How Did Religion Government and Family Life Influence the Civilization of the Sumer

Ancient Mesopotamia
Euphrates – Tigris
Assyriology
Cities / Empires
Sumer: Uruk – Ur – Eridu
Kish – Lagash – Nippur
Akkadian Empire: Akkad
Babylon – Isin – Susa
Assyria: Assur – Nineveh
Dur-Sharrukin – Nimrud
Babylonia – Chaldea
Elam – Amorites
Hurrians – Mitanni
Kassites – Urartu
Chronology
Kings of Sumer
Kings of Assyria
Kings of Babylon
Language
Cuneiform script
Sumerian – Akkadian
Elamite – Hurrian
Mythology
Enûma Elish
Gilgamesh – Marduk
Mesopotamian mythology

Sumer (or Šumer) was one of the early on civilizations of the Ancient Nigh East, located in the southern part of Mesopotamia (southeastern Iraq) from the time of the earliest records in the mid-quaternary millennium B.C.E. until the rising of Babylonia in the tardily tertiary millennium B.C.Due east. The term "Sumerian" applies to all speakers of the Sumerian language. Sumer together with Ancient Egypt and the Indus Valley Civilisation is considered the showtime settled club in the world to have manifested all the features needed to qualify fully equally a "civilization." The evolution of the Metropolis-state every bit an organized social and political settlement enabled art, commerce, writing, and architecture, including the building of Temples (ziggurats) to flourish.

Contents

• one Ethnonym
• 2 Background
• 3 City states
• iv History
  • iv.1 Ubaid period
  • 4.2 Uruk menstruum
  • iv.3 Early Dynastic
  • 4.four Lagash dynasty
  • iv.5 Akkadian dynasty
  • 4.6 Gutian period
  • iv.vii Sumerian renaissance
  • four.8 Downfall
• v Agriculture and hunting
• 6 Architecture
• 7 Culture
• 8 Economic system and merchandise
• ix Military machine
• 10 Faith
• xi Applied science
• 12 Language and writing
• thirteen Legacy
• fourteen Notes
• 15 References
• sixteen External links
• 17 Credits

The history of Sumeria dates back to the commencement of writing and besides of law, which the Sumerians are credited with inventing.^[i] and was essential for maintaining order inside the City-states. City-states for centuries used variations of Sumerian Police force, which established set penalties for detail offenses. This represents recognition that societies can non function without respect for life and property and shared values. More than and more people became aware of belonging to the aforementioned world equally a consequence of Sumeria's contribution to the homo story. Treaties from Sumeria point a preference for trade and commerce.

Ethnonym

The term "Sumerian" is an exonym first practical by the Akkadians. The Sumerians called themselves "the black-headed people" (sag-gi-ga) and their land "state of the civilized lords" (ki-en-gir). The Akkadian word Shumer may represent this name in dialect, only nosotros really exercise not know why the Akkadians chosen the southern land Shumeru. Biblical Shinar, Egyptian Sngr and Hittite Šanhar(a) could be western variants of Šumer. ^[2]

Background

The Sumerians were a non-Semitic people and were at once believed to take been invaders, as a number of linguists believed they could detect a substrate language beneath Sumerian. Withal, the archaeological tape shows clear uninterrupted cultural continuity from the fourth dimension of the Early Ubaid period (5200-4500 B.C.E. C-14, 6090-5429 B.C.Eastward. calBC) settlements in southern Mesopotamia. The Sumerian people who settled here farmed the lands in this region that were made fertile by silt deposited by the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers.

The challenge for any population attempting to dwell in Iraq'south barren southern floodplain, where rainfall is currently less than 5 inches a year, was to manage the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to supply year-round water for farming and drinking. The Sumerian linguistic communication has many terms for canals, dikes, and reservoirs. Sumerian speakers were farmers who moved downwardly from the due north afterward perfecting irrigation agriculture there. 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 B.C.Eastward. C-14, 6640-5816 B.C.E. in the north, who were the first to practice a archaic grade of irrigation agriculture forth the middle Tigris River and its tributaries. The connection is nearly clearly seen at Tell Awayli (Oueilli, Oueili) near Larsa, excavated by the French in the 1980s, where 8 levels yielded pre-Ubaid pottery resembling Samarran ware. Farming peoples spread downwards into southern Mesopotamia because they had developed a temple-centered social system for mobilizing labor and technology for water control, enabling them to survive and prosper in a hard environment.

City states

By the late 4th millennium B.C.E., Sumer was divided into about a dozen independent metropolis-states, whose limits were divers by canals and boundary stones. Each was centered on a temple dedicated to the detail patron god or goddess of the city and ruled over by a priest (ensi) or rex (lugal), who was intimately tied to the city's religious rites.

The principal Sumerian sites (from N to South) were the cities of:

• Mari—34°27′Northward 40°55′E
• Agade—33°06′N 44°06′Eastward
• Kish (Tell Uheimir & Ingharra)—32°33′N 44°39′East
• Borsippa (Birs Nimrud)—32°23′30 N°44′xx
• Nippur (Nuffar)—32°10′N 45°xi′Eastward
• Isin (Ishan al-Bahriyat)—31°56′Northward 45°17′East
• Adab (Tell Bismaya)—31°57′N 45°58′E
• Shuruppak (Fara)—31°46′N 45°30′Eastward
• Girsu (Tello)—31°37′N 46°09′Due east
• Lagash (Al-Hiba)—31°26′N 46°32′E
• Bad-Tibira (Al Medina)—31°46′N 46°00′E
• Uruk (Warka)—31°eighteen′Northward 45°xl′E
• Larsa (Tell as-Senkereh)—31°14′N 45°51′E
• Ur (al Muqayyar)—30°57′45 N°46′06
• Eridu (Abu Shahrain)—30°48′57.02 North°45′59

minor cities:

• Sippar (Abu Habba)—33°03′N 44°xviii′Eastward
• Kutha (Tell Ibrahim)—32°44′N 44°40′E
• Dilbat (Tell ed-Duleim)—32°09′Due north 44°30′E
• Marad ((Wanna es-) Sadun)—32°04′North 44°47′E
• Kisurra (Abu Hatab)—31°l′N 45°26′E
• Zabala (Tell Ibzeikh)—31°44′North 45°52′Eastward
• Umma (Tell Jokha)—31°38′N 45°52′E
• Kisiga (Tell el-Lahm)—30°50′N 46°xx′E
• Awan
• Hamazi
• Eshnunna
• Akshak
• Zimbir

Apart from Mari, which lies full 330 km northwest of Agade, but which is credited in the rex list to have "exercised kingship" in the Early Dynastic Ii menstruum, these cities are all in the Euphrates-Tigris alluvial plain, south of Baghdad in what are now the Bābil, Wāsit, Dhi Qar, Al-Muthannā and Al-Qādisiyyah governorates of Iraq.

History

The Sumerian urban center states rise to power during the prehistorical Ubaid and Uruk periods. The historical record gradually opens with the Early Dynastic period from ca. the 29th century B.C.E., but remains scarce until the Lagash menstruum begins in the 26th century. Classical Sumer ends with the Akkadian Empire in the 24th century. Following the Gutian period, there is a brief "Sumerian renaissance" in the 22nd century, cut short in ca. 2000 B.C.East. by Amorite invasions. The Amorite "dynasty of Isin" persists until ca. 1730 B.C.Eastward. when Mesopotamia is united nether Babylonian dominion.

• Ubaid period 5300-3900 B.C.Eastward.
• Uruk IV menstruation 3900-3200 B.C.E.
• Uruk III period 3200-2900 B.C.E.
• Early Dynastic I period 2900-2800 B.C.Due east.
• Early Dynastic Two period 2800-2600 B.C.East.
• Early Dynastic IIIa period 2600-2500 B.C.E.
• Early Dynastic IIIb period 2500-2334 B.C.East.
• Lagash dynasty period 2550-2380 B.C.Due east.
• Akkad dynasty period 2450-2250 B.C.East.
• Gutian menstruum 2250-2150 B.C.Due east.
• Ur Iii period 2150-2000 B.C.E.

Ubaid period

A distinctive fashion of fine quality painted pottery spread throughout Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf region in the Ubaid catamenia, when the ancient Sumerian religious center of Eridu was gradually surpassed in size by the nearby city of Uruk. The archaeological transition from the Ubaid flow to the Uruk period is marked by a gradual shift from painted pottery domestically produced on a tedious wheel, to a nifty variety of unpainted pottery mass-produced by specialists on fast wheels. The engagement of this transition, from Ubaid 4 to Early Uruk, is in dispute, merely calibrated radiocarbon dates from Tell Awayli would place information technology as early equally 4500 B.C.E.

Uruk period

Past the time of the Uruk menstruation (4500-3100 B.C.E. calibrated), the volume of trade goods transported forth the canals and rivers of southern Mesopotamia facilitated the rising of many big temple-centered cities where centralized administrations employed specialized workers. It is fairly certain that information technology was during the Uruk period that Sumerian cities began to brand utilise of slave labor (Subartu) captured from the hill land, and there is ample bear witness for captured slaves as workers in the earliest texts. Artifacts, and fifty-fifty colonies of this Uruk civilization have been establish over a wide surface area - from the Taurus Mountains in Turkey, to the Mediterranean Ocean in the due west, and as far due east every bit Central Iran.

The Uruk period civilization, exported by Sumerian traders and colonists (similar that institute at Tell Brak), had an upshot 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.

The end of the Uruk menses coincided with the Priora oscillation, a dry flow from c. 3200-2900 B.C.E. that marked the end of a long wetter, warmer climate period from about ix,000 to 5,000 years ago, called the Holocene climatic optimum. When the historical record opens, the Sumerians announced to be limited to southern Mesopotamia—although very early rulers such every bit Lugal-Anne-Mundu are indeed recorded as expanding to neighboring areas every bit far as the Mediterranean, Taurus and Zagros, and not long after legendary figures like Enmerkar and Gilgamesh, who are associated in mythology with the historical transfer of civilization from Eridu to Uruk, were supposed to have reigned.

Early Dynastic

The aboriginal Sumerian king list recounts the early dynasties. Like many other archaic lists of rulers, it may include legendary names. The first king on the list whose name is known from whatever other source is Etana, 13th male monarch of the commencement Dynasty of Kish. The beginning king authenticated through archaeological evidence is that of Enmebaragesi of Kish, the 22nd and penultimate king of that Dynasty, whose name is likewise mentioned in the Gilgamesh epic, and who may have been king at the time hegemony passed from Kish to Uruk once more. This has led to the proposition that Gilgamesh himself really was a historical king of Uruk.

Lugal-Zage-Si, the priest-rex of Umma, overthrew the primacy of the Lagash dynasty, took Uruk, making it his capital letter, and claimed an empire extending from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. He is the last ethnically Sumerian king before the inflow of the Semitic named king, Sargon of Akkad.^[3]

Lagash dynasty

The dynasty of Lagash is well known through important monuments, and 1 of the first empires in recorded history was that of Eannatum of Lagash, who annexed practically all of Sumer, including Kish, Uruk, Ur, and Larsa, and reduced to tribute the metropolis-state of Umma, arch-rival of Lagash. In improver, his realm extended to parts of Elam and forth the Persian Gulf. He seems to have used terror every bit a matter of policy - his stele of the vultures has been constitute, showing violent treatment of enemies.

Akkadian dynasty

The Semitic Akkadian language is first attested in proper names around 2800 B.C.E. From about 2500 B.C.E. ane finds texts written entirely in Old Akkadian. The Old Akkadian linguistic communication period was at its meridian during the dominion of Sargon the Great (2350 - 2330), but most administrative tablets even during that period are still written in Sumerian, equally that was the linguistic communication used by the scribes. Gelb and Westenholz differentiate betwixt three dialects of Old Akkadian - from the pre-Sargonic menstruation, the period of rule by king Sargon and the city of Agade, and the Ur Iii catamenia. Speakers of Akkadian and Sumerian coexisted for about one g years, from 2800 to 1800, at the terminate of which Sumerian ceased to exist spoken. Thorkild Jacobsen has argued that there is little pause in historical continuity between the pre- and mail service-Sargon periods, and that too much emphasis has been placed on the perception of a "Semitic vs. Sumerian" conflict^[4] However, it is certain that Akkadian was also briefly imposed on neighboring parts of Elam that were conquered past Sargon.

Gutian menstruation

Following the downfall of the Akkadian Empire at the easily of Gutians, another native Sumerian ruler, Gudea of Lagash, rose to local prominence, promoting creative development and standing the practices of the Sargonid kings' claims to divinity.

Sumerian renaissance

Afterwards, the third dynasty of Ur under Ur-Nammu and Shulgi, whose power extended as far equally northern Mesopotamia, was the terminal great "Sumerian renaissance," but already the region was becoming more Semitic than Sumerian, with the influx of waves of Martu (Amorites) who were later to institute the Babylonian Empire. Sumerian, however, remained a sacerdotal language taught in schools, in the same mode that Latin was used in the Medieval period, for as long as cuneiform was utilized.

Ecologically, the agricultural productivity of the Sumerian lands was being compromised as a result of ascent salinity. The evaporation of irrigated waters left dissolved salts in the soil, making it increasingly difficult to sustain agriculture. There was a major depopulation of southern Mesopotamia, affecting many of the smaller sites, from about 2000 B.C.Due east., leading to the collapse of Sumerian civilization.

Downfall

Post-obit an Elamite invasion and sack of Ur during the rule of Ibbi-Sin (ca. 2004 B.C.Due east.), Sumer came under Amorite rule (taken to introduce the Middle Bronze Age). The independent Amorite states of the twentieth to eighteenth centuries are summarized equally the "Dynasty of Isin" in the Sumerian rex listing, ending with the rise of Babylonia nether Hammurabi in ca. 1730 B.C.E..

This menses is mostly taken to coincide with a major shift in population from southern Republic of iraq toward the north, every bit a result of the increment in soil salinity. Soil salinity in this region had been long recognized as a major problem. Poorly drained irrigated soils, in an barren climate with high levels of evaporation, led to the deposit of crystalline salt in the soil, somewhen reducing agronomical yields severely. During the Akkadian and Ur III phases, at that place was a shift from the cultivation of wheat to the more salt-tolerant barley, but this was bereft, and during the period from 2100 B.C.Due east. to 1700 B.C.East., it is estimated that the population in this expanse declined past nearly iii fifths ^[v]. This greatly weakened the residuum of power within the region, weakening the areas where Sumerian was spoken, and comparatively strengthening those where Akkadian was the major language. Henceforth Sumerian would remain merely a literate, sacerdotal or sacred language, similar to the position occupied by Latin in Center Ages Europe.

Agriculture and hunting

The Sumerians adopted the agricultural way of life which had been introduced into Lower Mesopotamia and adept the same irrigation techniques as those used in Egypt.^[6] Adams says that irrigation evolution was associated with urbanization ^[7], and that 89 percentage of the population lived in the cities ^[8]

They grew barley, chickpeas, lentils, wheat, dates, onions, garlic, lettuce, leeks and mustard. They also raised cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs. They used oxen equally their primary beasts of burden and donkeys or equids equally their primary send animate being. Sumerians caught many fish and hunted fowl and gazelle.

Sumerian agronomics depended heavily on irrigation. The irrigation was achieved by the use of shadufs, canals, channels, dikes, weirs, and reservoirs. The frequent violent floods of the Tigris, and less and so, of the Euphrates, meant that canals required frequent repair and continual removal of silt, and survey markers and boundary stones continually replaced. The government required individuals to piece of work on the canals in a corvee, although the rich were able to exempt themselves.

Later on the flood flavor and after the Spring Equinox and the Akitu or New year Festival, using the canals, farmers would flood their fields and and then drain the water. Next they let oxen stomp the basis and kill weeds. They then dragged the fields with pickaxes. After drying, they plowed, harrowed, raked the ground 3 times, and pulverized information technology with a mattock, before planting seed. Unfortunately the high evaporation rate resulted in gradual salinity of the fields. By the Ur 3 menses, farmers had converted from wheat to the more salt-tolerant barley every bit their principle crop.

Sumerians harvested during the dry autumn season in three-person teams consisting of a reaper, a folder, and a sheaf arranger. The farmers would use threshing wagons to separate the cereal heads from the stalks and and then use threshing sleds to undo the grain. They then winnowed the grain/chaff mixture.

Architecture

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, and so they were periodically destroyed, leveled, and rebuilt on the aforementioned spot. This abiding rebuilding gradually raised the level of cities, so that they came to be elevated above the surrounding plain. The resultant hills are known as tells, and are found throughout the ancient Near East.

The most impressive and famous of Sumerian buildings are the ziggurats, large layered platforms which supported temples. Some scholars have theorized that these structures might have been the footing of the Tower of Babel described in the Volume of Genesis. Sumerian cylinder seals also depict houses built from reeds not unlike those congenital past the seminomadic Marsh Arabs (Ma'dan) of Southern Republic of iraq until as recently as C.E. 400. The Sumerians also developed the arch. With this construction, they were able to develop a potent blazon of roof called a dome. They congenital this past constructing several arches.

Sumerian temples and palaces made use of more advanced materials and techniques, such every bit buttresses, recesses, half columns, and clay nails.

Culture

Sumerian civilisation may be traced to two main centers, Eridu in the south and Nippur in the northward. Eridu and Nippur may be regarded every bit contrasting poles of Sumerian faith.

The deity Enlil, around whose sanctuary Nippur had grown upward, was considered lord of the ghost-land, and his gifts to flesh were said to exist the spells and incantations that the spirits of skillful or evil were compelled to obey. The earth he governed was a mountain (E-kur from Due east= house and Kur= Mountain); the creatures that he had made lived underground.

Eridu, on the other mitt, was the habitation of the culture god Enki (absorbed into Babylonian mythology every bit the god Ea), the god of beneficence, ruler of the freshwater depths beneath the earth (the Abzu from Ab= water and Zu= far), a healer and friend to humanity who was thought to have given u.s.a. the arts and sciences, the industries and manners of civilization; the first law-book was considered his creation. Eridu had once been a seaport, and it was doubtless its foreign trade and intercourse with other lands that influenced the development of its culture. Its cosmology was the outcome of its geographical position: the world, information technology was believed, had grown out of the waters of the deep, like the always widening coast at the mouth of the Euphrates. Long before history is recorded, yet, the cultures of Eridu and Nippur had coalesced. While Babylon seems to accept been a colony of Eridu, Eridu's immediate neighbor, Ur, may have been a colony of Nippur, since its moon god was said to be the son of Enlil of Nippur. Withal, in the admixture of the 2 cultures, the influence of Eridu was predominant. The Code of Hammurabi was based on Sumerian Law. The aboriginal Sumerian flood myth, similar to the Epic of Gilgamesh suggests that the development of City-States was thought to exist a fashion to ensure that peace would prevail.^[nine] Treaties from aboriginal Sumeria indicate a preference for solving disputes through negotiation. For the Sumerians, commerce and trade was improve than conflict.

Though women were protected by late Sumerian law and were able to reach a higher condition in Sumer than in other contemporary civilizations, the culture was male-dominated.

There is much evidence that the Sumerians loved music. It seemed to exist an important part of religious and civic life in Sumer. Lyres were pop in Sumer.

Economy and merchandise

Discoveries of obsidian from far-away locations in Anatolia and lapis lazuli from northeastern Afghanistan, beads from Dilmun (modern Bahrain), and several seals inscribed with the Indus Valley script suggest a remarkably wide-ranging network of ancient trade centered around the Farsi Gulf.

The Ballsy 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 Sumerians used slaves, although they were not a major role of the economy. Slave women worked every bit weavers, pressers, millers, and porters.

Sumerian potters busy pots with cedar oil paints. The potters used a bow drill to produce the burn down needed for baking the pottery. Sumerian masons and jewelers knew and made use of alabaster (calcite), ivory, gold, silvery, carnelian and lapis lazuli.

War machine

Early chariots on the Standard of Ur, ca. 2600 B.C.E.

The almost constant wars amongst the Sumerian urban center-states for 2000 years helped to develop the military technology and techniques of Sumer to a high level. The first war recorded was between Lagash and Umma in 2525 B.C.E. on a stele chosen the Stele of Vultures. It shows the male monarch of Lagash leading a Sumerian army consisting more often than not of infantry. The infantrymen carried spears, equipped with copper helmets and leather shields. The spearmen are shown arranged in a phalanx formation, which required preparation and bailiwick, and and then implies they were professional soldiers.

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

Sumerian cities were surrounded by defensive walls. The Sumerians engaged in siege warfare betwixt their cities, just the mudbrick walls failed to deter some foes.

Faith

Like other cities of Asia Pocket-size and the Mediterranean, Sumer was a polytheistic, or henotheistic, order. There was no organized set up of gods, with each city-country having its ain patrons, temples, and priest-kings; just the Sumerians were probably the kickoff to write down their behavior. Sumerian beliefs were also the inspiration for much of later Mesopotamian mythology, organized religion, and astrology.

The Sumerians worshipped Anu as the primary god, equivalent to "heaven"—indeed, the word "an" in Sumerian means "sky," and his espoused Ki, meaning "globe." Collectively the Gods were known as Anunnaki ((d)a-nun-na-ke4-ne = "offspring of the lord"). An's closest cohorts were Enki in the due south at the Abzu temple in Eridu, Enlil in the north at the Ekur temple of Nippur and Inana, the deification of Venus, the morning (eastern) and evening (western) star, at the Eanna temple (shared with An) at Uruk. The lord's day was Utu, was worshipped at Sippar, the moon was Nanna, worshipped at Ur and Nammu or Namma was one of the names of the Mother Goddess, probably considered to be the original matrix; there were hundreds of minor deities. The Sumerian gods (Sumerian dingir, plural dingir-dingir or dingir-a-ne-ne) thus had associations with different cities, and their religious importance often waxed and waned with the political power of the associated cities. The gods were said to have created human beings from clay for the purpose of serving them. The gods often expressed their anger and frustration through earthquakes and storms: the gist of Sumerian religion was that humanity was at the mercy of the gods.

Sumerians believed that the universe consisted of a flat disk enclosed by a tin dome. The Sumerian afterlife involved a descent into a gloomy netherworld to spend eternity in a wretched existence equally a Gidim (ghost).

Sumerian temples consisted of a forecourt, with a central pond for purification (the Abzu). The temple itself had a cardinal nave with aisles forth either side. Flanking the aisles would be rooms for the priests. At 1 terminate would stand up the podium and a mudbrick table for animal and vegetable sacrifices. Granaries and storehouses were usually located nigh the temples. After a time the Sumerians began to place the temples on height of multi-layered square constructions built every bit a series of rising terraces: the ziggurats.

Applied science

Examples of Sumerian engineering include: the cycle, cuneiform, arithmetic and geometry, irrigation systems, sumerian boats, lunisolar calendar, bronze, leather, saws, chisels, hammers, braces, bits, nails, pins, rings, hoes, axes, knives, lancepoints, arrowheads, swords, glue, daggers, waterskins, numberless, harnesses, armor, quivers, scabbards, boots, sandal (footwear), harpoons, and beer.

The Sumerians had 3 chief types of boats:

• pare boats comprising of animal skins and reeds
• clinker-built sailboats stitched together with pilus, featuring bitumen waterproofing
• wooden-oared ships, sometimes pulled upstream past people and animals walking along the nearby banks

Language and writing

The most important archaeological discoveries in Sumer are a large number of tablets written in Sumerian. Sumerian pre-cuneiform script has been discovered on tablets dating to around 3500 B.C.E.

The Sumerian language is by and large regarded as a language isolate in linguistics because it belongs to no known linguistic communication family; Akkadian belongs to the Afro-Asiatic languages. In that location have been many failed attempts to connect Sumerian to other language groups. It is an agglutinative linguistic communication; in other words, morphemes ("units of meaning") are added together to create words.

Sumerians invented picture-hieroglyphs that developed into later cuneiform, and their language vies with Ancient Egyptian for credit as the oldest known written man language. An extremely big body of hundreds of thousands of texts in the Sumerian language has survived, the nifty bulk of these on clay tablets. Known Sumerian texts include personal and business letters and transactions, receipts, lexical lists, laws, hymns and prayers, magical incantations, and scientific texts including mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. Monumental inscriptions and texts on dissimilar objects similar statues or bricks are likewise very mutual. Many texts survive in multiple copies because they were repeatedly transcribed by scribes-in-preparation. Sumerian continued to be the language of organized religion and law in Mesopotamia long after Semitic speakers had become the ruling race.

Agreement Sumerian texts today can be problematic even for experts. Near difficult are the earliest texts, which in many cases don't requite the full grammatical construction of the language.

Legacy

Most regime credit the Sumerians with the invention of the bike, initially in the form of the potter's wheel. The new concept quickly led to wheeled vehicles and mill wheels. The Sumerians' cuneiform writing system is the oldest there is bear witness of (with the possible exception of the highly controversial Old European Script), pre-dating Egyptian hieroglyphics by at least 75 years. The Sumerians were among the beginning formal astronomers, correctly formulating a heliocentric view of the solar system, to which they assigned five planets (all that can exist seen with the naked eye).

They invented and developed arithmetic using several different number systems including a Mixed radix system with an alternate base x and base six. This sexagesimal arrangement became the standard number arrangement in Sumer and Babylonia. Using this sexagesimal organisation they invented the clock with its threescore seconds, 60 minutes, and 12 hours, and the 12 month calendar which is still in apply. They may have invented military formations and introduced the bones divisions betwixt infantry, cavalry and archers. They developed the first known codified legal and administrative systems, complete with courts, jails, and government records. The starting time true city states arose in Sumer, roughly contemporaneously with similar entities in what is now Syria and State of israel. Several centuries after their invention of cuneiform, the practise of writing expanded beyond debt/payment certificates and inventory lists and was practical for the get-go time about 2600 B.C.E. to written letters and post delivery, history, legend, mathematics, astronomical records and other pursuits generally respective to the fields occupying teachers and students ever since. Accordingly, the offset formal schools were established, unremarkably under the auspices of a city-state'due south primary temple.

Finally, the Sumerians ushered in the age of intensive agronomics and irrigation. Emmer wheat, barley, sheep (starting as moufflon) and cattle (starting as aurochs) were foremost amidst the species cultivated and raised for the first time on a yard calibration. These inventions and innovations easily identify the Sumerians amongst the nigh creative cultures in human pre-history and history.

However, the Sumerians' misuse of their land ultimately led to their own downfall. The river that they used for irrigation flooded their fields of wheat with water. Over fourth dimension, salination—the build of salt—occurred in their soils, thus decreasing productivity. Less and less wheat could be harvested. The Sumerians tried switching to barley, a more table salt-tolerant crop. This worked for a while, but table salt connected to accumulate, ultimately leading to loss of yields and the starvation of their people.

Notes

1. ↑ Sumerian Legal System Crystalinks. Retrieved Jan 21, 2020.
2. ↑ John Alan Halloran, Meaning of Sumer? Sumerian Questions and Answers. Retrieved Jan 21, 2020.
3. ↑ Sumerian History Crystalinks. Retrieved January 21, 2020.
4. ↑ Thorkild Jacobsen, Toward the Image of Tammuz and Other Essays on Mesopotamian History and Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Academy Press, 1971, ISBN 0674898109).
5. ↑ William R. Thompson, "Complexity, Diminishing Marginal Returns and Series Mesopotamian Fragmentation," Journal of World Systems Research 10 (Fall 2004): 613-652. ISSN 1076-156X
6. ↑ Donald Alexander Mackenzie, (original 1909) Footprints of Early Man (Obscure Press, 2006, ISBN 1846644186).
7. ↑ Robert McCormick Adams, Heartland of Cities: Surveys of Ancient Settlement and State Use on the Central Floodplain of the Euphrates (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981, ISBN 9780226005447).
8. ↑ Azar Gat, "Why City-States Existed?" 125-138, in Mogens H. Hansen, (ed) A Comparative Study of 6 City-States (Copenhagen: The Danish Purple Academy, 2002).
9. ↑ Sumerian Myth Grand Valley State University. Retrieved January 21, 2020.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Adams, Robert McCormick. Heartland of Cities: Surveys of Ancient Settlement and Land Apply on the Central Floodplain of the Euphrates. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981. ISBN 9780226005447
• Ascalone, Enrico. Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians (Dictionaries of Civilizations; 1). Berkeley: Academy of California Press, 2007. ISBN 0520252667.
• Bottéro, Jean. Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Printing, 2001 ISBN 9780801868627
• Crawford, Harriet. Sumer and the Sumerians. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. ISBN 9780521381758
• Gelb, Ignace Jay. One-time Akkadian Writing and Grammar, 2d editon. Materials for the Assyrian Dictionary 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.
• Halloran, John Alan. Sumerian Lexicon. A Dictionary Guide to the Ancient Sumerian Language. Logogram Publishing, Los Angeles 2006. ISBN 0978642902
• Jacobsen, Thorkild. Toward the Image of Tammuz and Other Essays on Mesopotamian History and Civilisation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971. ISBN 0674898109
• Kramer, Samuel Noah. Sumerian Mythology: A Study of Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium B.C.E. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Printing, 1997. ISBN 9780585126975
• Kramer, Samuel Noah. History Begins at Sumer. Garden City, NY: Doubleday / Anchor, 1959.
• Kramer, Samuel Noah. The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Graphic symbol. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963
• Leick, Gwendolyn. Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City. London: Penguin, 2002 ISBN 9780140265743
• Lloyd, Seton. The Archaeology of Mesopotamia: From the Old Stone Age to the Farsi Conquest. London: Thames and Hudson, 1978. ISBN 9780500780077
• Mackenzie, Donald Alexander. (original 1909) Footprints of Early Human being. reprint ed. Obscure Printing, 2006. ISBN 1846644186
• Nemet-Nejat, Karen Rhea. Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Printing, 1998. ISBN 9780313294976
• Postgate, J. Nicholas. Early on Mesopotamia: Lodge and Economy at the Dawn of History. London: Routledge, 1994.
• Roux, Georges. Ancient Iraq, Third ed. reprint Penguin, [1965] 1993. ISBN 014012523X
• Schomp, Virginia. Ancient Mesopotamia: The Sumerians, Babylonians, And Assyrians. NY: Franklin Watts, 2004. ISBN 9780531118184
• Sumer: Cities of Eden (Timelife: Lost Civilizations). Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1993. ISBN 0809498871
• Westenholz, Aage. "Old Sumerian and Old Akkadian Texts in Philadelphia Chiefly from Nippur. Pt. i. Literary and Lexical Texts and the Earliest Administrative Documents from Nippur." Journal of Well-nigh Eastern Studies 36 (4) (Oct., 1977): 299-302
• Woolley, C. Leonard. The Sumerians. NY: Westward. Due west Norton, 1965. ISBN 9780393002928

External links

All links retrieved Jan 5, 2020.

• The History of the Ancient Near Eastward
• Sumerian Language Folio, perhaps the oldest Sumerian website on the spider web (it dates back to 1996), features compiled lexicon, detailed FAQ, extensive links, and and so on.
• ETCSL: The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature has complete translations of more 400 Sumerian literary texts.
• PSD: The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary, while still in its initial stages, can be searched on-line, from August 2004.

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