Smer-Think & You

Established 3000 BCE

Uruk New York London Rome Istanbul Berlin

Edw. Mitchell
September 25, 2013
Gilgamesh, the historical person:

King of the city of Uruk about 2800 BC

Gilgamesh, the legend:

represented in mesopotamian art

the hero of epic poems story poems

 Gilgamesh in Mesopotamian art
Gilgamesh kills the Bull of Enkidu and Gilgamesh kill
Heaven [ = drought] the Bull of Heaven
 clay tablet
a fragment from Gilgamesh: the Great Flood
 SUMERIA AND URUK
Sumeria:
the first city societies > the first civilization,
beginning 4000-3000 BC

follows the neo-lithic [ new stone-age] revolution > the

agricultural revolution in Mesopotamia 9000-5000 BC
agriculture
domestication of animals
settled societies (permanent villages and towns)

Before this agricultural revolution, human societies lived as

hunters and gatherers
Major cities of the Sumerian and Babylonian era
URUK: divided into three parts and sacred
center

gardens

houses
temples

fields
The Sumerian city: a representation of totality
Inside the walls: life, agriculture, labor,
authority > order > civilization

Outside the walls?

Outside the circle: ???
Outside the walls: Mythic Space

where human abilities to create and to

destroy are projected into the unknown,
the uncontrolled: gods, monsters,
unconquered Nature.

liminal [threshold / eik] space: we look

back to the mythic past, but the mythic past
calls forward to the present and future.
Outside the walls: Humbaba, guardian of the
great cedar forest

Natures challenge to civilization; a useful resource

to be conquered and exploited
13
 Whats new about Sumeria?

New technologies in
war
agriculture
labor

Especially, storage technology.

Storage of necessities until the next harvest essential
for agricultural societies and civilization
History of Civilization: objectified in objects of storage
technology
Writing a key storage technology

Clay tablet USB

But what is really new about Sumeria?

a new social form:

hierarchy
 For the first time in human history: society is divided
into classes

Hier-archy [original meaning: rule by the high priest]

organization by class or status.

high status rules low status.

The higher class has the power to command. The higher class
has political authority.

This conception of authority begins with Sumeria.

 authority
author = [the one who is the origin of something]

> > writer

The one who writes the law = authority

The right to speak is potentially the power to

command.
 Authority / Power claims to be innocent.

Power claims to be serving a greater Authority,

outside the person of the ruler.

The god Enlil has given Gilgamesh the power to

bind and to loose -- to rule his subjects.

A king claims to be innocent because he is the first

son of the last King a unique position that he did
not choose.
Elected politicians claim to rule in the name of 51%
of the people.
Hierarchy Sumeria and after
 Hierarchy:
Iso-morphs of imaginary order

cosmos / gods

patriarchal family

Fill in the blank

Knowledge/hierarchies
23 of truth 23
 The Real Sumerian Heritage II:
Commands come from the top and go down

Taxes and obligations come from the bottom

and go up
Sumerian ziggurat monument to hierarchy
Palace of the Soviets, Moscow -1930s (never completed)
Sacramento, California
 Since 4000 BC the basic elements of every
well organized society exist:

Priests, slaves, police, and prostitutes.

And we do not know how or why this occurred.

-- Cornelius Castoriadis
 The Real Sumerian Heritage II:
Commands come from the top and go down

Taxes and obligations come from the bottom

and go up
Political Theory of pre-modern civilizations
Property stone: the king gives land to his warriors. The warriors
collect taxes from the peasants on that land.
property [Latin: proprius ] -- ones own; what is proper
(appropriate) to oneself; a quality or state that belongs to
something (this stone is hard, this table is flat, etc)

Gilgamesh has the power to bind and to loose -- to determine

the properties of his subjects, to decide what is proper /
appropriate for each. >> authority
_______________

state [Latin: status] -- condition or quality of something;

state political state [from status / estate] political organization

according to social status, according to what is proper for each
class, according to the social properties of each class.
Hammurabis Code (1770 BCE)
Shamash gives Hammurabi the right to rule
The gods called me,
Hammurabi, to bring about
the rule of righteousness in
the land, to destroy the
wicked and the evil-doers; so
that the strong should not
harm the weak; so that I
should rule over the black-
headed people like Shamash,
and enlighten the land to
further the well-being of
mankind.
1. If a man accuses another man of a (capital) crime,
but cannot prove it, he, the accuser, shall be put to
death.

196. If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye
shall be put out.

197. If he break another man's bone, his bone shall be

broken.

198. If he put out the eye of a freed man [a former

slave], or break the bone of a freed man, he shall pay
one gold mina.
199. If he put out the eye of a man's slave, or break the
bone of a man's slave, he shall pay one-half of its value.
202. If any one strike the body of a man higher in rank
than he, he shall receive sixty blows with an ox-whip in
public.

203. If a free-born man strike the body of another free-

born man of equal rank, he shall pay one gold mina.

204. If a freed man strike the body of another freed

man, he shall pay ten shekels in money.

205. If the slave of a freed man strike the body of a freed

man, his ear shall be cut off.
209. If a man strike a free-born woman so that she lose
her unborn child, he shall pay ten shekels for her loss.
210. If the woman die, his daughter shall be put to death.

211. If a woman of the free class lose her child by a blow,

he shall pay five shekels in money.

212. If this woman die, he shall pay half a mina.

213. If he strike the female-servant of a man, and she

lose her child, he shall pay two shekels in money.

214. If this female-servant dies, he shall pay one-third of

a mina.
 The Net of the Sumerian Social Imaginary
Smer-Think

property hierarchy
authority
Hunter Gatherers in the Amazon
(the anti-sumerians)
 Among hunter-gatherers:

The chief must give gifts to the others. For this

reason he works harder than others.

The chief must give speeches everyday. It is his

duty not his right.

But the chief has no power to command. No

authority.

When the chief speaks, the others do not

listen. Or they pretend not to listen.
The City is the place and symbol of the state -- of hierarchy

gardens

houses
temples

fields
order
disorder = chaos
 order
Sumer-think 101:
Everyone, everything has an identity
Every identity has a function
Every function has its place
 Symbolic-Identitary Operations
identity means sameness: the same as, identical to

A = A A is identical to A
A -A A is not identical to not A
this = this
this that
This cannot be this and that.
___________________________

Our hunter-gatherers say: In truth, we are this and we are that. It is

language that prevents us from being this and that.
 Identitary logic of ancient
civilization

Everyone has a social identity/

status/function

Every function has an appropriate place

Like properties go with like properties
The imaginary order of authority is made visible
in the ancient City
identity = function = proper place
each identity group dresses (by law) in the proper
manner.
The ancient City makes the principle visible a
spatial order of political and economic hierarchy.

A place for every function. And everyone in his/her

proper place.
The Well Ordered Society -- M.C. Escher