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October 24, 2017 - January 16, 2018
Sumer, the land which came to be known in classical times as Babylonia, consists of the lower half of Mesopotamia, roughly identical with modern Iraq from north of Baghdad to the Persian Gulf. It has an area of approximately 10,000 square miles, somewhat larger than the state of Massachusetts. Its climate is extremely hot and dry, and its soil, left to itself, is arid, wind-swept, and unproductive. The land is flat and river-made, and therefore has no minerals whatever and almost no stone. Except for the huge reeds in the marshes, it had no trees for timber. Here, then, was a region with "the
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mud-plastering fashioned them into huts and byres. Later, the Sumerians invented the brick mold for shaping and baking the ubiquitous river clay and so had no more building-material problem. They devised such useful tools, skills, and techniques as the potter's wheel, the wagon wheel, the plow, the sailboat, the arch, the vault, the dome, casting in copper and bronze, riveting, brazing and soldering, sculpture in stone, engraving, and inlay. They originated a system of writing on clay, which was borrowed and used all over the Near East for some two thousand years. Almost all that we know of
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helplessness in the face of death and divine wrath. On the material side they prized highly wealth and possessions, rich harvests, well-stocked granaries, folds and stalls filled with cattle, successful hunting in the plain, and good fishing in the sea. Spiritually and psychologically, they laid great stress on ambition and success, pre-eminence and prestige, honor and recognition. The Sumerian was deeply conscious of his personal rights and resented any encroachment on them, whether by his king, his superior, or his equal. No wonder that the Sumerians were the first to compile laws and law
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to obtain the material essential to its economy either through trade or military force. So that by the third millenium B.C., there is good reason to believe that Sumerian culture and civilization had penetrated, at least to some extent, as far east as India and as far west as the Mediterranean, as far south as ancient Ethiopia and as far north as the Caspian.
To be sure, all this was five thousand years ago and may seem of little relevance to the study of modern man and culture. But the fact is that the land of Sumer witnessed the origin of more than one significant feature of present-day
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