URAK EXPANSION (1 jan 2950 ano antes da era comum – 1 jan 2900 ano antes da era comum)

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DID NIMROD BUILD THE TOWER OF BABEL ? by Gerard Gertoux

The Uruk expansion, dated c. 3100-2900 BCE, is thus a pivotal period in history, since it saw the construction of the first city-states, the appearance of the first writings, the sudden collapse of the first highly centralised and unified Mesopotamian empire, and the sudden and concomitant appearance of the first Egyptian empire, also highly centralised and unified.

...archaeological excavations have shown that this period constituted an “urban revolution” that saw the birth of the first Sumerian cities: Uruk, Eridu, Choghah Mish, Susa, Akkad, Nineveh, etc. This period of intense construction throughout the Sumer region led to a gigantic Urukean expansion towards both the west, Syria and Egypt, and the east, the Indus valley (Joannès: 2001, 887-890).

The developments of the late proto-historic Mesopotamian phase at the beginning of the third millennium BCE saw the process of formation of urban societies and ultimately the appearance of several systems of writing. These developments were combined with a particularly wide expansion (“Uruk expansion”) of Mesopotamian interaction spheres into the neighbouring regions from Syria to the Valley of Indus. This expansive phenomenon is still poorly understood and object of academic controversies, but the latest studies have shown several important points: this Uruk expansion was sudden and simultaneous from the Levant to the Indus Valley and the new cities formed were Urukean settlements and not indigenous cities that imported ceramics from Uruk. This conclusion is based on the following data (Butterlin: 2018, 71-101):
• The ceramics have the same Urukean style, so they make an “international” style. Since these ceramics are the oldest known as there was nothing before, we can speak of a “worldwide” style.
• Habuba Kabira, east of Byblos, was undoubtedly a Urukean settlement characterized not only by the same ceramics but also by the same monumental buildings that existed in Uruk at that time.

Archaeologists have found that towards Late Uruk there was a massive diffusion of pottery and objects of the same style, from a region including Uruk and its surroundings, simultaneously east (Elam) and west, along the Euphrates, to the Mediterranean and even to Abydos in southern Egypt. Archaeologists initially thought it was long-distance trade, but the absence of Egyptian (or Elamite) objects in Sumerian cities of that period shows that cities with Urukean pottery were colonized or built by “Urukeans”, such as Habuba Kabira, a city near Byblos. This “Uruk expansion” has crucial chronological consequences on the origin of Egyptian civilization. The primacy of the Sumerian civilisation, confirmed by archaeology, and the coincidence of the sudden collapse of this civilisation, at the time of the expansion of Uruk, with the sudden emergence of the Egyptian civilisation, allows us to conclude that this expansion was in fact a massive migration of the Mesopotamians out of their country of origin, mainly towards Egypt, in the west, and Elam, in the east, and consequently an enormous depopulation of the great Mesopotamian cities, even a quasi- abandonment during several centuries (Babel, Nineveh and Akkad). The “Uruk expansion” was thus a transitional period between the end of the Mesopotamian empire founded by Marduk and the beginning of the Egyptian predynastic kings (Dynasty 0).

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