Resurrecting the Ancient Granary: The Influence of the Classics in Western Imagery of Mesopotamia (Fifteenth–Twentieth Centuries)

In this paper, I trace the history of hydrocentric views about Mesopotamia from classical antiquity to (post-)colonial Modernity. In particular, I focus on the development of classics-infused, Western-European descriptions of the Mesopotamian landscape and of its canal system and how these are related to Eurocentric, Orientalist stereotypes and to Western colonialism and Arab environmentalist practices through times. When we evoke the name ‘Mesopotamia’, our minds inevitably go to the development of agriculture, irrigation, sedentarism and human progress. Indeed, the alluvial plain enclosed by the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, was known since antiquity for its irrigated fields, canals and grandiose buildings. This characterisation of the Tigris-Euphrates alluvial plain has had a long-lasting influence on medieval and modern Western European conceptualisations and historiographical narratives of Mesopotamia, dominated by the water element and human efforts at controlling it through hydraulic technology. Besides influencing historiographical discourses, these views underscored European colonial designs and Iraqi nationalist and environmentalist agendas aiming at exploiting the Tigris and Euphrates water resources and the age-old canal system in order to ‘restore’ the ancient agricultural and commercial prosperity of Mesopotamia. In this paper I intend to trace the history of the genesis and development of hydro- and technology-centric discourses about Mesopotamia from antiquity to post-colonial modernity. This article was published open access under a CC BY 4.0 licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .