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Uruk (Sumerian Unug, Biblical Erech and Arabic
Warka), was an ancient city of Sumer and later Babylonia, situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates, on
the line of the ancient Nil canal, in a region of marshes, about 140 miles SSE from Bagdad.
The modern name of Iraq is derived from the name Uruk.
It was one of the oldest and most important cities of Babylonia. Its walls were said to have been built by order of Gilgamesh who also constructed, it was said, the famous temple, called Eanna, dedicated to the worship of Inanna, or Ishtar. Its voluminous surviving temple archive, of the Neo-Babylonian period, documents the
social function of the temple as a redistribution center. In times of famine, a family might dedicate children to the temple as
oblates.
Uruk played a very important part in the political history of the country from an early time, exercising hegemony in Babylonia
at a period before the time of Sargon. Later it was prominent in the
national struggles of the Babylonians against the Elamite Empire up to
2000 BC, in which it suffered severely; recollections of these conflicts are embodied
in the Gilgamesh epic, in the literary and courtly form in which it has come down
to us.
Oppenheim states, "In Uruk, in southern Mesopotamia, Sumerian civilization seems to have reached its creative peak. This is
pointed out repeatedly in the references to this city in religious and, especially, in literary texts, including those of
mythological content; the historical tradition as preserved in the Sumerian king-list confirms it. From Uruk the center of
political gravity seems to have moved to Ur."
According to the Sumerian king list, Uruk was founded by Enmerkar,
who brought the official kingship with him from the city of E-ana. His father Mec-ki-aj-gacer had "entered the sea and disappeared". Other historical kings of Uruk include
Lugalzagesi of Umma (now Djokha) (who conquered Uruk), and Utuhegal.
Uruk was first excavated by a German team led by Julius Jordan before World War I. This expedition
returned in 1928 and made further excavations until 1939, then returned in 1954 under the direction of H. Lenzen and made
systematic excavations over the following years. These excavations revealed some early Sumerian documents and a larger cache of
legal and scholarly tablets of the Seleucid period, which have been published by
Adam Falkenstein and
other German epigraphists.
External links and references
For J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional creature, see Uruk-hai.
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