Sumerians were the first people to write. Using a sharp three-cornered stylus, they wrote on clay-small wedge-shapes called cuneiform. With writing, Sumerians turned the corner from prehistory to history! After at least two million years of humans telling stories, the Sumerians introduced literacy. Most civilizations passed down their heritage through orally recited traditions-stories were passed from one generation to another by word of mouth. The Sumerians were the first to write down their oral traditions. To make the historical record easier, the Sumerians invented calendars with exact dates of events and contracts often corroborated by astronomy. Since Sumerian farmers invented irrigation and created a surplus, other Sumerians could choose to specialize in law, education, architecture, engineering, marketing, and politics-all of which were accompanied by written records. Using the writings of the Sumerians and modern archaeology, this book will trace the story of the Sumerians, the world's first writers.

First Writers—The Sumerians

They Wrote On ClayBy Gary Arthur Thomson

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2011 Gary Arthur Thomson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-5984-3

Contents

Sumer Preface..................................................ixSumer Chronology...............................................xiSumer Map......................................................xiiiChapter 1. Writing Begins at Sumer.............................1Chapter 2. Writing on Bisitun Rock.............................7Chapter 3. First Farmers of Jarmo..............................13Chapter 4. Sumerians Settle The Floodplain.....................19Chapter 5. Eridu...............................................27Chapter 6. Ubaid...............................................33Chapter 7. Nippur..............................................39Chapter 8. Uruk................................................49Chapter 9. Ur..................................................59Chapter 10. Lagash.............................................67Chapter 11. Umma...............................................77Chapter 12. Shuruppak..........................................85Chapter 13. Dilmun.............................................89Chapter 14. Eshnunna...........................................93Sumerian Key Words.............................................101Cuneiform Lexicon..............................................121Bibliography...................................................131Index..........................................................149

Chapter One

Writing Begins at Sumer

Food-Gatherer Storytellers

For approximately 100,000 years, human clans roamed about gathering nuts, and berries to survive! They spent most of their time in search of food. These food-gatherers required 10 square kilometers to feed one person! Standing upright, they walked and ran. They ran fast and far in pursuit of small game. Around the evening campfire, storytellers entertained them. Their oral traditions were the most nuanced stories ever spoken and heard. We know this from the increased complexity of language as one moves back from English to Greek and Latin to Indo-European word roots. They were spellbound by the grammar of the aoristic present—a storyteller's art of moving from the past and making it become present to his listeners.

First Farmers

Scarcely 10,000 years ago, humans invented agriculture. The change was incredible! First farmers could feed 10 persons from one square kilometer. The archaeologist, Colin Renfrew, calls it an amazing ratio reversal—an agricultural revolution!

Sumerian Farming & Irrigation

5000 years ago, the Sumerians took further giant steps for humankind. Innovative Sumerian farmers ventured from their foothills gardens down onto the bottomlands of the valley between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. In spite of floods and heat, Sumerian farmers tenaciously tilled the rich floodplain. They noticed that lush grasses grew in the riverbeds where water lingered after the flood. The creative farmers planted seeds in the moist soil. Their horticultural experiments were eventually rewarded. One early farming technique was to hoe up a little terpen of soil in the midst of the remaining waters. The wading farmers would plant seeds in the drier soil on the terpen; this was an early prototype for French "raised bed" gardens. Then, another inventive miracle occurred; these Sumerian farmers got the bright idea of diverting river water around their raised seedbeds. The flat bottomland between the Tigris and Euphrates was spaded into a network of water channels around the seedbeds. There were major channels; there were middle-size channels; there were small field ditches. These practical horticulturalists were inventing irrigation. They were irrigating "the land between the rivers" with an intricate matrix of interconnecting ditches and watergates. Soon there was an agricultural surplus!

Sumerians Invent Writing

About the same time the Sumerians were inventing writing. The first writing was for practical purposes. The Sumerians wrote the first laws to regulate the use of watergates. They inscribed these irrigation regulations on clay tablets with a three-cornered stylus.

Once the process of flood control and irrigation was begun, the agricultural surplus meant that some people did not have to be farmers any more. Sumerian society was freed to move on to other forms of human cultural development. From the impetus of the agricultural network, the cooperative Sumerian cultural spirit grew like a mushroom. There were spinoffs of social capital at every juncture.

Cuneiform writing was initially invented to count livestock and grain, to record regulations and laws. Soon a judiciary was created to settle disputes. Marketing was invented to trade products. Schools were organized to teach scribes, judges, farmers, musicians, builders, managers and priests.

Goddesses and Gods, mythic stories and rituals patterned the cycles of the Sumerian social network. For 35,000 years, Paleolithic cave artists represented the Mother Goddess in paintings, sculpture, and reliefs in her mystical pregnant solitude. Now, Sumerian writers record the words of the previously silent Mother Goddess!

In the desert west of the Euphrates lived the Amurru. These Amorite desert nomads carried on tribal warfare. They invaded each other's camps stealing livestock. When these nomads came to the edge of the desert at the Euphrates, they looked incredulously at what was going on in the valley. Sometimes they attacked the Sumerian settlers. But more often, they marveled at Sumerian work in progress. The Sumerians worked like bees. Whether hoeing their fields or constructing their buildings, the Sumerians were workaholics! From the point of view of the desert tribesmen, the Sumerians had a compulsive and unrelenting need to work. They looked on in wonder at the productivity of the Sumerian economy. Cooperative human work and thought was a new thing.

A few centuries later some Amurru (Semites) decided to follow Sumerian patterns. Akkadians, Canaanites, Babylonians and Assyrians imitated the Sumerian model. They learned Sumerian agricultural technology. They traded in the Sumerian brokered market economy. They copied their monumental temple architecture and their planned urban housing. They emulated Sumerian aesthetic arts. They participated in Sumerian feasts and assimilated into the cycles of the Sumerian calendar. The Amurru enjoyed the convivial Sumerian love of good company.

Indeed, the totality of Sumerian social investment spread over all the Ancient Near East and extended to become the cultural base of Western civilization. The first Europeans to write were the Hittites who used the Sumerian cuneiform system to record their Indo-European language. Those who cite only Greece and Rome are ignorant of the genesis of civilization in ancient Iraq. Linguistics and archaeology of the twentieth century have enabled us to understand how the agricultural revolution in ancient Sumer became an urban revolution of human cooperation.

The fact that the Sumerians invented writing means that recorded "history begins at Sumer." Through what they wrote about themselves, we can actually know what the Sumerians were thinking when they were inventing their civilization between the rivers.

Chapter Two

Writing on Bisitun Rock

Archaeologists usually uncover buried civilizations. Under an unusual mound, archaeologists find a walled citadel....