Mesopotamia

THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION

Unlike the more unified civilizations of Egypt or Greece, Mesopotamia was a collection of varied cultures whose only real bonds were their script, their gods, and their attitude toward women. The social customs, laws, and even language of Akkad, for example, cannot be assumed to correspond to those of Babylon. It does seem, however, that the rights of women, the importance of literacy, and the pantheon of the gods were indeed shared throughout the region (though the gods had different names in various regions and periods). As a result of this, Mesopotamia should be more properly understood as a region that produced multiple empires and civilizations rather than any single civilization. Even so, Mesopotamia is known as the “cradle of civilization” primarily because of two developments that occurred there, in the region of Sumer, in the 4th millennium BC:

the rise of the city as we recognize that entity today,
and the invention of writing (although writing is also known to have developed in Egypt, in the Indus Valley, in China, and to have taken form independently in Mesoamerica).

Like the cultures of the Nile or the Indus, Mesopotamia, as its name suggests ("the land between the rivers") owed its existence to a river system. Large-scale human societies had begun to grow from about 10,000 BC in an arc through Syria, Palestine, Anatolia and the Zagros mountains. Starting with the first larger scale settlements at Jericho and Catal Huyuk in Anatolia, these were well built but still relatively small. It was only when sophisticated irrigation techniques were developed that the plain of southern Iraq was opened up to sustain a huge concentration of people and resources. Yet even this was still a relatively confined area: Mesopotamia had 25,000 sq km of irrigated land – similar in size to early dynastic Egypt.

To what extent Uruk (one of the most important cities in ancient Mesopotamia) really was the "mother of cities" is still hotly argued by archaeologists. It is claimed to be the birthplace of writing, mathematics and literature, and few would dispute that it is one of the most potent memory places of humanity.

From the fourth millennium BC came the first large cities, then states, whose culture and society would influence every aspect of life across west Asia – and further afield. In the third millennium BC, there were around 40 cities in Sumer and Akkad that made up the Babylonian plain. One big city-state, Lagash (whose site is more than 3km across), had 36,000 male adults in the third millennium BC, suggesting upwards of 100,000 people altogether. Uruk was probably of similar size. Each controlled an extensive territory: at Nippur, for example, 200 subsidiary villages clustered around five main canals and 60 smaller ones, joined by a web of countless small irrigation ditches – all subject to laws, customs and close control. These urban developments were fed by a trading network which, in the case of Uruk, linked Anatolia, Syria and the Zagros. Recent research has shown that Mesopotamia might not only have given birth to the world's first trading culture, but also the earliest private treaty stock market.

It is not surprising then that writing, written law, contract law, and international treaties are all found for the first time in the area. Not only does history begin at Sumer, but so does economics.

The Sumerians were the prehistoric population of the southern plain of Iraq. Their ethnic and linguistic affiliations are not yet clear; their language is not related to any known language, though there are many theories. During the third millennium BC a close cultural symbiosis took place between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, who lived in the middle of the plain – the area around and south of modern Baghdad. Many of the civilizational achievements of Mesopotamia are the product of that symbiosis. Sumerian itself, though, had died out as a living language by around 1600 BC, leaving it only the preserve of Babylonian scientists, scholars and liturgists. By the time the last Sumerian texts were copied in cuneiform in the Hellenistic age of the second century BC, the language had long been superseded by Akkadian as the language of literature in Mesopotamia. And the Sumerians themselves had long disappeared into the multiracial mix that was ancient Iraq.

In the 1850s, when the first major excavations were conducted in Iraq, it was still commonly held that the cultural predecessors of western civilization were the classical world of Greece and Rome and Judaeo-Christian religion. Though the Book of Genesis mentioned Uruk, Akkad and Babylon, it was never suspected that these much older civilizations had had a profound influence on the civilizations of the Near East and the Mediterranean world. At that time it was also not known that Mesopotamia had led the way in the invention of writing and literature; in mathematics, science, astronomy and geometry; in the invention of the wheel; and in the earliest law codes. Even today, when we count time and space in multiples of 12 and 60, we do so because of the Mesopotamians.

But if Mesopotamia was a place of cultural and technological innovation, it was also the site of constant conflict. With no natural boundaries, and no protection from neighbours, it was always open to attack from nomads and outside invaders, and internally prey to continual disputes over resources – especially water. Not surprisingly, then, this is where organised law appears for the first time in history – as well as organised warfare.

The history of Mesopotamia was then uniquely creative and uniquely violent and destructive; marked by invasions and devastating wars in which the great achievements of its civilization were smashed many times, from the ruin of the Ur III dynasty through Mongols, Tartars and Seljuks, to the savagery of recent wars.

Nevertheless, a single civilization survived through all these conflicts – one that is recognisably Iraqi: a land of "singular destiny" as the French historian Fernand Braudel put it. The character that emerges is very different from the optimism of Egyptian culture. Early Iraq was pessimistic in its view of human destiny – its poets knew the achievements of humanity were fragile and always fated to be wiped away. This insight informs the world's earliest literature and comes right down to the rich vein of modern Iraqi poetry. It perhaps also explains why lamentation became a ritual tradition in ancient Iraq and still is in Iraqi Shiism; a cultural personality that is still part of the way Iraqis are seen by other Arabs.

One should note that in Iraqi culture there is no clear dividing line between the ancient world and the medieval. Alexander's conquest in 331 BC might look like an ending on paper, but in fact it inaugurated Uruk's greatest age during a thousand years of multilingual Hellenic culture in a vast region stretching as far as India.

The Arab conquest of Mesopotamia in the seventh century AD looks like another cultural turning point, but even then, change was slow, with a more immediate impact on mentalities rather than material culture and custom. Just as Christianity inherited the Roman Empire in the West, Islam inherited West Asia and the Near East; and in this sense Islam could be seen simply as a continuation of the much older culture that underlay it. Baghdad, the great capital of the caliphate (the rule or reign of a caliph or chief Muslim ruler) founded in AD 762, was still a vast Mesopotamian city, made of burnt brick in the ancient way. And if change was slow in Baghdad, it was even slower in the old cities. The sacred city of Nippur, for example, continued to be a provincial centre for scholars – Christian, Jewish and Muslim. It was a crumbling old Iraqi town, with its warren of alleys like today's Irbil or old Kirkuk, with mosques, churches and synagogues, its Sufis and its Talmudic lawyers. Out in the countryside the old Mesopotamian religion survived until AD 1000, among pagan tribes in the south of the plain who worshipped the deities of the primal waters, the abode of the old Sumerian god Enki.

In Iraq, the real dividing line between the ancient and modern worlds was the Mongol invasion of 1258, when the country's vast irrigation works were ruined and the population decimated. But even then the ancient world never really ended. Even today, in the streets of Najaf during the Shia ceremony of Ashura, people still enact the communal ritual lament, which was so striking a feature of their ancient culture. Even in their traditional clothes one might see a link: Herodotus' description of typical Babylonian clothes – keffiya jalabiya and dishdash – can be seen anywhere today.

RELIGION

Mesopotamia was known in antiquity as a seat of learning, and it is believed that Thales of Miletus (known as the 'first philosopher') studied there. As the Babylonians believed that water was the 'first principle' from which all else flowed, and as Thales is famous for that very claim, it seems probable he studied in the region. Intellectual pursuits were highly valued across the region, and the schools (devoted primarily to the priestly class) were said to be as numerous as temples and taught reading, writing, religion, law, medicine, and astrology. There were over 1,000 deities in the pantheon of the gods of the Mesopotamian cultures. The Mesopotamians believed that they were co-workers with the gods and that the land was infused with spirits and demons (though 'demons' should not be understood in the modern, Christian, sense).

The beginning of the world, they believed, was a victory by the gods over the forces of chaos but, even though the gods had won, this did not mean chaos could not come again. Through daily rituals, attention to the deities, proper funeral practices, and simple civic duty, the people of Mesopotamia felt they helped maintain balance in the world and kept the forces of chaos and destruction at bay. Along with expectations that one would honor one’s elders and treat people with respect, the citizens of the land were also to honor the gods through the jobs they performed every day.

Each city had its own patron deity, some of which were connected to specialized occupations. There were also gods and goddess, the rulers of the sky, air, and more, which received more attention from worshipers. To worship the gods and goddesses, the people of Mesopotamia built large structures, called Ziggurats that served as temples. Inside the worshiping area of the Ziggurat people would place carved stone human figures with wide eyes and clasped hands, praying on behalf of the people of Mesopotamia. This area was also where people could make offerings to please the deities or regain their favor.

Some of the most important deities of ancient Mesopotamia were:

An (Anu) – Sky god, as well as father of the gods, An was the king of all the gods. There was no art depicting him, all information about this god was translated from ancient texts.
Enki (Ea) - God of fresh water, known for his wisdom. He was depicted as a bearded man with water flowing around him.
Inanna (Ishtar) – Goddess of love, fertility, and war. She was the most important of the female deities.
Nanna (Sin) – God of the moon and the son of Enlil and Ninlil. He travels across the sky in his small boat of woven twigs, surrounded by the planets and stars.
Utu (Shamash) - God of the sun and of justice. Between the time when the sun sets in the west and rises in the east he is in the underworld, where he decrees the fate of the dead.

There is no specified god or goddess of music, but there is the god Mummu, the deity of creativity and learning.

CULTURE

As the Mesopotamian civilization developed so did their culture. They developed a variety of festivals, ceremonies, traditions, and much more, which became an important part in the lives of many. Many of the rituals and ceremonies were based around certain rites of passage, such as birth and marriage, and these events were usually celebrated with a banquet that included music, dancing and food, though the food available was determined by the social status of the family. For music, though instruments have been found, it is unknown what kind of music they played.

In their daily lives, the men would go out and work, usually a specialized job, examples being a builder or musician, while the women stayed at home and took care of the house and raised children.

The average number of children in each household was usually around 3 or 4 children, though these are only those who survived to be a certain age. Infant mortality was high, as was miscarriage. To protect an unborn child the mother would usually wear protective amulets, with the symbol of the demon Pazuzu to chase away deities who would wish to cause harm to the unborn child, as well as perform rituals after the child's birth so certain deities or demons would not steal their child.

Children were raised according to their gender roles. Boys were raised learning skills they could use to work and girls were raised to be wives and mothers. Once a child was of marrying age, families would arrange a marriage. At the marriage ceremony it is believed that the husband would pour perfume onto the head of his new bride. After becoming a wife, a woman's role was to cook, clean, and raise children. If a woman had a job it was usually related to one of her household tasks. They could become midwives, or sell any surplus of beer or goods that they made for their families.

Burial customs in ancient Mesopotamia varied. One method was placing the body in a ceramic jar then covering the top with more ceramic. Since the jars usually found in excavations are small, possibly household ceramics, it is believed this was a burial custom for infants or small children, though larger vessels have been found that were used for adult burials. Other means of burial included using carpets and mats to wrap the body.

MUSIC

The musician’s purpose in the Mesopotamian culture was to communicate to and appease the gods. Mesopotamians believed that their world was governed by gods and goddesses, and musicians used a variety of instruments to please them. Musicians were highly regarded in their culture. As a normal part of their practice, they would wash their hands to purify themselves before playing a stringed instrument.

Instruments

Mesopotamians used a variety of musical instruments. Instrumentalists used reed pipes, kettle drums, and lutes. String instruments consisted of two chief families: lyres and harps. The original wooden stringed instruments found at Ur were engraved and overlaid with gold, silver, lapis lazuli, mother of pearl, and other non-wood materials that did not deteriorate in the earth over the millennia. It is these materials that enabled the excavators to establish the forms and dimensions of the instruments. When the ceilings of the ancient tombs fell in, some of the instruments collapsed together so badly that it was difficult to sort out which pieces went with which. As a result of many years of study by archaeologists and museum researchers, we now believe we have correctly separated the different and distinct instruments and improved our assessments of their original sizes. Thus, we now have concrete evidence we can use to replicate these unique lyres and harps.

In 1929, C. Leonard Woolley led an excavation that recovered four lyres and a harp from Ur in ancient Mesopotamia, present day Iraq. They are the oldest existing string instruments, dating to about 2750 BC.

The bovine lyre was the most common stringed instrument of the mid-3rd millennium BC in the Near East. Its sound box is usually in the shape of a realistic reclining or standing bovine (an animal of the cattle group, which also includes buffaloes and bison). Other bovine lyre bodies are more schematic: the actual sound box has a trapezoidal or rectangular shape with a realistic bovine head appended to the front. The bovine lyre was represented in the graves at Ur by instruments ranging in size from small examples that would have been hand-held to the well-known lyre with the lapis lazuli—bearded bull’s head, the largest of the lyres recovered.

The instrument shown below, from [deSchauensee 2002], is the restored Great Lyre of Ur. It was recovered from the grave site of King "Lugal" Abargi, dated about 2685 BC. The grave was ceremonially guarded by six soldiers wearing copper helmets and carrying spears. A dozen men armed with their weapons laid close to the bodies of richly adorned women, supposedly singers and a harpist. Close to their heads the remnants of two musical instruments were found. They may be associated with the ceremonial burial of the king.

The restored instrument is on display at the University of Pennsylvania museum. The head of the bull is covered with gold leaf and the beard and eyes are fashioned from lapis lazuli. The lyre’s wooden structure has been reconstructed from the detailed measurement made by pouring the plaster into the impression left by the disintegrated wood. The eleven strings fastened on the rectangular sound-box are modern. The front of the sound-box is decorated with the mosaic plaque, trapezoidal in shape and set in bitumen. In one of four scenes, depicting mythological creatures, a seated animal – onager or bear – plays a similar lyre.

In one private grave, “PG 333”, they found “bars of silver wantonly twisted and bent” that was later discovered to be a silver double-flute, described in [Krispijn 2008]:

Silver flute from tomb PG 333. Ur ± 2500 BC. Beside the stringed instruments flutes were excavated from the royal tombs. The instrument might have had a reed mouthpiece. It certainly covers a diatonic scale, possibly from C-D-E-F-G-A.

These two photos show the recovered and cleaned silver fragments from the original excavation (from [Schlesinger 1939] and [Schlesinger 1970]) and a reconstruction of the double-flute (from [Krispijn 2008]):

The Silver Pipes of Ur are the oldest existing wind instruments from the Near East region, more than 500 years older than the oldest surviving Egyptian wind instrument, a set of Middle Kingdom flutes made of reed.

The instruments from Ur have a large enough number of strings (several have eleven and one has thirteen) on which to carry out the tuning procedures using intervals of fourths and fifths (the most important in initiating the tuning series) and to accommodate the octave. While we have not identified an Akkadian or a Sumerian word for the octave, it is clear that the octave was known because of the substitution of the number 1 instead of 8 and 2 instead of 9 to represent the octaves of strings 1 and 2. Early Mesopotamian representations of lyres show them with string numbers ranging from three to twelve.

Playable reconstructions of several of the Ur instruments, using coniferous wood, produce rich sounds. (More recent research on the original wood fragments has identified them as boxwood.) The largest lyre, having the longest strings, has a register and resonance like that of a bass viol; the medium-sized silver lyre has a sound reminiscent of a cello; Puabi’s harp sounds rather like a small guitar. Three playable replicas were made in Berkeley, at the University of California, by emeritus professor Robert R. Brown. None of the small lyres from Ur has been reconstructed (as far as we know), but in all likelihood, based on the relative string lengths, they would have had registers similar to that of Puabi’s harp.

What can one reasonably play on these reconstructions? What combination of sounds might resemble ancient Mesopotamian music? The most straightforward and simplest answer would be: the intervals and the tuning procedures, since the tuning text from Ur gives explicit instructions as to which strings to tighten and loosen in order to tune each of the seven scales. But one can attempt, within reason, to do a bit more than that because of the tonality of each scale; that is, once we know the scales, we have a good notion of the kinds of sounds and harmonies that the strings can produce.

What we can never know exactly is how ancient instrumentalists and singers performed. Did they stay on pitch? Did they use a performance style that wavered around the pitch? In the gallery at the University of Pennsylvania Museum where the Ur lyres are on display is a demonstration tape. A common reaction from those listening to it is, ‘This sounds like Western music; surely this cannot be correct! But, in fact, we have no evidence on which to base an assertion that ancient Near Eastern music sounded like modern Near Eastern music. All we have to go on are the intervals and the tunings, which are as “modern” as they are “ancient” (and as universal). Because the structure of the ancient human ear was the same as our own, Mesopotamians heard the consonances of the octaves, the fifths, and the fourths as readily as we do. And their experts could use notes in the overtone series to fine-tune (or even to “temper”) the consonances within a single octave. The existence of instruments with so many strings, and the fact that the intervals and the tuning instructions always use string-pairs or dichords, leads us to believe that the playing of two or more strings at the same time was common, but that single string sounding would also have occurred.

Amazingly, archaeomusicologists identified a handful of ancient Mesopotamian texts written in cuneiform on clay tablets as precise tuning instructions for their stringed instruments. The information on these various “musical texts” dates from about 1800–600 BC and has been the subject of intense analysis and debate for the past 45 years.

Cuneiform

The languages of Ancient Mesopotamia were written in cuneiform, a system of inscribing on wet clay tablets using a wedge-shaped stylus made of reed. The tablets were dried in the sun or baked in kilns to create a permanent record. The system of cuneiform writing had been used as early as 5300 BC in the proto-writing found recently on the Tărtăria tablets.

Sumerian was the first written language. Beginning in about 3500 BC with a primitive writing system during the “proto-literate” period, it gradually developed into a system of logographic signs inscribed in clay tablets, and later added Sumerian syllables to the writing system.

The tablet shown below, MS 3029 from The Schøyen Collection, was inscribed in Sumer in the 26th century BC. It was written by an expert scribe and is the earliest manuscript describing a religious practice.

We know quite a bit about Sumerian and ancient Semitic languages, in part because of the study of the 500,000 clay tablets and fragments that we have found (estimate of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative). Many of the texts are legal and accounting documents, but there are thousands of literary and mathematical documents, and a handful of documents known as the “music texts”.

The chart below, based on a drawing in [Kramer 1988], demonstrates the development of cuneiform writing. Each sign was a picture of one or more concrete objects and represented a word whose meaning was identical to, or related closely to, the object depicted. Drawing was a slow process and the set of syllables grew as writing became more complex. The system evolved into gradually more abstract symbols, using the wedge-shaped reed stylus to make impressions in the clay, and began substituting phonetic values instead of ideographic pictures.

The columns represent progressive development through time. The rotation of symbols in column 2 were adopted for convenience of writing, so the tablet was often read with the sign in this position. Row A represents the symbol for “mouth” (Sumerian "ka") and also “to speak” (Sumerian "dug"), with the meaning determined by context.

Cuneiform sources reveal an orderly organized system of diatonic scales, depending on the tuning of stringed instruments in alternating fifths and fourths. Whether this reflects all types of music is not known.

Among the many cuneiform tablets studied we have been fortunate to have recognized, since 1959, a small number of texts that relate to the tuning and playing of ancient instruments. Thus far, cuneiformists have identified ten Mesopotamian tablets that contain technical information about ancient musical scales. We now know that by the Old Babylonian period in ancient Iraq, there existed standardized tuning procedures that operated within a heptatonic (a musical scale that has seven pitches per octave), diatonic (involving only notes proper to the prevailing key without chromatic alteration) system consisting of seven different and interrelated scales.

The fact that these seven scales could be equated with seven ancient Greek scales (dating some 1400 years later) quite startled the scholarly community; and the fact that one of the scales in common use was equivalent to our own modern major scale (do-re-mi. . . ) seemed difficult for many to believe. But research on the part of several cuneiformists and musicologists working together has been strengthened over the years by the steady accumulation of cuneiform tablets that use the same standard corpus of Akkadian terms to designate the names of the musical strings; the names of the instruments and their parts; fingering techniques; the names of musical intervals (fifths, fourths, thirds, and sixths); and the names of the seven scales that derive their nomenclature from the particular interval of a fourth or a fifth on which the tuning procedure starts.

Two of these important technical texts came from the site of Ur, while three others came from another rich Sumerian site, the ancient city of Nippur. It is highly probable that the tuning systems evidenced in the Akkadian language in texts dating from the Old Babylonian to the Neo-Babylonian period had earlier Sumerian ancestors, because many of the technical terms in Akkadian have Sumerian equivalents.

We also know that the Sumero-Babylonian musical system was exported at least as far away as the Mediterranean coast, for the same Akkadian corpus of terms was used for instructions to instrumentalists performing Hurrian cult hymns in ancient Ugarit (modern Ras Sham) in Syria. It is not a stretch of the imagination to suggest that the ancient Greeks did, as Pythagoras said, learn Mesopotamian music theory—together with their mathematics—in the Near East.

The Musical Texts

Of the half a million recovered tablets and fragments, we have found seven texts written in Akkadian that relate to music. This may seem meager, but consider these thoughts on the status of music in the culture and what would cause them to use the cumbersome process of inscribing into wet clay. From [Michalowski 2010]:

In early Mesopotamia, musical knowledge was learned by apprenticeship, not in the establishments that taught reading and writing, and the “music texts” were never part of the standard school curriculum. These were not practical instructions, for which writing was superfluous, but rather theoretical exemplifications of certain limited lexicographical and mathematical knowledge associated with strings of instruments. Therefore, I suggest that the narrow scholastic tradition that is represented by these “music texts” is a marginal one that is associated primarily with mathematical and lexical scribal practice rather than with professional musical knowledge and performance, although its origins may lie in Akkadian language liturgical contexts. The terminology, as well as the setting in which it was used, has nothing to do with ‘Sumerian’ music; indeed, it might be better to avoid such ethnic distinctions altogether and to speak of a variety of common as well as regional musical forms and traditions, that commingled in early Mesopotamia.

Despite these limitations, it is exactly the “narrow scholastic tradition” that is so interesting with these music texts since they relate to tuning and scales.

MS 2340 — The Earliest Sumerian Musical Text

A 26th century BC tablet written in Sumerian, this tablet contains the earliest known record of music and musical instruments in history. It lists 9 types of musical strings and 23 types of musical instruments and music. The name of one of the stringed instruments is a Semitic word, ki-na-ru, the later kinnaru known from the Mari letters and Ras Shamra texts (13th century BC, cfr. MS 1955/1-6), and still later the Biblical Hebrew kinnor.

MS 5105 — Early Musical Notation

This tablet is of unclear provenience and has recently been acquired by the Schøyen Collection as MS 5105. The range of estimated dates from various sources is 2000–1600 BC.

The Schøyen Collection describes it as the oldest musical notation, written for a long-necked Babylonian four-string lute. The tablet has columns of numbers with the headings “intonation” and “incantation”. The commentary from the Schøyen Collection says that

“It further attests that frets were used, and that their values, tonal and semitonal, were purposely calculated. Most significantly, the discovery of this text attests of a music syllabus in educational institutions about 4000 years ago.”

UET VII 126 — The String Naming Text

This tablet was inscribed in about 626–539 BC. The information this tablet contains is the oldest information that we have regarding the names of strings and pitches. The tablet is bilingual with the left column in Sumerian and a translation into Akkadian in the right column ([Dumbrill 2008d]).

This is a critical text, because it provides the names of nine strings of a musical instrument (presumed to be the lyre) and is a key for understanding the other musical texts.

CBS 10996 — The Interval Text

This text was found at Nippur and believed to be from the early first millennium BC, but possibly a copy of a far older text on the basis that the terminology is known from another tablet, UET VII 74, dated circa 1800 BC.

The image below is from the CDLI database.

The tablet names intervals in terms of the string names from UET VII 126.

UET VII 74 — The Tuning Text

This text is known as “the tuning text” because it provided the decisive clue to the understanding of the Babylonian musical system and its terminology. It was unearthed by Sir Leonard Woolley at Ur in the 1920s and dates to about 1800 BC. The tablet was sent to the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad in the 1970s.

The tablet describes the tuning of the sammû instrument, using a set of instructions for tightening or loosening various strings. Each instruction has the form:

If the sammû is (tuned as) X and the (interval) Y is not clear, you tighten/loosen the string N and then Y will be clear.

The Mesopotamians were very technologically and musically advanced. Many of the musical styles we have today are due to their developments. The first seven notes of the embūbum nine-tone tuning are the un-tempered versions of the notes of diatonic major scale. And it is now apparent that the work of Pythagoras in developing the Greek modes and the Pythagorean tunings were based directly on his exposure to the Babylonian music traditions.

Mesopotamia (from the Greek, meaning 'between two rivers’) was an ancient region in the eastern Mediterranean bounded in the northeast by the Zagros Mountains and in the southeast by the Arabian Plateau, corresponding to today’s Iraq, mostly, but also parts of modern-day Iran, Syria and Turkey. The 'two rivers' of the name referred to the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers.

Named Uruk by the Akkadians, Unug by the Sumerians, Erech in the Bible and Orchoe by the Greeks, the city was founded in the fifth millennium BC and survived into the first millennium AD. It was ruled in later times by Romans, Persians and Muslim Arabs before in the seventh century AD it was abandoned, except for the Bedouin, whose black tents still hug the horizon.