神殿建築から見たシュメール王権の成立

Abstract

It was generally thought that the Sumerian kingship appeared in their society which had been equal, when the Sumerian cities became to need the powerful director with the intensification of the disputes between the cities. H. Frankfort, Th. Jacobsen, S. N. Kramer, and some others generally thought like this, and concluded that the Sumerian kingship established at the Early Dynastic II.But recently some scholars has begun to think earlier than the Early Dynastic II about the appearance of the kingship. They think that the centralization and the leading minority was rather suggested in the Sumerian great enterprises as the river improvements, the irrigation, and so on, though H. Frankfort thought them useful for strengthening the unity of the community.I consider the establishment of the Sumerian kingship from the development of the temple architecture.The Sumerian temple architecture deriving from the small shrines at Eridu developed into the gigantic temples of Uruk at the late Uruk period (c. 3000 B. C.). But after this period the precincts became more extensive and to be enclosed with the walls on the one hand, the temple architecture itself was inclined to be rather small, and to be built on a high terrace, that famous ziggurat, on the other hand. Almost all the great temples at the Early Dynastic period took this style, and this suggests the separation of the grades in the Sumerian society, that is to say the privileged class to be able to use the temple on the large terrace, and the mass to be able to approach only under the ziggurat. The former intervened between the mass and the great gods, and grasped the gods' will in their hands. The most powerful man of the privileged class became their king.And so the Sumerian kingship already appeared at the late Uruk period, that is earlier than the period when H. Frankfort and some others suggested.