June 13th, 2012 - August 13th, 2013

"Questions create and define reality" ---- Talben Shahar

1. What is the city? How did it come into existence? What processes does it further: what functions does it perform: what purpose does it fulfill?

2. ... Whether he shall devote himself to the development his own deepest humanity, or whether he shall surrender himself to the now almost automatic forces he himself has set in motion and yield places to his dehumanized alter ego, "Post-historic Man" that second choice will bring with it a progressive loss of feeling, emotion, creative audacity, and finally consciousness.'

3. Not least, perhaps, the cave gave early man his first conception of architectural space, his first glimpse of the power a walled enclosure to intensify spiritual receptivity and emotional exaltation.

"Once the city came into existence, with its collective increase in power in every department, this whole situation under went a change. Instead of raids and sallies for single victims, mass extermination and mass destruction came to prevail."

"Constant obsession of kingship"

"Early connection between kinship, sacrifice, war and urban development"

"Every city became a pocket of insolent power, indifferent to those humane means of conciliation and intercourse which the city, in another mood, had promoted" "Thus both the physical form and institutional life of the city, form the very beginning of the urban implosion, were shaped in no small measure by the irrational and magical purpose of war."

"No matter how many valuable functions the city has furthered, it has also served, throughout most of its history, as a container of organized violence and a transmitter of war."

Protoliterate Period - when the new institution of kingship was taking place: Deroces - First King v.s.Uruk - First City.

"The city was nothing less than the home of a powerful God" Without the religious potencies of the city, the wall alone could not have succeeded in molding the character as well as controlling the activities of the city's inhabitants. Being partly an expression of intensified anxiety and aggregation, the walled city replaced an older image of rural tranquility and peace.

"The most precious collective invention of civilization, the city, second only to language itself in the transmission of culture, became from the outset the container of disruptive internal forces, directed toward ceaseless destruction and extermination."

Mesopotamian Culture - Cultivation - rewarded with a prosperity and a security that he had never before enjoyed.

4. Early cities: a) the evidence for the size and density of dwelling houses is equally random; b) the next mark of the city is the walled citadel; c) did not grow beyond walking distance or hearing distance. (P.61)

Note the magical attraction of the city. People came to that sacred place to be under the cave of a mighty god and almost equally mighty king, who exhibited in his own person new attributes - a power of command and understanding, a power of decision and free will - which might run counter to the venerable ways of the tribe. Until this moment the human character had been molded by the local group and had no other identity or individuality. But in the city, under the institution of kingship, personality itself first emerged: self-directed, self-governing, self-centered, claiming for the single magnified 'I', as divine representative of the larger collectivity, all that had once belong to the now-diminished 'Us'.

墨子 "Power in Personality" "Security" - deprived of such sacred power, the ancient city cold have been formless, purposeless, meaningless - an imitation of the gods.

Each generation could now leave its deposit of ideal forms and images: shrines, temples, palaces, statues, portraits, inscriptions, carved and painted records on walls and columns, that satisfied man's earliest wish for immortality through being present in the minds of later generations.

In the city, the great archetypes of the unconscious, godlike kings, winged bulls, hawk-headed men, lion-like women, hugely magnified, erupted in-clay, stone, brass, and gold. It is not merely in the theater that the spectator feels that the actors are bigger than their actual life size. This is a characteristic illusion produced by the city, because the urban center is in fact a theater.

A temple community - in visible form a 'neighborhood unit'.

"Insecurity" and "intimidation" were written all over the Mesopotamian record: These practices left their impression on every part of life, in repeated acts of cruelty and violence.

Under such conditions, the necessary cooperation of urban living require the constant application of the police power, and the city becomes a kind of prison whose inhabitants are under constant surveillance: a state not merely symbolized but effectively perpetuated by the town wall and barred gates.

The benign sun and the forces of fertility and every kind of creativeness.

Grave, shrine, ceremonial center, anticipated market, workshop, and fort: their purpose, to enhance the meaning and values of life, ensured collective participation, willing sacrifice, and prions continuity.

Probably, the walled town made its appearance in Egypt before the dynastic centralization of power; but there may well have been a long period, a pay Egyptians, that relaxed the both the internal tensions and the need for external protection. When the walled city came back again, it was more of an agent of common defense against foreign invaders than a means of making local coercion effective.