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Ancient Sumeria: The History of Ancient
Sumeria including its cities, kings and religions
Now, I swear by the sun god Utu on this very day -- and my
younger brothers shall be witness of it in foreign lands where the
sons of Sumer are not known, where people do not have the use of
paved roads, where they have no access to the written word -- that
I, the firstborn son, am a fashioner of words, a composer of songs,
a composer of words, and that they will recite my songs as heavenly
writings, and that they will bow down before my words......-
King Shulgi (c. 2100 BC) on the future of Sumerian literature.
Ancient Sumeria: The
History of Ancient Sumeria including its cities, kings and religions
(pdf)
Contents
Mesopotamia: The First Civilization: Ancient Sumeria: The History
of Ancient Sumeria including its cities, kings and religions
PAGEREF _Toc85805817 \h 3
The Geography Of Mesopotamia.
PAGEREF _Toc85805818 \h 3
Prelude To Civilization.
PAGEREF _Toc85805819 \h 4
The Land of the Two Rivers
PAGEREF _Toc85805820 \h 5
An Introduction To Sumerian History.
PAGEREF _Toc85805821 \h 6
The Emergence Of Civilization In Sumer, c. 3100-2800 B.C.
PAGEREF _Toc85805822 \h 10
The Rise of the Sumerian City States
PAGEREF _Toc85805823 \h 12
The Sumerian Achievement
PAGEREF _Toc85805824 \h 13
The Sumerian Writing System..
PAGEREF _Toc85805825 \h 14
Sumerian Schools
PAGEREF _Toc85805826 \h 16
Sumerian Cities
PAGEREF _Toc85805827 \h 17
Architecture.
PAGEREF _Toc85805828 \h 18
The Physical Appearance of the Sumerian City.
PAGEREF _Toc85805829 \h 20
Stories of Gods and Heroes
PAGEREF _Toc85805830 \h 22
The Old Sumerian Period, c. 2800-2300 B.C.
PAGEREF _Toc85805831 \h 24
The Fall of the Sumerian Cities
PAGEREF _Toc85805832 \h 26
The Last of the Sumerians
PAGEREF _Toc85805833 \h 26
Archaeology.
PAGEREF _Toc85805834 \h 27
Authorities do not all agree about the definition of civilization.
Most accept the view that "a civilization is a culture which has
attained a degree of complexity usually characterized by urban
life." In other words, a civilization is a culture capable of
sustaining a substantial number of specialists to cope with the
economic, social, political, and religious needs of a populous
society. Other characteristics usually present in a civilization
include a system of writing to keep records, monumental architecture
in place of simple buildings, and an art that is no longer merely
decorative, like that on Neolithic pottery, but representative of
people and their activities. All these characteristics of
civilization first appeared in Mesopotamia. i
Around 6000 B.C., after the agricultural revolution had begun to
spread from its place of origin on the northern fringes of the
Fertile Crescent, Neolithic farmers started filtering into the
Fertile Crescent itself. Although this broad plain received
insufficient rainfall to support agriculture, the eastern section
was watered by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Known in ancient
days as Mesopotamia (Greek for "between the rivers"), the lower
reaches of this plain, beginning near the point where the two rivers
nearly converge, was called Babylonia. Babylonia in turn encompassed
two geographical areas - Akkad in the north and Sumer, the delta of
this river system, in the south.
Broken by river channels teeming with fish and re-fertilized
frequently by alluvial silt laid down by uncontrolled floods, Sumer
had a splendid agricultural potential if the environmental problems
could be solved. "Arable land had literally to be created out of a
chaos of swamps and sand banks by a 'separation' of land from water;
the swamps ... drained; the floods controlled; and lifegiving waters
led to the rainless desert by artificial canals." ^4 In the course
of the several successive cultural phases that followed the arrival
of the first Neolithic farmers, these and other related problems
were solved by cooperative effort. Between 3500 B.C. and 3100 B.C.
the foundations were laid for a type of economy and social order
markedly different from anything previously known. This far more
complex culture, based on large urban centers rather than simple
villages, is what we associate with civilization.
i
[Footnote 4: V. Gordon Childe, New Light on the Most Ancient East
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1954), p. 114.]
By discovering how to use metals to make tools and weapons, late
Neolithic people effected a revolution nearly as far-reaching as
that wrought in agriculture. Neolithic artisans discovered how to
extract copper from oxide ores by heating them with charcoal. Then
about 3100 B.C., metal workers discovered that copper was improved
by the addition of tin. The resulting alloy, bronze, was harder than
copper and provided a sharper cutting edge.
Thus the advent of civilization in Sumer is associated with the
beginning of the Bronze Age in the West, which in time spread to
Egypt, Europe, and Asia. The Bronze age lasted until about 1200
B.C., when iron weapons and tools began to replace those made of
bronze.
The first plow was probably a stick pulled through the soil with a
rope. In time, however, domesticated cattle were harnessed to drag
the plow in place of the farmer. Yoked, harnessed animals pulled
plows in the Mesopotamian alluvium by 3000 B.C. As a result, farming
advanced from the cultivation of small plots to the tilling of
extensive fields. "By harnessing the ox man began to control and use
a motive power other than that furnished by his own muscular energy.
The ox was the first step to the steam engine and gasoline motor."
^5
[Footnote 5: V. Gordon Childe, What Happened in History (New York:
Pelican Books, 1946), p. 74.]
Since the Mesopotamian plain had no stone, no metals, and no timber
except its soft palm trees, these materials had to be transported
from Syria and Asia Minor. Water transport down the Tigris and
Euphrates solved the problem. The oldest sailing boat known is
represented by a model found in a Sumerian grave of about 3500 B.C.
Soon after this date wheeled vehicles appear in the form of
ass-drawn war chariots. For the transport of goods overland,
however, people continued to rely on the pack ass.
Another important invention was the potter's wheel, first used in
Sumer soon after 3500 B.C. Earlier, people had fashioned pots by
molding or coiling clay by hand, but now a symmetrical product could
be produced in a much shorter time. A pivoted clay disk heavy enough
to revolve of its own momentum, the potter's wheel has been called
"the first really mechanical device."
i
The word Mesopotamia , derived from the Greek, means literally
"between the rivers," but it is generally used to denote the whole
plain between and on either side of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
The plain was bordered to the north and east by mountain ranges, in
whose foothills, as we have seen, agriculture was first practiced.
To the southwest lay the forbidding deserts of Syria and Arabia .
Each year the two great rivers were swollen with the winter snows of
the northern mountains, and each year at flood stage they spread a
thick layer of immensely fertile silt across the flood plain where
they approached the Persian Gulf . This delta, a land of swamp rich
in fish, wildlife, and date palms, was the most challenging and
rewarding of the three natural units into which the river valleys
were divided; and it was here, between 3500 and 3000 B. c., that
agricultural settlers created the rich city-states of Sumer , of
which the best known is Ur . The delta could only be made habitable
by large-scale irrigation and flood control, which was managed first
by a priestly class and then by godlike kings. Except for the period
2370-2230 B. c., when the Sumerian city-states were subdued by the
rulers of Akkad , the region immediately to the north, the Sumerians
remained prosperous and powerful until the beginning of the second
millennium B. C.
Immediately to the north of Sumer , where the two rivers came most
closely together, the plain was less subject to flooding but made
fertile by rainfall and irrigation. This area, known first as Akkad
, was inhabited by Semitic peoples who subdued the Sumerians in the
middle of the third millennium; but when a new Semitic people called
the Amorites conquered the area about 2000 B. c. and founded a great
new capital city of Babylon ; the area henceforth came to be known
as Babylonia . Except for invasions of Hittites and Kassites, who
were Indo-European peoples from Asia , Babylonia continued to
dominate Mesopotamia for a thousand years.
The third natural region, called Assyria , stretched from the north
of Babylonia to the Taurus range. Its rolling hills were watered by
a large number of streams flowing from the surrounding mountains as
well as by the headwaters of the two great rivers themselves. The
Assyrians, a viciously warlike Semitic people, were able to conquer
the whole of Mesopotamia in the eighth and seventh centuries B. c.
Thus the history of Mesopotamia can be envisaged as a shift of the
center of power northwards, from Sumer to Babylonia and then to
Assyria.
i
During the 5th millennium BC a people known as the Ubaidians
established settlements in the region known later as Sumer; these
settlements gradually developed into the chief Sumerian cities,
namely Adab, Eridu, Isin, Kish, Kullab, Lagash, Larsa, Nippur, and
Ur. Several centuries later, as the Ubaidian settlers prospered,
Semites from Syrian and Arabian deserts began to infiltrate, both as
peaceful immigrants and as raiders in quest of booty. After about
3250 BC, another people migrated from its homeland, located probably
northeast of Mesopotamia, and began to intermarry with the native
population. The newcomers, who became known as Sumerians, spoke an
agglutinative language unrelated apparently to any other known
language.
In the centuries that followed the immigration of the Sumerians, the
country grew rich and powerful. Art and architecture, crafts, and
religious and ethical thought flourished. The Sumerian language
became the prevailing speech of the land, and the people here
developed the cuneiform script, a system of writing on clay. This
script was to become the basic means of written communication
throughout the Middle East for about 2000 years.
The first Sumerian ruler of historical record, Etana, king of Kish
(flourished about 2800 BC), was described in a document written
centuries later as the "man who stabilized all the lands." Shortly
after his reign ended, a king named Meskiaggasher founded a rival
dynasty at Erech (Uruk), far to the south of Kish. Meskiaggasher,
who won control of the region extending from the Mediterranean Sea
to the Zagros Mountains, was succeeded by his son Enmerkar
(flourished about 2750 BC). The latter’s reign was notable for an
expedition against Aratta, a city-state far to the northeast of
Mesopotamia. Enmerkar was succeeded by Lugalbanda, one of his
military leaders. The exploits and conquests of Enmerkar and
Lugalbanda form the subject of a cycle of epic tales constituting
the most important source of information on early Sumerian history.
At the end of Lugalbanda’s reign, Enmebaragesi (flourished about
2700 BC), a king of the Etana dynasty at Kish, became the leading
ruler of Sumer. His outstanding achievements included a victory over
the country of Elam and the construction at Nippur of the Temple of
Enlil, the leading deity of the Sumerian pantheon. Nippur gradually
became the spiritual and cultural center of Sumer.
Enmebaragesi’s son Agga (probably died before 2650 BC), the last
ruler of the Etana dynasty, was defeated by Mesanepada, king of Ur
(fl. about 2670 BC), who founded the so-called 1st Dynasty of Ur and
made Ur the capital of Sumer. Soon after the death of Mesanepada,
the city of Erech achieved a position of political prominence under
the leadership of Gilgamesh (flourished about 2700-2650 BC), whose
deeds are celebrated in stories and legends.
Sometime before the 25th century bc the Sumerian Empire, under the
leadership of Lugalanemundu of Adab (flourished about 2525-2500 BC),
was extended from the Zagros to the Taurus mountains and from the
Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. Subsequently the empire was
ruled by Mesilim (fl. about 2500 BC), king of Kish. By the end of
his reign, Sumer had begun to decline. The Sumerian city-states
engaged in constant internecine struggle, exhausting their military
resources. Eannatum (fl. about 2425 BC), one of the rulers of
Lagash, succeeded in extending his rule throughout Sumer and some of
the neighboring lands. His success, however, was short-lived. The
last of his successors, Uruinimgina (fl. about 2365 BC), who was
noteworthy for instituting many social reforms, was defeated by
Lugalzagesi (reigned about 2370-2347 BC), the governor of the
neighboring city-state of Umma. Thereafter, for about 20 years,
Lugalzagesi was the most powerful ruler in the Middle East.
By the 23rd century bc the power of the Sumerians had declined to
such an extent that they could no longer defend themselves against
foreign invasion. The Semitic ruler Sargon I (reigned about
2335-2279 BC), called The Great, succeeded in conquering the entire
country. Sargon founded a new capital, called Agade, in the far
north of Sumer and made it the richest and most powerful city in the
world. The people of northern Sumer and the conquering invaders,
fusing gradually, became known ethnically and linguistically as
Akkadians. The land of Sumer acquired the composite name Sumer and
Akkad.
The Akkadian dynasty lasted about a century. During the reign of
Sargon’s grandson, Naram-Sin (r. about 2255-2218 BC), the Gutians, a
belligerent people from the Zagros Mountains, sacked and destroyed
the city of Agade. They then subjugated and laid waste the whole of
Sumer. After several generations the Sumerians threw off the Gutian
yoke. The city of Lagash again achieved prominence, particularly
during the reign of Gudea (circa 2144-2124 BC), an extraordinarily
pious and capable governor. Because numerous statues of Gudea have
been recovered, he has become the Sumerian best known to the modern
world. The Sumerians achieved complete independence from the Gutians
when Utuhegal, king of Erech (reigned about 2120-2112 BC), won a
decisive victory later celebrated in Sumerian literature.
One of Utuhegal’s generals, Ur-Nammu (r. 2113-2095 BC), founded the
3rd Dynasty of Ur. In addition to being a successful military
leader, he was also a social reformer and the originator of a law
code that antedates that of the Babylonian king Hammurabi by about
three centuries (see Hammurabi, Code of). Ur-Nammu’s son Shulgi (r.
2095-2047 BC) was a successful soldier, a skillful diplomat, and a
patron of literature. During his reign the schools and academies of
the kingdom flourished.
Before the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC the Amorites, Semitic
nomads from the desert to the west of Sumer and Akkad, invaded the
kingdom. They gradually became masters of such important cities as
Isin and Larsa. The resultant widespread political disorder and
confusion encouraged the Elamites to attack (circa 2004 BC) Ur and
to take into captivity its last ruler, Ibbi-Sin (r. 2029-2004 BC).
During the centuries following the fall of Ur bitter intercity
struggle for the control of Sumer and Akkad occurred, first between
Isin and Larsa and later between Larsa and Babylon. Hammurabi of
Babylon defeated Rim-Sin of Larsa (r. about 1823-1763 BC) and became
the sole ruler of Sumer and Akkad. This date probably marks the end
of the Sumerian state. Sumerian civilization, however, was adopted
almost in its entirety by Babylonia.
i
By 3100 B.C. the population of Sumer had increased to the point
where people were living in cities and had developed a preponderance
of those elements previously noted as constituting civilization.
Since these included the first evidence of writing, this first phase
of Sumerian civilization, to about 28 B.C., is called the
Protoliterate period.
The original homeland of the Sumerians is unknown. It is believed
that they came from the east, but whether by sea or from the
highlands is unknown. Their language is not related to those major
language families that later appear in the Near East - Semites and
Indo-Europeans. (The original home of the Semitic-speaking peoples
is thought to have been the Arabian peninsula, while the
Indo-Europeans seem to be migrated from the region north of the
Black and Caspian seas. A third, much smaller language family is the
Hamitic, which included the Egyptians and other peoples of
northeastern Africa.)
How would life in Protoliterate Sumer have appeared to visitors
seeing it for the first time? As they approached Ur, one of about a
dozen Sumerian cities, they would pass farmers working in their
fields with ox-drawn plows. They might see some of the workers using
bronze sickles. The river would be dotted by boats carrying produce
to and from the city. Dominating the flat countryside would be a
ziggurat, a platform (later a lofty terrace, built in the shape of a
pyramid) crowned by a sanctuary, or "high place." This was the "holy
of holies," sacred to the local god. Upon entering the city,
visitors would see a large number of specialists pursuing their
appointed tasks as agents of the community and not as private
entrepreneurs - some craftsmen casting bronze tools and weapons,
others fashioning their wares on the potter's wheel, and merchants
arranging to trade grain and manufactures for the metals, stone,
lumber, and other essentials not available in Sumer.
Scribes would be at work incising clay tablets with picture signs.
Some tablets might bear the impression of cylinder seals, small
stone cylinders engraved with a design. Examining the clay tablets,
the visitors would find that they were memoranda used in
administering a temple, which was also a warehouse and workshop.
Some of the scribes might be making an inventory of the goats and
sheep received that day for sacrificial use; others might be drawing
up wage lists. They would be using a system of counting based on the
unit 60 - the sexagismal system rather than the decimal system which
is based on the unit 10. It is still used today in computing
divisions of time and angles.
Certain technical inventions of Protoliterate Sumer eventually made
their way to both the Nile and the Indus valleys. Chief among these
were the wheeled vehicle and the potter's wheel. The discovery in
Egypt of cylinder seals similar in shape to those used in Sumer
attests to contact between the two areas toward the end of the
fourth millennium B.C. Certain early Egyptian art motifs and
architectural forms are also thought to be of Sumerian origin. And
it is probable that the example of Sumerian writing stimulated the
Egyptians to develop a script of their own.
i
Little is known about the origins of the Sumerian people, who spoke
a language totally distinct from that of the Semitic inhabitants of
the valleys to the north. The Sumerians probably moved down into the
swamps of the delta under pressure of over-population of the
foothills after 3900 B. c. Al- though at first they formed small
agricultural villages, they soon found not only that the richness of
the alluvial land permitted greater density of settlement but also
that the vast engineering works in canals and dikes necessary to
harness the annual floods required work forces of hundreds of men.
Moreover, the layout and clearing of the canals required expert
planning, while the division of the irrigated land, the water, and
the crops demanded political control. By 3000 B. c. the Sumerians
had solved this problem by forming "temple-communities," in which a
class of priest-bureaucrats con- trolled the political and economic
life of the city in the name of the city gods.
All Sumerian cities recognized a number of gods in common, including
Anu the sky god, Enlil the lord of storms, and Ishtar the morning
and evening star. The gods seemed hopelessly violent and
unpredictable, and one's life a period of slavery to their whims.
The epic poem, The Creation, emphasizes that mortals were created to
enable the gods to give up working. Each city moreover had its own
god, who was considered literally to inhabit the temple and who was
in theory the owner of all property within the city. Hence the
priests who interpreted the will of the god and controlled the
distribution of the economic produce of the city were venerated for
their supernatural and material functions alike. When, after 3000 B.
c., the growing warfare among the cities made military leadership
vital, the head of the army who became king assumed an intermediate
position between the god, whose agent he was, and the priestly
class, whom he had both to use and to conciliate. Thus, king and
priests represented the upper class in a hierarchical society. Below
them were the scribes, the secular attendants of the temple, who
supervised every aspect of the city's economic life and who
developed a rough judicial system. Outside the temple officials,
society was divided between an elite or noble group of large
landowners and military leaders; a heterogeneous group of merchants,
artisans, and craftsmen; free peasants who composed the majority of
the population; and slaves.
i
The priests and scribes of the temples must be credited with the
great advances made by the Sumerians in both arts and science.
Following the invention of cuneiform writing, a rich epic literature
was created, of which the three most impressive survivals are the
story of the creation, an epic of the flood which parallels in many
details the Biblical story of Noah, and the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Gilgamesh, two-thirds god and one-third man, is the classic hero of
Mesopotamian literature, a majestic, almost overly powerful figure
pressing the gods in vain for the secret of immortality. He is also
a great lover of his city Uruk; and throughout the poem we find,
perhaps for the first time in literature, the celebration of the
appeal of the civilized life of a great city. Gilgamesh, we are told
at the start of the poem, has built the great rampart which still
today runs seven miles around the ruins of his city:
Of ramparted Uruk the wall he built. Of hallowed Eanna, the pure
sanctuary. Behold its outer wall, whose cornice is like copper.
Peer at the inner wall, which none can equal. Seize upon the
threshold which is of old. Draw near to Eanna the dwelling of
Ishtar Which no future kin, no man, can equal. Go up and walk on
the walls of Uruk, Inspect the base terrace, examine the brickwork:
Is it not the brickwork of burnt brick? Did not the Seven Sages lay
its foundation?
Sculpture, too, advanced to serve the needs of the temples and then
of the kings. The earliest statues surviving show bearded figures
with wide staring eyes and piously clasped hands who represent some
form of fertility cult. Later work in limestone or alabaster shows
the female goddess bringing water, once again the symbol of
fertility, while the achievements of the Akkadian rulers during
their brief hegemony are recorded on enormous sandstone tablets. Few
portrait busts cast in antiquity rival the expressive dignity of the
head of Sargon of Akkad. Even more demanding in artistic technique
were the small cylinder seals used to roll one's signature into the
wet clay of a tablet recording a commercial transaction. Thousands
of these tablets have been found in the temple compounds, proving
that the bureaucrats of Sumer had developed a complex commercial
system, including con- tracts, grants of credit, loans with
interest, and business partnerships. Moreover, the planning of the
vast public works under their control led the priests to develop a
useful mathematical notation, including both a decimal notation and
a system based upon 60, which has given us our sixty-second minute,
our sixty-minute hour and our division of the circle into 360
degrees. They invented mathematical tables and used quadratic
equations. Both for religious and agricultural purposes, they
studied the heavens, and they created a lunar calendar with a day of
24 hours and a week of seven days. Much of this science was
transmitted to the West by the Greeks and later by the Arabs. It is
not surprising, however, that the achievement which the Sumerians
themselves admired most was the city itself.
i
Whether the Sumerians were the first to develop writing is
uncertain, but theirs is the oldest known writing system. The clay
tablets on which they wrote were very durable when baked.
Archaeologists have dug up many thousands of them--some dated
earlier than 3000 BC.
The earliest writing of the Sumerians was picture writing similar in
some ways to Egyptian hieroglyphs. They began to develop their
special style when they found that on soft, wet clay it was easier
to impress a line than to scratch it. To draw the pictures they used
a stylus--probably a straight piece of reed with a three-cornered
end.
An unexpected result came about: the stylus could best produce
triangular forms (wedges) and straight lines. Curved lines therefore
had to be broken up into a series of straight strokes. Pictures lost
their form and became stylized symbols. This kind of writing on clay
is called cuneiform, from the Latin cuneus, meaning "wedge."
A tremendous step forward was accomplished when the symbols came to
be associated with the sound of the thing shown rather than with the
idea of the thing itself. Each sign then represented a syllable.
Although cuneiform writing was still used long after the alphabet
appeared, it never fully developed an alphabet.
As we have noted, the symbols on the oldest Sumerian clay tablets,
the world's first writing, were pictures of concrete things such as
a person, a sheep, a star, or a measure of grain. Some of these
pictographs also represented ideas; for example, the picture of a
foot was used to represent the idea of walking, and a picture of a
mouth joined to that for water meant "to drink." This early
pictograph writing gave way to phonetic (or syllabic) writing when
the scribes realized that a sign could represent a sound as well as
an object or idea. Thus, the personal name "Kuraka" could be written
by combining the pictographs for mountain (pronounced kur), water
(pronounced a), and mouth (pronounced ka). By 2800 B.C., the use of
syllabic writing had reduced the number of signs from nearly two
thousand to six hundred.
In writing, a scribe used a reed stylus to make impressions in soft
clay tablets. The impressions took on a wedge shape, hence the term
cuneiform (Latin cuneus, "wedge"). The cuneiform system of writing
was adopted by many other peoples of the Near East, including the
Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, and Persians.
i
Cuneiform was difficult to learn. To master it children usually went
to a temple school. Using a clay tablet as a textbook, the teacher
wrote on the left-hand side, and the pupil copied the model on the
right. Any mistakes could be smoothed out. The pupil began by making
single wedges in various positions and then went on to groups of
wedges. Thousands of groups had to be mastered. Finally the pupil
was assigned a book to copy, but the work was slow and laborious.
Many first chapters of all the important Sumerian works have been
handed down from students' tablets, but only fragments of the rest
of the books survive.
The pupils also studied arithmetic. The Sumerians based their number
system on 10, but they multiplied 10 by 6 to get the next unit. They
multiplied 60 by 10, then multiplied 600 by 6, and so on. (The
number 60 has the advantage of being divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10,
12, 15, 20, and 30.) The Sumerians also divided the circle into 360
degrees. From these early people came the word dozen (a fifth of 60)
and the division of the clock to measure hours, minutes, and
seconds.
The Sumerians had standard measures, with units of length, area, and
capacity. Their standard weight was the mina, made up of 60
shekels--about the same weight as a pound. There was no coined
money. Standard weights of silver served as measures of value and as
a means of exchange.
From the earliest times the Sumerians had a strong sense of private
property. After they learned to write and figure, they kept
documents about every acquired object, including such small items as
shoes. Every business transaction had to be recorded. Near the gates
of the cities, scribes would sit ready to sell their services. Their
hands would move fast over a lump of clay, turning the stylus. Then
the contracting parties added their signatures by means of seals.
The usual seal was an engraved cylinder of stone or metal that could
be rolled over wet clay.
In the course of time cuneiform was used for every purpose, just as
writing is today--for letters, narratives, prayers and incantations,
dictionaries, even mathematical and astronomical treatises. The
Babylonians and Assyrians adapted cuneiform for their own Semitic
languages and spread its use to neighboring Syria, Anatolia,
Armenia, and Iran.
i
Sumerian towns and cities included Eridu, Nippur, Lagash, Kish, and
Ur. The cities differed from primitive farming settlements. They
were not composed of family-owned farms, but were ringed by large
tracts of land. These tracts were thought to be "owned" by a local
god. A priest organized work groups of farmers to tend the land and
provide barley, beans, wheat, olives, grapes, and flax for the
community.
These early cities, which existed by 3500 BC, were called temple
towns because they were built around the temple of the local god.
The temples were eventually built up on towers called ziggurats
(holy mountains), which had ramps or staircases winding up around
the exterior. Public buildings and marketplaces were built around
these shrines.
The temple towns grew into city-states, which are considered the
basis of the first true civilizations. At a time when only the most
rudimentary forms of transportation and communication were
available, the city-state was the most governable type of human
settlement. City-states were ruled by leaders, called ensis, who
were probably authorized to control the local irrigation systems.
The food surplus provided by the farmers supported these leaders, as
well as priests, artists, craftsmen, and others.
The Sumerians contributed to the development of metalworking,
wheeled carts, and potter's wheels. They may have invented the first
form of writing. They engraved pictures on clay tablets in a form of
writing known as cuneiform (wedge-shaped). The tablets were used to
keep the accounts of the temple food storehouses. By about 2500 BC
these picture-signs were being refined into an alphabet.
The Sumerians developed the first calendar, which they adjusted to
the phases of the moon. The lunar calendar was adopted by the
Semites, Egyptians, and Greeks. An increase in trade between
Sumerian cities and between Sumeria and other, more distant regions
led to the growth of a merchant class.
The Sumerians organized a complex mythology based on the
relationships among the various local gods of the temple towns. In
Sumerian religion, the most important gods were seen as human forms
of natural forces--sky, sun, earth, water, and storm. These gods,
each originally associated with a particular city, were worshiped
not only in the great temples but also in small shrines in family
homes.
Warfare between cities eventually led to the rise of kings, called
lugals, whose authority replaced that of city-state rulers. Sumeria
became a more unified state, with a common culture and a centralized
government. This led to the establishment of a bureaucracy and an
army. By 2375 BC, most of Sumer was united under one king,
Lugalzaggisi of Umma.
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The Sumerian temple was a small brick house that the god was
supposed to visit periodically. It was ornamented so as to recall
the reed houses built by the earliest Sumerians in the valley. This
house, however, was set on a brick platform, which became larger and
taller as time progressed until the platform at Ur (built around
2100 BC) was 150 by 200 feet (45 by 60 meters) and 75 feet (23
meters) high. These Mesopotamian temple platforms are called
ziggurats, a word derived from the Assyrian ziqquratu, meaning
"high." They were symbols in themselves; the ziggurat at Ur was
planted with trees to make it represent a mountain. There the god
visited Earth, and the priests climbed to its top to worship.
The ziggurat continued as the essential temple form of Mesopotamia
during the later Assyrian and Babylonian eras. In these later times
it became taller and more tower-like, perhaps with a spiral path
leading up to the temple at the top. The Greek historian Herodotus
wrote that the main temple of Babylon, the famous Tower of Babel,
was such a tower divided into seven diminishing stages, each a
different color: white, black, purple, blue, orange, silver, and
gold.
Each Sumerian city rose up around the shrine of a local god. As a
reflection of a city's wealth, its temple became an elaborate
structure. The temple buildings stood on a spacious raised platform
reached by staircases and ramps. From the platform rose the temple
tower, called a ziggurat (holy mountain), with a circular staircase
or ramp around the outside. On the temple grounds were quarters for
priests, officials, accountants, musicians, and singers; treasure
chambers; storehouses for grain, tools, and weapons; and workshops
for bakers, pottery makers, brewers, leatherworkers, spinners and
weavers, and jewelers. There were also pens for keeping the sheep
and goats that were destined for sacrifice to the temple god.
Horses and camels were still unknown, but sheep, goats, oxen,
donkeys, and dogs had been domesticated. The plow had been invented,
and the wheel, made from a solid piece of wood, was used for carts
and for shaping pottery. Oxen pulled the carts and plows; donkeys
served as pack animals. Bulky goods were moved by boat on the rivers
and canals. The boats were usually hauled from the banks, but sails
also were in use. Before 3000 BC the Sumerians had learned to make
tools and weapons by smelting copper with tin to make bronze, a much
harder metal than copper alone.
Mud, clay, and reeds were the only materials the Sumerians had in
abundance. Trade was therefore necessary to supply the city workers
with materials. Merchants went out in overland caravans or in ships
to exchange the products of Sumerian industry for wood, stone, and
metals. There are indications that Sumerian sailing vessels even
reached the valley of the Indus River in India. The chief route,
however, was around the Fertile Crescent, between the Arabian Desert
and the northern mountains. This route led up the valley of the two
rivers, westward to Syria, and down the Mediterranean coast.
All of the Sumerian cities were built beside rivers, either on the
Tigris or Euphrates or on one of their tributaries. The city rose,
inside its brown brick walls, amid well-watered gardens and pastures
won from the swamps. In all directions, the high levees of the
irrigation canals led to grain and vegetable fields. The trading
class lived and worked in the harbor area, where the river boats
brought such goods as stone, copper, and timber from the north. Most
citizens lived within the walls in small, one-story houses
constructed along narrow alleyways, although the more elaborate
homes were colonnaded and built around an inner courtyard. By far
the most impressive section of the city was the temple compound,
which was surrounded by its own wall. Here were the workshops and
homes of large numbers of temple craftsmen, such as gwiers, jewelers,
carpenters, and weavers, the offices and schoolrooms of the scribes,
and the commercial and legal offices of the bureaucrat-priests. The
king's palace and graveyard was located near the temple; and, as
Leonard Woolley's excavations at Ur proved, an increasingly lavish
form of ceremonial life was organized here as the kings gained
greater control over the city's surplus. Woolley himself de- scribed
the growing horror his archaeological party felt as they slowly un-
covered the royal graves, because they discovered not only elaborate
golden daggers, headdresses of gold, lapis lazuli and camelian,
fantastically worked heads of bulls, harps and lyres, sledges and
chariots, but also lines of elegantly costumed skeletons laid
carefully in rows. In a gigantic mass suicide, probably through the
drinking of a drug, the king's courtiers and some of his soldiers
had gone to their deaths with their master.
The most elaborate of the Sumerian buildings was the temple or
ziggurat. Normally a huge platform or terrace was first constructed,
upon which the temple could be built; but in later times, as the
terraces grew to be like artificial mountains, they were built in
huge steps or levels mounted by an elaborate stairway clearly
symbolizing the ascent toward heaven. The purpose of these ziggurats
is still unclear. We do know that they were not burial chambers like
the pyramids of Egypt , nor were they for human sacrifice like the
pyramids of Aztec Mexico. It has been suggested that they were a
nostalgic re-creation of the mountains the original settlers had
left, or an at- tempt to raise the city's god above the material
life of the streets below, or an attempt to reach closer to heaven.
We do know that the creation of a temple was regarded as a
god-imposed task for every ruler of any ambition. Gudea, ruler of
Lagash about 2000 B. c., built fifteen large temples with the aid of
the gods: "Inscrutable as the sky, the wisdom of the Lord, of
Ningirsu, the son of Enlil, will soothe thee," he was told. "He will
reveal to thee the plan of His temple, and the Warrior whose decrees
are great will build it for thee." The task proved enormous.
[Gudea purified the holy city and encircled it with fires .... He
collected clay in a very pure place; in a pure place he made with it
the brick and put the brick into the mold. He followed the rites in
all their splendor: he purified the foundations of the temple,
surrounded it with fires, anointed the platform with an aromatic
balm...
Gudea, the great en-priest of Ningirsu, made a path in the Cedar
mountains which nobody had entered before; he cut its cedars with
great axes. . . . Like giant snakes, cedars were floating down the
water....
In the quarries which nobody had entered before, Gudea, the great
en- priest of Ningirsu, made a path, and then the stones were
delivered in large blocks.... Many other precious metals were
carried to the ensi. From the Copper mountain of Kimash ... its
copper was mined in clusters; gold was delivered from its mountains
as dust .... For Gudea, they mined silver from its mountains,
delivered red stone from Aeluhha in great amount ....
Finally, when the temple was finished, Gudea declared proudly:
"Respect for the temple pervades the country; the fear of it fills
the strangers; the brilliance of the Eninnu enfolds the universe
like a mantle.
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As the people in a city-state became familiar with the gods of other
cities, they worked out relationships between them, just as the
Greeks and Romans did in their myths centuries later. Sometimes two
or more gods came to be viewed as one. Eventually a ranking order
developed among the gods. Anu, a sky god who originally had been the
city god of Uruk, came to be regarded as the greatest of them
all--the god of the heavens. His closest rival was the storm god of
the air, Enlil of Nippur. The great gods were worshiped in the
temples. Each family had little clay figures of its own household
gods and small houses or wall niches for them.
The Sumerians believed that their ancestors had created the ground
they lived on by separating it from the water. According to their
creation myth, the world was once watery chaos. The mother of Chaos
was Tiamat, an immense dragon. When the gods appeared to bring order
out of Chaos, Tiamat created an army of dragons. Enlil called the
winds to his aid. Tiamat came forward, her mouth wide open. Enlil
pushed the winds inside her and she swelled up so that she could not
move. Then Enlil split her body open. He laid half of the body flat
to form the Earth, with the other half arched over it to form the
sky. The gods then beheaded Tiamat's husband and created mankind
from his blood, mixed with clay.
The longest story is the Gilgamesh epic, one of the outstanding
works of ancient literature. The superhero Gilgamesh originally
appeared in Sumerian mythology as a legendary king of Uruk. A long
Babylonian poem includes an account of his journey to the bottom of
the sea to obtain the plant of life. As he stopped to bathe at a
spring on the way home, a hungry snake snatched the plant. When
Gilgamesh saw the creature cast off its old skin to become young
again, it seemed to him a sign that old age was the fate of humans.
Another searcher for eternal life was Adapa, a fisherman who gained
wisdom from Ea, the god of water. The other gods were jealous of his
knowledge and called him to heaven. Ea warned him not to drink or
eat while there. Anu offered him the water of life and the bread of
life because he thought that, since Adapa already knew too much, he
might as well be a god. Adapa, however, refused and went back to
Earth to die, thus losing for himself and for mankind the gift of
immortal life. These legends somewhat resemble the Bible story of
Adam and Eve. It is highly probable, in fact, that the ancient
legends and myths of Mesopotamia supplied material that was reworked
by the biblical authors.
It was during the Sumerian era that a great flood overwhelmed
Mesopotamia. So great was this flood that stories about it worked
their way into several ancient literatures. The Sumerian counterpart
of Noah was Ziusudra, and from him was developed the Babylonian
figure Utnapishtim, whose story of the flood was related in the
'Epic of Gilgamesh'. Immortal after his escape from the flood,
Utnapishtim was also the wise man who told Gilgamesh where to find
the youth-restoring plant.
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By 2800 B.C., the Sumerian cities had emerged into the light of
history. This first historical age, called the Old Sumerian (or
Early Dynastic) period, was characterized by incessant warfare as
each city sought to protect or enlarge its land and water rights.
Each city-state was a theocracy, for the chief local god was
believed to be the real sovereign. The god's earthly representative
was the ensi, the high priest and city governor, who acted as the
god's steward in both religious and secular functions. Though
endowed with divine right by virtue of being the human agent of the
god, the ensi was not considered divine.
Early Sumerian society was highly collectivized, with the temples
of the city god and subordinate deities assuming a central role.
"Each temple owned lands which formed the estate of its divine
owners. Each citizen belonged to one of the temples, and the whole
of a temple community - the officials and priests, herdsmen and
fishermen, gardeners, craftsmen, stonecutters, merchants, and even
slaves - was referred to as 'the people of the god X.'" ^6 That part
of the temple land called 'common' was worked by all members of the
community, while the remaining land was divided among the citizens
for their support at a rental of from one third to one sixth of the
crop. Priests and temple administrators, however, held rent-free
lands.
[Footnote 6: H. Frankfort, The Birth of Civilization in the Near
East (London: Williams and Norgate, 1951), p. 60.]
In addition to the temples lands, a considerable part of a city's
territory originally consisted of land collectively owned by clans,
kinship groups comprising a number of extended families. By 2600
B.C., these clan lands were becoming the private property of great
landowners called lugals (literally "great men"). Deeds of sale
record the transfer of clan lands to private owners in return for
substantial payments in copper to a few clan leaders and
insignificant grants of food to the remaining clan members. These
private estates were worked by "clients" whose status resembled that
of the dependents of the temples.
In time, priests, administrators, and ensis became venal, usurping
property and oppressing the common people. This frequently led to
the rise of despots who came to power on a wave of popular
discontent. Since these despots were usually lugals, lugal became a
political title and is generally translated as "king."
The Sumerian lugals made the general welfare their major concern.
Best known is Urukagina, who declared himself lugal of Lagash near
the end of the Old Sumerian period and ended the rule of priests and
"powerful men," each of whom, he claimed, was guilty of acting "for
his own benefit." Urukagina's inscriptions describe his many reforms
and conclude: "He freed the inhabitants of Lagash from usury,
burdensome controls, hunger, theft, murder, and seizure (of their
property and persons). He established freedom. The widow and the
orphan were no longer at the mercy of the powerful man." ^7
[Footnote 7: "The Reforms of Urukagina" in Nels M. Bailkey, ed.,
Readings in Ancient History: Thought and Experience from Gilgamesh
to St. Augustine, 4th ed. (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1992), p.
21.]
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Around 2000 B. c. both Sumer and Akkad were attacked by barbarian
invaders. The Amorites from Syria seized control in Akkad , and
built a powerful new state around the city of Babylon . The Elamites
from Iran took the city of Ur , sacked it, and burnt it down. When
Ur was later rebuilt under Babylonian rule, its inhabitants
remembered with terror the Elamite destruction of their beloved
city:
0 Father Nanna, that city into ruins was made ...Its people, not
potsherds, filled its sides; Its walls were breached; the people
groan. In its lofty gates, where they were wont to promenade, dead
bodies were lying about; in its boulevards, where the feasts were
celebrated, scattered they lay. In all its streets, where they were
wont to promenade, dead bodies were lying about; In its places,
where the festivities of the land took place, the people lay in
heaps ... Ur -its weak and its strong perished through hunger;
Mothers and fathers who did not leave their houses were overcome by
fire; The young, lying on their mothers' laps, like fish were
carried off by the waters; In the city the wife was abandoned, the
son was abandoned, the possessions were scattered about...0 Nanna,
Ur has been destroyed, its people have been dispersed.
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Within a few centuries the Sumerians had built up a society based in
12 city-states: Kish, Uruk (in the Bible, Erech), Ur, Sippar,
Akshak, Larak, Nippur, Adab, Umma, Lagash, Bad-tibira, and Larsa.
According to one of the earliest historical documents, the Sumerian
King List, eight kings of Sumer reigned before the famous flood.
Afterwards various city-states by turns became the temporary seat of
power until about 2800 BC, when they were united under the rule of
one king--Etana of Kish. After Etana, the city-states vied for
domination; this weakened the Sumerians, and they were ripe for
conquest--first by Elamites, then by Akkadians.
The Sumerians had never been very warlike, and they had only a
citizen army, called to arms in time of danger. In about 2340 BC
King Sargon of Akkad conquered them and went on to build an empire
that stretched westward to the Mediterranean Sea. The empire, though
short-lived, fostered art and literature.
Led by Ur, the Sumerians again spread their rule far westward.
During Ur's supremacy (about 2150 to 2050 BC) Sumerian culture
reached its highest development. Shortly thereafter the cities lost
their independence forever, and gradually the Sumerians completely
disappeared as a people. Their language, however, lived on as the
language of culture. Their writing, their business organization,
their scientific knowledge, and their mythology and law were spread
westward by the Babylonians and Assyrians
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Before the mid-19th century AD, the existence of the Sumerian people
and language was not suspected. The first major excavations leading
to the discovery of Sumer were conducted (1842-1854) at Assyrian
sites such as Nineveh, Dur Sharrukin, and Calah by the French
archaeologists Paul Émile Botta and Victor Place; the British
archaeologists Sir Austen Henry Layard and Sir Henry Creswicke
Rawlinson; and the Iraqi archaeologist Hormuzd Rassam. Thousands of
tablets and inscriptions dating from the 1st millennium bc, the vast
majority written in Akkadian, were uncovered. Thus, scholars assumed
at first that all Mesopotamian cuneiform inscriptions were in the
Akkadian language. Rawlinson and the Irish clergyman Edward Hincks
made a study of the inscriptions, however, and discovered that some
were in a non-Semitic language. In 1869 the French archaeologist
Jules Oppert suggested that the name Sumerian, from the royal title
King of Sumer and Akkad appearing in numerous inscriptions, be
applied to the language.
In the late 19th century, a series of excavations was undertaken at
Lagash by French archaeologists working under the direction of the
Louvre and at Nippur by Americans under the auspices of the
University of Pennsylvania. The French excavations at Lagash were
conducted from 1877 to 1900 by Ernest de Sarzec; from 1903 to 1909
by Gaston Cros; from 1929 to 1931 by Henri de Genouillac; and from
1931 to 1933 by André Parrot. The excavations at Nippur were
conducted (1889-1900) by John Punnett Peters, John Henry Haynes, and
Hermann Vollrat Hilprecht. Since 1948, excavations have been
conducted by archaeologists working under the direction of the
University of Pennsylvania, the Oriental Institute of the University
of Chicago, and the American Schools of Oriental Research (after
1957 under the sole direction of the Oriental Institute of the
University of Chicago). Other Sumerian excavations have been
conducted at Kish, Adab, Erech, Eridu, Eshnunna, Jemdet Nasr,
Shuruppak, Tell al-Ubaid, Tutub, and Ur. The canalled city of Kish,
which was situated 13 km (8 mi) east of Babylon on the Euphrates
River, is known to have been one of the most important cities of
Sumer. Extensive excavations since 1922 have uncovered an invaluable
sequence of pottery. Archaeologists also unearthed a temple of
Nebuchadnezzar II and Nabonidus (r. 556-539 BC) and the palace of
Sargon of Akkad, ruins that date from the 3rd millennium BC to about
550 BC.
Primary Author: Robert A. Guisepi, Portions of this work
Contributed By: F. Roy Willis of the University of California
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