A picture shows the archaeological site of Uruk Warka. The origins of Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia are still debated today, but archaeological evidence indicates that they established roughly a dozen city-states by the fourth millennium B. These usually consisted of a walled metropolis dominated by a ziggurat—the tiered, pyramid-like temples associated with the Sumerian religion.
Homes were constructed from bundled marsh reeds or mud bricks, and complex irrigation canals were dug to harness the silt-laden waters of the Tigris and Euphrates for farming. Major Sumerian city-states included Eridu, Ur, Nippur, Lagash and Kish, but one of the oldest and most sprawling was Uruk, a thriving trading hub that boasted six miles of defensive walls and a population of between 40, and 80, At its peak around B.
Ruins of the city of Kish, which Kubaba supposedly ruled. Stele of the Vultures, portraying Eannatum sovereign troops in the conquest of Umma.
Even though they shared a common language and cultural traditions, the Sumerian city-states engaged in near-constant wars that resulted in several different dynasties and kingships. The first of these conflicts known to history concerns King Eannatum of Lagash, who defeated the rival city-state of Umma in a border dispute sometime around B. Under Eannatum, Lagash went on to conquer the whole of Sumer, but it was just one of several city-states that held sway over Mesopotamia during its history.
The infighting led to several military advancements—the Sumerians may have invented the phalanx formation and siege warfare—but it also left them vulnerable to invasions by outside forces. During the latter stages of their history, they were attacked or conquered by the Elamites, Akkadians and Gutians. A clay seal depicting beer drinking in a banquet scene dating from B. Credit: E. The Epic of Gilgamesh mentions several leaders, including Gilgamesh himself, who were likely historical kings.
The first dynastic king was Etana, the 13th king of the first dynasty of Kish. War was on the increase, and cities erected walls for self-preservation. Sumerian culture began to spread from southern Mesopotamia into surrounding areas. Sumerian Necklaces and Headgear Sumerian necklaces and headgear discovered in the royal and individual graves, showing the way they may have been worn. Toward the end of the empire, though, Sumerian became increasingly a literary language.
The Gutian period BCE was marked by a period of chaos and decline, as Guti barbarians defeated the Akkadian military but were unable to support the civilizations in place.
However, the region was becoming more Semitic, and the Sumerian language became a religious language. Many Sumerian clay tablets written in cuneiform script have been discovered. They are not the oldest example of writing, but nevertheless represent a great advance in the human ability to write down history and create literature. Initially, pictograms were used, followed by cuneiform, and then ideograms. Letters, receipts, hymns, prayers, and stories have all been found on clay tablets.
Bill of Sale on a Clay Tablet. They also developed a numeral system to represent multiple instances of the same symbol rather than just inscribing them all. The symbols became stylised over time and eventually evolved into a complete writing system. The name 'cuneiform' means 'wedge-shaped' and comes from the Latin cuneus wedge.
It is based on the appearance of the strokes, which were made by pressing a reed stylus into clay. These type of symbol emerged in 3, BC. By about 2, BC some of the Sumerian glyphs were being used to represent sounds using the rebus principle.
For example, the symbol for arrow, pronounced 'ti', was used to represent the word for life til. There were also many glyphs which were pronounced the same but represented different words. Later a system of determinatives, which gave you a hint at the category a word belonged to, and of phonetic components, which indicated how to pronounce a word, developed, and helped disambiguate the meanings of glyphs.
Summary account of silver for the governor written in Sumerian Cuneiform on a clay tablet. From Shuruppak, Iraq, circa BC. British Museum, London. Image by Gavin.
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