The most ancient monument of Sumerian writing is the tablet from Kish, which was dated to approximately 3500 BC. The Sumerians made tablets from clay until the material finally hardened, and strokes were applied to them with a wooden stick. Subsequently, this method of writing was called cuneiform.
Instructions
During excavations of the city of Uruk, clay tablets were found around 3300 BC. This allowed scientists to conclude that writing contributed to the rapid development of cities and the complete restructuring of society. In the east was the kingdom of Elam, and between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was the Sumerian kingdom. These two states conducted trade, and therefore there was an urgent need for writing. Elam used pictographs, which the Sumerians adapted.
In Elam and Sumer, tokens were used - clay chips of various shapes that denoted single objects (one goat or one ram). Somewhat later, symbols began to be applied to tokens: serifs, imprints, triangles, circles and other shapes. Tokens were placed in stamped containers. To find out about the contents, it was necessary to break the container, count the number of chips and determine their shape. Subsequently, the container itself began to indicate what tokens it contained. Soon these chips lost their meaning. The Sumerians were content with only their imprint on the container, which turned from a ball into a flat tablet. Using corners and circles on such plates, the type and quantity of items or objects were indicated. By definition, all signs were pictograms.
Over time, the combinations of pictograms became stable. Their meaning was made up of a combination of images. If a bird with an egg was drawn on the sign, then it was about fertility and procreation as an abstract concept. Pictograms became ideograms (symbolic representations of an idea).
After 2-3 centuries, the style of Sumerian writing changed dramatically. To make it easier to read, the symbols were divided into wedges - small segments. In addition, all symbols used began to be depicted inverted 90 degrees counterclockwise.
The styles of many words and concepts are standardized over time. Now you can put not only administrative letters on the tablets, but also literary treatises. In II BC, Sumerian cuneiform was already used in the Middle East.
The first attempt to decipher Sumerian writing was made by Grotefend in the mid-19th century. His work was later continued by Rawlinson. The subject of his study was the Behistun manuscript. The scientist found that the tablets that came into his hands were written in three languages and represented the Elamite and Akkadian scripts - direct descendants of the Sumerian script. By the end of the 19th century, later forms of cuneiform were finally deciphered thanks to dictionaries and archives found in Nineveh and Babylon. Today, scientists are trying to understand the principle of proto-Sumerian writing - the prototypes of the Sumerian cuneiform script.
Sumer was a civilization with a historical site in southern Mesopotamia and occupied the territory of modern Iraq. This is the most ancient civilization known to man, the cradle of the human race. The history of Sumerian civilization spans more than 3000 years. With beginnings in the Ubaid period during the first settlement of Eridu (mid-6th millennium BC) through the Uruk period (4th millennium BC) and dynastic periods (3rd millennium BC) and until the emergence of Babylon at the beginning second millennium BC.
Sumerian civilization and features of ancient writing.
It is the birthplace of writing, the wheel and agriculture. The most important archaeological discovery made on the territory of the Sumerian civilization is undoubtedly writing. A huge number of tablets and manuscripts with records in the Sumerian language were found during the study of the Sumerian civilization. Sumerian writing is the oldest example of writing on earth. At the beginning of their history, the Sumerians used images and hieroglyphs for writing; later, symbols appeared that formed syllables, words, and sentences. Triangular or cuneiform signs were used for writing on reed paper or on wet clay. This type of writing is called cuneiform.
A huge variety of texts that the Sumerian civilization wrote in the Sumerian language have survived and survived to this day, both personal and business letters, receipts, lexical lists, laws, hymns, prayers, histories, daily reports, and even libraries have been found filled with clay tablets. Monumental inscriptions and texts on various objects, on statues or brick buildings, have become widespread in Sumerian civilization. Many texts have survived in multiple copies. The Sumerian language continued to be the language of religion and law in Mesopotamia even after the Semites took over the historical territories of the Sumerians. The Sumerian language is generally regarded as a lonely language in linguistics, since it does not belong to any of the known language families; The Akkadian language, unlike the Sumerian language, belongs to the languages of the Semitic-Hamitic language family. There have been many unsuccessful attempts to connect the Sumerian language with any language group. Sumerian is an agglutinative language; in other words, morphemes ("units of meaning") are joined together to create words, unlike analytical languages where morphemes are simply added to create sentences.
Sumerians, their oral and written language.
Understanding Sumerian texts today can be challenging even for experts. The most difficult ones are the early ones 
time texts. In many cases Sumerians and their texts cannot be fully grammatically assessed, that is, they have not yet been completely deciphered. During the third millennium BC, a very close cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians and Akkadians. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian (and vice versa) is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a large scale, to syntactic and morphological, phonological convergence. Akkadian gradually replaced the language spoken by the Sumerians (around the 2nd-3rd centuries BC; exact dating is a matter of debate), but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific language in Mesopotamia until the first century ad.
Stone Age, fourth millennium BC, people use stone tools, have the most primitive skills, almost zero skills and the most barbaric knowledge about the world around them. They live either directly in the open air or in dwellings like dugouts. No bows, no swords, no ships, no jewelry, no pyramids, no kings, no furniture - none of this chaotic set existed at that time, and could not have arisen, given the stage of human evolution.
So it seemed to scientists for a long time, until the Sumerian civilization was discovered, which with its existence created a real sensation among scientific minds. The scale of the shock was so great that few people wanted to believe in the reality of the Sumerians until the facts became too many. What so amazed and continues to amaze the most enlightened minds of humanity?
Judging by the finds discovered in the cities of the Sumerians, they were the inventors of almost everything that we use to this day. In principle, it is high time for historians and literary publishing houses to rewrite history, because much that was attributed to other peoples was invented by the mysterious Sumerians. The Sumerians came, and out of nowhere entire cities appeared with huge pyramids, ziggurats, real smooth roads covered with a substance similar in composition to modern asphalt.
So, six thousand years ago, an incomprehensible civilization either itself invented something that could not yet exist at that time, or used more ancient inventions, which means that all our ideas about this stage of the development of our planet are fundamentally incorrect. Here is the little that the Sumerians knew and used:
In those days, one could already find markets on the streets, people opened something like culinary shops where they could have a snack on the way. Sumerians walked through the streets in beautiful outfits, decorated with various jewelry. And this is not the only thing that shocks researchers. Most of all, no one understands why a nation that was supposed to develop, having achieved everything in the first centuries of its existence, then suddenly began to degrade! Assumptions have been and are being made. And the worst thing is that it is the scientists and romantic writers of recent generations who can become those thanks to whom the Sumerian civilization will acquire absurd legends, which will subsequently prevent our descendants from continuing the study of this most interesting mysterious people.
The invention of writing by the Sumerians was of world-historical significance. The Sumerians began writing at the end of 4 thousand BC, that is, much earlier than the Egyptians. In the Red Temple of Uruk, dated to around 3300 BC, a tablet was discovered with text using about 700 characters. This tablet is, apparently, the world's first monument of written culture.
Before the advent of writing, there were cylinder seals on which miniature images were carved, and then the seal was rolled over clay. These round seals represented one of the greatest achievements of Mesopotamian art.
Writing arose as a practical necessity for trading activities, business records and calculations. The earliest writings were made in the form of pictograms, or primitive drawings made with a reed stick on tablets of wet clay. Then the clay “tablets” were dried in the sun or fired in a kiln (if the designations were especially important and intended for long-term storage). The first such tablets are memorial notes, lists of goods, recipes (notes of an economic nature). Guess the meaning of most of the pictograms used around 3300 BC. e., not difficult. The radiant star denoted the sky or, in the future, a deity. The cup undoubtedly conveyed the word “food.” In some cases, combinations of symbols can be easily deciphered: the pictograms “big” and “man” standing together mean “king”.
The first step towards abstract symbols was made at the beginning of 2 thousand BC. BC, when the pictographs began to “lie on their edges,” which could be due to the fact that Sumerian scribes began to turn the tablets over in order to be able to write from left to right, and not from top to bottom, as before. But whatever the real reasons for this “revolution,” the fact itself suggests that the symbols gradually began to lose their connection with the specific object depicted.
Written characters underwent even more dramatic changes when scribes changed from a sharpened reed stick for drawing on soft clay to a wedge-shaped style, leading to a change in writing that was called "cuneiform" from the Latin. “cuneus”, which means “wedge”. Ancient scribes made every effort to ensure that their drawings resembled the depicted object as closely as possible, and for this purpose they used all kinds of wedge-shaped impressions. Then all the wedges used to represent the sign were divided into several classes: vertical, horizontal and oblique.
This is how it arose cuneiform writing on clay tablets. It spread throughout Western Asia, and for more than two thousand years it was used by peoples who spoke various languages. Cuneiform was used especially productively in Babylonian and early Persian writing.
Around 1800 BC scribes simplified the writing of many cuneiform symbols, replacing them with even more conventional signs that bore only a vague resemblance to the previous pictograms.
*Slides: Using the example of selected Sumerian signs on the table on the right, you can trace the evolution of Sumerian writing over 1500 years - the transformation of early pictograms into a system of abstract symbols.
The instructions in the lower right corner read: “Pass through a sieve and then stir in the crushed tortoiseshells, naga-shi sprouts, salt and mustard. Then wash the damaged areas with good quality beer and hot water and rub the mixture in. Wait a little and rub with oil again, then apply a poultice of crushed pine bark.”
Epic of Gilgamesh
Thanks to the invention of writing, many aspects of the past were revealed to historians. Because samples of literature are preserved in written sources; a historian can judge the mentality of people of that time.
The greatest monument of ancient Sumerian literature is the Tale of Gilgamesh. It is preserved on cuneiform tablets, one of which comes from Nippur. Gilgamesh is said to have been a king and successful general from Uruk around 2700 BC.
The cycle of epic songs about Gilgamesh is associated mainly with the idea of human immortality, and throughout the poem Gilgamesh desperately tries to defeat death. Gilgamesh is endowed with strength and courage, which ensured his victory in the fight with the lion. Together with your companion Enkidu Gilgamesh travels to the cedar forest to fight the forest ruler Humbaba. But his main goal is the search for wisdom, happiness, immortality. The Akkadian epic also contains a description of Gilgamesh's journey beyond life to achieve immortality. He was looking for Utnapishtim, who survived the flood. Floods often occurred in Sumer, when both rivers - the Tigris and Euphrates - overflowed widely. Perhaps a catastrophic flood, when both rivers closed with each other, is called a flood in popular memory. In Dilmun, the Sumerian paradise, Utnapishtim helped Gilgamesh find the “plant (pearl?) of eternal youth” that gives immortality, but on his way back home he lost this precious root and accepts the inevitability of his fate.
Sumerian religion
By about 2250 B.C. in Sumer a whole pantheon of gods had already developed, personifying various elements and elemental forces. This pantheon was the basis of the Sumerian religion. This is how theology was born.
According to Sumerian beliefs, the earth was ruled by gods, and people were created to serve them. This motif of the Sumerian epic was reflected much later in the Bible, in the Old Testament. Initially, each city had its own god. This was probably due to political changes in relations between cities, but in the end the gods organized themselves into a kind of hierarchy.
Each of the gods was assigned its own role and its own area of activity: there was the god of air, the god of water, and the god of agriculture. The goddess Inanna (among the Akkadians Ishtar) was the goddess of carnal love and fertility, but at the same time the goddess of war, the personification of the planet Venus. At the head of the hierarchy were 3 highest male gods:
· Anu – father of the gods, god of the sky;
· Enlil (among the Akkadians Ellil, White) – the god of air;
· Enki (among the Akkadians Eil, Ea) – the god of wisdom and fresh water, he was the teacher who gives life (water = life), and maintained the order created by Enlil.
Since the harvest, especially grain, was constantly threatened by drought, flood, or locust, and these troubles occurred, according to beliefs, by the will of the gods, the Sumerians sought to appease them. This purpose was served by the most complex ritual of worship in their temples - the earthly dwellings of the gods. Done ritual worship of the king and the main gods of the Sumerian pantheon. Each of the deities had its own temple, which became the center of the city-state. In Sumer they were founded and established main features of the temple architecture of Mesopotamia.
Fall of Sumer
Amorite Invasion. Marie. After 2000 BC e. in the battle with the Elamites who came from Persia, the powerful state of the Sumerians fell. This was followed by an invasion of Semitic tribes - the Amorites - from northern Syria. The Amorites settled in Mesopotamia and built rich, thriving city-states.
Of all the cities, the large Amorite city especially stood out. city of Mari, built in the middle reaches of the Euphrates. As a result of excavations, a city with a strict, close to modern layout- long avenues, palaces in squares, perpendicularly intersecting streets, beautiful sculptures, rich cemeteries, walls decorated with frescoes.
Grand Palace of Marie
The Great Palace of Zimri-Lima, who ruled Mari from 1780 to 1760. BC, was built before 2100 BC. and after several centuries it was reconstructed. It consisted of more than 260 rooms and courtyards on the ground floor, the rest were above.
The centerpiece of the palace was a double throne room, dating back to the time of the Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad, who died in 1780 BC, however, the main components of the palace were laid out under Zimri-Lim.
Along with public spaces and private living rooms, the palace contained numerous craft workshops, where linen, woolen clothing, blankets and draperies were spun and made, things were made from leather, cabinetmakers inlaid wood with alabaster and mother-of-pearl. A significant number of workers in these workshops were slaves.
In addition, the palace had a royal treasury and other storage facilities.
The most important discovery at Marie was the archive, which contained more than 20,000 tablets. The texts written on them are related to various aspects of city life. Among them are numerous documents on official business, diplomatic and private correspondence, for example, about the health of members of the royal family.
Hammurabi
At the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. a new unification of Mesopotamia emerged with its center in the city Babylon. Babylon is located on the banks of the Euphrates, 90 km south of modern Baghdad. The name of the city translates as “gate of the gods.”
After the fall of the state of Ur in 2000. BC. Babylon is ruled by the Amorite (Western Semites) dynasty. Under Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC), Babylon became the political and religious capital of southern Mesopotamia.
Originally a vassal of the Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad I, through superior diplomatic maneuvers and successful military campaigns with rival city-states (Uruk, Issin, Larsa, Eshnuna and Mari), Hammurabi established Babylon as the dominant power of the Mesopotamian plain and the regions further north (Mari and Ashur). Due to the fact that during the era of Hammurabi the characteristic features of Babylonian culture took shape, in the history of Babylon it was called classical. In addition, many temples and canals were built under Hammurabi. His influence towards the end of his life (he died in 1750 BC) increases so much that Babylon receives the status of the natural capital of southern Mesopotamia.
Laws of Hammurabi. Hammurabi was the greatest lawgiver in human history. Like the prophet Moses, he gave his people and at the same time humanity a code of laws. It was carved on a stone stele that was found in Susa (now kept in the Louvre).
*Slide: On top of the monolith, where the laws of Hammurabi are engraved, there is an image of the king himself. The king stands in a respectful pose, listening to what the god of justice, Shamash, tells him. Shamash sits on his throne and holds the attributes of power in his right hand, and flames shine around his shoulders. Shamash commands Hammurabi to do his will in exactly the same way as Yahweh commands Moses in the Bible.
The Code of Hammurabi amazes with the level of legal thought that existed 15 centuries before the advent of Roman law. The 282 sections of Hammurabi's famous code of laws contain laws on various topics: slavery, property, trade, family, wages, divorce, medical care and much more.
Many laws were borrowed from the Sumerians, but the application and interpretation of legal rules were more detailed and more legally developed.
Even such special cases were stipulated: “If a man, during an attack or invasion, was captured or taken to distant countries and stayed there for a long time, and in the meantime another man took his wife and she bore him a son, then if the husband returns, he gets his wife back.” Or the law on providing for wives:
“If a husband turns his face away from his first wife... and she does not leave the house, then the woman he took as his mistress will be his second wife. He must continue to support his first wife as well.”
According to the Code of Hammurabi, many crimes - theft, adultery, false accusation, perjury - were punishable by death. Strict punishments were provided, for example, in the following cases: if a patient lost one eye due to the carelessness or inability of the doctor, the doctor’s hand was cut off; if the house collapsed; then its builder was sentenced to death or a large fine.
Hammurabi carried out religious reform. The Sumerian gods continued to be revered, but by order of the king he became the main Babylonian god Marduk.( Marduk, in Sumerian-Akkadian mythology, the central deity of the Babylonian pantheon, the main god of the city of Babylon, the son of Ey (Enki) and Domkina (Damgalnun). Written sources report on the wisdom of Marduk, his healing arts and spell power; God is called "judge of the gods", "lord of the gods" and even "father of the gods"). He was the god of the entire empire of Hammurabi.
Rise of Assyria.
After Hammurabi's death, his empire fell apart. Babylon itself became a victim of the predatory raid of the Hittites, then of the Kassites who came from Persia. They ruled over Babylon until its conquest by the Assyrians, a Semitic people who lived from ancient times in the upper reaches of the Tigris.
The rise of Assyria began, whose trade in the north of the country had been restrained and controlled by the Hittites for a long time. But in 1200 BC. e. The Hittite kingdom collapsed. Assyria entered the Mediterranean and captured lands right up to the territory of modern Turkey. The success of Assyria's conquests was facilitated by use of iron weapons, in which the Assyrians were far superior to all neighboring peoples, and high level of military art, ensured by the special maneuverability of troops. The Assyrian invasions were cruel and bloody. The Old Testament says that they used special machines for the siege of fortress walls and “assault goats”.
The Assyrian king Sargon II (722-705 BC) built a new majestic capital - Dur-Sharrukin (now Khorsabad), which means Sargon's Fortress. The palace stood on a high artificially raised hill. In 713 BC. e. Sargon II, during the construction of his capital, Dur-Sharrukin (modern Khorsabad, Iraq), surrounded the city with a solid brick wall, leaving seven passages (gates) in it. On the sides at the entrance to the palace there were huge statues of winged bulls with human heads. These are the shedu - the guards guarding the palace gates; they seem to be keeping a watchful eye on those passing by. Everyone who approached the palace could already see the head, chest and two legs from afar. As soon as you walked further and looked at the shad from the side, it began to seem that the bull had stepped forward, moving its front leg. The Assyrian sculptor achieved this by making the bull... five legs! Therefore, two legs are visible from the front, and four from the side. And if not for the fifth leg, then in profile the bull would appear to be tripodal.
But perhaps the most interesting and truly artistic works of art were the Assyrian reliefs that adorned the walls of the palaces. Assyria was a powerful military power; there was no end to campaigns and conquests, which is why the palace reliefs depict mainly military scenes glorifying the king-commander. All scenes are conveyed so vividly, with such skill that one does not immediately notice either the conventional image of the human figure (always in profile), or the identical facial features of almost all people, or the overly emphasized muscles of the arms and legs (by this the artist wanted to show the power Assyrian army). Many reliefs depict royal hunts, mainly lions. Animals are depicted surprisingly accurately and truthfully.
Sargon's son Sennacherib (705-680 BC) moved the capital of the state to Nineveh. Here archaeologists discovered numerous sculptures, including winged bulls, and found frescoes and stone reliefs depicting the battles of Sennacherib with his enemies. Sennacherib sacked, burned and destroyed Babylon in 689 BC. This event is reported on a stele covered in cuneiform writing.
Son of Sennacherib - Esarhaddon(680-669 BC) - in 671 he captured Egypt and restored Babylon to its former greatness. Numerous new monuments of Assyrian culture appeared, but the previous ones, Sumerian and Babylonian, were irretrievably lost.
In 701 BC. Assyrian troops besieged Jerusalem, and the Jewish king Hiskiel was forced to pay tribute. This is reported in the Old Testament. Inscriptions on the palace of Sennacherib glorify the Assyrian king as a victor who supposedly locked the king of the Jews “like a bird in a cage.” However, in reality, Sennacherib failed to conquer and plunder rich Jerusalem: the plague epidemic that broke out there prevented him from doing so.
Simultaneously with their campaigns of conquest, the Assyrians paid a lot of attention construction and art. The reliefs in the palaces depicting hunting and battle scenes are extremely expressive. The Assyrians were also excellent civil engineers. Built by them plumbing, palaces, equipment for besieging cities, interior decoration of palaces, many sculptures- all this amazed the imagination.
To decorate the interiors of the palace of Ashurbanippal in Nineveh (7th century BC), gold and ivory from Egypt, silver from Syria, azure and semi-precious stones from Persia, and cedar wood from Lebanon were specially delivered.
*Slide: At the bottom of the fragment, on a triumphal chariot under an umbrella, stands the powerful king Ashurbanipal (reigned 669-631 BC). Traditionally, the figure of the king is larger than all other characters. The king holds an unopened bud in his hand as part of an Assyrian court ceremony.
After the death of Ashurbanipal, his great empire lasted only fifteen years. The reasons for her crash was
The inability to protect the vast borders of the state,
Uprisings of enslaved peoples, as well as
The moral decay of a huge army engaged in robbery. In the Old Testament, the prophet Nahum foreshadows the destruction of Nineveh: “Woe to the city of blood! It is all full of deception and murder; robbery does not cease in him” (Old Testament. Book of the Prophet Nahum, 8:1.). The prophecy came true. IN 612 BC e. the capital of Assyria, Nineveh, fell under the onslaught of the Babylonians and Indians. The Assyrian Empire was divided between the two victors. A new era of the rise of Babylon and the spread of its culture began.
Neo-Babylonian kingdom .
A new flowering of Babylon has occurred during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II(605-562 BC). A thousand years after Hammurabi, he made an attempt to equal him in greatness. And he partially succeeded. The ruins of Babylon still amaze with their grandiose size.
The Greek historian Herodotus described Babylon in his “History” as a city that surpassed all cities in the world in wealth and luxury. What struck his imagination the most was city wall of Babylon. According to Herodotus, its width was such that two chariots drawn by four horses could easily pass each other! For more than two thousand years, these words of Herodotus were considered an exaggeration and were confirmed only in 1899 during the excavations of Babylon undertaken by the German archaeologist R. Koldewey. He dug up double fortress walls 7 m wide and 18 km long, surrounding the city center. The space between the walls was filled with earth. Four horses could ride here! Watchtowers were attached to the walls every 50 m.
Ishtar Gate
Of the eight gates dedicated to the main gods revered in Babylon, the most magnificent were double gates of the goddess of love Ishtar. The "processional road" passed through them - an important thoroughfare that connects the temple of Marduk and the temple of the New Year's festival in the outer part of the city.
*Slide: At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. German archaeologists dug up a large number of fragments of the city wall, using which they were able to completely restore the historical appearance of the Ishtar Gate, which was reconstructed (in full size) and is now exhibited in the State Museums of Berlin. The gate was double, connecting both defensive walls of the inner city and reaching a height of 23 m. The entire structure is covered with glazed bricks with relief images of the sacred animals of the god Marduk - the bull and the fantastic creature sirrush (Babylonian dragon). This last character (also called the Babylonian dragon) combines the characteristics of four representatives of the fauna: an eagle, a snake, an unidentified quadruped and a scorpion. Thanks to the delicate and sophisticated color scheme (yellow figures on a blue background), the monument looked light and festive. Strictly maintained intervals between animals tuned the viewer to the rhythm of the solemn procession.
They were rebuilt three times under Nebuchadnezzar II, and only during the last rebuilding were they decorated with images of these animals. During this period, the bricks were covered with glaze. The animals were colored yellow and white, while the background was bright blue. In addition, the gates were guarded by powerful colossi in the form of bulls and dragons.
From the gates of Ishtar began Sacred road reserved for festive processions. It was believed that the god Marduk himself walked along this path. The procession road was paved with large slabs. Reaching a width of 16 m, the Processional Road for 200 meters was surrounded by walls of glazed brick, from which 120 lions depicted on a blue background looked down at the procession participants.
The road led to the sanctuary of Marduk - Esagile, majestic temple complex, in the center of which rose a colossal 90-meter ziggurat of Etemenanki(the cornerstone of earth and heaven), famous Tower of Babel, consisting of seven terraces painted in different colors. At the top stood the temple of Marduk, lined with blue bricks.
Etemenanki was shrine and pride of the state And embodied the daring thoughts of people striving to get closer to heaven. It is with him that the biblical legend of the Babylonian pandemonium. It tells how God, having seen the city and the tower that the sons of men were building, realized that people speaking the same language and doing something together would not have any obstacles. Angry, he descended to earth and confused languages, so that people ceased to understand each other and were scattered throughout the entire earth. Even the ruins of Etemenanka, destroyed in the 4th century. BC e. troops of the Persian king Xerxes, shocked Alexander the Great with their greatness.
The glory of Babylon was composed and colorful palace of Nebuchadnezzar II with the famous "Hanging Gardens". Even in ancient times, the gardens were called the miracle of the world. They were artificial terraces made of mud bricks of various sizes and resting on stone ledges. They contained land with various exotic trees. The Hanging Gardens were a feature of the palace of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562 BC). It is a pity that they have not survived to this day. spread out on vaulted terraces connected to a system of wells and drains.
The Babylonians were a trading people: they sailed not only along their rivers - the Tigris and Euphrates - but also crossed the Persian Gulf, delivered lapis lazuli, fabrics, food from India, and traded with Asia Minor, Persia, and Syria. Thousands of tablets with promissory notes and various invoices and contractual documents (for example, for the charter of ships) have been preserved.
One of the greatest achievements of Babylonian and Assyrian culture was creation of libraries and archives.
Even in the ancient cities of Sumer - Ur and Nippur, for many centuries, scribes (the first educated people and the first officials) collected literary, religious, scientific texts and created repositories, private libraries. One of the largest libraries of that period - library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal(669 - ca. 633 BC), containing about 25 thousand clay tablets recording the most important historical events, laws, literary and scientific texts. It was really a library: the books were placed in a certain order, the pages were numbered. There were even unique index cards that outlined the contents of the book, indicating the series and number of tablets of each series of texts.
Babylonian scientists and priests knew astronomy, made maps of the starry sky, observed the movement of the planets, and were able to predict solar and lunar eclipses.
In 539 BC. e. Babylon fell under the onslaught of the Persians. The biblical prophet Daniel talks about how King Belshazzar (son of Nebuchadnezzar II) feasted in a palace drowning in wealth and luxury, and at that time the archers of King Cyrus managed to divert the waters of the Euphrates, walk along the shallow bed into the city and break into the palace. As the prophet narrates, in the large royal palace, the words inscribed by a mysterious hand suddenly appeared on the inner wall: “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Uparsin.” Soon it was all over. The palace was captured by Cyrus's troops. His governors were appointed to govern Mesopotamia. Although the Persians did not destroy Babylon, but turned it into their capital, part of the city's population was killed and the rest were dispersed. Persian rule lasted almost 200 years.
In 321 BC. e. Alexander the Great defeated the Persian troops. He set a goal to give Babylon a new brilliant life, but due to his sudden death, this plan remained unfulfilled. The city fell into decay and the inhabitants left it.
The surviving ruins of the majestic Babylon still remind us of that civilization in the center of Mesopotamia, which over the course of three millennia created cultural values that formed the basis of many subsequent civilizations. It was there that a school appeared for the first time in history, the first calendar in human history was compiled, and the first written language was created. Many sciences arose - astronomy, algebra, medicine. A majestic epic appeared. The first legend of the resurrection from the dead was born. The first love song was composed, the first fables were written. The first system of legality was developed in Mesopotamia. In a word, the spiritual life of humanity began here.
Type: syllabic-ideographic
Language family: not established
Localization: Northern Mesopotamia
Distribution time: 3300 BC e. - 100 AD e.
Sumer, one of the most ancient civilizations of the Middle East, existed at the end of the 4th - beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. in the Southern Mesopotamia, the region of the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates, in the south of modern Iraq.
The first settlements in this territory began to appear already in the 6th millennium BC. e.
Where the Sumerians came to these lands from, among whom the local agricultural communities disappeared, has not yet been clarified.
Their own traditions speak of eastern or southeastern origin. They considered their oldest settlement to be Eredu, the southernmost of the cities of Mesopotamia, now the site of Abu Shahrain.
The Sumerians called the homeland of all mankind the island of Dilmui, identified with modern Bahrain in the Persian Gulf.
The earliest Sumerian writing is represented by texts found in the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr, dating back to 3300 BC.
The Sumerian language still continues to remain a mystery to us, since even now it has not been possible to establish its relationship with any of the known language families. Archaeological materials suggest that the Sumerians created the Ubaid culture in the south of Mesopotamia at the end of the 5th - beginning of the 4th millennium BC. e. Thanks to the emergence of hieroglyphic writing, the Sumerians left many monuments of their culture, imprinting them on clay tablets.
The cuneiform script itself was a syllabic script, consisting of several hundred characters, of which about 300 were the most common; these included more than 50 ideograms, about 100 signs for simple syllables and 130 for complex ones; there were signs for numbers in the hexadecimal and decimal systems.
Sumerian writing developed over 2,200 years
Most signs have two or several readings (polyphonism), since often, next to Sumerian, they also acquired a Semitic meaning. Sometimes they depicted related concepts (for example, “sun” - bar and “shine” - lah).
The invention of Sumerian writing itself was undoubtedly one of the largest and most significant achievements of the Sumerian civilization. Sumerian writing, which went from hieroglyphic, figurative signs-symbols to the signs that began to write the simplest syllables, turned out to be an extremely progressive system. It was borrowed and used by many peoples who spoke other languages.
At the turn of the IV-III millennium BC. e. we have indisputable evidence that the population of Lower Mesopotamia was Sumerian. The widely known story of the Great Flood first appears in Sumerian historical and mythological texts.
Although Sumerian writing was invented exclusively for economic needs, the first written literary monuments appeared among the Sumerians very early: among records dating back to the 26th century. BC e., there are already examples of folk wisdom genres, cult texts and hymns.
[
Due to this circumstance, the cultural influence of the Sumerians in the Ancient Near East was enormous and outlived their own civilization for many centuries.
Subsequently, writing loses its pictorial character and transforms into cuneiform.
Cuneiform writing was used in Mesopotamia for almost three thousand years. However, later it was forgotten. For tens of centuries, cuneiform kept its secret, until in 1835 the unusually energetic Englishman Henry Rawlinson, an English officer and lover of antiquities, deciphered it. One day he was informed that an inscription had been preserved on a steep cliff in Behistun (near the city of Hamadan in Iran). It turned out to be the same inscription, written in three ancient languages, including ancient Persian. Rawlinson first read the inscription in this language known to him, and then managed to understand the other inscription, identifying and deciphering more than 200 cuneiform characters.
In mathematics, the Sumerians knew how to count in tens. But the numbers 12 (a dozen) and 60 (five dozen) were especially revered. We still use the Sumerian heritage when we divide an hour into 60 minutes, a minute into 60 seconds, a year into 12 months, and a circle into 360 degrees.
In the figure you see how over 500 years hieroglyphic images of numerals turned into cuneiform ones.
