Mesopotamia is one of the world's oldest urban cultures. According to Mesopotamian ideology, the gods selected rulers who exercised kingship over cities and in some cases over territories. An extensive body of historical and archaeological research provides a starting point for a synthetic understanding of Mesopotamian cities. Accounts of the origins of cities in Mesopotamia have focused on the city of Uruk since excavations there in the late 1920s and 1930s recovered abundant evidence of monumental structures of the late fourth millennium BCE at the center of a large city along with numerous early cuneiform texts. Mesopotamian temples were the households of the gods. The deities were physically brought into their cult statues through rituals and the statues were clothed and fed. Cities, neighborhoods, and communities were formed and reformed by movements of people into and away from cities. Mesopotamian cities depended on a countryside that urban institutions had a significant role in constructing.