Before becoming a resource to be managed, diverted, or rationed, water in Mesopotamia was a cosmic force. Rivers, canals, and floods were not merely natural elements, but structures through which civilizations defined their relationship with territory, power, and the sacred. This idea informs Primordial Water. Lessons from Mésopotamia, an exhibition presented at the Musée du Louvre. The project uses the Louvre's antiquities collections to reconstruct the central role of water in the development of Mesopotamian societies, from the Sumerian city-states to the Assyrian and Babylonian empires. Through reliefs, tablets, ritual objects, and archaeological finds, the exhibition explores how the control of water contributed to the emergence of the first forms of urbanization, administration, and political organization. In ancient Mesopotamia, the great rivers of the Tigris and Euphrates were both a source of prosperity and a constant threat. Irrigation enabled agricultural development and urban growth, but it also required complex systems of collective management, hydraulic infrastructure, and centralized forms of territorial control. The exhibition thus highlights how environmental issues were already deeply intertwined with the mechanisms of power. One of the central aspects of the exhibition concerns the relationship between water and cosmology. In Mesopotamian myths, primordial water precedes the creation of the world and represents an original substance from which gods, men, and the very order of civilization emerge. The exhibition's title recalls this symbolic dimension, connecting mythological narratives and the concrete organization of urban space. While focusing on antiquity, the project implicitly engages with contemporary issues. Drought, desertification, exploitation of water resources, and climate change now affect many of the same areas that were the cradle of Mesopotamian civilizations. The Louvre thus uses archaeology not as a simple reconstruction of the past, but as a tool to interrogate the long-standing relationship between environment and society.
