EXHIBITIONS Mesopotamian Megacity Re-imagined in Berlin SHIYANTHI THAVAPALAN Abstract The curators of the exhibition Uruk: 5000 Years of the Megacity claim that Uruk is the earliest known city in the world, the birthplace of writing, bureaucracy, monumental art, and architecture. Their reconstruction of this ancient metropolis in present-day Berlin suggests to visitors that modernity and Mesopotamia are perhaps not worlds apart after all. The sumptuous new exhibition—organized by the Vorderasiatisches Museum/Staatliche Museum Berlin, the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum Mannheim, and the Curt Engelhorn Foundation in collaboration with the German Archeological Institute and the German Oriental Society (DOG)—commemorates the centennial of the first German excavations at the site of Warka in southern Iraq. The word megacity brings to mind Mum- bai, Tokyo, Seoul, and New York City, and this is exactly the image the curators of the exhibi- tion Uruk: 5000 Years of the Megacity wish to conjure. They claim that Uruk is the earliest known city in the world, the birthplace of writ- ing, bureaucracy, monumental art, and architec- ture. At the same time, their reconstruction of this ancient metropolis in present-day Berlin suggests to visitors that modernity and Mesopo- tamia are perhaps not worlds apart after all. This sumptuous new exhibition—orga- nized by the Vorderasiatisches Museum/Staa- tliche Museum Berlin, the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum Mannheim, and the Curt Engelhorn Foundation in collaboration with the German Archeological Institute and the German Orien- tal Society (DOG)—commemorates the cen- tennial of the first German excavations at the site of Warka in southern Iraq. But the true cause for celebration must be that with this exhibition, curators Nicola Cr€ usemann and Beate Salje have brought together, under one roof, the long-separated treasures of Uruk, shown side by side for the first time since they were dug up. Pieces from the British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archeology in Oxford, and the Mus ee du Louvre are joined by artifacts housed in Germany at the Pergamon Museum (south wing of the Vorderasiatisches Museum) and the University of Heidelberg’s Uruk-Warka Collection. BACKGROUND Excavations at Uruk began shortly after the British explorer, geologist, and naturalist Wil- liam Kennett Loftus discovered the site in 1849. Loftus went on to lead the first, regrettably unscientific, round of digs there between 1850- 1854. The race between Britain, France, and Germany to create national collections of “Oriental” artifacts had begun. During this era, the relics of the Near East were literally cut out of the ground and shipped to Europe. 1 When Markus Hilgert, professor of Assyriology and director of the DOG, says that “the excavations in this unique ruin site are a scientific milestone Shiyanthi Thavapalan (shiyanthi.thavapalan@yale.edu) Ph.D. candidate in Assyriology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. 137 Volume 57 Number 1 January 2014