Sumerian Culture… continued from last week
November 30th, 2008 by admin
Sumerian villages were built on mounds with houses clustered together on narrow lanes. Some houses were two to three stories high and the Sumerians had learnt very early how to make bricks and dry them in the sun or a kiln. The cities were protected by a wall all around it and the poor people’s settlements were outside these walls with houses made of reeds plastered in clay. Like every other ancient society, the Sumerian culture was centered on gods. The cities were built around the shrine of a local god. Any city’s wealth was reflected in the elaborate structures of its temples. Ramps and staircases led to the temples which stood on raised platforms. Temples were not only religious shrines but the entire Sumerian culture and its people depended on them for daily life. The temple complex had quarters for the priest, officials, accountants, singers and musicians. It also served as a treasure house for the city and a storehouse for grains, tools and weapons. Workshops for professions which were the mainstream of Sumerian culture were in the temple complex as well. These included bakers, pottery makers, jewelers, leatherworkers and spinners and weavers. Sheep and goat meant for sacrifice to the temple gods were also kept within the complex.
Sheep, goat, oxen, donkeys and dogs had been domesticated though horses and camels were still unknown. The Sumerian culture has been responsible for several inventions as they progressed as a race. The plow for agriculture, the wheel for trading carts, sail boats for moving bulky goods up the river and above all writing was invented to make easier the job of remembering details of trade.
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Sumerian Culture
November 20th, 2008 by admin
Sumerians were people who inhabited southern Mesopotamia from around 3500 BC to 1800 BC. They had formed twelve city states, the most famous being Ur and Sumer. A common language called Sumerian was followed throughout these cities. Though there are no modern day descendants of Sumerians, Sumerian culture lives on mainly due to their inventions. No other ancient culture has contributed so much to today’s world as the Sumerian culture. We know so much about the Sumerian culture due to tone of their inventions too – writing.
The Sumerians formed the first human settlement bringing to an end the nomadic ways of ancient man. They were an agricultural culture and raised crops in three areas. Inside the cities they kept highly cultivated gardens, while the cultivation of crops and other food sources came from agricultural fields outside the city. The third region was away from water resources mainly for grazing of the domesticated animals, hunting and for collection of fuel. The salty and stagnant water from the canals were used for growing the highly nutritious date-palms. In order for agriculture, the Sumerians needed irrigation. This paved way to the development of canals and embankments to control flood waters from the Euphrates River. Large scale cooperation was needed to keep the irrigational canal building continuing, repairing them and finally to address concerns and allot water shares. This gave rise to monarchy, government and laws. The Sumerian culture continuously invented and reinvented to perfection.
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Sumerian Art and its Influences
November 10th, 2008 by admin
Mother goddesses were worshipped in the hope of bringing fertility to women and crops. These were the next tallest statues. Smaller than these were the priests and the smallest were the worshippers. All statues have their heads uplifted and hands clasped with cylindrical bodies devoid of any gender differentiation. The clasped hands is the pose of supplication or portraying ‘wanting or waiting for something’. In Sumerian art the entire body of the statues is simple except the faces. This reinforces the power of the face with dominating eyes. The vast eyes would be inlaid with colored stones or enamel making them stand out.
These figures were stand ins used during religious rituals. The rituals involved leaving the stand-ins at the temple when a person died. These large eyed statues seemed to speak as they stared open eyed offering supplication to the gods on behalf of whoever donated them to the temples.
Another piece of Sumerian art was the standard or the banners which was a part of the state. The figures on these banners pretty much summed up the Sumerian life in its entirety. One side of the banner had soldiers leading prisoners to the king, while the other side had a king holding a banquet and commoners bringing him gifts of livestock and farm produce and manufactured goods. This Sumerian art piece is 18 inches decorated with shell and lapis lazuli. The mosaic was designed in bitumen.
Sumerian merchants led their barley and textile filled caravans into Asia Minor and Iran returning with timber, stone and metals. Soon, these were used in making weapons and Sumerian art as well. The Sumerian art forms reflect on the culture and lifestyle of the ancient Sumerians.
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Sumerians and Art
November 3rd, 2008 by admin
More than 4000 years ago the Sumerians settled in the valleys of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. The Sumerians were the first human race to form a settlement and brought to an end the nomadic existence of humans till then. With settlement and forming of cities, the Sumerian inventions changed the way all of us live today. Things that we take for granted today like farming, calendar, wheels were all Sumerian inventions. Writing was discovered and the Sumerian art and culture was sophistication in itself. The Sumerian art can be easily separated into ritual objects, state objects and personal objects.
Dating from 2400 BC, archaeologists have found smooth, perfected and idealized features of the classical period in Sumerian art. Some of the portraits are in marble and others in black-grey diorite. Excavations have unearthed great skill and artistry in Sumerian art. Sumerian art was complex and ornate with clay being the most abundantly used material. Stone, wood and metal had to be imported into Sumer. Painting and sculpture was the main median used and art was primarily used for religious purposes.
Sumerian art had Three-dimensional statuettes made of marble with an obvious hierarchy of size. The tallest statues were of the vegetation God almost about 30 inches in height. A number of statutes and sculptures were religious and depicted the mother goddess.
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Sumerian Food… continued from last week
October 27th, 2008 by admin
Information about Sumerian food can be gathered from archaeology and written records on cuneiform tablets. These sources also indicated the importance of barley and wheat cakes as the staple diet together with grain and legume soups, onion, leeks, garlic and chate melon. Besides farmed vegetables, Sumerian food also included fruits. These were apples, fig and grapes. Several culinary herbs and honey and cheese, butter and vegetable oil have also been mentioned in later Sumerian food records. Sumerians drank beer often and sometimes wine too. Preservation of food stuff had also been evolved with meats being salted and fruits conserved in honey. Various other fruits including apples were dried to preserve them and a fermented cause is also mentioned in the Akkadian texts.
Rice and corn was unknown in ancient Mesopotamia, thus barley and its flour was the staple Sumerian food. Their bread was coarse, flat and unleavened, though an expensive version was made out of finer flour. Pieces of this bread were found in the tomb of Queen Puabi of Ur, left there for sustenance in afterlife. Breads were enhanced with butter, milk and cheese, sesame seeds and even fruits and their juices. Later records show truffles being made as well. With the advent of irrigation canals lush fruit and vegetable farms with fruits like mulberries, pears, plum, cherries and pomegranates were found in abundance. The most important food crop in southern Mesopotamia was the date-palm. Goats, cows and ewe were domesticated for milk, geese and ducks for eggs and some 50 varieties of fish were a staple Sumerian food. Meats were cooked by roasting, boiling, barbecuing or broiling and preserved by drying, smoking or salting.
Tags: akkadian texts, ancient mesopotamia, barley, culinary herbs, cuneiform tablets, fareast, flour, food records, food stuff, grapes, legume, melon, mso, orphan, paper source, staple diet, style definitions, style name, sumerian clothing, times new roman, vegetable oil
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Sumerian Food
October 20th, 2008 by admin
Sumerians were the first culture to quit hunting and gathering food and begin cultivation. Like many other inventions that Sumerian culture gave to the world, they also contributed in farming and food. Sumerian food consisted mainly of barley.
The raw material of most of Sumerian food was barley; barley cakes and barley paste were accompaniments of all major meals. Wheat and millet were other raw materials used in Sumerian food. Farming yielded vegetables and fruits, chick peas, lentils, beans, onion, garlic, leeks, cucumbers, cress, mustard and fresh green lettuce were all part of the early Sumerian food. Sumerians were the first culture to settle down and leave the earlier nomad lifestyle. With settlement they began domesticating animals for food and labor. Goat’s milk and meat, eggs, pig, wild fowl, deer and venison were an integral part of the Sumerian’s food as well.
Everyday Sumerian food was probably barley cakes with onions and beans washed down with barley ale. Fish that swarmed in the rivers of Mesopotamia were a major food source too. Over fifty different types of fish are mentioned in the early texts dating before 2300 BC and the fried fish vendors had a thriving trade in the city of Ur. Food stalls also sold onions, cucumbers, freshly grilled goat, mutton and pork. Meat was more popular and common in big cities as compared to sparsely populated towns as they would spoil in the heat. Cattle were only slaughtered for consumption when they were nearly at the end of their working lives.
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Sumerian Invention: Monarchy
October 13th, 2008 by admin
The world’s first system of monarchy is also a Sumerian invention. The early Sumerian states needed a new form of government to govern larger areas and diverse people. The states of Sumer were ruled by a priest-king whose duties included leading the military, trade, judging disputes and taking part in vital religious ceremonies.
Under the priest-king were several priests who surveyed land, assigned fields and distributed the harvest. The new system of rule followed the e concepts of kinship and responsibility. The monarch was considered divine and worshipped. With a large part of the Sumerian civilization now not merely raising crop, a middle management or the bureaucrat acted as the distribution mechanism. Book keeping and writing were already an established Sumerian invention and this aided bureaucracy well.
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Sumerian Invention: Astronomy
October 6th, 2008 by admin
The Sumerian inventions’ unending list also comprises the invention of the calendar. The ancient Sumer had to yield crops much in excess of what he could consume in lack of calculations. The book keeping was also in lack of an efficient system of calculating long time periods.
Based on the cycle of the moon, the Sumerians invented the calendar which was divided into twelve months. Since a year consisting of twelve lunar months was shorter than a solar year, the Sumerians also added a ‘leap year’ every three years to catch up with the sun. Gradually, the Sumerians had developed a keen sense in abstract mathematics and astronomy.
Tags: ancient sumer, crops, div, efficient system, family auto, fareast, font definitions, footer, invention, lt, mso, orphan, paper source, pitch, signature, style definitions, style name, sumerian clothing, sumerian s, time periods, times new roman
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Sumerians: The Beginning of Inventions… continued from last week.
September 29th, 2008 by admin
Developing a writing system is perhaps the most significant of Sumerian inventions. It helped the Sumerians to communicate, contribute to literature and in book keeping. Cuneiform was the first form of writing developed by the Sumerians around 3200 BC. Clay tablets were used as paper and a stylus like implement was used to draw wedge – shaped characters. These clay tablets were then baked for preservation. For several decades after that Cuneiform was the method of written communication despite the fact that there were almost 500 characters to master in order to be able to communicate effectively.
The oldest known literary work, The Epic of Gilgamesh, is a collection of stories about a Sumerian hero which was the foundation for poetry and prose writing development. The Odyssey and the Iliad among others were based on this collection.
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Sumerians: The Beginning of Inventions
September 22nd, 2008 by admin
Our lives and world as it is today owes a lot to the ancient Sumerian people. They were perhaps the innovators of most of the things we take for granted today. The Sumerians were the first to begin a human settlement of any kind and soon they began innovating and improvising in their day to day lives. Sumerian inventions forever changed the course of civilization.
Sumerian inventions contributed in written and oral communication, trade, travel, commerce, clothing, science and literature among a horde of other discoveries. Almost everything that we have always had can be traced back to the Sumerian culture. Some of the most influential of the Sumerian inventions are discussed here.
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