# A Brief History of Sumer

An episode of [Human History ASMR](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6793196842), 3 Oct 2026, 1 h 29 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/75487038/a_brief_history_of_sumer_human_voiced_no_ads.mp3

Journey back to the dawn of urban civilization and discover the fascinating history of Sumer, one of the earliest known complex societies in human history. Emerging in southern Mesopotamia thousands of years ago, the Sumerians developed cities, writing, monumental architecture, sophisticated administration, and religious traditions that would influence the civilizations that followed. Explore the rise of great Sumerian city-states such as Uruk, Ur, Lagash, Eridu, and Nippur. Discover how these cities developed around irrigation agriculture and became centers of trade, religion, craftsmanship, and political power. Learn how competition between rival cities shaped warfare, diplomacy, alliances, and the changing political landscape of ancient Mesopotamia. One of Sumer's greatest achievements was the development of writing. Discover how early cuneiform emerged from systems of accounting and administration before becoming a powerful tool for recording laws, transactions, religious texts, literature, royal inscriptions, and everyday life. Explore what surviving clay tablets reveal about merchants, farmers, priests, rulers, workers, and families. Step into the religious world of Sumer and meet powerful deities such as Anu, Enlil, Inanna, Enki, Utu, and Ninhursag. Discover how temples and priesthoods shaped urban society and how Sumerians understood the relationship between humans, gods, nature, and the unpredictable forces of the world around them. The episode also explores the political transformations of Sumer, from independent city-states to periods of wider imperial control. Discover the rise of rulers such as Eannatum, Lugalzagesi, and Ur-Nammu, the emergence of the Akkadian Empire, the revival of Sumerian power under the Third Dynasty of Ur, and the eventual decline of Sumerian political independence. Drawing on cuneiform tablets, archaeological discoveries, inscriptions, ancient literature, temple remains, administrative records, and modern scholarship, this episode separates established historical evidence from later myths and popular misconceptions. Discover what we really know about the people who helped shape the foundations of civilization. Narrated with a calm, human voice, this immersive journey is perfect for history enthusiasts, ancient history lovers, Mesopotamian history fans, archaeology listeners, documentary audiences, relaxation, or listening before sleep. Step into the cities of ancient Sumer and explore the origins of writing, urban life, organized government, and one of humanity's earliest civilizations.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: In the desert of southern Mesopotamia, amid the marshes and
[0:05] Speaker 1: plains between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, lay the ruins
[0:10] Speaker 1: of humanity's first great cities. It was here, five thousand
[0:16] Speaker 1: years ago, that the Sumerians built an urban civilization that
[0:21] Speaker 1: pioneered writing, monumental architecture, and epic literature. The Story of
[0:29] Speaker 1: Sumer from its prehistoric villagers to the mighty city-states of
[0:34] Speaker 1: the Bronze Age, is a saga of conquest, innovation, and ultimately, collapse.
[0:43] Speaker 1: Today we're going to go through the mythical origins of
[0:46] Speaker 1: kingship in the antediluvian city of Eridu, to the glittering
[0:51] Speaker 1: courts of Uruk and Ur, through to the periods of
[0:55] Speaker 1: triumphant turmoil under native Sumerian and foreign Akkadian rulers, and
[1:01] Speaker 1: finally to the Neo-Sumerian Renaissance and its ultimate end around
[1:06] Speaker 1: 2000 BCE. And while we're at it, we'll examine together
[1:12] Speaker 1: how Sumerians developed the world's earliest urban society, their advances
[1:18] Speaker 1: in agriculture and trade, the invention of cuneiform writing, their
[1:23] Speaker 1: stratified social order and powerful priesthoods, along with their rich
[1:28] Speaker 1: religious and literary traditions. So, you might be surprised what
[1:35] Speaker 1: we find in our time together today. As this society, 5,000
[1:41] Speaker 1: years ago, was much more advanced than you might think. So,
[1:48] Speaker 1: let me first welcome you to the channel. It's good
[1:51] Speaker 1: to have you all on board for another Bronze Age video.
[1:57] Speaker 1: and we're doing a chronological history of Sumer today now
[2:00] Speaker 1: that is a brief history we could hardly fit it
[2:03] Speaker 1: all into a video of this length but perhaps we'll
[2:07] Speaker 1: go into more details later on now if you're not
[2:11] Speaker 1: yet subscribed to the channel I invite you to do
[2:14] Speaker 1: so and thank you to those supporting on the Patreon
[2:19] Speaker 1: and the YouTube memberships along with the merch store welcomes
[2:26] Speaker 1: out of the way. Let's get nice and relaxed, and
[2:31] Speaker 1: we can go back to before the Bronze Age, the
[2:38] Speaker 1: most ancient of ancient worlds. And indeed, we start in
[2:47] Speaker 1: southern Mesopotamia, in the 6th and 5th millennia BCE, a
[2:53] Speaker 1: challenging environment. of swampy wetlands and sparse rainfall. Yet, it
[3:00] Speaker 1: was precisely here that the precursors of Sumerian civilization began
[3:05] Speaker 1: to take root. Archaeologists refer to this early formative era
[3:10] Speaker 1: as the Ubaid period, 5500 to 4000 BCE, when small
[3:17] Speaker 1: village communities began to thrive by draining marshes. and developing
[3:23] Speaker 1: rudimentary irrigation techniques for agriculture. These pre-Sumerian inhabitants cultivated grains,
[3:31] Speaker 1: wove textiles, fashioned simple painted pottery, and established the first
[3:38] Speaker 1: communal institutions. Of course, over centuries, the settlements grew in
[3:43] Speaker 1: size and therefore complexity. and that set the stage for
[3:47] Speaker 1: the later Sumerians who would inherit that legacy and build
[3:51] Speaker 1: upon the foundation. Now interestingly, southern Mesopotamia at the time
[3:58] Speaker 1: had virtually no forests or metal ores. But, if properly irrigated,
[4:06] Speaker 1: the soil was extremely fertile, yielding abundant amounts of grain.
[4:13] Speaker 1: The bounty, however, depended on communal efforts to dig canals
[4:17] Speaker 1: and control the floods, which likely spurred the development of
[4:21] Speaker 1: organized government and temple authorities quite early on. And here's
[4:27] Speaker 1: something intriguing. The question of where the Sumerians themselves came
[4:32] Speaker 1: from is still a matter of debate. The language they
[4:38] Speaker 1: used was unlike any other in the Near East. Of course,
[4:43] Speaker 1: there's plenty of opinions. Some scholars theorize that the ancestors
[4:47] Speaker 1: of the Sumerians may have lived along the shores of
[4:50] Speaker 1: the Persian Gulf, in what is now Eastern Arabia, until,
[4:55] Speaker 1: of course, rising sea levels at the end of the
[4:59] Speaker 1: Ice Age drove them into Mesopotamia. Whether indigenous or immigrant,
[5:06] Speaker 1: by the Ubaid period, these people had certainly fashioned a
[5:09] Speaker 1: way of life, that was steadily increasing in complexity. One
[5:16] Speaker 1: of the most significant Ubaid period sites is Eridu, located
[5:21] Speaker 1: near the old Persian Gulf shoreline in what is now
[5:24] Speaker 1: southern Iraq. In Sumerian tradition, Eridu was revered as the
[5:31] Speaker 1: first city ever created, the city of the first kings,
[5:36] Speaker 1: where kingship was established on earth by divine decree. The
[5:42] Speaker 1: Sumerian king list, an ancient record of rulers compiled long afterward,
[5:48] Speaker 1: opens with the words, quote, After the kingship descended from heaven,
[5:54] Speaker 1: the kingship was in Eridu. Names like Alulim as the
[6:00] Speaker 1: first king, said to have reigned for a fantastically long 28,800 years. Well,
[6:05] Speaker 1: perhaps no term limits back then, clearly mythical in these
[6:15] Speaker 1: details such accounts show Eridu's status in Mesopotamian memory as
[6:21] Speaker 1: a primordial city from which civilization itself sprang up from
[6:25] Speaker 1: and indeed archaeology confirms its great antiquity excavations reveal a
[6:33] Speaker 1: sequence of superimposed temples at Eridu built in mud brick
[6:39] Speaker 1: and repeatedly expanded over thousands of years The earliest shrine
[6:44] Speaker 1: on the site, dating to around 5500 BCE, was a
[6:49] Speaker 1: modest 3 by 4 meter room with a simple altar.
[6:53] Speaker 1: Up till now, it is the oldest known temple in Mesopotamia.
[6:59] Speaker 1: Offerings of fish bones and ashes found on the altar
[7:03] Speaker 1: floor suggest worshippers presented Enki, known later to the Akkadians
[7:09] Speaker 1: as Enki. the god of fresh water and wisdom who
[7:12] Speaker 1: was a patron of Eridu with meals of fresh fish.
[7:18] Speaker 1: As centuries went on, the humble chapel was rebuilt, again
[7:24] Speaker 1: and again, but always on the same sacred spot, each
[7:29] Speaker 1: time a little larger, a little more elaborate, eventually becoming
[7:34] Speaker 1: a massive mud-brick sanctuary. Eridu's temple of Enki, called the
[7:41] Speaker 1: House of the Aquifer, thus stands as a tangible record
[7:45] Speaker 1: of the nascent religious tradition that would characterize Sumerian cities.
[7:50] Speaker 1: The idea that each city was home to a patron
[7:52] Speaker 1: deity living in a grand central temple. In fact, Sumerian
[7:59] Speaker 1: mythology even casts Eridu as a paradisiacal first city. Some
[8:06] Speaker 1: later Mesopotamian writers described a primeval time when Eridu was
[8:11] Speaker 1: a blissful garden, a concept that may have influenced the
[8:15] Speaker 1: biblical idea of the Garden of Eden. By the late
[8:20] Speaker 1: Ubayit period, Eridu had grown from a village into what
[8:25] Speaker 1: we might think as a proto-city, with a population of
[8:30] Speaker 1: several thousand. Pretty impressive, for back then, but it was
[8:35] Speaker 1: part of a network of emerging towns across the southern alluvium.
[8:41] Speaker 1: Nearby sites like Lagash, Ur, and others show Ubaid phase
[8:46] Speaker 1: occupation as well. Although true urbanization had not quite yet arrived,
[8:53] Speaker 1: the ingredients were certainly assembling. Productive irrigated farms, communal centers
[9:00] Speaker 1: for religion, specialized craft and long-distance trade for resources— not
[9:06] Speaker 1: available in a river valley that is such as stone,
[9:09] Speaker 1: wood and metal ores. There is even evidence of interaction
[9:13] Speaker 1: between differing cultural groups. It's been theorised that in southern
[9:18] Speaker 1: Mesopotamia of this era, ancestral Sumerian farming populations co-existed and
[9:24] Speaker 1: fused with those nomadic Semitic pastoralists and fisher folk of
[9:29] Speaker 1: the marshland. In fact, that might have given rise to
[9:33] Speaker 1: the unique Sumerian culture and language. And it is at
[9:39] Speaker 1: this point where Sumer's true urban revolution unfolds, in the
[9:46] Speaker 1: Uruk period, about 4000 to 3100 BCE, named, of course,
[9:53] Speaker 1: after the city of Uruk, which became the largest and
[9:55] Speaker 1: most influential settlement of its time. A little bit more
[10:00] Speaker 1: about Uruk. It's known as Unug in Sumerian, and later
[10:05] Speaker 1: Erek in the Bible. It was initially a small Ubaid town,
[10:09] Speaker 1: just like Eridu. But during the 4th millennium BCE, it
[10:14] Speaker 1: underwent an explosive pattern of growth. transforming into a sprawling metropolis,
[10:20] Speaker 1: covering over 250 hectares, absolutely unprecedented in size. By around
[10:27] Speaker 1: 34 to 3,200, Uruk may have housed between 40 and 50,000 people,
[10:35] Speaker 1: and that, quite well and truly, makes it the first
[10:39] Speaker 1: city in the full sense, if we're talking about population-wise.
[10:44] Speaker 1: But what exactly drove Uruk? Such rapid urbanization. That's a
[10:49] Speaker 1: little bit more difficult to quantify. The exact causes are debatable,
[10:54] Speaker 1: but in terms of archaeology, we see signs of agricultural surpluses,
[11:00] Speaker 1: feeding population increase, as well as the concentration of political
[11:04] Speaker 1: and religious authority drawing people to the city. Uruk itself
[11:09] Speaker 1: was divided into districts, including the Eana precinct, dedicated to Inanna.
[11:16] Speaker 1: the goddess of love, war, later called Ishtar, and the
[11:21] Speaker 1: Anu ziggurat precinct dedicated to Anu, the sky god. Massive
[11:27] Speaker 1: temple platforms were constructed, such as the limestone-paved terrace supporting
[11:32] Speaker 1: the Ayanna temple complex and the high terrace for the
[11:36] Speaker 1: whitewashed brick sanctuary, the White Temple of Anu. These monumental buildings,
[11:43] Speaker 1: some of the first true ziggurats in Mesopotamia, must have
[11:47] Speaker 1: required organized labor on a massive scale, and they're truly
[11:52] Speaker 1: a testament to Uruk's role as a ceremonial center. But
[11:57] Speaker 1: even more crucial, Uruk period temples were not just religious edifices,
[12:04] Speaker 1: but economic hubs. The city's patron gods were believed to
[12:09] Speaker 1: own the land and its produce, with the temple administration
[12:13] Speaker 1: managing grain harvests, herds of livestock, and workshops for craft production.
[12:20] Speaker 1: Ordinary farmers bought their barley, dates, or wool as dues
[12:24] Speaker 1: to the temple's storehouse, and in return received allotments of
[12:28] Speaker 1: food and goods for their sustenance. In effect, the temple
[12:33] Speaker 1: had functioned as a centralized redistribution system. It received, stored,
[12:39] Speaker 1: and disbursed the community's wealth, maintaining reserves to weather bad years.
[12:49] Speaker 1: Of course, managing a complex economy like this, you needed
[12:53] Speaker 1: an administrative class. So in come the priests and the scribes.
[13:00] Speaker 1: These officials kept accounts of temple incomes and outlays, initially
[13:05] Speaker 1: using carved stone tokens and seals. But eventually, an even
[13:10] Speaker 1: more revolutionary tool. Writing. You can't have civilization without that,
[13:17] Speaker 1: can't you? So it is within these late Uruk levels
[13:24] Speaker 1: that archaeologists have discovered the earliest known writing in the world.
[13:31] Speaker 1: And just think about that. That's more than 5,000 years ago. Exciting.
[13:39] Speaker 1: So exciting. Well, clay tablets from Uruk and a few
[13:44] Speaker 1: other sites under Uruk's influence bear proto-cuneiform signs that is,
[13:50] Speaker 1: pictographic and numeric impressions that record transactions of grain, livestock, beer,
[13:56] Speaker 1: and other commodities, certainly within its infancy, but it is
[14:02] Speaker 1: what we can recognize as a written form of communication
[14:05] Speaker 1: and record-keeping. Of course, writing began as an extension of accounting.
[14:11] Speaker 1: The Uruk bureaucracy needed a permanent way to track the
[14:15] Speaker 1: flow of goods and labor rations in the temple economy.
[14:20] Speaker 1: At first, simple drawings and tally marks sufficed. But over time,
[14:26] Speaker 1: scribes got creative, and they developed standardized symbols and impressed
[14:31] Speaker 1: them into the clay with a stylus, creating wedge-shaped marks.
[14:37] Speaker 1: Certainly the beginnings of cuneiform script. By around 3200 BCE,
[14:43] Speaker 1: these tablets even record personal names and titles. hinting at
[14:48] Speaker 1: the first written administrative orders and ownership statements. The invention
[14:55] Speaker 1: of writing had an enormous impact. It allowed the Sumerians
[14:59] Speaker 1: to transmit information across time and distance with precision, facilitating
[15:06] Speaker 1: more complex governance and ultimately laying the groundwork for history
[15:11] Speaker 1: and literature, which will come a little bit later. Uruk's
[15:16] Speaker 1: ascendancy during this period was not only felt in Sumer proper.
[15:22] Speaker 1: In what scholars term as the Uruk expansion, material culture
[15:26] Speaker 1: from Uruk appears across a wide variety of regions beyond
[15:31] Speaker 1: southern Mesopotamia. Archaeologists have found Uruk-style pottery, cylinder seals with
[15:38] Speaker 1: Mesopotamian motifs, and even entire settlements established by colonists from
[15:44] Speaker 1: Uruk in distant lands. For example, in Habuba Kabira in
[15:49] Speaker 1: today's Syria, and at sites in southeastern Turkey and western Iran,
[15:55] Speaker 1: Uruk-period enclaves sprang up hundreds of kilometres away from Sumer.
[16:01] Speaker 1: The outposts were likely trading colonies or administrative centres to
[16:07] Speaker 1: secure vital resources. Timber from the north mountains, precious metals
[16:13] Speaker 1: and stones, perhaps access to trade routes reaching as far
[16:17] Speaker 1: as the Levant and the Indus Valley. By the late
[16:21] Speaker 1: 4th millennium BCE, Uruk's influence, or at least its cultural style,
[16:28] Speaker 1: extended from the Persian Gulf all the way to the Mediterranean. Technologically,
[16:34] Speaker 1: the Uruk period saw plenty of important innovations. The potter's
[16:39] Speaker 1: wheel came into use, enabling mass production of pottery. like
[16:43] Speaker 1: the standardized beveled rim-bowl. The Sumerians also harnessed the wheel
[16:49] Speaker 1: for transport. Wheeled carts and wagons appear in this area,
[16:55] Speaker 1: as does the use of the sail on boats, facilitating
[16:58] Speaker 1: trade along rivers and the gulf. And then there was
[17:02] Speaker 1: the plough that was improved for oxen to pull, greatly
[17:07] Speaker 1: expanding agricultural output. With more food available, Of course, not
[17:13] Speaker 1: everyone needed to be a farmer, and Uruk boasted full-time
[17:17] Speaker 1: artisans such as metallurgists, leather workers and priests, supported by
[17:22] Speaker 1: all that surplus grain. Good times. One exquisite artifact from Uruk,
[17:30] Speaker 1: the Warka vase, shows a procession of offerings brought to
[17:34] Speaker 1: the goddess Inanna, carved in alabaster. The layers of imagery
[17:39] Speaker 1: on the vase, the farmers' livestock, priests and the goddess
[17:43] Speaker 1: herself capture an organization of society still centered around the temple.
[17:51] Speaker 1: The Uruk period also saw the first heroic figures emerge
[17:55] Speaker 1: in Sumerian tradition. Although purely historical records from this time
[18:00] Speaker 1: are pretty rare, later legends recall that Uruk's early kings
[18:05] Speaker 1: were culture heroes. Of course, you know the name Gilgamesh.
[18:11] Speaker 1: he's the most famous, who in Sumerian tales is the
[18:14] Speaker 1: fifth king of Uruk. The Sumerian king list indeed names, quote, Gilgamesh,
[18:23] Speaker 1: whose father was a phantom, i.e. of an unknown father,
[18:28] Speaker 1: and credits him with a reign of 126 years in
[18:32] Speaker 1: the distant past. Gilgamesh likely lived, if he was real,
[18:38] Speaker 1: near the end of the early dynastic period, the 27th
[18:42] Speaker 1: to the 26th century BCE. But by the Bronze Age,
[18:46] Speaker 1: he'd certainly become a household name. Later epic poetry describes
[18:52] Speaker 1: him building Uruk's monumental walls and going on fantastic adventures.
[18:58] Speaker 1: The kernel of these stories may hark back to the
[19:00] Speaker 1: pride Sumerians felt in Uruk's grandeur and at the dawn
[19:05] Speaker 1: of cities. even an early proto-epic fragment from Uruk, written
[19:11] Speaker 1: centuries after the Uruk period, but set in primordial time,
[19:15] Speaker 1: lords the city's walls and temple precinct, suggesting that even
[19:20] Speaker 1: by the Dron's age, Sumerians looked upon Uruk's ancient achievements
[19:25] Speaker 1: with reverence. But you know what they say about good times.
[19:33] Speaker 1: They don't always last forever. By around 3100 BCE, the
[19:39] Speaker 1: Uruk-centric system experienced quite an upheaval. Many of the distant
[19:46] Speaker 1: Uruk colonies were abandoned, and Uruk's dominance within Sumer seems
[19:52] Speaker 1: to have waned possibly due to shifting river courses climate
[19:57] Speaker 1: stress perhaps internal political change in Mesopotamian legend this error
[20:04] Speaker 1: is punctuated by a great flood the king's list notes
[20:08] Speaker 1: laconically that that kingship passed through several cities, and then
[20:14] Speaker 1: the flood swept over, playing a break in history. A
[20:21] Speaker 1: Sumerian poem, often called the Eridu Genesis, composed 2300 BCE,
[20:27] Speaker 1: tells of gods deciding to inundate the land, and of
[20:31] Speaker 1: one righteous man, Ziusudra, who built an ark and survived
[20:36] Speaker 1: the deluge at the behest of the god Enki. Indeed,
[20:41] Speaker 1: it's all familiar. These tales of a flood and renewal
[20:46] Speaker 1: likely echo real floods, though. We see them in a
[20:50] Speaker 1: lot of different cultures. Certainly devastated parts of southern Mesopotamia,
[20:55] Speaker 1: that's for sure. Indeed, archaeologists at Ur found a thick
[21:01] Speaker 1: layer of water-laid clay separating the Ubayit and Uruk remains
[21:07] Speaker 1: from the later strata. evidence of a significant flood event
[21:12] Speaker 1: around 2800 BCE. Well, whether or not this specific flood
[21:19] Speaker 1: underlies the myth, the end of the Uruk period did
[21:24] Speaker 1: usher in a new chapter of Sumerian civilization. State was
[21:29] Speaker 1: certainly set for the early dynastic period, a time when
[21:34] Speaker 1: multiple competing city-states blossomed in Sumer, inheriting the legacies of
[21:40] Speaker 1: that now-gone Uruk Age. Are you still with me? We're
[21:48] Speaker 1: only just getting started. By circa 2900 BCE, Sumer had
[21:54] Speaker 1: regrouped into a mosaic of independent city-states. Each city in
[21:59] Speaker 1: its surrounding hinterland had formed a small kingdom centered on
[22:04] Speaker 1: a cult of its patron deity, and ruled by a
[22:07] Speaker 1: secular leader, Lugal, meaning great man or king, or an ensi,
[22:15] Speaker 1: a city governor. Now remember those words because you'll hear
[22:18] Speaker 1: them come up a lot when you're talking about Sumer.
[22:21] Speaker 1: That's Lugal and ensi, king and governor. The early dynastic
[22:28] Speaker 1: period spans roughly 2900 to 2330 BCE. and is traditionally
[22:34] Speaker 1: divided into sub-periods, such as being ED1, 2 and 3
[22:38] Speaker 1: in modern chronology. During this time we find the first
[22:43] Speaker 1: extensive written records, and I'm not just talking administrative tablets,
[22:49] Speaker 1: but also inscriptions by kings bragging of their deeds, and
[22:55] Speaker 1: possibly the earliest hymns and narrative texts. We also have
[22:59] Speaker 1: rich archaeological evidence, including the spectacular royal tombs at Ur,
[23:06] Speaker 1: which together paint a picture of a vibrant, competitive era
[23:09] Speaker 1: in Sumerian history. But politically, there wasn't a single city
[23:17] Speaker 1: that dominated all of Sumer in the early dynastic. Rather,
[23:22] Speaker 1: the situation was that power rotated among the major centers.
[23:27] Speaker 1: Alliances and rivalries were always changing. We have cities such
[23:33] Speaker 1: as Uruk, Ur, Kish, Lagash, Umur, Nipur, Shurupak and Eshnunna.
[23:42] Speaker 1: Now that's just to name the prominent ones. And they
[23:45] Speaker 1: had their own dynasties of rulers. The Sumerians themselves viewed
[23:51] Speaker 1: this period through a somewhat legendary lens. The Sumerian kings list.
[23:57] Speaker 1: composed in the Ur III period, but reporting to record
[24:01] Speaker 1: far earlier times, gives us a sequence of dynasties. After
[24:06] Speaker 1: the mythical Antediluvian kings, it says kingship resumed at Kish. Quote,
[24:14] Speaker 1: After the flood had swept over, kingship came down again
[24:17] Speaker 1: at Kish. Now, where exactly was Kish? Well, it was
[24:23] Speaker 1: a city on the northern edge of Sumer, near the
[24:27] Speaker 1: modern city of Tel el-Uheimir, and is often listed first
[24:33] Speaker 1: in the post-flood times. Indeed, King of Kish became a
[24:39] Speaker 1: title that implied primacy or hegemony among Sumerian cities. Early
[24:44] Speaker 1: dynastic rulers from various cities sometimes adopted the title King
[24:49] Speaker 1: of Kish to legitimize themselves as the foremost leader. even
[24:54] Speaker 1: if they had never even stepped foot in Kish, or
[24:58] Speaker 1: never were born in Kish. But it all indicates that
[25:02] Speaker 1: Kish had an early prestige as a centre of power,
[25:07] Speaker 1: much like later on now we see the same for Babylon,
[25:12] Speaker 1: this kind of thing. Well, some modern historians do suspect
[25:18] Speaker 1: that Kish may have been an early hegemon, or at
[25:22] Speaker 1: least symbolized a unifying kingship in Sumerian ideology. From early
[25:30] Speaker 1: dynastic texts and excavations, we can begin to flesh out
[25:34] Speaker 1: individual rulers who straddle myth and history. One of the earliest,
[25:40] Speaker 1: whose historicity is evidenced outside the king's list, is Emne
[25:45] Speaker 1: Barakesi of Kish, who is said to have lived in E.D. I,
[25:50] Speaker 1: that is perhaps around 2600 BCE. Emne Baragesi is credited
[25:56] Speaker 1: by later tradition with capturing weapons from Elam, that is
[26:01] Speaker 1: a neighboring land to the east. And significantly, archaeologists at
[26:06] Speaker 1: Nippur found a vase fragment inscribed with his name. Now,
[26:12] Speaker 1: that's a pretty hard piece of evidence that a king
[26:16] Speaker 1: named Emne Baragesi did exist. And then we have his son,
[26:22] Speaker 1: Aga of Kish, who appears in a Sumerian story as
[26:26] Speaker 1: a contemporary rival of Gilgamesh in Uruk, suggesting conflicts between
[26:32] Speaker 1: Kish and Uruk were happening even in legend. Another key
[26:39] Speaker 1: city-state rivalry that emerges in ED times is between Lagash
[26:44] Speaker 1: and Uma, two cities in eastern Sumer. divided by a
[26:48] Speaker 1: fertile boundary region called Gu-Edin. Now this dispute over territory
[26:57] Speaker 1: became one of the first recorded wars in history. We're
[27:02] Speaker 1: fortunate enough to have detailed descriptions, at least from the victors.
[27:08] Speaker 1: The kings of Lagash left behind inscribed stones and steli,
[27:11] Speaker 1: recounting their fights with Uma. One of these is the
[27:16] Speaker 1: famous Stell of the Vultures from Lagash. It dates to
[27:20] Speaker 1: around 2450 BCE, that is, the corresponding ED3 period. Now,
[27:28] Speaker 1: although it is fragmentary, its inscription and carved relief images
[27:33] Speaker 1: celebrate the victory of Aenatum of Lagash over Uma. We
[27:39] Speaker 1: learn that generations earlier, a border was fixed between the
[27:44] Speaker 1: two by Meselim of Gish, a powerful earlier king who
[27:48] Speaker 1: acted as a mediator. But Umma later violated the boundary.
[27:56] Speaker 1: And so, according to the text, the god of Umma
[27:59] Speaker 1: ordered its ruler to seize the contested fields of Lagash.
[28:03] Speaker 1: The Patesi of Umma, by the command of his god,
[28:07] Speaker 1: plundered Gu-ed-din, the territory beloved of Ningirsu. That is from
[28:12] Speaker 1: the text. Eanatum The ruler, or Ensi, of Lagash, claims
[28:18] Speaker 1: that his own patron deity, Ningirsu, the god of war
[28:21] Speaker 1: and agriculture, then commanded him in a dream to march
[28:26] Speaker 1: to battle. In the ensuing war, Enatum led the armies
[28:32] Speaker 1: of Lagash to defeat Uma's forces. The Stell of the
[28:36] Speaker 1: Vultures depicts vultures carrying off the severed heads of the
[28:40] Speaker 1: defeated enemy. A pretty grisly trophy. but an effective image
[28:46] Speaker 1: of triumph. On the carved relief, Eonatum's infantry advance in
[28:52] Speaker 1: tight formation, wearing helmets and wielding spears and axes, while
[28:58] Speaker 1: Ningirsu himself is shown in a mythological form, helping trap
[29:05] Speaker 1: Uma's soldiers in a net. While one can certainly imagine
[29:09] Speaker 1: the pride of Lagash's citizens at this divinely sanctioned victory,
[29:15] Speaker 1: doesn't get much better than that. Eonatum's inscription not only
[29:19] Speaker 1: boasts of piling up the bodies of Uma soldiers, but
[29:24] Speaker 1: it also records a treaty. The defeated Uma was made
[29:28] Speaker 1: to swear not to encroach again, and to pay heavy
[29:33] Speaker 1: tribute of grain to the temple of Ningirisu. Lagash's archives
[29:39] Speaker 1: reveal a surprisingly legalistic approach to the conflict, and Atom's successor, Enmenta, Enmetena, rather,
[29:50] Speaker 1: of Lagash, records renewing the boredom. indicating that written agreements
[29:59] Speaker 1: and curses against violators were certainly a key part of
[30:04] Speaker 1: intercity diplomacy in those days. And that really is noteworthy.
[30:09] Speaker 1: The practice of using an inscribed stele to demarcate borders,
[30:16] Speaker 1: and of invoking gods as guarantors of treaties, is first
[30:20] Speaker 1: seen in this stele, setting precedence for later international law
[30:25] Speaker 1: in Mesopotamia. And, of course, in the broader Bronze Age
[30:30] Speaker 1: world of later times, we see the same sorts of
[30:33] Speaker 1: things still after the Battle of Kadesh between the Hittites
[30:37] Speaker 1: and the Egyptians under Ramesses II. Well, back to Sumer.
[30:45] Speaker 1: The religious city of Nippur, home of Enlil's great sanctuary,
[30:50] Speaker 1: held a special status throughout these centuries. Kings from different
[30:54] Speaker 1: cities all respected Nippur, It was common belief that no
[30:59] Speaker 1: man could rule Sumer legitimately without getting Enlil's blessing, and
[31:05] Speaker 1: he had to get that from Nippur, of course. Thus,
[31:09] Speaker 1: even when no single king dominated politically, a shared Sumerian
[31:14] Speaker 1: cultural identity was maintained through common worship at Nippur and
[31:19] Speaker 1: other holy sites. But while all the wars raged on,
[31:25] Speaker 1: Sumerian society was also developing in its own sophistication. The
[31:31] Speaker 1: economy in the early dynastic times remained centered on temple estates,
[31:36] Speaker 1: but secular palaces were becoming powerful as well. Kings or
[31:43] Speaker 1: lugals appear more prominently, often claiming divine favor or semi-divine lineage.
[31:50] Speaker 1: We see the growth of a warrior aristocracy with bronze
[31:54] Speaker 1: weapons and light chariots, but they were usually drawn by donkeys,
[32:00] Speaker 1: not by horses. There is evidence also of a class
[32:05] Speaker 1: of free men and labourers, and also slaves, often war
[32:10] Speaker 1: captives or debt servants, at the bottom of the social pyramid.
[32:15] Speaker 1: The construction of lavish royal tombs in this period suggests
[32:19] Speaker 1: the elite commanded enormous resources. And nowhere is this more
[32:24] Speaker 1: evident than at the royal cemetery of Ur, dating to
[32:29] Speaker 1: roughly the early dynastic III period, 2500 BCE. British archaeologists
[32:37] Speaker 1: Leonard Woolley's excavations at Ur in the 1920s uncovered tombs
[32:42] Speaker 1: of extraordinary wealth, gold jewelry, musical instruments, ornate weapons, and
[32:49] Speaker 1: all other grave goodies. You really had a bit of everything.
[32:54] Speaker 1: All the luxuries of the ancient world, all in one nice,
[32:58] Speaker 1: neat little hole. That's what archaeology is all about. Well,
[33:05] Speaker 1: in some of these tombs, though, the main burial, a
[33:07] Speaker 1: king or queen, was accompanied by a retinue of attendants,
[33:12] Speaker 1: who appear to have been sacrificed to serve their master
[33:15] Speaker 1: in the afterlife. For instance, the tomb, believed to belong
[33:20] Speaker 1: to Queen Puabi, which is labelled at the site as PG-800,
[33:26] Speaker 1: contained the bodies of dozens of servants and guards, dressed
[33:30] Speaker 1: in fine garments and gold ornaments, who went to the
[33:34] Speaker 1: grave with her. It's a pretty macabre ritual, sure, but
[33:40] Speaker 1: it just drives home that point of the godlike status
[33:44] Speaker 1: of Sumerian royalty. Hmm. It's also perhaps a haunting glimpse
[33:49] Speaker 1: at the worldview of life's hierarchy continuing after death. I
[33:55] Speaker 1: have a full video on Sumerian funeral practices, if you're
[33:59] Speaker 1: interested in that. It goes into quite a lot of detail. Well,
[34:05] Speaker 1: let's continue. From these royal burials also came artworks that
[34:11] Speaker 1: reveal much about Sumerian life. For example, the Standard of Ur.
[34:17] Speaker 1: A wooden box found in a royal tomb at Ur
[34:21] Speaker 1: bears intricate mosaics illustrating the dual roles of the ruler.
[34:26] Speaker 1: On one side, a war scene, showing the king leading
[34:31] Speaker 1: a Sumerian army. Chariots drawn by wild donkeys trample over enemies.
[34:37] Speaker 1: Infantry with spears and copper helmets march in formation. And finally,
[34:43] Speaker 1: the downtrodden prisoners presented to the king. But on the
[34:49] Speaker 1: opposite side, there is a scene of peace, depicting a
[34:53] Speaker 1: banquet with the king and nobles drinking while a musician
[34:57] Speaker 1: plays a lyre. And lower registers show labourers bringing animals,
[35:03] Speaker 1: fish and produce as tribute. Either way, it makes the
[35:09] Speaker 1: message pretty clear. The image tells a thousand words. The
[35:14] Speaker 1: king protects the city in war and ensures prosperity and peace.
[35:19] Speaker 1: Despite the focus on rulers and temples, ordinary life in
[35:23] Speaker 1: Sumer thrived under this urban order. Citizens lived in mud-brick
[35:29] Speaker 1: houses along narrow streets. Excavations show multi-room homes, often centred
[35:35] Speaker 1: on a courtyard, with kitchens, storage and living quarters. A
[35:41] Speaker 1: clay figurine might be set in a household shrine to
[35:44] Speaker 1: offer prayers to personal gods. The Sumerians were also renowned
[35:48] Speaker 1: for enjoying life's pleasures, too. Archaeological finds include a royal
[35:54] Speaker 1: game of Ur, a board game with checkers and dice,
[35:59] Speaker 1: and even evidence of prolific beer brewing. Of course, back then,
[36:05] Speaker 1: you wouldn't be drinking normal water. That's dangerous. It's far
[36:09] Speaker 1: safer to brew it into beer, something like that, and
[36:13] Speaker 1: then consume it. but do remember that back then the
[36:16] Speaker 1: alcohol content was much lower. People would usually have beer
[36:21] Speaker 1: for breakfast, especially in the case of what we found
[36:25] Speaker 1: at the rations list at the pyramids for the workers.
[36:29] Speaker 1: Usually they were paid in grain and beer sort of thing. Well,
[36:36] Speaker 1: in fact, a famous Sumerian hymn to the goddess Ninkasi
[36:41] Speaker 1: doubles as a recipe for beer. describing in poetic terms
[36:46] Speaker 1: the step-by-step process of how to make the best Sumerian beer.
[36:54] Speaker 1: Of course, it's a staple drink for all classes, consumed
[36:57] Speaker 1: with straws from large jars. Music and song were beloved.
[37:04] Speaker 1: Harps and lyres were played both in palaces and taverns,
[37:08] Speaker 1: and by this period, The cuneiform record even preserves the
[37:12] Speaker 1: first known musical notation and lullabies. All these details, they
[37:18] Speaker 1: don't portray a society of Bronze Age cave dwellers or
[37:23] Speaker 1: anything like that, but rather a very human picture. Sure,
[37:30] Speaker 1: devout and hierarchical, definitely, but they certainly knew how to
[37:35] Speaker 1: celebrate the joys of feasting and entertainment. The richness of
[37:40] Speaker 1: material culture in the early dynastic age also reflects a
[37:44] Speaker 1: burgeoning long-distance trade system. Many precious materials found in Sumer
[37:49] Speaker 1: had to be imported. We're talking lapis lazuli and gold
[37:54] Speaker 1: coming from as far as Central Asia, the modern region
[37:58] Speaker 1: of Afghanistan. Tin as well, to alloy with copper for bronze,
[38:04] Speaker 1: possibly from Iran or beyond. Cedar wood from the forests
[38:08] Speaker 1: of the Levant. Lebanon and Syria, and diorite stone from
[38:13] Speaker 1: Magan in the Arabian Gulf. Magan is roughly modern-day Oman.
[38:21] Speaker 1: Samoan inscriptions proudly list these acquisitions. The rulers of Lagash,
[38:26] Speaker 1: for example, describe bringing timbers from the Amanus and Lebanon ranges,
[38:32] Speaker 1: copper and gold from distant lands, and indeed diorite from Magan.
[38:37] Speaker 1: One Lagash king, Gudea, who ruled slightly later during the
[38:42] Speaker 1: Gutian interlude, around 2140 BCE, recorded how he obtained cedar logs,
[38:48] Speaker 1: imported rare stones, and welcomed ships from Dilmun, laden with
[38:54] Speaker 1: exotic goods. Now, Dilmun, by the way, that's roughly around Bahrain. Now,
[39:03] Speaker 1: such records show that by the mid-third millennium, Sumer was
[39:08] Speaker 1: indeed a hub of the trading world that connected the
[39:11] Speaker 1: Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean. Merchants from Sumer, sometimes acting
[39:17] Speaker 1: on behalf of the temples, travelled or at least sent
[39:21] Speaker 1: emissaries abroad, exchanging Sumer's textiles, wool, grain, and crafted wares
[39:28] Speaker 1: for the metals and timber, that their homeland lacked. The
[39:35] Speaker 1: Sumerians progressively extended their cultural reach, and also developed their
[39:40] Speaker 1: intellectual life. Short hymns and temporal songs have been found,
[39:46] Speaker 1: as well as early versions of tales about Heroes like Gilgamesh, Lugalbandha,
[39:51] Speaker 1: and Enmerkar. Sumerian scribes by the E.D. III period were
[39:58] Speaker 1: recording their heroic traditions. Kings like Etana of Gish and
[40:03] Speaker 1: Gilgamesh of Uruk, who appear in the king's list and
[40:07] Speaker 1: now in epic tales, certainly show how history and myth
[40:12] Speaker 1: sometimes have a bit of a blurry line between. Think
[40:16] Speaker 1: about wither. bit of Greek mythology as well. The ancient world,
[40:21] Speaker 1: it just goes hand in hand like that. Now, Gilgamesh,
[40:27] Speaker 1: likely a historical king around the 26th century BCE, was
[40:31] Speaker 1: already being immortalized in poems as a demigod who battled
[40:35] Speaker 1: monsters and sought immortality, indicating a rich oral law being
[40:41] Speaker 1: committed to writing. In cultural terms, The early dynastic period
[40:46] Speaker 1: laid the groundwork for what we now recognize as classical
[40:49] Speaker 1: Sumerian civilization. The Sumerian language was at this time in
[40:54] Speaker 1: everyday use. Schools, or as they called them, eduba, tablet houses,
[41:02] Speaker 1: were established to train scribes who had to master hundreds
[41:06] Speaker 1: of signs to produce neat-looking tablets. From scribal training exercises
[41:12] Speaker 1: and school texts, we see the first of proverbs and fables,
[41:17] Speaker 1: indicating a tradition of wisdom literature. For example, one Sumerian
[41:23] Speaker 1: proverb admonishes that, He who may possess much silver may
[41:30] Speaker 1: be happy. He who possesses much barley may be happy.
[41:35] Speaker 1: But he who has nothing at all can sleep. A
[41:40] Speaker 1: wry commentary on wealth and contentment. The Sumerians also began
[41:46] Speaker 1: writing down their myths and epics in this period, or
[41:50] Speaker 1: at least circulating them orally. By the end of E.D. 3,
[41:56] Speaker 1: short narrative poems in Sumerian existed about legendary kings. Five
[42:01] Speaker 1: separate Sumerian poetic tales about Gilgamesh are actually known from
[42:05] Speaker 1: later copies, although the fully developed Sumerian literature would blossom
[42:11] Speaker 1: in the subsequent Old Babylonian period. Its seeds were certainly
[42:16] Speaker 1: planted in the early dynastic times. As far as religion, well,
[42:22] Speaker 1: no surprises. It continued to dominate intellectual life. Each city's
[42:28] Speaker 1: temple was not only an economic centre, but the literal
[42:32] Speaker 1: seat of political power. In many cases, early rulers governed
[42:39] Speaker 1: as priest-kings. The Sumerian title, En, denoted a priestly lord
[42:47] Speaker 1: for instance the city of Uruk had a female high
[42:51] Speaker 1: priestess of Inanna who were royal family members indicating the
[42:57] Speaker 1: intertwining of sacred and royal authority not unique to Sumeria
[43:04] Speaker 1: while the pantheon of the Sumerian gods took on a
[43:07] Speaker 1: more fixed form An, sky, Enlil, air, storm, king of
[43:13] Speaker 1: the gods, whose main temple was at Nipur. Enki, water
[43:18] Speaker 1: and wisdom, at Eridu. Ninurzag, earth and fertility. Nana, the
[43:25] Speaker 1: moon at Ur. Utu, sun, the sun rather, at Larsa
[43:30] Speaker 1: or Sipar. Inanna, love and war, based in Uruk and
[43:35] Speaker 1: many other minor gods. Sumerian religion was anthropomorphic. Gods were
[43:43] Speaker 1: thought to live in their temple houses, to eat the
[43:46] Speaker 1: food offered to them, and to engage in very human-like dramas,
[43:51] Speaker 1: according to myth. Maintaining the favor of the patron deity
[43:55] Speaker 1: through proper rituals, offerings, and temple upkeep, well, that was
[44:00] Speaker 1: essential to a city's good fortune. When kings boast in inscriptions,
[44:06] Speaker 1: they often credit their successors to the will of their
[44:09] Speaker 1: city's god and lavish praise on building that god's temple.
[44:15] Speaker 1: This close god-king relationship is epitomized in the sacred marriage
[44:21] Speaker 1: rite that some cities practiced, where the king would actually
[44:25] Speaker 1: marry the goddess in a ritual embodied by her high
[44:29] Speaker 1: priestess to ensure fertility and prosperity for the land. By
[44:36] Speaker 1: the end of the early dynastic period, one city-state had
[44:40] Speaker 1: managed to assert itself above all the rest, albeit briefly,
[44:47] Speaker 1: and that was Uma, under its ambitious king, Lugal-Zegesi. Ruling
[44:54] Speaker 1: circa 2350, Lugal-Zegesi claimed to have conquered the entirety of Sumer,
[45:00] Speaker 1: and even lands beyond. In a boastful inscription, he states
[45:05] Speaker 1: that Enlil granted him kingship over the nations, and that
[45:10] Speaker 1: he had made the lands from the Upper Sea to
[45:13] Speaker 1: the Lower Sea, that is a reference to the Mediterranean
[45:16] Speaker 1: and Persian Gulf, obedient to him. We may presume that
[45:21] Speaker 1: it's a bit of exaggeration, but what is certain is
[45:26] Speaker 1: that Lugal-Zagazi defeated his long-time rival Lagash, and that ended
[45:32] Speaker 1: Lagash's dynasty. which had endured for generations since the time
[45:37] Speaker 1: of Aeonatum. He also established his rule over Ur, Uruk,
[45:42] Speaker 1: and several other Sumerian cities, making Uruk his capital, perhaps
[45:48] Speaker 1: harking back to its ancient prestige. It seemed as if
[45:54] Speaker 1: Sumer might finally be united under one native ruler. But,
[46:03] Speaker 1: Hold your horses. Lugas, against his triumph, would become quite short-lived.
[46:11] Speaker 1: There was a new power on the horizon, rising in
[46:15] Speaker 1: northern Mesopotamia, and one that would dramatically end the independence
[46:21] Speaker 1: of the Sumerian city-states, the first conquerors. Mid-24th century BCE
[46:33] Speaker 1: A talented and ruthless Semitic chieftain from the north swept
[46:38] Speaker 1: down into Sumer and forever changed its destiny. I'm sure
[46:44] Speaker 1: you've heard of him. They called him Shahrukin, meaning true king.
[46:50] Speaker 1: But in our modern vernacular, he is Sargon of Akkad.
[46:55] Speaker 1: He founded the world's first recorded empire. His rise marks
[47:01] Speaker 1: the start of the Akkadian Empire. circa 2334 to 2154,
[47:08] Speaker 1: and represents the first time Sumer was conquered and united
[47:12] Speaker 1: by an outside force. Yet, Sarpon shrewdly wove together Sumerian
[47:19] Speaker 1: and Semitic elements, and the Akkadian Age became a time
[47:23] Speaker 1: of cross-pollination. Sumerian culture would influence the conquerors, even as
[47:30] Speaker 1: Akkadian language and rule spread over Sumer. According to later legends,
[47:37] Speaker 1: Sargon had quite humble origins. A Babylonian birth myth portrays
[47:42] Speaker 1: his mother as an unwed priestess who gave birth in
[47:47] Speaker 1: secret and set her infant adrift on the river in
[47:50] Speaker 1: a basket, only for the baby to be rescued by
[47:54] Speaker 1: a water drawer and raised as his son. Pretty common myth,
[48:00] Speaker 1: isn't it? Well, this Sargon legend not only inspired the
[48:05] Speaker 1: biblical story of Moses, but it also shows Sargon's aura
[48:10] Speaker 1: as a man of destiny, a self-made king. Now, historically,
[48:17] Speaker 1: Sargon first appears as an official, a cupbearer to the
[48:21] Speaker 1: king of Kish. Around 2334, however, he rebelled, seized power,
[48:30] Speaker 1: and then from Kish launched a series of campaigns to
[48:33] Speaker 1: subdue the rest of Sumer. The decisive clash came when
[48:38] Speaker 1: Sargon defeated Lugan Zagazi of Uruk, the would-be master of Sumer,
[48:44] Speaker 1: capturing him in chains and parading him in humiliation, which
[48:50] Speaker 1: was the style at the time. With Uruk, Ur, Lagash
[48:56] Speaker 1: and other major cities fallen, Sargon effectively became the king
[49:01] Speaker 1: of Sumer. He established a new capital city, Akkad, and
[49:08] Speaker 1: at a strategically central location, though its exact size is
[49:13] Speaker 1: unfortunately unknown today. Perhaps it's another place we can find,
[49:18] Speaker 1: like how we found Troy back in those old times. Well,
[49:23] Speaker 1: from Akkad he ruled over not only Sumer, but vast
[49:28] Speaker 1: territories beyond. An empire, in its true sense, that eventually
[49:33] Speaker 1: stretched north into Syria and Anatolia. west into the Mediterranean,
[49:38] Speaker 1: and east into Elam and Iran. His conquests are recorded
[49:43] Speaker 1: in later chronicles, and possibly in his own commemorative inscriptions.
[49:49] Speaker 1: One Akkadian text, preserved in copies, has him boast, Sargon,
[49:54] Speaker 1: king of Kish, triumphed in thirty-four battles, and that he
[49:59] Speaker 1: crossed the sea, likely the Persian Gulf and beyond. He
[50:04] Speaker 1: is said to have set up his statues in distant lands,
[50:08] Speaker 1: a way of declaring his domination. There are references to
[50:13] Speaker 1: his army reaching Mari on the middle Euphrates and Ashur
[50:18] Speaker 1: on the Tigris, taking treasure from the Elamites, and even
[50:22] Speaker 1: sending ships from Akkad to sail to Dilmun and Meluha,
[50:27] Speaker 1: which may correspond to Bahrain and the Indus Valley. While
[50:33] Speaker 1: some of these claims might be propagandistic hyperbole, there is
[50:37] Speaker 1: no doubt that Sargon forged a realm far beyond anything
[50:41] Speaker 1: he had seen before. For the first time, Sumer was
[50:46] Speaker 1: but one core province in a larger multi-ethnic empire, ruled
[50:53] Speaker 1: from a new city called Akkad. But how exactly did
[50:58] Speaker 1: Sargon maintain control of Sumer and all these other lands?
[51:03] Speaker 1: Wasn't like he had any point of reference. Well, he
[51:07] Speaker 1: got to work. He pioneered new methods of imperial governance.
[51:12] Speaker 1: He stationed trusted governors, Ensi, many of them Akkadian officials
[51:18] Speaker 1: or his own kin, to oversee key cities. For example,
[51:23] Speaker 1: in the city of Ur, he installed his daughter, Enheduanna,
[51:27] Speaker 1: as high priestess of the moon god Nana. a brilliant
[51:31] Speaker 1: move that secured religious loyalty. Now, in fact, Enheduanna, who
[51:38] Speaker 1: served as priestess in Ur for decades, is famous in
[51:41] Speaker 1: her own right, not just for being Sargon's daughter, but
[51:46] Speaker 1: as the world's earliest known author by name. She composed
[51:51] Speaker 1: numerous Sumerian hymns and poems, including passionate hymns to the
[51:56] Speaker 1: goddess Inanna, which have survived on clay tablets. In Eduana's writings,
[52:03] Speaker 1: not only show a royal woman actively shaping religious culture,
[52:08] Speaker 1: but they also exemplify how Akkadians embraced Sumerian language and religion.
[52:15] Speaker 1: She wrote in Sumerian, the sacred tongue, invoking Sumerian deities,
[52:22] Speaker 1: yet she was the daughter of a Semitic conqueror. Now,
[52:27] Speaker 1: if that's not a symbol of the fusion of cultures
[52:30] Speaker 1: under Akkad, I don't know what is. What about the
[52:36] Speaker 1: Akkadian administration? Well, they likely collected tribute and taxes from
[52:42] Speaker 1: Sumerian cities to fund the imperial center. There is evidence
[52:47] Speaker 1: of Akkadian officials taking over temples and palace estates. However,
[52:53] Speaker 1: rather than attempt to suppress Sumerian culture, the Akkadian kings
[52:59] Speaker 1: often presented themselves as heirs to Sumer's legacy. Sargon took
[53:04] Speaker 1: the title King of Sumer and Akkad, signalling a dual heritage.
[53:12] Speaker 1: His grandson, Naram-Sin, even went a step further. After winning
[53:17] Speaker 1: major victories, including a crushing coalition of rebellious Sumerian cities,
[53:23] Speaker 1: that was a failure. while Naram-Sin assumed the unprecedented title,
[53:29] Speaker 1: King of the Four Quarters of the Earth. And, as mentioned,
[53:35] Speaker 1: he did declare himself a living god, too. Stele from
[53:39] Speaker 1: Naram-Sin's reign depicted him with the horned crown of divinity.
[53:45] Speaker 1: While some Sumerians saw this as, frankly, blasphemous, it shows
[53:50] Speaker 1: how the ideology of kingship had evolved under this new empire.
[53:55] Speaker 1: the ruler now claimed near absolute divine status over an
[54:00] Speaker 1: immense realm. In fact, Nermsin's boldness was commemorated in his
[54:08] Speaker 1: victory still, which depicts him wearing a godlike helmet and
[54:13] Speaker 1: climbing a mountain above his defeated foes, the first Mesopotamian
[54:18] Speaker 1: king shown as a deity in art. But, In Sumerian memory,
[54:26] Speaker 1: this hubris was punished. A famous Sumerian poem, The Curse
[54:33] Speaker 1: of Agade, Agade was their word for Akkad, blames Naram-Sin's
[54:38] Speaker 1: sacrilegious attack on Enlil's temple for the entire downfall of
[54:43] Speaker 1: the empire. That's right, the whole thing is his fault.
[54:48] Speaker 1: betraying the gods themselves, withdrawing support, and sending the Gutians
[54:53] Speaker 1: to ravage Akkad. Sorry about the spoiler alert, but we're
[54:58] Speaker 1: about to get to that section. Now, forming an empire,
[55:03] Speaker 1: that's one thing. Keeping an empire, that is an entirely
[55:09] Speaker 1: different skill set. After Sargon's long reign, said to be
[55:14] Speaker 1: about 56 years, pretty long, but and that of his
[55:20] Speaker 1: sons too, internal dissent and external pressures began to mount.
[55:26] Speaker 1: Sumerian cities, used to their autonomy, began to grow weary
[55:31] Speaker 1: of their Akkadian governors. There were revolts. One chronicler says that, quote,
[55:40] Speaker 1: in every city the son rebelled against his father during
[55:45] Speaker 1: the reign of Sargon's grandsons. Shar Kalishari. It seems that
[55:50] Speaker 1: the Golden Age of the Akkadians was well and truly
[55:54] Speaker 1: coming to an end. It didn't help that foreign enemies
[55:58] Speaker 1: were pressing in as well. In particular, groups of mountain
[56:02] Speaker 1: people from the northeast, known as the Gutians, began raiding Mesopotamia.
[56:08] Speaker 1: They're depicted in Sumerian sources as wild, uncivilized highlanders. quote,
[56:15] Speaker 1: not classed among people, with human intelligence, but canine instincts
[56:21] Speaker 1: and monkey features. Pretty harsh description, but okay. These Gutian incursions,
[56:29] Speaker 1: combined with perhaps a period of drought and famine around
[56:32] Speaker 1: 2200 BCE, led to the Arcadian Empire's fragmentation. Around 2154 AD,
[56:42] Speaker 1: Akkad's last king fell, and the empire was collapsed into chaos.
[56:50] Speaker 1: And here, Mesopotamia proper enters a dark interval, often called
[56:57] Speaker 1: the Gutian period. Okay, the Akkadians are gone. Good news, right? Well,
[57:08] Speaker 1: not really. With Akkad gone, Sumer was left in disarray.
[57:17] Speaker 1: Contemporary Sumerian laments describe this time as one of famine
[57:23] Speaker 1: and despair, and they blame it all on divine wrath. Now,
[57:29] Speaker 1: we've mentioned that text, the Curse of Agade. It recounts
[57:33] Speaker 1: how the Akkadian king Namsin angered the patron deity Enlil
[57:37] Speaker 1: by attacking the holy city of Nippur. resulting in the
[57:41] Speaker 1: Goths withdrawing their favor and sending the Gutians as a scourge. Well,
[57:49] Speaker 1: the Gutians poured out of the Zagros Mountains, and they're
[57:53] Speaker 1: portrayed as a plague of barbarism. They filled the land
[57:59] Speaker 1: with wickedness, took away the wife from him who had
[58:03] Speaker 1: a wife, took away the child from him who had
[58:05] Speaker 1: a child. They had no kingship traditions. no understanding of rights,
[58:12] Speaker 1: that is, R-I-T-E-S, and brought the thriving fields of Sumer
[58:19] Speaker 1: to ruin. Well, there is maybe a little bit of
[58:24] Speaker 1: hyperbole in these accounts. Centralized rule and maintenance of infrastructure
[58:29] Speaker 1: faulted under Gutian disruption. Sumerian texts emphasize this disruption without
[58:36] Speaker 1: a strong king. the roads grew tangled and impassable, and
[58:42] Speaker 1: the fields yielded weeds. A poetic way to describe famine
[58:47] Speaker 1: and lawlessness. Indeed, one copy of Utu Hengal's victory inscription
[58:53] Speaker 1: recounts the Gutian rule had blocked the roads and caused
[58:57] Speaker 1: the tall grass to grow on the highways. So commerce
[59:01] Speaker 1: and communication are simply ground to a halt. But you
[59:07] Speaker 1: could probably tell the video is not over yet. So
[59:10] Speaker 1: hold your horses. It's not the end of the story.
[59:13] Speaker 1: Not all is lost. Even in this troubled period, pockets
[59:18] Speaker 1: of Sumerian leadership persisted. The city of Lagash in particular
[59:23] Speaker 1: experienced a local revival under a line of independent rulers.
[59:29] Speaker 1: Most famous among them is Gudea of Lagash, circa 2140,
[59:35] Speaker 1: who was not subdued by the Gutians. Gudea, though only
[59:40] Speaker 1: styling himself NC, governor, effectively ruled a small kingdom centered
[59:47] Speaker 1: on Lagash. He is remembered for devoutly rebuilding temples, especially
[59:52] Speaker 1: the great temple of Ninkirsu, and for bringing prosperity back
[59:57] Speaker 1: to his city. His numerous statues and inscriptions depict a
[1:00:02] Speaker 1: pious and just ruler. But he doesn't just boast of conquests. Instead,
[1:00:09] Speaker 1: he emphasizes piety and the well-being of the people. One
[1:00:14] Speaker 1: description describes Gudea bringing in cedars from the mountains and
[1:00:18] Speaker 1: diorite and gold from distant lands for the temples, showing
[1:00:23] Speaker 1: that trade was well and truly still alive. Under Gudeo
[1:00:28] Speaker 1: and his predecessor Urbaba, Lagash was kind of a refuge
[1:00:33] Speaker 1: of Sumerian tradition amid that foreign domination. Ultimately, the Sumerians
[1:00:42] Speaker 1: would reclaim their political autonomy. Around 2110, a southern Sumerian
[1:00:48] Speaker 1: leader named Uta Hengal, the king of Uruk, rose up
[1:00:54] Speaker 1: and finally expelled the Gutian invaders. Utu-Hengal's victory is recorded
[1:01:01] Speaker 1: in a dramatic royal inscription known from later copies. It
[1:01:05] Speaker 1: relates that Enlil, the chief god, commissioned Utu-Hengal to eliminate
[1:01:10] Speaker 1: the Gutians, metaphorically called, quote, the fanged serpent of the
[1:01:16] Speaker 1: mountain who carried off the kingship of Sumer to the mountains.
[1:01:23] Speaker 1: Utuhengal rallied the Sumerian cities for a final battle. In
[1:01:27] Speaker 1: the text, he prays to Inanna for aid, and then
[1:01:31] Speaker 1: engages the Gutian army, led by their king, Tiragan. He
[1:01:36] Speaker 1: manages to trap Tiragan, who fled to the mountains, and
[1:01:39] Speaker 1: capture him, bringing him back in a neck stock. With this,
[1:01:46] Speaker 1: the Gutian yoke was finally cast off. Utu Hengal proclaimed
[1:01:51] Speaker 1: the restoration of order. The kingship of the land of
[1:01:56] Speaker 1: Sumer was brought back from the mountains to the cities.
[1:02:01] Speaker 1: After years of neglect, canals were finally being redug, the
[1:02:07] Speaker 1: roads were safe again, and the fields returned to cultivation.
[1:02:14] Speaker 1: He was going to make Sumer great again. Well, Tragically
[1:02:20] Speaker 1: for Utu-Hengal, he enjoyed the triumph only for a short time.
[1:02:26] Speaker 1: Perhaps only seven years. Fate struck. An accident, in which
[1:02:33] Speaker 1: he is said to have drowned in the Euphrates River.
[1:02:38] Speaker 1: But the torch of Cimmerian revival was taken up by
[1:02:41] Speaker 1: other dynamic leaders. One who may have been Utu-Hengal's military commander,
[1:02:48] Speaker 1: or an ambitious governor. Ur-Namu, the ruler of Ur. Ur-Namu
[1:02:55] Speaker 1: deposed Uruhengal's heir around 2112 BCE and founded what is
[1:03:00] Speaker 1: known as the Third Dynasty of Ur, also called the
[1:03:06] Speaker 1: Neo-Sumerian Empire. The establishment of the Third Dynasty of Ur,
[1:03:15] Speaker 1: or just Ur III, is the final great flourish of
[1:03:20] Speaker 1: Sumerian civilization. A century of strong centralized rule, cultural resistance
[1:03:27] Speaker 1: and relative peace, often seen as a Sumerian Golden Age,
[1:03:32] Speaker 1: at least before the final decline. Ur-Nammu and his successors Shulgi, Amarsin,
[1:03:44] Speaker 1: Shusin and Ibisin ruled over a united Mesopotamia from roughly
[1:03:51] Speaker 1: 2112 to 2004 BCE. Though Semitic-Akkadian influence was present, the
[1:04:00] Speaker 1: kings proudly embraced that Sumerian heritage. They presided over what
[1:04:06] Speaker 1: one might even call a national revival of Sumerian language,
[1:04:12] Speaker 1: literature and religion, all while running an efficient state apparatus,
[1:04:17] Speaker 1: and that is a difficult balancing act. Ur-Namu began by
[1:04:23] Speaker 1: firmly securing Sumer and Akkad, that is, the northern regions.
[1:04:28] Speaker 1: He took the title King of Ur, King of Sumer
[1:04:31] Speaker 1: and Akkad, deliberately invoking both traditions. Militarily, he pushed back
[1:04:38] Speaker 1: any remaining Gutian threats, and also campaigned against pockets of
[1:04:42] Speaker 1: local rebellion. But Ur-Namu is remembered less for conquests than
[1:04:49] Speaker 1: for construction and law-giving. he sponsored an ambitious building program,
[1:04:56] Speaker 1: including the earliest monumental ziggurats, that is, the stepped pyramidal temples.
[1:05:04] Speaker 1: At Ur, he constructed a magnificent ziggurat dedicated to the
[1:05:08] Speaker 1: moon god Nana. The ruins of this edifice, a massive
[1:05:13] Speaker 1: three-tiered platform of mud brick faced with bitumen of brick,
[1:05:17] Speaker 1: are still quite impressive today as a testament to the
[1:05:21] Speaker 1: engineering of the time. Similarly, he built or restored temples
[1:05:26] Speaker 1: in Eridu, Nippur and Uruk and other cities, effectively stamping
[1:05:31] Speaker 1: his authority across Sumer through bricks and mortar. Each brick
[1:05:37] Speaker 1: from each of his projects was stamped with an inscription
[1:05:41] Speaker 1: of his name and titles, a practice that reinforced his
[1:05:45] Speaker 1: pious image and certainly helps identifying who built the structures. But...
[1:05:54] Speaker 1: Perhaps most remarkably, he's credited with issuing one of the
[1:05:59] Speaker 1: earliest law codes in the world, that is the Code
[1:06:03] Speaker 1: of Ur-Nammu, fragments of which have been discovered. And it
[1:06:08] Speaker 1: even predates the famous Code of Hammurabi by over 300 years.
[1:06:16] Speaker 1: But only parts of it survive. Unfortunately. But still, its
[1:06:21] Speaker 1: prologue speaks of Ur-Namu as the king who, quote, established
[1:06:26] Speaker 1: equity in the land and protected the weak. The laws,
[1:06:31] Speaker 1: written in Sumerian, address various offences and their punishments. Notably,
[1:06:37] Speaker 1: the code imposes monetary compensation for injuries, rather than the later,
[1:06:41] Speaker 1: I for an I, lex talionis, physical retaliation. Significantly, Unamu's
[1:06:49] Speaker 1: code shows a shift from the vengeance-based justice of earlier
[1:06:53] Speaker 1: times to a system of fines and restitution, suggesting an
[1:06:57] Speaker 1: advanced concept of fairness. Let's take an example. If a
[1:07:03] Speaker 1: man caused another man's eye to be lost, the code
[1:07:06] Speaker 1: prescribed a payment of silver rather than bodily retribution. This
[1:07:13] Speaker 1: early legal text shows the Ur-3 king's ideology of ruling
[1:07:17] Speaker 1: as protectors of the weak, rather ahead of its time,
[1:07:21] Speaker 1: I must say. But Unamu died in battle, according to
[1:07:27] Speaker 1: one account, fighting an eastern enemy, and was succeeded by
[1:07:32] Speaker 1: his son Shulgi, reigning from 2094 to 2047. King Shulgi
[1:07:40] Speaker 1: took the Neo-Sumerian state to its zenith, reigning for 47 years,
[1:07:45] Speaker 1: He proved to be a multifaceted ruler, a brilliant administrator,
[1:07:49] Speaker 1: a self-promoter, even a patron of culture. Early in his reign,
[1:07:56] Speaker 1: he continued his father's projects, completing ziggurats like the Great
[1:08:00] Speaker 1: Ziggurat of Ur, and expanding the empire's borders further into
[1:08:05] Speaker 1: Assyria and Elamite territory. To better control his territory, he
[1:08:11] Speaker 1: instituted an efficient provincial system and an elaborate bureaucracy. He
[1:08:17] Speaker 1: then reorganized the empire into about twenty provinces, each overseen
[1:08:22] Speaker 1: by a trusted governor, often family members or in-laws, and
[1:08:27] Speaker 1: each with his responsibilities to send regular taxes in kind
[1:08:31] Speaker 1: to the central treasury. He also reinstituted the Bala system,
[1:08:37] Speaker 1: which is a rotating tax and tribute burden shared amongst provinces,
[1:08:42] Speaker 1: to ensure a steady flow of resources to Ur. The
[1:08:47] Speaker 1: Ur III state kept meticulous records. Tens of thousands of
[1:08:52] Speaker 1: clay tablets from this period have been found, and I'm
[1:08:55] Speaker 1: sure we're going to find plenty more. They record everything
[1:08:58] Speaker 1: from temple offering to the number of sheep delivered by
[1:09:02] Speaker 1: each province annually. It appears to have been a highly
[1:09:07] Speaker 1: bureaucratized economy, too, with standard units of measure and a
[1:09:12] Speaker 1: unified calendar that should be introduced for the whole realm.
[1:09:18] Speaker 1: But he didn't just excel at administration. He cultivated an
[1:09:22] Speaker 1: almost legendary persona. In a series of royal praise hymns,
[1:09:28] Speaker 1: likely composed by court scribes or perhaps Shulgi himself as
[1:09:33] Speaker 1: he claims, the king boasts extravagantly of his prowess. These
[1:09:39] Speaker 1: self-laudatory hymns present him as a kind of superhuman. Let's
[1:09:46] Speaker 1: take this one passage for example. Quote from the text, I, Shulgi,
[1:09:53] Speaker 1: was a hero already in the womb. I am a
[1:09:57] Speaker 1: fierce-looking lion, begotten by a dragon. I am the king
[1:10:02] Speaker 1: of the four regions. I am the herdsman and the
[1:10:05] Speaker 1: shepherd of the black-headed people. The black-headed people, of course,
[1:10:11] Speaker 1: is a reference to what the Sumerians called themselves. Well,
[1:10:17] Speaker 1: he describes himself too as a learned scholar. Quote, I
[1:10:21] Speaker 1: am a knowledgeable scribe of Nisaba. I have perfected my wisdom.
[1:10:27] Speaker 1: And also as a high priest of the gods, performing
[1:10:30] Speaker 1: every ritual correctly. Famously, he bragged about his physical endurance.
[1:10:37] Speaker 1: One hymn relates how he strengthened the roads and built
[1:10:40] Speaker 1: rest houses. and then ran a distance of a hundred
[1:10:43] Speaker 1: miles from Nippur to Ur and back in a single
[1:10:46] Speaker 1: day to prove his speed, outbasing the sun god Udu. Well,
[1:10:56] Speaker 1: I think we can pretty much put that down to
[1:10:58] Speaker 1: a poetic hyperbole. But it does convey a message that
[1:11:03] Speaker 1: Shulgi was tireless in serving the gods and his kingdom.
[1:11:07] Speaker 1: He also mentions improving the roads and way stations and Yes, indeed,
[1:11:12] Speaker 1: he established a system of royal post roads with lodging stations,
[1:11:17] Speaker 1: an ancient precursor to a postal service that kept his
[1:11:21] Speaker 1: realm connected. By declaring himself divine late in his reign,
[1:11:27] Speaker 1: having temples and offerings in his name, Julli sought to
[1:11:30] Speaker 1: cement loyalty and inspire awe. The cult of the king
[1:11:36] Speaker 1: became an element of Ur III's statecraft, Offerings were made
[1:11:41] Speaker 1: to Shugi's statue, and he was referred to as the
[1:11:44] Speaker 1: god of the land in official documents. Despite this somewhat
[1:11:51] Speaker 1: egoistic turn, he appears to have been genuinely effective, and
[1:11:57] Speaker 1: his rule of the economy prospered, and there was a
[1:12:00] Speaker 1: flourishing of the arts. Scribes copied and canonized Sumerian literary
[1:12:05] Speaker 1: works and composed new ones. Many of the Sumerian myths
[1:12:10] Speaker 1: and epics have come down to us, were preserved through
[1:12:13] Speaker 1: the old Babylonian copies of texts set in Ur three times. Well,
[1:12:19] Speaker 1: by the time of Shulgi, Sumerian was no longer the
[1:12:23] Speaker 1: mother tongue of much of the population. Akkadian had replaced that.
[1:12:28] Speaker 1: Yet Shulgi's court championed Sumerian as a classical way of communicating,
[1:12:33] Speaker 1: commissioning scribal academies to preserve it. He placed royal daughters
[1:12:39] Speaker 1: and sons as priestesses and governors throughout the land to
[1:12:43] Speaker 1: tighten cultural unity. And his reign saw a renaissance in
[1:12:47] Speaker 1: Sumerian literature. Scribes in cities like Nippur and Ur compiled
[1:12:52] Speaker 1: extensive lexical lists, bilingual dictionaries, hymns and songs in Sumerian,
[1:13:00] Speaker 1: ensuring the legacy of Sumer's language and lore would live on.
[1:13:07] Speaker 1: Certainly sounds like a hard act to follow, don't you think? Well,
[1:13:11] Speaker 1: that's precisely because it was. After Shunki's long and successful reign,
[1:13:19] Speaker 1: his successors had shorter rules and increasing troubles. Amar-Sin and Shu-Sin,
[1:13:27] Speaker 1: who ruled in the 2040s to 30s, continued to hold
[1:13:30] Speaker 1: the empire, sure, but they faced growing external threats, especially
[1:13:36] Speaker 1: from the Amorite tribes pressing in from the west, and
[1:13:40] Speaker 1: renewed pressure from Elam in the east. Well, who were
[1:13:45] Speaker 1: the Amorites? They were West Semitic semi-nomadic groups. They gradually
[1:13:52] Speaker 1: infiltrated Mesopotamia. To hold them off, Jusin constructed a massive
[1:13:58] Speaker 1: defensive wall along his western frontier. stretching perhaps 170 miles
[1:14:04] Speaker 1: between the Tigris and Euphrates. We hear of Shusin's Wall
[1:14:09] Speaker 1: as a great fortification project, but such lines are hard
[1:14:14] Speaker 1: to man completely, and nomadic Amorites likely just circumvented it.
[1:14:21] Speaker 1: So despite these efforts, the incursions continued, and provinces on
[1:14:26] Speaker 1: the empire's edges began to be slowly eaten away at.
[1:14:32] Speaker 1: The last king, Ibi-Sin, 2028-2004 BCE, saw the unravelling of
[1:14:39] Speaker 1: Ur's control. One by one, peripheral territories stopped sending tribute,
[1:14:46] Speaker 1: or just broke away. Texts from Ibi-Sin's last years depicted
[1:14:53] Speaker 1: desperate situation. Grain shipments from the breadbasket regions were cut off,
[1:15:00] Speaker 1: causing famine in Ur. A series of letters between Ibi-Sin
[1:15:04] Speaker 1: and his officials paint a dire picture. The king in
[1:15:09] Speaker 1: Ur begs for grain from the governor of Isin as
[1:15:12] Speaker 1: starvation worsens, while that governor, Ishbi-Era, uses the crisis to
[1:15:18] Speaker 1: declare independence and move the precious grain stores to his
[1:15:22] Speaker 1: own city. It was a perfect storm of betrayal from
[1:15:28] Speaker 1: within and attack from without. Ibi-Sin apparently couldn't do much,
[1:15:35] Speaker 1: as the empire he inherited fragmented all around him. Finally,
[1:15:40] Speaker 1: around 2004 BCE, an alliance of the Elamites with some
[1:15:45] Speaker 1: Semitic auxiliaries attacked Ur itself. It was sieged, sacked, and
[1:15:53] Speaker 1: reduced to ruins, and its people were slaughtered, or deported.
[1:16:00] Speaker 1: And King Ibi-Sin himself was captured and carried off to
[1:16:04] Speaker 1: Elam in chains. Well, that's certainly a very sad end
[1:16:10] Speaker 1: to the third dynasty of Ur, and with it, the
[1:16:14] Speaker 1: last flowering of Sumerian political power. Well, the fall of
[1:16:21] Speaker 1: Ur was commemorated by the Sumerians in a heart-wrenching poetic lament. 1.
[1:16:28] Speaker 1: The lamentation over the destruction of Ur gives a vivid
[1:16:31] Speaker 1: sense of the catastrophe from a Sumerian perspective. It describes
[1:16:36] Speaker 1: how the patron god Nana deserted his city, allowing the
[1:16:40] Speaker 1: enemy to enter unchecked. Upon the city which the sun
[1:16:47] Speaker 1: god Udu loved, dust has fallen. Upon the temple of
[1:16:52] Speaker 1: the great gods, dust has fallen. The people are scattered abroad.
[1:16:57] Speaker 1: and the city has become a wasteland. This image of Ur,
[1:17:03] Speaker 1: once the seat of a mighty empire, now desolate, wind
[1:17:08] Speaker 1: blowing the dust throughout the ruins, is perhaps one of
[1:17:11] Speaker 1: the most haunting in ancient literature. The Lamentations also mention
[1:17:17] Speaker 1: how the gods of Sumer, one by one, abandoned their
[1:17:21] Speaker 1: cities to the storm of destruction. Enlil unleashed the evil storm,
[1:17:28] Speaker 1: and the people groan. It's an uncanny awareness of the
[1:17:34] Speaker 1: tragedy of lost civilization, as if the Sumerians themselves knew
[1:17:40] Speaker 1: how profound their own collapse was. Though the political power
[1:17:50] Speaker 1: of the Sumerians ended with the collapse of Period of
[1:17:53] Speaker 1: Ur III, the legacy didn't vanish overnight. A native dynasty
[1:17:58] Speaker 1: at Isin picked up the kingship after Ur's fall, and
[1:18:03] Speaker 1: Isin's rulers maintained Sumerian traditions and language for a time,
[1:18:08] Speaker 1: even as the demographic balance shifted with more West Semitic
[1:18:12] Speaker 1: Amorites settling in the cities. In the following centuries, the
[1:18:17] Speaker 1: Isin-Larsa period and Old Babylonian period, as 2000 to 1600,
[1:18:24] Speaker 1: Amorite rulers took control of the south, They increasingly spoke
[1:18:29] Speaker 1: the Akkadian language in daily life. Yet these successors saw
[1:18:34] Speaker 1: themselves as heirs to Sumerian culture. They preserved Sumerian titles
[1:18:39] Speaker 1: and rituals. The kings of Isin still called themselves kings
[1:18:43] Speaker 1: of Sumer and Akkad. The scribal elite continued to teach
[1:18:48] Speaker 1: and use Sumerian. Centuries of school tablets from Babylonian cities
[1:18:54] Speaker 1: show scribes diligently learning Sumerian grammar and copying Sumerian myths
[1:18:59] Speaker 1: and hymns. Even in the first millennium BCE, Assyrian scholars
[1:19:05] Speaker 1: in Nineveh were still referencing Sumerian texts for wisdom. In essence,
[1:19:12] Speaker 1: Sumer began the classical foundation of Mesopotamian culture. The continuity
[1:19:19] Speaker 1: of Sumerian learning is exemplified by a charming old Babylonian
[1:19:24] Speaker 1: story called School Days, written in Sumerian, which recounts a
[1:19:28] Speaker 1: pupil's woes in the tablet house. The student endures a
[1:19:33] Speaker 1: day of chastisements for poor writing and showing up late,
[1:19:38] Speaker 1: only to have his father invite the teacher home for
[1:19:41] Speaker 1: dinner and gifts. Placated by the hospitality, the teacher returns
[1:19:46] Speaker 1: the next day with gentler treatment. Such a narrative shows
[1:19:51] Speaker 1: a more human side of Suma's legacy. The educational values
[1:19:55] Speaker 1: and humor of those ancient people transmitted long after their
[1:20:01] Speaker 1: power had faded. The Sumerians' influence extended to their Semitic successors, religion,
[1:20:08] Speaker 1: lore and literature. Major Sumerian works, hymns, lamentations, epics, were
[1:20:15] Speaker 1: copied and studied by later Babylonians and Assyrians, becoming the
[1:20:19] Speaker 1: core of the Mesopotamian scholastic tradition. For example, the Babylonian
[1:20:25] Speaker 1: epic of Gilgamesh was built upon earlier Sumerian stories. And
[1:20:31] Speaker 1: Sumerian deities like Inanna, Enlil, and Enki continued to be worshipped,
[1:20:37] Speaker 1: although under Semitic names like Ishtar, Elil, and Ey. The
[1:20:43] Speaker 1: very institution of kingship in Mesopotamia carried a Sumerian imprint.
[1:20:48] Speaker 1: Titles such as Lugal and the ideal of the just,
[1:20:53] Speaker 1: temple-building king, were inherited from Sumer. Well, today, we often
[1:21:02] Speaker 1: call Sumerians the cradle of civilization, and rightly so. It's
[1:21:08] Speaker 1: a story that allows us to look back over five
[1:21:11] Speaker 1: millennia and witness the dawn of civilization. In a real sense,
[1:21:18] Speaker 1: the Sumerians wrote the opening chapter of human civilization, inscribing
[1:21:23] Speaker 1: their legacy in clay for all future ages to discover.
[1:21:29] Speaker 1: For us in the modern time, the study of Sumer
[1:21:32] Speaker 1: offers not only a chronicle of kings and battles, but
[1:21:35] Speaker 1: it is a window into the very genesis of urban
[1:21:38] Speaker 1: society and human creativity. Thanks to the tireless decipherment of cuneiform,
[1:21:46] Speaker 1: we can now directly read Sumerian words from thousands of
[1:21:49] Speaker 1: years ago, all the way from King Shulgi's boasting hymn
[1:21:55] Speaker 1: to a humble pupil's school essay. Or do an intimate
[1:21:58] Speaker 1: connection with people who laid humanity's first civilizational foundation. And
[1:22:05] Speaker 1: that's pretty special, don't you think? Well, if you don't
[1:22:11] Speaker 1: think so, I don't know how you made it one
[1:22:13] Speaker 1: hour and twenty-two minutes into the video. Me, sitting here
[1:22:19] Speaker 1: with my cold. I'm just getting over a cold, I
[1:22:24] Speaker 1: do apologize, so. That's why my voice is perhaps a
[1:22:27] Speaker 1: little bit off today. But I'll do my best. Have
[1:22:33] Speaker 1: to keep putting coal into the furnace, don't you? And
[1:22:38] Speaker 1: where else were you going to go and learn about Sumo?
[1:22:40] Speaker 1: I don't know, there's probably other channels. I'm just rambling now.
[1:22:45] Speaker 1: I want to thank the top dear patrons and supporters. Doug, Kimberly, Christine, Sally, Embo, Susan, Cameron, Legitmus, Carrie, Charlene, Lynn-Therese, Katiana, Nicholas, Ulfineer, Alexander, Charles, Christine, Dr. Neuronerd, Erin, Jayden, Jim, Jeffrey, Jessica, Madeline, Melissa,
[1:23:06] Speaker 1: Orthodox Review, Scott, Stark Factory, Shell, Wendy, Josie, Sarah, Ryan, Thor, Cameron, Stefan, Kevin, HMSHH, Crystal, Dalvery, Anthony, Lucy, Brandon,
[1:23:22] Speaker 1: and Gugu Bubonic. Okay, well, that is enough from me tonight.
[1:23:31] Speaker 1: Unless you want to go watch another video, which, well,
[1:23:34] Speaker 1: you're welcome to do so. But as for me, that's enough.
[1:23:42] Speaker 1: I hope you're all doing alright out there. I'm doing okay.
[1:23:49] Speaker 1: As always, I wish you all the best. Lots of
[1:23:51] Speaker 1: love to all of you, wherever you are in the world.
[1:23:55] Speaker 1: And good night.

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