ziggurat whose ruins still dominate the landscape. At Eshnunna and Adab the archaeologists found temples and artful statues from pre-Sargonic times. Umma produced inscriptions speaking of early empires. At Kish monumental buildings and a ziggurat from at least 3000 B.C. were unearthed.
Uruk (Erech) took the archaeologists back into the fourth millennium B.C. There they found the first colored pottery baked in a kiln, and evidence of the first use of a potter's wheel. A pavement of limestone blocks is the oldest stone construction found to date. At Uruk the archaeologists also found the first ziggurat—a vast man-made mound, on top of which stood a white temple and a red temple. The world's first inscribed texts were also found there, as well as the first cylinder seals. Of the latter, Jack Finegan
(Light from the Ancient Past)
said, "The excellence of the seals upon their first appearance in the Uruk period is amazing." Other sites of the Uruk period bear evidence of the emergence of the Metal Age.
In 1919, H. R. Hall came upon ancient ruins at a village now called El-Ubaid. The site gave its name to what scholars now consider the first phase of the great Sumerian civilization. Sumerian cities of that period—ranging from northern Mesopotamia to the southern Zagros foothills-produced the first use of clay bricks, plastered walls, mosaic decorations, cemeteries with brick-lined graves, painted and decorated ceramic wares with geometric designs, copper mirrors, beads of imported turquoise, paint for eyelids, copper-headed "tomahawks," cloth, houses, and, above all, monumental temple buildings.
Farther south, the archaeologists found Eridu-the first Sumerian city, according to ancient texts. As the excavators dug deeper, they came upon a temple dedicated to Enki, Sumer's God of Knowledge, which appeared to have been built and rebuilt many times over. The strata clearly led the scholars back to the beginnings of Sumerian civilization: 2500 B.C. , 2800 B.C. , 3000 B.C. , 3500 B.C.
Then the spades came upon the foundations of the first temple dedicated to Enki. Below that, there was virgin soil-nothing had been built before. The time was circa 3800 B.C. That is when civilization began.
It was not only the first civilization in the true sense of the term. It was a most extensive civilization, all-encompassing, in many ways more advanced than the other ancient cultures that had followed it. It was undoubtedly the civilization on which our own is based.
Having begun to use stones as tools some 2,000,000 years earlier, Man achieved this unprecedented civilization in Sumer circa 3800 B.C. And the perplexing fact about this is that to this very day the scholars have no inkling who the Sumerians were, where they came from, and how and why their civilization appeared.
For its appearance was sudden, unexpected, and out of nowhere.
H. Frankfort
(Tell Uqair)
called it "astonishing." Pierre Amiet
(Elam)
termed it "extraordinary." A. Parrot
(Sumer)
described it as "a flame which blazed up so suddenly." Leo Oppenheim
(Ancient Mesopotamia)
stressed "the astonishingly short period" within which this civilization had arisen. Joseph Campbell
(The Masks of God)
summed it up in this way: "With stunning abruptness ... there appears in this little Sumerian mud garden ... the whole cultural syndrome that has since constituted the germinal unit of all the high civilizations of the world."
3
•
GODS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
What was it that after hundreds of thousands and even millions of years of painfully slow human development abruptly changed every thing so completely, and in a one-two-three punch—circa 11,000–7400–3800 B.C. —transformed primitive nomadic hunters and food gatherers into farmers and pottery makers, and then into builders of cities, engineers, mathematicians, astronomers, metallurgists, merchants, musicians, judges, doctors, authors, librarians, priests? One can
Uruk (Erech) took the archaeologists back into the fourth millennium B.C. There they found the first colored pottery baked in a kiln, and evidence of the first use of a potter's wheel. A pavement of limestone blocks is the oldest stone construction found to date. At Uruk the archaeologists also found the first ziggurat—a vast man-made mound, on top of which stood a white temple and a red temple. The world's first inscribed texts were also found there, as well as the first cylinder seals. Of the latter, Jack Finegan
(Light from the Ancient Past)
said, "The excellence of the seals upon their first appearance in the Uruk period is amazing." Other sites of the Uruk period bear evidence of the emergence of the Metal Age.
In 1919, H. R. Hall came upon ancient ruins at a village now called El-Ubaid. The site gave its name to what scholars now consider the first phase of the great Sumerian civilization. Sumerian cities of that period—ranging from northern Mesopotamia to the southern Zagros foothills-produced the first use of clay bricks, plastered walls, mosaic decorations, cemeteries with brick-lined graves, painted and decorated ceramic wares with geometric designs, copper mirrors, beads of imported turquoise, paint for eyelids, copper-headed "tomahawks," cloth, houses, and, above all, monumental temple buildings.
Farther south, the archaeologists found Eridu-the first Sumerian city, according to ancient texts. As the excavators dug deeper, they came upon a temple dedicated to Enki, Sumer's God of Knowledge, which appeared to have been built and rebuilt many times over. The strata clearly led the scholars back to the beginnings of Sumerian civilization: 2500 B.C. , 2800 B.C. , 3000 B.C. , 3500 B.C.
Then the spades came upon the foundations of the first temple dedicated to Enki. Below that, there was virgin soil-nothing had been built before. The time was circa 3800 B.C. That is when civilization began.
It was not only the first civilization in the true sense of the term. It was a most extensive civilization, all-encompassing, in many ways more advanced than the other ancient cultures that had followed it. It was undoubtedly the civilization on which our own is based.
Having begun to use stones as tools some 2,000,000 years earlier, Man achieved this unprecedented civilization in Sumer circa 3800 B.C. And the perplexing fact about this is that to this very day the scholars have no inkling who the Sumerians were, where they came from, and how and why their civilization appeared.
For its appearance was sudden, unexpected, and out of nowhere.
H. Frankfort
(Tell Uqair)
called it "astonishing." Pierre Amiet
(Elam)
termed it "extraordinary." A. Parrot
(Sumer)
described it as "a flame which blazed up so suddenly." Leo Oppenheim
(Ancient Mesopotamia)
stressed "the astonishingly short period" within which this civilization had arisen. Joseph Campbell
(The Masks of God)
summed it up in this way: "With stunning abruptness ... there appears in this little Sumerian mud garden ... the whole cultural syndrome that has since constituted the germinal unit of all the high civilizations of the world."
3
•
GODS OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
What was it that after hundreds of thousands and even millions of years of painfully slow human development abruptly changed every thing so completely, and in a one-two-three punch—circa 11,000–7400–3800 B.C. —transformed primitive nomadic hunters and food gatherers into farmers and pottery makers, and then into builders of cities, engineers, mathematicians, astronomers, metallurgists, merchants, musicians, judges, doctors, authors, librarians, priests? One can
Similar Books
