Who were the Sumerians? The first time I heard about them was from my father, a lover of history and the mysteries it hides.
Since then, I have been fascinated by them and I cannot believe why they are not studied more in school or why there are still people who do not know about them. I hope this article will help you to know and understand this ancient civilization.
The Sumerians
Middle East has given the history of humanity very interesting chapters. In part of the ancient Mesopotamia, between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, fertile land, the Sumerian civilization was born, which is considered the oldest in the world.
It is not known for certain where its inhabitants came from., there are more or less convincing theories based on the study of skulls or sculptural art. In fact, even the name with which we call them, Sumerians, is actually the one used by their neighbors and later successors, the Akkadian Semites. They called themselves sag-giga, the blackhead village.
Where the Sumerians came from is still unknown, perhaps from India, and that adds a greater degree of mystery to the matter, although it is accepted today that The Sumerian civilization begins in the so-called Obeid period, which settled in the Uruk period.
Maybe the name Uruk sounds familiar to you? It appears in the Bible and is a super important historical moment in the history of humanity because it is then that the wheel appears, around the year 3500 BC and also writing, in 3300 BC, when we can already speak of the transition from prehistory to history proper.
Clay tablets with cuneiform writing, the Sumerian writing that resembles the marks left by wedges, tell us that The Sumerians arrived in these lands of the Middle East sometime during the Copper Age, around 3500 BC., now called the Uruk period, and later spread throughout Mesopotamia.
The culture of this period allowed the construction of primitive walled cities, but the reading of the tablets found, where chronological lists of kings were recorded, is quite confusing because the dates recorded there are unbelievable. There are kings who reigned for a thousand years, others for longer, the numbers are incredible, inhuman. Did the world exist back then? What are they talking about?
The truth is that impossible dates appear and archaeologists explain them by saying that the monarchs only wanted to trace their lineage in history, to make themselves look important. Could this have been the case? We don't know, I like to think that we don't know everything and that for that very reason one should be open to other interpretations. Archaeological discoveries and work with other disciplines are changing history.
There are different moments in the history of the Sumerian people. We have a first moment of Akkadian domination, around 2350 BC, when Sargon conquered all the Sumerian cities, an empire that was inherited by his successors until it fell apart due to internal strife and invasions of other peoples.
The barbarians were expelled by Utu-hengal, king of Uruk, around 2100 BC, but The rebirth of Sumeria would be achieved by the king of Ur, Ur-Nammu. The glory of Sumer would be, under his leadership, more powerful and more extensive in the territory. His children succeeded him successfully until in another turn of history another invading people, this time from Arabia, would bring it down.
During these periods is when City-states such as Lagash predominate, an iconic site in the history of Sumeria and later Babylon, Ur, Nippur… This thing about city-states is something important in the Sumerian civilization and, as we already know, it is repeated in human history. Think of Athens or Sparta.
Sumeria was divided into independent city-states, all shopping centers, with a temple dedicated to their patron and sometimes governed by a king or a patesi, administrator of the kingdom or representative of the gods, a mixture of priest and ruler.
The city-states were marked with boundary stones and defined by canals, They were temple cities, and the figure of the pathesi It was important because it served as an interlocutor between the god and the government. The temples were the famous pyramid-shaped structures, ziggurat, considered the place where the gods descended when they wanted to take part in the town's festivities.
The coexistence of these city-states was not always peaceful., and struggles for control of resources, water, trade routes and taxes, were the common currency for the clashes.
We said above that This period is very important because the wheel is invented and writing is developed. Well, Sumerian writing is not related to any known language family to date.. Another mystery. It does not resemble Akkadian, a Semitic language like many in the region, and although the Akkadians used Sumerian cuneiform writing, the language was not the same.
First there were pictorial hieroglyphics, iconic visual signs, which later gave way to cuneiform writing. The thousands of Sumerian texts that have come down to us did so in the form of clay tablets and there is a bit of everything: hymns, prayers, commercial information, letters, scientific texts, astronomy, medicine…
Fortunately, the Sumerian language, despite the fall of civilization, continued to be used as a liturgical language in legal and religious matters in Mesopotamia. Its reading remains complicated because even today there are characters that are difficult to understand.
For me, the most interesting thing about the Sumerian civilization is its religion. That's when I stop and ask myself a thousand questions. Religion is the favorite fertilizer of the Sumerian mystery. What do I mean?
Like all ancient peoples The Sumerians believed in many gods and that they They were the answer behind natural phenomenaWe can think that they were in a certain way animists because just as the sun and the moon were gods, so were the reeds, for example.
The gods were the great providers, the doables of his world, because they told them how to build, write or think. The degree of development of the Sumerian civilization had to do with the help of the gods, controllers of absolutely everything.
And here's the interesting part: Sumerian mythology is very similar to some stories in the BibleThat is why I say that every Christian should know more about his own religion, only then can he understand the world.
For example, for the Sumerians, the gods created humans from clay to serve them. When the gods became angry or frustrated, they would move the earth, here it would rain, there it would be an earthquake, and the gods would create and destroy. to tasteDoesn't this sound like Genesis to you?
Divine names like Nammu, Enki, Enlil, Utu, Inanna or An are the names of the Sumerian gods. And then, The creation myth also resembles that of the Bible or rather, that the Bilia is very similar to the Sumerian: the division of the saguas, the earth and the seas, the sky...
It can be agreed that The Sumerians were the source of many stories and creation myths and tales that were later adopted by other peoples. The story of the Great Flood starring Utnapishtin, for example, is clearly the one we know with Noah at the head, the creation of Eve from Adam's rib and many others.
But there are others even more curious, such as the appearance in art of something that resembles the DNA, the stories of The Anunnaki, giant gods from another planet, the very design of the solar system without the aid of modern telescopes…
As a child, I always liked Egyptian civilization, but let me tell you that when I learned a little about the Sumerian civilization, I was completely blown away. I encourage you to investigate and continue reading.
Finally, just a few facts: The Sumerians invented the clock with 60 seconds, 60 minutes and 12 hours, the 12-month calendar, legal systems, prisons, judicial courts, domesticated and raised animals on a large scale, They were astronomers and with their writing they ensured for the first time the transmission in time and space of the most valuable thing that human beings have: knowledge.