One of the earliest images of the development of agriculture.
Fragment of a vessel from the Temple of ShamashatMari, Syria. The staetite relief depicts a man tending to a plant. (Early dynastic period I, c. 2900 BC).
Agriculture, growing crops rather than raising livestock, pre-dates the first cities by thousands of years. But at some point agricultural activity in Mesopotamia became more intensive and on a larger scale than had ever been seen before. The geography of southern Mesopotamia is such that agriculture is possible only with irrigation and good drainage, a fact which had a profound effect on the evolution of early civilisation. The need for irrigation led the Sumerians, and later the Akkadians, to build their cities along the TigrisandEuphrates and the branches of these rivers. The farmers built dams and dug canals to bring the water to the crops, on which all their lives now depended. The social consequences of this cooperation were profound; those farmers were planting the seed from which the tree of civilisation would grow.
The city of Mari, situated on the right bank of the Euphrates river, flourished in the 3rd millennium BC. Excavations discoved an enormous palace, with nearly 300 rooms and two floors and also an archive over 20.000 tablets in Akkadian language written in cuneiform. The temple of Shamash was dedicated to the Sun god, who was regarded among Mari’s most important deities.
