Uruk - About the Major Mesopotamian Urban Area of Uruk

Definition: Uruk was a major Mesopotamian city from a very early date -- in the fifth millennium B.C. -- during the Ubaid period (5500-4000 B.C. Mesopotamia). Uruk was at one time probably the largest city in the world and remained an important city from the time of the Akkadians through the Seleucids. Uruk had the earliest known colonial system*, which was used to support commercial expansion in the Zagros Mountains, Syria, and southeastern Anatolia.

Archaeologists began excavating in the 19th century and in the early 20th found stratified urban centers in southern Mesopotamia from between 4500 and 3750 B.C. Clay tablets from c. 3300 B.C. show early writing at Uruk. In all, there were about 1200 written pre-cuneiform pictographic signs. Late Uruk seals marking property, tablets or signs show plows and, possibly, wheeled vehicles. The legendary king Gilgamesh is said to have built the walls around the city of Uruk. There were two major (religious) centers:

• For the sky god An at Kullaba, and
• For the love and war goddess Inanna, at Eanna, where there is a ziggurat complex.

* "Uruk Colonies and Anatolian Communities: An Interim Report on the 1992-1993 Excavations at Hacinebi, Turkey," by Gil J. Stein et al. American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 100, No. 2 (Apr., 1996), pp. 205-260.

For other references and more information, see Periods of Uruk

Also Known As: Erech (biblically), Unu (Sumerian), Warka (Arabic). Iraq.