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Coordinates: 31°19′20″N, 45°38′10″E

Ancient Mesopotamia
Euphrates · Tigris
Cities / Empires
Sumer: Uruk · Ur · Eridu
Kish · Lagash · Nippur
Akkadian Empire: Akkad
Babylon · Isin · Susa
Assyria: Assur · Nineveh
Dur-Sharrukin · Nimrud
Babylonia · Chaldea
Elam · Amorites
Hurrians · Mitanni
Kassites · Urartu
Chronology
Kings of Sumer
Kings of Assyria
Kings of Babylon
Language
Aramaic
Sumerian · Akkadian
Elamite · Hurrian
Mythology
Enûma Elish
Gilgamesh · Marduk

See also: Uruk period, an archaeologically-deduced culture named after this city.

Uruk (Sumerian: ^URUUNUG 𒌷𒀔, Biblical: Erech, Greek: Ορχόη or Ωρύγεια, Arabic وركاء Warkā’), was an ancient city of Sumer and later Babylonia, situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates, on the line of the ancient Nil canal, in a region of marshes, some 30 km east of As-Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq. The theory that the modern name of Iraq could be possibly derived from the name Uruk is not proven. At its height, Uruk probably had 50,000-80,000 residents living in 6 square kilometres of walled area, the largest city in the world at its time. Uruk represents one of the world's first cities, with a dense population. Uruk also saw the rise of the state in Mesopotamia with a full-time bureaucracy, military, and stratified society.

Also known by its oldest sector as Kulab, Kulaba or Unug-Kulaba, it was one of the oldest and most important cities of Sumer. According to the Sumerian king list, Uruk was founded by Enmerkar, who brought the official kingship with him. In the epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, he is also said to have constructed the famous temple called E-anna, dedicated to the worship of Inanna (the later Ishtar).

It was also the capital city of Gilgamesh, hero of the famous Epic of Gilgamesh. According to the Bible (Genesis 10:10), Erech (Uruk) was the second city founded by Nimrod in Shinar. Historical kings of Uruk include Lugalzagesi of Umma (who conquered Uruk) and Utu-hegal.

Uruk played a very important part in the political history of the country from an early time, exercising hegemony in Sumer before the time of Sargon of Akkad. Later it was prominent in the national struggles of the Sumerians against the Elamites up to 2004 BC, in which it suffered severely; recollections of some of these conflicts are embodied in the Gilgamesh epic, in the literary and courtly form that has come down to us.

Oppenheim states, "In Uruk, in southern Mesopotamia, Sumerian civilization seems to have reached its creative peak. This is pointed out repeatedly in the references to this city in religious and, especially, in literary texts, including those of mythological content; the historical tradition as preserved in the Sumerian king-list confirms it. From Uruk the center of political gravity seems to have moved to Ur."

Its voluminous surviving temple archive of the Neo-Babylonian period documents the social function of the temple as a redistribution center. In times of famine, a family might dedicate children to the temple as oblates.

Uruk was first excavated by a German team led by Julius Jordan before World War I. This expedition returned in 1928 and made further excavations until 1939, then returned in 1954 under the direction of H. Lenzen and made systematic excavations over the following years. These excavations revealed some early Sumerian documents and a larger cache of legal and scholarly tablets of the Seleucid period, that have been published by Adam Falkenstein and other German epigraphists.

• The History of the Ancient Near East
• Earliest evidence for large scale organized warfare in the Mesopotamian world (Hamoukar vs. Uruk?
• Map of the Fertile Crescent

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• A. Leo Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia: portrait of a dead civilization.