City States of the Most Ancient Times

The action in The Coming Wrath takes place in two adjacent city-states, Lamech, named after Noah's father, and Y'tor, the domain of the Nephil king Torech. The Bible does not tell us about city-states or any other countries in the time before the Flood. Is it good historical fiction to use the idea of city states?

Mesopotamian City State Layout, Christophe Gaggero 2005

The answer is, yes! The Flood occurred sometime almost five thousand years ago, according to clues given in Biblical chronologies and genealogies. From the Old Testament and other well-documented historical events the date of creation, as calculated by Ussher, was about 4004 BC. On this timeline, the Flood would have happened in 2348 BC.¹ Within a couple of centuries, the Tower of Babel was built by the descendants of the Flood's survivors, and then destroyed by the direct action of God.²

The Bible records how, after the Tower of Babel, God confused the languages of all the people who had concentrated at Babel. In the resulting disharmony, the different people groups dispersed to live all around the world (Genesis 11:1-9). The ones who stayed closest to Babel separated themselves in the area of Mesopotamia, which is now modern day Iraq.

According to Jamie Nicole Malig,³ these scattered peoples within Iraq became what is commonly called the Sumerian civilization. They established independent cities, among them were Erida , Ur and Uruk. The cities they established soon began to expand and gained political and economic control among their surrounding countryside. In this way each city and surrounding area became a self-governing city-state.

The cities of Summer were usually surrounded by walls. The city of Uruk as an example was encircled by a wall. The wall they created is six miles long and it has defense tower along the wall located in every thirty to thirty five feet.

How were the Sumerians inspired to form these city-states? They must have known the stories that were handed down to them by Noah and Shem, who were still alive at that time, of how people governed themselves before the Flood. It is highly likely that the people who lived before the Flood organized themselves in a similar fashion, into city states.

Malig explain further about the cities of Mesopotamia:

Mesopotamian region had a little stone and wood to be used as building materials. The region had plenty of mud that was utilized by the Sumerians. They made mud bricks out of the mud which they used for constructing purposes. Mud bricks are easily shaped by hands. The Sumerians left the mud-bricks in the hot sand until the bricks were baked.

The Mesopotamian civilization was known in their creativity with mud-bricks. They were said to invent the arch and the dome. They were able to build some of the largest brick building in the world.³

The YouTube video above gives you a flavor of what a typical Mesopotamian city looked like.⁴ You can imagine that the cities of Lamech and Y'tor were similar!

(For historical fiction that touches on this topic, see Chapter 5: First Victory of The Coming Wrath)

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written by Marko Malyj

References 

1. David Wright, Timeline for the Flood, AnswersInGenesis.org, March 9, 2012.

2. Bodie Hodge, Was the Dispersion at Babel a Real Event?,  AnswersInGenesis.org, August 19, 2010.

3. Jamie Nicole Malig, The City-States of Ancient Mesopotamia, retrieved 1/12/2013.

4. laraclass2012, Mesopotamian City State Layout, Dec 30, 2011.