The remarkable continuity of Mesopotamian civilization can be traced in its literature, public architecture, and city planning from the late fourth millennium BCE, when, almost simultaneously, urbanism and writing appeared, to 323 BCE and the death of Alexander the Great in Babylon. Mesopotamia's economic base was agricultural, but the social foundation was the city, embodied by the temple of the city god or goddess. Prosperity depended on a two-way relationship in which divine benevolence was encouraged by correct human ritual and ethical behavior. The largest temples owned much of the city's lands and employed thousands of people. From the end of the third millennium, kings asserted enough control over temples that important religious establishments became political extensions of the palace. The religious lives of common people, however, revolved around the patriarchal family's ancestral spirits and patron god or goddess...