2 SUMER

http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/sumer.htm

The Sumerian civilization emerged upon the flood plain of the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers about 4000 B.C. The social structure of the Sumerians was decidedly different from other societies of that and later times. The Sumerian communities were city states organized around a temple and ruled by a priesthood. The bulk of the people of the community were considered to be the servant-slaves of the god of the temple. The insecurities of life justified the role of the priesthood. When calamities occured despite the best efforts of the priesthood this was explained as being the result of the actions of other gods acting in concert which over-ruled the wishes of the local god.

There was a class of craftsmen in addition to the priests and peasants. The craftmen devoted most of their time to producing things for either the temples or the warrior-soldiers which protected the temple community. The people were to devote their lives to propitiating the gods to prevent calamities from befalling the community.

The political structure of Sumer was independent city-states. The map shows the important communities. Note that in Sumerian times the Persian Gulf extended to the area of the city-states. Since then the rivers have filled in hundreds miles of Gulf and Ur which was once almost on the coast is hundreds of miles from the sea. Along with the map of Sumer there is a schematic depiction of the layout of the city of Ur with a branch of the Euphrates River running through the city with a protected harbor at the city walls. There was another protected harbor at the city walls. The temple grounds were separated from the rest of the city.

The temple community city-states of Sumer did not form leagues and alliances until after the glory of the era of Sumer. With wars of defense the role of the priesthood declined relative to the role of the warriors. Eventually the dominance of the warriors was manifested in the rule of kings.

The origin of the Sumerians is uncertain. They apparently came from the south through the Persian Gulf. Their literature speaks of their homeland being Dilmun, which could have been one of the islands in the Persian Gulf such as Bahrain. But no ruins comparable in age and complexity to those of Sumer have been found in the proposed locations of Dilmun. However the balance of the evidence is that Dilmun was the island of Bahrain.

The Sumerians apparently had practiced trading in their original homeland. The frequency of animal beings in the pantheon of their gods suggests some previous pastoral history. The Sumerian language is of no help in identifying their origins because it appears to be unrelated to any other language in the world. It is an agglutinating language like Turkish, Hungarian, Finnish and Inuit (Eskimo); i.e., statements are constructed by adding prefixes and suffixes onto the core word. For more on the language of the Sumerians click here.

The Sumerians disappeared from history about 2000 B.C. as a result of military domination by various Semitic peoples. In particular, in about 2000 B.C. Sargon established an empire in Mesopotamia which included the area of Sumer. But long before Sargon's conquest Semitic peoples had been entering the area of Sumer.

The Sumerian civilization influenced other civilization, notably that of Babylon to the north. Egypt was also influenced by the Sumerians. Upper Egypt would have been influenced through the sea routes from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. Lower Egypt could have had contact with the Sumerians by that same route or by way of the overland route along the coast of the eastern Mediterranean. The civilization of the Indus River Valley (Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro) may also have been influenced. One prominent scholar, Samuel Noah Kramer, believes that the term Dilmun in Sumerian literature refers not to the Sumerian homeland but to the Indus civilization as the land of opportunity. However there is just as much chance that the Indus River Valley Civilization was the source of the civilization of Dilmun.

The Sumerian civilization became known to the modern world as a result of references to Sumer in writings found through the investigation of the ruins of Babylon and related cities. These Babylonian references were to a civilization that was ancient even in Babylonian times.

The story of Sumer is like the plot to a science fiction story. The modern world learns of its existence through references in an ancient literature to a still more ancient times. The Sumerian appeared at the dawn of history as a fully developed society with a technology and organization that was different and superior to the other societies of the time. And civilization itself seems to have stemmed from this alien and mysterious people. Communists proposed what they claimed was a new and progressive structure of society but what they seemed to be trying to create was basically the same sort of society that the Sumerians created with a priesthood controlling the society and its economy five thousand years ago.

The Babylonian Marriage Market

Class, Power and War among the Sumerians

In that part of the Middle East called the Fertile Crescent, hunter-gatherers began planting gardens. By 7000 BCE there was farming that required permanent settlement. By 4500 BCE those archaeologists call Ubaidians were living in towns near where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers emptied into the Persian Gulf. This was in Mesopotamia (Greek for "between two rivers"). The Ubaidians drained marshes. They grew wheat and barley and irrigated their crops by digging ditches to river waters. They kept farm animals. Some manufactured pottery. They did weaving, leather or metal work, and some were involved in trade with other societies.

Where there had been small hunter-gatherer societies getting food for themselves, the producers of food were now able to support many who worked at other occupations – such as the priesthood, pottery making, weaving, carpentry and smithing. There were also traders, and the Sumerians developed an extensive commerce by land and sea. They built seaworthy ships, and they imported from afar items made from the wood, stone, tin and copper not found nearby.

There was ownership of property. Some people were more wealthy than others, and political power was unevenly distributed. Sumerian society around 3000 BCE was not as sharing or as egalitarian as hunter-gatherer societies had been or were. The Sumerians appear "to have been the first people to commandeer the agricultural surplus grown by the community and create a privileged ruling class


Sumerian kings sent men out to plunder people in hill country, and they acquired slaves. The Sumerian name for a female slave was mountain girl, and a male slave was called mountain man. The Sumerians used their slaves mainly as domestics and concubines. And they justified their slavery as would others: they claimed that their gods had given them victory over an inferior people.
As Sumerian cities grew in population and expanded, the swamps that insulated city from city disappeared. Sumerians from opposing cities were unable or unwilling to resolve conflicts over territory and the availability of water, and wars between cities erupted – wars the Sumerians saw as between their gods. And the Sumerians made slaves of other Sumerians they had captured in war.

It was a new kind of warfare. In herding and hunter-gatherer societies – mobile societies – the entire community might enter the field of battle. In settled agricultural communities such as those of the Sumerians, the younger and stronger, maybe a fourth or fifth of a city's population went to war. The others remained at home, working at farming or other chores.
Wars with distant people were fueled by the greed and ambitions of kings. The Sumerians described this in a poetic tale of conflict between the king of Uruk and the distant town of Arrata. (Uruk has been described as Ereck in the Book of Genesis 10:10.) It was a story written by a Sumerian some five hundred years after the event, a tale of which only fragments remain. Here was reporting as it would be for more than 3,000 years, as it would be with Homer and his Iliad,the sacred writings of Hindus and with the Old Testament, with gods in command and not disapproving of war.
The rulers and perhaps peoples of various Sumerian cities wanted their city to have supreme power. And, around 2800 BCE, Kish had become the first of the cities to dominate the whole of Sumer. Then Kish's supremacy was challenged by the city of Lagash, which launched a bloody conquest against its Sumerian neighbors and extended its power beyond Sumerian lands. A bas-relief sculpture uncovered by archaeologists depicts a king of Lagash celebrating his victory over the city of Umma, the king's soldiers, with helmets, shields and pikes, standing shoulder to shoulder and line behind line over the corpses of their defeated enemy.

kings of sumer

1 When the kingship was lowered from heaven
the kingship was in Eridu(g).
(In) Eridu(g) A-lulim(ak) (became) king
and reigned 28,800 years;
5 Alalgar reigned 36,000 years.
2 kings
reigned its 64,800 years.
I drop (the topic) Eridu(g);
its kingship to Bad-tibira(k)
10 was carried.
(In) Bad-tibira(k) En-men-lu-Anna(k)
reigned 43,200 years;
En-men-gal-Anna(k)
reigned 28,800 years;
15 divine Dumu-zi(d), a shepherd, reigned 36,000 years.
3 kings
reigned its 108,000 years.
I drop (the topic) Bad-tibira(k);
its kingship to Larak was carried.
20 (In) Larak En-sipa(d)-zi(d)-Anna(k)
reigned its 28,800 years.
1 king
reigned its 28,800 years.
I drop (the topic) Larak;
25 its kingship to Sippar was carried.
(In) Sippar En-men-dur-Anna(k)
became king and reigned 21,000 years.
1 king
reigned its 21,000 years.
30 I drop (the topic) Sippar;
its kingship to Shuruppak was carried.
(In) Shuruppak Ubar-Tutu(k)
became king and reigned 18,600 years.
1 king
35 reigned its 18,600 years.
5 cities were they;
8 kings
reigned their 241,200 years.
The Flood swept thereover.
40 After the Flood had swept thereover,
when the kingship was lowered from heaven
the kingship was in Kish.

[end of the antediluvian section]

In Kish Ga … ur(?)
became king
45 and reigned 1,200 years;
.
.
.
Aka,
reigned 625 years.
.
.
.
Kish was smitten with weapons;
its kingship to E-Anna(k)
was carried.
In E-Anna(k)
Mes-kiag-gasher,
son of Utu, became high priest
and king and reigned 324 years.