Sumerian village according to plan river channels vegetation. Sumerians: the most mysterious people in world history. The poor man borrows and makes trouble for himself

05.11.2022

The country of Sumer gets its name from the people who settled around 3000 BC. in the lower reaches of the Euphrates River, near its confluence with the Persian Gulf. The Euphrates here is divided into numerous channels - branches, which either merge or diverge again. The banks of the river are low, so the Euphrates often changes its path to the sea. At the same time, the old riverbed gradually turns into a swamp. The clayey hills located at a distance from the river are severely scorched by the sun. The heat, heavy fumes from the swamps, and clouds of midges forced people to stay away from these places. The lower reaches of the Euphrates have long attracted the attention of farmers and pastoralists of Western Asia.

Small villages were located quite far away from water, since the Euphrates floods very violently and unexpectedly in the summer, and floods have always been very dangerous here. People tried not to enter the endless reed thickets, although very fertile lands were hidden underneath them. They were formed from silt that settled during floods. But in those days, people were still unable to cultivate these lands. They knew how to harvest crops only from small open areas, whose size resembled vegetable gardens rather than fields.

Everything changed when new, energetic owners appeared in the country of rivers and swamps - the Sumerians. In addition to fertile, but not yet developed lands, the new homeland of the Sumerians could boast a large amount of clay and reeds. There were no tall trees, no stone suitable for construction, no ores from which metals could be smelted. The Sumerians learned to build houses from clay bricks; the roofs of these houses were covered with reeds. Such a house had to be repaired every year, smearing the walls with clay so that it would not fall apart. Abandoned houses gradually turned into shapeless hills, as the bricks were made of unfired clay. The Sumerians often abandoned their homes when the Euphrates changed its course, and the settlement found itself far from the coast. There was a lot of clay everywhere, and within a couple of years the Sumerians managed to build a new village on the banks of the river that fed them. For fishing and river travel, the Sumerians used small round boats woven from reeds, coating them on the outside with resin.

Possessing fertile lands, the Sumerians eventually realized what high yields could be obtained if the swamps were drained and water was piped to dry areas. The flora of Mesopotamia is not rich, but the Sumerians acclimatized cereals, barley and wheat. Irrigation of fields in Mesopotamia was a difficult task. When too much water flowed through the canals, it seeped underground and connected with underground groundwater, which is salty in Mesopotamia. As a result, salt and water were again carried to the surface of the fields, and they quickly deteriorated; wheat did not grow on such lands at all, and rye and barley yielded low yields. The Sumerians did not immediately learn to determine how much water was needed to properly water the fields: excess or lack of moisture was equally bad. Therefore, the task of the first communities formed in the southern part of Mesopotamia was to establish an entire network of artificial irrigation. F. Engels wrote: “The first condition for agriculture here is artificial irrigation, and this is the business of either communities, or provinces, or the central government.”

The organization of large irrigation works, the development of ancient barter trade with neighboring countries and constant wars required the centralization of government administration.

Documents from the time of the existence of the Sumerian and Akkadian states mention a wide variety of irrigation works, such as regulating the overflow of rivers and canals, correcting damage caused by floods, strengthening banks, filling reservoirs, regulating the irrigation of fields and various earthworks associated with irrigating fields. Remains of ancient canals from the Sumerian era have been preserved to this day in some areas of southern Mesopotamia, for example, in the area of ancient Umma (modern Jokha). Judging by the inscriptions, these canals were so large that large boats, even ships loaded with grain, could navigate them. All these major works were organized by the state authorities.

Already in the fourth millennium BC. e. Ancient cities appeared on the territory of Sumer and Akkad, which were the economic, political and cultural centers of individual small states. In the southernmost part of the country was the city of Eridu, located on the shores of the Persian Gulf. The city of Ur was of great political importance, which, judging by the results of recent excavations, was the center of a strong state. The religious and cultural center of all of Sumer was the city of Nippur with its common Sumerian sanctuary, the temple of the god Enlil. Among other cities of Sumer, Lagash (Shirpurla), which waged a constant struggle with the neighboring Umma, and the city of Uruk, where, according to legend, the ancient Sumerian hero Gilgamesh once ruled, were of great political importance.

A variety of luxurious objects found in the ruins of Ur indicate a significant increase in technology, mainly metallurgy, at the beginning of the third millennium BC. e. During this era, they already knew how to make bronze by alloying copper with tin, learned to use meteorite iron, and achieved remarkable results in jewelry.

Periodic floods of the Tigris and Euphrates, caused by melting snow in the mountains of Armenia, had a certain significance for the development of agriculture based on artificial irrigation. Sumer, located in the south of Mesopotamia, and Akkad, which occupied the middle part of the country, were somewhat different from each other in climatic terms. In Sumer, winter was relatively mild, and the date palm could grow wild here. In terms of climatic conditions, Akkad is closer to Assyria, where snow falls in winter and the date palm does not grow wild.

The natural wealth of Southern and Central Mesopotamia is not great. The fatty and viscous clay of alluvial soil was an excellent raw material in the hands of the primitive potter. By mixing clay with asphalt, the inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia made a special durable material, which replaced them with stone, rarely found in the southern part of Mesopotamia.

The flora of Mesopotamia is also not rich. The ancient population of this country acclimatized cereals, barley and wheat. The date palm and reed, which grew wild in the southern part of Mesopotamia, were of great importance in the economic life of the country. Obviously, the local plants included sesame (sesame), which was used for making oil, as well as tamarisk, from which sweet resin was extracted. The oldest inscriptions and images indicate that the inhabitants of Mesopotamia knew various breeds of wild and domestic animals. In the eastern mountains there were sheep (mouflons) and goats, and in the swampy thickets of the south there were wild pigs, which were tamed already in ancient times. The rivers were rich in fish and poultry. Various types of poultry were known in both Sumer and Akkad.

The natural conditions of Southern and Central Mesopotamia were favorable for the development of cattle breeding and agriculture, requiring the organization of economic life and the use of significant labor for a long time.

The Afro-Asian drought forced the fathers of the Sumerian civilization to move to the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and transform the swampy lowlands into the fertile land of the Middle Mesopotamia. The test that the fathers of the Sumerian civilization went through was preserved by the Sumerian legend. The slaying of the dragon Tiamat by the god Marduk and the creation of the world from his remains is an allegorical rethinking of the conquest of the primeval desert and the creation of the land of Shinar. The story of the Flood symbolizes the rebellion of Nature, rebelling against human intervention. The swamps formed in the territory of Lower Iraq between Amara on the Tigris, Nasiriyah on the Euphrates and Basra on the Shatt al-Arab have remained untouched from their origin to the present time, for not a single society has appeared on the historical stage that would like to and was able to master them. The swamp people who often visited these places passively adapted to them, but they never had sufficient potency to repeat the feat of the fathers of the Sumerian civilization, who lived in their immediate neighborhood some five or six thousand years ago. They didn't even try to transform the swamps into a network of canals and fields.

The monuments of the Sumerian civilization keep silent but precise evidence of those dynamic acts that, if we turn to Sumerian mythology, were performed by the god Marduk, who killed Tiamat.

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“Success Channel” - How to solve the unsolvable. Ratings are given based on several parameters. A 35-minute interview between a recruiter and a real candidate for a real vacancy. In the final, the recruiter and experts give their verdict on whether the candidate is suitable for the position. Personnel decide. Channel propagation. New TV channel programs in 2011.

“Rivers 6th grade” - Where rivers look like leopards and jump from white peaks. Rivers - the main part of the land waters are lowland mountainous. Waters sushi Lesson of generalization and repetition 6th grade. L.N. Tolstoy. The fog lies on the steep slopes, motionless and deep. M.Yu. Lermontov. R. Gamzatov The Don waddles along in a peaceful, quiet flood. M.A. Sholokhov The river stretches out, flows, lazily sad And washes the banks.

“Grade 6 Geography of Rivers” - Rivers. Rivers in the works of poets. Amazon with Marañon (Southern parts of the river. Ob with Irtysh (Asia) 5451 km 6. Yellow River (Asia) 4845 km 7. Missouri (Northern Yangtze (Asia) 5800 km. The largest rivers in the world. Volga (Europe) 3531 km. Nile with Kagera (Africa) 6671 km "Oh, Volga!.. Mississippi with Missouri (North America) 6420 km America) 4740 km 8. Mekong (Asia) 4500 km 9. Amur with Argun (Asia) 4440 km . 10.

“River in Kazakhstan” - The ancient name is Ya?ik (from the Kazakh Aral Sea. The ecological situation in the Ural basin continues to remain tense. There are several reasons for such concern. 2003. Before the start of shallowing, the Aral Sea was the fourth largest lake in the world. By territory In Kazakhstan, the lakes are unevenly distributed.

Mysterious language

The Mesopotamian valley has long been inhabited by tribes of Semitic herders. It was they who were driven north by the Sumerian aliens. The Sumerians themselves were not related to the Semites; moreover, their origins are still unclear to this day. Neither the ancestral home of the Sumerians nor the linguistic family to which their language belonged is known.

Luckily for us, the Sumerians left many written monuments. From them we learn that neighboring tribes called these people “Sumerians”, and they themselves called themselves “Sang-ngiga” - “black-headed”. They called their language a “noble language” and considered it the only one suitable for people (in contrast to the not so “noble” Semitic languages spoken by their neighbors).
But the Sumerian language was not homogeneous. It had special dialects for women and men, fishermen and shepherds. What the Sumerian language sounded like is unknown to this day. A large number of homonyms suggests that this language was a tonal language (like, for example, modern Chinese), which means that the meaning of what was said often depended on intonation.
After the decline of the Sumerian civilization, the Sumerian language was studied for a long time in Mesopotamia, since most religious and literary texts were written in it.

The ancestral home of the Sumerians

One of the main mysteries remains the ancestral home of the Sumerians. Scientists build hypotheses based on archaeological data and information obtained from written sources.

This Asian country, unknown to us, was supposed to be located on the sea. The fact is that the Sumerians came to Mesopotamia along river beds, and their first settlements appeared in the south of the valley, in the deltas of the Tigris and Euphrates. At first there were very few Sumerians in Mesopotamia - and this is not surprising, because the ships can only accommodate so many settlers. Apparently, they were good sailors, since they were able to climb up unfamiliar rivers and find a suitable place to land on the shore.

In addition, scientists believe that the Sumerians come from mountainous areas. It’s not for nothing that in their language the words “country” and “mountain” are spelled the same. And the Sumerian temples “ziggurats” resemble mountains in appearance - they are stepped structures with a wide base and a narrow pyramidal top, where the sanctuary was located.

Another important condition is that this country had to have developed technologies. The Sumerians were one of the most advanced peoples of their time; they were the first in the entire Middle East to use the wheel, create an irrigation system, and invent a unique writing system.
According to one version, this legendary ancestral home was located in the south of India.

Flood survivors

But all this abundance had a downside. When the snow began to melt in the mountains, the Tigris and Euphrates carried streams of water into the valley. Unlike the Nile floods, the Tigris and Euphrates floods could not be predicted; they were not regular.

Heavy floods turned into a real disaster; they destroyed everything in their path: cities and villages, fields, animals and people. It was probably when they first encountered this disaster that the Sumerians created the legend of Ziusudra.
At a meeting of all the gods, a terrible decision was made - to destroy all of humanity. Only one god, Enki, took pity on the people. He appeared in a dream to King Ziusudra and ordered him to build a huge ship. Ziusudra fulfilled the will of God; he loaded his property, family and relatives, various craftsmen to preserve knowledge and technology, livestock, animals and birds onto the ship. The doors of the ship were tarred on the outside.

The next morning a terrible flood began, which even the gods were afraid of. The rain and wind raged for six days and seven nights. Finally, when the water began to recede, Ziusudra left the ship and made sacrifices to the gods. Then, as a reward for his loyalty, the gods granted Ziusudra and his wife immortality.

This legend not only resembles the legend of Noah's Ark; most likely, the biblical story is borrowed from Sumerian culture. After all, the first poems about the flood that have reached us date back to the 18th century BC.

King-priests, king-builders

Each city-state was ruled by three kings. The first and most important was called “en”. This was the king-priest (however, the enom could also be a woman). The main task of the king was to conduct religious ceremonies: solemn processions and sacrifices. In addition, he was in charge of all temple property, and sometimes the property of the entire community.

An important area of life in ancient Mesopotamia was construction. The Sumerians are credited with the invention of baked brick. City walls, temples, and barns were built from this more durable material. The construction of these structures was supervised by the priest-builder ensi. In addition, the ensi monitored the irrigation system, because canals, locks and dams made it possible to at least somewhat control irregular spills.

During the war, the Sumerians elected another leader - a military leader - lugal. The most famous military leader was Gilgamesh, whose exploits are immortalized in one of the most ancient literary works, the Epic of Gilgamesh. In this story, the great hero challenges the gods, defeats monsters, brings a precious cedar tree to his hometown of Uruk, and even descends into the afterlife.

Sumerian gods

Important gods for the Sumerians were the sun (Utu) and the moon (Nannar), which replaced each other in the sky. And, of course, one of the most important figures of the Sumerian pantheon was the goddess Inanna, whom the Assyrians, who borrowed the religious system from the Sumerians, would call Ishtar, and the Phoenicians - Astarte.

Inanna was the goddess of love and fertility and, at the same time, the goddess of war. She personified, first of all, carnal love and passion. It is not for nothing that in many Sumerian cities there was a custom of “divine marriage”, when kings, in order to ensure fertility for their lands, livestock and people, spent the night with the high priestess Inanna, who embodied the goddess herself.

Like many ancient gods, Inannu was capricious and fickle. She often fell in love with mortal heroes, and woe to those who rejected the goddess!
The Sumerians believed that the gods created people by mixing their blood with clay. After death, souls fell into the afterlife, where there was also nothing but clay and dust, which the dead ate. To make the life of their deceased ancestors a little better, the Sumerians sacrificed food and drink to them.

Cuneiform

Sumerian civilization reached amazing heights, even after being conquered by its northern neighbors, the culture, language and religion of the Sumerians were borrowed first by Akkad, then by Babylonia and Assyria.
The Sumerians are credited with inventing the wheel, bricks, and even beer (although they most likely made barley drink using a different technology). But the main achievement of the Sumerians was, of course, a unique writing system - cuneiform.
Cuneiform got its name from the shape of the marks that a reed stick left on wet clay, the most common writing material.

Sumerian writing came from a system of counting various goods. For example, when a man counted his flock, he made a clay ball to represent each sheep, then put these balls in a box, and left marks on the box indicating the number of these balls. But all the sheep in the herd are different: different sexes, different ages. Marks appeared on the balls according to the animal they represented. And finally, the sheep began to be designated by a picture - a pictogram. Drawing with a reed stick was not very convenient, and the pictogram turned into a schematic image consisting of vertical, horizontal and diagonal wedges. And the last step - this ideogram began to denote not only a sheep (in Sumerian “udu”), but also the syllable “udu” as part of compound words.

At first, cuneiform was used to compile business documents. Extensive archives have come down to us from the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia. But later, the Sumerians began to write down artistic texts, and even entire libraries appeared from clay tablets, which were not afraid of fires - after all, after firing, the clay only became stronger. It was thanks to the fires in which the Sumerian cities, captured by the warlike Akkadians, perished, that unique information about this ancient civilization has reached us.

Ancient Mesopotamia

Lesson Plan

1. Country of two rivers .

2. Cities made of clay bricks .

3. Towers from earth to sky .

4. Writings on clay tablets .

Dunaeva L.N.

Starogolskaya Secondary School

Novoderevenkovsky district

Oryol region

It lies between two large rivers - Euphrates And Tiger.

Hence its name - Mesopotamia or Mesopotamia.

1. Country of two rivers.

A detachment of foreign warriors approached a large deep river. This was the Euphrates. The strangers looked at the running water, waved their hands in surprise and shouted: “It can’t be! But this is a river flowing in reverse!”

Guess what nation the foreigners belonged to.

Why did they call the Euphrates "the great inverted river"?

What was the name of the king who led the army to the banks of the Euphrates?

The answer is on the first flyleaf of the textbook

1. Country of two rivers.

Fill out the table based on working with the text of the textbook (clause 1, 2 § 13)

Comparison lines

Mesopotamia

Natural conditions

Mesopotamia

Natural conditions

Infrequent rains, irregular and violent floods of the Tigris and Euphrates; the hot sun, turning the earth into a desert; marshy areas; lack of forests

Egypt

Organization of irrigation system

Egypt

Organization of irrigation system

Construction of canals, reservoirs, embankments, dams and dams; use of water-lifting machines and pumps

Lack of rain; the hot sun, turning the earth into a desert; regular floods of the Nile, bringing fertile silt; fertile lands suitable for farming, located along the river

Construction of canals, use of shadufs to raise water

Describe the pattern of our time (p. 66)

according to plan

"Sumerian Village"

1) river, canals, vegetation; 2) huts and cattle pens; 3) main activities; 4) wheeled cart.

3. Towers from earth to sky.

Above the squat city buildings rose a stepped tower, the ledges of which rose to the sky. This is what the temple of the city's patron god looked like .

The mighty mountains are full of your radiance, your light fills all countries. You are mighty above the mountains, you contemplate the earth, you soar at the ends of the earth, among the sky. You rule over the inhabitants of the entire universe... You crush the horn of the one who plots evil; you imprison an unjust judge, you execute the one who takes bribes; to the one who does not take bribes and cares for the oppressed, Shamash is merciful, and his days are prolonged... O Shamash, a traveler full of fear, a wandering merchant, a young man, comes running to you merchant, bearer of a purse of gold. O Shamash, a fisherman with a net, a hunter, a butcher, a cattle driver prays to you

Shamash - Sun God

Syn - god of the moon .

Ea - god of water Ishtar - goddess of fertility and love

2. Cities made of clay bricks.

1. I was born on an unlucky day!

2. Throw you into water - the water will go rotten. Let you into the garden - all the fruits will rot.

3. Friendship lasts a day, kinship lasts forever.

4. If a country is poorly armed, the enemy will always be at the gates.

5. You go to conquer the enemy’s land, the enemy comes and conquers your land.

6. The poor man borrows - he makes trouble for himself!

7. A well-dressed person is always welcome.

8. He hasn’t caught the fox yet, and he’s already making a block for her.

9. I dodged a wild bull and ran into a wild cow.

Let's get acquainted with the documents on p. 69-70.

Find sentences in the text of the document that would serve as captions for the illustrations.

Why did the flood myth arise in Mesopotamia?

4. Writings on clay tablets

Cuneiform - This is a special letter from Mesopotamia.

INSCRIPTION

ON GLINYANAYA

PLATE,

DONE

STUDENT

IN SUMERIAN

SCHOOL

In the house of signs, the overseer reprimanded me: “Why are you late?” I was scared, my heart was beating wildly.

Approaching the teacher, I bowed to the ground. The father of the house of signs asked for my sign. He was dissatisfied with it and hit me.

Then I struggled with the lesson, struggled with the lesson.

When the teacher checked the order in the house of tablets,

The man with the reed stick reprimanded me:

“You have to be careful on the street: you can’t tear your clothes!”

And he hit me. Father of the House of Plaques

placed a sign with writing on it in front of me; The class supervisor ordered us: “Rewrite!” I took my tablet in my hands and wrote on it, but there was also something on the tablet that I did not understand, that I could not read. Then the warden reprimanded me: “Why were you talking without permission?”

And hit me; The caretaker said:

“Why did you bow without permission?” - and hit me;

The person keeping order said: “Why did you stand up without permission?” - and hit me; The gatekeeper said, “Why did you leave without permission?”

And hit me; The man with the stick said:

“Why did you extend your hand without permission?” - and hit me... I was disgusted with the fate of the scribe, I hated the fate of the scribe.

Think about whether the relationship between the teacher and students in the scribe school was similar to the relationship between father and sons?

4. Letters on

clay tablets

Describe the picture of our time according to plan

"School in Mesopotamia"

students;

2) teacher;

3) worker kneading clay

Consolidation of knowledge and methods of action

Perform testing (option 1, 2).
Work on cards 1, 2.

Why did rich people in Southern Mesopotamia indicate in their wills, among other property, a wooden stool and a door?

Information

about home

task

Study § 23. Answer questions 1-4 orally.
Write a letter to your friend from this country and share your impressions.
You can send a photo (drawing) about Mesopotamia.
Complete tasks 46, 48, 56 in the workbook

In the south of modern Iraq, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a mysterious people, the Sumerians, settled almost 7,000 years ago. They made a significant contribution to the development of human civilization, but we still do not know where the Sumerians came from or what language they spoke. Mysterious language The Mesopotamian valley has long been inhabited by tribes of Semitic herders. It was they who were driven north by the Sumerian aliens. The Sumerians themselves were not related to the Semites; moreover, their origins are still unclear to this day. Neither the ancestral home of the Sumerians nor the linguistic family to which their language belonged is known. Luckily for us, the Sumerians left many written monuments. From them we learn that neighboring tribes called these people “Sumerians”, and they themselves called themselves “Sang-ngiga” - “black-headed”. They called their language a “noble language” and considered it the only one suitable for people (in contrast to the not so “noble” Semitic languages spoken by their neighbors). But the Sumerian language was not homogeneous. It had special dialects for women and men, fishermen and shepherds. What the Sumerian language sounded like is unknown to this day.

A large number of homonyms suggests that this language was a tonal language (like, for example, modern Chinese), which means that the meaning of what was said often depended on intonation. After the decline of the Sumerian civilization, the Sumerian language was studied for a long time in Mesopotamia, since most religious and literary texts were written in it.

The ancestral home of the Sumerians

One of the main mysteries remains the ancestral home of the Sumerians. Scientists build hypotheses based on archaeological data and information obtained from written sources. This Asian country, unknown to us, was supposed to be located on the sea. The fact is that the Sumerians came to Mesopotamia along river beds, and their first settlements appeared in the south of the valley, in the deltas of the Tigris and Euphrates. At first there were very few Sumerians in Mesopotamia - and this is not surprising, because the ships can only accommodate so many settlers. Apparently, they were good sailors, since they were able to climb up unfamiliar rivers and find a suitable place to land on the shore. In addition, scientists believe that the Sumerians come from mountainous areas. It’s not for nothing that in their language the words “country” and “mountain” are spelled the same. And the Sumerian temples “ziggurats” resemble mountains in appearance - they are stepped structures with a wide base and a narrow pyramidal top, where the sanctuary was located. Another important condition is that this country had to have developed technologies. The Sumerians were one of the most advanced peoples of their time; they were the first in the entire Middle East to use the wheel, create an irrigation system, and invent a unique writing system. According to one version, this legendary ancestral home was located in the south of India.

Flood survivors

It was not for nothing that the Sumerians chose the Mesopotamia Valley as their new homeland. The Tigris and Euphrates originate in the Armenian Highlands, and carry fertile silt and mineral salts to the valley. Because of this, the soil in Mesopotamia is extremely fertile, with fruit trees, grains and vegetables growing in abundance. In addition, there were fish in the rivers, wild animals flocked to watering holes, and in the flooded meadows there was plenty of food for livestock. But all this abundance had a downside. When the snow began to melt in the mountains, the Tigris and Euphrates carried streams of water into the valley. Unlike the Nile floods, the Tigris and Euphrates floods could not be predicted; they were not regular. Heavy floods turned into a real disaster; they destroyed everything in their path: cities and villages, fields, animals and people. It was probably when they first encountered this disaster that the Sumerians created the legend of Ziusudra. At a meeting of all the gods, a terrible decision was made - to destroy all of humanity. Only one god, Enki, took pity on the people. He appeared in a dream to King Ziusudra and ordered him to build a huge ship. Ziusudra fulfilled the will of God; he loaded his property, family and relatives, various craftsmen to preserve knowledge and technology, livestock, animals and birds onto the ship. The doors of the ship were tarred on the outside. The next morning a terrible flood began, which even the gods were afraid of. The rain and wind raged for six days and seven nights. Finally, when the water began to recede, Ziusudra left the ship and made sacrifices to the gods. Then, as a reward for his loyalty, the gods granted Ziusudra and his wife immortality. This legend not only resembles the legend of Noah's Ark; most likely, the biblical story is borrowed from Sumerian culture. After all, the first poems about the flood that have reached us date back to the 18th century BC.

King-priests, king-builders

The Sumerian lands were never a single state. In essence, it was a collection of city-states, each with its own law, its own treasury, its own rulers, its own army. The only things they had in common were language, religion and culture. City-states could be at enmity with each other, could exchange goods or enter into military alliances. Each city-state was ruled by three kings. The first and most important was called “en”. This was the king-priest (however, the enom could also be a woman). The main task of the king was to conduct religious ceremonies: solemn processions and sacrifices. In addition, he was in charge of all temple property, and sometimes the property of the entire community. An important area of life in ancient Mesopotamia was construction. The Sumerians are credited with the invention of baked brick. City walls, temples, and barns were built from this more durable material. The construction of these structures was supervised by the priest-builder ensi. In addition, the ensi monitored the irrigation system, because canals, locks and dams made it possible to at least somewhat control irregular spills. During the war, the Sumerians elected another leader - a military leader - lugal. The most famous military leader was Gilgamesh, whose exploits are immortalized in one of the most ancient literary works, the Epic of Gilgamesh. In this story, the great hero challenges the gods, defeats monsters, brings a precious cedar tree to his hometown of Uruk, and even descends into the afterlife.

Sumerian Gods

Sumer had a developed religious system. Three gods were especially revered: the sky god Anu, the earth god Enlil and the water god Ensi. In addition, each city had its own patron god. Thus, Enlil was especially revered in the ancient city of Nippur. The people of Nippur believed that Enlil gave them such important inventions as the hoe and the plow, and also taught them how to build cities and build walls around them. Important gods for the Sumerians were the sun (Utu) and the moon (Nannar), which replaced each other in the sky. And, of course, one of the most important figures of the Sumerian pantheon was the goddess Inanna, whom the Assyrians, who borrowed the religious system from the Sumerians, would call Ishtar, and the Phoenicians - Astarte. Inanna was the goddess of love and fertility and, at the same time, the goddess of war. She personified, first of all, carnal love and passion. It is not for nothing that in many Sumerian cities there was a custom of “divine marriage”, when kings, in order to ensure fertility for their lands, livestock and people, spent the night with the high priestess Inanna, who embodied the goddess herself.

Like many ancient gods, Inannu was capricious and fickle. She often fell in love with mortal heroes, and woe to those who rejected the goddess! The Sumerians believed that the gods created people by mixing their blood with clay. After death, souls fell into the afterlife, where there was also nothing but clay and dust, which the dead ate. To make the life of their deceased ancestors a little better, the Sumerians sacrificed food and drink to them.

Cuneiform

Sumerian civilization reached amazing heights, even after being conquered by its northern neighbors, the culture, language and religion of the Sumerians were borrowed first by Akkad, then by Babylonia and Assyria. The Sumerians are credited with inventing the wheel, bricks, and even beer (although they most likely made barley drink using a different technology). But the main achievement of the Sumerians was, of course, a unique writing system - cuneiform. Cuneiform got its name from the shape of the marks that a reed stick left on wet clay, the most common writing material. Sumerian writing came from a system of counting various goods. For example, when a man counted his flock, he made a clay ball to represent each sheep, then put these balls in a box, and left marks on the box indicating the number of these balls.

But all the sheep in the herd are different: different sexes, different ages. Marks appeared on the balls according to the animal they represented. And finally, the sheep began to be designated by a picture - a pictogram. Drawing with a reed stick was not very convenient, and the pictogram turned into a schematic image consisting of vertical, horizontal and diagonal wedges. And the last step - this ideogram began to denote not only a sheep (in Sumerian “udu”), but also the syllable “udu” as part of compound words. At first, cuneiform was used to compile business documents. Extensive archives have come down to us from the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia. But later, the Sumerians began to write down artistic texts, and even entire libraries appeared from clay tablets, which were not afraid of fires - after all, after firing, the clay only became stronger. It was thanks to the fires in which the Sumerian cities, captured by the warlike Akkadians, perished, that unique information about this ancient civilization has reached us.