2500 BCE

There is no greater city in the world than Lagash. Ask anyone, and they are sure to tell you so —people who live here cannot imagine living anywhere else and people who don’t wish that they did. To call it the jewel of the fertile crescent would almost seem like something of an understatement these days.

Already the city’s population is greater than anything yet known to man, and it seems to be growing everyday. A booming agriculture, sustained by a peasant class that knows its place, keeps the city—and its venerable rulers—well feed. All the latest processes of irrigation are being daily employed, with each season bringing with it a greater and greater yield. A surplus that the temples then put to very good use in building ever bigger and bigger edifices. Now talk about some happy Gods!

The city’s elites are international celebrities to put it mildly —as far away as Uruk people tune in to hear about their exploits and fashions. Ur-Nanshe, the human God that he is, sets a tough bar for style, but the court and its attendants follow it as closely as they can. What Miss Ur-Nanshe does with her hair you can bet that every other young noblewoman will do it with theirs as well. As for the jewelry, one merchant was once quoted as saying: “There is Lagash jewelry, and the rest doesn’t really matter.”

Lagash rightly sees itself as the world’s cultural capital, with a yearly output of hundreds of clay tablets. Even the most remote herder in the mountains could tell you about Gilgamesh and his Epic. The city’s artistic scene boasts eager and crafty artisans who now exactly just how to polish off a new temple with a sparkling mosaic, or to highlight a palace interior with just the right statue. As for exotics, you’ll find all the world’s goods without ever once leaving the city’s walls; in fact, there generally exists among the elite a cosmopolitan sophistication that one can’t help but to immediately envy and respect. Already people have termed the average citizen-ruler’s laid back and refined lifestyle as “that Lagash sensibility”.

Even the slaves here are better behaved and groomed than anything else you’ll find up and down those two rivers. The women slaves in particularly are made very good use of as weavers, supplying an eager population with those comfortable and austerely stylish loincloths. Troubles with the slaves are hard to come by, as even those miserable creatures know that they have it better here than most other people in the world. Of course there are occasional grumblings from the peasants (chalk that up to human nature), but they are always free to go, to move somewhere like Elam, but they never will. Why would they? For them, Lagash is simply the city they love to hate.

And all this leads to a subject of the city’s that is already so widely recognized and respected that it barely warrants mention here —the famed Ziggurats. Hard to find is the visitor or new resident who isn’t stopped dead in the street admiring these magnificent feats. Be sure that nothing else like them exists in all the world. Gazing upon them serves to remind the viewer that certainly this is a city that can—and will—stand the test of time.

And that’s ultimately what strikes one most about this sprawling settlement, the sense of accomplishment. Only a few hundred years ago the spot was home to a collection of huts and dirty wells, and, yet, today it stands as a beacon to the world of what people can surly accomplish if they only put their faith in their leaders and their Gods. Yes sir, despite the occasional “doom and gloom” of a few apocalyptic soothsayers, I think it’s safe to say that Lagash is going to be here for an eternity at the least.

[the previous text was a rough translation of an ancient clay tablet found in the ruins of the city of Lagash, circa 2500’s BCE]