An outline, era by era

Sumer

Uruk, Ur; cuneiform writing (~3200 BCE), the start of recorded history

Bronze Age · ~3300 – ~1200 BCE

Sumer was a land of independent city-states in southern Mesopotamia, in present-day southern Iraq, between the lower Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Cities such as Uruk, Ur, Eridu, Lagash, Kish and Nippur grew up on irrigated farmland from the fourth millennium BCE. Each city had its own patron god, temple and ruler, and the cities often fought one another over land and water.

Around 3300 to 3200 BCE, scribes at Uruk began keeping records on clay tablets. Over the following centuries this became cuneiform, the wedge-shaped script that is usually taken as the start of recorded history. The Sumerians also left some of the oldest known literature, law codes, schools and monumental temples, and their language was still copied by scribes long after it stopped being spoken.

Things happened, and the rest is history

  1. Uruk and the first cities

    Event

    What happened

    Through the fourth millennium BCE, farming villages on the irrigated plains of southern Mesopotamia grow into towns, and one of them, Uruk, grows into a city. By around 3200 BCE Uruk covers about 250 hectares, home to tens of thousands of people, and its centre is filled with huge temple buildings. Settlements built in the Uruk style, with the same pottery, seals and houses, appear far up the Euphrates, as at Habuba Kabira in Syria.

    The rest is history

    This 'Uruk expansion' ends around 3100 BCE, and the distant outposts are abandoned. In the south, though, city life lasts. By about 2900 BCE the land is shared among a dozen or so walled city-states, among them Uruk, Ur, Lagash, Umma, Kish and Nippur. Each has its own patron god, temple estates and ruler, and together they make up the Sumer of the Early Dynastic period, one of the earliest civilizations built on cities. They remain independent rivals for more than five hundred years.

    Sources

    1. BookAlgaze, Guillermo. Ancient Mesopotamia at the Dawn of Civilization: The Evolution of an Urban Landscape. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.Why cities first grew in southern Mesopotamia, and how large Uruk became.
    2. BookAlgaze, Guillermo. The Uruk World System: The Dynamics of Expansion of Early Mesopotamian Civilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.The Uruk-style settlements up the Euphrates and beyond.
    3. BookStrommenger, Eva. Habuba Kabira: Eine Stadt vor 5000 Jahren. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1980.The excavated Uruk-period town on the Syrian Euphrates.

  2. The Lagash-Umma border war

    Event

    What happened

    Between about 2500 and 2350 BCE the neighbouring city-states of Lagash and Umma fight over the Gu-edena, a fertile strip of land along their border. Mesilim, king of Kish, has a boundary stone set up between them, but the fighting goes on. Around 2450 BCE Eannatum of Lagash defeats Umma and raises the Stele of the Vultures, which shows his soldiers marching over the bodies of the enemy. His nephew Enmetena later records the whole quarrel on clay cones.

    The rest is history

    Around 2350 BCE Umma finally wins. Its king, Lugal-zage-si, sacks Lagash during the reign of Uruinimgina and makes himself king of Uruk. His inscriptions claim that the god Enlil gave him everything from the Lower Sea, along the Tigris and Euphrates, to the Upper Sea, making him one of the first rulers to claim lordship over all of Sumer. His rule is short. Sargon of Akkad defeats him, and the age of independent Sumerian city-states gives way to the Akkadian Empire.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryStele of the Vultures. Limestone victory stele of Eannatum of Lagash, c. 2450 BCE, from Girsu (Tello). Musée du Louvre, Paris.
    2. PrimaryInscription of Enmetena on clay foundation cones, recounting the border conflict between Lagash and Umma, c. 2400 BCE.
    3. BookCooper, Jerrold S. Reconstructing History from Ancient Inscriptions: The Lagash-Umma Border Conflict. Sources from the Ancient Near East 2, fasc. 1. Malibu: Undena Publications, 1983.Translations and discussion of every text about the conflict.

  3. Enmerkar and the invention of writing

    Heroic tale

    The legend

    Enmerkar, king of Uruk, sends message after message to the lord of the distant city of Aratta, demanding precious stone and metal for the temple of Inanna. One message is so long and difficult that his messenger cannot repeat it. So the king pats a lump of clay flat and sets the words down on it, and from that day words could be written on clay.

    The rest is history

    Writing did begin at Uruk. The oldest known tablets, from the Eanna temple precinct, date to around 3300 to 3100 BCE. But they were not letters. Almost all of them are accounts of grain, livestock, beer, textiles and workers, kept by temple administrators. Signs began as numbers and simple pictures pressed into clay, and only slowly, over several centuries, did the script become able to record full sentences, stories and letters. The poem itself was written down more than a thousand years after those first tablets.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryEnmerkar and the Lord of Aratta. Sumerian epic poem, known from Old Babylonian copies, c. 1800 BCE. Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL) 1.8.2.3, University of Oxford.The passage where Enmerkar writes the first message on clay comes near the end of the poem.
    2. BookVanstiphout, Herman. Epics of Sumerian Kings: The Matter of Aratta. Writings from the Ancient World 20. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003.Edition and English translation of the four Enmerkar and Lugalbanda poems.
    3. BookNissen, Hans J., Peter Damerow, and Robert K. Englund. Archaic Bookkeeping: Early Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.Shows that the earliest Uruk tablets were administrative records.

  4. Gilgamesh, the king who sought eternal life

    Heroic tale

    The legend

    Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, is two-thirds god and one-third man. He builds the great walls of Uruk, kills the monster Humbaba in the Cedar Forest with his friend Enkidu, and slays the Bull of Heaven. When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh travels to the ends of the earth looking for a way to escape death, fails, and comes home to Uruk.

    The rest is history

    Gilgamesh was very probably a real king of Uruk who ruled around 2700 BCE. The Sumerian King List names him, and a later chronicle of the Tummal shrine at Nippur says he built in Enlil's temple there, while his son Ur-lugal restored the Tummal itself. One Sumerian poem has him facing Aga, son of Enmebaragesi of Kish, and Enmebaragesi is the earliest king on the King List who is known from his own inscriptions. Uruk's city wall, around 9 km long, was real and dates to roughly the same period. Stories about Gilgamesh were first told as separate Sumerian poems and later joined into the Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest surviving works of literature.

    Sources

    1. BookGeorge, Andrew R. The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.Standard scholarly edition of the epic, with discussion of the historical Gilgamesh.
    2. PrimaryGilgamesh and Aga. Sumerian poem, Old Babylonian copies, c. 1800 BCE. ETCSL 1.8.1.1, University of Oxford.Uruk under siege by Aga of Kish, son of Enmebaragesi.
    3. PrimaryThe History of the Tummal. Sumerian chronicle, Old Babylonian copies. ETCSL 2.1.3, University of Oxford.Names Gilgamesh as builder of the Numunbura in Enlil's temple at Nippur, and his son Ur-lugal as restorer of the Tummal.

  5. The great flood and Ziusudra

    Myth

    The legend

    The gods decide to wipe out humankind with a flood. The god Enki warns one man, the pious king Ziusudra, through the wall of his reed house. Ziusudra builds a huge boat, and the flood rages for seven days and seven nights. When it ends he makes offerings to the gods, and they reward him with life like a god's in the land of Dilmun.

    The rest is history

    Southern Mesopotamia is flat, low land between two great rivers, and floods were a real and repeated danger. Excavations at Ur, Kish and Shuruppak found thick flood deposits. In 1929 Leonard Woolley announced he had found the flood of the Bible at Ur, but the layers at different cities date to different times, so they record local floods rather than one universal one. The flood story was retold in Akkadian, as Atrahasis and in the Epic of Gilgamesh, where the hero is called Utnapishtim. It is closely parallel to the story of Noah in the Book of Genesis.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryThe Flood Story (Eridu Genesis). Sumerian poem, a single damaged tablet from Nippur, Old Babylonian period, c. 1600 BCE. ETCSL 1.7.4, University of Oxford.
    2. BookLambert, W. G., and A. R. Millard. Atra-hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood. With The Sumerian Flood Story by M. Civil. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.Edition of the Akkadian flood epic, with Miguel Civil's edition of the Sumerian flood story.
    3. ArticleMallowan, M. E. L. "Noah's Flood Reconsidered." Iraq 26, no. 2 (1964): 62-82.Reviews the flood deposits at Ur, Kish and Shuruppak and why they do not match one single flood.

  6. Kingship descends from heaven

    Origin story

    The legend

    The Sumerian King List begins: when kingship was lowered from heaven, it was in Eridu. Its first king, Alulim, ruled for 28,800 years. Kingship then passes from city to city until the flood sweeps over the land. Afterwards kingship comes down from heaven again, this time at Kish, and the reigns slowly shrink to human lengths.

    The rest is history

    Eridu really is one of the oldest settlements in southern Mesopotamia. Excavations there in the 1940s found a long sequence of temples, one built on top of another, starting around 5000 BCE. The King List itself is far later, with the oldest copies dating to around 2100 BCE and most to around 1800 BCE. It presents the history of Sumer as a single line of kingship passing from one city to the next, although in reality many cities had rulers at the same time. It was a piece of political history, written partly to show that the kings of its own day had inherited a sacred, unbroken office.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryThe Sumerian King List. Old Babylonian copies, c. 1800 BCE. ETCSL 2.1.1, University of Oxford.
    2. PrimaryWeld-Blundell Prism (W-B 444). Clay prism inscribed with the Sumerian King List, c. 1800 BCE. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.The best preserved single copy of the King List.
    3. BookJacobsen, Thorkild. The Sumerian King List. Assyriological Studies 11. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939.Classic study of how the list was compiled and why it puts rulers who reigned at the same time one after another.

  7. Inanna brings the gifts of civilization to Uruk

    Myth

    The legend

    The goddess Inanna sails to Eridu to visit Enki, god of wisdom. At a feast, Enki drinks too much beer and hands her the me, the divine powers behind everything civilized, from kingship and priesthood to music, crafts and writing. Inanna loads them on her Boat of Heaven and escapes to Uruk, while a sober Enki sends monsters after her in vain.

    The rest is history

    The myth reflects a real shift in power from Eridu, the ancient holy city, to Uruk. By about 3300 BCE Uruk had become the largest city in the world, and its centre was the temple precinct of Inanna, the Eanna. The Eanna was the site of huge monumental buildings, and it is where the oldest writing tablets were found. The story celebrates Uruk and its goddess as the new heart of Sumerian civilization, while still honouring Eridu and Enki as the older source of wisdom.

    Sources

    1. PrimaryInana and Enki. Sumerian myth, Old Babylonian copies, c. 1800 BCE. ETCSL 1.3.1, University of Oxford.
    2. BookFarber-Flügge, Gertrud. Der Mythos "Inanna und Enki" unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Liste der me. Studia Pohl 10. Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1973.Scholarly edition of the myth and its list of the me (in German).
    3. BookWolkstein, Diane, and Samuel Noah Kramer. Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer. New York: Harper & Row, 1983.Readable English retelling of the Inanna myths, including this one.

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