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Sumer (

However, some scholars such as Piotr Michalowski and Gerd Steiner, contest the idea of a Proto-Euphratean language or one substrate language. It has been suggested by them and others, that the Sumerian language was originally that of the hunter and fisher peoples, who lived in the marshland and the Eastern Arabia littoral region, and were part of the Arabian bifacial culture.^[10] Reliable historical records begin much later; there are none in Sumer of any kind that have been dated before Enmebaragesi (c. 26th century BC). Professor Juris Zarins believes the Sumerians were settled along the coast of Eastern Arabia, today's Persian Gulf region, before it flooded at the end of the Ice Age.^[11] Sumerian literature speaks of their homeland being Dilmun.

Sumerian civilization took form in the

The term "Sumerian" is the common name given to the ancient non-Semitic inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Sumer, by the Semitic Akkadians. The Sumerians referred to themselves as ùĝ saĝ gíg-ga (cuneiform: 𒌦 𒊕 𒈪 𒂵), phonetically uŋ saŋ giga, literally meaning "the black-headed people".^[14] The Akkadian word Shumer may represent the geographical name in dialect, but the phonological development leading to the Akkadian term šumerû is uncertain.^[15] Hebrew Shinar, Egyptian Sngr, and Hittite Šanhar(a), all referring to southern Mesopotamia, could be western variants of Shumer.^[15]

City-states in Mesopotamia

By the late 4th millennium BC, Sumer was divided into about a dozen independent

The five "first" cities said to have exercised

1. Eridu (Tell Abu Shahrain)
2. Bad-tibira (probably Tell al-Madain)
3. Larsa (Tell as-Senkereh)
4. Sippar (Tell Abu Habbah)
5. Shuruppak (Tell Fara)

Other principal cities:

6. Uruk (Warka)
7. Kish (Tell Uheimir & Ingharra)
8. Ur (Tell al-Muqayyar)
9. Nippur (Afak)
10. Lagash (Tell al-Hiba)
11. Girsu (Tello or Telloh)
12. Umma (Tell Jokha)
13. Hamazi ¹
14. Adab (Tell Bismaya)
15. Mari (Tell Hariri) ²
16. Akshak ¹
17. Akkad ¹
18. Isin (Ishan al-Bahriyat)

(¹location uncertain)
(²an outlying city in northern Mesopotamia)

Minor cities (from south to north):

1. Kuara
   (Tell al-Lahm)
2. Zabala (Tell Ibzeikh)
3. Kisurra (Tell Abu Hatab)
4. Marad (Tell Wannat es-Sadum)
5. Dilbat (Tell ed-Duleim)
6. Borsippa (Birs Nimrud)
7. Kutha (Tell Ibrahim)
8. Der (al-Badra)
9. Eshnunna (Tell Asmar)
10. Nagar
    (Tell Brak) ²

(²an outlying city in northern Mesopotamia)

Apart from Mari, which lies full 330 km (205 mi) northwest of Agade, but which is credited in the

The Sumerian city-states rose to power during the prehistoric

• Ubaid period: 5300 – 4100 BC (Pottery Neolithic to Chalcolithic)
• Early Bronze Age
  I)
  • Uruk XIV-V: 4100 – 3300 BC
  • Uruk IV period: 3300 – 3100 BC
  • Jemdet Nasr period (Uruk III): 3100 – 2900 BC
• Early Bronze Age
  II-IV)
  • Early Dynastic I period: 2900–2800 BC
  • Early Dynastic II period: 2800–2600 BC (Gilgamesh)
  • Early Dynastic IIIa period: 2600–2500 BC
  • Early Dynastic IIIb period: c. 2500–2334 BC
• Akkadian Empire period: c. 2334–2218 BC (Sargon)
• Early Bronze Age
  IV)
• Ur III period
  : c. 2047–1940 BC

The Ubaid period is marked by a distinctive style of fine quality painted pottery which spread throughout Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. During this time, the first settlement in southern Mesopotamia was established at Eridu (Cuneiform: NUN.KI), c. 5300 BC, by farmers who brought with them the Hadji Muhammed culture, which first pioneered irrigation agriculture. It appears this culture was derived from the Samarran culture from northern Mesopotamia. It is not known whether or not these were the actual Sumerians who are identified with the later Uruk culture. Eridu remained an important religious center when it was gradually surpassed in size by the nearby city of Uruk. The story of the passing of the me (gifts of civilisation) to Inanna, goddess of Uruk and of love and war, by Enki, god of wisdom and chief god of Eridu, may reflect this shift in hegemony.^[17]

Uruk period

The archaeological transition from the Ubaid period to the Uruk period is marked by a gradual shift from painted pottery domestically produced on a slow wheel to a great variety of unpainted pottery mass-produced by specialists on fast wheels. The Uruk period is a continuation and an outgrowth of Ubaid with pottery being the main visible change.^[18][19]

By the time of the

The Uruk period civilization, exported by Sumerian traders and colonists (like that found at Tell Brak), had an effect on all surrounding peoples, who gradually evolved their own comparable, competing economies and cultures. The cities of Sumer could not maintain remote, long-distance colonies by military force.^[20]

Sumerian cities during the Uruk period were probably

The ancient Sumerian king list includes the early dynasties of several prominent cities from this period. The first set of names on the list is of kings said to have reigned before a major flood occurred. These early names may be fictional, and include some legendary and mythological figures, such as

The Dynastic period begins c. 2900 BC and includes such legendary figures as Enmerkar and Gilgamesh—who are supposed to have reigned shortly before the historic record opens c. 2700 BC, when the now deciphered syllabic writing started to develop from the early pictograms. The center of Sumerian culture remained in southern Mesopotamia, even though rulers soon began expanding into neighboring areas, and neighboring Semitic groups adopted much of Sumerian culture for their own.

The earliest Dynastic king on the Sumerian king list whose name is known from any other legendary source is

1st Dynasty of Lagash

c. 2500–2270 BC

The dynasty of Lagash, though omitted from the king list, is well attested through several important monuments and many archaeological finds.

Although short-lived, one of the first empires known to history was that of Eannatum of Lagash, who annexed practically all of Sumer, including Kish, Uruk, Ur, and Larsa, and reduced to tribute the city-state of Umma, arch-rival of Lagash. In addition, his realm extended to parts of Elam and along the Persian Gulf. He seems to have used terror as a matter of policy^[23]—his Stele of the Vultures has been found, showing violent treatment of enemies. His empire collapsed shortly after his death.

Later,

c. 2270–2083 BC (short chronology)

The

c. 2083–2050 BC (short chronology)

2nd Dynasty of Lagash

c. 2093–2046 BC (short chronology)

Following the downfall of the Akkadian Empire at the hands of

c. 2047–1940 BC (short chronology)

Later, the

Decline

This period is generally taken to coincide with a major shift in population from southern Mesopotamia toward the north. Ecologically, the agricultural productivity of the Sumerian lands was being compromised as a result of rising salinity.

Uruk, one of Sumer's largest cities, has been estimated to have had a population at its height of 50-80,000;^[26] given the other cities in Sumer, and the large agricultural population, a rough estimate for Sumer's population might be 0.8million-1.5million. The world population at this time has been estimated at about 27m.^[27]

The Sumerians were a non-Semitic people, and spoke a

It is speculated by some archaeologists that Sumerian speakers were farmers who moved down from the north, after perfecting irrigation agriculture there [note there is no consensus among scholars on the origins of the Sumerians]. The Ubaid pottery of southern Mesopotamia has been connected via Choga Mami Transitional ware to the pottery of the Samarra period culture (c. 5700 – 4900 BC C-14) in the north, who were the first to practice a primitive form of irrigation agriculture along the middle Tigris River and its tributaries. The connection is most clearly seen at Tell Awayli (Oueilli, Oueili) near Larsa, excavated by the French in the 1980s, where eight levels yielded pre-Ubaid pottery resembling Samarran ware. According to this view, farming peoples spread down into southern Mesopotamia because they had developed a temple-centered social organization for mobilizing labor and technology for water control, enabling them to survive and prosper in a difficult environment.^{[citation needed]}

Others have suggested a continuity of Sumerians, from the indigenous hunter-fisherfolk traditions, associated with the Arabian bifacial assemblages found on the Arabian littoral. The Sumerians themselves claimed kinship with the people of Dilmun, associated with Bahrein in the Persian Gulf. Professor Juris Zarins believes the Sumerians may have been the people living in the Persian Gulf region before it flooded at the end of the last Ice Age.^[29]

Culture

Social and family life

In the early Sumerian period (i.e. Uruk), the primitive pictograms suggest^[30] that

• "Pottery was very plentiful, and the forms of the vases, bowls and dishes were manifold; there were special jars for honey, butter, oil and wine, which was probably made from dates, and one form of vase had a spout protruding from its side. Some of the vases had pointed feet, and stood on stands with crossed legs; others were flat-bottomed, and were set on square or rectangular frames of wood. The oil-jars — and probably others also — were sealed with clay, precisely as in early Egypt. Vases and dishes of stone were made in imitation of those of clay, and baskets were woven of reeds or formed of leather."
• "A feathered head-dress was worn on the head. Beds, stools and chairs were used, with carved legs resembling those of an ox. There were fire-places and fire-altars, and apparently chimneys also."
• "Knives, drills, wedges and an instrument which looks like a saw were all known, while spears, bows, arrows and daggers (but not swords) were employed in war."
• "Tablets were used for writing purposes, and copper, gold and silver were worked by the smith. Daggers with metal blades and wooden handles were worn, and copper was hammered into plates, while necklaces or collars were made of gold."
• "Time was reckoned in lunar months."

There is considerable evidence that the

Inscriptions describing the reforms of king Urukagina of Lagash (c. 2300 BC) say that he abolished the former custom of polyandry in his country, prescribing that a woman who took multiple husbands be stoned with rocks upon which her crime had been written.^[31]

Though women were protected by late Sumerian law and were able to achieve a higher status in Sumer than in other contemporary civilizations, the culture was male-dominated. The Code of Ur-Nammu, the oldest such codification yet discovered, dating to the Ur-III "Sumerian Renaissance", reveals a glimpse at societal structure in late Sumerian law. Beneath the lu-gal ("great man" or king), all members of society belonged to one of two basic strata: The "lu" or free person, and the slave (male, arad; female geme). The son of a lu was called a dumu-nita until he married. A woman (munus) went from being a daughter (dumu-mi), to a wife (dam), then if she outlived her husband, a widow (numasu) and she could then remarry.

Language and writing

The most important archaeological discoveries in Sumer are a large number of

Understanding Sumerian texts today can be problematic even for experts.^[citation needed] Most difficult are the earliest texts, which in many cases do not give the full grammatical structure of the language.

During the 3rd millennium BC a cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread

Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as a spoken language somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC,[32] but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary, and scientific language in Babylonia and Assyria until the 1st century CE.^[33]

Religion

At an early stage following the dawn of recorded history, Nippur in central Mesopotamia replaced Eridu in the south as the primary temple city, whose priests also conferred the status of political hegemony on the other city-states. Nippur retained this status throughout the first Sumerian period, until Sargon of Akkad is said to have transferred it to Babylon.

Deities

Sumerians believed in an anthropomorphic polytheism, or the belief in many gods in human form. There was no common set of gods; each city-state had its own patrons, temples, and priest-kings, however they were not exclusive. The gods of one city were often acknowledged elsewhere. Sumerian speakers were among the earliest people to record their beliefs in writing, and were a major inspiration in later Mesopotamian mythology, religion, and astrology.

The Sumerians worshiped:

• An as the full-time god equivalent to heaven; indeed, the word an in Sumerian means sky and his consort Ki, means earth.
• Enki in the south at the temple in Eridu. Enki was the god of beneficence, ruler of the freshwater depths beneath the earth, a healer and friend to humanity who in Sumerian myth was thought to have given humans the arts and sciences, the industries and manners of civilization; the first law-book was considered his creation,
• Enlil, lord of the ghost-land, in Nippur. He gave mankind the spells and incantations that the spirits of good or evil must obey,
• Inanna, the deification of Venus, the morning (eastern) and evening (western) star, at the temple (shared with An) at Uruk.
• The sun-god
  Utu at Larsa in the south and Sippar
  in the north,
• The moon god Sin at Ur.

These deities formed a core pantheon; there were additionally hundreds of minor ones. Sumerian gods could thus have associations with different cities, and their religious importance often waxed and waned with those cities' political power. The gods were said to have created human beings from clay for the purpose of serving them. The temples organized the mass labour projects needed for irrigation agriculture. Citizens had a labor duty to the temple, though they could avoid it by a payment of silver.

Cosmology

Sumerians believed that the

• • To the north were the hill-dwelling Subartu who were periodically raided for slaves, timber, and raw materials.
  • To the west were the tent-dwelling
    Martu
    , Semitic people living as pastoral nomads tending herds of sheep and goats.
  • To the south was the land of Dilmun, a trading state associated with the land of the dead and the place of creation.
  • To the east were the
    Elamites
    , a rival people with whom the Sumerians were frequently at war.

Their known world extended from The Upper Sea or Mediterranean coastline, to The Lower Sea, the

Ziggurats (Sumerian temples) each had an individual name and consisted of a forecourt, with a central pond for purification.^[35] The temple itself had a central nave with aisles along either side. Flanking the aisles would be rooms for the priests. At one end would stand the podium and a mudbrick table for animal and vegetable sacrifices. Granaries and storehouses were usually located near the temples. After a time the Sumerians began to place the temples on top of multi-layered square constructions built as a series of rising terraces, giving rise to the Ziggurat style.^[36]

Funerary practices

It was believed that when people died, they would be confined to a gloomy world of Ereshkigal, whose realm was guarded by gateways with various monsters designed to prevent people entering or leaving. The dead were buried outside the city walls in graveyards where a small mound covered the corpse, along with offerings to monsters and a small amount of food. Human sacrifice was found in the death pits at the Ur royal cemetery where Queen Puabi was accompanied in death by her servants. It is also said that the Sumerians invented the first oboe-like instrument, and used them at royal funerals.

Agriculture and hunting

The Sumerians adopted an agricultural lifestyle perhaps as early as c. 5000 BC – 4500 BC. The region demonstrated a number of core agricultural techniques, including organized

In the early Sumerian Uruk period, the primitive pictograms suggest that

The Sumerians were one of the first known beer drinking societies. Cereals were plentiful and were the key ingredient in their early brew. They brewed multiple kinds of beer consisting of wheat, barley, and mixed grain beers. Beer brewing was very important to the Sumerians. It was referenced in the Epic of Gilgamesh when Enkidu was introduced to the food and beer of Gilgamesh's people: "Drink the beer, as is the custom of the land... He drank the beer-seven jugs! and became expansive and sang with joy!"^[37]

The Sumerians practiced similar irrigation techniques as those used in Egypt.

as their principal crop.

Sumerians harvested during the

stalks and then use threshing sleds to disengage the grain. They then winnowed

the grain/chaff mixture.

Architecture

Main articles:

Sumerian architecture, Ziggurat, and Mudhif

The Tigris-Euphrates plain lacked minerals and trees. Sumerian structures were made of plano-convex mudbrick, not fixed with mortar or cement. Mud-brick buildings eventually deteriorate, so they were periodically destroyed, leveled, and rebuilt on the same spot. This constant rebuilding gradually raised the level of cities, which thus came to be elevated above the surrounding plain. The resultant hills, known as tells, are found throughout the ancient Near East.

According to Archibald Sayce, the primitive pictograms of the early Sumerian (i.e. Uruk) era suggest that "Stone was scarce, but was already cut into blocks and seals. Brick was the ordinary building material, and with it cities, forts, temples and houses were constructed. The city was provided with towers and stood on an artificial platform; the house also had a tower-like appearance. It was provided with a door which turned on a hinge, and could be opened with a sort of key; the city gate was on a larger scale, and seems to have been double. The foundation stones — or rather bricks — of a house were consecrated by certain objects that were deposited under them."^[30]

The most impressive and famous of Sumerian buildings are the

seals also depict houses built from reeds not unlike those built by the Marsh Arabs of Southern Iraq until as recently as 400 CE. The Sumerians also developed the arch, which enabled them to develop a strong type of dome. They built this by constructing and linking several arches. Sumerian temples and palaces made use of more advanced materials and techniques,^{[citation needed]} such as buttresses, recesses, half columns, and clay nails

.

Mathematics

Main article: Babylonian mathematics

The Sumerians developed a complex system of

Babylonian numerals also date back to this period.^[42] The period c. 2700 – 2300 BC saw the first appearance of the abacus, and a table of successive columns which delimited the successive orders of magnitude of their sexagesimal number system.^[43] The Sumerians were the first to use a place value numeral system. There is also anecdotal evidence the Sumerians may have used a type of slide rule in astronomical calculations. They were the first to find the area of a triangle and the volume of a cube.^[44]

Economy and trade

Discoveries of

Indus Valley script suggest a remarkably wide-ranging network of ancient trade centered around the Persian Gulf

.

The Epic of Gilgamesh refers to trade with far lands for goods such as wood that were scarce in Mesopotamia. In particular, cedar from Lebanon was prized. The finding of resin in the tomb of Queen Puabi at Ur, indicates it was traded from as far away as Mozambique.

The Sumerians used

porters

.

Sumerian

jewelers knew and made use of alabaster (calcite), ivory, iron, gold, silver, carnelian, and lapis lazuli.^[45]

Military

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The almost constant wars among the Sumerian city-states for 2000 years helped to develop the military technology and techniques of Sumer to a high level. The first war recorded in any detail was between Lagash and Umma in c. 2525 BC on a stele called the

phalanx formation, which requires training and discipline; this implies that the Sumerians may have made use of professional

soldiers.

The Sumerian military used carts harnessed to onagers. These early chariots functioned less effectively in combat than did later designs, and some have suggested that these chariots served primarily as transports, though the crew carried battle-axes and lances. The Sumerian chariot comprised a four or two-wheeled device manned by a crew of two and harnessed to four onagers. The cart was composed of a woven basket and the wheels had a solid three-piece design.

Sumerian cities were surrounded by defensive

walls. The Sumerians engaged in siege warfare between their cities, but the mudbrick

walls were able to deter some foes.

Technology

Examples of Sumerian technology include: the

sandals, harpoons and beer

. The Sumerians had three main types of boats:^[citation needed]

• clinker-built sailboats stitched together with hair, featuring bitumen waterproofing
• skin boats constructed from animal skins and reeds
• wooden-oared ships, sometimes pulled upstream by people and animals walking along the nearby banks

Legacy

Evidence of

cuneiform writing system is the oldest (or second oldest after the Egyptian hieroglyphs) which has been deciphered (the status of even older inscriptions such as the Jiahu symbols and Tartaria tablets is controversial). The Sumerians were among the first astronomers, mapping the stars into sets of constellations, many of which survived in the zodiac and were also recognized by the ancient Greeks.^[46] They were also aware of the five planets that are easily visible to the naked eye.^[47]

They invented and developed arithmetic by using several different number systems including a mixed radix system with an alternating base 10 and base 6. This sexagesimal system became the standard number system in Sumer and Babylonia. They may have invented military formations and introduced the basic divisions between infantry, cavalry, and archers. They developed the first known codified legal and administrative systems, complete with courts, jails, and government records. The first true city-states arose in Sumer, roughly contemporaneously with similar entities in what are now Syria and Lebanon. Several centuries after the invention of cuneiform, the use of writing expanded beyond debt/payment certificates and inventory lists to be applied for the first time, about 2600 BC, to messages and mail delivery, history, legend, mathematics, astronomical records, and other pursuits. Conjointly with the spread of writing, the first formal schools were established, usually under the auspices of a city-state's primary temple.

Finally, the Sumerians ushered in

Emmer wheat, barley, sheep (starting as mouflon), and cattle (starting as aurochs

) were foremost among the species cultivated and raised for the first time on a grand scale.

See also

• History of Iraq
• History of writing numbers
• Ancient Mesopotamian units of measurement
• Toynbee's law of challenge and response

Notes

References

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Further reading

Ascalone, Enrico. 2007. Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians (Dictionaries of Civilizations; 1). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-25266-7 (paperback).

Bottéro, Jean, André Finet, Bertrand Lafont, and George Roux. 2001. Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Crawford, Harriet E. W. 2004. Sumer and the Sumerians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Leick, Gwendolyn. 2002. Mesopotamia: Invention of the City. London and New York: Penguin.

Lloyd, Seton. 1978. The Archaeology of Mesopotamia: From the Old Stone Age to the Persian Conquest. London: Thames and Hudson.

Nemet-Nejat, Karen Rhea. 1998. Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. London and Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.

ISBN 0-226-45238-7

.

Kramer, Samuel Noah. Sumerian Mythology: A Study of Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium BC.

Roux, Georges. 1992. Ancient Iraq, 560 pages. London: Penguin (earlier printings may have different pagination: 1966, 480 pages, Pelican; 1964, 431 pages, London: Allen and Urwin).

Schomp, Virginia. Ancient Mesopotamia: The Sumerians, Babylonians, And Assyrians.

Sumer: Cities of Eden (Timelife Lost Civilizations). Alexandria, VA:

Time-Life Books

, 1993 (hardcover, ISBN 0-8094-9887-1).

Woolley, C. Leonard. 1929. The Sumerians. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sumer.

• Ancient Sumer History --- The History of the Ancient Near East Electronic Compendium
• Iraq’s Ancient Past —
  Penn Museum
• The Sumerians

Geography

• Map of The Fertile Crescent
• The History Files: Ancient Mesopotamia

Language

• Sumerian Language Page, perhaps the oldest Sumerian website on the web (it dates back to 1996), features compiled lexicon, detailed FAQ, extensive links, and so on.
• ETCSL: The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature has complete translations of more than 400 Sumerian literary texts.
• PSD: The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary, while still in its initial stages, can be searched on-line, from August 2004.
• CDLI: Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative a large corpus of Sumerian texts in transliteration, largely from the Early Dynastic and Ur III periods, accessible with images.

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