Empire of Dirt

Clay is the skeletal structure of our cities. An initial foundation laid long ago on the heads of kings and at the hands of potters. To enjoy the fruits of the metropolis is to bask in the properties of clay.

As anyone who has tried to line a bathroom knows, water is a top-tier escape artist. Always finding the cracks in the floor, water is eternally striving to reach lower ground. To have a vessel that can hold water and to hold it well, in today’s plastic and metal-clad society, is an underappreciated thing.

Fired terracotta pots have long been used to control water. From buckets for carrying, to cups for drinking the oldest pots used fired terracotta to keep liquids at bay. These permeable pots were made watertight by allowing milk to settle in their porous holes. As the fats became rancid, they clogged up the pot like fryer grease clogging skin pores. Suddenly with these vessels at hand water could be transported, it could be stored, and with that cities spread further and further from the wells and riverbanks they depended on. Clay allowed cities to grow. It lined the ovens for the first bakers of bread and formed the tablets where words first became etched. Emerging from clay-laden flood plains cities expanded and expanded.

For the Ancient High Priests of the Tigress and the Euphrates when it came to making their idols only the finest clay would do. This dirt was not dirt cheap. Finer clays used for religious ceremonies would cost you a pretty penny, often in the form of silver, gold and lapiz. These expenses weren’t paid to a merchant, they were instead paid directly into pits from where they were extracted. Seeing a priest chuck a handful of rare metals into a pit of slick, sticky mud would today seem insane but back then it seemed like a fair bargain. In return for glistening metals the Earth gave you a material like no other. The ultimate vessel, a material that can hold water and heat, as well as it can hold language and belief. The early templates for our metropolises emerged as clay forms that since have been refined and sculpted into the landscapes we know today.

When I think of reverence for clay, I think of the imagery from one stone tablet exhumed from an ancient Babylonian temple. This tablet shows King Ashurbanipal, holding a basket above his crown. Pointing towards the heavens this basket housed something more valuable than gold or lapiz, it housed the literally foundations for his Empire. Even a man once called the King of the World, had to pay tribute to the divine material that is clay. For without clay how could breadmakers feed the masses, scribes write their epics, priests make their idols or potters make their pots. How could a King like Ashurbanipal rule with an iron fist without his Empire of dirt?

Simple answer, he couldn’t.