The Sumerians - their first civilization arose in general at a breathtaking time: at least 445 thousand years ago. Many scientists have fought and are struggling to solve the mystery of the most ancient people on the planet, but the mysteries still remain.
More than 6 thousand years ago, in the region of Mesopotamia, out of nowhere, a unique civilization of the Sumerians appeared, which had all the signs of a highly developed one. Suffice it to mention that the Sumerians used the ternary counting system and knew the Fibonacci numbers. The Sumerian texts contain information about the origin, development and structure solar system.
In their depiction of the solar system, located in the Middle East section of the State Museum in Berlin, the Sun is at the center of the system, surrounded by all the planets known today. However, there are differences in their depiction of the solar system, the main of which is that the Sumerians place an unknown large planet between Mars and Jupiter - the 12th planet in the Sumerian system! The Sumerians called this mysterious planet Nibiru, which means "crossing planet". The orbit of this planet - a highly elongated ellipse - once every 3600 years crosses the solar system.
The next passage of the Niber through the solar system is expected between 2100 and 2158. According to the Sumerians, the planet Niberu was inhabited by conscious beings - the Anunaki. Their life span was 360,000 Earth years. They were real giants: women from 3 to 3.7 meters tall, and men from 4 to 5 meters.
It is worth noting here that, for example, the ancient ruler of Egypt, Akhenaten, was 4.5 meters tall, and the legendary beauty Nefertiti was about 3.5 meters tall. Already in our time, two unusual coffins were discovered in Akhenaten's city of Tel el-Amarna. In one of them, an image of the Flower of Life was engraved right above the head of the mummy. And in the second coffin were found the bones of a seven-year-old boy, whose height was about 2.5 meters. Now this coffin with the remains is exhibited in the Cairo Museum.
In Sumerian cosmogony, the main event is called the “celestial battle”, a catastrophe that occurred 4 billion years ago and changed the appearance of the solar system. Modern astronomy confirms the data on this catastrophe!
A sensational discovery by astronomers in recent years has been the discovery of a set of fragments of some celestial body with a common orbit corresponding to the orbit of the unknown planet Nibiru.
Sumerian manuscripts contain information that can be interpreted as information about the origin of intelligent life on Earth. According to these data, the genus Homo sapiens was created artificially as a result of the use of genetic engineering about 300 thousand years ago. Thus, perhaps humanity is a civilization of biorobots. I’ll make a reservation right away that there are some temporary inconsistencies in the article. This is due to the fact that many dates are set only with a certain degree of accuracy.
Six millennia ago... Civilizations ahead of their time, or the mystery of the climatic optimum.
The deciphering of Sumerian manuscripts shocked the researchers. Here is a brief and incomplete list of the achievements of this unique civilization that existed at the dawn of the development of Egyptian civilization, long before the Roman Empire, and even more so Ancient Greece. We are talking about the time about 6 thousand years ago.
After deciphering the Sumerian tables, it became clear that the Sumerian civilization had a number of modern knowledge in the field of chemistry, herbal medicine, cosmogony, astronomy, modern mathematics (for example, it used the golden ratio, the ternary calculus system, used after the Sumerians only when creating modern computers, used Fibonacci numbers! ), possessed knowledge in genetic engineering (this interpretation of the texts was given by a number of scientists in the order of the version of the decoding of manuscripts), had a modern state structure - a jury trial and elected bodies of people's (in modern terminology) deputies, and so on ...
Where could such knowledge come from at that time? Let's try to figure it out, but let's draw some facts about that era - 6 thousand years ago. This time is significant in that the average temperature on the planet then was several degrees higher than at present. The effect is called the temperature optimum.
The approach of the binary system of Sirius (Sirius-A and Sirius-B) to the solar system belongs to the same period. At the same time, for several centuries of the 4th millennium BC, two moons were visible in the sky instead of one moon - the second celestial body, then comparable in size to the moon, was the approaching Sirius, an explosion in the system of which occurred again in the same period - 6 thousand years ago!
At the same time, absolutely regardless of the development of the Sumerian civilization in Central Africa, there was a Dogon tribe leading a rather isolated lifestyle from other tribes and nationalities, however, as it became known in our time, the Dogon knew the details of not only the structure of the Sirius star system, but also owned other information from the field of cosmogony.
Those are the parallels. But if the Dogon legends contain people from Sirius, whom this African tribe perceived as gods who descended from heaven and flew to Earth due to a catastrophe on one of the inhabited planets of the Sirius system associated with an explosion on the star Sirius, then, according to the Sumerian According to texts, the Sumerian civilization was associated with immigrants from the dead 12th planet of the solar system, the planet Nibiru.
According to Sumerian cosmogony, the planet Nibiru, not without reason called "crossing", has a very elongated and inclined elliptical orbit and passes between Mars and Jupiter once every 3600 years. For many years, the information of the Sumerians about the dead 12th planet of the solar system was classified as a legend.
However, one of the most amazing discoveries of the last two years has been the discovery of a collection of fragments of a previously unknown celestial body moving along a common orit in a way that only fragments of a once single celestial body can do. The orbit of this collection crosses the solar system once every 3600 years precisely between Mars and Jupiter and exactly corresponds to the data from the Sumerian manuscripts. How could the ancient civilization of the Earth have such information 6 thousand years ago?
The planet Nibiru plays a special role in the formation of the mysterious civilization of the Sumerians. So, the Sumerians claim to have had contact with the inhabitants of the planet Nibiru! It was from this planet that, according to the Sumerian texts, the Anunaki came to Earth, "descending from heaven to Earth."
The Bible also supports this assertion. In the sixth chapter of Genesis there is a mention of them, where they are called niphilim, "descended from heaven." The Anunaki, according to Sumerian and other sources (where they had the name "nifilim"), often mistaken for "gods", "took earthly women as wives."
Here we are dealing with evidence of the possible assimilation of settlers from Nibiru. By the way, if you believe these legends, which are many in different cultures, then humanoids not only belonged to the protein form of life, but were also so compatible with earthlings that they could have common offspring. Biblical sources also testify to such assimilation. We add that in most religions, the gods converged with earthly women. Doesn't the above testify to the reality of paleocontacts, that is, contacts with representatives of other inhabited celestial bodies that occurred from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years ago.
How incredible is the existence of beings close to human nature outside the Earth? Among the supporters of the plurality of intelligent life in the Universe there were many great scientists, among whom it is enough to mention Tsiolkovsky, Vernadsky and Chizhevsky.
However, the Sumerians report much more than the biblical books. According to Sumerian manuscripts, the Anunaki first arrived on Earth about 445 thousand years ago, that is, long before the emergence of the Sumerian civilization.
Let's try to find an answer in the Sumerian manuscripts to the question: why did the inhabitants of the planet Nibiru fly to Earth 445 thousand years ago? It turns out that they were interested in minerals, primarily gold. Why?
If we take as a basis the version of ecological disaster on the 12th planet of the solar system, then we could talk about creating a protective gold-containing screen for the planet. Note that a technology similar to the proposed one is currently used in space projects.
At first, the Anunaki unsuccessfully tried to extract gold from the waters of the Persian Gulf, and then they took up mining in Southeast Africa. Every 3600 years, when the planet Niberu appeared near the earth, gold reserves were sent to it.
According to the chronicles, the Anunaki were engaged in gold mining for a long time: from 100 to 150 thousand years. And then, as expected, a rebellion broke out. The long-lived Anunaki were tired of working in the mines for hundreds of thousands of years. And then the leaders made a unique decision: to create "primitive workers" to work in the mines.
And the whole process of creating a person or the process of mixing divine and earthly components - the process of fertilization in a test tube - is painted with details on clay tablets and depicted on the cylinder seals of the Sumerian chronicles. This information literally shocked modern geneticists.
The ancient Jewish Bible - the Torah, which was born on the ruins of Sumer, attributed the act of creating man to Elohim. The word is given in plural and should be translated as gods. Well, the purpose of the creation of man is defined very precisely: "... and there was no man to cultivate the land." The ruler of Niberu Anu and the chief scientist of the Anunaki Enki decided to create "Adama". This word comes from "Adamah" (earth) and means "Earthly".
Enki decided to use the upright walking anthropomorphic creatures that already lived on earth, and improve them so much that they would understand orders and be able to use tools. They understood that terrestrial hominids had not yet evolved and decided to speed up this process.
Considering the universe as a single living and intelligent being, self-organizing on an infinite number of levels, in connection with which the mind and mind are constant cosmic factors, he believed that life on earth came from the same cosmic seed of life as on his home planet.
In the Torah, Enki is called Nahash, which means "serpent, serpent" or "one who knows secrets, secrets." And the emblem of Enki's cult center was two intertwined snakes. In this symbol, you can see a model of the structure of DNA, which Enki was able to unravel as a result of genetic research.
Enki's plans included using primate DNA and Anunaki DNA to create a new race. As an assistant, Enki attracted a young beautiful girl, whose name was Ninti - "the lady who gives life." Subsequently, this name was replaced by the pseudonym Mami, the prototype of the universal word mom.
The chronicles give the instruction that Enki gave to Ninti. First of all, all procedures must be performed under completely sterile conditions. Sumerian texts repeatedly mention that before working with "clay" Ninti first washed her hands. As is clear from the text, Enki used the egg of an African female monkey that lived north of Zimbabwe.
The instruction reads: “Add clay (egg) to the “essence” from the base of the earth, which is slightly up (to the north) from the Abzu, and fit it into the mold with the “essence”. I represent a good, knowledgeable, young Anunaki who will bring the clay (egg) to the desired state ... you will tell the fate of the newborn ... Ninti will embody the image of the gods in him, and what it will become will be Man.
The divine element, which in the Sumerian chronicles is called "TE-E-MA" and is translated as "essence" or "that which binds memory", and in our understanding it is DNA, was obtained from the blood of a specially selected Anunaki (or Anunaki) and subjected to processing in a cleansing bath. The young man was also taken Shiru - sperm.
The word "clay" comes from "TI-IT", translated as "that which accompanies life." A derivative of this word is "egg". In addition, the texts note that from the blood of the blood of one of the gods was obtained what is called napishtu (parallel to it the biblical term Naphsh, which is usually not accurately translated as "soul").
Sumerian texts say that luck did not immediately accompany scientists, and as a result of experiments, ugly hybrids first appeared. Finally they came to success. The successfully formed egg was then placed into the body of the goddess Ninti had agreed to become. As a result of a long pregnancy and caesarean section, the first man, Adam, was born.
Since many industrial workers were required for the mines, Eve was created to reproduce their own kind by cloning. Unfortunately, this can only be assumed, descriptions of the details of cloning in the Sumerian chronicles have not yet been found. But having given us their image and abilities for intellectual development, the Anunaki did not give us longevity. The Torah says on this occasion: “Elohim uttered the phrase: “Adam became like one of us ... And now, no matter how he stretched out his hand and took the same from the tree of life, and did not taste, and did not begin to live forever.” And Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden!
More recently, as a result of careful DNA research, Wesley Brown made an interesting discovery “about the same mitochondrial Eve for all people on Earth,” who lived in Africa about 250,000 years ago. And it turned out that the first human being came from the very valley where we, according to the Sumerians, mined gold!
Later, when the women of the Earth acquired an attractive appearance, the Anunaki began to take them as wives, which also contributed to the development of the intellect of the next generations of people. The Bible of Moses says the following about this: “Then the sons of God saw the daughters of men, and they began to bear them. These are strong, glorious people from ancient times.”
The New Explanatory Bible says the following about this: “This is one of the most difficult passages in the Bible to interpret; the main difficulty lies in determining who here can be understood as "sons of God." And since the Bible of Moses does not directly say anything about the Anunaki, the interpreters decided to consider the “sons of God” the descendants of Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve, who “were the spokesmen for all that is good, exalted and good” - “Giants of the Spirit”. Well! If you do not know about the content of the Sumerian chronicles, then this is still some kind of explanation.
Questions and answers.
1. Who could mine during the Stone Age?!
Archaeological research confirms that mining operations were carried out in South Africa during the Stone Age (!). Back in 1970, in Swaziland, archaeologists discovered extensive gold mines, up to 20 meters deep. An international group of physicists in 1988 determined the age of the mines - from 80 to 100 thousand years.
2. How do savage tribes know about "artificial people"?
Zulu legends say that flesh-and-blood slaves artificially created by the "first men" worked in these mines.
3. The second discovery of astronomers testifies - the planet Nibiru was!
In addition to the above-mentioned discovery of a group of shards moving along the desired trajectory, corresponding to the ideas of the Sumerians, the recent subsequent discovery of astronomers was no less surprising. Modern astronomical laws confirm that between Mars and Jupiter there must have been planets twice as large as the Earth! This planet or was destroyed as a result major disaster, or not formed at all due to the gravitational influence of Jupiter.
4. The claim of the Sumerians about the "heavenly battle" 4 billion years ago is also confirmed by science with a high degree of probability!
After the discovery of the fact that Uranus, Neptune and Pluto "lie on their side", and their satellites lie in a completely different plane, it became clear that the collisions of celestial bodies changed the face of the solar system. This means that they could not be satellites of these planets before the catastrophe. Where did they come from? Scientists believe that they were formed from the release of matter from the planet Uranus during a collision.
It is clear that an object of some destructive force collided with these planets, so much so that it was able to turn their axes. According to modern scientists, this catastrophe, which the Sumerians dubbed the "heavenly battle", occurred 4 billion years ago. Note that the "heavenly battle" according to the Sumerians does not mean the notorious "star wars". We are talking about a collision of celestial bodies of enormous mass or other similar cataclysm.
Note that the Sumerians quite accurately not only describe the appearance of the solar system before the “celestial battle” (that is, 4 billion years ago), but also indicate the reasons for that dramatic period! True, the matter is small - in deciphering figurative turns and allegories! One thing is clear, the description of the solar system before the catastrophe, when it was still “young,” is information transmitted by someone! By whom?
Thus, the version that the Sumerian texts contain a description of the history of 4 - billion years ago has the right to exist!
The book contains the full content of all the deciphered clay tablets telling about the gods, heroes and kings of the mysterious people of the "black-headed" Sumerians, who laid the foundation for mythology, economics, astronomy, mathematics, medicine and who owns the tragic epic of the first hero of mankind - Gilgamesh; parallels are drawn with the Bible, ancient myths, the history of Assyria and Babylon.
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The following excerpt from the book Sumerians. The first civilization on Earth (Samuel Kramer) provided by our book partner - the company LitRes.
Archeology and deciphering
Sumer, the land that was called Babylonia in the classical era, occupied the southern part of Mesopotamia and roughly coincided geographically with modern Iraq, stretching from Baghdad in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south. The territory of Sumer occupied about 10 thousand square miles, a little more than the state of Massachusetts. The climate here is extremely hot and dry, and the soils are naturally scorched, weathered, and infertile. This is a river plain, and therefore it is devoid of minerals and poor in stone. The swamps were overgrown with powerful reeds, but there was no forest, and, accordingly, there was no wood. This is what this land was like, “from which the Lord denied” (unpleasant to God), hopeless and, it would seem, doomed to poverty and desolation. But the people who inhabited it and known by the 3rd millennium BC. e. how Sumerians, He was endowed with an uncommon creative intellect and an enterprising, determined spirit. Despite the natural disadvantages of the land, they turned Sumer into a real Garden of Eden and created what was probably the first advanced civilization in the history of mankind.
The Sumerians had a special technical inventive talent. Already the earliest settlers came up with the idea of irrigation, which enabled them to collect and channel the silt-rich waters of the Tigris and Euphrates through canals to irrigate and fertilize fields and gardens. Compensating for the lack of minerals and stone, they learned to burn river clay, the supply of which was almost inexhaustible, and turn it into pots, dishes and jugs. Instead of wood, they used chopped and dried gigantic swamp reeds, which grew in abundance here, knitted them into sheaves or wove mats, and also, using clay, built huts and pens for livestock. Later, the Sumerians invented a mold for molding and firing bricks from inexhaustible river clay, and the problem of building material was solved. Here appeared such useful tools, crafts and technical means such as potter's wheel, wheel, plow, sailboat, arch, vault, dome, copper and bronze casting, needle sewing, riveting and soldering, stone sculpture, engraving and inlay. The Sumerians invented a clay writing system that was adopted and used throughout the Middle East for almost two thousand years. Almost all of the information about the early history of Western Asia has been gleaned from thousands of clay documents covered with cuneiform written by the Sumerians, which have been found by archaeologists over the past one hundred and twenty-five years.
Sumer is remarkable not only for its high material culture and technical achievements, but also for its ideas, ideals and values. Vigilant and intelligent, they had a practical outlook on life and within their intellectual development never confuse fact with fiction, desire with embodiment, and mystery with mystification. The Sumerian sages developed a faith and creed that, in a certain sense, left "God to God", and also recognized and accepted the inevitability of the limitations of mortal existence, especially their helplessness in the face of death and God's wrath. With regard to views on material existence, they highly valued wealth and property, a rich harvest, full granaries, barns and stables, successful hunting on land and good fishing in the sea. Spiritually and psychologically, they emphasized ambition and success, superiority and prestige, honor and recognition. The inhabitant of Sumer was deeply aware of his personal rights and opposed any encroachment on them, whether it be the king himself, someone senior in position or equal. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Sumerians were the first to establish law and compose codes to clearly distinguish "black from white" and thus avoid misunderstanding, misinterpretation and ambiguity.
With all the respect of the Sumerians to the individual and its achievements, the strongest spirit of cooperation both between individuals and between communities stimulated a certain dominant factor - the complete dependence of the well-being of Sumer, and simply its existence, on irrigation. Irrigation is a complex process that requires joint efforts and organization. Canals had to be dug and constantly repaired, and water had to be distributed proportionately to all consumers. For this, power was needed that exceeded the desires of an individual landowner and even an entire community. This contributed to the formation of administrative institutions and the development of the Sumerian statehood. Since Sumer, due to the fertility of irrigated soils, produced much more grain, while experiencing an acute shortage in metals, stone and building timber, the state was forced to extract the materials necessary for the economy either by trade or by military means. Therefore, there is every reason to believe that by the 3rd millennium BC. e. Sumerian culture and civilization penetrated, at least to some extent, east to India, west to the Mediterranean, south to Ethiopia, north to the Caspian Sea.
Of course, all this took place five thousand years ago and may seem to have little bearing on the study of modern man and culture. In fact, the land of Sumer witnessed the birth of more than one important feature of modern civilization. Whether it is a philosopher or a teacher, a historian or a poet, a lawyer or a reformer, a statesman or a politician, an architect or a sculptor, each of our contemporaries will most likely find their prototype and colleague in ancient Sumer. Of course, the Sumerian origin of modern realities today can no longer be traced unambiguously or with certainty: the ways of interpenetration of cultures are multifaceted, intricate and complex, and the magic of contact with the past is delicate and volatile. And yet it is evident in the Law of Moses and Solomon's parables, in the tears of Job and the weeping of Jerusalem, in the sad story of the dying man-god, in the cosmogony of Hesiod and Hindu myths, in the fables of Aesop and the theorem of Euclid, in the sign of the zodiac and the heraldic symbol, in the weight of the mine, the degree of the angle, the inscription of the number. It is the history, social structure, religious ideas, teaching practice, literary creativity and value motivation of the civilization of ancient Sumer that the essays on the following pages will be devoted to. But first, a short introduction dedicated to the archaeological reconstruction of the culture of Sumer and the deciphering of its writing and language.
It is remarkable that less than a century ago they did not know anything not only about the Sumerian culture, they did not even suspect the very existence of the Sumerian people and language. Scientists and archaeologists who began excavations in Mesopotamia about a hundred years ago were not looking for the Sumerians at all, but for the Assyrians; there was sufficient, although very inaccurate, information about this people from Greek and Jewish sources. About the Sumerians, their lands, people and language, it was believed, not a word was said in all available biblical, classical and postclassical literature. The very name - Sumer - remained erased in the consciousness and memory of mankind for more than two millennia. The discovery of the Sumerians and their language was completely unforeseen and unexpected, and this seemingly insignificant circumstance led to contradictions that greatly complicated and slowed down the further development of Sumerology.
The decipherment of Sumerian was made possible through the decipherment of Semitic-Akkadian, formerly known as Assyrian or Babylonian, which, like Sumerian, used cuneiform. The key to the Akkadian language was, in turn, found in the Old Persian, an Indo-European language of the Persians and Medes who ruled Iran for much of the 1st millennium BC. e. Some representatives of the ruling Achaemenid dynasty, named after its founder Achaemen, who lived around 700 BC. BC, considered it politically necessary to keep records in three languages: Persian - their native language, Elamite - the agglutinative language of the inhabitants of Western Iran conquered and subjugated by them - and Akkadian - the Semitic language of the Babylonians and Assyrians. This group of trilingual cuneiform documents, similar in content to the inscriptions on the Egyptian Rosetta Stone, was found in Iran, not Iraq, although cuneiform was born there. This brings us directly to the history of research and excavations that have made it possible to decipher the cuneiform and recreate the civilizations of Mesopotamia. We will talk about them briefly (over the past decades, this topic has been discussed many times and in detail) in order to give the reader the opportunity to form a complete picture of this subject, and also to pay tribute to researchers, archaeologists and armchair scientists who have long passed away, each of whom, himself, did not suspecting, in his own way contributed to the publication of a book about the Sumerians.
The re-creation of the culture of the Assyrian, Babylonian and Sumerian peoples buried under abandoned mounds or tells is the highest and most amazing achievement of science and humanism in the 19th century. Of course, in previous centuries there were separate reports of the ruins of ancient Mesopotamia. So, already in the XII century. a rabbi from Tudela (Kingdom of Navarre) named Benjamin, son of Jonah, visited the Jews of Mosul and accurately determined that the ruins near this city were the remains of ancient Nineveh, but his guess became widely known only in the 16th century. Meanwhile, the remains of Babylon were identified only in 1616, when the Italian Pietro della Balle visited the hills near modern Hilla. This keen traveler not only gave an excellent description of the ruins of Babylon, but also brought back to Europe clay bricks covered with inscriptions, which he found near a hill that modern Arabs call Tell Mukayar, “a hill with a pit”, hiding the ruins of ancient Ur. So the first examples of cuneiform came to Europe.
The remainder of the 17th and almost the entire 18th century. numerous travelers with different points of view regarding the location and the ruins visited Mesopotamia, and each tried to fit what they saw into the biblical context. Between 1761 and 1767 The most significant expedition took place when Karsten Niebuhr, a Danish mathematician, not only copied in Persepolis the writings that made it possible to decipher cuneiform writing, but also for the first time gave contemporaries a concrete idea of the ruins of Nineveh in sketches and sketches. A few years later, the French botanist A. Michaud sold to the National Library in Paris a boundary stone found near Ctesiphon south of Baghdad - the first truly valuable original letter that came to Europe. This simple inscription, which actually contained a warning to trespassers, received some ridiculous translations. Here is one of them: "The heavenly army will pour vinegar on us to generously provide a means of healing."
Around the same time, Abbe Beauchamp, Governor-General of Baghdad and Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences, made careful and accurate observations of what he saw around him, especially on the ruins of Babylon. Hiring a few local workers under a master mason, he actually carried out the first archaeological excavations in Mesopotamia for the sculpture now known as the "Lion of Babylon" and still on display there for modern tourists. He was the first to describe the Ishtar Gate, a marvelous fragment of which can be seen today in the Middle East section of the Berlin Museum; he also mentions the discovery of cylinders made of hard materials with inscriptions that, in his opinion, are similar to those from Persepolis. The memoirs of his travels, published in 1790, were almost instantly translated into English and German and became a sensation in the scientific world.
The spark thrown by Abbe Beauchamp had its consequences: the East India Company in London dispatched its agents to Baghdad to carry out archaeological reconnaissance and ascertain prospects. So in 1811, Claudius James Rich, a representative of the East India Company in Baghdad, took up the study and mapping of the ruins in Babylon, and even carried out trial excavations in some places. Nine years later, Rich appeared in Mosul, where he made sketches and conducted research on the huge hills of ancient Nineveh. He collected many tablets, bricks, boundary stones and inscribed cylinders; among them were the famous cylinders of Nebuchadnezzar and Sennacherib, the inscriptions from which were carefully copied by his secretary Karl Bellino and sent to the epigrapher Grotefend for deciphering. The Rich Collection formed the nucleus of the extensive collection of Mesopotamian antiquities in the British Museum.
Rich died at the age of thirty-four, but two books of his memoirs about the ruins of Babylon, with illustrations and inscriptions, remained and, one might say, marked the birth of Assyriology and the study of cuneiform adjoining it. He was followed by Robert Ker Porter, who made accurate artistic reproductions of part of the Mesopotamian ruins, as well as a plan of the inner territory of the ruins of Babylon. In 1828, Robert Minyan made a cursory excavation of the ruins of Babylon, where Rich worked in 1811, he hired 30 people, cleared an area of 12 square feet to a depth of 20 feet, and was the first to find a cylinder covered with carved inscriptions on it. Finally, in the 30s. 19th century two Englishmen, J. Bailey Fraser and William F. Ainsworth, visited a number of cities in southern Mesopotamia, but it never occurred to them that this territory was part of ancient Sumer.
We have come to the extensive and relatively systematic excavations in Iraq, begun in 1842 by Paul Emile Botta, the French consul in Mosul, and continuing, with some interruptions, to this day. At first, they were conducted in northern Mesopotamia, in the territory known as Assyria, and thousands of documents found there were written in Akkadian. However, during the excavation period, this was not yet known; it could only be said that the inscription resembled the writing of the third class of trilingual inscriptions from Iran, mainly from Persepolis and its environs. In Persepolis, the ruins of a magnificent palace still towered, with an abundance of high, well-preserved beautiful columns, as well as various sculptures scattered here and there. The city was surrounded by magnificently decorated tombs located in the rocks. Many monuments of Persepolis were full of inscriptions, by the end of the 18th century. recognized as similar to the inscriptions on bricks from Babylon. Moreover, by the middle of the XIX century. one of the trilingual inscriptions was deciphered and provided a list of proper names that contributed to the decipherment of a third group of scripts, which in turn made it possible to read the Assyrian tablets found in Iraq. However, in order to trace the progress of the decipherment of the Akkadian script, one must first have an idea of the decipherment of the trilingual inscriptions of the first class from Persepolis and the nature of the information obtained from them.
The ruins of Persepolis became known in Europe in the 16th century, when in 1543 the travel notes of the Venetian ambassador to Persia, Josophat Barbarosa, were published in Venice, where he spoke with admiration about what he saw. Inscriptions on monuments were first mentioned in a book published in Lisbon in 1611 by Antonio de Güek, the first ambassador of Spain and Portugal to Persia; he said that the inscriptions did not resemble either Persian, or Arabic, or Armenian, or Hebrew letters. His successor, Don Garcia Silva Figueroa, in a book published in Antwerp in 1620, was the first to identify the remains of Persepolis with the palace of Darius, the Achaemenid ruler, using the description of Diodorus Siculus. He also points out that the writings on the monuments differ from the Chaldean, Hebrew, Arabic and Greek ones, that they resemble an elongated triangle similar to a pyramid in shape, and that all the signs are the same and differ only in position.
In a letter dated October 21, 1621, Pietro della Balle reports that he examined the ruins of Persepolis and even copied (incorrectly, as it turned out) five inscriptions; he also suggested that they should be read from left to right. In 1673, the young French artist André Dollier Desland printed the first accurate engraving of the palace at Persepolis, copying only three inscriptions; he placed them on the engraving in such a way that they seemed to perform an exclusively decorative function - in accordance with the widely accepted in the 18th century. theory. In 1677, the Englishman Sir Thomas Herbert, who had served some 50 years earlier as the British ambassador to Persia, published a rather poor copy of what was supposed to be a three-line passage, which turned out to be a hodgepodge of completely different texts. His characterization of writing, however, is not devoid of historical interest: “The signs of a strange and unusual form are neither letters nor hieroglyphs. We are so far from understanding them that we are not even able to make a clear judgment about whether they are words or signs. Nevertheless, I am inclined to the first option, considering them full-fledged words, or syllables, as in brachiology or shorthand, which we habitually practice.
In 1693, a copy of an inscription from Persepolis, made by Samuel Flower, an agent of the East India Company, was published, which consisted of two lines and twenty characters. It was considered genuine, although in fact it contained twenty-three separate characters from different inscriptions - an error that nevertheless did not confuse or baffle any of those who tried to decipher the inscription. In 1700, the letter finally acquired its name - "cuneiform", since then forever firmly entrenched in it. This was due to Thomas Hyde, who wrote a book on the history of religion in ancient Persia; in this book he reproduced Flower's text and described its characters, calling the nature of the letter "cuneiform". Unfortunately, he did not believe that the signs were intended to convey meaningful speech, but believed that they were only decoration and ornament.
The first complete set of Persepolis inscriptions was published only in 1711 by Jean Chardin, a naturalized Englishman who visited Persepolis three times in his youth. Three years later, Carnel Le Brun published fairly accurate copies of three trilingual inscriptions. However, only Carsten Niebuhr really opened the way to the decipherment of Persian writings. In 1778 he publishes verified, exact copies also of three trilingual inscriptions from Persepolis; he points out that they should be read from left to right, that each of the three inscriptions contains three different types of cuneiform, designated by him as "class I", "class II" and "class III" and, finally, that class I is an alphabetical system, since it contains only forty-two characters, in accordance with its systematization. Unfortunately, he was of the opinion that the three classes of writing were not three languages, but were varieties of one language. In 1798, Friedrich Münther, another Dane, made the crucial observation that Niebuhr's class I was an alphabetic system, while classes II and III were syllabic and ideographic respectively, and that each class represented not only a different form but also a different language.
So, now the basis for deciphering was available: exact copies of a number of inscriptions, each of which was at the same time an independent form and language, besides, the first was correctly identified as alphabetic. But the deciphering itself took a good half a century and could not have taken place at all if not for two scientists who unwittingly made a great contribution to this process by publishing scientific works that had no direct relation to the cuneiform of Persepolis, and thus provided invaluable assistance to the decipherers. One of them, the Frenchman A.G. Anketius-Duperron spent a long time in India, collecting manuscripts of the Avesta, the sacred book of the Zoroastrians, and learning to read and translate its language - ancient Persian. His publications on the subject appeared in 1768 and 1771. and gave the cuneiform transcribers some idea of Old Persian, which proved invaluable for reading class I trilingual inscriptions, since the dominant position of the text gave good reason to believe that it was Old Persian. Another scholar, Sylvester de Sacy, in 1793 published a translation of the Pahlavi texts found in the vicinity of Persepolis, which, although dating several centuries later than the cuneiform texts of Persepolis, fit into a more or less clear scheme, which probably could also lie at the base of earlier monuments. The scheme was: X, great king, king of kings, king…, son of Wu, great king, king of kings…
Let us return to the deciphering of the Persepolis inscriptions. The first serious attempt was made by Olaf Gerhard Tichsen, who, studying the writing of class I, correctly recognized four signs and recognized one of them, the most common, as a word separator, which made it possible to establish the beginning and end of each word; besides these, he made a few more ingenious observations. However, he mistakenly believed that the inscriptions belonged to the Parthian dynasty, that is, five thousand years younger than their real age, so his translations turned out to be pure conjecture and were fundamentally wrong.
Tichsen published his results in 1798. In the same year, Friedrich Münther presented two papers to the Royal Danish Society of Sciences in Copenhagen proving that the documents of Persepolis belonged to the Achaemenid dynasty, a fact of extreme importance for deciphering the letter. However, Munter himself did not succeed in his attempts to read it. This was done by a Greek teacher at the gymnasium in Göttingen, who managed to do what others could not do, and gained fame as a decipherer of Persian cuneiform inscriptions, that is, the first of the three classes of the Niebuhr system. He started with the most frequently repeated signs and assumed that they were vowels. He took a sample of the Pahlavi text from De Sacy's publication and used it to identify places where the names of the king who erected the monument and his father, as well as the words "king" and "son", were most likely to appear. He further manipulated the well-known names of the kings from the Achaemenid dynasty, taking into account first of all their length and placing them in the appropriate places; along the way, he used suitable words from the works of Anquetius-Duperron on the Old Persian language, trying to read other words of the text. In this way he succeeded in correctly recognizing ten signs and three proper names, and came up with a translation which, although with a large number of errors, still correctly conveyed the idea of content.
Extracts from Grotefend's work on decipherment appeared in print in 1802, and three years later it appeared in full. The work was highly appreciated by Tihsen, Munter and especially Rich, who continued to send him copies of cuneiform documents found on the ruins of Babylon and Nineveh. But Grotefend exaggerated his accomplishments, claiming to have recognized many more signs than he actually did, and presenting complete but unreliable transliterations and translations that could only arouse a feeling of bewilderment in some of his colleagues. Nevertheless, he was on the right track, which was directly and indirectly confirmed over the next decades by the efforts of a number of scientists who made their own adjustments to the general work. A.Zh. Saint-Martin, Rasmus Raek, Eugene Burnouf and his closest friend and colleague Christian Lassen - these are just the most significant names. But for a complete understanding of the Old Persian language and the final deciphering of all signs, the Persepolis inscriptions were too short and did not provide a sufficient vocabulary in terms of volume and semantics for verification and control. This brings us to the key figure in the early study of cuneiform, a brilliant, intuitive and insightful Englishman named Henry Creswick Rawlinson, and to the remarkable fact that two men independently deciphered a series of documents using virtually identical criteria.
G.K. Rawlinson, who was in the service of the British Army in Persia, became interested in cuneiform inscriptions scattered throughout Persia. He began to copy some of the trilingual patterns, especially the inscriptions on Mount Alvand near Hamadan and on the Behistun Rock about twenty miles from Kermanshah.
The first was two short notes copied by him in 1835; and knowing nothing of the work of Grotefend, de Sacy, Saint-Martin, Rusk, Burnouf, and Lassen, he was able to read them using the same method as Grotefend and his followers. He, however, understood that in order to recognize all the signs of these inscriptions and read them correctly, more proper names are needed. And he found them on Behistun Rock, in an inscription of many hundreds of trilingual lines carved on a specially prepared surface of the rock with an area of over 1200 square feet, which was also partially filled with low sculptural relief. Unfortunately, this monument was located at an altitude of more than 300 feet above ground level, and there was no way to get there. Therefore, Rawlinson had to build a special ladder, and from time to time, wanting to get as complete a copy as possible, he dangled on ropes against the rock.
In 1835 he began copying Persian columns from trilingual Behistun texts; there were five of them, and they contained 414 lines. The work continued with some interruptions for more than a year, until 1837, when he had already copied about 200 lines, that is, about half, and with the help of classical authors and medieval geographers, he was able to read some of the geographical names from several hundred contained in the inscription. By 1839 he had become acquainted with the writings of his European colleagues and, with the help of the additional information received, successfully translated the first 200 lines of the Old Persian part of the Behistun text. He wanted to copy the entire inscription from the Behistun rock to the smallest detail, but his military duties interrupted these efforts, and he was able to return to his favorite pastime only in 1844. That year he returned to Behistun, completely completed a copy of 414 lines of the ancient Persian inscription and copied everything 263 lines of the second, Elamite, as it is now known, version. In 1848 he sent his manuscript, with copies, transliterations, translations, commentaries and notes, from Baghdad to the Royal Asiatic Society, and thus placed an absolutely reliable foundation for deciphering the ancient Persian texts. This fact was again confirmed when, in the same year, the brilliant Irish linguist Edward Hinks published a work based on his own report two years earlier, in which he anticipated many of Rawlinson's own significant observations. Since then, only minor changes, additions and corrections have been made, among which the contribution of Lassen's student, Julis Oppert, in 1851 should be noted. , but also cleared the way for the decipherment of Akkadian and Sumerian, thus opening the dusty pages of clay "books" buried in the vast lands of the Middle East.
Let us turn again to the great systematic excavations in Mesopotamia that led to the deciphering of the Akkadian and Sumerian languages. In 1842, Paul Emile Botta was appointed to Mosul as the French ambassador. Immediately upon arrival, he began excavations on two hills, Kuyunjik and Nebi Yunus, hiding the remains of Nineveh. This did not work, and he turned his attention to Khorsabad, a little north of the Kuyunjik hill, where, in the language of archaeologists, he attacked a gold mine: the ruins of Khorsabad hid the palace of the mighty Sargon II, who ruled Assyria in the first quarter of the 8th century. BC e. (although, of course, then archaeologists did not yet know about this); the land abounded with Assyrian sculpture, friezes, reliefs, many of which were covered with cuneiform texts. Only three years later, the Englishman Austen Henry Layard first excavated at Nimrud, then at Nineveh, and again at Nimrud. In addition to the royal palace, covered with low reliefs, he found in Nineveh the library of King Ashurbanipal, great-grandson of Sargon II, consisting of thousands of tablets and fragments with lexical, religious and literary works of the ancients. Thus, by the middle of the XIX century. Europe possessed hundreds of cuneiform texts, mostly from Assyria, calling for reading, but also presenting difficulties and obstacles for those times insurmountable. And yet, thanks largely to the genius and insight of Hinks, Rawlinson, and Oppert, it did not take more than a decade or so for the decipherment to become an established fact.
In truth, would-be decoders now had an advantage. Long before the Bott and Layard expeditions began, a limited number of texts of one kind or another arrived in Europe, mainly from the ruins of Babylon, and this letter was classified as class III, in accordance with Niebuhr's classification of Persepolis trilingual monuments. Unfortunately, this Class III, which was justifiably considered a translation of Class I texts, required painstaking work to decipher.
First, the Persepolis inscriptions were too short to allow an understanding of the system of the language. Further, even a superficial analysis of the most extensive Babylonian texts available at that time made it obvious that they consisted of hundreds and hundreds of characters, while class I trilingual inscriptions contained only 42, which made it impossible to trace all the names and words that seemed identical. . Finally, in the Babylonian list itself, identical signs differed greatly in outlines and forms. Therefore, it is not surprising that the first attempts to decipher the Babylonian writings were fruitless.
In 1847, a significant step forward was made, and, quite naturally, by Edward Hinks. Using a copy of a relatively long ancient Persian version of the Behistun list, which contained a substantial number of proper names, he managed to read a number of vowels, syllables and ideograms, as well as the first Babylonian word that was not a proper name, the pronoun a-na-ku - "I", practically identical to Hebrew to its counterpart. However, his main discovery, which turned out to be a turning point in deciphering, did not occur until 1850 and was based to some extent on the observations of Bott, who, in addition to excavations, published in 1848 an extremely detailed study on cuneiform signs. Botta did not try to read a word, although he succeeded in understanding the meaning of several ideograms. His main contribution concerned variants. After careful study and detailed documentation, he showed that there are a considerable number of words that, despite the similar sound and meaning, are written differently. This incidental observation of spelling variations paved the way for Hinks's 1850 work, in which he was able to explain in one fell swoop the incredible fact that the Babylonian list contained hundreds of characters, and justified the existence of such a huge number of variants. The Assyro-Babylonian (or, as it was now called, Akkadian) text, Hinks argued, did not have an alphabetic system, but a syllabic and ideographic one, i.e. signs could be syllables (a consonant plus a vowel, and vice versa, or a consonant plus a vowel plus a consonant ), combined in various ways into words, or one sign could denote the whole word.
This new look at Babylonian writing greatly spurred decipherment. And yet, there were two more important linguistic discoveries ahead, and both of them were the result of the efforts and research of another of our acquaintances, Rawlinson. In 1847, he again traveled from Baghdad to Behistun and, at the risk of life and limb, transferred the Babylonian version to paper, which provided him with 112 lines ready to be deciphered using the Old Persian text already deciphered by that time. Moreover, in the course of his work, he discovered another essential feature of Babylonian writing, "polyphony", when the same sign could mean more than one sound or "one" (dignity). As a result, Rawlinson was now able to correctly read about 150 characters; he knew how to read and what almost 200 words meant in a language that - now it became quite obvious - was Semitic; he could even give him a rough grammar outline.
Rawlinson's ingenious conclusions were published in 1850-1851. In 1853, Hinks, relying on them, successfully completed the list with more than a hundred new meanings of the Babylonian script, and now it became possible to read almost 350 units of the text. But the principle of polyphony, involved in the deciphering, caused doubts, suspicions and protests in scientific circles, attacks on the Hinks-Rawlinson translations as biased and worthless. It was hard to believe that ancient people had a writing system where the same sign could have many meanings, since this, supposedly, could confuse the reader so much that the task seemed impossible. At this tragic moment, Julis Oppert, the last of the triumvirate, came to the rescue. In 1855 he gave a general overview of the state of decipherment to that day, pointed out the correctness of the Hinks-Rawlinson readings, and added a number of new characters with more than one meaning. He was the first to give a thorough analysis of the syllabary prepared by the ancient scribes themselves on the tablets found during the excavations of the library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, and widely used it in translation.
His numerous treatises, redactions of texts and polemics helped to establish a new science, now commonly known as Assyriology(on the basis of the fact that the earliest excavations were carried out in northern Iraq, the land of the Assyrian people), and inspire deep respect for her.
Fateful, full of bright events, 1857 was for Assyriology. It all started with a speech by a non-professional Assyriologist, V.F. Fox Talbot - mathematician and inventor. His research into integrated calculations formed the basis of modern photography; but he was also an amateur orientalist. He studied the publications of Rawlinson and Hinks and even published his own translations of some Assyrian texts. Obtaining somewhere else an unpublished copy of an inscription from the time of the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser I (1116-1076), he completed the translation and on March 17, 1857, sent it in a sealed envelope to the Royal Asiatic Society. At the same time, he suggested that Hinks and Rawlinson be invited to prepare independent translations of the same text and also, in sealed form, submit them to the Society in order to be able to compare three independent translations. The Society did just that, sending an invitation also to Julis Oppert, who was in London at the time. All three accepted the offer, and two months later the seals on the four transfer envelopes were broken by a specially appointed committee of five members of the Royal Asiatic Society. A report was published stating, among other things, that Rawlinson's and Hinks' translations were most similar, that Talbot's translation was vague and inaccurate, and that Oppert's translation was heavily annotated and often very different from that of his English counterparts. On the whole, the verdict was favorable to Assyriology; the similarity of the four translations was evident, and the reliability of the decipherment was confirmed.
Two years later, in 1859, Oppert published one of the most important scientific works, Deciphering the Cuneiform Texts. It was such clear, accessible and authoritative evidence of Assyriology and its achievements that all attacks ceased. Over the following decades, a number of scholars, especially in France, England and Germany, published articles, monographs and books in all areas of the new discipline: language, history, religion, culture, etc. The texts were copied and published by the thousands. Lists of signs, glossaries, dictionaries and grammar reference books were compiled, countless highly specialized articles were written on grammar, syntax and etymology. Thus, the study of the Assyrian language, at first called Babylonian and now gradually renamed Akkadian, a term that owes its origin to the self-name of the Mesopotamians, developed and matured. The result was that now, in 1963, two independent multi-volume dictionaries are in the process of being published: the first, in English, is published by the Institute of Oriental Studies at the University of Chicago, the second, in German, under international patronage. This is the crown of more than a hundred years of scientific accumulation.
Babylonian! Assyrian! Akkadian! And not a word about Sumer and the Sumerians, but the book is dedicated to them. Unfortunately, until the middle of the last century, no one knew about the existence of the Sumerians and the Sumerian language. And we must follow step by step the path that led to the rather surprising and unexpected understanding that a people called the Sumerians once inhabited Mesopotamia. In 1850, Hincks made a report to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in which he expressed some doubts about the general assumption that cuneiform writing was invented by the Assyrian and Babylonian Semites who used this writing. In Semitic languages, consonants are a stable element, while vowels are extremely variable. Therefore, it seems unnatural that the Semites invented a syllabic spelling system, where vowels and consonants are equally stable. An essential feature of the Semitic languages is the difference between soft and hard palatal and dental, but the cuneiform syllabary reflects this feature inadequately. Further, if cuneiform was invented by the Semites, there must be a direct relationship between the meanings of syllabic signs and Semitic words. However, such cases are extremely rare; it was obvious that the vast majority of the syllabic meanings of cuneiform signs went back to words or elements that did not have a Semitic equivalent. And Hincks suspected that the cuneiform writing system had been invented by some non-Semitic people who preceded the Semites of Babylonia.
But enough about Hinks and his suspicions. Two years later, in 1852, from a note published by Hinks, we learn that Raulinson, having studied the syllabaries excavated in Kuyunjik, came to the conclusion that they were bilingual, so that the Semitic Babylonian words in them explained the corresponding words of a completely new, hitherto unknown language. He called this language Akkadian and ranked it "with the Scythian or Turkic". Here, for the first time, we learn about the possibility of the existence of a non-Semitic people and a non-Semitic language in Mesopotamia. In 1853, Rawlinson himself gave a lecture to the Royal Asiatic Society, where he argued for the presence of monolingual cuneiform texts on bricks and tablets in some places in southern Babylonia, written in the "Scythian" language. Two years later, in a lecture to the same Society, he described in some detail the bilingual syllabaries of Kuyundzhik, believing that they “were nothing more, nothing less than comparative alphabets, grammars and dictionaries of the Assyrian and Scythian dialects. The Babylonian Scythians, whose ethnic name is the Akkadians, are probably the inventors of cuneiform writing. It was these Akkadians, Rawlinson continued, “who built the primitive temples and capitals of Babylon, worshiping the same gods and inhabiting the same lands as their Semitic successors; but they seem to have different nomenclature, both mythological and geographical." As for the language of these "Babylonian Scythians," the Kuundjik tablets, said Rawlinson, "provide volumes of comparative examples and literal translations." The result of his studies of this "primitive" language from bilingual texts was the conclusion that "there is hardly any direct continuity between this primitive language and any of the existing dialects. The nominal system is somewhat closer to the Mongolian and Manchu types than to any other branch of the Turkic language family, but their vocabulary is either little similar or not at all. In short, Rawlinson was absolutely accurate in asserting the existence of the Sumerians and their language, although he called them somewhat erroneously at first the Babylonian Scythians, and then the Akkadians, a term applied today to the Semites of this territory.
We owe the correct name to the non-Semitic people who invented cuneiform writing to the genius of Julis Oppert, whose contribution to all aspects of Assyriology, especially to the study of the syllabaries, was outstanding.
On January 17, 1869, Oppert gave a lecture at the Ethnographic and Historical Section of the French Society of Numismatics and Archaeology, in which he announced that this people and their language should be called Sumerians, basing his conclusions on the heading "King of Sumer and Akkad" found in inscriptions from the early rulers; for, he quite rightly argued, the name Akkad was the name of the Semitic people of Assyria and Babylonia, therefore the name Sumer refers to the non-Semitic population. Oppert even went further in his lecture statements: an analysis of the structure of the Sumerian language led him to the conclusion that it was closely related to Turkish, Finnish, and Hungarian, a brilliant insight into the structure of a language that did not exist for the scientific world twenty years ago.
The name "Sumerian" was not immediately accepted by most cuneiform scholars, and the term "Akkadian" was in use for several more decades. In fact, there was one well-known Orientalist, Joseph Halévy, who, contrary to all evidence to the contrary, denied the very existence of the Sumerian people and language. Since the 1870s and for more than three decades he published article after article, insisting that no people other than the Semites had ever mastered Babylon, and that the so-called Sumerian language was but an artificial invention of the Semites themselves, intended for hieratic and esoteric purposes. For a very short period, he was even supported by several venerable Assyriologists. But all this is now nothing more than a historical detail, because soon after Oppert's far-sighted conclusions regarding the non-Semitic origin of the people of Babylon and their language, excavations began at two points in southern Babylonia. These excavations confirmed the Sumerians on the map: statues and steles told about their physical appearance, and countless tablets and inscriptions about their political history, religion, economy and literature.
The first large-scale excavations of the Sumerian settlement were started in 1877 in the Tello area, on the ruins of ancient Lagash, by the French under the leadership of Ernest de Sarzek. Between 1877 and 1900 de Sarzec conducted eleven campaigns and successfully recovered many statues, mostly of Gudea, stelae, of which the Gudea cylinders are the most significant, and thousands of tablets, many of which date back to the Ur-Nanche dynasty. In 1884, the publication of the huge volume of Léon Husey's Discoveries in Chaldea by Ernest de Sarzec, in collaboration with the eminent epigraphers Arthur Amyot and François Toureau-Dangin, began. The French periodically resumed excavations in Lagash: from 1903 to 1909 under the leadership of Gaston Cros; from 1929 to 1931 - under the leadership of Henry de Genouillac and from 1931 to 1933 - André Parrot. In total, the French conducted 20 field campaigns in Lagash. The results are briefly summarized in André Parro's most valuable reference book Tello (1948), which also provides a complete detailed bibliography of all publications related in one way or another to these excavations.
The second major excavation of a Sumerian site was carried out by the University of Pennsylvania. This was the first American expedition of its kind in Mesopotamia. Throughout the 80s. 19th century there were discussions in American university circles about the advisability of an American expedition to Iraq, where the British and French were making such incredible discoveries. It was only in 1887 that John P. Peters, a professor of Hebrew at the University of Pennsylvania, managed to obtain the moral and financial support of university and near-university persons in order to supply and support an archaeological expedition to Iraq. The choice fell on Nippur, one of the largest and most important hills of Iraq, where four long and exhausting campaigns took place between 1889 and 1900 - the first under the leadership of Peters, then J. Haynes (at first the expedition photographer) and finally , under the supervision of the famous Assyriologist H.V. Hilprecht, former epigraphist on the first trip.
Difficulties and setbacks plagued the expedition. One young archaeologist died in the field, and there was not a year when one or another member of the group would not have suffered a serious illness. Nevertheless, despite the obstacles, the excavations continued, and the expedition achieved enormous, in some ways even unique results. The main achievements were concentrated in the field of writing. During the work, the Nippur expedition found about thirty thousand tablets and fragments, most of which were written in the Sumerian language and whose age is estimated at more than two thousand years, from the second half of the 3rd to the last century of the 1st millennium BC. e. The publication of some materials began as early as 1893 in accordance with Hilprecht's long-term and long-term plan, which, in addition to himself, assumed the participation of many scientists. Not all planned volumes saw the light of day; as happens with many grandiose projects, unforeseen circumstances and difficulties arose that prevented its full implementation. But an impressive number of volumes nevertheless appeared, and these publications provided invaluable assistance to cuneiform researchers. This brings us back to the discussion of Sumerology and its development in the period following the discoveries of its three pioneers: Hinks, Rawlinson, and Oppert.
Prior to the excavations at Lagash and Nippur, practically all the source material for the study of the Sumerians and their language consisted of bilingual syllabaries and interlinear books found in the library of Ashurbanipal on the ruins of Nineveh, and then published in various sections of five heavy volumes entitled "Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia" edited by Rawlinson. But this material dates from the 7th century. BC e., more than a millennium after the disappearance of the Sumerian people as a political unity and the Sumerian language as a living language. Of course, there were examples of writing from the excavated Sumerian settlements available in Europe, but these were mainly a series of bricks, tablets and cylinders from the Sumerian and post-Sumerian periods that ended up in the British Museum and were of little substance. Excavations at Lagash and Nippur have provided scholars with thousands of directly Sumerian inscriptions, which could now be attempted to be translated and interpreted with the help of very approximate grammatical rules and lexical data extracted from the material of the Kuunjik bilingual syllabaries and interlinear. The vast majority of inscriptions from Lagash and Nippur were of an administrative, economic and legal nature, with inventories of all kinds and sizes, written commitments (receipts) and prescriptions, deeds of sales, marriage contracts, wills and judgments. And according to these documents, one could get some idea of the social and economic system of the Sumerian society. These documents also contained hundreds of names of people, deities, and places of particular value to the study of Sumerian religion. Even more valuable were the hundreds of texts of oaths on statues, steles, cones and tablets, which were fundamentally important for the study of Sumerian political history. Many lexical and grammatical texts, especially those found at Nippur, precursors of the later bilingual inscriptions from Kuyunjik, have become invaluable material for the study of the Sumerian language. Finally, thousands of tablets and fragments of Sumerian literary texts have been found at Nippur; and although they remained obscure for many decades after their discovery, Hilprecht, having read and registered a large number of them, realized their significance for the history of religion and literature. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the direct result of the excavations at Lagash and Nippur was the possibility of the publication in 1905 of the epoch-making work of François Toureau-Dangin (Written Records of Sumer and Akkad) and Arnaud Pöbel (Fundamentals of Sumerian Grammar) in 1923.
Of course, scientists built both of these works on the efforts and contributions of their predecessors and contemporaries; in science there is no other way for the development of productive scientific activity. We will name only a few of the most prominent personalities. This is the Englishman A.Kh. Says, who published the first monolingual Sumerian document in 1871, namely the Shulgi inscription containing twelve lines, and also pointed out several important features of the Sumerian language in a detailed philological commentary. This is François Lenormand with his monumental "Akkadian Studies (Essays)", begun in 1873. This is Paul Haupt, who copied many Sumerian bilingual and monolingual inscriptions in the British Museum and made a significant contribution to the study of Sumerian grammar and lexicography. Next, P.E. Brunnov: he compiled a list of Sumerian characters and their readings, and on the material of the bilingual tablets available at that time created the most complete dictionary of Sumerian words, which has been of fundamental importance for all lexicographers since its publication in 1905. to the present day, although it is supplemented by a number of glossaries prepared by other scholars to keep pace with the times. This is Zh.D. Prince, who published the first substantial Sumerian lexicon in 1905; and Friedrich Delitzsch, who compiled a Sumerian grammar and a Sumerian glossary based on word roots rather than individual signs and rules for reading them.
But it was Touro-Dangin’s “Written Monuments of Sumer and Akkad” published in 1905 and the translation into German that appeared two years later under the title “Die sumerischen und akkadischen Königsinschriften” (“Inscriptions of the Sumerian and Akkadian kings”) turned out to be a turning point in the development of science about the Sumerians. It is a brilliant compendium of direct translations and laconic notes, a masterful distillation of the accumulated knowledge of Sumerology at that time, completely devoid of Toureau-Dangin's personal, original contribution; and even after five decades of studying cuneiform, this work remains unsurpassed and probably will remain so. Pöbel's Fundamentals of Sumerian Grammar was to Sumerian grammar what Toureau-Dangin was to political history and religion. Based on painstaking, thorough, comprehensive and meticulous study of Sumerian texts, both bilingual and monolingual, from all periods of the "classical" language of the 3rd millennium BC. e. up to the late "literary" Sumerian language of the 1st millennium BC. e. (translations of inscriptions 1 to 35 appendices mainly rely on these studies), Pöbel's Grammar is notable for its firm logic in identifying the fundamental principles and rules of Sumerian grammar, illustrating them essentially and, if possible, as completely as possible. The result of independent research by Pöbel, as well as other scientists, especially Adam Falkenstein and Thorkild Jacobsen, was a number of additions and clarifications, and future research will undoubtedly result in modifications of some provisions of the Grammar in due time. But on the whole, Pöbel's work has stood the test of time and, despite the constant passion for not always justified changes in terminology and nomenclature, will long remain the cornerstone of all constructive efforts in the field of Sumerian grammar.
Pöbel's grammar, however, is written from a logical rather than a pedagogical standpoint, so it cannot be used by beginners who would like to learn Sumerian on their own. A small book quite suitable for this purpose is The Sumerian Reading Book by S.J. Gedda; however, it was first published in 1924 and urgently requires a modern edition. Another pedagogically useful grammar is Anton Daimel's Sumerian Grammar, republished in 1939, although it suffers greatly from an artificial approach to the problems of translating Sumerian texts. In the field of lexicography, the Sumerian Lexicon by the same author, based mainly on a compilation of works by Brunnov and other authors, is indispensable for students, although it should be used very critically and legibly. The most promising fundamental works on lexicography, which are currently in preparation, are the "Materials on the Sumerian lexicon: a dictionary and reference tables" by Benno Landsberger, head of the Assyriologists. Eight volumes, comprising the most up-to-date collections of the latest syllabaries, dictionaries and bilingual lexical reference books, as well as their Sumerian primary sources, have already appeared under the patronage of the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, an institution to which cuneiform scholars are very grateful for patronage of research in the field of Sumerology during the last fifty years. .
Let us leave Sumerian linguistic studies and turn again to archaeology to briefly summarize the results of some of the most important excavations at the Sumerian sites that began so auspiciously at Lagash and Nippur. In 1902–1903 a German expedition led by Robert Koldewey worked in Farah, ancient Shuruppak, the homeland of the hero of the flood legend Ziusudra, and discovered a large number of administrative, economic and lexical texts relating to the 25th century. BC e.; thus they are older than the Ur-Nansh dynasty inscriptions found at Lagash. Economic texts included the sale of houses and lands, indicating the existence of private property in Sumer, a feature of Sumerian life that had long been a subject of contention among the Orientalists. The lexical texts from Farah were also of particular value for the history of civilization, since they indicated the existence of Sumerian schools already in the 25th century. BC e., and possibly earlier. Archaeologists have also found a number of private and public buildings, tombs, a huge number of vases made of stone, metal and terracotta, and many cylinder seals. In 1930, the University of Pennsylvania expedition led by Eric Schmidt returned to Farah, but the new finds were no different from those that appeared 30 years ago. I, then young and inexperienced, was fortunate enough to be an epigraphist on this expedition. The texts of many tablets from Farah were studied and published by Anton Deimelm and the French Sumerologist R. Zhestin.
In 1903, an expedition from the University of Chicago led by E.J. Banksa was excavating at Bismaya, on the site of the capital of Lugallannemundu called Adab. Here, too, a large number of ancient tablets were found, similar to those found in Fara in form and content. Banks also unearthed the remains of several temples and palaces, numerous written vows, and a statue called Lugaldalu dating from around 2400 BC. e. The main publication with the results of this expedition was the volume of the Institute of Oriental Studies, containing texts copied by D.D. Lakenbil, which are of particular value for the history of Sumer in the era of Sargon and the pre-Sargonian period.
From 1912 to 1914, a French expedition led by the eminent cuneiform scientist Henri de Genouillac excavated in Kish, the city that was the first to be granted a kingdom after the flood. First World War put an end to these works, but in 1923 an Anglo-American expedition, led by another well-known cuneiform specialist, Stephen Langdon, returned to Kish and worked there for ten consecutive seasons. Archaeologists have unearthed several monumental buildings, ziggurats, cemeteries and found many tablets. A number of publications were published by the Field Museum on archaeological materials and Oxford University on epigraphic materials. A small contingent of Kish's expedition also carried out quick work at the nearby site of Yemdet-Nasr, on a hill that hid the ruins of a city whose ancient name is still unknown. During these rather insignificant excavations in a small area, archaeologists were lucky to find several hundred tablets and fragments with signs of a semi-pictographic nature. The tablets have been dated to around 2800 BC. e. and thus turned out to be the earliest of the Sumerian writings found by that time, presented in sufficient volume. These tablets, copied and published by Stephen Langdon, marked a turning point in Sumerian epigraphic research.
We came to a place called Varka by the modern Arabs and Uruk by the ancient Sumerians and Akkadians. This is the biblical Erech, and today the most systematic and scientific excavations are being carried out here, which can rightfully be called fundamental for, so to speak, “stratigraphic” studies of the history and culture of Sumer.
Systematic excavations were first started here by a German expedition led by Julius Jordan. After the inevitable interruption caused by the First World War, the expedition returned there in 1928 and continued to work until the Second World War. During this period, the staff of the expedition included many eminent epigraphers, among them Adam Falkenstein, a prolific and prominent scholar in the field of Sumerology over the past thirty years. It was the Jericho expedition that created something like a comparative dating of all Sumerian finds, digging a hole about 20 meters deep in a certain area, descending to virgin soils and carefully studying and sorting the finds of numerous layers and periods, starting with the earliest settlements and ending with the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. e. The oldest Sumerian monumental buildings dated to about 3000 BC were exposed. e. Among the many smaller finds is an almost meter high alabaster vase decorated with cult scenes, very characteristic of early Sumerian rites and ritual; a life-sized marble female head was also found dating back to about 2800 BC. e., is evidence that the early Sumerian sculpture as a whole reached unprecedented creative heights. In one of the early temple buildings, more than a thousand pictographic tablets were found, which made it possible to trace the cuneiform writing system back into the depths of centuries, right down to its earliest stages. Many of these tablets have been published in a sumptuous volume, prepared with great care by Adam Falkenstein after detailed research. In 1954, the German expedition returned to Erech and continued the meticulous and methodical excavations that would undoubtedly make Erech, the city of the great Sumerian heroes, the fame of the cornerstone of Mesopotamian archeology in all its aspects: architecture, art, history, religion, and epigraphy.
From biblical Erech we will move on to biblical Ur, or Urim, as the Sumerians themselves called it, a city excavated from 1922 to 1934 with the skill, accuracy and imagination of Sir Leonard Woolley. Woolley has repeatedly returned to describing his discovery at Ur, both for professionals and amateurs, but we will mention here only his last work of 1954, "Excavations at Ur". Thanks to him, the words "tombs", "ziggurats" and "flood" become almost everyday. Less known, but no less significant, is the scientific contribution of the epigraphers of the expedition, Gadd, Leon Legrain, E. Barrows, who copied, studied and published the main body of written documents found in Ur, documents that shed new light on the history, economy, culture, not only of Ur, but also Sumer as a whole.
Near Ur, just four miles to the north, is a sloping hill known as El Obeid, which, despite its size, played a significant role in Mesopotamian archeology. First studied by H.R. Hall, an employee of the British Museum, in 1919, and later methodically opened by Leonard Woolley, it turned out to be part of a prehistoric hill containing evidence of the presence of the first immigrants in these parts. These people, conventionally called Obeids (from the name of the El Obeid hill), produced and used special monochrome-colored objects and objects made of flint and obsidian, which were later discovered in the deepest layers of several excavations in Mesopotamia. Woolley also discovered here a small temple of the goddess Ninhursag, which, in addition to visualizing what a small provincial temple was like in the middle of the 3rd millennium, proved unconditionally that the so-called First Dynasty of Ur, perceived by most scholars as legendary, really existed; this discovery thus helped to rethink the almost universal skepticism about the all-important King List, which in turn gave a clearer picture of Sumerian political history.
At the extreme northeastern point of Sumer, east of the Tigris and some distance off the beaten path, by Sumerological standards, lie several hills that attracted the attention of Henry Frankfort, one of the world's most famous archaeologists, a thoughtful art historian and philosophically oriented scholar, whose timeless death was an irreparable loss for Orientalism. Between 1930 and 1936 he made careful, methodical excavations of the Asmar, Hafaya and Agrab hills and unearthed temples, palaces and private houses, tablets, cylinder seals and a most impressive series of sculptures, some dating back to 2700 BC. e. - only about a century younger than the famous head from Erech. Among Frankfort's collaborators were Piñas Delugas, an experienced archaeologist and now director of a museum at the Institute of Oriental Studies; Seton Lloyd, who became an advisor to the Iraqi Antiquities Authority and took part in the excavation of the largest number of Sumerian sites of any other living archaeologist; Thorkild Jacobsen, a scholar of rare talent, equally well versed in archeology and epigraphy. The results of these excavations appear periodically in a series of excellent publications by the Institute of Oriental Studies, which are remarkable for their detailed and excellently illustrated materials on architecture, art and writing.
From 1933 to 1956, interrupted only once during the Second World War, the Louvre Expedition led by André Parrot, the archaeologist who, in a certain sense, turned the last page of the book about Lagash, excavated in Mari, a city located on the middle reaches of the Euphrates, to west of what was considered directly Sumerian territory. And the results were incredible and unexpected. There is a city there, from the earliest times to this day, inhabited by Semites, judging by the fact that all the tablets found at Mari are of Akkadian origin; nevertheless, culturally, the city is difficult to distinguish from the Sumerian: the same type of temples, ziggurats, sculptures, inlays, even on the statuette of a singer, the truly Sumerian name Ur-Nansh is scrawled, the very name that the founder of the oldest known Lagash dynasty bore. The leading epigrapher of the Louvre expedition was the Belgian cuneiform scholar Georges Dossen, who, together with Parro, publishes a particularly significant multi-volume on the written monuments of Marie; many French and Belgian scientists also take part in this project. Once again, the French, who account for Lagash and Marie, are gaining the upper hand in archeology and exploration of Mesopotamia.
During the war years, when foreign expeditions were irrelevant and practically impossible, the Iraqi Antiquities Authority, which has grown from a small collection into an excellent representation of archaeologists, epigraphers, registrars and restorers and which maintains the archeology of Mesopotamia at a good scientific level, equipped three independent expeditions, timely and important to study Sumer. In Uker Hill, the remains of a city whose ancient name is still unknown, an expedition led by Fuad Safar unearthed in the period 1940-1941. the first of the famous Sumerian temples with murals, colored frescoes covering the inner surface of the walls and the altar. Several Obeid houses and a number of archaic tablets have also been found. At Tell Harmal, a small hill about six miles east of Baghdad, Taxa Bakir, then director of the Iraqi Museum, excavated from 1945 to 1949 and, to the astonishment of scientists around the world, found more than two thousand tablets, among which were perfectly preserved "textbooks" on vocabulary and mathematics, as well as a temple. And in the southern tip of Sumer, in ancient Eridu, the abode of Enki, the Sumerian god of wisdom, Fuad Safar conducted excavations in 1946–1949, discovering the oldest Obeid ceramics, a cemetery and two palaces from the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. e. The Temple of Enki made it possible to trace the history of the creation of temple buildings from the earliest construction phase, approximately 4000 BC. e. Sadly, not a single tablet was found in Eridu - a strange circumstance for a city where the god of wisdom was the supreme deity.
In the post-war years, only two major foreign expeditions to excavate in Sumer took place. The Germans returned to Erech. The Americans, mainly through the efforts of Thorkild Jacobsen, went to Nippur and cleared the temple of Enlil over the following seasons, unearthing more than a thousand tablets and fragments along the way (about five hundred of them - literary works) and began clearing the temple of the goddess Inanna. But the future of Sumerian archeology in Iraq is now concentrated in the hands of the Iraqis themselves, and there is every reason to believe that Iraqi scientists and archaeologists will not retreat and will not neglect the history of their distant ancestors, who did so much not only for Iraq, but for humanity as a whole.
This concludes our brief overview of the history of deciphering and archeology associated with Sumer and the Sumerians. Before turning to the history of Sumer, the subject of our next chapter, the reader should at least have a general idea of the problem that most concerns archaeologists in the Near East and historians: the problem of chronology. This issue could not be resolved using the carbon dating method; due to purely physical and mechanical factors, the results of this method have often been ambiguous and misleading, not to mention that in the case of Lower Mesopotamia the margin of error is too high to rest on.
In general, the original dates attributed to Sumerian rulers and monuments were overstated. To some extent, this happened due to the understandable tendency of archaeologists to declare the deep antiquity of their finds. But this was mainly due to available sources, especially several dynastic lists compiled by the ancient Sumerians and Babylonians themselves; they were often perceived as a chronological list of dynasties of rulers, which are now known from other sources as contemporaries in whole or in part. Since there is still no consensus on this matter, dates for Sumer are now greatly underestimated compared to earlier historical monographs and popular publications, sometimes by half a thousand years.
The two key dates for Sumerian chronology are the end of the Third Dynasty of Ur, when the Sumerians lost their political dominance in Mesopotamia, and the beginning of the reign of Hammurabi in Babylon, when, despite all efforts, the Sumerians ceased to be a single political, ethnic, and linguistic entity. The last date, as is now commonly believed, is approximately 1750 BC. e. with an error of fifty years. As for the time gap between this date and the end of the Third Dynasty of Ur, there are many written scripts to reasonably claim that it was approximately 195 years. Thus, the end of the reign of the Third Dynasty of Ur can be dated to 1945 BC. e. plus or minus fifty years. Counting from this date into the past and relying on a sufficient amount of historical information, chronological tables and synchronous evidence of various kinds, we come to about 2500 BC. e., a ruler named Mesilim. In addition, the whole chronology is entirely dependent on archaeological, stratigraphic and ethnographic interference and conclusions of various kinds, as well as carbon tests, which, as already mentioned, have not justified themselves as a decisive and final method of assessment, as was supposed.
The Sumerians are an ancient people who once inhabited the territory of the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the south of the modern state of Iraq (Southern Mesopotamia or Southern Mesopotamia). In the south, the boundary of their habitat reached the shores of the Persian Gulf, in the north - to the latitude of modern Baghdad.
For a whole millennium, the Sumerians were the main actors in the ancient Near East. According to the currently accepted relative chronology, their history continued during the Proto-literate period, the Early Dynastic period, the period of the Akkadian dynasty, the era of the Gutians and the era of the kingdom of the III dynasty of Ur. Proto-literate period (XXX-XXVIII centuries) * - the time of the arrival of the Sumerians to the territory of the Southern Mesopotamia, the construction of the first temples and cities and the invention of writing. The Early Dynastic Period (abbreviated RD) is divided into three sub-periods: RD I (c. 2750-c. 2615), when the statehood of the Sumerian cities was just being formed; RD II (c. 2615-c. 2500), when the formation of the main institutions of Sumerian culture (temple and school) begins; RD III (c.2500-c.2315) - the beginning of the internecine wars of the Sumerian rulers for superiority in the region. Then, for more than a century, the reign of kings of Semitic origin, immigrants from the city of Akkad (XXIV-beginning of XXII centuries) lasted. Sensing the weakness of the last Akkadian rulers, the wild tribes of the Gutians attack the Sumerian land, who also rule the country for a century. The last century of Sumerian history is the era of the III dynasty of Ur, the period of centralized government of the country, the dominance of the accounting and bureaucratic system and, paradoxically, the heyday of the school and the verbal and musical arts (XXI-XX centuries). After the fall of Ur under the blows of the Elamites in 1997, the history of the Sumerian civilization ends, although the main institutions of the state and traditions created by the Sumerians over ten centuries of active work continue to be used in Mesopotamia for about two more centuries, until Hamurappi (1792-1750) came to power.
Sumerian astronomy and mathematics were the most accurate in the entire Middle East. We still divide the year into four seasons, twelve months and twelve signs of the zodiac, measure angles, minutes and seconds in sixties - the way the Sumerians first began to do it. We call the constellations by their Sumerian names, translated into Greek or Arabic, and through these languages have come into ours. We also know astrology, which, along with astronomy, first appeared in Sumer and for centuries has not lost its influence on the human mind.
We care about the education and harmonious upbringing of children - and after all, the world's first school, which taught the sciences and arts, arose at the beginning of the 3rd millennium - in the Sumerian city of Ur.
When we go to see a doctor, we all ... receive prescriptions for medicines or advice from a psychotherapist, completely without thinking about the fact that both herbal medicine and psychotherapy first developed and reached a high level precisely among the Sumerians. While receiving a subpoena and counting on the justice of judges, we also do not know anything about the founders of legal proceedings - the Sumerians, whose first legislative acts contributed to the development of legal relations in all parts of the Ancient World. Finally, thinking about the vicissitudes of fate, lamenting the fact that we were cheated at birth, we repeat the same words that the philosophizing Sumerian scribes first brought to clay - but hardly even guesses about it.
But perhaps the most significant contribution of the Sumerians to the history of world culture is the invention of writing. Writing has become a powerful accelerator of progress in all areas of human activity: with its help, property accounting and production control were established, economic planning became possible, a stable education system appeared, the volume of cultural memory increased, resulting in a new type of tradition based on following the canon. written text. Writing and education have changed the attitude of people towards one written tradition and the value system associated with it. The Sumerian type of writing - cuneiform - was used in Babylonia, Assyria, the Hittite kingdom, the Hurrian state of Mitanni, in Urartu, in Ancient Iran, in the Syrian cities of Ebla and Ugarit. In the middle of the 2nd millennium, cuneiform was a letter of diplomats; even the pharaohs of the New Kingdom (Amenhotep III, Akhenaten) used it in their foreign policy correspondence. The compilers of books used the information that came down from cuneiform sources in one form or another. Old Testament and Greek philologists from Alexandria, scribes of Syrian monasteries and Arab-Muslim universities They were known both in Iran and in medieval India. In Europe of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, “Chaldean wisdom” (the ancient Greeks called astrologers and doctors from Mesopotamia Chaldeans) was held in high esteem first by hermetic mystics, and then by Oriental theologians. But over the centuries, errors in the transmission of ancient traditions inexorably accumulated, and the Sumerian language and cuneiform were so thoroughly forgotten that the sources of knowledge of mankind had to be discovered a second time ...
Note: In fairness, it must be said that at the same time as the Sumerians, writing appears among the Elamites and Egyptians. But the influence of Elamite cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs on the development of writing and education in the ancient world cannot be compared with the importance of cuneiform.
the author is carried away in his admiration for Sumerian writing, firstly, omitting the facts of the existence of much earlier writing both in Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, and in Europe. And secondly, if we discard Amenhotep III and Akhenaten (who were “troublemakers” and after whom Egypt returned to the old traditions), then we are talking about only one, rather limited region ...
in general, the author absolutely leaves aside all more or less important discoveries in the field of linguistics already over the last fifty years before the release of his book (at least, the Terterian finds, indicating the existence of writing long before the Sumerians, already about 50 years old) ...
… even the father of Assyriology, Rawlinson, in 1853 [AD], defining the language of the inventors of writing, called it “Scythian or Turkic”… Some time later, Rawlinson was already inclined to compare the Sumerian language with Mongolian, but by the end of his life he became convinced of the Turkic hypothesis… Despite the unconvincing Sumero-Turkic kinship for linguists, this idea is still popular in the Turkic-speaking countries, in the circle of people engaged in the search for noble ancient relatives.
After the Turkic, the Sumerian language was compared with the Finno-Ugric (also agglutinative), Mongolian, Indo-European, Malayo-Polynesian, Caucasian, Sudanese, Sino-Tibetan languages. The latest hypothesis to date was put forward by I.M. Dyakonov in 1997 [AD]. According to the St. Petersburg scientist, the Sumerian language may be related to the languages of the Munda peoples living in the northeast of the Hindustan peninsula and being the oldest pre-Aryan substratum of the Indian population. Dyakonov discovered indicators of pronouns of the 1st and 2nd person singular common to Sumerian and Mund, a common indicator of the genitive case, as well as some similar kinship terms. His assumption can be partly confirmed by reports from Sumerian sources about contacts with the land of Aratta - a similar settlement is mentioned in ancient Indian texts of the Vedic period.
The Sumerians themselves do not say anything about their origin. The oldest cosmogonic fragments begin the history of the universe with separate cities, and this is always the city where the text was created (Lagash), or the sacred cult centers of the Sumerians (Nippur, Eredu). The texts of the beginning of the 2nd millennium name the island of Dilmun (modern Bahrain) as the place of origin of life, but they were compiled just in the era of active trade and political contacts with Dilmun, therefore, they should not be taken as historical evidence. Much more serious is the information contained in the ancient epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Ararty. It speaks of a dispute between two rulers for the settlement of the goddess Inanna in their city. Both rulers equally revere Inanna, but one lives in the south of Mesopotamia, in the Sumerian city of Uruk, and the other in the east, in the country of Aratta, famous for its skilled craftsmen. Moreover, both rulers bear Sumerian names - Enmerkar and Ensukhkeshdanna. Do not these facts speak of the eastern, Iranian-Indian (of course, pre-Aryan) origin of the Sumerians?
Another evidence of the epic: the Nippur god Ninurta, fighting on the Iranian highlands with some monsters seeking to usurp the Sumerian throne, calls them “children of An”, and meanwhile it is well known that An is the most respected and oldest god of the Sumerians and, therefore, Ninurta is related to his opponents. Thus, the epic texts make it possible to determine, if not the area of origin of the Sumerians, then at least the eastern, Iranian-Indian direction of the Sumerians' migration to the Southern Mesopotamia.
this allows us to fix only the fact that the war of the gods was between relatives. Only and everything. A certain “ancestral home” of the Sumerians, what does it have to do with it? ..
Already by the middle of the III millennium, when the first cosmogonic texts were being created, the Sumerians completely forgot about their origin and even about their difference from the rest of the inhabitants of Mesopotamia. They themselves called themselves Sang-ngig - "black-headed", but the Mesopotamian Semites also called themselves in their own language. If the Sumer wanted to emphasize his origin, he called himself "the son of such and such a city", that is, a free citizen of the city. If he wanted to oppose his country to foreign countries, then he called it the word kalam (the etymology is unknown, it is written with the sign “people”), and someone else’s with the word kur (“mountain, the afterlife”). Thus, national identity was absent in the self-determination of a person at that time; territorial belonging was important, which often combined the origin of a person with his social status.
The Danish Sumerologist A. Westenholz suggests understanding “Sumer” as a distortion of the phrase ki-eme-gir - “land of the noble language” (as the Sumerians themselves called their language).
“noble” in the ancient conception – first of all, “leading its origin from the gods” or “having a divine origin”…
In Lower Mesopotamia, there is a lot of clay and almost no stone. People learned to use clay not only for making ceramics, but also for writing and sculpture. In the culture of Mesopotamia, modeling prevails over carving on hard material ...
Lower Mesopotamia is not rich in vegetation. There is practically no good building timber here (for it you need to go east, to the Zagros Mountains), but there is a lot of reed, tamarisk and date palms. Reed grows along the banks of swampy lakes. Bundles of reeds were often used in dwellings as a seat; both dwellings and cattle pens were built from reeds. Tamarisk tolerates heat and drought well, so it grows in large numbers in these places. From tamarisk, handles were made for various tools, most often for hoes. The date palm was a true source of abundance for palm plantation owners. Several dozen dishes were prepared from its fruits, including cakes, and porridge, and delicious beer. Various household utensils were made from the trunks and leaves of the palm tree. And reeds, and tamarisk, and date palm were sacred trees in Mesopotamia, they were sung in spells, hymns to the gods and literary dialogues.
There are almost no minerals in Lower Mesopotamia. Silver had to be delivered from Asia Minor, gold and carnelian - from the Hindustan peninsula, lapis lazuli - from the regions of present-day Afghanistan. Paradoxically, this sad fact played a very positive role in the history of culture: the inhabitants of Mesopotamia were constantly in contact with neighboring peoples, not knowing the period of cultural isolation and preventing the development of xenophobia. The culture of Mesopotamia throughout the ages of its existence was susceptible to other people's achievements, and this gave it a constant incentive to improve.
the listed "useful" minerals for a primitive person have no practical value (from the standpoint of survival and nutrition). So what could be the special incentive here? ..
Another feature of the local landscape is the abundance of deadly fauna. There are about 50 species in Mesopotamia poisonous snakes, lots of scorpions and mosquitoes. It is not surprising that one of the characteristic features of this culture is the development of herbal and conspiracy medicine. A large number of spells against snakes and scorpions have come down to us, sometimes accompanied by recipes for magical actions or herbal medicine. And in the temple decor, the snake is the most powerful amulet that all demons and evil spirits should have been afraid of.
The founders of the Mesopotamian culture belonged to different ethnic groups and spoke unrelated languages, but had a single economic structure. They were mainly engaged in sedentary cattle breeding and irrigation farming, as well as fishing and hunting. Cattle breeding played an outstanding role in the culture of Mesopotamia, influencing the images of the state ideology. The sheep and the cow are marked with the greatest reverence here. They made excellent warm clothes from sheep's wool, which was considered a symbol of wealth. The poor were called “having no wool” (nu-siki). They tried to find out the fate of the state from the liver of the sacrificial lamb. Moreover, the constant epithet of the king was the epithet “righteous sheep shepherd” (sipa-zid). It arose from observations of a flock of sheep, which can only be organized with skillful direction on the part of the shepherd. The cow that gave milk and dairy products was no less valued. Oxen plowed in Mesopotamia, the productive power of the bull was admired. It is no coincidence that the deities of these places wore a horned tiara on their heads - a symbol of power, fertility and constancy of life.
do not forget that the turn of the III-II millennium is the change of the era of Taurus to the era of Aries! ..
Agriculture in Lower Mesopotamia could only exist thanks to artificial irrigation. Water with silt was diverted into specially constructed canals, so that if necessary, it could be supplied to the fields. Work on the construction of canals required a large number of people and their emotional rallying. Therefore, people here have learned to live in an organized way and, if necessary, meekly sacrifice themselves. Each city arose and developed near its canal, which created a prerequisite for independent political development. Until the end of the III millennium, it was not possible to form a nationwide ideology, since each city was a separate state with its own cosmogony, calendar and pantheon features. The unification took place only during severe disasters or to solve important political problems, when it was necessary to elect a military leader and representatives of various cities gathered in the cult center of Mesopotamia - the city of Nippur.
The anthropological type of the Sumerians can be judged to a certain extent by the skeletal remains: they belonged to the Mediterranean minor race of the Caucasoid major race. The Sumerian type is still found in Iraq to this day: they are dark-skinned people of short stature, with a straight nose, curly hair and abundant facial and body hair. Hair and vegetation were carefully shaved off to protect themselves from lice, which is why there are so many images of shaven-headed and beardless people in Sumerian figurines and reliefs. It was also necessary to shave for religious purposes - in particular, priests always went shaved. On the same images - big eyes and big ears, but this is just a stylization, also explained by the requirements of the cult (large eyes and ears as containers of wisdom).
there might be something in it...
Neither men nor women of Sumer wore underwear. But until the end of their days, they did not take off the magical double lace worn on their naked body, which protected life and health, from the waist. The main clothing of a man was a sleeveless shirt (tunic) made of sheep's wool, much longer than the knees, and a loincloth in the form of a woolen cloth with a fringe on one side. A fringed edge could be applied to legal documents instead of a seal if the person was not notable enough and did not have a personal seal. In very hot weather, a man could appear in front of people in just a bandage, and often completely naked.
Women's clothing differed relatively little from men's, but women never went without a tunic and did not appear in one tunic, without other clothes. Women's tunic could reach the knees and below, sometimes had slits on the side. A skirt was also known, sewn from several horizontal panels, and the top was wrapped in a tourniquet-belt. The traditional clothing of noble people (both men and women), in addition to the tunic and headband, was a “wrapping” of cloth covered with sewn flags. These flags are probably nothing more than a fringe of colored yarn or fabric. There was no veil that would cover a woman's face in Sumer. Of the hats, felt round hats, hats and caps were known. From shoes - sandals and boots, but they always came to the temple barefoot. When the cold days of late autumn came, the Sumerians wrapped themselves in a cape - a rectangular panel, in the upper part of which one or two straps were attached on both sides, tied in a knot on the chest. But there were few cold days.
The Sumerians were very fond of jewelry. Rich and noble women wore a tight "collar" of beads adjacent to each other, from the chin to the neckline of the tunic. Expensive beads were made from carnelian and lapis lazuli, cheaper ones were made from colored glass (Hurrian), the cheapest ones were made from ceramics, shells and bones. Both men and women wore a cord with a large silver or bronze pectoral ring around their necks and metal hoops on their arms and legs.
Soap had not yet been invented, so soapy plants, ash and sand were used for washing and washing. Pure fresh water without silt was of great value - it was carried from wells dug in several places in the city (often on high hills). Therefore, it was cherished and spent most often for washing hands after a sacrificial meal. The Sumerians knew both ointments and incense. resins coniferous plants for the manufacture of incense were imported from Syria. Women lined their eyes with black-and-green antimony powder, which protected them from bright sunlight. The ointments also had a pragmatic function - they prevented excessive dryness of the skin.
No matter how pure the fresh water of city wells was, it was impossible to drink it, and treatment facilities had not yet been invented. Moreover, it was impossible to drink the water of rivers and canals. There remained barley beer - the drink of commoners, date beer - for the richer people and grape wine - already for the most noble. The food of the Sumerians, for our modern taste, was rather meager. These are mainly cakes made from barley, wheat and spelt, dates, dairy products (milk, butter, cream, sour cream, cheese) and various types of fish. Meat was eaten only on major holidays, eating the rest of the victim. Sweets were made from flour and date molasses.
The typical house of the average city dweller was one-story, built of raw brick. The rooms in it were located around an open courtyard - the place where sacrifices were made to the ancestors, and even earlier, the place of their burial. A wealthy Sumerian house was one floor higher. Archaeologists count up to 12 rooms in it. Downstairs there were a living room, a kitchen, a toilet, a servant's room and a separate room in which the home altar was located. The upper floor housed the private quarters of the owners of the house, including the bedroom. There were no windows. High-backed chairs, reed mats and wool rugs on the floor are found in rich houses, large beds with carved wooden headboards in the bedrooms. The poor were content with bundles of cane as a seat and slept on mats. The property was stored in clay, stone, copper or bronze vessels, where even the tablets of the household household archive fell. Apparently, there were no wardrobes, but dressing tables in the master's quarters and large tables at which meals were eaten are known. This is an important detail: in the Sumerian house, the hosts and guests did not sit on the floor at the meal.
From the earliest pictographic texts that have come down from the temple in the city of Uruk and deciphered by A.A. Vaiman, we learn about the content of the ancient Sumerian economy. We are helped by the signs of writing themselves, which at that time were still no different from drawings. In large numbers there are images of barley, spelled, wheat, sheep and sheep wool, date palms, cows, donkeys, goats, pigs, dogs, various kinds of fish, gazelles, deer, aurochs and lions. It is clear that plants were cultivated, and some of the animals were bred, while others were hunted. Of the household items, the images of vessels for milk, beer, incense and for loose bodies are especially frequent. There were also special vessels for sacrificial libations. Picture writing has preserved for us images of metal tools and a forge, spinning wheels, shovels and hoes with wooden handles, a plow, a sledge for dragging cargo across wetlands, four-wheeled carts, ropes, rolls of cloth, reed boats with highly curved noses, reed pens and stables for cattle, reed emblems of ancestral gods and much more. There is in it early time and the designation of the ruler, and signs for priestly offices, and a special sign for designating a slave. All these most valuable evidence of writing indicate, firstly, the agricultural and pastoral nature of civilization with the residual phenomena of hunting; secondly, the existence of a large temple economy in Uruk; thirdly, the presence in society of a social hierarchy and relations of slavery. The data of archaeological excavations testify to the existence of an irrigation system of two types in the south of Mesopotamia: pools for the accumulation of spring flood waters and long main canals with permanent dam units.
in general, everything points to a fully formed society in the form that is observed further ...
Since all the economic archives of early Sumer came down to us from temples, the idea arose and strengthened in science that the Sumerian city itself was a temple city and that all the land in Sumer belonged exclusively to the priesthood and temples. At the dawn of Sumerology, this idea was expressed by the German-Italian researcher A. Deimel, and in the second half of the twentieth century [AD] he was supported by A. Falkenstein. However, from the works of I.M. Dyakonov it became clear that, in addition to the temple land, in the Sumerian cities there was also the land of the community, and this communal land was much larger. Dyakonov calculated the city population and compared it with the temple staff. Then, in the same way, he compared the total area of temple lands with the total area of the entire land of Southern Mesopotamia. Comparisons turned out not in favor of the temple. It turned out that the Sumerian economy knew two main sectors: the economy of the community (uru) and the economy of the temple (e). About non-temple communal land, in addition to numerical ratios, also speak of documents on the purchase and sale of land, completely ignored by Daimel's supporters.
The picture of Sumerian landownership is best seen from the accounting documents that have come down from the city of Lagash. According to temple economic documents, there were three categories of temple land:
1. Priestly land (ashag-nin-ena), which was cultivated by temple agricultural workers who used cattle and tools given to them by the temple. For this, they received land allotments and in-kind payments.
2. Feeding land (ashag-kur), which was distributed in the form of separate allotments to officials of the temple administration and various artisans, as well as to the elders of groups of agricultural workers. The same category began to include fields that were issued personally to the ruler of the city as an official.
3. Cultivation land (ashag-nam-uru-lal), which was also issued from the temple land fund in separate allotments, but not for service or work, but for a share in the harvest. Temple officials and workers took it in addition to their service allotment or rations, as well as the relatives of the ruler, members of the staff of other temples, and, perhaps, in general, any free citizen of the city who had the strength and time to process an additional allotment.
Representatives of the communal nobility (including the priests) either did not have allotments on the land of the temple, or had only small allotments, mainly on the land of cultivation. We know from the documents of sale and purchase that these persons, like the relatives of the ruler, had large land holdings received directly from the community, and not from the temple.
The existence of non-temple land is reported by a variety of types of documents that science relates to contracts of sale. These are clay tablets with a lapidary statement of the main aspects of the transaction, and inscriptions on the obelisks of the rulers, which report on the sale of large land plots to the king and describe the transaction procedure itself. For us, of course, all these testimonies are important. From them it turns out that the non-temple land was owned by a large family community. This term refers to a collective connected by a common origin on the paternal side, a common economic life and land ownership and including more than one family and marriage unit. Such a collective was headed by the patriarch, who organized the procedure for transferring the land to the buyer. This procedure consisted of the following parts:
1. the ritual of making a deal - driving a peg into the wall of the house and pouring oil next to it, transferring the rod to the buyer as a symbol of the territory being sold;
2. payment by the buyer of the price of the land plot in barley and silver;
3. surcharge for the purchase;
4. "gifts" to the seller's relatives and poor members of the community.
The Sumerians cultivated barley, spelt and wheat. Purchase and sale settlements were made in measures of barley grain or in silver (in the form of silver scrap by weight).
Cattle breeding in Sumer was transhumance: cattle were kept in pens and stables and driven out to pasture every day. Of the texts known goatherds, shepherds of cow herds, but more known than all sheep shepherds.
Craft and trade in Sumer developed very early. The oldest lists of names of temple artisans preserved terms for the professions of a blacksmith, coppersmith, carpenter, jeweler, saddler, tanner, potter, and weaver. All artisans were temple workers and received for their work both in kind and additional plots of land. However, they rarely worked on the land and over time lost any real connection with the community and agriculture. Known from ancient lists and merchants and shipmen who transported goods across the Persian Gulf for trade in eastern countries, but they also worked for the temple. A special, privileged part of the artisans included scribes who worked at a school, in a temple or in a palace and received large natural payments for their work.
isn’t there a situation similar to the initial version, only about the temple belonging of the land?.. It is hardly possible that artisans were only at the temples…
In general, the Sumerian economy can be considered as an agricultural and pastoral economy with a subordinate position of craft and trade. It is based on subsistence farming, which fed only the inhabitants of the city and its authorities, and only occasionally supplied its products to neighboring cities and countries. The exchange went mainly in the direction of imports: the Sumerians sold surplus agricultural products, importing building timber and stone, precious metals and incense into their country.
The structure of the Sumerian economy outlined as a whole did not undergo significant changes in diachronic terms. With the development of the despotic power of the kings of Akkad, consolidated by the monarchs of the III dynasty of Ur, more and more land fell into the hands of insatiable rulers, but they never owned all the cultivable land of Sumer. And although the community had already lost its political power by this time, all the same, the Akkadian or Sumerian king had to redeem the land from her, scrupulously observing the procedure described above. Artisans, over time, were more and more fixed by the king and the temples, which reduced them almost to the position of slaves. The same thing happened with commercial agents, in all their actions accountable to the king. Against their background, the work of a scribe was invariably regarded as free and well-paid work.
...already in the earliest pictographic texts from Uruk and Jemdet-Nasr, there are signs for designating managerial, priestly, military and craft positions. Therefore, no one was separated from anyone, and people of various social purposes lived in the very first years of the existence of the most ancient civilization.
... the population of the Sumerian city-state was divided as follows:
1. Know: the ruler of the city, the head of the temple administration, priests, members of the council of elders of the community. These people had, in the order of family-communal or tribal, and often individual ownership, tens and hundreds of hectares of communal land, exploiting clients and slaves. The ruler, in addition, often used the land of the temple for personal enrichment.
2. Ordinary community members who had plots of communal land in the order of family-communal ownership. They made up more than half of the total population.
3. Clients of the temple: a) members of the temple administration and artisans; b) subordinates to them. These are former community members who have lost community ties.
4. Slaves: a) temple slaves, little different from the lower categories of clients; b) slaves of private individuals (the number of these slaves was relatively small).
Thus, we see that the social structure of Sumerian society is quite clearly divided into two main economic sectors: the community and the temple. Nobility is determined by the amount of land, the population either cultivates its allotment or works for the temple and large landowners, artisans are attached to the temple, and priests are attached to communal land.
The ruler of the Sumerian city in the initial period of the history of Sumer was en (“lord, possessor”), or ensi. He combined the functions of a priest, military leader, mayor and chairman of parliament. His duties included the following:
1. Leadership of the community cult, especially participation in the rite of sacred marriage.
2. Management of construction work, especially temple building and irrigation.
3. Leadership of an army of persons dependent on temples and on him personally.
4. Presidency in the people's assembly, especially in the council of elders of the community.
En and his people, according to tradition, had to ask permission for their actions from the people's assembly, which consisted of the "youths of the city" and "the elders of the city." We learn about the existence of such a collection mainly from hymn-poetic texts. As some of them show, even without receiving the approval of the assembly or having received it from one of the chambers, the ruler could still decide on his risky enterprise. Subsequently, as power was concentrated in the hands of one political group, the role of the people's assembly completely disappeared.
In addition to the position of city governor, the title lugal is also known from Sumerian texts - “big man”, in various cases translated either as “king” or as “master”. I.M. Dyakonov in his book “Ways of History” suggests translating it with the Russian word “prince”. This title first appears in the inscriptions of the rulers of the city of Kish, from where it may well have come. Initially, it was the title of a military leader who was chosen from among the Ens by the supreme gods of Sumer in sacred Nippur (or in his city with the participation of the Nippur gods) and temporarily occupied the position of master of the country with the powers of a dictator. But subsequently, kings became not by choice, but by inheritance, although during enthronement they still observed the old Nippur rite. Thus, one and the same person was both the enom of a city and the lugal of the country, so the struggle for the title of lugal went on at all times in the history of Sumer. True, the difference between the Lugal and En titles soon became apparent. During the capture of Sumer by the Gutians, not a single ensi had the right to bear the title of lugal, since the occupiers called themselves lugals. And by the time of the III Dynasty of Ur, the ensi were officials of city administrations, wholly subordinate to the will of the lugal.
Documents from the archives of the city of Shuruppak (XXVI century) show that in this city people ruled in turn, and the ruler changed annually. Each line, apparently, fell by lot not only on this or that person, but also on a certain territorial area or temple. This indicates the existence of some kind of collegial governing body, whose members took turns holding the position of eponymous elder. In addition, evidence of mythological texts about the order in the reign of the gods is known. Finally, the term itself for the term of the reign of the lugala ball literally means “queue”. Does this mean that the earliest form of government in the Sumerian city-states was precisely the successive rule of representatives of neighboring temples and territories? It is quite possible, but it is quite difficult to prove it.
If the ruler on the social ladder occupied the top rung, then slaves huddled at the foot of this ladder. Translated from Sumerian, “slave” means “lowered, lowered”. First of all, the modern slang verb “lower” comes to mind, that is, “deprive someone of social status, subjugating oneself as property.” But we also have to take into account the historical fact that the first slaves in history were prisoners of war, and the Sumerian army fought their opponents in the Zagros mountains, so the word for a slave may simply mean “lowered from the eastern mountains”. Initially, only women and children were taken prisoner, since the weapons were imperfect and it was difficult to escort captured men. After captivity, they were most often killed. But later, with the advent of bronze weapons, men were also kept alive. The labor of slave prisoners of war was used in private households and in temples ...
In addition to the slave-captives, in the last centuries of Sumer, debtor slaves appeared, captured by their creditors until the debt was paid with interest. The fate of such slaves was much easier: in order to regain their former status, they only needed to redeem themselves. Slaves-captives, even having mastered the language and having a family, could rarely count on freedom.
At the turn of the 4th and 3rd millennia, on the territory of the Southern Mesopotamia, three peoples completely different in origin and language met and began to live in a common economy. The first to come here were native speakers of the language, conventionally called “banana” because of a large number words with repeated syllables (such as Zababa, Huvava, Bunene). It was to their language that the Sumerians owed the terminology in the field of crafts and metal processing, as well as the names of some cities. The carriers of the "banana" language did not leave a memory of the names of their tribes, since they were not lucky enough to invent writing. But their material traces are known to archaeologists: in particular, they were the founders of an agricultural settlement that now bears the Arabic name of El Ubeid. The masterpieces of ceramics and sculpture found here testify to the high development of this nameless culture.
because on early stages Since the writing was pictographic and did not focus at all on the sound of the word (but only on its meaning), then it is simply impossible to detect the “banana” structure of the language with such writing! ..
The second to come to Mesopotamia were the Sumerians, who founded the settlements of Uruk and Dzhemdet-Nasr (also an Arabic name) in the south. The last in the first quarter of the 3rd millennium came the Semites from northern Syria, who settled mostly in the north and northwest of the country. Sources that have come down from different eras of Sumerian history show that all three peoples lived compactly on a common territory, with the difference that the Sumerians lived mainly in the south, the Semites in the northwest, and the “banana” people in both the south and In the north of the country. There was nothing like national disagreements, and the reason for such a peaceful coexistence was that all three peoples were newcomers to this territory, equally experienced the difficulties of life in Mesopotamia and considered it an object of joint development.
Very weak arguments. As not so distant historical practice shows (the development of Siberia, the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks), millennia are not at all needed for adaptation in a new territory. Already in a hundred or two years, people consider themselves completely “their own” on this earth, where their ancestors came not so long ago. Most likely, there is nothing to do with any “resettlement” here. They might not exist at all. And the “banana” style of language is observed quite often among primitive peoples throughout the Earth. So their “trace” is only the remnants of an older language of the same population… It would be interesting to look at the vocabulary of the “banana” language and later terms from this angle.
The defining factor for the history of the country was the organization of a network of main canals, which existed without fundamental changes until the middle of the 2nd millennium.
by the way, a very curious fact. It turns out that a certain people came to this area; for no apparent reason built a developed network of canals and dams; and for one and a half thousand years (!) this system did not change at all!!! Why, then, historians are tormented by the search for the “ancestral home” of the Sumerians - you just need to find traces of a similar irrigation system, and that’s all! a new place already with these skills!.. somewhere in the old place he had to “train” and “develop his skills”!.. But this is nowhere!!! Here's another hitch for the official version of the story...
The main centers of the formation of states - cities - were also connected with the network of canals. They grew up on the site of the original groups of agricultural settlements, which were concentrated on separate drained and irrigated areas reclaimed from swamps and deserts in the previous millennia. Cities were formed by resettling the inhabitants of abandoned villages in the center. However, it most often did not come to the complete relocation of the entire district to one city, since the inhabitants of such a city could not cultivate fields within a radius of more than 15 kilometers and the already developed land lying outside these limits would have to be abandoned. Therefore, in one district, three or four or more interconnected cities usually arose, but one of them was always the main one: the center of common cults and the administration of the entire district were located here. I.M. Dyakonov, following the example of Egyptologists, suggested calling each such district nom. In Sumerian, it was called ki, which means "land, place." The city itself, which was the center of the district, was called uru, which is usually translated as “city”. However, in the Akkadian language, this word corresponds to alu - "community", so we can assume the same original meaning for the Sumerian term. Tradition assigned the status of the first fenced settlement (i.e., the city itself) to Uruk, which is quite likely, since archaeologists have found fragments of the high wall surrounding this settlement.
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The Sumerians are the first civilization on earth.
The Sumerians are an ancient people who once inhabited the territory of the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the south of the modern state of Iraq (Southern Mesopotamia or Southern Mesopotamia). In the south, the boundary of their habitat reached the shores of the Persian Gulf, in the north - to the latitude of modern Baghdad.
For a whole millennium, the Sumerians were the main actors in the ancient Near East.
Sumerian astronomy and mathematics were the most accurate in the entire Middle East. We still divide the year into four seasons, twelve months and twelve signs of the zodiac, measure angles, minutes and seconds in sixties - the way the Sumerians first began to do it.
When we go to see a doctor, we all ... receive prescriptions for medicines or advice from a psychotherapist, completely without thinking about the fact that both herbal medicine and psychotherapy first developed and reached a high level precisely among the Sumerians. While receiving a subpoena and counting on the justice of judges, we also do not know anything about the founders of legal proceedings - the Sumerians, whose first legislative acts contributed to the development of legal relations in all parts of the Ancient World. Finally, thinking about the vicissitudes of fate, lamenting the fact that we were cheated at birth, we repeat the same words that the philosophizing Sumerian scribes first brought to clay - but hardly even guesses about it.
The Sumerians are "black-headed". This people, who appeared in the south of Mesopotamia in the middle of the 3rd millennium BC from nowhere, is now called the "progenitor of modern civilization", and in fact, until the middle of the 19th century, no one even knew about him. Time has erased Sumer from the annals of history and, if not for linguists, perhaps we would never have known about Sumer.
But I'll probably start from 1778, when the Dane Carsten Niebuhr, who led an expedition to Mesopotamia in 1761, published copies of a cuneiform royal inscription from Persepolis. He was the first to suggest that the 3 columns in the inscription are three different types of cuneiform writing containing the same text.
In 1798, another Dane, Friedrich Christian Münter, hypothesized that the writing of the 1st class is alphabetic Old Persian writing (42 characters), the 2nd class is a syllabary, the 3rd class is ideographic characters. But the first to read the text was not a Dane, but a German, a Latin teacher in Göttingen, Grotenfend. His attention was attracted by a group of seven cuneiform characters. Grotenfend suggested that this word is King, and the rest of the signs were selected based on historical and linguistic analogies. Eventually Grotenfend made the following translation:
Xerxes, great king, king of kings
Darius, king, son, Achaemenid
However, only 30 years later, the Frenchman Eugene Burnouf and the Norwegian Christian Lassen found the correct equivalents for almost all cuneiform signs of the 1st group. In 1835, a second multilingual inscription was found on a rock in Behistun, and in 1855, Edwin Norris managed to decipher the 2nd type of writing, which consisted of hundreds of syllabic characters. The inscription turned out to be in the Elamite language (nomadic tribes called Amorites or Amorites in the Bible).
With the 3rd type, it turned out to be even more difficult. It was a completely forgotten language. One sign there could denote both a syllable and a whole word. Consonants appeared only as part of a syllable, while vowels could also appear as separate signs. For example, the sound "r" could be rendered in six different characters, depending on the context. On January 17, 1869, the linguist Jules Oppert stated that the language of the 3rd group is .... Sumerian ... This means that the Sumerian people must also exist ... But there was also a theory that it was only artificial - "sacred language "priests of Babylon. In 1871, Archibald Says published the first Sumerian text, the Shulgi royal inscription. But it was not until 1889 that the definition of Sumerian was universally accepted.
SUMMARY: What we now call the Sumerian language is actually an artificial construction built on analogies with the inscriptions of the peoples who adopted the Sumerian cuneiform - Elamite, Akkadian and Old Persian texts. And now remember how the ancient Greeks distorted foreign names and evaluate the possible reliability of the sound of "restored Sumerian". Strangely, the Sumerian language has neither ancestors nor descendants. Sometimes Sumerian is called "the Latin of ancient Babylon" - but one must be aware that Sumerian did not become the progenitor of a powerful language group, only the roots of several dozen words remained from it.
Appearance of the Sumerians.
I must say that southern Mesopotamia is not the best place in the world. The complete absence of forests and minerals. Swampiness, frequent floods, accompanied by a change in the course of the Euphrates due to low banks and, as a result, the complete absence of roads. The only thing that was in abundance there was reed, clay and water. However, in combination with fertile soil fertilized by floods, this was enough for the first city-states of ancient Sumer to flourish there at the very end of the 3rd millennium BC.
We do not know where the Sumerians came from, but when they appeared in Mesopotamia, people already lived there. The tribes that inhabited Mesopotamia in the deepest antiquity lived on islands that towered among the swamps. They built their settlements on artificial earth embankments. Draining the surrounding swamps, they created the oldest system of artificial irrigation. As the finds in Kish indicate, they used microlithic tools.
An impression of a Sumerian cylinder seal depicting a plow. The earliest settlement discovered in southern Mesopotamia was near El Obeid (near Ur), on a river island that rose above a swampy plain. The population living here was engaged in hunting and fishing, but was already moving to more progressive types of economy: to cattle breeding and agriculture.
The El Obeid culture has existed for a very long time. It has its roots in the ancient local cultures of Upper Mesopotamia. However, the first elements of Sumerian culture are already appearing.
According to the skulls from the burials, it was determined that the Sumerians were not a monoracial ethnic group: there are also brachycephals ("round-headed") and dolichocephaly ("long-headed"). However, this could also be the result of mixing with the local population. So we can't even assign them to a particular ethnic group with complete certainty. At present, it can only be stated with some certainty that the Semites of Akkad and the Sumerians of southern Mesopotamia differed sharply from each other both in their appearance and in language.
In the most ancient communities of the southern part of Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC. e. almost all the products produced here were consumed locally and subsistence farming reigned. Clay and reed were widely used. In ancient times, vessels were molded from clay - first by hand, and later on a special potter's wheel. Finally, the most important building material was made from clay in large quantities - brick, which was prepared with an admixture of reeds and straw. This brick was sometimes dried in the sun, and sometimes fired in a special kiln. By the beginning of the third millennium BC. e., include the oldest buildings built of original large bricks, one side of which forms a flat surface, and the other - a convex one. A major revolution in technology was made by the discovery of metals. One of the first metals known to the peoples of southern Mesopotamia was copper, whose name is found in both Sumerian and Akkadian. A little later, bronze appeared, which was made from an alloy of copper with lead, and later with tin. Recent archaeological discoveries indicate that already in the middle of the third millennium BC. e. in Mesopotamia, iron was known, obviously meteoric.
The next period of the Sumerian archaic is called the Uruk period, after the site of the most important excavations. This era is characterized by a new type of ceramics. Earthenware vessels with tall handles and long spouts may reproduce an ancient metal prototype. The vessels are made on a potter's wheel; however, in their ornamentation, they are much more modest than the painted pottery of the El Obeid period. However, economic life and culture receive their further development in this era. There is a need for documentation. In connection with this, primitive pictorial (pictographic) writing appears, traces of which are preserved on the cylinder seals of that time. The inscriptions are in total up to 1500 picture signs, from which the ancient Sumerian writing gradually grew.
After the Sumerians, a huge number of clay cuneiform tablets remained. Perhaps it was the first bureaucracy in the world. The earliest inscriptions date back to 2900 BC. and contain business records. Researchers complain that the Sumerians left behind a huge number of "economic" records and "lists of gods" but did not bother to write down the "philosophical basis" of their belief system. Therefore, our knowledge is only an interpretation of "cuneiform" sources, most of which were translated and rewritten by the priests of later cultures, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh or the poem "Enuma Elish" dating from the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. So, perhaps we are reading a kind of digest, similar to the adaptive version of the Bible for modern children. Especially considering that most of the texts are compiled from several separate sources (due to poor preservation).
The property stratification that took place within rural communities led to the gradual disintegration of the communal system. Growth productive forces, the development of trade and slavery, and finally, predatory wars contributed to the isolation of a small group of slave-owning aristocracy from the entire mass of community members. Aristocrats who owned slaves and partly land were called "big people" (lugal), who were opposed by "little people", that is, free poor members of rural communities.
The oldest indications of the existence of slave-owning states in Mesopotamia date back to the beginning of the third millennium BC. e. Judging by the documents of this era, these were very small states, or rather, primary state formations, headed by kings. In the principalities that had lost their independence, the highest representatives of the slave-owning aristocracy ruled, bearing the ancient semi-priestly title "tsatesi" (epsi). The economic basis of these ancient slave-owning states was the land fund of the country centralized in the hands of the state. Communal lands cultivated by free peasants were considered the property of the state, and their population was obliged to bear all kinds of duties in favor of the latter.
The disunity of the city-states created a problem with the exact dating of events in Ancient Sumer. The fact is that each city-state had its own chronicles. And the lists of kings that have come down to us are mainly written no earlier than the Akkadian period and are a mixture of fragments of various "temple lists", which led to confusion and errors. But in general it looks like this:
2900 - 2316 BC - heyday of the Sumerian city-states
2316 - 2200 BC - the unification of the Sumerians under the rule of the Akkadian dynasty (Semitic tribes of the northern part of the Southern Mesopotamia who adopted the Sumerian culture)
2200 - 2112 BC - Interregnum. The period of fragmentation and invasions of nomads - Kuti
2112 - 2003 BC - Sumerian Renaissance, the heyday of culture
2003 BC - the fall of Sumer and Akkad under the onslaught of the Amorites (Elamites). Anarchy
1792 - the rise of Babylon under Hammurabi (Old Babylonian kingdom)
After their fall, the Sumerians left something that was picked up by many other peoples who came to this earth - Religion.
Religion of Ancient Sumer.
Let's touch on the Religion of the Sumerians. It seems that in Sumer the origins of religion had purely materialistic, and not "ethical" roots. The purpose of the cult of the Gods was not "purification and holiness", but was intended to ensure a good harvest, military success, etc. .e.), personified the forces of nature - the sky, the sea, the sun, the moon, the wind, etc., then the gods appeared - the patrons of cities, farmers, shepherds, etc. The Sumerians claimed that everything in the world belongs to the gods - the temples were not the place of residence of the gods, who were obliged to take care of people, but the granaries of the gods - barns.
The main deities of the Sumerian Pantheon were AN (heaven - masculine) and KI (earth - feminine). Both of these beginnings arose from the primordial ocean, which gave birth to the mountain, from the firmly connected heaven and earth.
On the mountain of heaven and earth, An conceived the [gods] Anunnaki. From this union was born the god of air - Enlil, who divided heaven and earth.
There is a hypothesis that in the beginning, maintaining order in the world was the function of Enki, the god of wisdom and the sea. But then, with the rise of the city-state of Nippur, whose god Enlil was considered, it was he who took the leading place among the gods.
Unfortunately, not a single Sumerian myth about the creation of the world has come down to us. The course of events presented in the Akkadian myth "Enuma Elish", according to researchers, does not correspond to the concept of the Sumerians, despite the fact that most of the gods and plots in it are borrowed from Sumerian beliefs. At first it was hard for the gods, they had to do everything themselves, there was no one to serve them. Then they created people to serve themselves. It would seem that An, like other creator gods, should have had a leading role in Sumerian mythology. And, indeed, he was revered, though most likely symbolically. His temple at Ur was called E.ANNA - "House of AN". The first kingdom was called the "Kingdom of Anu". However, according to the ideas of the Sumerians, An practically does not interfere in the affairs of people, and therefore the main role in "everyday life" passed to other gods, led by Enlil. However, Enlil was not omnipotent either, because the supreme power belonged to a council of fifty main gods, among which the seven main gods "who decide fate" stood out in particular.
It is believed that the structure of the council of the gods repeated the "earthly hierarchy" - where the rulers, ensi, ruled together with the "council of elders", in which a group of the most worthy stood out ..
One of the foundations of Sumerian mythology, the exact meaning of which has not been established, is "ME", which played a huge role in the religious and ethical system of the Sumerians. In one of the myths, more than a hundred "ME" are named, of which less than half were able to read and decipher. Here such concepts as justice, kindness, peace, victory, lies, fear, crafts, etc. , everything in one way or another connected with public life. Some researchers believe that "me" are the prototypes of all living things, radiated by gods and temples, "Divine Rules".
In general, in Sumer, the Gods were like Humans. In their relationship there are matchmaking and wars, rape and love, deceit and anger. There is even a myth about a man who possessed the goddess Inanna in a dream. It is noteworthy, but the whole myth is imbued with sympathy for man.
Interestingly, the Sumerian paradise is not intended for people - it is the abode of the gods, where sorrows, old age, illness and death are unknown, and the only problem that worries the gods is the problem of fresh water. By the way, in ancient Egypt there was no concept of paradise at all. Sumerian hell - Kur - a gloomy dark underworld, where on the way where there were three servants - "door man", "underground river man", "carrier". Reminds the ancient Greek Hades and Sheol of the ancient Jews. This empty space that separates the earth from the primordial ocean is filled with the shadows of the dead, wandering without hope of return, and demons.
In general, the views of the Sumerians were reflected in many later religions, but now we are much more interested in their contribution to the technical side of the development of modern civilization.
The story begins in Sumer.
One of the greatest experts on Sumer, Professor Samuel Noah Kramer, in his book "History Begins in Sumer" listed 39 subjects in which the Sumerians were pioneers. In addition to the first writing system, which we have already spoken about, he included in this list the wheel, the first schools, the first bicameral parliament, the first historians, the first "farmer's almanac"; in Sumer, cosmogony and cosmology first arose, the first collection of proverbs and aphorisms appeared, and literary debates were held for the first time; for the first time the image of "Noah" was created; here the first book catalog appeared, the first money (silver shekels in the form of "bullions by weight") were in circulation, taxes were introduced for the first time, the first laws were adopted and social reforms were carried out, medicine appeared, and for the first time attempts were made to achieve peace and harmony in society.
In the field of medicine, the Sumerians had very high standards from the very beginning. In the library of Ashurbanipal found by Layard in Nineveh, there was a clear order, it had a large medical department, in which there were thousands of clay tablets. All medical terms were based on words borrowed from the Sumerian language. Medical procedures were described in special reference books, which contained information about hygiene rules, operations, such as cataract removal, and the use of alcohol for disinfection during surgical operations. Sumerian medicine was characterized by a scientific approach to diagnosis and prescription of treatment, both medical and surgical.
The Sumerians were excellent travelers and explorers - they are also credited with the invention of the world's first ships. One Akkadian dictionary of Sumerian words contained at least 105 designations for various types of ships - according to their size, purpose and type of cargo. One inscription excavated in Lagash speaks of the possibility of repairing ships and lists the types of materials that the local ruler Gudea brought to build the temple of his god Ninurta in about 2200 BC. The breadth of the assortment of these goods is amazing - ranging from gold, silver, copper - to diorite, carnelian and cedar. In some cases, these materials have been transported over thousands of miles.
The first brick kiln was also built in Sumer. The use of such a large furnace made it possible to fire clay products, which gave them special strength due to internal stress, without poisoning the air with dust and ash. The same technology was used to smelt metals from ore, such as copper, by heating the ore to over 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit in a closed furnace with a low oxygen supply. This process, called smelting, became necessary in the early stages, as soon as the supply of natural native copper was exhausted. Researchers of ancient metallurgy were extremely surprised at how quickly the Sumerians learned the methods of ore dressing, metal smelting and casting. These advanced technologies were mastered by them only a few centuries after the emergence of the Sumerian civilization.
Even more amazing was that the Sumerians mastered the methods of obtaining alloys - a process by which various metals are chemically combined when heated in a furnace. The Sumerians learned how to produce bronze, a hard but workable metal that changed the entire course of human history. The ability to alloy copper with tin was the greatest achievement for three reasons. Firstly, it was necessary to choose a very accurate ratio of copper and tin (analysis of Sumerian bronze showed the optimal ratio - 85% copper to 15% tin). Secondly, in Mesopotamia there was no tin at all. (In contrast, for example, from Tiwanaku) Thirdly, tin does not occur in nature at all in its natural form. To extract it from the ore - tin stone - a rather complicated process is necessary. This is not a case that can be opened by accident. The Sumerians had about thirty words for various types of copper. different quality, but for tin they used the word AN.NA, which literally means "Heavenly stone" - which many consider as evidence that the Sumerian technology was a gift from the gods.
Thousands of clay tablets have been found containing hundreds of astronomical terms. Some of these tablets contained mathematical formulas and astronomical tables with which the Sumerians could predict solar eclipse, various phases of the moon and trajectories of the planets. A study of ancient astronomy has revealed the remarkable accuracy of these tables (known as ephemeris). No one knows how they were calculated, but we may wonder why this was necessary?
"The Sumerians measured the rising and setting of the visible planets and stars relative to the earth's horizon, using the same heliocentric system that is used now. We also adopted from them the division of the celestial sphere into three segments - northern, central and southern (respectively, among the ancient Sumerians -" the path of Enlil "," the path of Anu "and" the path of Ea "). In essence, all modern concepts spherical astronomy, including a complete spherical circle of 360 degrees, zenith, horizon, axes of the celestial sphere, poles, ecliptic, equinox, etc. - all this suddenly arose in Sumer.
All knowledge of the Sumerians regarding the movement of the Sun and the Earth was combined in the world's first calendar created by them, created in the city of Nippur - the solar-lunar calendar, which began in 3760 BC. The Sumerians counted 12 lunar months, which were approximately 354 days, and then added 11 more extra days to get a full solar year. This procedure, called intercalation, was done annually until, after 19 years, the solar and lunar calendars were aligned. The Sumerian calendar was drawn up very precisely so that the key days (for example, the New Year always fell on the day of the vernal equinox). It is surprising that such a developed astronomical science was not at all necessary for this newly born society.
In general, the mathematics of the Sumerians had "geometric" roots and is very unusual. Personally, I don’t understand at all how such a number system could originate among primitive peoples. But you better judge for yourself...
Mathematics of the Sumerians.
The Sumerians used the sexagesimal number system. Only two signs were used to depict numbers: "wedge" denoted 1; 60; 3600 and further degrees from 60; "hook" - 10; 60 x 10; 3600 x 10, etc. The digital notation was based on the positional principle, but if you, based on the basis of numbering, think that numbers in Sumer were displayed as powers of 60, then you are mistaken.
The base in the Sumerian system is not 10, but 60, but then this base is strangely replaced by the number 10, then 6, and then back to 10, and so on. And thus, positional numbers line up in the following row:
1, 10, 60, 600, 3600, 36 000, 216 000, 2 160 000, 12 960 000.
This cumbersome sexagesimal system allowed the Sumerians to calculate fractions and multiply numbers up to millions, extract roots and raise to a power. In many respects this system even surpasses the decimal system we currently use. Firstly, the number 60 has ten prime divisors, while 100 has only 7. Secondly, it is the only system ideally suited for geometric calculations, and this is the reason why it continues to be used in our time from here, for example, dividing a circle into 360 degrees.
We rarely realize that not only our geometry, but also the modern way of calculating time, we owe to the Sumerian sexagesimal number system. The division of the hour into 60 seconds was not at all arbitrary - it is based on the sexagesimal system. Echoes of the Sumerian number system were preserved in the division of a day into 24 hours, a year into 12 months, a foot into 12 inches, and in the existence of a dozen as a measure of quantity. They are also found in modern system an account in which numbers from 1 to 12 are singled out, and then numbers like 10 + 3, 10 + 4, etc. follow.
It should no longer surprise us that the zodiac was also another invention of the Sumerians, an invention that was later adopted by other civilizations. But the Sumerians did not use the signs of the zodiac, tying them to each month, as we do now in horoscopes. They used them in a purely astronomical sense - in the sense of the deviation of the earth's axis, the movement of which divides the full cycle of precession of 25,920 years into 12 periods of 2160 years. With the twelve-month movement of the Earth in orbit around the Sun, the picture of the starry sky, which forms a large sphere of 360 degrees, changes. The concept of the zodiac arose by dividing this circle into 12 equal segments (zodiacal spheres) of 30 degrees each. Then the stars in each group were combined into constellations, and each of them received its own name, corresponding to their modern names. Thus, there is no doubt that the concept of the zodiac was first used in Sumer. The inscriptions of the signs of the zodiac (representing imaginary pictures of the starry sky), as well as their arbitrary division into 12 spheres, prove that the corresponding signs of the zodiac used in other, later cultures, could not have appeared as a result of independent development.
Studies of Sumerian mathematics, much to the surprise of scientists, showed that their number system closely related to the precessional cycle. The unusual moving principle of the Sumerian sexagesimal number system focuses on the number 12,960,000, which is exactly equal to 500 great precessional cycles occurring in 25,920 years. The absence of any other than astronomical possible applications for the products of the numbers 25920 and 2160 can only mean one thing - this system is designed specifically for astronomical purposes.
It seems that scientists are avoiding answering the uncomfortable question, which is this: how could the Sumerians, whose civilization lasted only 2,000 years, notice and record a cycle of celestial movements that lasts 25,920 years? And why does the beginning of their civilization refer to the middle of the period between the changes of the zodiac? Does this not indicate that they inherited astronomy from the gods?
Civilization arose in the 65th century. back.
Civilization stopped in the 38th century. back.
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Civilization existed from 4500 BC. before 1750 BC in the southern part of Mesopotamia on the territory of modern Iraq ..
The Sumerian civilization dissolved as the Sumerians ceased to exist as a single people.
Sumerian civilization arose in 4-3 thousand BC.
Sumerian race: White Alpine mixed with white Mediterranean race.
Sumerian - a society related to, not connected with the previous ones, but connected with subsequent societies ..
The Sumerians are one of the oldest non-autochthonous people of Mesopotamia ..
The genetic links of the Sumerians have not been established ..
The name is given for the Sumer region, which did not cover the entire country with a Sumerian population, but originally, the area around the city of Nippur.
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The genetic links of the Sumerians have not been established.
The Semitic civilization constantly interacted with the Sumerian, which led to a gradual mixing of their cultures, and subsequently civilizations. After the fall of Akkad, under pressure from the barbarians from the northeast, peace was maintained only in Lagash. But the Sumerians succeeded in re-raising their political prestige and reviving their culture during the Ur Dynasty (circa 2060).
After the fall of this dynasty in 1950, the Sumerians were never able to take the political primacy. With the rise of Hammurabi, control over these territories passed to Babylon and the Sumerians, as a nation, disappeared from the face of the earth.
Amorites - Semites in origin, commonly known as the Babylonians, overcame the Sumerian culture and civilization. With the exception of language, the Babylonian educational system, religion, mythology, and literature were virtually identical to those of the Sumerians. And because these Babylonians, in turn, were greatly influenced by their less cultured neighbors, especially the Assyrians, Hittites, Urartians, and Canaanites, they, like the Sumerians themselves, helped plant the seeds of Sumerian culture throughout the ancient Near East.
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Sumerian City State. It is a sociopolitical entity that developed in Sumer from a village and a small settlement in the second half of the 4th millennium BC. and flourished throughout the 3rd millennium. The city with its free citizens and general assembly, its aristocracy and priesthood, clients and slaves, its patron god and its viceroy and representative on earth, the king, farmers, artisans and merchants, its temples, walls and gates existed everywhere in the Ancient World, he Indus to the Western Mediterranean.
Some of its specific features may vary from place to place, but in general it bears a very strong resemblance to its early Sumerian prototype, and it is reasonable to conclude that very many of its elements and counterparts are rooted in Sumer. Of course, it is likely that the city would have come into existence independently of the existence of Sumer.
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Sumer, the land that was called Babylonia in the classical era, occupied the southern part of Mesopotamia and roughly coincided geographically with modern Iraq, stretching from Baghdad in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south. The territory of Sumer occupied about 10 thousand square miles, a little more than the state of Massachusetts. The climate here is extremely hot and dry, and the soils are naturally scorched, weathered, and infertile. This is a river plain, and therefore it is devoid of minerals and poor in stone. The swamps were overgrown with powerful reeds, but there was no forest, and, accordingly, there was no wood.
It was a land that, they say, the Lord denied (in the Bible - objectionable to God), hopeless, doomed to poverty and desolation. But the people who inhabited it and known by the 3rd millennium BC. like the Sumerians, he was endowed with an uncommon creative intellect and an enterprising, decisive spirit. Despite the natural disadvantages of the land, they turned Sumer into a real Garden of Eden and created what was probably the first advanced civilization in the history of mankind.
The basic unit of Sumerian society was the family, whose members were closely linked to each other by bonds of love, respect, and shared duties. The marriage was organized by the parents, and the engagement was considered completed as soon as the groom presented the bride's father with a wedding gift. The engagement was often confirmed by a contract recorded on a tablet. Although marriage was thus reduced to a practical transaction, there is evidence that premarital love affairs were not alien to the Sumerians.
A woman in Sumer was endowed with certain rights: she could own property, participate in cases, be a witness. But her husband could simply divorce her, and if she turned out to be childless, he had the right to have a second wife. Children completely obeyed the will of their parents, who could disinherit them and even sell them into slavery. But in the normal course of events, they were selflessly loved and pampered, and after the death of their parents, they inherited all their property. Adopted children were not uncommon, and they, too, were treated with extreme care and attention.
Law played a big role in the Sumerian city. Starting around 2700 B.C. we find acts of sale, including fields, houses and slaves.
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Judging by the available evidence, both archaeological and literary, the world known to the Sumerians extended as far as India in the East; to the north - to Anatolia, the Caucasus region and more western territories of Central Asia; to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, here it is possible, apparently, to rank Cyprus and even Crete; and as far as Egypt and Ethiopia in the south. Today there is no evidence that the Sumerians had any contact or information about the peoples who inhabited North Asia, China or the European continent. The Sumerians themselves divided the world into four ubdas, i.e. four districts or regions that roughly corresponded to the four compass points.
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Sumerian culture belongs to two centers: Eridu in the south and Nippur in the north. Sometimes Eridu and Nippur are called the two opposite poles of Sumerian culture.
The history of civilization is divided into 2 stages:
period of the Ubaid culture, which is characterized by the beginning of the construction of an irrigation system, population growth and the emergence of large settlements that turn into city-states. A city-state is a self-governing city with an adjacent territory.
INThe second stage of the Sumerian civilization is associated with the Uruk culture (from the city of Uruk). This period is characterized by: the appearance of monumental architecture, the development of agriculture, ceramics, the appearance of the first writing in the history of mankind (pictograms-drawings), this writing is called cuneiform and was produced on clay tablets. It was used for about 3 thousand years.
Signs of the Sumerian civilization:
Writing. The Phoenicians first borrow it and on its basis create their own script, consisting of 22 consonants, the Greeks borrow the script from the Phoenicians, who add vowels. Latin was largely derived from Greek, and many modern European languages exist on the basis of Latin.
The Sumerians discovered copper, which begins the Bronze Age.
The first elements of statehood. In peacetime, the Sumerians were ruled by a council of elders, and during the war a supreme ruler was elected - lugal, gradually their power remains in peacetime and the first ruling dynasties appear.
The Sumerians laid the foundations of Temple architecture, a special type of temple appeared there - a ziggurat, this is a temple in the form of a stepped pyramid.
The Sumerians carried out the first reforms in the history of mankind. The ruler of Urukavina became the first reformer.He forbade the taking away of donkeys, sheep and fish from the townspeople and any kind of deductions to the palace in payment for assessing their allowance and shearing sheep. When a husband divorced his wife, no bribe was paid to either the enzi or his viziers or the abgal. When the deceased was brought to the cemetery for burial, various officials received a much smaller share of the property of the deceased than before, and sometimes much less than half. As for the temple property that the enzi appropriated to himself, he, Urukagina, returned it to its true owners - the gods; in fact, it seems that the temple administrators now looked after the enzi's palace, as well as the palaces of his wives and children. Throughout the country, from end to end, notes a contemporary historian, "there were no tax collectors."
FROMExamples of Sumerian technology include wheel, cuneiform, arithmetic, geometry, irrigation systems, boats, lunisolar calendar, bronze, leather, saw, chisel, hammer, nails, brackets, rings, hoes, knives, swords, dagger, quiver, scabbard, glue, harness, harpoon and beer. They grew oats, lentils, chickpeas, wheat, beans, onions, garlic and mustard. Sumerian pastoralism involved raising cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs. A bull acted as a pack animal, and a donkey acted as a riding animal. The Sumerians were good fishermen and hunted game. The Sumerians had slavery, but it was not the main component of the economy.
Sumerian buildings were made of plano-convex mud bricks, not held together with lime or cement, because of this they were destroyed from time to time and rebuilt in the same place. The most impressive and famous structures of the Sumerian civilization are the ziggurats, large multi-layered platforms that supported the temples.
Hsome scientists speak of them as progenitors Tower of Babel spoken of in the Old Testament. Sumerian architects came up with such a technique as an arch, thanks to which the roof was erected in the form of a dome. The temples and palaces of the Sumerians were built using such advanced materials and technologies as semi-columns, niches and clay nails.
The Sumerians learned how to burn river clay, the supply of which was almost inexhaustible, and turn it into pots, dishes and jugs. Instead of wood, they used chopped and dried gigantic swamp reeds, which grew in abundance here, knitted them into sheaves or wove mats, and also, using clay, built huts and pens for livestock. Later, the Sumerians invented a mold for molding and firing bricks from inexhaustible river clay, and the problem of building material was solved. Here appeared such useful tools, crafts and technical means as a potter's wheel, a wheel, a plow, a sailing vessel, an arch, a vault, a dome, copper and bronze casting, sewing with a needle, riveting and soldering, stone sculpture, engraving and inlay. The Sumerians invented a clay writing system that was adopted and used throughout the Middle East for almost two thousand years. Almost all of the information about the early history of Western Asia has been gleaned from thousands of clay documents covered with cuneiform written by the Sumerians, which have been found by archaeologists over the past one hundred and twenty-five years.
The Sumerian sages developed a faith and creed that, in a certain sense, left "God to God", and also recognized and accepted the inevitability of the limitations of mortal existence, especially their helplessness in the face of death and God's wrath. With regard to views on material existence, they highly valued wealth and property, a rich harvest, full granaries, barns and stables, successful hunting on land and good fishing in the sea. Spiritually and psychologically, they emphasized ambition and success, superiority and prestige, honor and recognition. The inhabitant of Sumer was deeply aware of his personal rights and opposed any encroachment on them, whether it be the king himself, someone senior in position or equal. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Sumerians were the first to establish law and compose codes to clearly distinguish "black from white" and thus avoid misunderstanding, misinterpretation and ambiguity.
Irrigation is a complex process that requires joint efforts and organization. Canals had to be dug and constantly repaired, and water had to be distributed proportionately to all consumers. For this, power was needed that exceeded the desires of an individual landowner and even an entire community. This contributed to the formation of administrative institutions and the development of the Sumerian statehood. Since Sumer, due to the fertility of irrigated soils, produced much more grain, while experiencing an acute shortage in metals, stone and building timber, the state was forced to extract the materials necessary for the economy either by trade or by military means. Therefore, by 3 thousand BC. Sumerian culture and civilization penetrated east to India, west to the Mediterranean, south to Ethiopia, north to the Caspian Sea.
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The Sumerian influence invaded the Bible through the Canaanite, Khuritti, Hittite and Akkadian literatures, especially the latter, since, as is known, in the 2nd millennium BC. Akkadian was ubiquitous in Palestine and its environs as the language of practically all educated people. Therefore, the works of Akkadian literature must have been well known to the writers of Palestine, including the Jews, and many of these works have their own Sumerian prototype, modified and transformed over time.
Abraham was born in Chaldean Ur, probably around 1700 BC. and spent the beginning of his life there with his family. Then Ur was one of the main cities of ancient Sumer; it became the capital of Sumer three times in different periods of its history. Abraham and his family members brought some of the Sumerian knowledge to Palestine, where it gradually became part of the tradition and the source that Jewish writers used to write and edit the books of the Bible.
The Jewish writers of the Bible considered the Sumerians to be the original ancestors of the Jewish people. Coordinated texts and plots of Sumerian cuneiform are known, which are repeated in the form of presentations in the Bible, some of them were repeated by the Greeks.
A significant proportion of Sumerian blood flowed in the veins of Abraham's ancestors, who lived for generations in Ur or other Sumerian cities. With regard to Sumerian culture and civilization, there is no doubt that the proto-Jews absorbed and assimilated much of the life of the Sumerians. So it is very likely that the Sumerian-Jewish contacts were much closer than is commonly believed, and the law that came from Zion has many of its roots in the land of Sumer.
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Sumerian is an agglutinative language, not an inflectional one like the Indo-European or Semitic languages. Its roots are generally immutable. The basic grammatical unit is a phrase rather than a single word. Its grammatical particles tend to retain their independent structure rather than appear in complex conjunction with word roots. Therefore, structurally, the Sumerian language closely resembles such agglutinative languages as Turkish, Hungarian and some Caucasian ones. In terms of vocabulary, grammar, and syntax, Sumerian still stands apart and does not seem to be related to any other language, living or dead.
Sumerian has three open vowels, a, e, o, and three corresponding closed vowels, a, k, and i. Vowels were not pronounced strictly, but often changed in accordance with the rules of sound harmony. This primarily concerned vowels in grammatical particles - they sounded short and were not accented. At the end of a word or between two consonants, they were often omitted.
The Sumerian language has fifteen consonants: b, p, t, e, g, k, z, s, w, x, r, l, m, n, nasal g (ng). The consonants could be omitted, i.e. they were not pronounced at the end of a word unless they were followed by a grammatical particle that began with a vowel.
The Sumerian language is quite poor in adjectives and often uses genitives instead of them. Links and conjunctions are rarely used.
In addition to the main Sumerian dialect, probably known as Emegir, "royal language", there were several other, less significant ones. One of them, emesal, was used mainly in the speeches of female deities, women and eunuchs.
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According to the tradition that existed among the Sumerians themselves, they arrived from the islands of the Persian Gulf and settled Lower Mesopotamia at the beginning of the 4th millennium BC.
Some researchers attribute the emergence of the Sumerian civilization to no less than 445 thousand years ago.
In the Sumerian texts that have come down to us, referred to V millennium BC, contains enough information about the origin, evolution and composition of the solar system. IN In the Sumerian image of our solar system, exhibited in the Berlin State Museum, in the very center is the luminary - the Sun, which is surrounded by all the planets known to us today. At the same time, there are differences in the image of the Sumerians, and the main one is that the Sumerians place an unknown and very large planet between Mars and Jupiter - the twelfth in the Sumerian system. This mysterious planet was called Nibiru by the Sumerians - the "crossing planet", whose orbit, a highly elongated ellipse, passes through the solar system every 3600 years.
TOOsmogony of the Sumerians considers the “heavenly battle” to be the main event - a catastrophe that occurred more than four billion years ago, and which changed the appearance of the solar system.
The Sumerians confirmed that they once had contacts with the inhabitants of Nibiru, and that it was from that distant planet that the Anunnaki descended to Earth - "descended from heaven."
The Sumerians describe the celestial collision that took place in the space between Jupiter and Mars, not as a battle of some large highly developed creatures, but as a collision of several celestial bodies that changed the entire solar system.
ABOUTThis is evidenced even by the sixth chapter of biblical Genesis: nifilim - "descended from heaven." This is evidence that the Anunnaki "married the women of the earth."
From the Sumerian manuscripts it becomes clear that the Anunnaki first appeared on Earth about 445 thousand years ago, that is, much earlier before the advent of the Sumerian civilization.
The aliens were only interested in terrestrial minerals, primarily gold. FROM At first, the Anunnaki tried to extract gold in the Persian Gulf, and then took up mine development in southeast Africa. And every thirty-six centuries, when the planet Nibiru appeared, earthly gold reserves were sent to it.
The Annunaki spent 150,000 years mining gold, and then a rebellion broke out. The long-lived Anunnaki were tired of working in the mines for hundreds of thousands of years, and then the decision was made: to create any of the most "primitive" workers to work in the mines.
Not immediately luck began to accompany the experiments, and at the very beginning of the experiments, ugly hybrids were born. But, finally, success came to them, and a successful egg was placed in the body of the goddess Ninti. After a long pregnancy as a result of a caesarean section, Adam, the first man, appeared in the world.
Apparently, many events, historical information, important knowledge that helps people to rise to a higher level, described in the Bible - all this came from the Sumer civilization.
Many texts of the Sumerians say that their civilization began precisely with the settlers who flew from Nibiru when it died. There are records of this fact in the Bible about people who descended from heaven, who even took earthly women as wives.
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FROMThe word "Sumer" is used today to refer to the southern part of ancient Mesopotamia. From the most ancient times, for which there is any evidence, southern Mesopotamia was inhabited by a people known as the Sumerians, who spoke a language other than Semitic. Some memos say that they could be conquerors from the East, perhaps Iran or India.
V thousand BC There was already a prehistoric settlement in Lower Mesopotamia. By 3000 B.C. A flourishing urban civilization already existed here.
The Sumerian civilization was predominantly agricultural, and featured a well-organized social life. The Sumerians were adept at building canals and developing efficient irrigation systems. Found objects such as pottery, jewelry and weapons testified that they also knew how to handle materials such as copper, gold and silver, and developed art along with technological knowledge.
The name of two vital rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, or Ydiglat and Buranun, as they are read in cuneiform, are not Sumerian words. And the names of the most significant urban centers - Eridu (Eredu), Ur, Larsa, Isin, Adab, Kullab, Lagash, Nippur, Kish - also do not have a satisfactory Sumerian etymology. Both the rivers and the cities, or rather, the villages that later grew into cities, took their names from people who did not speak the Sumerian language. Similarly, the names Mississippi, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Dakota indicate that the early settlers of the United States did not speak English.
The name of these pre-Sumerian settlers of Sumer is, of course, unknown. They lived long before the invention of writing and did not leave any control records. Neither do the later Sumerian documents say anything about them, although there is a belief that at least some of them were known in the 3rd millennium as Subars (Subarians). We know this almost for certain; they were the first important civilizing force in ancient Sumer - the first tillers, pastoralists, fishermen, its first weavers, leather workers, carpenters, blacksmiths, potters and masons.
And again, linguistics confirmed the guess. It appears that basic agricultural techniques and industrial crafts were first brought to Sumer not by the Sumerians, but by their unnamed predecessors. Landsberger called this people Proto-Euphrates, a slightly awkward name that is nonetheless appropriate and linguistically useful.
In archeology, the proto-Euphrates are known as the Obeids (Ubeids), that is, the people who left cultural traces, first found in the El Obeid hill near Ur, and later in the lowest layers of several hills (tells) throughout ancient Sumer. The Proto-Euphrates, or Obeids, were agriculturalists who established a number of villages and towns throughout the territory and developed a fairly stable, rich rural economy.
Judging from the cycle of epic tales of Enmerkar and Lugalband, it is likely that the early Sumerian rulers had an unusually close, trusting relationship with the city-state of Aratta, located somewhere in the region of the Caspian Sea. The Sumerian language is an agglutinative language, to some extent reminiscent of the Ural-Altaic languages, and this fact also points in the direction of Aratta.
IV millennium BC In the extreme south of Mesopotamia, the first Sumerian settlements arose. The Sumerians found tribes in southern Mesopotamia who spoke the language of the Ubeid culture, different from Sumerian and Akkadian, and borrowed the most ancient toponyms from them. Gradually, the Sumerians occupied the entire territory of Mesopotamia from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf.
Sumerian statehood arises at the turn of the 4th and 3rd millennium BC.
By the end of the III millennium BC. the Sumerians lost their ethnic and political significance.
28th century BC e. - the city of Kish becomes the center of the Sumerian civilization.The first ruler of Sumer whose deeds were recorded, however brief, was a king named Etana of Kish. The King's List speaks of him as "who stabilized all the lands." After Etana, according to the King's List, there are seven rulers, and several of them, judging by their names, were more Semites than Sumerians.
The eighth was King Enmebaraggesi, about whom we have some historical, or at least in the spirit of the saga, information, both from the King's List and from other literary Sumerian sources. One of the heroic messengers of Enmerkar and his fighting companion in the fight against Aratta was Lugalbanda, who succeeded Enmerkar on the throne of Erech. Since he is the main character in at least two epic tales, he was most likely also a venerable and imposing ruler; and it is not surprising that by 2400 BC, and possibly earlier, he was counted among the deities by the Sumerian theologians and found a place in the Sumerian pantheon.
Lugalbanda, according to the King's list, was replaced by Dumuzi, the ruler who became the main character of the Sumerian "rite of sacred marriage" and the myth of the "dying god", which deeply affected the ancient world. Following Dumuzi, according to the King List, Gilgamesh ruled, a ruler whose deeds won him such wide fame that he became the main hero of Sumerian mythology and legends.
27th century BC e. - The weakening of Kish, the ruler of the city of Uruk - Gilgamesh repels the threat from Kish and smashes his army. Kish is attached to the possessions of Uruk and Uruk becomes the center of the Sumerian civilization.
26th century BC e. - Weakening of Uruk. The city of Ur became the leading center of the Sumerian civilization for a century.The fierce three-sided struggle for supremacy between the kings of Kish, Erech and Ur must have greatly weakened Sumer and undermined its military power. In any case, according to the King's List, the First Dynasty of Ur was replaced by the foreign dominion of the kingdom of Avan, an Elamite city-state located not far from Susa.
XXV thousand BC By the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. we find hundreds of deities among the Sumerians, at least their names. Many of these names are known to us not only from the lists compiled in schools, but also from the lists of sacrifices set forth in the tablets found over the last century.
A little later than 2500 B.C. a ruler named Mesilim enters the Sumerian scene, taking the title of king of Kish and, it seems, control over the whole country - a knob was found in Lagash and in Adaba - several items with his inscriptions. But most importantly, Mesilim was the responsible arbiter in the bitter border dispute between Lagash and Umma. About a generation after the reign of Mesilim, around 2450 BC, a man named Ur-Nanshe ascended the throne of Lagash and founded a dynasty that lasted five generations.
2400 BC The issuance of laws and legal regulation by the rulers of the Sumerian states was common in this age. Over the next three centuries, more than one judge plenipotentiary, or palace archivist, or edubba professor, had the idea of recording current and past legal norms or precedents, either for the purpose of reference to them, or perhaps for teaching. But to date, no such compilations have been found for the entire period from the reign of Urukagina to Ur-Nammu, the founder of the Third Dynasty of Ur, who came to power around 2050 BC.
24th century BC e. - The city of Lagash reaches its highest political power under King Eannatum. Eanntatum reorganizes the army, introduces a new battle formation. Relying on the reformed army, Eannatum subjugates most of Sumer to his power and undertakes a successful campaign against Elam, defeating a number of Elamite tribes. In need of large funds to carry out such a large-scale policy, Eannatum introduces taxes and duties on temple lands. After the death of Eannatum, popular unrest incited by the priesthood begins. As a result of these unrest, Uruinimgina comes to power.
2318-2312 BC e. - the reign of Uruinimgina. To restore worsened relations with the priesthood, Uruinimgin is implementing a series of reforms. The absorption of temple lands by the state is stopped, tax collections and duties are reduced. Uruinimgina carried out a number of reforms of a liberal nature, which improved the situation not only of the priesthood, but also of the ordinary population. Uruinimgin entered the history of Mesopotamia as the first social reformer.
2318 BC e. - The city of Umma, dependent on Lagash, declares war on it. The ruler of Umma Lugalzagesi defeated the army of Lagash, devastated Lagash, burned its palaces. For a short time, the city of Umma became the leader of a united Sumer, until it was defeated by the northern kingdom of Akkad, which assumed dominance over all of Sumer.
2316-2261 BC ABOUT one of the close rulers of the city of Kish seized power and took the name Sargon (Sharrumken is the king of truth, his real name is unknown, in the historical literature he is called Sargon the Ancient) and the title of king of the country, a Semite by origin, created a state covering all of Mesopotamia and part of Syria.
2236-2220 BC FROM Sargon made the small city of Akkade in the north of the Lower Mesopotamia the capital of his state: the region became known as Akkad after it. Sargon's grandson Naramsin (Naram-Suen) Took the title "king of the four cardinal points".
Sargon the Great was one of the most prominent political figures of the Ancient Near East, a military leader and genius, as well as a creative administrator and builder with a sense of the historical importance of his deeds and achievements. His influence manifested itself in one way or another throughout the ancient world, from Egypt to India. In later epochs, Sargon became a legendary figure about whom poets and bards wrote sagas and fairy tales, and they did contain a grain of truth.
2176 BC The fall of the Akkadian monarchy under the blows of the nomads and neighboring Elam.
2112-2038 BC The king of the city of Ur, Ur-Nammu, and his son Shulgi (2093-2046 BC), the creators of the III dynasty of Ur, united all Mesopotamia and took the title "King of Sumer and Akkad."
2021 -- 2017 BC. The fall of the kingdom of Sumer and Akkad under the blows of the West Semitic people of the Amorites (Amorites). (Toynbee). M Much later, Hammurabi again called himself king of Sumer and Akkad.
2000 BC. The free population of Lagash was about 100 thousand people. In Ur about 2000 BC, i.e. when it was the capital of Sumer for the third time, there were approximately 360,000 souls, writes Woolley in his recent article "The Urbanization of Society." His figure is based on minor comparisons and dubious assumptions, and it would be wise to cut it by about half, but even then the population of Ur will be close to 200,000.
At the beginning of the III millennium BC. on the territory of southern Mesopotamia, several small city-states, nomes, developed. They were located on natural hills and surrounded by walls. Approximately 40-50 thousand people lived in each of them. In the extreme southwest of Mesopotamia was the city of Eridu, near it was the city of Ur, which was of great importance in the political history of Sumer. On the banks of the Euphrates, to the north of Ur, was the city of Larsa, and to the east of it, on the banks of the Tigris, was Lagash. A major role in the unification of the country was played by the city of Uruk, which arose on the Euphrates. In the center of Mesopotamia on the Euphrates was Nippur, which was the main sanctuary of all Sumer.
City Ur. There was a custom in Ure to bury, along with members of the royal family, also their servants, slaves and close associates - apparently, to accompany them in the afterlife. In one of the royal tombs, the remains of 74 people were found, 68 of which were women (most likely, the king's concubines);
City-state, Lagash. In its ruins, a library of clay tablets with cuneiform text was found. These texts contained business records, religious hymns, as well as very valuable information for historians - diplomatic treaties and reports on wars that were fought in Mesopotamia. In addition to clay tablets, sculptural portraits of local rulers, figurines of bulls with human heads, as well as works of handicraft art were found in Lagash;
The city of Nippur was one of the most important cities in Sumer. Here was located the main sanctuary of the god Enlil, who was revered by all the Sumerian city-states. Any Sumerian ruler, if he wanted to consolidate his position, had to get the support of the priests of Nippur. A rich library of clay cuneiform tablets was found here, the total number of which amounted to several tens of thousands. The remains of three large temples were discovered here, one of which is dedicated to Enlil, the other to the goddess Inanna. Also found were the remains of a sewer system, the presence of which was characteristic of the urban culture of Sumer - it consisted of clay pipes with a diameter of 40 to 60 centimeters;
City of Eridu. First, the city built by the Sumerians upon their arrival in Mesopotamia. It was founded at the end of the 5th millennium BC. directly on the coast of the Persian Gulf. The Sumerians erected temples on the remains of former sanctuaries in order not to leave the place marked by the gods - as a result, this led to a multi-stage structure of the temple, known as the ziggurat ..
The city of Borsippa is famous for the remains of a large ziggurat, whose height even today is about 50 meters - and this despite the fact that for centuries, if not millennia, the locals used it as a quarry for building material. Often the Great Ziggurat is associated with the Tower of Babel. Alexander the Great, impressed by the greatness of the ziggurat in Borsippa, ordered to begin its restoration, but the death of the king prevented these plans;
The city of Shuruppak was one of the most influential and wealthy city-states of Sumer. It was located on the banks of the Euphrates River and in legends was called the birthplace of the righteous and wise king Ziusudra - a man who, according to the Sumerian myth of the flood, was warned by the god Enki about punishment and with his entourage built a large ship that allowed him to escape. Archaeologists have found an interesting reference to this myth in Shuruppak - traces of a major flood that occurred around 3200 BC.
In the first half of the III millennium BC. in Sumer, several political centers were created, the rulers of which bore the title of lugal or ensi. Lugal in translation means "big man". This is what the kings were called. Ensi was called an independent lord who ruled any city with the nearest district. This title is of priestly origin and indicates that initially the representative of the state power was also the head of the priesthood.
In the second half of the III millennium BC. Lagash began to claim a dominant position in Sumer. In the middle of the XXV century. BC. Lagash in a fierce battle defeated his permanent enemy - the city of Ummu, located to the north of it. Later, the ruler of Lagash, Enmetena (circa 2360-2340 BC), ended the war with Umma victoriously.
The internal position of Lagash was not stable. The masses of the city were infringed in their economic and political rights. To restore them, they banded around Uruinimgina, one of the city's powerful citizens. He displaced an ensi named Lugalanda and took his place himself. During the six-year reign (2318-2312 BC), he carried out important social reforms, which are the oldest legal acts known to us in the field of socio-economic relations.
He was the first to proclaim the slogan that later became popular in Mesopotamia: “Let the strong not offend widows and orphans!” Extortions from the priestly staff were abolished, the in-kind allowance of forced temple workers was increased, and the independence of the temple economy from the tsarist administration was restored.
In addition, Uruinimgina restored the judicial organization in rural communities and guaranteed the rights of the citizens of Lagash, protecting them from usurious bondage. Finally, polyandry (polyandry) was eliminated. Uruinimgin presented all these reforms as an agreement with the main god of Lagash, Ningirsu, and declared himself the executor of his will.
However, while Uruinimgina was busy with his reforms, a war broke out between Lagash and Umma. The ruler of Umma Lugalzagesi enlisted the support of the city of Uruk, captured Lagash and canceled the reforms introduced there. Then Lugalzagesi usurped power in Uruk and Eridu and extended his dominion over almost all of Sumer. The capital of this state was Uruk.
The main branch of the Sumerian economy was agriculture, based on a developed irrigation system. By the beginning of the III millennium BC. refers to the Sumerian literary monument, called the "Agricultural Almanac". It is dressed in the form of a lesson given by an experienced farmer to his son, and contains instructions on how to maintain soil fertility and stop the process of salinization. The text also provides a detailed description field work in their time sequence. Cattle breeding was also of great importance in the country's economy.
The craft developed. There were many house builders among the urban artisans. Excavations in Ur of monuments dating back to the middle of the 3rd millennium BC show a high level of skill in Sumerian metallurgy. Among the grave goods were found helmets made of gold, silver and copper, axes, daggers and spears, chasing, engraving and graining. Southern Mesopotamia did not have many of the materials found in Ur attest to a lively international trade.
Gold was delivered from the western regions of India, lapis lazuli - from the territory of modern Badakhshan in Afghanistan, stone for vessels - from Iran, silver - from Asia Minor. In exchange for these goods, the Sumerians traded wool, grain, and dates.
From local raw materials, artisans had at their disposal only clay, reed, wool, leather and linen. The god of wisdom Ea was considered the patron of potters, builders, weavers, blacksmiths and other artisans. Already in this early period, bricks were fired in kilns. Glazed bricks were used for facing buildings. From the middle of the III millennium BC. potter's wheel began to be used for the production of dishes. The most valuable vessels were covered with enamel and glaze.
Already at the beginning of the III millennium BC. bronze tools began to be made, which until the end of the next millennium, when the Iron Age began in Mesopotamia, remained the main metal tools.
To obtain bronze, a small amount of tin was added to molten copper.
The Sumerians spoke a language whose relationship to other languages has not yet been established.
Many sources testify to the high astronomical and mathematical achievements of the Sumerians, their building art (it was the Sumerians who built the world's first step pyramid). They are the authors of the most ancient calendar, recipe guide, library catalogue.
Medicine was at a high level of its development: special medical sections were created, reference books contained terms, operations and hygiene skills. Scientists have managed to decipher records of cataract surgery.
Geneticists were especially shocked by the found manuscripts, which depict fertilization in test tubes, all in detail.
Sumerian records say that the Sumerian scientists and physicians of that time carried out many experiments on genetic engineering before they created the perfect man, recorded in the bible as Adam.
Scientists are even inclined to think that the secrets of cloning were also known to the Sumerian civilization.
Even then, the Sumerians knew about the properties of alcohol as a disinfectant, and used it during operations.
The Sumerians had unique knowledge in the field of mathematics - the ternary system of calculus, the Fibonacci number, they knew everything about genetic engineering, they were fluent in the processes of metallurgy, for example, they knew everything about metal alloys, and this is the most difficult process.
The solar-lunar calendar was the most accurate. It was also the Sumerians who came up with the sexagesimal number system, which made it possible to multiply millions of numbers, count fractions, and find the root. The fact that we now divide a day into 24 hours, a minute into 60 seconds, a year into 12 months - all this is the Sumerian voice of antiquity.
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