Times of labour mobilization were thus seen as moments of absolute equality before the gods – when even slaves might be placed on an equal footing to their masters – as well as times when the imaginary city became real, as its inhabitants shed their day-to-day identities as bakers or tavern keepers or inhabitants of such and such a neighbourhood, or later generals or slaves, and briefly assembled to become ‘the people’ of Lagash, or Kish, Eridu, or Larsa as they built or rebuilt some part of the city or the network of irrigation canals that sustained it.
