When was sumer founded

Letters, receipts, hymns, prayers, and stories have all been found on clay tablets. Bill of Sale on a Clay Tablet.

This clay tablet shows a bill of sale for a male slave and building, circa BCE. Sumerians believed in anthropomorphic polytheism, or of many gods in human form, which were specific to each city-state. The core pantheon consisted of An heaven , Enki a healer and friend to humans , Enlil gave spells spirits must obey , Inanna love and war , Utu sun-god , and Sin moon-god. Sumerians invented or improved a wide range of technology, including the wheel, cuneiform script, arithmetic, geometry, irrigation, saws and other tools, sandals, chariots, harpoons, and beer.

Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Search for:. The Sumerians Learning Objective To understand the history and accomplishments of the Sumerian people.

Many Sumerian clay tablets have been found with writing. Initially, pictograms were used, followed by cuneiform and then ideograms. Sumerians believed in anthropomorphic polytheism, or of many gods in human form that were specific to each city-state.

Their homeland in Mesopotamia, called Sumer, emerged roughly 6, years ago along the floodplains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in present-day Iraq and Syria. The Sumerians learned to farm on a grand scale in the so-called Fertile Crescent, a thin, crescent-shaped sliver of Mesopotamia often tied to the dawn of farming, writing, mathematics and astronomy. And while the arid, ancient landscapes of the Middle East may not seem like the most likely location for an agricultural breakthrough, Sumer actually had a massive advantage.

By settling between two large rivers, the Sumerians benefited from rich floodplain soil and ample water to irrigate crops. Their success was accelerated by Sumerian technological innovations like canals and plows. With time, Sumer got so good at growing food that they started to have enough resources left over to focus on building the cities and temples.

Roughly 10, years ago, villages started popping up across Mesopotamia. The people who lived in the region raised animals and grew grains, even as they continued to hunt and gather. Over time, those villages expanded and their people became increasingly dependent on farming. However, similarities in pottery styles and stamp seals placed on a variety of containers suggests some level of administrative control emerged between 6, and 7, years ago.

Meanwhile, people started constructing a series of temples using mud bricks at a site called Eridu. The city seems to have been founded around B. Babylonians actually believed that Eridu was the oldest city on Earth, having been created by the gods themselves. That kind of reverence attracted modern researchers, too. Even before archaeologists discovered Eridu, they had read about its existence in ancient texts. The area around Eridu was excavated a handful of times between the midth century and the midth century, turning up the remains of a once-sprawling metropolis that saw successive buildings constructed on the remains of temples and other structures that had come before.

Those digs did confirm Eridu as a real and truly ancient metropolis. However, Eridu was just the beginning of Sumer. The civilization quickly grew to include dozens of cities, like Ur, Kish and Uruk. In time, Eridu would fade in influence and Uruk would take on an outsized role.

At its peak around BC, the city had a population between 40, and 80, people living between its six miles of defensive walls, making it a contender for the largest city in the world.

Each city-state of Sumer was surrounded by a wall, with villages settled just outside and distinguished by the worship of local deities. The Sumerian language is the oldest linguistic record. It first appeared in archaeological records around B. It was mostly replaced by Akkadian around B. Cuneiform, which is used in pictographic tablets, appeared as far back as B. Writing remains one of the most important cultural achievements of the Sumerians, allowing for meticulous record keeping from rulers down to farmers and ranchers.

The oldest written laws date back to B. The Sumerians were considered to have a rich body of literary works, though only fragments of these documents exist. Architecture on a grand scale is generally credited to have begun under the Sumerians, with religious structures dating back to B. Homes were made from mud bricks or bundled marsh reeds. The buildings are noted for their arched doorways and flat roofs. Sculpture was used mainly to adorn temples and offer some of the earliest examples of human artists seeking to achieve some form of naturalism in their figures.

Facing a scarcity of stone, Sumerians made leaps in metal-casting for their sculpture work, though relief carving in stone was a popular art form. Under the Akkadian dynasty, sculpture reached new heights, as evidenced by intricate and stylized work in diorite dated to B. Ziggurats began to appear around B. These impressive pyramid-like, stepped temples, which were either square or rectangular, featured no inner chambers and stood about feet high.

Ziggurats often featured sloping sides and terraces with gardens. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon was one of these. Palaces also reach a new level of grandiosity.

In Mari around B. Sumerians had a system of medicine that was based in magic and herbalism, but they were also familiar with processes of removing chemical parts from natural substances. They are considered to have had an advanced knowledge of anatomy, and surgical instruments have been found in archeological sites. One of the Sumerians greatest advances was in the area of hydraulic engineering.

Early in their history they created a system of ditches to control flooding, and were also the inventors of irrigation, harnessing the power of the Tigris and Euphrates for farming. Canals were consistently maintained from dynasty to dynasty.

Their skill at engineering and architecture both point to the sophistication of their understanding of math. The structure of modern time keeping, with sixty seconds in a minute and sixty minutes in an hour, is attributed to the Sumerians. Sumerians left behind scores of written records, but they are more renowned for their epic poetry, which influenced later works in Greece and Rome and sections of the Bible , most notably the story of the Great Flood, the Garden of Eden, and the Tower of Babel.

The very first ruling body of Sumer that has historical verification is the First Dynasty of Kish. The most famous of the early Sumerian rulers is Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, who took control around B. A devastating flood in the region was used as a pivotal point in the epic poem and later reused in the Old Testament story of Noah. Somewhere around B. The first conflict resulted in the kingdom of Awan seizing control and shifting the ruling body outside of Sumer until the kingship was returned to the Kish.

The Kish kept control briefly until the rise of Uruk King Enshakushanna, whose brief dynasty was followed by Adabian conqueror Lugalannemundu, who held power for 90 years and is said to have expanded his kingdom up to the Mediterranean. Lugalannemundu also conquered the Gutian people, who lived in the Eastern Iraqi mountains and who would later come to rule Sumer. In B. She is the only female listed on the Sumerian King List, which names all rulers of Sumer and their accomplishments.