November/December 2015 Challenge: Nippur

[Chick]

Well, I did ask for a city map assignment, because I haven't done one. Here is what Snodsy gave me:

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Historical City Map - NIPPUR - TOP DOWN VIEW
Time Period - 2500 BCE Mesopotamia - Early Dynastic Period.
Bronze age for weapons and decorations, Stone age for farming and agriculture. Sumerian cuneiform writing is developing.

There were approximately 18 Sumerian City States along the Euphrates River at this time, with warfare common amongst them, each with a walled city, farmland, grazing fields, orchards surrounding them and arid landscapes between the cities.

The city of NIPPUR is the regional religious center with approximately 20-30,000 occupants. The temple of Enlil (storm god) was a regional pilgrimage for all and is the main building on the site. 3 main roads lead into the city- West from Susa, South from Isin, Northwest to Kish.

A regional map could be included as well as an icon or more detail illustration for the temple Enlil if desired.
Label important buildings, temple, rivers and canels, and other important geographical elements.
Including a scale and compass rose should be period specific.
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Nippur sat on top of a sort of plateau hill next to the Euphrates River. It had its own canal system and roads, as well as a city wall.

So my first problem was to depict the elevations within the city, and lay out the basics of city wall and river/canals as known from modern excavations.

### Latest WIP ###
Nippur 07.jpg

So far that didn't come out too awful, although it might be too dark.

Unfortunately, I haven't the slightest idea what to do next ....

[snodsy]

Great start like the textures. Don't mind the darkness at this point, can alway change that. Maybe figure out what 20,000 occupants means in a city this size, that could give you the size and scaling of the buildings? Locate the Temple, the market and other larger public buildings maybe. I do think starting with the topo is probably good, since it's a top down map you will know the grade, terraces or cliff faces may become evident.

[ChickPea]

Good start! The colours are a little subdued but it's far too early in the process to worry about that.

Just out of general interest, how does one decide how many houses, public buildings etc to have to cater for a population of 20,000? Obviously family sizes were much higher in those days, but is there any kind of guidelines anywhere? Or do we mostly simply divide 20K by, what, 5 or 6 (or whatever the average family size was?)

[soggymuse]

For medieval Europe, there's the Medieval Demographics Domesday Book generator-type thing that tells you how many of each shop/occupation/university/etc you'd find per X amount of people, and the population densities and square mileage of different types of cities.

I don't think there's anything like that for the Bronze Age, though. Is there anything on Wikipedia or something about the size of Nippur or comparative city-states that might at least give you a scale to work from?

I agree the textures are a bit muted so you can't easily differentiate terrain. I wouldn't worry about it too much yet, although I'd personally probably fiddle with it before I got too much further, just because I never really follow a logical workflow... ¬_¬ It's looking good, though! I'm looking forward to seeing how you progress from here.

[Bogie]

I like the topo layout as a background. Looks good. It may be just because it is early in the process, but I would say the wall is a little to wide and the river is a little to narrow.
Looking forward to seeing this progress.

[Chick]

I like the topo layout as a background. Looks good. It may be just because it is early in the process, but I would say the wall is a little to wide and the river is a little to narrow.
Looking forward to seeing this progress.

Thanks for the comments, Bogie! I don't think I'm going to use the topo structure because it's really the archeological topo, and probably not what the area was at the time. The wall was drawn from the archeological map, but that could also be distorted by time and collapse.

There is surprisingly little info on Nippur and even on the whole area. I have maps of Mesopotamia from that era that have widely differing locations for half the cities in the region. I found some artist conception of Babylon drawings and I'll probably use those as a guide to the architecture and city structure, because that was at least contemporary. Looking at the pictures of Nippur today, it looks like a pile of mud brick buildings, but apparently it was much more advanced and sophisticated in its heyday than that would make you think.

Anyway, updates are coming, but I have to admit already that this is probably the only city map I'll ever make. What a pain ....

And while I'm on the subject, do any of you top-down city experts have any suggestions on how to is the easiest way to rotate a brush in photoshop?

[Chick]

So I have decided to go with a map that shows the architecture of the city in 2500 BCE, namely mudbricks for most everything, including city walls (Bogie, that is why they are thick, they are not stone and thus easier to assault), large residence buildings, and smaller rural homes. The streets were actually paved, possibly with real stone as was Babylon. The legend will of course be in cuneiform

The surrounding countryside was arid, supported entirely by the Euphrates River, so canals were constructed to bring water to the agricultural areas surrounding the city. There were several gates, with roads leading to the other Sumerian cities, roads which later became the foundation of Darius's Persian Royal Road and eventually the Silk Road trade routes to the orient. There was strife, but also extensive trading between the Sumerian cities, so the roads were well-travelled and well-kept. Nippur itself was primarily a religious city, not governmental, and pilgrimages also brought many travelers and much trade. The local agriculture was primarily grain, vegetables, fruit orchards, and animal livestock.

### Latest WIP ###
Nippur 10.jpg

Right now, I'm struggling with how to depict the croplands and pastures, so suggestions most welcome!

[J.Edward]

I think what you have going on for fields works, why not use that for other pastures?
This is looking good - that left side panel looks great with the stones and the insert map.

[soggymuse]

I agree with J.Edward about using the same sort of style for pastures and croplands as the fields. Maybe a slightly more olive or less vibrant green for pastures, since I imagine they'll be more grass than tended crops.

Something you might already plan on doing later but that I noticed and thought I'd mention is that some of the labels in your side-panel map of Mesopotamia are off kilter. Nippur and Ur, for instance, are too high relative to their dots compared to the more central positioning of other labels.

I love the tablet maps in the side panel, though, and your city's coming along really nicely.

[Chick]

...Something you might already plan on doing later but that I noticed and thought I'd mention is that some of the labels in your side-panel map of Mesopotamia are off kilter. Nippur and Ur, for instance, are too high relative to their dots compared to the more central positioning of other labels....

The positioning of those labels is deliberate. It's generally considered poor to have labels cross other terrain features, in this case the rivers. Shuruppak is the only one that I couldn't place in such a way as to not cross the river and so that it was next to the dot and not cause ambiguity with a different dot. The doggone name was just too long. I tried vertical spacings, but in the end, having that label cross the river looked the best and clearest.

That also means the Ur label should be to the left of the dot to avoid the river, but if Ur and Eridu labels were even with their dots, that would make it ambiguous which dot represents Ur and which one represents Eridu. By spacing them a little vertically apart, it is clear which is which.

Nippur is deliberately larger and brighter to draw attention to it, because that is the subject of the whole map. I placed it slightly higher than the dot to add emphasis and to space it further from Adab so as not to overwhelm that label nor make it superficially appear that Nippur was closer to Adab than the dots actually show.