"The Sumerians were surprisingly advanced. They used the potter's wheel for making pottery and the plow for preparing fields. They were expert metal workers and used riveting, soldering, engraving, and inlaying. They used true arches, vaults, and domes. Most importantly, they invented the art of writing."
"Ancient Sumer was not an inviting place at all. Just as today the land between 'the two rivers' was arid and dry, with little vegetation. But the soil was rich, having been deposited over many millennium by the rivers, and the spring flooding, coupled with irrigation during the rest of the year, provided the agricultural surplus needed for the rise of true civilization."
"The fields of Sumer, over the long centuries, became less and less productive as salts leached from the soil under irrigation. The Sumerians were among the first to reap the rewards of agriculture but also the first to suffer man-caused environmental destruction."
"'Eve' in Hebrew means 'to make live'. In a Sumerian legend, Enki's body begins to fail, and a fox persuades Ninhursag to heal Enki. The healing being that she created to heal Enki's rib was called 'Ninti'. This means both 'The lady of the rib' and 'the lady who makes live' in Sumerian -- it was a play on words. This 'play on words' does not work in Hebrew, but some historians speculate that 'Ninti' did enter the 'Garden of Eden' story as 'Eve' along with 'the rib' ."
"A Sumerian Proverb: 'You can have a lord, you can have a king, but the man to fear is the tax collector!'"
"A Sumerian Proverb: 'For his pleasure: marriage. On his thinking it over: divorce.'"
"Woolley found an 8 foot deep layer of mud in his diggings at Ur. Sure it was evidence of Noah's flood he wrote: 'It was not a universal deluge. It was a vast flood in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates which drowned the whole habitable land between the mountains and the deserts; for the people who lived there, that was all the world.' But now most archaeologists agree that Noah lived in Shurrupak almost 70 miles north."
"A unique Sumerian invention that later spread outside to Egypt, Syria, Cappadocia, Anatolia, Cyprus, and Greece, was the cylinder seal. These were cylindrical seals which, when rolled over clay, left distinctive, personal, and beautiful impressions that asserted ownership or acted as a person's signature does today. These cylinder seals usually had holes through them so a person could wear the seal about the neck. If a cylinder seal was lost, the person losing it had to announce publicly that it was missing to prevent another from misusing it."
"The Sumerians were great builders who had very few natural resources to build with. They therefore built with the only thing available -- sun-baked clay. Sun-baked clay, however, is not very durable. To increase a building's durability, the Sumerians would efface its structure with brightly painted hard baked clay cones -- the painted face of the cone to the outside, and the elements, the pointed end of the cone imbedded deep in the column or wall. Sumerian cities thus were probably extremely beautiful with their thousands of cones forming mosaics on buildings and walls."
"The game board that our game's board is based on came from the tomb of an unknown king -- the husband of queen Puabi. When Woolley opened our kings tomb it had been ransacked and he found only our gaming board and a silver boat. How it had been ransacked was obvious. While digging the shaft for the queen's tomb the ancient burial workers had come upon the roof of the king's tomb and were unable to resist the temptation to burrow in and steal everything. Then they covered the resulting hole in queen Puabi's death pit with one of her wooden clothes chests."
"From a Sumerian drinking song: 'Drinking beer, in a blissful mood, with joy in the heart and a happy liver'. Beer was an important part of the Sumerian economy and beer brewers were under divine protection. Some archaeologists have speculated that wheat and barley were first grown not for food, but for beer."
"Woolley found gold fragments by a hole running down into the ground in his diggings at Ur. In a stroke of genius, he took plaster and poured it down the hole until it was full and left it to harden. Then excavating carefully, he dug out the plaster which had set in the mold-like hole. What he found was the perfect shape of an ancient harp whose wood had long rotted away, leaving only some gold leaf fragments.'"
"Sargon's empire was enormous. An inscription reads: 'He made the ships from Meluhha, the ships from Magan, the ships from Dilmun tie up alongside the quay of Agade.' Meluhha most likely refers to India, Magan probably refers to Oman, and Dilmun is the island of Bahrain. His army visited Crete, Turkey, and a country only known as the 'Tin Country'."
"A Sumerian proverb: 'Making loans is as easy as making love, but repaying them is as hard as bearing a child.'"
"A Sumerian proverb: 'Go up to the ancient ruin heaps and walk around; look at the skulls of the lowly and great. Which belongs to someone who did evil and which to someone who did good?'"
"A Sumerian proverb: 'Who has not supported a wife or child, his nose has not borne a leash.'"
"The ancient Sumerians would impress the hem of their garments on a clay tablet as proof of their commitment to a legal transaction. Modern Jews still do this pressing of the fringe of the prayer shawl on the scroll of the Torah during a reading."
"The ziggurat is a stepped pyramid with a small shrine at its summit. But unlike an Egyptian pyramid, which served as a burial place and had a labyrinth of passages, a ziggurat is more like 'a ladder' that connected earth and heaven. At their highest, these structures reached 290 feet and may have had as many as 7 stages or steps. The base of a ziggurat could be rectangular, square, or even oval shaped and was typically hundreds of feet on a side. The most famous ziggurat is Etemenanki at Babylon which some scholars have identified with the Biblical 'Tower of Babel'."
"A poignant section of the epic of Gilgamesh in which an innkeeper exhorts him to give up his search for eternal life: 'Gilgamesh, whither are you wandering? Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let Death be his share, and withheld life in their own hands. Gilgamesh, fill your belly -- Day and night make merry, Let days be full of joy. Dance and make music day and night, And wear fresh clothes. And wash your head and bathe. Look at the child that is holding your hand, And let your wife delight in your embrace. These things alone are the concern of man.'"
"A Sumerian proverb: 'Who possesses much silver may be happy; who possesses much barley may be glad; but he who has nothing at all may sleep.'"
"A Sumerian proverb: 'He who builds like a lord, lives like a slave; Who builds like a slave, lives like a lord.'"
"A Sumerian saying: 'A wife is a man's future; a son is a man's refuge; the daughter is a man's salvation; the daughter-in-law is a man's devil.'"
"The staple diet of Sumerians was grain. Wheat sometimes, but mostly barley, which seemed to grow better in the alkaline soil. Barley was cooked into a kind of porridge or made into flour from which unleavened bread was baked. Fully 40% of the barley crop of Sumer went into beer production. (this was really an 'ale' rather than beer). The goddess Ninkasi (which means 'the lady who fills the mouth') presided over beer production. Ordinary temple workers received a ration of two pints a day and officials received 10 pints per day. Basically, the Sumerians were addicted to beer."
"Some linguists think that the Sumerians were probably descended from even more ancient nomadic shepherds. Why? Because the Sumerian language has over 200 words describing different kinds of sheep."
"The date of the date palm was an important food for the ancient Sumerians. The date palm grew wild near the rivers and canals and when cultivated and carefully tended, could yield over 100 pounds of fruit per tree per year. The dates were eaten fresh, or dried and stored. They could be pressed into a thick syrup which was used as a sweetener. The stones of the dates were even used to provide fodder for cattle or burned to make charcoal."
"The average Sumerian life span was not more than 40 years."
"The common Sumerian lived in a one-story mud brick house that was made up of several rooms surrounding a central court. The rich Sumerian lived in a two-story house with about a dozen rooms, built of the same baked mud brick, but plastered and whitewashed inside and out. The first floor would have had a reception area, a kitchen, a bathroom. a servants quarters, and perhaps even a chapel."
"Samuel Noah Kramer, the Sumerologist, writes: 'And so Sumer came to a cruel, tragic end, as one melancholy Sumerian bard laments: Law and order ceased to exist; cities, houses, stalls, and sheepfolds were destroyed; rivers and canals flowed with bitter waters; fields and steppes grew nothing but weeds and 'wailing plants'. The mother cared not for her children, nor the father for his spouse, the nursemaids chanted no lullabies at the crib. No one trod the highways and the roads; the cities were ravaged, and their people were killed by mace or died of famine. Finally, over the land fell a calamity 'indescribable and unknown to man.'"
"The Sumerian (and later the Babylonian) system of weights was based on the 'mina' -- a weight of just under two pounds. 60 of these mina made a larger measure called a 'talent', while a mina could be divided up into smaller measures called a 'shekel'. Their were 60 shekels to a mina."
"A Sumerian proverb that is the exact counterpart to 'don't count your chickens before they hatch' : 'He did not yet catch the fox, Yet he is making a neck-stock for it.''"
"A Sumerian saying equivalent to 'out of the pan and into the fire' : 'Upon my escaping from the wild-ox, The wild cow confronted me.'"
"From the Seven Hymns to Inanna: 'You flash like lightning over the highlands; you throw your firebrands across the earth. Your deafening command, whistling like the South Wind, splits apart great mountains . . . Holy Priestess, who can soothe your troubled heart?'"
"There is, believe it or not, a Sumerian tradition of the Tower of Babel (without the tower). It reads as follows: 'In those days, the land of Shubur-Hamazi, Sumer of clashing tongues, the great land of me of princeship, Uri the land having all that is appropriate, the land of Martu, resting in security, the whole universe, the people well-cared for, to Enlil in one tongue gave speech. But then . . . Enki, the lord of abundance, whose commands are trustworthy, The lord of wisdom who scans the land, The leader of the gods, The lord of Eridu, endowed with wisdom, Changed the speech in their mouths, put contention into it, Into the speech of man that had been one.'"
"A Sumerian Lullaby: 'Come Sleep, Come Sleep, Come to where my son is, Hurry Sleep to where my son is, Put to sleep his restless eyes, Put your hand on his painted eyes, And as for his babbling tongue, Let not the babbling tongue shut out his sleep.'"
"A Sumerian school-boy records his schedule: 'Here is the monthly record of my attendance at school: My vacation days each month are three, My recurrent monthly holidays are three, That leaves twenty-four days each month that I must stay in school -- and long days they are.'"
"The Sumerians used a loaf-shaped mud brick for construction arranged in a characteristic herringbone pattern -- alternating rows of horizontal bricks and bricks set at an angle. Why they would have used loaf-shaped bricks instead rectangular one with straight sides is somewhat a mystery."
"As archaeologists excavated at Eridu they uncovered nearly 1000 graves, some dating back to as early as 6000 BC In several cases the graves had been re-opened to accommodate the burial of a spouse. Pottery, cups, dishes, personal belongings, and food were placed in the grave to accompany the deceased to the afterlife. Sometimes the bones of a man even had the bones of his dog laid across his chest with a meatbone near its mouth. One little boy lay alone with the skeleton of his dog, which had been provided a bone for a snack."
"In our prolog, Arphaxad's fear of lions is no imaginary worry. The threat of lions in the marshes of Mesopotamia was very real. Around 1000 BC an Assyrian ruler claimed to have personally killed 1,000 over the years in various hunts. As late as 700 BC the Assyrian monarch Assurbanipal wrote: 'The young of the lions thrived in countless numbers . . . They grew ferocious through their devouring of herds, flocks, and people . . .' In another passage: 'On the plain savage lions, fierce creatures of the mountains, rose against me.'"
