Quotes About Uruk

its city walls encompassed an area of over two square miles, with much of the city apparently lying outside those walls. This made Uruk the largest city not only of its age but for the next three thousand years.

the reason why Gilgamesh needed the assent of his elders to defend his city was probably that he did not have at his disposal the writing tools necessary to command absolute political control over large numbers of citizens. By the same token, Uruk's literate, scribal elite was not yet able to disempower its illiterate masses.

The entire process [Uruk expansion] was, in a sense, colonial, and it did not go unopposed. As it turns out, we cannot really understand the rise of what we have come to call 'the star' - and specifically of aristocracies and monarchies - except in the larger context of that counter-reaction.

Sumerian scribes invented the practice of writing in cuneiform on clay tablets sometime around 3400 B.C. in the Uruk/Warka region in the south of ancient Iraq. [The etymology of 'Iraq' may come from this region, biblical Erech. Medieval Arabic sources used the name 'Iraq' as a geographical term for the area in the south and center of the modern republic.]

Bartimaeus: By-name of the demon Sakhr al-Jinni, mentioned in Procopius and Michelot. A middle-ranking djinni of ancient standing, great ingenuity, and no little power. First recorded in Uruk; later in Jerusalem. Fought at the battle of al-Arish against the Assyrians. Known masters have included: Gilgamesh, Solomon, Zarbustibal, Heraclius, Hauser.

Early Near Eastern villages domesticated plants and animals. Uruk urban institutions, in turn, domesticated humans.

Uruk retained a certain importance, but it never recovered its former political power. Its ruins now lie isolated in the deserts of Iraq.