Sumerians: A History From Beginning to End

by Henry Freeman

The earliest writing from 3300 BCE involved pictographic script. The Sumerians were the first to develop a written language. By 2800 BCE, the script had evolved into signs, which represented syllables; his newly-evolved written language had signs for roughly 600 syllables. Scribes wrote by pressing a writing stick called a stylus into a soft clay tablet. Since the symbols appeared like wedge shapes, their writing is called cuneiform, which means, quite literally, “wedge shaped.” The earliest known dictionaries in the world developed when literacy began to spread to the neighboring kingdom of Mari and people needed to translate words in Sumerian into Eblaite, since Ebla was a major educational center. Trade and economic necessities were likely the biggest motivators for writing.

As an agrarian civilization, their sense of time was shaped by the cyclical nature of seasonal change. They subdivided the calendar into lunar months. They calculated a lunar year’s length, which is close to our own. When they developed writing, they found it possible to keep the calendar and predict seasonal changes. We still use the Sumerian sexagesimal system when we divide a circle into 360 degrees or an hour into 60 minutes.

Sumerians built sewers under cities. They had a complex system of sewers and flush toilets with pipes of baked brick.

Sumerians loved “kash,” their word for beer that was as thick as porridge.

When they wore sheepskin skirts, the skins were turned inside and the wool was combed into decorative tufts and pinned into place. Sometimes, these tufts were extended to the knees or waist, and if it was someone of great importance, then the tuft may go to the ankle.

Apparently, in 2500 BCE woven woolen fabric replaced the sheepskin look, although the tufts remained.

While wealthy men wore the short wide skirts like a kilt and a fringed shawl over one shoulder, poorer men and women wore simple knee-length tunics. When the temperature dipped, men and women both wore animal skins.

They wore jewelry; women wore beads and pendants and rings made of ivory, gold or silver and makeup. They also used perfumes and body oils.

If it were a more formal event, it was customary for Sumerians to shave the head and wear a wig for a festive occasion when they wanted to look their best, according to “Figurative Language in the Ancient Near East” published by the Hebrew University. The reason women shaved their head and wore wigs was to keep free of lice. Priests were most likely to wear wigs.

Jane Shuter in “Mesopotamia,” forensic archaeologists who studied the skeletons at Sumerian burial grounds say that they were short and solid. They had thin lips, straight thin noses, and eyes that sloped downward. They suggest that Sumerians were dark-skinned, dark-eyed and dark-haired. As menti...

Sumerian thinkers did not have an exaggerated confidence in man and destiny, as they were firmly convinced that man was fashioned from clay and created to serve gods. Sumerians thought that uncertainty was most common in man’s life and that they were haunted by insecurity. As a result of not knowing what the gods might bestow on man, they invested little comfort or belief in free will. In other words, by accepting their dependent status on the gods, then the individual feared his god, but had more confidence in the gods overall than her or she had in earthly matters. Since man would die despite his or her guardian angel, the Sumerians figured they had good reason to be anxious and perplexed about death and the world below. Sumerian ideas about death consumed their myths and arts. For one thing, they had a gloomy view of the underworld, according to Harriet Crawford in “Sumer and the Sumerians.” Based on evidence, there is the impression that their condition in the underworld reflected their social status on earth, not their virtue.