Short Historical Dictionary on Urban Hydrology and Drainage
HABUBA KEBIRA Habuba Kebira (or Habuba Kabira) was one of the colonies created by the Sumerians coming from South Mesopotamia during the Uruk Period, which corresponds approximately to 3500 BC (Viollet, 2000). Established along the Euphrates, in the present Syria, the city of Habuba Kabira had a brief life: about 150 years (Strommenger, 1979). It has been created ex-nihilo without any pre-existing village, and it was never re-occupied after it has been abandoned. Intensively explored in the beginning of the 1970s by German archaeologists (e.g. Heinrich et al., 1973; Strommenger, 1975, 1979), the 12 ha city of Habuba Kebira is one of the most interesting sites where the structured and coherent urbanisation process characteristic of the Urukian civilisation can be observed (Margueron, 1991, vol. 1, p. 53; Vallet, 1997). The spatial organisation of the city and the importance of the public works carried out show that a strong public authority had been necessary. In his revisited synthesis of previous works, Vallet (1997) observes that the coherent arrangement of the streets “shows their significance in the Urukian culture” (Vallet, 1997, p. 71): all streets in Habuba Kebira are covered with a conglomerate of fluvial gravels and have been regularly renewed. “But the most spectacular arrangement of the streets is its system of pipes.” (Vallet, 1997, p. 72). Houses were usually equipped with several pipes allowing the discharge of both wastewater and stormwater into wells and trenches, or, the most frequent case, into a street gutter (Ludwig, 1977) or a pipe.
Figure 1 : Typical wastewater pipes observed in South Habuba Kebira (in Ludwig, 1977, p. 73).
© Jean-Luc Bertrand-Krajewski - 02/2006
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Short Historical Dictionary on Urban Hydrology and Drainage
There were three types of sewers (Frank and Ludwig, 1973, p. 16; Frank, 1975; Ludwig, 1977): i) closed channels with lateral walls, covered with limestone plates, the bottom being sealed with two or three compacted layers of clay, ii) open channels, or gutters, built with 0.64 m long U-shape elementary pieces manufactured with clay, and iii) interlocked circular clay pipes, which were the most efficient technique. The two last types are shown in Figure 1. The three types of sewers were frequently used in association. Almost all streets were equipped with pipes which composed a global converging sewer system with a slope parallel to those of the natural ground. The outlet of this system was located outside of the city, in the countryside (Strommenger, 1979). Frank (1975), in his Figure 1 given in appendix of his paper, has drawn the path of the sewers along the streets (Figure 2).
Figure 2 : Plan of a part of South Habuba Kebira (in Frank, 1975, appendix).
Habuba Kebira is probably the oldest example (but not necessarily the first historical one) of a structured sewer network draining a whole city, composed of elementary
© Jean-Luc Bertrand-Krajewski - 02/2006
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Short Historical Dictionary on Urban Hydrology and Drainage
pieces of circular pipes. Unfortunately, this concept, very likely characteristic of the Urukian culture and of some other urban settlements, has been lost during the following centuries.
Habuba Kebira Ugarit
Bouqras
El Kowm SYRIA
Beirut Mediterranean Sea
IRAK
Mari Bagdad
Damascus
Jerusalem
References Frank D.R. (1975). Versuch zur Rekonstruktion von Bauregeln und Massordnung einer nordsyrischen Stadt des vierten Jahrtausends - Untersucht anhand von Grabungsergebnissen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft in Habuka Kabira - Ernst Heinrich zum 75. Geburtstag. Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft (MDOG), 107, 7-16. Frank D.R., Ludwig W. (1973). Habuba Kebira zur Zeit der frühesten Schriftkulturen Architektur. In Heinrich et al. (1973) : Vierter vorläufiger Bericht... Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient Gesellschaft, 105, 11-20. Heinrich E. et al. (1973). Vierter vorläufiger Bericht über die von der DOG mit Mitteln der Stiftung Volkswagenwerk in Habuba Kebira und in Mumbaqat unternommenen archäologischen Untersuchungen erstattet von Mitgliedern der Mission. Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient Gesellschaft, 105, 5-68. Ludwig W. (1977). Mass, Sitte und Technik des Bauens in Habuba Kabira Süd. Actes du colloque “Le Moyen Euphrate, zone de contacts et d'échanges”, J.-C. Margueron (Ed.), Strasbourg (France), 63-74. Margueron J.-C. (1991). Les Mésopotamiens - Tome 1 : Le temps et l'espace. Paris (France) : Armand Colin, collection “Civilisations”, 232 p. ISBN 2-20037173-X. Margueron J.-C. (1991). Les Mésopotamiens - Tome 2 : Le cadre de vie et la pensée. Paris (France) : Armand Colin, collection “Civilisations”, 240 p. ISBN 2-200-37174-8. Strommenger E. (1975). Habuba Kabira - Sud 1974. Les Annales Archéologiques Arabes Syriennes, 25, 155-164. Strommenger E. (1979). Ausgrabungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft in Habuba Kabira. Annual of the American School of Oriental Research, 44, 63-78. Vallet R. (1997). Habuba Kebira ou la naissance de l'urbanisme. Paléorient, 22(2), 45-76. Viollet P.-L. (2000). L'hydraulique dans les civilisations anciennes - 5000 ans d'histoire. Paris (France) : Presses de l'Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, 374 p. ISBN 2-85978-335-0.
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