The ancient Sumerians used writing. Sumerian writing - history - knowledge - catalog of articles - rose of the world
The Sumerians are the first civilization on earth.
The Sumerians are an ancient people who once inhabited the territory of the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the south of the modern state of Iraq (Southern Mesopotamia or Southern Mesopotamia). In the south, the border of their habitat reached the shores of the Persian Gulf, in the north - to the latitude of modern Baghdad.
For a millennium, the Sumerians were the main protagonists in the ancient Near East.
Sumerian astronomy and mathematics were the most accurate in the entire Middle East. We still divide the year into four seasons, twelve months and twelve signs of the zodiac, measure angles, minutes and seconds in sixties - just as the Sumerians first began to do.
When going to see a doctor, we all... receive prescriptions for drugs or advice from a psychotherapist, without thinking at all that both herbal medicine and psychotherapy first developed and reached a high level precisely among the Sumerians. Receiving a subpoena and counting on the justice of the judges, we also know nothing about the founders of legal proceedings - the Sumerians, whose first legislative acts contributed to the development of legal relations in all parts of the Ancient World. Finally, thinking about the vicissitudes of fate, complaining that we were deprived at birth, we repeat the same words that the philosophizing Sumerian scribes first put into clay - but we hardly even know about it.
Sumerians are "black-headed". This people, who appeared in the south of Mesopotamia in the middle of the 3rd millennium BC from nowhere, are now called the “progenitor of modern civilization,” but until the mid-19th century no one even suspected about them. Time has erased Sumer from the annals of history and, if not for linguists, perhaps we would never have known about Sumer.
But I will probably start from 1778, when the Dane Carsten Niebuhr, who led the expedition to Mesopotamia in 1761, published copies of the cuneiform royal inscription from Persepolis. He was the first to suggest that the 3 columns in the inscription are three different types of cuneiform writing, containing the same text.
In 1798, another Dane, Friedrich Christian Munter, hypothesized that 1st class writing is an alphabetic Old Persian script (42 characters), 2nd class - syllabic writing, 3rd class - ideographic characters. But the first to read the text was not a Dane, but a German, a Latin teacher in Göttingen, Grotenfend. A group of seven cuneiform characters caught his attention. Grotenfend suggested that this is the word King, and the remaining signs were selected based on historical and linguistic analogies. Eventually Grotenfend made the following translation:
Xerxes, the great king, king of kings
Darius, king, son, Achaemenid
However, only 30 years later, the Frenchman Eugene Burnouf and the Norwegian Christiann Lassen found the correct equivalents for almost all cuneiform characters of the 1st group. In 1835, a second multilingual inscription was found on a rock in Behistun, and in 1855, Edwin Norris managed to decipher the 2nd type of writing, which consisted of hundreds of syllabic characters. The inscription turned out to be in the Elamite language (nomadic tribes called Amorites or Amorites in the Bible).
With type 3 it turned out to be even more difficult. It was a completely forgotten language. One sign there could represent both a syllable and a whole word. Consonants appeared only as part of a syllable, while vowels could also appear as separate characters. For example, the sound "r" could be represented by six different characters, depending on the context. On January 17, 1869, linguist Jules Oppert stated that the language of the 3rd group is... Sumerian... Which means the Sumerian people must also exist... But there was also a theory that this is only an artificial - “sacred language "Priests of Babylon. In 1871, Archibald Says published the first Sumerian text, the royal inscription of Shulgi. But it was not until 1889 that the definition of Sumerian was universally accepted.
SUMMARY: What we now call the Sumerian language is actually an artificial construction, built on analogies with the inscriptions of the peoples who adopted the Sumerian cuneiform - Elamite, Akkadian and Old Persian texts. Now remember how the ancient Greeks distorted foreign names and evaluate the possible authenticity of the sound of the “restored Sumerian”. Strangely, the Sumerian language has neither ancestors nor descendants. Sometimes Sumerian is called “the Latin of ancient Babylon” - but we must be aware that Sumerian did not become the progenitor of a powerful language group; only the roots of several dozen words remained from it.
The emergence of the Sumerians.
It must be said that southern Mesopotamia is not the best place in the world. Complete absence of forests and minerals. Swampiness, frequent floods accompanied by changes in the course of the Euphrates due to low banks and, as a consequence, a complete absence of roads. The only thing there was in abundance there was reed, clay and water. However, in combination with fertile soil fertilized by floods, this was enough for the first city-states of ancient Sumer to flourish there at the very end of the 3rd millennium BC.
We don't know where the Sumerians came from, but when they appeared in Mesopotamia, people were already living there. The tribes that inhabited Mesopotamia in ancient times lived on islands rising among the swamps. They built their settlements on artificial earthen embankments. By draining the surrounding swamps, they created an ancient artificial irrigation system. As the finds at Kish indicate, they used microlithic tools.
An impression of a Sumerian cylinder seal depicting a plow. The earliest settlement discovered in southern Mesopotamia was near El Obeid (near Ur), on a river island that rose above a marshy plain. The population living here was engaged in hunting and fishing, but was already moving on to more progressive types of economy: cattle breeding and agriculture
The El Obeid culture existed for a very long time. Its roots go back to the ancient local cultures of Upper Mesopotamia. However, the first elements of Sumerian culture are already appearing.
Based on the skulls from the burials, it was determined that the Sumerians were not a monoracial ethnic group: brachycephals (“round-headed”) and dolichocephalic (“long-headed”) are found. However, this could also be the result of mixing with the local population. So we cannot even attribute them to a specific ethnic group with complete confidence. At present, we can only say with some certainty that the Semites of Akkad and the Sumerians of Southern Mesopotamia differed sharply from each other both in their appearance and in language.
In the oldest communities of southern Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC. e. Almost all products produced here were consumed locally and subsistence farming reigned. Clay and reed were widely used. In ancient times, vessels were sculpted from clay - first by hand, and later on a special potter's wheel. Finally, clay was used in large quantities to make the most important building material - brick, which was prepared with an admixture of reeds and straw. This brick was sometimes dried in the sun, and sometimes fired in a special kiln. By the beginning of the third millennium BC. e., are the oldest buildings built from peculiar large bricks, one side of which forms a flat surface, and the other a convex surface. A major revolution in technology was made by the discovery of metals. One of the first metals known to the peoples of southern Mesopotamia was copper, the name of which appears in both the Sumerian and Akkadian languages. Somewhat later, bronze appeared, which was made from an alloy of copper and lead, and later - with tin. Recent archaeological discoveries indicate that already in the middle of the third millennium BC. e. In Mesopotamia, iron was known, apparently from meteorites.
The next period of the Sumerian archaic is called the Uruk period after the site of the most important excavations. This era is characterized by a new type of ceramics. Clay vessels, equipped with high handles and a long spout, may reproduce an ancient metal prototype. The vessels are made on a potter's wheel; however, in their ornamentation they are much more modest than the painted ceramics of the El Obeid period. However, economic life and culture received their further development in this era. There is a need to prepare documents. In this regard, a primitive picture (pictographic) writing emerged, traces of which were preserved on cylinder seals of that time. The inscriptions number a total of up to 1,500 pictorial signs, from which the ancient Sumerian writing gradually grew.
After the Sumerians, a huge number of clay cuneiform tablets remained. It may have been the world's first bureaucracy. The earliest inscriptions date back to 2900 BC. and contain business records. Researchers complain that the Sumerians left behind a huge number of "economic" records and "lists of gods" but never bothered to write down the "philosophical basis" of their belief system. Therefore, our knowledge is only an interpretation of “cuneiform” sources, most of them translated and rewritten by priests of later cultures, for example, the Epic of Gilgamesh or the poem “Enuma Elish” dating back to the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. So, perhaps we are reading a kind of digest, similar to an adaptive version of the Bible for modern children. Especially considering that most of the texts are compiled from several separate sources (due to poor preservation).
The property stratification that occurred within rural communities led to the gradual disintegration of the communal system. The growth of productive forces, the development of trade and slavery, and finally, predatory wars contributed to the separation of a small group of slave-owning aristocracy from the entire mass of community members. The aristocrats who owned slaves and partly land are called “big people” (lugal), who are opposed by “little people”, that is, free poor members of rural communities.
The oldest indications of the existence of slave states in Mesopotamia date back to the beginning of the third millennium BC. e. Judging by the documents of this era, these were very small states, or rather, primary state formations, headed by kings. The principalities that lost their independence were ruled by the highest representatives of the slave-owning aristocracy, who bore the ancient semi-priestly title “tsatesi” (epsi). The economic basis of these ancient slave states was the country's land fund, centralized in the hands of the state. Communal lands, cultivated by free peasants, were considered the property of the state, and their population was obliged to bear all kinds of duties in favor of the latter.
The disunity of city-states created a problem with the exact dating of events in Ancient Sumer. The fact is that each city-state had its own chronicles. And the lists of kings that have come down to us were mostly written no earlier than the Akkadian period and are a mixture of scraps of various “temple lists”, which led to confusion and errors. But in general it looks like this:
2900 - 2316 BC - the heyday of the Sumerian city-states
2316 - 2200 BC - unification of Sumer under the rule of the Akkadian dynasty (Semitic tribes of the northern part of Southern Mesopotamia who adopted Sumerian culture)
2200 - 2112 BC - Interregnum. The period of fragmentation and invasions of the nomadic Kutians
2112 - 2003 BC - Sumerian Renaissance, the heyday of culture
2003 BC - the fall of Sumer and Akkad under the onslaught of the Amorites (Elamites). Anarchy
1792 - rise of Babylon under Hammurabi (Old Babylonian Kingdom)
After their fall, the Sumerians left something that was picked up by many other peoples who came to this land - Religion.
Religion of Ancient Sumer.
Let's touch on the Sumerian Religion. It seems that in Sumer the origins of religion had purely materialistic, rather than “ethical” roots. The cult of the Gods was not aimed at “purification and holiness” but was intended to ensure a good harvest, military successes, etc.... The most ancient of the Sumerian Gods, mentioned in the oldest tablets “with lists of gods” (mid-3rd millennium BC .e.), personified the forces of nature - the sky, sea, sun, moon, wind, etc., then gods appeared - patrons of cities, farmers, shepherds, etc. The Sumerians argued that everything in the world belonged to the gods - temples were not the place of residence of the gods, who were obliged to take care of people, but the granaries of the gods - barns.
The main deities of the Sumerian Pantheon were AN (sky - masculine) and KI (earth - feminine). Both of these principles arose from the primordial ocean, which gave birth to the mountain, from the firmly connected sky and earth.
On the mountain of heaven and earth An conceived the Anunnaki [gods]. From this union, the god of air was born - Enlil, who divided heaven and earth.
There is a hypothesis that in the beginning maintaining order in the world was the function of Enki, the god of wisdom and the sea. But then, with the rise of the city-state of Nippur, whose god Enlil was considered, it was he who took a leading place among the gods.
Unfortunately, not a single Sumerian myth about the creation of the world has reached us. The course of events presented in the Akkadian myth "Enuma Elish", according to researchers, does not correspond to the concept of the Sumerians, despite the fact that most of the gods and plots in it are borrowed from Sumerian beliefs. At first life was hard for the gods, they had to do everything themselves, there was no one to serve them. Then they created people to serve themselves. It would seem that An, like other creator gods, should have had a leading role in Sumerian mythology. And, indeed, he was revered, although most likely symbolically. His temple at Ur was called E.ANNA - "House of AN". The first kingdom was called the "Kingdom of Anu". However, according to the Sumerians, An practically does not interfere in the affairs of people and therefore the main role in “everyday life” passed to other gods, led by Enlil. However, Enlil was not omnipotent, because supreme power belonged to a council of fifty main gods, among which the seven main gods “who decide fate” stood out.
It is believed that the structure of the council of gods repeated the “earthly hierarchy” - where the rulers, ensi, ruled together with the “council of elders”, in which a group of the most worthy was highlighted..
One of the foundations of Sumerian mythology, the exact meaning of which has not been established, is “ME”, which played a huge role in the religious and ethical system of the Sumerians. In one of the myths, more than a hundred “MEs” are named, of which less than half were read and deciphered. Here such concepts as justice, kindness, peace, victory, lies, fear, crafts, etc. , everything is somehow connected with social life. Some researchers believe that “me” are prototypes of all living things, emitted by gods and temples, “Divine rules”.
In general, in Sumer the Gods were like People. Their relationships include matchmaking and war, rape and love, deception and anger. There is even a myth about a man who possessed the goddess Inanna in a dream. It is noteworthy that the whole myth is imbued with sympathy for man.
It is interesting that the Sumerian paradise is not intended for people - it is the abode of the gods, where sadness, old age, illness and death are unknown, and the only problem that worries the gods is the problem of fresh water. By the way, in Ancient Egypt there was no concept of heaven at all. Sumerian hell - Kur - a gloomy dark underground world, where on the way there stood three servants - “door man”, “underground river man”, “carrier”. Reminiscent of the ancient Greek Hades and Sheol of the ancient Jews. This empty space separating the earth from the primordial ocean is filled with the shadows of the dead, wandering without hope of return, and demons.
In general, the views of the Sumerians were reflected in many later religions, but now we are much more interested in their contribution to the technical side of the development of modern civilization.
The story begins in Sumer.
One of the leading experts on Sumer, Professor Samuel Noah Kramer, in his book History Begins in Sumer, listed 39 subjects in which the Sumerians were pioneers. In addition to the first writing system, which we have already talked about, he included in this list the wheel, the first schools, the first bicameral parliament, the first historians, the first “farmer's almanac”; in Sumer, cosmogony and cosmology arose for the first time, the first collection of proverbs and aphorisms appeared, and literary debates were held for the first time; the image of “Noah” was created for the first time; here the first book catalog appeared, the first money began to circulate (silver shekels in the form of “weight bars”), taxes began to be introduced for the first time, the first laws were adopted and social reforms were carried out, medicine appeared, and for the first time attempts were made to achieve peace and harmony in society.
In the field of medicine, the Sumerians had very high standards from the very beginning. The library of Ashurbanipal, found by Layard in Nineveh, had a clear order, it had a large medical department, which contained thousands of clay tablets. All medical terms were based on words borrowed from the Sumerian language. Medical procedures were described in special reference books, which contained information about hygiene rules, operations, for example, cataract removal, and the use of alcohol for disinfection during surgical operations. Sumerian medicine was distinguished by a scientific approach to making a diagnosis and prescribing a course of treatment, both therapeutic and surgical.
The Sumerians were excellent travelers and explorers - they are also credited with inventing the world's first ships. One Akkadian dictionary of Sumerian words contained no less than 105 designations for various types of ships - according to their size, purpose and type of cargo. One inscription excavated at Lagash talks about ship repair capabilities and lists the types of materials that the local ruler Gudea brought to build a temple to his god Ninurta around 2200 BC. The breadth of the range of these goods is amazing - from gold, silver, copper - to diorite, carnelian and cedar. In some cases, these materials were transported over thousands of miles.
The first brick kiln was also built in Sumer. The use of such a large furnace made it possible to fire clay products, which gave them special strength due to internal tension, without poisoning the air with dust and ash. The same technology was used to smelt metals from ores, such as copper, by heating the ore to temperatures above 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit in a closed furnace with little oxygen supply. This process, called smelting, became necessary early on, as soon as the supply of natural native copper was exhausted. Researchers of ancient metallurgy were extremely surprised by how quickly the Sumerians learned the methods of ore beneficiation, metal smelting and casting. These advanced technologies were mastered by them only a few centuries after the emergence of the Sumerian civilization.
Even more amazingly, the Sumerians had mastered alloying, a process by which different metals were chemically combined when heated in a furnace. The Sumerians learned to produce bronze, a hard but easily workable metal that changed the entire course of human history. The ability to alloy copper with tin was a great achievement for three reasons. First, it was necessary to select a very precise ratio of copper and tin (analysis of Sumerian bronze showed the optimal ratio - 85% copper to 15% tin). Secondly, there was no tin at all in Mesopotamia. (Unlike, for example, Tiwanaku) Thirdly, tin does not occur in nature in its natural form at all. To extract it from the ore - tin stone - a rather complex process is required. This is not a business that can be opened by chance. The Sumerians had about thirty words for different types of copper of varying quality, but for tin they used the word AN.NA, which literally means "Sky Stone" - which many see as evidence that Sumerian technology was a gift of the gods.
Thousands of clay tablets were found containing hundreds of astronomical terms. Some of these tablets contained mathematical formulas and astronomical tables with which the Sumerians could predict solar eclipses, various phases of the moon, and the trajectories of the planets. The study of ancient astronomy has revealed the remarkable accuracy of these tables (known as ephemeris). Nobody knows how they were calculated, but we can ask the question - why was this necessary?
"The Sumerians measured the rising and setting of visible planets and stars relative to the earth's horizon, using the same heliocentric system that is used now. We also adopted from them the division of the celestial sphere into three segments - northern, central and southern (accordingly, the ancient Sumerians - "the path of Enlil ", "path of Anu" and "path of Ea"). In essence, all modern concepts of spherical astronomy, including a complete spherical circle of 360 degrees, zenith, horizon, axes of the celestial sphere, poles, ecliptic, equinox, etc. - all this is suddenly originated in Sumer.
All the knowledge of the Sumerians regarding the movement of the Sun and the Earth was combined in the world's first calendar, created in the city of Nippur, the solar-lunar calendar, which began in 3760 BC. The Sumerians counted 12 lunar months, which were approximately 354 days, and then they added 11 additional days to get a full solar year. This procedure, called intercalation, was done annually until, after 19 years, the solar and lunar calendars were aligned. The Sumerian calendar was compiled very precisely so that key days (for example, the New Year always fell on the day of the vernal equinox). The surprising thing is that such a developed astronomical science was not at all necessary for this newly emerging society.
In general, the mathematics of the Sumerians had “geometric” roots and was very unusual. Personally, I don’t understand at all how such a number system could have originated among primitive peoples. But it’s better to judge this for yourself...
Mathematics of the Sumerians.
The Sumerians used a sexagesimal number system. Only two signs were used to represent numbers: “wedge” meant 1; 60; 3600 and further degrees from 60; "hook" - 10; 60 x 10; 3600 x 10, etc. The digital recording was based on the positional principle, but if, based on the basis of notation, you think that numbers in Sumer were displayed as powers of 60, then you are mistaken.
In the Sumerian system, the base is not 10, but 60, but then this base is strangely replaced by the number 10, then 6, and then again by 10, etc. And thus, the positional numbers are arranged in the following row:
1, 10, 60, 600, 3600, 36 000, 216 000, 2 160 000, 12 960 000.
This cumbersome sexagesimal system allowed the Sumerians to calculate fractions and multiply numbers up to millions, extract roots and raise to powers. In many ways this system is even superior to the decimal system we currently use. Firstly, the number 60 has ten prime factors, while 100 has only 7. Secondly, it is the only system ideal for geometric calculations, and this is why it continues to be used in modern times from here, for example, dividing a circle into 360 degrees.
We rarely realize that we owe not only our geometry, but also our modern way of calculating time, to the Sumerian sexagesimal number system. The division of the hour into 60 seconds was not at all arbitrary - it is based on the sexagesimal system. Echoes of the Sumerian number system were preserved in the division of the day into 24 hours, the year into 12 months, the foot into 12 inches, and in the existence of the dozen as a measure of quantity. They are also found in the modern counting system, in which numbers from 1 to 12 are distinguished separately, followed by numbers like 10+3, 10+4, etc.
It should no longer surprise us that the zodiac was also another invention of the Sumerians, an invention that was later adopted by other civilizations. But the Sumerians did not use zodiac signs, tying them to each month, as we do now in horoscopes. They used them in a purely astronomical sense - in the sense of the deviation of the earth's axis, the movement of which divides the full cycle of precession of 25,920 years into 12 periods of 2160 years. During the twelve-month movement of the Earth in its orbit around the Sun, the picture of the starry sky, forming a large sphere of 360 degrees, changes. The concept of the zodiac arose by dividing this circle into 12 equal segments (zodiac spheres) of 30 degrees each. Then the stars in each group were united into constellations, and each of them received its own name, corresponding to their modern names. Thus, there is no doubt that the concept of the zodiac was first used in Sumer. The outlines of the zodiac signs (representing imaginary pictures of the starry sky), as well as their arbitrary division into 12 spheres, prove that the corresponding zodiac signs used in other, later cultures could not appear as a result of independent development.
Studies of Sumerian mathematics, much to the surprise of scientists, have shown that their number system is closely related to the precessional cycle. The unusual moving principle of the Sumerian sexagesimal number system emphasizes the number 12,960,000, which is exactly equal to 500 great precessional cycles, occurring in 25,920 years. The absence of any other than astronomical possible applications for the products of the numbers 25,920 and 2160 can only mean one thing - this system was developed specifically for astronomical purposes.
It seems that scientists are avoiding answering the inconvenient question, which is this: how could the Sumerians, whose civilization lasted only 2 thousand years, be able to notice and record a cycle of celestial movements that lasted 25,920 years? And why does the beginning of their civilization date back to the middle of the period between the zodiac changes? Doesn't this indicate that they inherited astronomy from the gods?
Sumerian cuneiform is part of the small heritage that remains after this. Unfortunately, most of the architectural monuments were lost. All that remained were clay tablets with unique writings on which the Sumerians wrote - cuneiform. For a long time it remained an unsolved mystery, but thanks to the efforts of scientists, humanity now has data about what the civilization of Mesopotamia was like.
Sumerians: who are they?
The Sumerian civilization (literal translation “black-headed”) is one of the very first to emerge on our planet. The very origin of a people in history is one of the most pressing issues: disputes among scientists are still ongoing. This phenomenon is even given the name “Sumerian question.” The search for archaeological data yielded little, so the main source of study became the field of linguistics. The Sumerians, whose cuneiform script is best preserved, began to be studied from the point of view of linguistic kinship.
Around 5 thousand years BC, settlements appeared in the valley and Euphrates in the southern part of Mesopotamia, which later grew into a powerful civilization. Archaeological finds indicate how economically developed the Sumerians were. Cuneiform writing on numerous clay tablets tells about this.
Excavations in the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk allow us to make an unambiguous conclusion that the Sumerian cities were quite urbanized: there were classes of artisans, traders, and managers. Outside the cities lived shepherds and peasants.
Sumerian language
The Sumerian language is a very interesting linguistic phenomenon. Most likely, he came to southern Mesopotamia from India. For 1-2 millennia, the population spoke it, but it was soon replaced by Akkadian.
The Sumerians still continued to use their native language in religious events, administrative work was carried out in it, and they studied in schools. This continued until the beginning of our era. How did the Sumerians write their language? Cuneiform was used precisely for this purpose.
Unfortunately, it was not possible to restore the phonetic structure of the Sumerian language, because it belongs to the type where the lexical and grammatical meaning of a word lies in numerous affixes attached to the root.
Evolution of cuneiform
The emergence of Sumerian cuneiform coincides with the beginning of economic activity. It is due to the fact that it was necessary to record elements of administrative activity or trade. It should be said that Sumerian cuneiform is considered the first writing to appear, which provided the basis for other writing systems in Mesopotamia.
Initially, digital values were recorded while they were far from written language. A certain amount was indicated by special clay figurines - tokens. One token - one item.
With the development of economics, this became inconvenient, so they began to make special markings on each figure. Tokens were stored in a special container on which the owner’s seal was depicted. Unfortunately, in order to count the items, the storage had to be broken down and then sealed again. For convenience, information about the contents began to be depicted next to the seal, and after that the physical figures disappeared completely - only the prints remained. This is how the first clay tablets appeared. What was depicted on them was nothing more than pictograms: specific designations of specific numbers and objects.
Later, pictograms began to reflect abstract symbols. For example, a bird and an egg depicted next to it already indicated fertility. Such writing was already ideographic (signs-symbols).
The next stage is the phonetic design of pictograms and ideograms. It should be said that each sign began to correspond to a certain sound design that has nothing to do with the depicted object. The style is also changing, it is being simplified (we’ll tell you how later). In addition, for convenience, the symbols unfold and become horizontally oriented.
The emergence of cuneiform gave impetus to the replenishment of the dictionary of styles, which is happening very actively.
Cuneiform: Basic Principles
What was cuneiform writing? Paradoxically, the Sumerians could not read: the principle of writing was not the same. They saw the written text, because the basis was
The style was largely influenced by the material on which they wrote - clay. Why she? Let's not forget that Mesopotamia is an area where there are practically no trees suitable for processing (remember the Slavic ones or the Egyptian papyrus, made from a bamboo stem), and there was no stone there. But there was plenty of clay in the river floods, so it was widely used by the Sumerians.
The writing blank was a clay cake, it had the shape of a circle or a rectangle. The marks were made with a special stick called a kapama. It was made of hard material, such as bone. The tip of the kapama was triangular. The writing process involved dipping a stick into soft clay and leaving a specific design. When the kapama was pulled out of the clay, the elongated part of the triangle left a wedge-like mark, hence the name “cuneiform”. To preserve what was written, the tablet was fired in a kiln.
The origins of syllabics
As stated above, before cuneiform appeared, the Sumerians had another type of writing - pictography, then ideography. Later, the signs became simplified, for example, instead of a whole bird, only a paw was depicted. And the number of signs used is gradually decreasing - they become more universal, they begin to mean not only direct concepts, but also abstract ones - for this it is enough to depict another ideogram next to it. Thus, “another country” and “woman” standing next to each other meant the concept of “slave”. Thus, the meaning of specific signs became clear from the general context. This way of expression is called logography.
Still, it was difficult to depict ideograms on clay, so over time, each of them was replaced by a certain combination of dashes-wedges. This pushed the writing process forward by allowing syllables to match specific sounds. Thus, syllabic writing began to develop, which lasted for quite a long time.
Decoding and meaning for other languages
The mid-19th century was marked by attempts to understand the essence of the Sumerian cuneiform writing. Grotefend made great strides in this. However, what was found made it possible to finally decipher many texts. The rock-cut texts contained examples of ancient Persian, Elamite and Akkadian script. Rawlins was able to decipher the texts.
The emergence of Sumerian cuneiform influenced the writing of other countries of Mesopotamia. As civilization spread, it brought with it the verbal-syllabic type of writing, which was adopted by other peoples. The entry of Sumerian cuneiform into Elamite, Hurrian, Hittite and Urartian writing is especially clear.
Type: syllabic-ideographic
Language family: not installed
Localization: Northern Mesopotamia
Propagation time:3300 BC e. - 100 AD e.
The Sumerians called the homeland of all mankind the island of Dilmui, identified with modern Bahrain in the Persian Gulf.
The earliest is represented in texts found in the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr, dated 3300 BC.
The Sumerian language still continues to remain a mystery to us, since even now it has not been possible to establish its relationship with any of the known language families. Archaeological materials suggest that the Sumerians created the Ubaid culture in the south of Mesopotamia at the end of the 5th - beginning of the 4th millennium BC. e. Thanks to the emergence of hieroglyphic writing, the Sumerians left many monuments of their culture, imprinting them on clay tablets.
The cuneiform script itself was a syllabic script, consisting of several hundred characters, of which about 300 were the most common; these included more than 50 ideograms, about 100 signs for simple syllables and 130 for complex ones; there were signs for numbers in the hexadecimal and decimal systems.
Sumerian writing developed over 2200 years
Most signs have two or several readings (polyphonism), since often, next to Sumerian, they also acquired a Semitic meaning. Sometimes they depicted related concepts (for example, “sun” - bar and “shine” - lah).
The invention of Sumerian writing itself was undoubtedly one of the largest and most significant achievements of the Sumerian civilization. Sumerian writing, which went from hieroglyphic, figurative signs-symbols to the signs that began to write the simplest syllables, turned out to be an extremely progressive system. It was borrowed and used by many peoples who spoke other languages.
At the turn of the IV-III millennium BC. e. we have indisputable evidence that the population of Lower Mesopotamia was Sumerian. The widely known story of the Great Flood first appears in Sumerian historical and mythological texts.
Although Sumerian writing was invented exclusively for economic needs, the first written literary monuments appeared among the Sumerians very early: among records dating back to the 26th century. BC e., there are already examples of folk wisdom genres, cult texts and hymns.
Due to this circumstance, the cultural influence of the Sumerians in the Ancient Near East was enormous and outlived their own civilization for many centuries.
Subsequently, writing loses its pictorial character and transforms into cuneiform.
Cuneiform writing was used in Mesopotamia for almost three thousand years. However, later it was forgotten. For tens of centuries, cuneiform kept its secret, until in 1835 the unusually energetic Englishman Henry Rawlinson, an English officer and lover of antiquities, deciphered it. One day he was informed that an inscription had been preserved on a steep cliff in Behistun (near the city of Hamadan in Iran). It turned out to be the same inscription, written in three ancient languages, including ancient Persian. Rawlinson first read the inscription in this language known to him, and then managed to understand the other inscription, identifying and deciphering more than 200 cuneiform characters.
In mathematics, the Sumerians knew how to count in tens. But the numbers 12 (a dozen) and 60 (five dozen) were especially revered. We still use the Sumerian heritage when we divide an hour into 60 minutes, a minute into 60 seconds, a year into 12 months, and a circle into 360 degrees.
In the figure you see how over 500 years hieroglyphic images of numerals turned into cuneiform ones.
Modification of Sumerian numerals from hieroglyphs to cuneiform
In the south of modern Iraq, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a mysterious people, the Sumerians, settled almost 7,000 years ago. They made a significant contribution to the development of human civilization, but we still do not know where the Sumerians came from or what language they spoke.
Mysterious language
The Mesopotamian valley has long been inhabited by tribes of Semitic herders. It was they who were driven north by the Sumerian aliens. The Sumerians themselves were not related to the Semites; moreover, their origins are still unclear to this day. Neither the ancestral home of the Sumerians nor the linguistic family to which their language belonged is known.
Luckily for us, the Sumerians left many written monuments. From them we learn that neighboring tribes called these people “Sumerians”, and they themselves called themselves “Sang-ngiga” - “black-headed”. They called their language a “noble language” and considered it the only one suitable for people (in contrast to the not so “noble” Semitic languages spoken by their neighbors).
But the Sumerian language was not homogeneous. It had special dialects for women and men, fishermen and shepherds. What the Sumerian language sounded like is unknown to this day. A large number of homonyms suggests that this language was a tonal language (like, for example, modern Chinese), which means that the meaning of what was said often depended on intonation.
After the decline of the Sumerian civilization, the Sumerian language was studied for a long time in Mesopotamia, since most religious and literary texts were written in it.
The ancestral home of the Sumerians
One of the main mysteries remains the ancestral home of the Sumerians. Scientists build hypotheses based on archaeological data and information obtained from written sources. 
This Asian country, unknown to us, was supposed to be located on the sea. The fact is that the Sumerians came to Mesopotamia along river beds, and their first settlements appeared in the south of the valley, in the deltas of the Tigris and Euphrates. At first there were very few Sumerians in Mesopotamia - and this is not surprising, because the ships can only accommodate so many settlers. Apparently, they were good sailors, since they were able to climb up unfamiliar rivers and find a suitable place to land on the shore.
In addition, scientists believe that the Sumerians come from mountainous areas. It’s not for nothing that in their language the words “country” and “mountain” are spelled the same. And the Sumerian temples “ziggurats” resemble mountains in appearance - they are stepped structures with a wide base and a narrow pyramidal top, where the sanctuary was located.
Another important condition is that this country had to have developed technologies. The Sumerians were one of the most advanced peoples of their time; they were the first in the entire Middle East to use the wheel, create an irrigation system, and invent a unique writing system.
According to one version, this legendary ancestral home was located in the south of India.
Flood survivors
It was not for nothing that the Sumerians chose the Mesopotamia Valley as their new homeland. The Tigris and Euphrates originate in the Armenian Highlands, and carry fertile silt and mineral salts to the valley. Because of this, the soil in Mesopotamia is extremely fertile, with fruit trees, grains and vegetables growing in abundance. In addition, there were fish in the rivers, wild animals flocked to watering holes, and in the flooded meadows there was plenty of food for livestock. 
But all this abundance had a downside. When the snow began to melt in the mountains, the Tigris and Euphrates carried streams of water into the valley. Unlike the Nile floods, the Tigris and Euphrates floods could not be predicted; they were not regular.
Heavy floods turned into a real disaster; they destroyed everything in their path: cities and villages, fields, animals and people. It was probably when they first encountered this disaster that the Sumerians created the legend of Ziusudra.
At a meeting of all the gods, a terrible decision was made - to destroy all of humanity. Only one god, Enki, took pity on the people. He appeared in a dream to King Ziusudra and ordered him to build a huge ship. Ziusudra fulfilled the will of God; he loaded his property, family and relatives, various craftsmen to preserve knowledge and technology, livestock, animals and birds onto the ship. The doors of the ship were tarred on the outside.
The next morning a terrible flood began, which even the gods were afraid of. The rain and wind raged for six days and seven nights. Finally, when the water began to recede, Ziusudra left the ship and made sacrifices to the gods. Then, as a reward for his loyalty, the gods granted Ziusudra and his wife immortality.
This legend not only resembles the legend of Noah's Ark; most likely, the biblical story is borrowed from Sumerian culture. After all, the first poems about the flood that have reached us date back to the 18th century BC.
King-priests, king-builders
The Sumerian lands were never a single state. In essence, it was a collection of city-states, each with its own law, its own treasury, its own rulers, its own army. The only things they had in common were language, religion and culture. City-states could be at enmity with each other, could exchange goods or enter into military alliances. 
Each city-state was ruled by three kings. The first and most important was called “en”. This was the king-priest (however, the enom could also be a woman). The main task of the king was to conduct religious ceremonies: solemn processions and sacrifices. In addition, he was in charge of all temple property, and sometimes the property of the entire community.
An important area of life in ancient Mesopotamia was construction. The Sumerians are credited with the invention of baked brick. City walls, temples, and barns were built from this more durable material. The construction of these structures was supervised by the priest-builder ensi. In addition, the ensi monitored the irrigation system, because canals, locks and dams made it possible to at least somewhat control irregular spills.
During the war, the Sumerians elected another leader - a military leader - lugal. The most famous military leader was Gilgamesh, whose exploits are immortalized in one of the most ancient literary works, the Epic of Gilgamesh. In this story, the great hero challenges the gods, defeats monsters, brings a precious cedar tree to his hometown of Uruk, and even descends into the afterlife.
Sumerian gods
Sumer had a developed religious system. Three gods were especially revered: the sky god Anu, the earth god Enlil and the water god Ensi. In addition, each city had its own patron god. Thus, Enlil was especially revered in the ancient city of Nippur. The people of Nippur believed that Enlil gave them such important inventions as the hoe and the plow, and also taught them how to build cities and build walls around them. 
Important gods for the Sumerians were the sun (Utu) and the moon (Nannar), which replaced each other in the sky. And, of course, one of the most important figures of the Sumerian pantheon was the goddess Inanna, whom the Assyrians, who borrowed the religious system from the Sumerians, would call Ishtar, and the Phoenicians - Astarte.
Inanna was the goddess of love and fertility and, at the same time, the goddess of war. She personified, first of all, carnal love and passion. It is not for nothing that in many Sumerian cities there was a custom of “divine marriage”, when kings, in order to ensure fertility for their lands, livestock and people, spent the night with the high priestess Inanna, who embodied the goddess herself.
Like many ancient gods, Inannu was capricious and fickle. She often fell in love with mortal heroes, and woe to those who rejected the goddess!
The Sumerians believed that the gods created people by mixing their blood with clay. After death, souls fell into the afterlife, where there was also nothing but clay and dust, which the dead ate. To make the life of their deceased ancestors a little better, the Sumerians sacrificed food and drink to them.
Cuneiform
Sumerian civilization reached amazing heights, even after being conquered by its northern neighbors, the culture, language and religion of the Sumerians were borrowed first by Akkad, then by Babylonia and Assyria.
The Sumerians are credited with inventing the wheel, bricks, and even beer (although they most likely made barley drink using a different technology). But the main achievement of the Sumerians was, of course, a unique writing system - cuneiform.
Cuneiform got its name from the shape of the marks that a reed stick left on wet clay, the most common writing material. 
Sumerian writing came from a system of counting various goods. For example, when a man counted his flock, he made a clay ball to represent each sheep, then put these balls in a box, and left marks on the box indicating the number of these balls. But all the sheep in the herd are different: different sexes, different ages. Marks appeared on the balls according to the animal they represented. And finally, the sheep began to be designated by a picture - a pictogram. Drawing with a reed stick was not very convenient, and the pictogram turned into a schematic image consisting of vertical, horizontal and diagonal wedges. And the last step - this ideogram began to denote not only a sheep (in Sumerian “udu”), but also the syllable “udu” as part of compound words.
At first, cuneiform was used to compile business documents. Extensive archives have come down to us from the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia. But later, the Sumerians began to write down artistic texts, and even entire libraries appeared from clay tablets, which were not afraid of fires - after all, after firing, the clay only became stronger. It was thanks to the fires in which the Sumerian cities, captured by the warlike Akkadians, perished, that unique information about this ancient civilization has reached us.
The invention of writing by the Sumerians was of world-historical significance. The Sumerians began writing at the end of 4 thousand BC, that is, much earlier than the Egyptians. In the Red Temple of Uruk, dated to around 3300 BC, a tablet was discovered with text using about 700 characters. This tablet is, apparently, the world's first monument of written culture.
Before the advent of writing, there were cylinder seals on which miniature images were carved, and then the seal was rolled over clay. These round seals represented one of the greatest achievements of Mesopotamian art.
Writing arose as a practical necessity for trading activities, business records and calculations. The earliest writings were made in the form of pictograms, or primitive drawings made with a reed stick on tablets of wet clay. Then the clay “tablets” were dried in the sun or fired in a kiln (if the designations were especially important and intended for long-term storage). The first such tablets are memorial notes, lists of goods, recipes (notes of an economic nature). Guess the meaning of most of the pictograms used around 3300 BC. e., not difficult. The radiant star denoted the sky or, in the future, a deity. The cup undoubtedly conveyed the word “food.” In some cases, combinations of symbols can be easily deciphered: the pictograms “big” and “man” standing together mean “king”.
The first step towards abstract symbols was made at the beginning of 2 thousand BC. BC, when the pictographs began to “lie on their edges,” which could be due to the fact that Sumerian scribes began to turn the tablets over in order to be able to write from left to right, and not from top to bottom, as before. But whatever the real reasons for this “revolution,” the fact itself suggests that the symbols gradually began to lose their connection with the specific object depicted.
Written characters underwent even more dramatic changes when scribes changed from a sharpened reed stick for drawing on soft clay to a wedge-shaped style, leading to a change in writing that was called "cuneiform" from the Latin. “cuneus”, which means “wedge”. Ancient scribes made every effort to ensure that their drawings resembled the depicted object as closely as possible, and for this purpose they used all kinds of wedge-shaped impressions. Then all the wedges used to represent the sign were divided into several classes: vertical, horizontal and oblique.
This is how it arose cuneiform writing on clay tablets. It spread throughout Western Asia, and for more than two thousand years it was used by peoples who spoke various languages. Cuneiform was used especially productively in Babylonian and early Persian writing.
Around 1800 BC scribes simplified the writing of many cuneiform symbols, replacing them with even more conventional signs that bore only a vague resemblance to the previous pictograms.
*Slides: Using the example of selected Sumerian signs on the table on the right, you can trace the evolution of Sumerian writing over 1500 years - the transformation of early pictograms into a system of abstract symbols.
The instructions in the lower right corner read: “Pass through a sieve and then stir in the crushed tortoiseshells, naga-shi sprouts, salt and mustard. Then wash the damaged areas with good quality beer and hot water and rub the mixture in. Wait a little and rub with oil again, then apply a poultice of crushed pine bark.”
Epic of Gilgamesh
Thanks to the invention of writing, many aspects of the past were revealed to historians. Because samples of literature are preserved in written sources; a historian can judge the mentality of people of that time.
The greatest monument of ancient Sumerian literature is the Tale of Gilgamesh. It is preserved on cuneiform tablets, one of which comes from Nippur. Gilgamesh is said to have been a king and successful general from Uruk around 2700 BC.
The cycle of epic songs about Gilgamesh is associated mainly with the idea of human immortality, and throughout the poem Gilgamesh desperately tries to defeat death. Gilgamesh is endowed with strength and courage, which ensured his victory in the fight with the lion. Together with your companion Enkidu Gilgamesh travels to the cedar forest to fight the forest ruler Humbaba. But his main goal is the search for wisdom, happiness, immortality. The Akkadian epic also contains a description of Gilgamesh's journey beyond life to achieve immortality. He was looking for Utnapishtim, who survived the flood. Floods often occurred in Sumer, when both rivers - the Tigris and Euphrates - overflowed widely. Perhaps a catastrophic flood, when both rivers closed with each other, is called a flood in popular memory. In Dilmun, the Sumerian paradise, Utnapishtim helped Gilgamesh find the “plant (pearl?) of eternal youth” that gives immortality, but on his way back home he lost this precious root and accepts the inevitability of his fate.
Sumerian religion
By about 2250 B.C. In Sumer, a whole pantheon of gods had already developed, personifying various elements and elemental forces. This pantheon was the basis of the Sumerian religion. This is how theology was born.
According to Sumerian beliefs, the earth was ruled by gods, and people were created to serve them. This motif of the Sumerian epic was reflected much later in the Bible, in the Old Testament. Initially, each city had its own god. This was probably due to political changes in relations between cities, but in the end the gods organized themselves into a kind of hierarchy.
Each of the gods was assigned its own role and its own area of activity: there was the god of air, the god of water, and the god of agriculture. The goddess Inanna (among the Akkadians Ishtar) was the goddess of carnal love and fertility, but at the same time the goddess of war, the personification of the planet Venus. At the head of the hierarchy were 3 highest male gods:
· Anu – father of the gods, god of the sky;
· Enlil (among the Akkadians Ellil, White) – the god of air;
· Enki (among the Akkadians Eil, Ea) – the god of wisdom and fresh water, he was the teacher who gives life (water = life), and maintained the order created by Enlil.
Since the harvest, especially grain, was constantly threatened by drought, flood, or locust, and these troubles occurred, according to beliefs, by the will of the gods, the Sumerians sought to appease them. This purpose was served by the most complex ritual of worship in their temples - the earthly dwellings of the gods. Done ritual worship of the king and the main gods of the Sumerian pantheon. Each of the deities had its own temple, which became the center of the city-state. In Sumer they were founded and established main features of the temple architecture of Mesopotamia.
Fall of Sumer
Amorite Invasion. Marie. After 2000 BC e. in the battle with the Elamites who came from Persia, the powerful state of the Sumerians fell. This was followed by an invasion of Semitic tribes - the Amorites - from northern Syria. The Amorites settled in Mesopotamia and built rich, thriving city-states.
Of all the cities, the large Amorite city especially stood out. city of Mari, built in the middle reaches of the Euphrates. As a result of excavations, a city with a strict, close to modern layout- long avenues, palaces in squares, perpendicularly intersecting streets, beautiful sculptures, rich cemeteries, walls decorated with frescoes.
Grand Palace of Marie
The Great Palace of Zimri-Lima, who ruled Mari from 1780 to 1760. BC, was built before 2100 BC. and after several centuries it was reconstructed. It consisted of more than 260 rooms and courtyards on the ground floor, the rest were above.
The centerpiece of the palace was a double throne room, dating back to the time of the Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad, who died in 1780 BC, however, the main components of the palace were laid out under Zimri-Lim.
Along with public spaces and private living rooms, the palace contained numerous craft workshops, where linen, woolen clothing, blankets and draperies were spun and made, things were made from leather, cabinetmakers inlaid wood with alabaster and mother-of-pearl. A significant number of workers in these workshops were slaves.
In addition, the palace had a royal treasury and other storage facilities.
The most important discovery at Marie was the archive, which contained more than 20,000 tablets. The texts written on them are related to various aspects of city life. Among them are numerous documents on official business, diplomatic and private correspondence, for example, about the health of members of the royal family.
Hammurabi
At the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. a new unification of Mesopotamia emerged with its center in the city Babylon. Babylon is located on the banks of the Euphrates, 90 km south of modern Baghdad. The name of the city translates as “gate of the gods.”
After the fall of the state of Ur in 2000. BC. Babylon is ruled by the Amorite (Western Semites) dynasty. Under Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC), Babylon became the political and religious capital of southern Mesopotamia.
Originally a vassal of the Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad I, through superior diplomatic maneuvers and successful military campaigns with rival city-states (Uruk, Issin, Larsa, Eshnuna and Mari), Hammurabi established Babylon as the dominant power of the Mesopotamian plain and the regions further north (Mari and Ashur). Due to the fact that during the era of Hammurabi the characteristic features of Babylonian culture took shape, in the history of Babylon it was called classical. In addition, many temples and canals were built under Hammurabi. His influence towards the end of his life (he died in 1750 BC) increases so much that Babylon receives the status of the natural capital of southern Mesopotamia.
Laws of Hammurabi. Hammurabi was the greatest lawgiver in human history. Like the prophet Moses, he gave his people and at the same time humanity a code of laws. It was carved on a stone stele that was found in Susa (now kept in the Louvre).
*Slide: On top of the monolith, where the laws of Hammurabi are engraved, there is an image of the king himself. The king stands in a respectful pose, listening to what the god of justice, Shamash, tells him. Shamash sits on his throne and holds the attributes of power in his right hand, and flames shine around his shoulders. Shamash commands Hammurabi to do his will in exactly the same way as Yahweh commands Moses in the Bible.
The Code of Hammurabi amazes with the level of legal thought that existed 15 centuries before the advent of Roman law. The 282 sections of Hammurabi's famous code of laws contain laws on various topics: slavery, property, trade, family, wages, divorce, medical care and much more.
Many laws were borrowed from the Sumerians, but the application and interpretation of legal rules were more detailed and more legally developed.
Even such special cases were stipulated: “If a man, during an attack or invasion, was captured or taken to distant countries and stayed there for a long time, and in the meantime another man took his wife and she bore him a son, then if the husband returns, he gets his wife back.” Or the law on providing for wives:
“If a husband turns his face away from his first wife... and she does not leave the house, then the woman he took as his mistress will be his second wife. He must continue to support his first wife as well.”
According to the Code of Hammurabi, many crimes - theft, adultery, false accusation, perjury - were punishable by death. Strict punishments were provided, for example, in the following cases: if a patient lost one eye due to the carelessness or inability of the doctor, the doctor’s hand was cut off; if the house collapsed; then its builder was sentenced to death or a large fine.
Hammurabi carried out religious reform. The Sumerian gods continued to be revered, but by order of the king he became the main Babylonian god Marduk.( Marduk, in Sumerian-Akkadian mythology, the central deity of the Babylonian pantheon, the main god of the city of Babylon, the son of Ey (Enki) and Domkina (Damgalnun). Written sources report on the wisdom of Marduk, his healing arts and spell power; God is called "judge of the gods", "lord of the gods" and even "father of the gods"). He was the god of the entire empire of Hammurabi.
Rise of Assyria.
After Hammurabi's death, his empire fell apart. Babylon itself became a victim of the predatory raid of the Hittites, then of the Kassites who came from Persia. They ruled over Babylon until its conquest by the Assyrians, a Semitic people who lived from ancient times in the upper reaches of the Tigris.
The rise of Assyria began, whose trade in the north of the country had been restrained and controlled by the Hittites for a long time. But in 1200 BC. e. The Hittite kingdom collapsed. Assyria entered the Mediterranean and captured lands right up to the territory of modern Turkey. The success of Assyria's conquests was facilitated by use of iron weapons, in which the Assyrians were far superior to all neighboring peoples, and high level of military art, ensured by the special maneuverability of troops. The Assyrian invasions were cruel and bloody. The Old Testament says that they used special machines for the siege of fortress walls and “assault goats”.
The Assyrian king Sargon II (722-705 BC) built a new majestic capital - Dur-Sharrukin (now Khorsabad), which means Sargon's Fortress. The palace stood on a high artificially raised hill. In 713 BC. e. Sargon II, during the construction of his capital, Dur-Sharrukin (modern Khorsabad, Iraq), surrounded the city with a solid brick wall, leaving seven passages (gates) in it. On the sides at the entrance to the palace there were huge statues of winged bulls with human heads. These are the shedu - the guards guarding the palace gates; they seem to be keeping a watchful eye on those passing by. Everyone who approached the palace could already see the head, chest and two legs from afar. As soon as you walked further and looked at the shad from the side, it began to seem that the bull had stepped forward, moving its front leg. The Assyrian sculptor achieved this by making the bull... five legs! Therefore, two legs are visible from the front, and four from the side. And if not for the fifth leg, then in profile the bull would appear to be tripodal.
But perhaps the most interesting and truly artistic works of art were the Assyrian reliefs that adorned the walls of the palaces. Assyria was a powerful military power; there was no end to campaigns and conquests, which is why the palace reliefs depict mainly military scenes glorifying the king-commander. All scenes are conveyed so vividly, with such skill that one does not immediately notice either the conventional image of the human figure (always in profile), or the identical facial features of almost all people, or the overly emphasized muscles of the arms and legs (by this the artist wanted to show the power Assyrian army). Many reliefs depict royal hunts, mainly lions. Animals are depicted surprisingly accurately and truthfully.
Sargon's son Sennacherib (705-680 BC) moved the capital of the state to Nineveh. Here archaeologists discovered numerous sculptures, including winged bulls, and found frescoes and stone reliefs depicting the battles of Sennacherib with his enemies. Sennacherib sacked, burned and destroyed Babylon in 689 BC. This event is reported on a stele covered in cuneiform writing.
Son of Sennacherib - Esarhaddon(680-669 BC) - in 671 he captured Egypt and restored Babylon to its former greatness. Numerous new monuments of Assyrian culture appeared, but the previous ones, Sumerian and Babylonian, were irretrievably lost.
In 701 BC. Assyrian troops besieged Jerusalem, and the Jewish king Hiskiel was forced to pay tribute. This is reported in the Old Testament. Inscriptions on the palace of Sennacherib glorify the Assyrian king as a victor who supposedly locked the king of the Jews “like a bird in a cage.” However, in reality, Sennacherib failed to conquer and plunder rich Jerusalem: the plague epidemic that broke out there prevented him from doing so.
Simultaneously with their campaigns of conquest, the Assyrians paid a lot of attention construction and art. The reliefs in the palaces depicting hunting and battle scenes are extremely expressive. The Assyrians were also excellent civil engineers. Built by them plumbing, palaces, equipment for besieging cities, interior decoration of palaces, many sculptures- all this amazed the imagination.
To decorate the interiors of the palace of Ashurbanippal in Nineveh (7th century BC), gold and ivory from Egypt, silver from Syria, azure and semi-precious stones from Persia, and cedar wood from Lebanon were specially delivered.
*Slide: At the bottom of the fragment, on a triumphal chariot under an umbrella, stands the powerful king Ashurbanipal (reigned 669-631 BC). Traditionally, the figure of the king is larger than all other characters. The king holds an unopened bud in his hand as part of an Assyrian court ceremony.
After the death of Ashurbanipal, his great empire lasted only fifteen years. The reasons for her crash was
The inability to protect the vast borders of the state,
Uprisings of enslaved peoples, as well as
The moral decay of a huge army engaged in robbery. In the Old Testament, the prophet Nahum foreshadows the destruction of Nineveh: “Woe to the city of blood! It is all full of deception and murder; robbery does not cease in him” (Old Testament. Book of the Prophet Nahum, 8:1.). The prophecy came true. IN 612 BC e. the capital of Assyria, Nineveh, fell under the onslaught of the Babylonians and Indians. The Assyrian Empire was divided between the two victors. A new era of the rise of Babylon and the spread of its culture began.
Neo-Babylonian kingdom .
A new flowering of Babylon has occurred during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II(605-562 BC). A thousand years after Hammurabi, he made an attempt to equal him in greatness. And he partially succeeded. The ruins of Babylon still amaze with their grandiose size.
The Greek historian Herodotus described Babylon in his “History” as a city that surpassed all cities in the world in wealth and luxury. What struck his imagination the most was city wall of Babylon. According to Herodotus, its width was such that two chariots drawn by four horses could easily pass each other! For more than two thousand years, these words of Herodotus were considered an exaggeration and were confirmed only in 1899 during the excavations of Babylon undertaken by the German archaeologist R. Koldewey. He dug up double fortress walls 7 m wide and 18 km long, surrounding the city center. The space between the walls was filled with earth. Four horses could ride here! Watchtowers were attached to the walls every 50 m.
Ishtar Gate
Of the eight gates dedicated to the main gods revered in Babylon, the most magnificent were double gates of the goddess of love Ishtar. The "processional road" passed through them - an important thoroughfare that connects the temple of Marduk and the temple of the New Year's festival in the outer part of the city.
*Slide: At the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. German archaeologists dug up a large number of fragments of the city wall, using which they were able to completely restore the historical appearance of the Ishtar Gate, which was reconstructed (in full size) and is now exhibited in the State Museums of Berlin. The gate was double, connecting both defensive walls of the inner city and reaching a height of 23 m. The entire structure is covered with glazed bricks with relief images of the sacred animals of the god Marduk - the bull and the fantastic creature sirrush (Babylonian dragon). This last character (also called the Babylonian dragon) combines the characteristics of four representatives of the fauna: an eagle, a snake, an unidentified quadruped and a scorpion. Thanks to the delicate and sophisticated color scheme (yellow figures on a blue background), the monument looked light and festive. Strictly maintained intervals between animals tuned the viewer to the rhythm of the solemn procession.
They were rebuilt three times under Nebuchadnezzar II, and only during the last rebuilding were they decorated with images of these animals. During this period, the bricks were covered with glaze. The animals were colored yellow and white, while the background was bright blue. In addition, the gates were guarded by powerful colossi in the form of bulls and dragons.
From the gates of Ishtar began Sacred road reserved for festive processions. It was believed that the god Marduk himself walked along this path. The procession road was paved with large slabs. Reaching a width of 16 m, the Processional Road for 200 meters was surrounded by walls of glazed brick, from which 120 lions depicted on a blue background looked down at the procession participants.
The road led to the sanctuary of Marduk - Esagile, majestic temple complex, in the center of which rose a colossal 90-meter ziggurat of Etemenanki(the cornerstone of earth and heaven), famous Tower of Babel, consisting of seven terraces painted in different colors. At the top stood the temple of Marduk, lined with blue bricks.
Etemenanki was shrine and pride of the state And embodied the daring thoughts of people striving to get closer to heaven. It is with him that the biblical legend of the Babylonian pandemonium. It tells how God, having seen the city and the tower that the sons of men were building, realized that people speaking the same language and doing something together would not have any obstacles. Angry, he descended to earth and confused languages, so that people ceased to understand each other and were scattered throughout the entire earth. Even the ruins of Etemenanka, destroyed in the 4th century. BC e. troops of the Persian king Xerxes, shocked Alexander the Great with their greatness.
The glory of Babylon was composed and colorful palace of Nebuchadnezzar II with the famous "Hanging Gardens". Even in ancient times, the gardens were called the miracle of the world. They were artificial terraces made of mud bricks of various sizes and resting on stone ledges. They contained land with various exotic trees. The Hanging Gardens were a feature of the palace of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562 BC). It is a pity that they have not survived to this day. spread out on vaulted terraces connected to a system of wells and drains.
The Babylonians were a trading people: they sailed not only along their rivers - the Tigris and Euphrates - but also crossed the Persian Gulf, delivered lapis lazuli, fabrics, food from India, and traded with Asia Minor, Persia, and Syria. Thousands of tablets with promissory notes and various invoices and contractual documents (for example, for the charter of ships) have been preserved.
One of the greatest achievements of Babylonian and Assyrian culture was creation of libraries and archives.
Even in the ancient cities of Sumer - Ur and Nippur, for many centuries, scribes (the first educated people and the first officials) collected literary, religious, scientific texts and created repositories, private libraries. One of the largest libraries of that period - library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal(669 - ca. 633 BC), containing about 25 thousand clay tablets recording the most important historical events, laws, literary and scientific texts. It was really a library: the books were placed in a certain order, the pages were numbered. There were even unique index cards that outlined the contents of the book, indicating the series and number of tablets of each series of texts.
Babylonian scientists and priests knew astronomy, made maps of the starry sky, observed the movement of the planets, and were able to predict solar and lunar eclipses.
In 539 BC. e. Babylon fell under the onslaught of the Persians. The biblical prophet Daniel talks about how King Belshazzar (son of Nebuchadnezzar II) feasted in a palace drowning in wealth and luxury, and at that time the archers of King Cyrus managed to divert the waters of the Euphrates, walk along the shallow bed into the city and break into the palace. As the prophet narrates, in the large royal palace, the words inscribed by a mysterious hand suddenly appeared on the inner wall: “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Uparsin.” Soon it was all over. The palace was captured by Cyrus's troops. His governors were appointed to govern Mesopotamia. Although the Persians did not destroy Babylon, but turned it into their capital, part of the city's population was killed and the rest were dispersed. Persian rule lasted almost 200 years.
In 321 BC. e. Alexander the Great defeated the Persian troops. He set the goal of giving Babylon a new brilliant life, but due to his sudden death, this plan remained unfulfilled. The city fell into decay and the inhabitants left it.
The surviving ruins of the majestic Babylon still remind us of that civilization in the center of Mesopotamia, which over the course of three millennia created cultural values that formed the basis of many subsequent civilizations. It was there that a school appeared for the first time in history, the first calendar in human history was compiled, and the first written language was created. Many sciences arose - astronomy, algebra, medicine. A majestic epic appeared. The first legend of the resurrection from the dead was born. The first love song was composed, the first fables were written. The first system of legality was developed in Mesopotamia. In a word, the spiritual life of humanity began here.
