (a) as the spartan proposal of using a currency of iron implies, it's much easier for an urban magnate to "sell out" on short notice and continue trading in exile than for a rural magnate (consider the pejorative "rootless cosmopolitan"), and (b) that innovation is often greeted with scepticism: urban traders are sometimes interested in disrupting markets, agricultural[2] producers are almost always for the status quo. [1] from a game theory perspective, the urbanite would also prefer to defend their own city and either pay besiegers to go away or wait for their logistics to fail. if one is a monarch raising an army, rural dwellers would be more interested in travelling to defend their land (or even to acquire foreign land. cf "filibuster"). Compare "no viet cong ever called me", uttered by someone whose profession could be conducted anywhere there was a large venue. [2] if one believes US political memes, ag policies favour the "family farm" and small towns. if one follows the money, they tend to favour the likes of Archer Daniels Midland.

therockspush 6y ago

The thing that always stuck with me about the Gilgamesh story was the way gilg and enkidu fought. All of my best friends were people i had tension with first. Familiarity or something