section_path: City-states in Mesopotamia
section_name: City-states in Mesopotamia
paragraph_text: City-states in Mesopotamia
  
  In the late 4th millennium BC, Sumer was divided into many independent city-states, which were divided by canals and boundary stones. Each was centered on a temple dedicated to the particular patron god or goddess of the city and ruled over by a priestly governor (ensi) or by a king (lugal) who was intimately tied to the city's religious rites.
  
  The five "first" cities, said to have exercised pre-dynastic kingship "before the flood":
  
  Other principal cities:
  
  Minor cities (from south to north):
  
  (an outlying city in northern Mesopotamia)
  
  Apart from Mari, which lies full 330 kilometres (205 miles) north-west of Agade, but which is credited in the king list as having "exercised kingship" in the Early Dynastic II period, and Nagar, an outpost, these cities are all in the Euphrates-Tigris alluvial plain, south of Baghdad in what are now the Bābil, Diyala, Wāsit, Dhi Qar, Basra, Al-Muthannā and Al-Qādisiyyah governorates of Iraq.