5-2 Notes: Sumer

Ancient Sumer• (3000 B.C.E.) Large

surpluses of crops in southern Mesopotamia allowed large amounts of skilled workers to live in cities of southern Mesopotamia

• Although fighting took place between rival cities, they shared a common religion, agricultural system, and some of the world’s earliest advancements such as the wheel, sailboats, and writing

Cuneiform• Sumer is credited with

inventing cuneiform, the world’s first writing system

• System used at first to record farm surpluses with sharp reeds into soft clay tablets

• Earliest tablets (3500 B.C.E.) featured symbols that looked like what they described; gradually these symbols became simpler, forming a language of over 500 signs

• Cuneiform was difficult to read and write, so schools were set up to teach it

• After years of studying, graduates became scribes (writers) whose job was to record information (letters, stories, laws, songs

City-States• Life in Sumer was

dominated by city-states, or self-governing cities that also controlled surrounding villages

• Rival city-states often went to war with each other over resources (normally control of water)

• Cities were walled; gates were important access points and markets in the city

• Palace was the center of city life; Kings served as generals, judges, engineers

Religion in Ancient Sumer• In the center of Sumerian

cities stood the ziggurat, a large mud-brick building with a temple on top

• Ziggurats employed thousands of people as weavers, barbers, musicians, craft-workers, bakers, scribes and more

• Sumerian religion was polytheistic, meaning that they worshipped many gods that represented love, war, water, and other things

• Sumerians believed that gods were responsible for the well being of their families and cities

Sargon of Akkad• Sargon, from the city-state

Kish, united the city-states of Sumer under one government around 2300 B.C.E.

• Sargon founded a new city, Akkad, to be the capital of what is considered to be the world’s first empire

• Sargon expanded north and west into Mesopotamia until his kingdom stretched over 900 miles

• Sargon used cuneiform to communicate and unite his empire