20: The Middle Uruk expansion in the north, 4000-3500 BCE (Enmerkar & the lord of Aratta, part 1)

Guest: Kelten

First: Our hero Enmerkar, grandson of the sun-god Utu, demands tribute (in the form of labor and precious minerals) from the anonymous lord of faraway Aratta, with the blessing of his lover (and Utu's sister), the goddess Inanna.

Then, we kick off our mini-series on the Uruk expansion, a process of intensive economic and cultural interaction between the Sumerian plain and its neighbors to the north and east. We can’t know for sure if cities like Unug formally colonized these highland settlements, but it’s hard to explain the latter’s rigid adherence to Sumerian (rather than local) cultural norms without some kind of relationship with the new cities on the southern plain. This episode focuses on the Middle Uruk, roughly corresponding to the early 3000s BCE.

We start with two small sites in Iraqi Kurdistan, Logardan and Girdi Qala, to see the earliest known appearance of Uruk materials in northern Mesopotamia (around 4000 BCE) and what may be the first Uruk outpost (during the early 3000s). Then, we visit Tell Brak (again), Tell Hamoukar, and Hacınebi, all in the far northwest, to see how they were affected by Uruk contact.

Finally, we meet the eponymous lord in his highland fastness of Aratta, who bets the entire proverbial farm on his contest with Enmerkar. As the proverb goes: he who acknowledges a contest can be the outright winner, like the bull which acknowledges the bull at its side!

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