The Obituary
In the marshy plains between the Tigris and Euphrates, Sumer built the first cities, the first writing, the first law codes, and the first epic literature, including the Epic of Gilgamesh. Its city-states such as Uruk, Ur, and Lagash competed and traded for millennia. Sumer was repeatedly conquered by Akkadian-speaking neighbors, and after the fall of the Third Dynasty of Ur, Semitic languages displaced Sumerian in daily life. By around 1750 BCE Sumerian survived only as a written and liturgical tongue, its people merged into Babylonia.
Worth remembering
- Sumerians invented cuneiform, the earliest known writing system, around 3200 BCE.
- Their city of Uruk may have been the largest settlement in the world, with tens of thousands of people.
Sources
- Sumer was the earliest known civilization in southern Mesopotamia Wikipedia
- Sumerian declined as a spoken language by c. 1750 BCE, surviving liturgically Encyclopaedia Britannica
A graveyard tradition: leave a stone to show you came, and remembered.