The Sumerians, First Builders of History

For nearly 5 000 years the scorching sand of the Iraqi desert has lain undisturbed It has preserved the traces of the founders of the oldest known civilization the Sumerians Our world owes them everything The Sumerians invented writing and art They divided time into seconds and minutes They tamed nature and built colossal cities They nurtured culture and the arts Their caravans crossed the deserts charting the first trade routes Their stories inspired our foundational myths The Bible has preserved a part of their memory They wrote the story of a humanity still in its infancy Yet 4 000 years ago This brilliant civilization vanished For a long time their existence remained a mystery Today the desert sands finally reveal the secrets of this fascinating civilization to archaeologists A river flowed out to water the garden From there it spread out into four branches The name of the first is Pison The name of the second river is Guienne The name of the third is the Tigris which flows west of Syria The fourth river is the Euphrates Thus the eternal God took man And He placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to guard it Southern Iraq the silence blankets the sun-scorched dunes The thermometer reads nearly 50 degrees The climate of these lands has scarcely changed in millennia Yet it is here that humans once lived Between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf this region that the historian Polybius called Mesopotamia where land between two rivers watered by the Euphrates and the Tigris covered the territory of modern-day Iraq In the middle of the nineteenth century the ancient Near East was known only through what the Bible described French and British explorers were then competing in the race for discovery The findings were astonishing An unsuspected past emerged from the depths of the earth Thus Mesopotamia had been the cradle of a civilization What made these discoveries so exceptional And how can we explain the development of civilization in this part of the world What is exceptional about the discovery of the Syro-Mesopotamian civilization which has only come to light over the past century and a half is that we must fully recognize it What was exceptional was that we gradually realized it was an extremely diverse highly developed world and who in truth had already experienced many ways of life numerous social experiences in a world we did not know We used to think everything began with Greek civilization but then we realized something had come before and that this event had influenced the course of civilization during the classical era The history of Syro-Mesopotamian civilization corresponds to the geographical region of Syro-Mesopotamia at is the region drained by the two rivers the Tigris and the Euphrates But there's more to it—water isn't just for life it' s also for culture for people and for transportation And these areas where river valleys have become transportation corridors And in a country like Mesopotamia where there are agricultural productions but where there are fundamental shortages we lack wood we lack stone ere will be a shortage of metallic ores when bronze and copper are needed In a country like this the river will become the preferred transportation route between two domains of different yet complementary economies Our journey begins in the mountains of Armenia It is there that the Tigris and Euphrates originate Fed by the melting snows of the high plateaus their powerful currents rush down the steep slopes sweeping tons of silt from the mountains their courses wind parallel for over 2 000 kilometers before coming together to form Châtel-Arabe Lower down in the vast desert plains the waters calm down depositing sediments throughout their journey toward the Persian Gulf a fresh land a source of fertility Allied with humans the Euphrates and the Tigris can also prove merciless enemies In the spring devastating floods sweep everything in their path How were men able to settle on these lands subject to nature's whims Our investigation takes us to Baghdad the Iraqi capital on the banks of the Tigris In the narrow alleyways of the city the visitor is enveloped by the scents of the East The dense crowd swallows him up in a joyful uproar In the vibrant souk Iraqis showcase their millennia-old mastery of trade Here the traces of the legacy left by the Sumerians are everywhere On the stalls of merchants fruits and vegetables have remained unchanged for millennia In the gentle coolness of the shaded galleries the traveler finds the pomegranate from northern Iraq and the yogurt that the Mesopotamians greatly enjoyed At every street corner you'll find clay jars filled with drinkable water The dripping water on the jar's surface helps keep the liquid cool by evaporating A 5 000-year-old Sumerian invention But who were these Sumerians and where did they come from It is on the fertile plateaus of Anatolia thousands of kilometers away from Mesopotamia at archaeologists have solved part of the Sumerian mystery They found there the vital source that enabled population growth and the foundation of a civilization Einkorn This wild wheat grows naturally throughout eastern Turkey This exceptionally rich region a crossroads of major migrations has been inhabited since time immemorial The hunter-gatherer tribes found here all the essential foods needed for their survival Kurdish communities continue these traditions rooted in ancient times Every day the women prepare Sashi Ekmegi the family's staple flat wheat pancake In 1958 archaeologists uncovered the ruins of a 9 000-year-old village at Kayonu Three thousand five hundred years before Sumer people had already become settled on these fertile lands Although they don't yet produce ceramics the people of Kayonu are skilled builders They build homes with earthen walls resting on dry-stone foundations Nine thousand years ago the people of Kayonu made a discovery that would change the face of the world Around 15 000 years before Christ in these hilly regions along the Euphrates at its entry into Syria when this very particular situation arises causing the hills in these regions to become covered with this wild grass What will allow people to settle down is of course an extremely new factor When they discovered that this grass produced a seed that could be used which had the significant advantage of being preserved the preservation of food products has played a crucial role because it meant that instead of being forced to search for food three days after killing animal One could reasonably think they had several weeks or even months' worth of supplies ahead From that moment on circumstances change and when a man realizes he has this product he'll stay right beside it Of course this product is harvested only at a very specific time of year but it can't be transported Once it's gathered it must be preserved—it's a stock and that stock must be protected from others trying to take it Thus sedentarization occurs at a specific point in this region for a very particular reason at is the preservation of a food supply that can be harvested at a specific time And there of course the human mind will play a fundamental role One can speak of accidental discoveries I believe the human mind is constantly playing with observations on exceptional discoveries once twice repeatedly on a quest to explain this phenomenon up to the point where he can go beyond on his own and achieve something new And thus agriculture was born To master their environment the first farmers demonstrated remarkable ingenuity They modernized their tools improved their daily lives and passed on the invention of writing to humanity Cereals formed the primary wealth of the Sumerian civilization This alabaster vase over a meter tall bears witness to the Sumerians' reverence for nature He also conveys their religious fervor The sculptor depicted the plant and animal worlds in the form of wheat sheaves and flocks of sheep Humans carrying offerings move toward the sanctuary of Inanna goddess of the sky and earth There the high priest greets them in all his finest attire Thanks to this mastery of agriculture the population grew and the first groups began settling the lands along the rivers all the way to the great Mesopotamian plain Improving efficiency was the farmers' top concern This tablet shows a cart designed to conserve seed Thanks to a funnel the seeds were evenly and regularly poured into the furrows dug into the ground The secret of the Sumerians lies in their skill at taming unpredictable waters Five thousand years ago a delicate balance between humanity and nature began to take root on this earth To achieve this remarkable feat the Sumerians invented the wheel They dug hundreds of kilometers of drainage channels built reservoirs and constructed dams Irrigation became the cornerstone of their civilization By taming the unpredictable floods of the Tigris and Euphrates The Sumerians harnessed the power of an unforgiving nature As a reward for their efforts the lands fertilized across hundreds of thousands of hectares yielded miraculous harvests In some regions wheat millet and barley were harvested twice a year Along the irrigation canals vast oases stretching as far as the eye could see were made up of millions of palm trees A landscape reminiscent of the region where the Tigris and Euphrates merge their waters into a single river the Châtel-Arabe A thriving agricultural province blessed by the generosity of the Iraqi rivers Only small boats can navigate the heart of this labyrinth of towering reeds This is where the Sumerians had established their fishing village The lifestyle of the inhabitants and the method of building huts have remained unchanged as confirmed by the reliefs from that period The hut stands on a foundation stabilized by layers of woven earth and reeds The floor roof and walls are constructed from interwoven stalks Tight-fitting exceptionally durable boots support the load-bearing pillar and beam Five thousand years ago the marshes that stretched before the harbor of the city of Our ad a population of over 40 000 including fishermen and farmers A whole people once lived here conquering mile by mile an immense territory from fragile reed boats They said to each other "Come let's make bricks and bake them in the fire " And the brick served them as stone and the bitumen served them as mortar They said "Come let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top reaches the heavens " Before the ruins of the city of Our the first archaeologists were left speechless Before their eyes lay narrow alleys and plazas the remnants of houses granaries and temples Five thousand years before our era this urban complex housed 34 000 people At the same time in the West people were still living in the Stone Age By building these cities the Mesopotamians shaped the world in their own image The transformation of the world and environment by the inhabitants of Mesopotamia is a fundamental phenomenon They didn’t just create villages—they established agricultural zones Later during the era of cities they didn't just allow cities to grow—they shaped the region And the lifestyle they developed was one of dominating nature And that quite frankly is something astonishing that we don't always consider They transcended their nature to put it at the service of their survival Built to last using fired bricks coated in bitumen the Zigoura d'Our is impressive It is estimated that constructing just its foundation alone required the labor of 1 500 workers over a period of five years Twenty kilometers away the farmers could see the deity's residence their master's home The sketches of the ruins made in the early 20th century by English archaeologist Léonard Roulet allow us to envision the city of Our from 4 000 years ago This vast city lay in the midst of 4 000 hectares of cereal fields Its port received merchants from the Persian Gulf and exported goods thousands of kilometers away to the Arabian Peninsula All activity in the city revolved around the temple a place of worship where political and economic decisions were made Behind an 8-meter-high wall houses piled up into a chaotic disparate cluster In the narrow winding streets sewers were nonexistent Trash smoldered at the base of buildings or was simply scattered across the roadway Three-story buildings stood alongside single-story structures with no dwelling aligned directly next to another Besides the low doors and a few ventilation openings the facades had almost no other openings The residents of Our protected themselves from the heat and clouds of dust in this way Life within the walls of the Our housing project had long remained a mystery The site's inventor Léonard Roulet spent years exploring the ruins In 1926 he entered the death pit the tomb of Queen Puabi and fifty maidservants soldiers and servants sacrificed to serve her in the afterlife The faint glow of candles illuminated skeletons clad in gold and silver In the treasury the archaeologist discovered a piece of furniture—the banner of Our featuring finely crafted depictions of Sumerian daily life on both sides The figures of mother-of-pearl—fishermen slaves and soldiers—march endlessly into eternity against a lapis lazuli sky at an instant of incredible precisio which allows us to reclaim the war tanks pulled by mules crushing the enemy or the frozen smile of a scribe sharing a drink with friends In the now-arid desert surrounding the site the traces of the past remain clearly visible What a surprise to discover amidst these desolate lands several kilometers from any rivers the remains of ancient Sumerian dams Nineteenth-century archaeologists were faced with this mystery How could life possibly have established itself in such remote desert regions far from any water sources The city of Nippur 250 kilometers south of Baghdad deep in the desert The ruins of the temple rise from the dunes During the excavations of the city archaeologists uncovered the key to the mystery On this clay tablet depicting the layout of the city of Nippur You can see the precise location of the temple and the enclosure that protected the city To the west of the wall flowed the Frat River part of which had been diverted to supply water to the city Thus major cities were built along the water's edge Yet the morphological evolution of the land and the force of floods have altered the courses of the rivers Thanks to satellite images of the Iraqi terrain we can now reconstruct the map of this region of the world from 5 000 years ago Nippur Ur Eridu and Girsu the major cities of Sumerian civilization had thus been established in a landscape entirely different from what they had known At that time the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was located further north As they passed through Mesopotamia the two rivers merged into one The first rays of sunlight brush across the city of Our It is summer once again and the heat will be overwhelming The city stirs gently to life The residents slept on the rooftops much cooler than the small rooms of their homes The summaries of the property purchases revealed that the house sizes did not exceed 70 square meters Very early on a colorful crowd flooded the narrow streets People jostled and greeted one another loudly Merchants approach passersby The city's commercial activity is bustling In the courtyards of some homes men relax by drinking beer through straws Numerous writings bear witness to the temperament of the Sumerians The extraordinary precariousness of their situation subject to nature's whims It had made them realize the fleeting and fragile nature of existence In the streets the people of Our wear the konakès a tunic made from sheepskin Depending on the season or style the bottom of the outfit is rolled up to the thighs down to the knees or even to the ankles The wives of the local elite wear lighter fabrics in shimmering colors Men and women wear jewelry earrings bracelets and necklaces Archaeological excavations have revealed the presence within the city's walls of forgers who perfectly imitated gold and turquoise Thus the less fortunate residents had the means to adorn themselves with costume jewelry This entire small community consists of merchants shopkeepers and traders Around the temple you'll find the homes of scribes masons carpenters and the slums where slaves lived For archaeologists the treasure unearthed at Our holds immeasurable scientific value It provides insight into the customs of the Sumerians and attests to the high skill of the city's craftsmen Sumerian goldsmiths mastered the techniques of gold engraving and soldering This harp whose bull's head fixes the eternity of its lapis lazuli eyes was adorned with a mosaic of seashells and precious stones For their final journey alongside their sovereign the maids wore a stunning tiara crafted from golden ribbons and colorful stones A braid of beech leaves covered their foreheads An ornament made of three golden flowers was fastened at the back of their heads It rose above the face Gold used for tableware and ceremonial weapons silver lapis lazuli or turquoise They came from the eastern regions The mother-of-pearl and shells originated from the islands of Bahrain The raw materials used to craft this bold cufflink reveal the astonishing prosperity of the bear They reflect the vitality of their trade Archaeologists have traced the origins of some of these materials To obtain lapis lazuli the Sumerians organized caravans that traveled over 3 000 kilometers o reach the mountains of Badakhshan in present-day northern Pakistan In Peshawar a northern Pakistani trading city shipments of lapis lazuli arrive from Afghanistan The stone submerged in water glows with a deep blue hue This intense color fascinated the Sumerians Archaeologists have determined that the trade of lapis lazuli originated with the Sumerian civilization around 3500 BCE Three thousand years before the opening of the Silk Road the Sumerians established the trade routes that crisscrossed the East The development of commercial exchanges led the Sumerians to invent the concept of contracts Cylindrical jars were carved from stone and finely engraved with a negative relief When concluding a contract or identifying goods They were rolled in clay This impression sealed the transactions Thus the people of Sumer for whom these contracts held great significance began establishing laws Very few legislative texts from that period have survived to the present day But at the beginning of the twentieth century Archaeologists discovered in the Persian city of Susa the stone of Hammurabi king of Babylon The Elamites who had devastated Mesopotamia in the twelfth century BCE had taken it as a trophy In 1694 BCE Hammurabi had a code bearing his name compiled a comprehensive collection of all Sumerian laws Most of the 282 inscribed stone articles deal with issues of daily life Just as commercial transactions marriage or inheritances As a judge the king conducts investigations and safeguards individuals from abuses by officials and oversees major public works The Code of Hammurabi proves that the Sumerians were pioneers in many fields On the reverse of the stone Article 196 of the code warns If a man puts out another man's eye then his own eye shall be put out A famous saying that inspired the Bible To build their garden of Eden the Sumerians traveled across the world in search of goods they did not already possess This is especially true of wood which is absent from the deserts of Mesopotamia to obtain this scarce material reserved for construction The Sumerians ventured into Syria Turkey and even as far as the mountains of Lebanon Today cedar forests are rare and scattered After the Sumerians all the civilizations of antiquity This wood has been exploited inexorably destroying this botanical heritage The legend tells of cedars that are over 4 000 years old and lived alongside vanished civilizations They could thus bear witness to the achievements made by the Sumerians in their time The reliefs found in the temples depict this quest Sumerian loggers felled century-old cedars before loading them onto boats that traveled downstream along the Euphrates These expeditions lasted for months They reveal the immense achievement of a people settled in a harsh environment Some of the discoveries made by the Sumerians over 5 000 years ago are still used today by their Iraqi descendants This is the case with asphalt a natural mineral rich in carbon that is still used to waterproof boat hulls and the rooftops of the homes We are in Ith a small town on the banks of the Euphrates 600 kilometers from the Sumerian cities Here asphalt bursts from the earth's core accompanied by sulfur fumes As it floats on water Archaeologists believe the substance must have traveled along the course of the Euphrates and later recovered by the Sumerians along the riverbanks At Ith the population still harvests bitumen and the methods have not changed in thousands of years Before plunging his hands into the dark substance floating on the water he must first coat them with sand The Sumerians also used this bitumen to make their vessels watertight but they mainly employed it in construction ot only to bond the bricks together but also to waterproof the foundations of public buildings This practice sheds light on a major event in their lives—the floods Thanks to the research of the English orientalist George Smith Some accounts of devastating floods have reached us Because of humanity's wicked behavior which had angered Enlil the supreme god he decided to engulf them in a great flood Despite Enki's pleas the god who protected humanity unable to safeguard humankind e decides to preserve its memory through the person of Zeusoudra o whom he asks to build an ark on which he will board pairs of animals After six days and six nights of storm the world was overwhelmed At dawn on the seventh day the storm passed Zeusoudra released a dove which unable to land returned to him On the eighth day he released a raven that never returned Humanity was saved We have only rediscovered the myths of Mesopotamia in the past century or so the texts that were found especially in the library of Nénive particularly the flood In reality Western civilization and Western Christianity are deeply浸透 by the biblical text And in the biblical text there are myths that directly originate from the Mesopotamian world And the entire history of Western Christianity is shaped by these myths understood or not often reinterpreted you may not feel the profound meaning that the people of Mesopotamia once赋予 to it Yet these myths are here and they've utterly caught us off guard The gods inspired fear and reverence they embodied the deep-seated mistrust the Sumerians felt toward nature Each deity in their pantheon has a role Each one rules over a city Enlil lord of the breath rules over air and earth His city is Nippur Enki god of waters and the world is worshipped in Eridu Uthu god of justice and truth presides over the fate of Larsa Inanna the Babylonian goddess Ishtar is revered in Uruk She inspires love and war She will be the Aphrodite of the Greeks and the Venus of the Romans The flowing curves of the alabaster statuettes The brilliance of the Sumerian artists is revealed in full light Their skill the expressiveness of their faces They reveal their art and religious fervor The religious sentiment of the Mesopotamians is difficult to grasp We uncover temples through excavations Through texts we have myths We have rituals meaning the actions that must be performed during a particular ceremony Yet the underlying sentiment is deeply misunderstood and poorly expressed In the Mesopotamian universe there exists a highly general concept of divine power There are forces and man is subject to them must work with them must reconcile himself to them This religion is a human-centered faith serving God What is this service It's ensuring his daily existence—feeding him giving him something to drink during every meal of each day It's about dressing him in fine garments Clearly it refers to his statue Putting on collars taking them off changing them according to the day Occasionally the deity is brought out during major festivals He wanders through the city stays elsewhere for a time then returns to his temple If we look at the facts as we know them Mesopotamian religion is roughly that Prayer was a part of daily life for the people of Sumer Maintaining and operating the temples required a large workforce Every day the faithful brought their offerings The archives of Uruk describe the daily menu one of the four principal gods of the city 250 loaves 1 000 pastries 50 sheep 8 lambs 2 oxen and 1 calf A heavenly food that after being offered to the deities fed the priests and temple staff A total of 1 200 people The scribes have passed down the hopes of Sumer's inhabitants In exchange for their fervor and the virtues they nurtured Their dignity and respect for the established order aside the Sumerians aspired to eternal life in the afterlife The relentless struggle to master nature reminded them of the fragility of earthly existence and inspired their most beautiful legend Gilgamesh a historical figure was the fifth king of Uruk in the third millennium BCE and the hero of the Sumerians His legendary tales of heroic deeds were known throughout Mesopotamia They encapsulate the story of Sumerian civilization Just and sovereign builder Gilgamesh challenged the gods He tamed the wild peoples and headed toward the distant fragrant cedar forest to confront Oumbaba a fearsome monster that spews fire In a hand-to-hand struggle he severed the monster's head and returned triumphantly to Uruk To punish him the goddess Inanna sent the celestial bull to ravage the city The beast dried up the meadows and rivers He opened the fissures into which the inhabitants vanished And the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth and they stopped building the city The Sumerians' vision was prophetic After 3 000 years of rule over Mesopotamia Their civilization under attack from all sides will collapse without a sudden revival The grandeur of the cities was at an end due to their influence on the surrounding countryside The irrigation channels gradually dried up The walls of the houses collapsed and even the temples themselves fell beneath the combined onslaught sun rain and wind The clay from the bricks returned to the earth leaving only shapeless heaps above the dunes —last remnants of a people's former greatness How can one explain the disappearance of such a brilliant civilization How can one understand the decline of a people who left behind nothing but ruins And what of the ruins of temples soon to be looted by plunderers Can we speak of a decline To a certain extent yes But perhaps more accurately a sclerosis All these great discoveries made by the people of the fourth millennium All thought that takes form through religious expressions—or to put it another way within the realm of the religious—evolves And when viewed on a long-term scale one realizes that there are fewer and fewer freedoms remaining expressing a wide range of ideas For instance Mesopotamian art is infinitely more diverse and flourishing in the third millennium the first millennium What happens around 1200 Around 1200 iron is discovered Iron is an advantage Iron is more effective than copper In some ways it's easier to work with Even if a higher temperature is required it has even more applications so it's an improvement But the environment of Mesopotamia is not rich in iron And the issue of sourcing will become a problem because we'd need to go much farther And consequently the regions with iron ore will play a far stronger role than Mesopotamia For nearly a century scribes patiently recorded the declining harvests The tablets archived in the temples are unequivocal By 2350 BCE wheat production had declined by 40 percent Only the barley harvests remained at their initial level How could one believe in a people who had developed such advanced techniques Hasn't he been unable to halt the decline of his resources For decades archaeologists continued their investigation seeking in the texts a response that was already on the ground The very element that had been the source of the Sumerians' power—the irrigation system—also contributed to their downfall Water which had regularly flooded the fields for 3 000 years evaporated It has brought salt up from deep within the earth Soon a whitish layer hardened by the sun sterilizes the soil making it impossible for wheat to grow anymore —a problem that continues to confront the people in these regions Some terrains cracked by the sun's rays have the appearance of barren deserts That's what the vast fields surrounding the great cities looked like Due to climate warming and desertification The Sumerian farmers never found a solution to their problems But can we really speak of the decline of civilization To talk about a decline is inaccurate It is a power that has developed and a civilization that in the end reached its conclusion by producing magnificent works And then these creations this thought She will not perish This is a thought that will be passed on The Greeks the Persians—people who are themselves highly cultured— Like the people of Mesopotamia at the time certain groups certain elites will pass on their knowledge pass on their knowledge And this will be done in particular through Anatolia directed toward the Greek world And through the Greek world it will end up in the Mediterranean And the entire Mediterranean basin o inherit this Mesopotamian civilization yet without being able to make an absolute reference to the very forms of this Mesopotamian civilization Weakened the cities of Sumer could no longer withstand the economic competition from the major cities of northern Mesopotamia Already other civilizations inspired by the Sumerian example were planting their banners on conquered lands In 2004 BCE Sumer had already vanished and the Assyrians ruled Mesopotamia The Babylonian epic could now begin Beneath the merciless sun the wealth of the Sumerians turned to dust It is their story that the Bible tells us Like the builders of the Tower of Babel Men and women from Sumer scattered across the earth The water which they had feared so much had caused their downfall After capturing the waters of the tiger and the Euphrates Having quelled their fury having fed on their vitality the Sumerians sank into oblivion swept away by history bequeathing to humanity the memory of their wealth and the imprint of their creative genius and the sense of the extraordinary fragility of civilizations