The Sumerians: History and Archaeology

By Sarah James and Michael James

In this book you will find the following questions:
- The history of the Sumerians
- Their political and economic organization
- Who were the most important Sumerian kings
- Their most important cities
- The Sumerian religion
- The Sumerian language and writing

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael James
• Release date: Dec 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201188665

Book preview

1 Introduction

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In the second half of the fourth millennium B.C., in what is now southern Iraq, several urban centers, such as Uruk, controlled their closest territory, exploiting the resources of the environment and expanding their influence thousands of kilometers away. This is known as the Uruk period. Thus, they came to establish a colonial system, more or less organized, with the intention of controlling the resources of the periphery. Habuba Kabira is a good example of this. Habuba was a true Uruk center in the north. Currently under the waters of Lake Assad in Syria, Habuba Kabira and the nearby Jebel Aruda, were built according to an urban planning program, with blocks, paved streets, river port, network of pipes, etc. And all this with a design from the Uruk world.

Along with the settlements of the Uruk world, local regional centers such as Tell Brak, Tell Hamoukar, Arslantepe, Hacinebi or Tepe Gawra maintained more or less close contacts with the Uruk merchants.

At the end of the fourth millennium B.C., this system of urban centers typical of the Uruk culture enters a crisis. The colonial system breaks, and it will be necessary to wait a few years, so that in the same zone of the south of Iraq, the Sumerian city-state appeared.

Who were the Sumerians?

There has been much debate about its origin, but the question remains one of the main enigmas of the Sumerians. For a time it was thought that they were a foreign people who settled in the Mesopotamian floodplain at the end of the 4th and beginning of the 3rd millennium B.C., but it is more likely that the Sumerians were the descendants of the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia, the so-called Halaf and Ubaid cultures, and that they had already been present for quite some time when they made their presence known through archaeology and texts.

The Sumerians were not a Semitic or Indo-European people who spoke an ergative and agglutinating language without affiliation to any other and which cannot be classified within any linguistic trunk.

Sumerian city-states are the first known political model and are born as a result of the adaptation of previous models. We call them Sumerian because they speak the Sumerian language, with kinship to the language of Elam, but in reality the Sumerians referred to their land as KI-EN-GI. And we know this because during the Sumerian era the first texts of humanity appeared. The oldest examples of writing were found in Uruk, on level IV of the Eanna, and they are clay tablets of an administrative nature.

The Sumerians and their organizational system are heirs of the Ubaid and Uruk peoples who previously inhabited Mesopotamia. By the way, during the Uruk period the first texts of the humanity appeared. Undoubtedly, writing is one of the main contributions of the Sumerian culture. The oldest inscriptions were found on level IV of the Eanna of the city of Uruk, and they are clay tablets of an administrative nature written in cuneiform. Cuneiform writing that would later be used by the Sumerians and other peoples who inhabited the Near East to express their language.

The Sumerian city states enjoy similar resources and cultural development, without any one of them standing out from the others. Sumerian civilization is essentially urban. They are cities surrounded by secondary settlements, with a hinterland that they exploit thanks to an irrigated agriculture started by means of canals, and that will be the basis of the Sumerian economy. Everything seems to indicate that trade in Sumerian times was flourishing. And gold, silver, copper, stones and wood arrived without difficulty to Sumer from different territories such as Dilmun, Magan or Meluha. An example of this is the Banner of Ur found by Wolley while digging the Royal Cemetery.

In short, the Sumerian civilization would mark the beginning of the Ancient Age in Mesopotamia.

2 History of the sumerians

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The Sumerian period extends through the entire third millennium B.C. of Mesopotamia, a period known to historiography as the Archean Dynasty. There is a consensus in dividing the period into three stages, each with its corresponding subdivisions according to archaeological data:

Archaic Dynastic I: (2900 - 2775 B.C.)

Archaic Dynastic II: (2775 - 2600 B.C.)

Archaic Dynastic IIIa: (2600 - 2500 B.C.)

Archaic Dynastic IIIb: (2600 - 2334 B.C.)

In the 24th century B.C. the Semites appeared on the political plane and formed their own state, the Akkadian. The Semites were already among the population during the Archaeic Dynasty, but around 2340 B.C. a leader emerged among them, Sargon, who took power after defeating Lugalzagesi and created an Akkadian state.

When the Akkadian empire collapsed, a Sumerian revival took place. This period is known as the Third Dynasty of Ur (2110 - 2004 B.C.), because of the city from which the ruling dynasty came.

The appearance of the Sumerians

Little is known of the early Sumerian times. If we stick to what the texts say, Enmebaragesi king of Kish had been defeated by Gilgamesh the last king of Uruk. This, along with a victory of Enmebaragesi over the Elamites appearing in the Royal List and the names of the kings of Ur, Meskalamdug and Akalamdug this is all we know about the early years.

What is known about the later years is not very encouraging either, just the mention of some kings who proclaimed themselves sovereigns of some territory and built walls and erected temples.

Around 2560 B.C. Mesannepada founded the First Dynasty of Ur, which at that