The question to be addressed in this brief report is: Why did the Sumerians find it necessary to form temple communities? Walter R. Bodine (22-23) described the Sumerians as a Mesopotamian people concentrated in the lower part of the alluvial plain that comprises southern Mesopotamia, and which is generally referred to as Babylonia. Their major cities - Eridu, Ur, Larsa, Uruk, Bad-Tiibira, Lagash, Nina, Girsu, Ummua, Usub, Shurippak, and Nippur - were home to assemblies of free citizens who came together to create legal codes and mechanisms for maintaining social order and reverence for the pantheon of Sumerian gods. At the center of every city was a temple which served as the home of the chief deity worshipped in the city. In fact, as this essay will demonstrate, the ancient Sumerian cities were developed around the temple as the central focus of social, political and religious life because of the belief held by the Sumerians that the people were essentially little more than servants of the deity and they and their city were the property of the deity (Bodine 23).
The ancient Sumerians as described by Homer Smith (71-73) were a people accustomed to warfare and social change. Physically positioned at a crossroads in Mesopotamia, many of the conflicts that shaped the region were undertaken on behalf of both political interests (i.e., the intent of monarchs to expand their territorial holdings) and religious interests (i.e., the drive to aggrandize one deity over others). The story of the region is one of conquest, invasion, conflict, and warfare; it is a story that is rooted in the submission of the ordinary masses to both a human ruler and a ruling deity to whom they were directly responsible. The god of the Sumerians was "an earthly ruler and a great landowner...the temple and its adjuncts were a huge mundane establishment, and the priesthood became an important factor in the business life of the country" (Gardner 82). ...