Since their homeland was largely devoid of timber, stone and minerals, the Sumerians were forced to create one of history’s earliest trade networks over both land and sea. This panel shows a banquet, perhaps after a victory and men driving cattle and sheep. The Sumerians were well-traveled trade merchants.Ī detail from the so-called Standard of Ur, side B. In fact, archaeologists have found evidence that Near East astronomical texts were still being written in cuneiform as recently as the first century A.D. Since the script could be adapted to multiple languages, it was later used over the course of several millennia by more than a dozen different cultures. The Sumerians seem to have first developed cuneiform for the mundane purposes of keeping accounts and records of business transactions, but over time it blossomed into a full-fledged writing system used for everything from poetry and history to law codes and literature. The tablets were then baked or left in the sun to harden. In its most sophisticated form, it consisted of several hundred characters that ancient scribes used to write words or syllables on wet clay tablets with a reed stylus. The Sumerian invention of cuneiform-a Latin term literally meaning “wedge-shaped”- dates to sometime around 3400 B.C. The Gilgamesh Tablet, a 3,500-year-old Mesopotamian cuneiform clay tablet. The Sumerians were famously fond of beer. During the latter stages of their history, they were attacked or conquered by the Elamites, Akkadians and Gutians. The infighting led to several military advancements-the Sumerians may have invented the phalanx formation and siege warfare-but it also left them vulnerable to invasions by outside forces. Under Eannatum, Lagash went on to conquer the whole of Sumer, but it was just one of several city-states that held sway over Mesopotamia during its history. To commemorate his victory, Eannatum constructed the so-called “Stele of the Vultures,” a grisly limestone monument that depicts birds feasting on the flesh of his fallen enemies. The first of these conflicts known to history concerns King Eannatum of Lagash, who defeated the rival city-state of Umma in a border dispute sometime around 2450 B.C. Įven though they shared a common language and cultural traditions, the Sumerian city-states engaged in near-constant wars that resulted in several different dynasties and kingships. Stele of the Vultures, portraying Eannatum sovereign troops in the conquest of Umma.
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