Reconstructed setting· The columns of time

River cities

3,275 BCE → 801 BCE

This backdrop shows the first river cities: a temple on its terrace, a pyramid on the horizon and date palms above mudbrick roofs.

Backdrop representing the first river cities: a temple on its terrace, a pyramid on the horizon and date palms above mudbrick roofs.

What the evidence shows

The temple depicted is that of Uruk, whose Eanna sacred district comprises monumental enclosures raised at the end of the fourth millennium BCE and where the oldest proto-cuneiform tablets were recovered. The coincidence between the appearance of the city and that of writing is not fortuitous, the administration of a settlement of this size presupposing accounting. The pyramid depicted is that of Giza, built around 2560 BCE; it figures on the horizon and not in the foreground because it belongs to another river basin and another political organisation. The date palms mark the appearance of arboriculture: the olive, the vine, the date palm and the fig are among the first cultivated trees of the Near East.

Bounds and conventions

Two cultural complexes six centuries apart are brought together in a single view, the band covering 2,500 years and having only one composition. The Indus and Yellow River civilisations, contemporaneous with this band, are not represented.