The Sumerians

Mesopotamia
The Fertile Crescent
The Cradle of Civilization

The Sumerians

5300 – 2350 (1940) BC

Modern day southern Iraq

Architecture begins at the temple of Eridu, Sumeria, in 5,300 BCE (or 4,300 BCE).

The Sumerians develop the first independent city-state of Eridu, 4,300 BCE (or 5,300 BCE). The city states developed into land areas bounded by canals and centered around a temple and governed by a political priest or by a religious king.

Recorded history begins when the Sumerians develop the first phonetic written language, Cuneiform, 3,500 BCE. Developed originally for documenting government transactions, later for literary purposes, to record epic tales. Later, the tale of Gilgamesh (2700 BCE) would be Sumeria’s most famous epic.

The Sumerians begin using copper (2,900 BCE), along with the Egyptians (3,150 BCE) ushering in the Early Bronze Age.

The Sumerians were the first astronomers and created the Zodiac. Some of their constellation still exist in the Zodiac today.

The Sumerians invented and developed arithmetic and even abstract mathematics.

The Sumerians invented the Calendar and timekeeping, with the 60 minute hour.

The Sumerians invented both pottery and the wheel in 5000 BCE, in fact the Sumerians invented the potter’s wheel first and then discovered it’s more advantageous uses, like the mill wheel and later the ox cart and chariot.

Sumerians invented the concept of law, of statehood. and that of a king, a spiritual king, as opposed to a mere ruler.

The Sumerians invented the basic, ancient world military divisions of infantry, archers and calvary.

The ox-drawn plow appeared in Mesopotamia in 3000 BCE; it may have been invented in Egypt first. This one tool allowed for greater and faster expansion of settlements into great city-states. The first plow was wooden and was perfected by the Egyptian bronze plow.

The Sumerians developed agriculture and invented irrigation. They diverted water from the Euphrates river to irrigate most of Sumeria, all the way to the Tigris river. Unfortunately, silt and salinity from irrigation was their eventual decline.

History

Ubaid period: 5300 – 4100 BCE

Uruk period: 4100 – 2900 BCE

Early Dynastic period 2900 - 2334 BCE

Akkadian Empire period 2334 – 2218 BCE

Gutian period 2218 – 2047 BCE

Ur III period 2047 – 1940 BCE (2350 BCE)
(Sumerian Renaissance)


Culture

The Sumerians believed the gods created human beings from clay for the purpose of serving them. If the temples/gods ruled each city, it was for their mutual survival and benefit.
The Sumerian afterlife involved a descent into a gloomy netherworld to spend eternity as a ghost.
Sumerians believed that the universe consisted of a flat disk enclosed by a tin dome.

There were three basic types of priests in Sumerian culture:
an āšipu was an exorcist and physician.
a bārû was a diviner and astrologer.
a qadištu was a priestess and prostitute.





Architecture

The Sumerians believed that the land was owned by the gods. All work on the land was simply borrowed from them. Their entire life and culture was dieticentric. The main focus of every city state was the temple or Ziggurat. The Ziggurat is in the shape of a stepped pyramid made of only mud bricks. It was believed that the gods lived in the sky and the temple was a direct vehicle to the gods. From the Ziggurat, the priests would control irrigation, farming, and the distribution of food, thus providing food for the people. The grain was stored here and the king resided here as well.

Ziggurats consisted of a forecourt, with a central pond for purification. 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 mud brick 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 later Ziggurat style found at Ur.




Great Ziggurat of Ur
near modern day Nasiriyah, Iraq
2047 – 1940 BCE



Sumerian Renaissance

In the 3rd and final dynasty of the city-state of Ur under the kings Ur-Nammu and Shulgi, whose power extended as far as northern Mesopotamia, was the last 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 found the Babylonian Empire. The Sumerian language, however, remained a sacerdotal language taught in schools, in the same way that Latin was used in the Medieval period, for as long as cuneiform was utilized.



Decline

Irrigation was an ingenious way to farm in the arid conditions of Mesopotamia. The main problem is that the landscape was not suited for such irrigation over the long term. The local soil was clay-based and did not allow for natural drainage. There was little to no regional drainage. When flooding would occur, the excess water would sit on the soil. These two main points are important as the water from the Euphrates, or any river, has a large amount of silt in it. On the shot term, this clogged canals and periodic dredging was required. On the long term, salt, within the silt, when left to sit on farming land, over long periods will poison the soil. This is exactly what happened in Sumeria. There was no field drainage, no constant re-fertilization of the soil, and the soil itself drained very little due to the clay content. The salinity from the silt built up and eventually, the fields were unable to yield the same amount of crops that they used to and some were completely unable to support any crops.
The Mesopotamian plane is relatively flat, but the Euphrates river, in the south, is higher than the Tigris...


This period is generally taken to coincide with a major shift in population from southern Iraq toward the north. Ecologically, the agricultural productivity of the Sumerian lands was being compromised as a result of rising salinity. Soil salinity in this region had been long recognized as a major problem. Poorly drained irrigated soils, in an arid climate with high levels of evaporation, led to the buildup of dissolved salts in the soil, eventually reducing agricultural yields severely. During the Akkadian and Ur III phases, there was a shift from the cultivation of wheat to the more salt-tolerant barley, but this was insufficient, and during the period from 2100 BCE to 1700 BCE, it is estimated that the population in this area declined by nearly three fifths. This greatly weakened the balance 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 only a literary and liturgical language, similar to the position occupied by Latin in medieval Europe.
Following an Elamite invasion and the fall of Ur during the rule of Ibbi-Sin (1940 BCE), Sumer came under Amorite rule (taken to introduce the Middle Bronze Age). The independent Amorite states of the 20th to 18th centuries are summarized as the "Dynasty of Isin" in the Sumerian king list, ending with the rise of Babylonia under Hammurabi ca. 1700 BCE.


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