Sumer

It's another history article finally. It's been a three-month break from my regular routine so I am glad that we are back on schedule. In the past history articles, we discussed the first chapters of Genesis as well as laying some precedents for a study of the first civilization, Sumer. Today, we will begin our study of Sumer.

First of all, Sumer would have been located in southern Iraq. It is part of the Fertile Crescent and Lower Mesopotamia. Some historians choose to group it with Babylonia which we will discuss way later. The civilization began circa  2300 BC. The Old Testament in the Bible covers approximately 4000 years of history from the creation of the world (c. 4000 BC) to about 400 years before the New Testament. The intertestamental period (the years between the Old Testament and the New Testament) is about 400 years. This means that the Old Testament covers 4000 BC to 400 BC because the New Testament begins in approximately BC 3 with the Christmas story.

Another important fact is that Sumer is a location or name of a region than a city. This is why Sumer is known as the site of the first postdiluvian civilization. This region shared very similar cultures and that is why most textbooks will study Sumer as if it was a nation united by similar factors. It is not a nation though. The three oldest settlements in Sumer were Eridu, Uruk, and Ur.

Eridu is currently believed to be the first of the Sumerian cities. It was built around a temple which is believed to be dedicated to Enki, a Sumerian god. But the city was most likely named after Eridu, a Sumerian king. Uruk was located on the Euphrates River, and was founded by Enmerkar. The kings of the Sumerians are recorded on the Sumerian king list which is a cuneiform tablet telling of the ruling "houses" kind of like the Stuart or Tudor houses in British history. Gilgamesh, the legendary hero-king in the Epic of Gilgamesh, is said to have been the ruler of Uruk at one point. Apparently, at this point in history, archaeologists aren't quite sure if this list of kings are real accounts or myths.

Just a quick note; Eridu, Uruk, and Ur are not necessarily cities; they are called settlements. I'm actually not quite sure why, but I wanted to make the terminology clear. Ur is the last settlement to discuss. Most people know Ur as the city that Abraham left in approximately 2000 BC. There was a ziggurat, a terraced temple with a shrine on top, dedicated to Nanna or Sin, the moon god. By the way, that moon god is of the male gender; sounds weird considering the name.

Before this article ends, I would like to get into some Sumerian vocations. The Sumerians seem to have a wide range of vocations from studying their culture. They must have had builders and designers for their ziggurats and buildings and scholars to record their history or legends on cuneiform tablets. It seems amazing to us how such "primitive" people could accomplish such great building feats, but we shouldn't be surprised. In Genesis after the flood, people did not want to spread out like God commanded them. They decided to build a tower to the heavens instead. We can assume that they had the means to build a very tall tower. Some people believe that this tower would have been a ziggurat. We don't know if it was a ziggurat because they never finished building it.

There were also Sumerian schools that needed teachers, ziggurats that needed priests, and settlements that needed defenses. They seem to have had craftsman, sculptors, and jewelers who used precious materials such as ivory, jewels, and rare wood. They invented the potter's wheel which is known as the first true mechanical device. Sumer had a large textile industry and also made advancements in mathematics and astronomy although they most likely had astrologists to fulfill the scientific studies.

Agriculture was one of the most important parts of Sumerian life. The land in the Fertile Crescent was very fertile (obviously) especially in cities near the Tigris or Euphrates Rivers. Because they lived so close to the rivers, their land was prone to flooding with no clear sign of when it would happen. Then again, they were also in one of the driest parts of the world, and without the flooding, the land wouldn't be fertile for so long. They created dams to control the amount of flooding so it wouldn't wipe out their crops but would fertilize the soil. They also used irrigation techniques and invented the wheel and the plow that would both plow the ground and sow seeds at the same time. The Sumerians invented a number of important inventions as we will see throughout our study.

For such an ancient civilization, the citizens still seem to show ingenuity and creativity. They overcame natural problems with inventions and also created art and literature. This is another proof of Genesis being an accurate account. In the Bible, man wasn't some primitive caveman who needed to learn the ropes of survival after millions of years. In fact, Adam, the first man, named all the animals which shows creativity and intelligence. As someone pointed out, if man today had to name all of the animals, we would have trouble thinking of a different name after five creatures. The Bible says that man was created after God's image and that God equipped him with the means to survive on earth. Natural selection couldn't have done that. Only God the wise Creator who knows what we need even before we ask for it could have created man. It was just as God says; what He created was good. It shows how infinitely wise He is.