The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

by David Graeber

The story of Arslantepe begins around 3300 BC, when a temple was built on the site. This temple resembled those of Uruk and her colonies, with storage areas for food and carefully arranged archives of administrative seals, just as in any temple of the Mesopotamian floodplain. But within a few generations the temple was dismantled, and in its place was built a massive private structure enclosing a grand audience chamber and living quarters, as well as storage areas, including an armoury. An assemblage of swords and spearheads – finely crafted of arsenic-rich copper and quite unlike anything found in public buildings of the lowlands at this time – signals not only control over, but a celebration of the means to enact violence: a new aesthetics of personal combat and killing. The excavators have labelled this building the world’s ‘earliest known palace’.