Social and political theorists have tied the emergence of cities to the origin of civilization since the earliest written records we have found. The perhaps four-thousand-year-old Epic of Gilgamesh, which shaped and inspired later literature, including the Bible, opens on what is best understood as an extended meditation on the nature of city life. In it, a wild man named Enkidu, who is created by the gods to humble King Gilgamesh, the ruler of the city, makes his way to the great city of Ur.
