Sumerians: the most mysterious people of world history

In the south of modern Iraq, in the interfluve of the Tigris and Euphrates, almost 7000 years ago, a mysterious people settled - the Sumerians. They made a significant contribution to the development of human civilization, but we still do not know where the Sumerians came from and what language they spoke.

Mysterious language

The valley of Mesopotamia has long been inhabited by tribes of Semitic pastoralists. It was they who were driven north by the Sumerian aliens. The Sumerians themselves were not related to the Semites, moreover, their origin is still unclear. Neither the ancestral home of the Sumerians nor the language family to which their language belonged is known.

Fortunately for us, the Sumerians left many written monuments. From them we learn that neighboring tribes called this people "Sumers", and they themselves called themselves "Sang-ngiga" - "black-headed". They called their own language the “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. How the Sumerian language sounded is unknown to this day. A large number of homonyms suggests that this language was tonal (as, 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.

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 the riverbeds, and their first settlements appear in the south of the valley, in the deltas of the Tigris and Euphrates. At first, there were very few Sumerians in Mesopotamia - and not surprisingly, because the ships can not 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 a mountainous area. No wonder the words “country” and “mountain” are spelled the same in their language. Yes, and the Sumerian temples "ziggurats" in their appearance resemble mountains - these 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 who began to use the wheel, created an irrigation system, and invented a unique writing system.
According to one version, this legendary ancestral home was located in southern India.

flood survivors

It was not in vain that the Sumerians chose the valley of Mesopotamia 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, cereals, and vegetables growing in abundance. In addition, there were fish in the rivers, wild animals flocked to the watering place, and there was plenty of food for livestock in the water meadows.

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 floods of the Nile, the floods of the Tigris and Euphrates could not be predicted, they were not regular.

Strong floods turned into a real disaster, they destroyed everything in their path: cities and villages, eared fields, animals and people. Probably, having first encountered this disaster, the Sumerians created the legend of Ziusudra.
At the 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 masters to preserve knowledge and technology, livestock, animals and birds onto the ship. The ship's doors were tarred on the outside.

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

This legend is not just reminiscent of the legend of Noah's Ark, most likely the biblical story is borrowed from the Sumerian culture. After all, the first flood poems that have come down to us date back to the 18th century BC.

Priest kings, builder kings

The Sumerian lands have never been a single state. In fact, it was a collection of city-states, each with its own law, its own treasury, its own rulers, its own army. Only language, religion and culture were common. City-states could be at enmity with each other, could exchange goods or enter into military alliances.

Each city-state had three kings. The first and most important was called "en". It was a priest-king (however, a woman could also be enom). The main task of the king-en was to conduct religious ceremonies: solemn processions, 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 fired bricks. City walls, temples, barns were built from this more durable material. The priest-builder ensi was in charge of the construction of these structures. In addition, the ensi kept an eye on the irrigation system, because canals, locks and dams allowed at least a little control over irregular spills.

For the duration of the war, the Sumerians elected another leader - the 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 defies 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 enjoyed special reverence: Anu, the sky god, Enlil, the earth god, and Ensi, the god of water. In addition, each city had its own patron god. Thus, Enlil was especially revered in the ancient city of Nippur. The inhabitants of Nippur believed that Enlil gave them such important inventions as a hoe and a 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), replacing 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, passion. No wonder that in many Sumerian cities there was a custom of "divine marriage", when the kings, in order to ensure the fertility of their lands, livestock and people, spent the night with the high priestess Inanna, who embodied the goddess herself.

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

Cuneiform

The Sumerian civilization reached amazing heights, even after the conquest by the 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 the 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 left by a reed stick on wet clay, the most common writing material.

Sumerian writing originated from a system for counting various goods. For example, when a person counted his flock, he made a ball of clay to designate each sheep, then he put these balls in a box, and left notes on the box - the number of these balls. But after all, all the sheep in the herd are different: different sex, age. Marks appeared on the balls, according to the animal they denoted. And, finally, the sheep began to be denoted by a picture - a pictogram. It was not very convenient to draw with a reed stick, and the pictogram turned into a schematic image consisting of vertical, horizontal and diagonal wedges. And the last step - this ideogram began to designate not only a sheep (in Sumerian “udu”), but also the syllable “udu” as part of complex words.

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