At the Origins of Politics: Formation and Growth of the State in Syro-Mesopotamia

by Giorgio Buccellati

This volume, now available in English, explores how Mesopotamia’s urban revolution in the late fourth millennium B.C. shaped a new mentality, leading to new forms of social interaction, and to the development of the state, its laws and its religion to consolidate new managerial hierarchies in the region.

How is it that the phenomenon of the state, a society structured along lines of power that frame individuals in a new supra-organism, suddenly came into being during the fourth millennium B.C.? In this book, Buccellati explores the emergence of statehood and power structures in ancient Mesopotamia against the background of the long prehistoric period. It was the arena in which the earliest cities and states were born and that offers us the first and richest documentation of the development of political life in antiquity. This book provides rich documentation of the causes that led to the formation of the territorial state, tracing its evolution from city-states to universal empires from ca 3500 B.C. to 500 B.C. At the same time, it examines the tension between individual rights and supra-personal systems of power during this period and explores new forms of social interaction that coincided with the economic dimension of the urban revolution. This paradigmatic history, newly translated into English for Anglophone readers, offers a key to understanding modern political forms and their transformations.

At the Origins of Politics provides a thorough examination of the development of the state in ancient Mesopotamia, suitable for students, scholars, and researchers working on Near Eastern history and society, and ancient societies and politics more broadly.

311 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 22, 2024

About the author

Giorgio Buccellati is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and the Department of History at UCLA. He was the founding director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. He founded IIMAS – The International Institute for Mesopotamian Area Studies, of which he is currently the Director. He has also been active as a publisher, having founded Undena Publications, of which he is currently the General Editor.

He is married to Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati.

Reviews

[Ryan Schaller]

Dense but informative book. Bridges the gap from prehistory to history, discussing the cognitive and theoretical prerequisites for forming political entities in the ancient world. Further, he looks at how those conceptions of state and geography changed over time.

You should probably have a good general understanding of ancient Near Eastern history before tackling this one. I found it interesting, but not something I would describe as 'fun'.