There are many interesting places to visit in Sumer. Sumer is a place full of enjoyment and fun activities to do with the family. Here are some examples:
The ziggurat
Boat trips on the rivers
Markets
Mountain climbing
Swimming pool
Sumer’s swimming pool must be the best swimming pool of all time. The floors have beautiful pictures of them made f mosaic tiles.
There were almost constant wars among the Sumerian city-states for 2000 years. This helped to develop the military technology and techniques of Sumer to a very high level. The first war recorded was between Lagash and Umma (two kings) in 2525 BC on a stele called the Stele of Vultures. The king of Lagash lead a Sumerian army consisting mostly of . The infantrymen carried , equipped with and . The spearmen were arranged in a formation, which required training and discipline, and so shows they were soldiers.
The Sumerian military used carts harnessed to chariots. The early were less effective than later designs. Some drawings have suggested that these chariots served as only transport, though the crew carried battle-axes and . The Sumerian chariot had four or two s manned by a crew of two and harnessed to four onagers. The cart was composed of a and the wheels had a solid three-piece design.
Sumerian cities were surrounded by defensive . The Sumerians engaged in many fight so built walls around their cities but these sometimes failed to stop some foes.
The Sumerians enjoyed making artistic things such as vases, sculptures and jewellery etc. The people who made them were called artisans and were at the bottom end of the social ladder. Here are some examples of Sumerian art work:
Some people think that ancient hotels and restaurants will be horrible and have dreadful hygiene rules. In fact they are wrong! The Sumerians actually have some of the best hotels of all time. Here are a few:
Star Hotel, Ur
Although located in the busy and bustling city of Ur this hotel is a peaceful retreat away from city life. The entrance is small and leads you into the hotel’s best feature-the courtyard and swimming pool. The courtyard is surrounded by citrus plants and has a lovely aroma of summer flowers. It is an oasis of calmness and beauty which will make you holiday relaxing and enjoyable. The courtyard leads onto a hilltop swimming pool which looks down onto the countryside around Ur. It has a swimming pool and Jacuzzi which can be used at anytime. The food is also very good and some things on the menu include: vegetable curry (spicy, hot and delicious), char grilled prawns, steak and many different soups. You can stay for up to 14 nights for a very good price. Included in the price is either a continental or full English breakfast each morning.
Passion flower restaurant and hotel, Kish
The passion flower hotel is very beautiful and has passion flowers growing all around it, this explains its name. The hotel is not as good as the star hotel but is a close second. The restaurant has excellent food but if you do not like fish then you would probably not like it as it is the best fish restaurant in the whole of Sumer. The menu is changed every day but usually has prawns, crab and other shell fish and squid. Each morning the hotel owner goes out fishing and if you get up early enough you can go with him.
These hotels will definitely make your stay in Sumer the BEST!
In Sumer there were many markets where traders bought and sold goods. These traders sold pottery, tools, weapons, baskets, cloths and spices. They traded these items for food or other items needed and wanted at home. The invention of the wheel and axle meant that trade goods could be transported long distances more easily. After some time trading across water developed which meant that different cultures and people met and passed on ideas and inventions.
The daily appearance of a normal Sumerian person is quite simple. Sumerians make their clothing by using the natural resources that are available to them. Clothing is made from wool or flax which Sumerians can raise and harvest. (Flax is a plant with blue flowers. The stems of these plants are used to make the clothing.) The thickness of the clothing shows when the clothes would be worn. Like us, heavier clothing would be worn in the winter and lighter clothing would be worn in the summer.
The men of Sumer often have long hair with a part in the middle. They think this as an attractive style. They also have long beards although some Sumerian men prefer to shave. Wrap-around skirts and felt cloaks are their daily clothes but after a period of time, long skirts and large shawls were the new fashion. These large shawls are flung over the left shoulder of the wearer and the right shoulder and arm are left bare.
The woman’s clothing is similar to the men’s clothing. They wear extremely long shawls that wrap up their entire body except for their right arm and shoulder which is left bare. Sumerian women also wear their hair long. Most women would braid their locks into one long braid which they then wrapped around the top of their heads. This looked slightly like a hat on their head. Both men and women wear earrings and necklaces. During celebrations, even more jewellery is worn. The wealthier Sumerians often wear beautiful gold and silver bracelets and earrings. Necklaces are also worn and are set with bright, precious stones. Some of these stones were the lapis lazuli and the carnelian which are both found all over the world.
The religion of Sumer was a kind of polytheism, this is a belief in many gods. They believed that the gods controlled everything and without the gods the world would not be safe. Sumerians felt helpless against forces of nature. According to the Sumerian legends, four gods created the world. The father of the gods was Anu and he ruled the sky. Another god called Enlil ruled the air, the god Enki ruled the water and the mother goddess was Ninhursag. Other gods were the moon god, the sun god and the goddess of love and war. Each great god ruled a city state and each city had a temple (ziggurat) that was for that city’s god. People celebrated many holidays with ceremonies and processions. The most important ceremony was at New Year, which was when the king sought and won the favour of Inanna (the goddess of love.) The king participated in the symbolic marriage with the goddess. This ritual Sumerians believed would make New Year fruitful and prosperous. They had many poems and hymns that the sang and read, here is one they sang to Inanna:
My father gave me the heavens, gave me the earth,
I am Inanna!
Kingship he gave me,
Queenship he gave me,
Waging of battle he gave me, the attack he gave me,
The flood storm he gave me, the hurricane he gave me,
The heavens he a sent as a crown on my head,
The earth he set as sandals on my feet,
a holy robe he wrapped around my body,
a holy sceptre he placed in my hand.
The gods are sparrows -- I am a falcon;
the Anunnaki trundle along -- I am a splendid wild cow;
I am father Enlil's splendid wild cow,
his splendid wild cow leading the way!
Sumerian architecture is probably the oldest serious architecture
(it wasn’t just building houses and barns) in the world. People living in the area between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers (modern Iraq) began to build really big buildings about 3500 BC. Because there was practically no building stone in this area, but lots of clay, Sumerian architects built their buildings out of mud-brick or fired brick. It was so long ago that the architects didn't know how to make a big building stay up if it was hollow inside, so they first built big buildings that were solid - like a sand-castle. This meant that they weren’t very useful buildings and they were more like artificial hills. This is the same as the Egyptian pyramids, which were built just a little later and were also pretty much solid inside.
They mostly built huge staircases of mud-brick which are called ziggurats. Each little city-state would build its own ziggurat, partly to please the gods and partly to show how powerful the town was. On top of each ziggurat, there was a small temple to Ishtar or Anu or another god. The Sumerians also built tall walls around their towns, which were built mainly out of mud-brick, and were also solid.
The Sumerians in each city-state built palaces for their kings, too. These palaces weren't just to live in; they were also storehouses for wheat, barley, cloth and many things the kings collected as taxes. As well as the king many other people lived in the palaces including his whole family and many slaves. The palaces were made out of mud-brick to. Instead of the buildings looking brown and boring the builders made them look more interesting by creating areas of dark and light. They went in and out at regular intervals, making a sort of pattern of shadows.
In early Sumerian civilization people thought of education as something to do with priests and took place in temples. But then this changed and there was another education for the wealthier families of Sumer who paid for their education. One of the Sumerian schools is known as the Edubba, this means tablet house. As men in Sumer dominated the woman most of the students were men and boys. Nearly all of the students come from wealthier families as the poor could not afford the cost of the schools. Students had to work hard from sun rise to sun fall and were taught grammar and writing. This began with learning how to write simple sounds of the language, kind off like our ABC. The next step was for the students to learn and study long lists of very simple Sumerian words. It was a tough life for the students as if they got things wrong they would be beaten with a stick.
They transformed their marshy and flood-prone habitat into a very productive region: canals and dikes regulated a constant supply of water for their agriculture feeding 10x the amount of people or livestock that rain-dependent plots could (three grain harvests a year). Date-palms required extensive planning (they do not bear fruit before 5 years of age). With this agricultural bounty, they could buy the metal and materials they themselves did not have at hand.
Social cooperation was essential and leadership absolutely necessary for this venture to have succeeded. Disciplined obedience was greatly enhanced by the fact that life outside of this created world was unthinkable for only desert lay beyond the reclaimed world of Sumer. One had to remain in good standing within the community--for all life depended on it.
Eridu (Uruk) was the southernmost and earliest settlement--along what then was the coast of the Persian Gulf. Other notable Sumerian towns (a dozen or so) were Ur, Nippur, Lagash, Umma, Kish.
In about 2700 BC town walls were built at Eridu which were 18 feet thick and encompased an area 6 miles in circumference. At the center of their settlements they built temples--which added stories on top of stories: the ziggurat.
The city of Ur eventually extended its political boundaries to form an empire which included Babylon: the Babylonian language came to be widely spoken throughout Ur.
Early in Sumerian civilization, eighty to ninety percent of those who farmed did so on land they considered theirs rather than communal property. Here too the Sumerians were expressing a trend that was common among others. Another individual effort was commerce, and with a growth in commerce the Sumerians had begun using money, which made individual wealth more easily measured and stored. Commerce required initiative, imagination, an ability to get along with people and luck, and, of course, some merchants were more successful than were others. Farming took stamina, strength, good health, good luck and organization. And some farmers were more successful than were other farmers.
Those farmers who failed to harvest enough to keep themselves in food and seed borrowed from those who had wealth in surplus. Those who borrowed hoped that their next harvest would give them the surplus they needed to repay their loan. But if the next harvest were also inadequate, to meet their obligations they might be forced to surrender their lands to the lender or to work for him. When Sumerians lost their land, they or their descendants might become sharecroppers: working the lands of successful landowners in exchange for giving the landowners a good portion of the crops they grew.
Accompanying divisions in wealth was a division in power, and power among the Sumerians passed to an elite. Sumerian priests had once worked the fields alongside others, but now they were separated from commoners. A corporation run by priests became the greatest landowners among the Sumerians. The priests hired the poor to work their land and claimed that land was really owned by the gods. Priests had become skilled as scribes, and in some cities they sat with the city's council of elders. These councils wielded great influence, sometimes in conflict with a city's king.
Common Sumerians remained illiterate and without power, while kings, once elected by common people, became monarchs. The monarchs were viewed as agents of and responsible to the gods. It was the religious duty of his subjects to accept his rule as a part of the plan of the gods. Governments drafted common people to work on community projects, and common people were obliged to pay taxes to the government in the form of a percentage of their crops, which the city could either sell or use to feed its soldiers and others it supported. And priests told commoners that their drudgery was necessary to allow the gods their just leisure.
Sumerian art is mainly about exploring and supporting the relationships between people and the gods, and plants and animals. These relationships are complicated, and so Sumerian art represents them in several different ways.
Examples of Sumerian technology include: the , , and , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and .
The Sumerians had three main types of boats:
- skin boats made of animal skins and reeds
- clinker-built sailboats stitched together with hair that were waterproof
- wooden-oared ships, sometimes pulled upstream by people and animals walking along the nearby banks
Sumerian Bull Lyre, Iraq, 3200
The lyre was invented by the Sumerians of ancient Iraq around 3200 BCE. Its design was developed from the harp by replacing the single bow shape with two upright arms joined by a crossbar, and the strings, instead of joining the sound box directly, were made to run over a bridge attached to the box.
The bull lyre is one of three excavated from the royal cemetery of Ur. Each lyre had a different animal head protruding from the front of the sound box to denote its pitch: the bull lyre was bass, the heifer lyre was tenor and the stag lyre was alto. All three were made of wood. The bull lyre stood roughly 1.2 meters high. The sound box was defined by a broad border of mosaic in shell, lapis lazuli and red paste, and this border continued onto the rectangular upright arms. The strings were tied to the crossbar and strung down over the bridge to connect at the base of the sound box. Researchers believe the notes constituted the same scale as Queen Shub-Ad's harp and were achieved by the tension of the strings rather than the length.
The Sumerians were skilled farmers just like most other well developed civilizations. The most common job in Sumer was probably farming. Nearly every family in Sumer has their own piece of land to grow crops and raise farm animals. The most common crops that they grow are barley, chickpeas, lentils, millet, wheat, turnips, onions, garlic, lettuce, sesame, leeks and mustard. The most common fruits that are grown in Sumer are apples, plums, grapes and dates.
They use oxen to carry heavy loads and donkeys as their main source of transport. As they keep farm animals as their main meat source they only had to hunt fish and wild fowl (the latter being mainly for fun). The Sumerians also gather berries and fruit. They use baskets to carry the fruit and the berries. These baskets were made from the reeds that grow on the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.
Many animals are not killed in the hunt but are used as farm animals for their meat or usefulness on a working farm. Sheep are useful for the people who make clothes because their wool.
One of the greatest contributions to later civilisations was a controlled military. Soldiers would carry a pointed spear to drive away their enemies. Later development led to a wheeled war chariot in which one man would control the mule-driven chariot and another soldier would cast spears at the enemy. The mounted soldiers were surrounded by foot soldiers who attempted to protect them. [Obviously, military tactics also developed at this time.] The soldiers would be ruthless and would slaughter their enemies for opposing them.
Books
The Atlas of Ancient Worlds by Dr. Anne Millard
Prentice Hall World Explore, The Ancient World by
A message of ancient days by
Early Civilizations by
The Times Atlas of Past Worlds edited by Chris Scarre
Websites
