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Akkadian language

Akkadian (𒀝𒅗𒁺𒌑(𒌝)) is an extinct East Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia (Akkad, Assyria, Isin, Larsa, Babylonia and perhaps Dilmun) from the third millennium BC until its gradual replacement in common use by Old Aramaic among Assyrians and Babylonians from the 8th century BC.

Akkadian, which is the earliest documented Semitic language, is named after the city of Akkad, a major centre of Mesopotamian civilization during the Akkadian Empire (c. 2334–2154 BC). It was written using the cuneiform script, originally used for Sumerian, but also used to write multiple languages in the region including Eblaite, Hurrian, Elamite, and Hittite. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian went beyond just the cuneiform script; owing to their close proximity, a lengthy span of contact and the prestige held by the former, Sumerian significantly impacted Akkadian phonology, vocabulary and syntax. This mutual influence of Akkadian and Sumerian has also led scholars to describe the languages as a Sprachbund.

Akkadian proper names are first attested in Sumerian texts in the mid-3rd millennium BC, and inscriptions ostensibly written in Sumerian but whose character order reveals that they were intended to be read in East Semitic (presumably early Akkadian) date back to as early as c. 2600 BC. From about the 25th century BC, texts fully written in Akkadian begin to appear. By the 10th century BC, two variant dialectic forms of the same language were in use in Assyria and Babylonia, known as Assyrian and Babylonian respectively. The bulk of preserved material is from this later period, corresponding to the Near Eastern Iron Age. In total, hundreds of thousands of texts and text fragments have been excavated, covering a vast textual tradition of religious and mythological narrative, legal texts, scientific works, personal correspondence, political, civil and military events, economic tracts and many other examples.

Centuries after the fall of the Akkadian Empire, Akkadian, in its Assyrian and Babylonian varieties, was the native language of the Mesopotamian empires (Old Assyrian Empire, Babylonia, Middle Assyrian Empire) throughout the later Bronze Age, and became the lingua franca of much of the Ancient Near East by the time of the Bronze Age collapse c. 1150 BC. However, its gradual decline began in the Iron Age, during the Neo-Assyrian Empire when in the mid-eighth century BC Tiglath-Pileser III introduced Imperial Aramaic as a lingua franca of the Assyrian empire. By the Hellenistic period, the language was largely confined to scholars and priests working in temples in Assyria and Babylonia. The last known Akkadian cuneiform document dates from the 1st century AD.

Mandaic spoken by Mandean Gnostics and the dialects spoken by the extant Assyrians (Suret) are three extant Neo-Aramaic languages that retain Akkadian vocabulary and grammatical features, as well as personal and family names. These are spoken by Assyrians and Mandeans mainly in northern Iraq, southeast Turkey, northeast Syria, northwest Iran, the southern Caucasus and by communities in the Assyrian diaspora.

Akkadian is a fusional language with grammatical case. Like all Semitic languages, Akkadian uses the system of consonantal roots. The Kültepe texts, which were written in Old Assyrian, include Hittite loanwords and names, which constitute the oldest record of any Indo-European language.

Classification
Akkadian belongs with the other Semitic languages in the Near Eastern branch of the Afroasiatic languages, a family native to Middle East, Arabian Peninsula, parts of Anatolia, parts of the Horn of Africa, North Africa, Malta, Canary Islands and parts of West Africa (Hausa). Akkadian is only ever attested in Mesopotamia and neighboring regions in the Near East.

Within the Near Eastern Semitic languages, Akkadian forms an East Semitic subgroup (with Eblaite and perhaps Dilmunite). This group differs from the Northwest Semitic languages and South Semitic languages in its subject–object–verb word order, while the other Semitic languages usually have either a verb–subject–object or subject–verb–object order.

Additionally Akkadian is the only Semitic language to use the prepositions ina and ana (locative case, English in/on/with, and dative-locative case, for/to, respectively). Other Semitic languages like Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic have the prepositions bi/bə and li/lə (locative and dative, respectively). The origin of the Akkadian spatial prepositions is unknown.

In contrast to most other Semitic languages, Akkadian has only one non-sibilant fricative: ḫ. Akkadian lost both the glottal and pharyngeal fricatives, which are characteristic of the other Semitic languages. Until the Old Babylonian period, the Akkadian sibilants were exclusively affricated.

Writing
[[Image:AkkadischLand.png|200px|thumb|[[Cuneiform]] writing (Neo-Assyrian script)

(1 = Logogram (LG) "mix"/syllabogram (SG) ,

2 = LG "moat",

3 = SG ,

4 = SG ,, , ,

5 = SG kam,

6 = SG im,

7 = SG bir)]] Old Akkadian is preserved on clay tablets dating back to c. 2500 BC. It was written using cuneiform, a script adopted from the Sumerians using wedge-shaped symbols pressed in wet clay. As employed by Akkadian scribes, the adapted cuneiform script could represent either (a) Sumerian logograms (i.e., picture-based characters representing entire words), (b) Sumerian syllables, (c) Akkadian syllables, or (d) phonetic complements. In Akkadian the script practically became a fully fledged syllabic script, and the original logographic nature of cuneiform became secondary, though logograms for frequent words such as 'god' and 'temple' continued to be used. For this reason, the sign AN can on the one hand be a logogram for the word ilum ('god') and on the other signify the god Anu or even the syllable -an-. Additionally, this sign was used as a determinative for divine names.

Another peculiarity of Akkadian cuneiform is that many signs do not have a well defined phonetic value. Certain signs, such as , do not distinguish between the different vowel qualities. Nor is there any coordination in the other direction; the syllable ', for example, is rendered by the sign ', but also by the sign . Both of these are often used for the same syllable in the same text.

Cuneiform was in many ways unsuited to Akkadian: among its flaws was its inability to represent important phonemes in Semitic, including a glottal stop, pharyngeals, and emphatic consonants. In addition, cuneiform was a syllabary writing system—i.e., a consonant plus vowel comprised one writing unit—frequently inappropriate for a Semitic language made up of triconsonantal roots (i.e., three consonants plus any vowels).

Development
Akkadian is divided into several varieties based on geography and historical period:
 * Old Akkadian, 2500–1950 BC
 * Old Babylonian and Old Assyrian, 1950–1530 BC
 * Middle Babylonian and Middle Assyrian, 1530–1000 BC
 * Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian, 1000–600 BC
 * Late Babylonian, 600 BC–100 AD

One of the earliest known Akkadian inscriptions was found on a bowl at Ur, addressed to the very early pre-Sargonic king Meskiagnunna of Ur (c. 2485–2450 BC) by his queen Gan-saman, who is thought to have been from Akkad. The Akkadian Empire, established by Sargon of Akkad, introduced the Akkadian language (the "language of Akkad") as a written language, adapting Sumerian cuneiform orthography for the purpose. During the Middle Bronze Age (Old Assyrian and Old Babylonian period), the language virtually displaced Sumerian, which is assumed to have been extinct as a living language by the 18th century BC.

Old Akkadian, which was used until the end of the 3rd millennium BC, differed from both Babylonian and Assyrian, and was displaced by these dialects. By the 21st century BC Babylonian and Assyrian, which were to become the primary dialects, were easily distinguishable. Old Babylonian, along with the closely related dialect Mariotic, is clearly more innovative than the Old Assyrian dialect and the more distantly related Eblaite language. For this reason, forms like lu-prus ('I will decide') were first encountered in Old Babylonian instead of the older la-prus.

While generally more archaic, Assyrian developed certain innovations as well, such as the "Assyrian vowel harmony". Eblaite was even more so, retaining a productive dual and a relative pronoun declined in case, number and gender. Both of these had already disappeared in Old Akkadian. Over 20,000 cuneiform tablets in Old Assyrian have been recovered from the Kültepe site in Anatolia. Most of the archaeological evidence is typical of Anatolia rather than of Assyria, but the use both of cuneiform and the dialect is the best indication of Assyrian presence.

Old Babylonian was the language of king Hammurabi and his code, which is one of the oldest collections of laws in the world. (see Code of Ur-Nammu.) Old Assyrian developed as well during the second millennium BC, but because it was a purely popular language — kings wrote in Babylonian — few long texts are preserved. It was, however, notably used in the correspondence of Assyrian traders in Anatolia in the 20th-18th centuries BC and that even led to its temporary adoption as a diplomatic language by various local Anatolian polities during that time.

The Middle Babylonian period started in the 16th century BC. The division is marked by the Kassite invasion of Babylonia around 1550 BC. The Kassites, who reigned for 300 years, gave up their own language in favor of Akkadian, but they had little influence on the language. At its apogee, Middle Babylonian was the written language of diplomacy of the entire Ancient Near East, including Egypt (Amarna Period). During this period, a large number of loan words were included in the language from Northwest Semitic languages and Hurrian. However, the use of these words was confined to the fringes of the Akkadian-speaking territory.

From 1500 BC onwards, the Assyrian language is termed Middle Assyrian. It was the language of the Middle Assyrian Empire. However, the Babylonian cultural influence was strong and the Assyrians wrote royal inscriptions, religious and most scholarly texts in Middle Babylonian, whereas Middle Assyrian was used mostly in letters and administrative documents.

During the first millennium BC, Akkadian progressively lost its status as a lingua franca. In the beginning, from around 1000 BC, Akkadian and Aramaic were of equal status, as can be seen in the number of copied texts: clay tablets were written in Akkadian, while scribes writing on papyrus and leather used Aramaic. From this period on, one speaks of Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian.

Neo-Assyrian received an upswing in popularity in the 10th century BC when the Assyrian kingdom became a major power with the Neo-Assyrian Empire. During the existence of that empire, however, Neo-Assyrian began to turn into a chancellery language, being marginalized by Old Aramaic. The dominance of the Neo-Assyrian Empire under Tiglath-Pileser III over Aram-Damascus in the middle of the 8th century led to the establishment of Aramaic as a lingua franca of the empire, rather than it being eclipsed by Akkadian. Texts written 'exclusively' in Neo-Assyrian disappear within 10 years of Nineveh's destruction in 612 BC. Under the Achaemenids, Aramaic continued to prosper, but Assyrian continued its decline. The language's final demise came about during the Hellenistic period when it was further marginalized by Koine Greek, even though Neo-Assyrian cuneiform remained in use in literary tradition well into Parthian times.

Similarly, the Persian conquest of the Mesopotamian kingdoms contributed to the decline of Babylonian, from that point on known as Late Babylonian, as a popular language. However, the language was still used in its written form. Even after the Greek invasion under Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC, Akkadian was still a contender as a written language, but spoken Akkadian was likely extinct by this time, or at least rarely used. The last positively identified Akkadian text comes from the 1st century AD. The latest known text in cuneiform Babylonian is an astronomical almanac dated to 79/80 AD. However, the latest cuneiform texts are almost entirely written in Sumerian logograms.

Decipherment

The Akkadian language began to be rediscovered when Carsten Niebuhr in 1767 was able to make extensive copies of cuneiform texts and published them in Denmark. The deciphering of the texts started immediately, and bilinguals, in particular Old Persian-Akkadian bilinguals, were of great help. Since the texts contained several royal names, isolated signs could be identified, and were presented in 1802 by Georg Friedrich Grotefend. By this time it was already evident that Akkadian was a Semitic language, and the final breakthrough in deciphering the language came from Edward Hincks, Henry Rawlinson and Jules Oppert in the middle of the 19th century.

In the early 21st century it was shown that automatic high-quality translation of Akkadian can be achieved using Natural Language Processing methods such as Convolutional neural networks.

Dialects
The following table summarises the dialects of Akkadian identified with certainty so far.

Some researchers (such as W. Sommerfeld 2003) believe that the Old Akkadian variant used in the older texts is not an ancestor of the later Assyrian and Babylonian dialects, but rather a separate dialect that was replaced by these two dialects and which died out early.

Eblaite, formerly thought of as yet another Akkadian dialect, is now generally considered a separate East Semitic language.

Phonetics and phonology
Because Akkadian as a spoken language is extinct and no contemporary descriptions of the pronunciation are known, little can be said with certainty about the phonetics and phonology of Akkadian. Some conclusions can be made, however, due to the relationship to the other Semitic languages and variant spellings of Akkadian words.

Consonants
The following table presents the consonants of the Akkadian language, as distinguished in Akkadian cuneiform. The reconstructed phonetic value of a phoneme is given in IPA transcription, alongside its standard (DMG-Umschrift) transliteration in angle brackets ⟨ ⟩.

Evidence from borrowings from and to Sumerian has been interpreted as indicating that the Akkadian voiceless non-emphatic stops were originally unaspirated, but became aspirated around 2000 BCE.

Reconstruction
Akkadian emphatic consonants are typically reconstructed as ejectives, which are thought to be the oldest realization of emphatics across the Semitic languages. One piece of evidence for this is that Akkadian shows a development known as Geers' law, where one of two emphatic consonants dissimilates to the corresponding non-emphatic consonant. For the sibilants, traditionally /š/ has been held to be postalveolar, and /s/, /z/, // analyzed as fricatives; but attested assimilations in Akkadian suggest otherwise. For example, when the possessive suffix -šu is added to the root awat ('word'), it is written awassu ('his word') even though šš would be expected.

The most straightforward interpretation of this shift from tš to ss, is that /s, ṣ/ form a pair of voiceless alveolar affricates, *š is a voiceless alveolar fricative , and *z is a voiced alveolar affricate or fricative. The assimilation is then [awat+su] >. In this vein, an alternative transcription of *š is *s̠, with the macron below indicating a soft (lenis) articulation in Semitic transcription. Other interpretations are possible. could have been assimilated to the preceding, yielding , which would later have been simplified to.

The phoneme /r/ has traditionally been interpreted as a trill but its pattern of alternation with // suggests it was a velar (or uvular) fricative. In the Hellenistic period, Akkadian /r/ was transcribed using the Greek ρ, indicating it was pronounced similarly as an alveolar trill (though Greeks may also have perceived a uvular trill as ρ).

Descent from Proto-Semitic
Several Proto-Semitic phonemes are lost in Akkadian. The Proto-Semitic glottal stop, as well as the fricatives , , are lost as consonants, either by sound change or orthographically, but they gave rise to the vowel quality e not exhibited in Proto-Semitic. The voiceless lateral fricatives merged with the sibilants as in Canaanite, leaving 19 consonantal phonemes. Old Akkadian preserved the /*ś/ phoneme longest but it eventually merged with /*š/, beginning in the Old Babylonian period. The following table shows Proto-Semitic phonemes and their correspondences among Akkadian, Modern Standard Arabic and Tiberian Hebrew:

Vowels
The existence of a back mid-vowel has been proposed, but the cuneiform writing gives no good proof for this. There is limited contrast between different u-signs in lexical texts, but this scribal differentiation may reflect the superimposition of the Sumerian phonological system (for which an /o/ phoneme has also been proposed), rather than a separate phoneme in Akkadian.

All consonants and vowels appear in long and short forms. Long consonants are transliterated as double consonants, and inconsistently written as such in cuneiform. Long vowels are transliterated with a macron (ā, ē, ī, ū) or a circumflex (â, ê, î, û), the latter being used for long vowels arising from the contraction of vowels in hiatus. The distinction between long and short is phonemic, and is used in the grammar; for example, iprusu ('that he decided') versus iprusū ('they decided').

Stress
There is broad agreement among most Assyriologists about Akkadian stress patterns. The rules of Akkadian stress were originally reconstructed by means of a comparison with other Semitic languages, and the resulting picture was gradually amended using internal linguistic evidence from Akkadian sources, especially deriving from so-called plene spellings (spellings with an extra vowel).

According to this widely accepted system, the place of stress in Akkadian is completely predictable and sensitive to syllable weight. There are three syllable weights: light (ending in -V); heavy (ending in -V̄ or -VC), and superheavy (ending in -V̂, -V̄C or -V̂C). If the last syllable is superheavy, it is stressed, otherwise the rightmost heavy non-final syllable is stressed. If a word contains only light syllables, the first syllable is stressed. It has also been argued that monosyllabic words generally are not stressed but rather function as clitics. The special behaviour of /V̂/ syllables is explained by their functioning, in accordance with their historical origin, as sequences of two syllables, of which the first one bears stress.

A rule of Akkadian phonology is that certain short (and probably unstressed) vowels are dropped. The rule is that the last vowel of a succession of syllables that end in a short vowel is dropped, for example the declinational root of the verbal adjective of a root PRS is PaRiS-. Thus the masculine singular nominative is PaRS-um (< *PaRiS-um) but the feminine singular nominative is PaRiStum (< *PaRiS-at-um). Additionally there is a general tendency of syncope of short vowels in the later stages of Akkadian.

Consonantal root
Most roots of the Akkadian language consist of three consonants, called the radicals, but some roots are composed of four consonants, so-called quadriradicals. The radicals are occasionally represented in transcription in upper-case letters, for example PRS (to decide). Between and around these radicals various infixes, suffixes and prefixes, having word generating or grammatical functions, are inserted. The resulting consonant-vowel pattern differentiates the original meaning of the root. The middle radical can be geminated, which is represented by a doubled consonant in transcription, and sometimes in the cuneiform writing itself.

The consonants ', ', ' and ' are termed "weak radicals" and roots containing these radicals give rise to irregular forms.

Case, number and gender
Formally, Akkadian has three numbers (singular, dual and plural) and three cases (nominative, accusative and genitive). However, even in the earlier stages of the language, the dual number is vestigial, and its use is largely confined to natural pairs (eyes, ears, etc.). Adjectives are never found in the dual. In the dual and plural, the accusative and genitive are merged into a single oblique case.

Akkadian, unlike Arabic, has only "sound" plurals formed by means of a plural ending. Broken plurals are not formed by changing the word stem. As in all Semitic languages, some masculine nouns take the prototypically feminine plural ending (-āt).

The nouns šarrum (king) and šarratum (queen) and the adjective dannum (strong) will serve to illustrate the case system of Akkadian.

As is clear from the above table, the adjective and noun endings differ only in the masculine plural. Certain nouns, primarily those referring to geography, can also form a locative ending in -um in the singular and the resulting forms serve as adverbials. These forms are generally not productive, but in the Neo-Babylonian the um-locative replaces several constructions with the preposition ina.

In the later stages of Akkadian, the mimation (word-final -m) and nunation (dual final -n) that occurred at the end of most case endings disappeared, except in the locative. Later, the nominative and accusative singular of masculine nouns collapsed to -u and in Neo-Babylonian most word-final short vowels were dropped. As a result, case differentiation disappeared from all forms except masculine plural nouns. However, many texts continued the practice of writing the case endings, although often sporadically and incorrectly. As the most important contact language throughout this period was Aramaic, which itself lacks case distinctions, it is possible that Akkadian's loss of cases was an areal as well as phonological phenomenon.

Noun states and nominal sentences
As is also the case in other Semitic languages, Akkadian nouns may appear in a variety of "states" depending on their grammatical function in a sentence. The basic form of the noun is the status rectus (the governed state), which is the form as described above, complete with case endings. In addition to this, Akkadian has the status absolutus (the absolute state) and the status constructus (construct state). The latter is found in all other Semitic languages, while the former appears only in Akkadian and some dialects of Aramaic.

The status absolutus is characterised by the loss of a noun's case ending (e.g. awīl < awīlum, šar < šarrum). It is relatively uncommon, and is used chiefly to mark the predicate of a nominal sentence, in fixed adverbial expressions, and in expressions relating to measurements of length, weight, and the like.

Awīl-um šū šarrāq

man.NOM 3SG.MASC thief.ABSOLUTUS

This man is a thief

šarrum lā šanān

king.NOM.RECTUS NEG oppose.INF.ABSOLUTUS

The king who cannot be rivaled

The status constructus is more common by far, and has a much wider range of applications. It is employed when a noun is followed by another noun in the genitive, a pronominal suffix, or a verbal clause in the subjunctive, and typically takes the shortest form of the noun which is phonetically possible. In general, this amounts to the loss of case endings with short vowels, with the exception of the genitive -i in nouns preceding a pronominal suffix, hence:

māri-šu

son.CONSTRUCTUS-3SG.POSS

His son, its (masculine) son

but

mār šarr-im

son.CONSTRUCTUS king.GEN.SG

The king's son

There are numerous exceptions to this general rule, usually involving potential violations of the language's phonological limitations. Most obviously, Akkadian does not tolerate word-final consonant clusters, so nouns like kalbum (dog) and maḫrum (front) would have illegal construct state forms *kalb and *maḫr unless modified. In many of these instances, the first vowel of the word is simply repeated (e.g. kalab, maḫar). This rule, however, does not always hold true, especially in nouns where a short vowel has historically been elided (e.g. šaknum < *šakinum "governor"). In these cases, the lost vowel is restored in the construct state (so šaknum yields šakin).

kalab belim

dog.CONSTRUCTUS master.GEN.SG

The master's dog

šakin ālim

governor.CONSTRUCTUS city.GEN.SG

The city’s governor

A genitive relation can also be expressed with the relative preposition ša, and the noun that the genitive phrase depends on appears in status rectus.

salīmātum ša awīl Ešnunna

Alliances.NOM.RECTUS which man.CONSTRUCTUS Ešnunna.GEN

The alliances of the Ruler of Ešnunna (lit. "Alliances which man of Ešnunna (has)")

The same preposition is also used to introduce true relative clauses, in which case the verb is placed in the subjunctive mood.

awīl-um ša māt-am i-kšud-Ø-u

man.NOM that land.SG.ACC 3-conquer.PRET-SG.MASC-SJV

The man who conquered the land.

Verb aspects
The Akkadian verb has six finite verb aspects (preterite, perfect, present, imperative, precative, and vetitive (the negative form of precative)) and three infinite forms (infinitive, participle and verbal adjective). The preterite is used for actions that are seen by the speaker as having occurred at a single point in time. The present is primarily imperfective in meaning and is used for concurrent and future actions as well as past actions with a temporal dimension. The final three finite forms are injunctive where the imperative and the precative together form a paradigm for positive commands and wishes, and the vetitive is used for negative wishes. The periphrastic prohibitive, formed by the present form of the verb and the negative adverb lā, is used to express negative commands.

The infinitive of the Akkadian verb is a verbal noun, and in contrast to some other languages the Akkadian infinitive can be declined in case. The verbal adjective is an adjectival form and designates the state or the result of the action of the verb, and consequently the exact meaning of the verbal adjective is determined by the semantics of the verb itself. The participle, which can be active or passive, is another verbal adjective and its meaning is similar to the English gerund.

The following table shows the conjugation of the G-stem verbs derived from the root PRS ("to decide") in the various verb aspects of Akkadian:

The table below shows the different affixes attached to the preterite aspect of the verb root PRS "to decide"; and as can be seen, the grammatical genders differ only in the second person singular and third person plural.

Verb moods
Akkadian verbs have three moods:
 * 1) Indicative, used in independent clauses, is unmarked.
 * 2) Subjunctive, used in dependent clauses, is marked in forms which do not end in a vowel by the suffix -u (compare Arabic and Ugaritic subjunctives) but is otherwise unmarked. In the later stages of most dialects, the subjunctive is indistinct, as short final vowels were mostly lost.
 * 3) Venitive or allative, not a mood in the strictest sense, being a development of the first-person dative pronominal suffix -am/-m/-nim. With verbs of motion, it often indicates motion toward an object or person (e.g., illik, "he went" vs. illikam, "he came"). However, this pattern is not consistent, even in earlier stages of the language, and its use often appears to serve a stylistic rather than morphological or lexical function.

The following table demonstrates the verb moods of verbs derived from the root PRS ("to decide", "to separate"):

Verb patterns
Akkadian verbs have thirteen separate derived stems formed on each root. The basic, underived, stem is the G-stem (from the German Grundstamm, meaning "basic stem"). Causative or intensive forms are formed with the doubled D-stem, and it gets its name from the doubled-middle radical that is characteristic of this form. The doubled middle radical is also characteristic of the present. The forms of the D-stem use the secondary conjugational affixes, so a D-form will never be identical to a form in a different stem. The Š-stem is formed by adding a prefix š-, and these forms are mostly causatives. The passive forms of the verb are in the N-stem, formed by adding a n- prefix. The n- element is assimilated to a following consonant, so the original /n/ is only visible in a few forms.

Reflexive and iterative verbal stems can be derived from each of the basic stems. The reflexive stem is formed with an infix -ta, and the derived stems are therefore called Gt, Dt, Št and Nt, and the preterite forms of the Xt-stem are identical to the perfects of the X-stem. Iteratives are formed with the infix -tan-, giving the Gtn, Dtn, Štn and Ntn. Because of the assimilation of n, the /n/ is only seen in the present forms, and the Xtn preterite is identical to the Xt durative.

The final stem is the ŠD-stem, a form mostly attested only in poetic texts, and whose meaning is usually identical to either the Š-stem or the D-stem of the same verb. It is formed with the Š prefix (like the Š-stem) in addition to a doubled-middle radical (like the D-stem).

An alternative to this naming system is a numerical system. The basic stems are numbered using Roman numerals so that G, D, Š and N become I, II, III and IV, respectively. The infixes are numbered using Arabic numerals; 1 for the forms without an infix, 2 for the Xt, and 3 for the Xtn. The two numbers are separated using a solidus. As an example, the Štn-stem is called III/3. The most important user of this system is the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary.

There is mandatory congruence between the subject of the sentence and the verb. This is expressed by prefixes and suffixes. There are two different sets of affixes, a primary set used for the forms of the G and N-stems, and a secondary set for the D and Š-stems.

The stems, their nomenclature and examples of the third-person masculine singular stative of the verb parāsum (root PRS: 'to decide, distinguish, separate') is shown below:

Stative
A very often appearing form which can be formed by nouns, adjectives as well as by verbal adjectives is the stative. Nominal predicatives occur in the status absolutus and correspond to the verb "to be" in English. The stative in Akkadian corresponds to the Egyptian pseudo-participle. The following table contains an example of using the noun šarrum (king), the adjective rapšum (wide) and the verbal adjective parsum (decided).

Thus, the stative in Akkadian is used to convert simple stems into effective sentences, so that the form šarr-āta is equivalent to: "you were king", "you are king" and "you will be king". Hence, the stative is independent of time forms.

Derivation
Beside the already explained possibility of derivation of different verb stems, Akkadian has numerous nominal formations derived from verb roots. A very frequently encountered form is the maPRaS form. It can express the location of an event, the person performing the act and many other meanings. If one of the root consonants is labial (p, b, m), the prefix becomes na- (maPRaS > naPRaS). Examples for this are: maškanum (place, location) from ŠKN (set, place, put), mašraḫum (splendour) from ŠRḪ (be splendid), maṣṣarum (guards) from NṢR (guard), napḫarum (sum) from PḪR (summarize).

A very similar formation is the maPRaSt form. The noun derived from this nominal formation is grammatically feminine. The same rules as for the maPRaS form apply, for example maškattum (deposit) from ŠKN (set, place, put), narkabtum (carriage) from RKB (ride, drive, mount).

The suffix – ūt is used to derive abstract nouns. The nouns which are formed with this suffix are grammatically feminine. The suffix can be attached to nouns, adjectives and verbs, e.g. abūtum (paternity) from abum (father), rabûtum (size) from rabûm (large), waṣûtum (leaving) from WṢY (leave).

Also derivatives of verbs from nouns, adjectives and numerals are numerous. For the most part, a D-stem is derived from the root of the noun or adjective. The derived verb then has the meaning of "make X do something" or "becoming X", for example: duššûm (let sprout) from dīšum (grass), šullušum (to do something for the third time ) from šalāš (three).

Independent personal pronouns
Independent personal pronouns in Akkadian are as follows:

Suffixed (or enclitic) pronouns
Suffixed (or enclitic) pronouns (mainly denoting the genitive, accusative and dative) are as follows:

Demonstrative pronouns
Demonstrative pronouns in Akkadian differ from the Western Semitic variety. The following tables show the Akkadian demonstrative pronouns according to near and far deixis:

Relative pronouns
Relative pronouns in Akkadian are shown in the following table:

Unlike plural relative pronouns, singular relative pronouns in Akkadian exhibit full declension for case. Only the form ša (originally accusative masculine singular) survived, while the other forms disappeared in time.

Interrogative pronouns
The following table shows the interrogative pronouns used in Akkadian:

Prepositions
Akkadian has prepositions which consist mainly of only one word. For example: ina (in, on, out, through, under), ana (to, for, after, approximately), adi (to), aššum (because of), eli (up, over), ištu/ultu (of, since), mala (in accordance with), itti (also, with). There are some compound prepositions which are combined with ina and ana (e.g. ina maḫar (forwards), ina balu (without), ana ṣēr (up to), ana maḫar (forwards). Regardless of the complexity of the preposition, the following noun is always in the genitive case.

Examples: ina bītim (in the house, from the house), ana dummuqim (to do good), itti šarrim (with the king), ana ṣēr mārīšu (up to his son).

Numerals
Since numerals are written mostly as a number sign in the cuneiform script, the transliteration of many numerals is not well ascertained yet. Along with the counted noun, the cardinal numerals are in the status absolutus. Because other cases are very rare, the forms of the status rectus are known only by isolated numerals. The numerals 1 and 2 as well as 21–29, 31–39, 41–49 correspond with the counted in the grammatical gender. The numerals 3–20, 30, 40 and 50 are characterized by polarity of gender, i.e. if the counted noun is masculine, the numeral would be feminine and vice versa.

This polarity is typical of the Semitic languages and appears, for example, in classical Arabic. The numerals 60, 100, and 1,000 do not change according to the gender of the counted noun. Counted nouns more than two appear in the plural form. Body parts that occur in pairs appear in the dual form in Akkadian; e.g., šēpum (foot) becomes šēpān (two feet).

The ordinals are formed (with few exceptions) by adding a case ending to the nominal form PaRuS. The P, R and S must be substituted with the suitable consonants of the numeral. It is noted, that in the case of the numeral "one", the ordinal (masculine) and the cardinal number are the same. A metathesis occurs in the numeral "four".

Examples: erbē aššātum (four wives) (masculine numeral), meat ālānū (100 towns).

Nominal phrases
Adjectives, relative clauses and appositions follow the noun. While numerals precede the counted noun. In the following table the nominal phrase erbēt šarrū dannūtum ša ālam īpušū abūya 'the four strong kings who built the city are my fathers' is analyzed:

Sentence syntax
Akkadian sentence order was Subject+Object+Verb (SOV), which sets it apart from most other ancient Semitic languages such as Arabic and Biblical Hebrew, which typically have a verb–subject–object (VSO) word order. Modern South Semitic languages in Ethiopia also have SOV order, but these developed within historical times from the classical verb–subject–object (VSO) language Ge'ez. It has been hypothesized that this word order was a result of influence from the Sumerian language, which was also SOV. There is evidence that native speakers of both languages were in intimate language contact, forming a single society for at least 500 years, so it is entirely likely that a sprachbund could have formed. Further evidence of an original VSO or SVO ordering can be found in the fact that direct and indirect object pronouns are suffixed to the verb. Word order seems to have shifted to SVO/VSO late in the 1st millennium BC to the 1st millennium AD, possibly under the influence of Aramaic.

Vocabulary
The Akkadian vocabulary is mostly of Semitic origin. Although classified as East Semitic, many elements of its basic vocabulary find no evident parallels in related Semitic languages: mārum 'son' (Semitic *bn), qātum 'hand' (Semitic *yd), šēpum 'foot' (Semitic *rgl), qabûm 'say' (Semitic *qwl), izuzzum 'stand' (Semitic *qwm), ana 'to, for' (Semitic *li).

Due to extensive contact with Sumerian and Aramaic, the Akkadian vocabulary contains many loan words from these languages. Aramaic loan words were limited to the 1st centuries of the 1st millennium BC and primarily in the north and middle parts of Mesopotamia. Sumerian loan words were spread in the whole linguistic area. Beside the previous languages, some nouns were borrowed from Hurrian, Kassite, Ugaritic and other ancient languages.

Since Sumerian and Hurrian, two non-Semitic languages, differ from Akkadian in word structure, only nouns and some adjectives (not many verbs) were borrowed from these languages. Some verbs were borrowed, along with many nouns, from Aramaic and Ugaritic, both of which are Semitic languages.

The following table contains examples of loan words in Akkadian:

Akkadian was also a source of borrowing to other Semitic languages such as biṣru "onion" (into بَصَل and בצל), āsu "myrtle" (آس ās) and so on, above all Sumerian with examples: Sumerian da-ri ('lastingly', from Akkadian dārum), Sumerian ra gaba ('riders, messenger', from Akkadian rākibum).

In 2011, the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago completed a 21-volume dictionary, the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, of the Akkadian language. The dictionary took 90 years to develop, beginning in 1921, with the first volume published in 1956. The completion of this work was hailed as a significant milestone for the study of the language by prominent academic Irving Finkel of the British Museum.

Sample text
The following is the 7th section of the Hammurabi law code, written in the mid-18th century BC:

šumma awīl-um lū kasp-am lū ḫurāṣ-am lū ward-am lū amt-am

if man-NOM or silver-ACC or gold-ACC or slave-M.ACC or slave-F.ACC

If a man has bought silver or gold, a male or a female slave, lū alp-am lū immer-am lū imēr-am ū lū {mimma šumšu} ina

or cattle/oxen-ACC or sheep-ACC or donkey-ACC and or something from

an ox, a sheep, or a donkey—or anything for that matter— qāt mār awīl-im ū lū warad awīl-im balum šīb-ī u

hand-CONST son-CONST man-GEN and or slave-CONST man-GEN without witnesses-GEN and

from another man or from another man's slave without witnesses or contract, riks-ātim i-štām-Ø ū lū ana maṣṣārūt-im i–mḫur-Ø

contracts-GEN bought-3.SG.PERF and or for safekeeping-GEN received-3.SG.PRET

or if he accepted something for safekeeping without same, awīl-um šū šarrāq i-ddāk

man-NOM he-3.M.SG stealer-ABS is_killed-3.SG.PASS-PRS

then this man is a thief and hence to be killed.

Akkadian literature

 * Atrahasis Epic (early 2nd millennium BC)
 * Enûma Elish (c. 18th century BC)
 * Amarna letters (14th century BC)
 * Epic of Gilgamesh (Sin-liqe-unninni', Standard Babylonian version, 13th to 11th century BC)
 * Ludlul Bel Nemeqi

General description and grammar

 * Gelb, I. J. (1961). Old Akkadian writing and grammar. Materials for the Assyrian dictionary, no. 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-62304-1
 * Hasselbach, Rebecca. Sargonic Akkadian: A Historical and Comparative Study of the Syllabic Texts. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag 2005. ISBN 978-3-447-05172-9
 * Huehnergard, J. A Grammar of Akkadian (3rd ed. 2011.) Harvard Semitic Museum Studies 45. ISBN 978-1-57506-922-7
 * Huehnergard, J. (2005). A Key to A Grammar of Akkadian. Harvard Semitic Studies. Eisenbrauns.
 * Soden, Wolfram von: Grundriß der Akkadischen Grammatik. Analecta Orientalia. Bd 33. Rom 1995. ISBN 88-7653-258-7
 * Streck, Michael P. Sprachen des Alten Orients. Wiss. Buchges., Darmstadt 2005. ISBN 3-534-17996-X
 * Ungnad, Arthur: Grammatik des Akkadischen. Neubearbeitung durch L. Matouš, München 1969, 1979 (5. Aufl.). ISBN 3-406-02890-X
 * Woodard, Roger D. The Ancient Languages of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Aksum. Cambridge University Press 2008. ISBN 978-0-521-68497-2
 * Ikeda, Jun. Early Japanese and Early Akkadian Writing Systems. University of Tsukuba. 2007

Textbooks

 * Basics of Akkadian: A Grammar Workbook and Glossary, By Gordon P. Hugenberg with Nancy L. Erickson, 2022.
 * Rykle Borger: Babylonisch-assyrische Lesestücke. Rom 1963.(3., revidierte Auflage, 2006 Teil. I-II)
 * Part I: Elemente der Grammatik und der Schrift. Übungsbeispiele. Glossar.
 * Part II: Die Texte in Umschrift.
 * Part III: Kommentar. Die Texte in Keilschrift.
 * Richard Caplice: Introduction to Akkadian. Biblical Institute Press, Rome 1988, 2002 (4.Aufl.). ISBN 88-7653-566-7
 * Kaspar K. Riemschneider: Lehrbuch des Akkadischen. Verlag Enzyklopädie, Leipzig 1969, Langenscheidt Verlag Enzyklopädie, Leipzig 1992 (6. Aufl.). ISBN 3-324-00364-4
 * Martin Worthington: "Complete Babylonian: Teach Yourself" London 2010 ISBN 0-340-98388-4

Dictionaries

 * Jeremy G. Black, Andrew George, Nicholas Postgate: A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian. Harrassowitz-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2000.  ISBN 3-447-04264-8
 * Wolfram von Soden: Akkadisches Handwörterbuch. 3 Bde. Wiesbaden 1958–1981. ISBN 3-447-02187-X
 * Martha T. Roth, ed.: The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. 21 vols. in 26. Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Chicago 1956–2010. (available free online )

Akkadian cuneiform

 * Cherry, A. (2003). A basic neo-Assyrian cuneiform syllabary. Toronto, Ont: Ashur Cherry, York University.
 * Cherry, A. (2003). Basic individual logograms (Akkadian). Toronto, Ont: Ashur Cherry, York University.
 * Rykle Borger: Mesopotamisches Zeichenlexikon. Alter Orient und Altes Testament (AOAT). Bd 305. Ugarit-Verlag, Münster 2004. ISBN 3-927120-82-0
 * René Labat: Manuel d'Épigraphie Akkadienne. Paul Geuthner, Paris 1976, 1995 (6.Aufl.). ISBN 2-7053-3583-8

Translations

 * Shin Shifra, Jacob Klein (1996). In Those Far Days. Tel Aviv, Am Oved and The Israeli Center for Libraries' project for translating Exemplary Literature to Hebrew. This is an anthology of Sumerian and Akkadian poetry, translated into Hebrew.

Technical literature on specific subjects

 * Ignace J. Gelb: Old Akkadian Writing and Grammar. Materials for the Assyrian dictionary. Bd 2. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1952, 1961, 1973. ISBN 0-226-62304-1
 * Gutherz, Gai, et al. "Translating Akkadian to English with neural machine translation." PNAS nexus 2.5, 2023
 * Markus Hilgert: Akkadisch in der Ur III-Zeit. Rhema-Verlag, Münster 2002.  ISBN 3-930454-32-7
 * Walter Sommerfeld: Bemerkungen zur Dialektgliederung Altakkadisch, Assyrisch und Babylonisch. In: Alter Orient und Altes Testament (AOAT). Ugarit-Verlag, Münster 274.2003.

title: Akkadian language


text:
Talk:Cuneiform (disambiguation)

Why is this page not just a #redirect to cuneiform script? As the list of pages that link here helps demonstrate, that is by far the most common usage of the term. What would someone typing "cuneiform" into the Search box want: the script, the bones, or the obscure record label? —E. Underwood]] 03:33, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I don't think the picture here is so good. It's very low-contrast, making the script seem very blurry. - furrykef (Talk at me) 06:19, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * I agree 100% to E. Underwood. Cuneiform should redirect to Cuneiform script, or Cuneiform script should be moved to Cuneiform; either way, this page should then be moved to Cuneiform (disambiguation), because clearly the writing system is the most noteworthy and likely-to-be-searched-for term among the bunch. -Silence 18:23, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Cuneiform (disambiguation)


text:
Sumer

Sumer is the earliest known civilization, located in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (now south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. Like nearby Elam, it is one of the cradles of civilization, along with Egypt, the Indus Valley, the Erligang culture of the Yellow River valley, Caral-Supe, and Mesoamerica. Living along the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Sumerian farmers grew an abundance of grain and other crops, a surplus which enabled them to form urban settlements. The world's earliest known texts come from the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr, and date to between c. 3350, following a period of proto-writing c. 4000.

Name
The term "Sumer" (𒋗𒈨𒊒) comes from the Akkadian name for the "Sumerians", the ancient non-Semitic-speaking inhabitants of southern Mesopotamia. In their inscriptions, the Sumerians called their land "Kengir", the "Country of the noble lords", and their language "Emegir" ( or 𒅴𒄀 eme-gi15).

The origin of the Sumerians is not known, but the people of Sumer referred to themselves as "Black-Headed Ones" or "Black-Headed People"  (, or 𒊕𒈪𒂵, sag̃-gíg-ga, phonetically, lit. "head" + "black" + relative marker). For example, the Sumerian king Shulgi described himself as "the king of the four quarters, the pastor of the black-headed people". The Akkadians also called the Sumerians "black-headed people", or ṣalmat-qaqqadi, in the Semitic Akkadian language.

The Akkadians, the East Semitic-speaking people who later conquered the Sumerian city-states, gave Sumer its main historical name, but the phonological development of the term šumerû is uncertain. Hebrew שִׁנְעָר Šinʿar, Egyptian Sngr, and Hittite Šanhar(a), all referring to southern Mesopotamia, could be western variants of Sumer.

Origins
Most historians have suggested that Sumer was first permanently settled between c. 5500 by a West Asian people who spoke the Sumerian language (pointing to the names of cities, rivers, basic occupations, etc., as evidence), a non-Semitic and non-Indo-European agglutinative language isolate.

Others have suggested that the Sumerians were a North African people who migrated from the Green Sahara into the Middle East and were responsible for the spread of farming in the Middle East. However, contrary evidence strongly suggests that the first farming originated in the Fertile Crescent. Although not specifically discussing Sumerians, Lazaridis et al. 2016 have suggested a partial North African origin for some pre-Semitic cultures of the Middle East, particularly Natufians, after testing the genomes of Natufian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic culture-bearers.

Some scholars associate the Sumerians with the Hurrians and Urartians, and suggest the Caucasus as their homeland. This is not generally accepted.

A prehistoric people who lived in the region before the Sumerians have been termed the "Proto-Euphrateans" or "Ubaidians", and are theorized to have evolved from the Samarra culture of northern Mesopotamia. The Ubaidians, though never mentioned by the Sumerians themselves, are assumed by modern-day scholars to have been the first civilizing force in Sumer. They drained the marshes for agriculture, developed trade, and established industries, including weaving, leatherwork, metalwork, masonry, and pottery.

Some scholars contest the idea of a Proto-Euphratean language or one substrate language; they think the Sumerian language may originally have been that of the hunting and fishing peoples who lived in the marshland and the Eastern Arabia littoral region and were part of the Arabian bifacial culture. Juris Zarins believes the Sumerians lived along the coast of Eastern Arabia, today's Persian Gulf region, before it was flooded at the end of the Ice Age.

Sumerian civilization took form in the Uruk period (4th millennium BC), continuing into the Jemdet Nasr and Early Dynastic periods. The Sumerian city of Eridu, on the coast of the Persian Gulf, is considered to have been one of the oldest cities, where three separate cultures may have fused: that of peasant Ubaidian farmers, living in mud-brick huts and practicing irrigation; that of mobile nomadic Semitic pastoralists living in black tents and following herds of sheep and goats; and that of fisher folk, living in reed huts in the marshlands, who may have been the ancestors of the Sumerians.

Reliable historical records begin with Enmebaragesi (Early Dynastic I). The Sumerians progressively lost control to Semitic states from the northwest. Sumer was conquered by the Semitic-speaking kings of the Akkadian Empire around 2270 BC (short chronology), but Sumerian continued as a sacred language. Native Sumerian rule re-emerged for about a century in the Third Dynasty of Ur at approximately 2100–2000 BC, but the Akkadian language also remained in use for some time.

City-states in Mesopotamia
In the late 4th millennium BC, Sumer was divided into many independent city-states, which were divided by canals and boundary stones. Each was centered on a temple dedicated to the particular patron god or goddess of the city and ruled over by a priestly governor (ensi) or by a king (lugal) who was intimately tied to the city's religious rites.

The five "first" cities, said to have exercised pre-dynastic kingship "before the flood": Other principal cities: 1. Uruk (Warka)
 * 1) Eridu (Tell Abu Shahrain)
 * 2) Bad-tibira (probably Tell al-Madain)
 * 3) Larak $1$
 * 4) Sippar (Tell Abu Habbah)
 * 5) Shuruppak (Tell Fara)

2. Kish (Tell Uheimir and Ingharra)

3. Ur (Tell al-Muqayyar)

4. Nippur (Afak)

5. Lagash (Tell al-Hiba)

6. Girsu (Tello or Telloh)

7. Umma (Tell Jokha)

8. Hamazi $1$

9. Adab (Tell Bismaya)

10. Mari (Tell Hariri) $2$

11. Akshak $1$

12. Akkad $1$

13. Isin (Ishan al-Bahriyat)

14. Larsa (Tell as-Senkereh) ($1$location uncertain)

($2$an outlying city in northern Mesopotamia) Minor cities (from south to north): ($2$an outlying city in northern Mesopotamia)
 * 1) Kuara (Tell al-Lahm)
 * 2) Zabala (Tell Ibzeikh)
 * 3) Kisurra (Tell Abu Hatab)
 * 4) Marad (Tell Wannat es-Sadum)
 * 5) Dilbat (Tell ed-Duleim)
 * 6) Borsippa (Birs Nimrud)
 * 7) Kutha (Tell Ibrahim)
 * 8) Der (al-Badra)
 * 9) Eshnunna (Tell Asmar)
 * 10) Nagar (Tell Brak) $2$

Apart from Mari, which lies full 330 kilometres (205 miles) north-west of Agade, but which is credited in the king list as having "exercised kingship" in the Early Dynastic II period, and Nagar, an outpost, these cities are all in the Euphrates-Tigris alluvial plain, south of Baghdad in what are now the Bābil, Diyala, Wāsit, Dhi Qar, Basra, Al-Muthannā and Al-Qādisiyyah governorates of Iraq.

History

The Sumerian city-states rose to power during the prehistoric Ubaid and Uruk periods. Sumerian written history reaches back to the 27th century BC and before, but the historical record remains obscure until the Early Dynastic III period, c. 23rd century BC, when the language of the written records becomes easier to decipher, which has allowed archaeologists to read contemporary records and inscriptions.

The Akkadian Empire was the first state that successfully united larger parts of Mesopotamia in the 23rd century BC. After the Gutian period, the Ur III kingdom similarly united parts of northern and southern Mesopotamia. It ended in the face of Amorite incursions at the beginning of the second millennium BC. The Amorite "dynasty of Isin" persisted until c. 1700 BC, when Mesopotamia was united under Babylonian rule.
 * New Stone Age: c. 10000
 * Ubaid period: c. 6500
 * Copper Age: c. 5000
 * Uruk period: c. 4100
 * Uruk XIV–V phases: c. 4100
 * Uruk IV phase: c. 3300
 * Early Bronze Age I: c. 3300
 * Jemdet Nasr period (Uruk III phase): c. 3100
 * Uruk III phase: c. 3100
 * Early Bronze Age II: c. 3000
 * Early Dynastic period c. 2900
 * Early Dynastic I period: c. 2900
 * Eridu dynasty (Alulim)
 * Bad-tibira dynasty (Dumuzid)
 * Larak dynasty (En-sipad-zid-ana)
 * Sippar dynasty (Enmeduranki)
 * Shuruppak dynasty (Ziusudra)
 * Kish I dynasty (Enmebaragesi)
 * Early Dynastic II period: c. 2800
 * Uruk I dynasty (Gilgamesh)
 * Early Dynastic IIIa period: c. 2600
 * Ur I dynasty
 * Awan dynasty
 * Kish II dynasty
 * Hamazi dynasty
 * Early Dynastic IIIb period: c. 2500
 * Uruk II dynasty
 * Ur II dynasty
 * Adab dynasty
 * Mari dynasty
 * Kish III dynasty
 * Akshak dynasty
 * Kish IV dynasty
 * Uruk III dynasty
 * Early Bronze Age III: c. 2700
 * Akkadian period: c. 2334
 * Akkad dynasty (Sargon)
 * Early Bronze Age IV: c. 2200
 * Gutian period: c. 2154
 * Uruk IV dynasty
 * Gutian dynasty
 * Middle Bronze Age I: c. 2100
 * Ur III period: c. 2119
 * Uruk V dynasty
 * Ur III dynasty
 * Middle Bronze Age II A: c. 2000
 * Isin-Larsa period: c. 2004
 * Isin I dynasty
 * Larsa dynasty
 * Middle Bronze Age II B: c. 1750
 * Old Babylonian period: c. 1736
 * Sealand dynasty

Ubaid period
The Ubaid period is marked by a distinctive style of fine quality painted pottery which spread throughout Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. The oldest evidence for occupation comes from Tell el-'Oueili, but, given that environmental conditions in southern Mesopotamia were favourable to human occupation well before the Ubaid period, it is likely that older sites exist but have not yet been found. It appears that this culture was derived from the Samarran culture from northern Mesopotamia. It is not known whether or not these were the actual Sumerians who are identified with the later Uruk culture. The story of the passing of the gifts of civilization (me) to Inanna, goddess of Uruk and of love and war, by Enki, god of wisdom and chief god of Eridu, may reflect the transition from Eridu to Uruk.

Uruk period
The archaeological transition from the Ubaid period to the Uruk period is marked by a gradual shift from painted pottery domestically produced on a slow wheel to a great variety of unpainted pottery mass-produced by specialists on fast wheels. The Uruk period is a continuation and an outgrowth of Ubaid with pottery being the main visible change.

By the time of the Uruk period, c. 4100–2900 BC calibrated, the volume of trade goods transported along the canals and rivers of southern Mesopotamia facilitated the rise of many large, stratified, temple-centered cities, with populations of over 10,000 people, where centralized administrations employed specialized workers. It is fairly certain that it was during the Uruk period that Sumerian cities began to make use of slave labour captured from the hill country, and there is ample evidence for captured slaves as workers in the earliest texts. Artifacts, and even colonies of this Uruk civilization have been found over a wide area—from the Taurus Mountains in Turkey, to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, and as far east as western Iran.

The Uruk period civilization, exported by Sumerian traders and colonists, like that found at Tell Brak, had an effect on all surrounding peoples, who gradually evolved their own comparable, competing economies and cultures. The cities of Sumer could not maintain remote, long-distance colonies by military force.

Sumerian cities during the Uruk period were probably theocratic and were most likely headed by a priest-king (ensi), assisted by a council of elders, including both men and women. It is quite possible that the later Sumerian pantheon was modeled upon this political structure. There was little evidence of organized warfare or professional soldiers during the Uruk period, and towns were generally unwalled. During this period Uruk became the most urbanized city in the world, surpassing for the first time 50,000 inhabitants.

The ancient Sumerian king list includes the early dynasties of several prominent cities from this period. The first set of names on the list is of kings said to have reigned before a major flood occurred. These early names may be fictional, and include some legendary and mythological figures, such as Alulim and Dumizid.

The end of the Uruk period coincided with the Piora oscillation, a dry period from c. 3200–2900 BC that marked the end of a long wetter, warmer climate period from about 9,000 to 5,000 years ago, called the Holocene climatic optimum.

Early Dynastic Period
The dynastic period begins c. 2900 BC and was associated with a shift from the temple establishment headed by council of elders led by a priestly "En" (a male figure when it was a temple for a goddess, or a female figure when headed by a male god) towards a more secular Lugal (Lu = man, Gal = great) and includes such legendary patriarchal figures as Dumuzid, Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh—who reigned shortly before the historic record opens c. 2900 BC, when the now deciphered syllabic writing started to develop from the early pictograms. The center of Sumerian culture remained in southern Mesopotamia, even though rulers soon began expanding into neighboring areas, and neighboring Semitic groups adopted much of Sumerian culture for their own.

The earliest dynastic king on the Sumerian king list whose name is known from any other legendary source is Etana, 13th king of the first dynasty of Kish. The earliest king authenticated through archaeological evidence is Enmebaragesi of Kish (Early Dynastic I), whose name is mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh—leading to the suggestion that Gilgamesh himself might have been a historical king of Uruk. As the Epic of Gilgamesh shows, this period was associated with increased war. Cities became walled, and increased in size as undefended villages in southern Mesopotamia disappeared. Both Enmerkar and Gilgamesh are credited with having built the walls of Uruk.

1st Dynasty of Lagash

The dynasty of Lagash (c. 2500–2270 BC), though omitted from the king list, is well attested through several important monuments and many archaeological finds.

Although short-lived, one of the first empires known to history was that of Eannatum of Lagash, who annexed practically all of Sumer, including Kish, Uruk, Ur, and Larsa, and reduced to tribute the city-state of Umma, arch-rival of Lagash. In addition, his realm extended to parts of Elam and along the Persian Gulf. He seems to have used terror as a matter of policy. Eannatum's Stele of the Vultures depicts vultures pecking at the severed heads and other body parts of his enemies. His empire collapsed shortly after his death.

Later, Lugal-zage-si, the priest-king of Umma, overthrew the primacy of the Lagash dynasty in the area, then conquered Uruk, making it his capital, and claimed an empire extending from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. He was the last ethnically Sumerian king before Sargon of Akkad.

Akkadian Empire

The Akkadian Empire dates to c. 2234–2154 BC (middle chronology), founded by Sargon of Akkad. The Eastern Semitic Akkadian language is first attested in proper names of the kings of Kish c. 2800 BC, preserved in later king lists. There are texts written entirely in Old Akkadian dating from c. 2500 BC. Use of Old Akkadian was at its peak during the rule of Sargon the Great (c. 2334–2279 BC), but even then most administrative tablets continued to be written in Sumerian, the language used by the scribes. Gelb and Westenholz differentiate three stages of Old Akkadian: that of the pre-Sargonic era, that of the Akkadian empire, and that of the Ur III period that followed it.

Akkadian and Sumerian coexisted as vernacular languages for about one thousand years, but by around 1800 BC, Sumerian was becoming more of a literary language familiar mainly only to scholars and scribes. Thorkild Jacobsen has argued that there is little break in historical continuity between the pre- and post-Sargon periods, and that too much emphasis has been placed on the perception of a "Semitic vs. Sumerian" conflict. It is certain that Akkadian was also briefly imposed on neighboring parts of Elam that were previously conquered, by Sargon.

Gutian period
c. 2193–2119 BC (middle chronology)

2nd Dynasty of Lagash

c. 2200–2110 BC (middle chronology)

Following the downfall of the Akkadian Empire at the hands of Gutians, another native Sumerian ruler, Gudea of Lagash, rose to local prominence and continued the practices of the Sargonic kings' claims to divinity.

The previous Lagash dynasty, Gudea and his descendants also promoted artistic development and left a large number of archaeological artifacts.

Ur III period
Later, the Third Dynasty of Ur under Ur-Nammu and Shulgi (c. 2112–2004 BC, middle chronology), whose power extended as far as southern Assyria, has been erroneously called a "Sumerian renaissance" in the past. Already, the region was becoming more Semitic than Sumerian, with the resurgence of the Akkadian-speaking Semites in Assyria and elsewhere, and the influx of waves of Semitic Martu (Amorites), who founded several competing local powers in the south, including Isin, Larsa, Eshnunna and later, Babylonia.

The last of these eventually came to briefly dominate the south of Mesopotamia as the Babylonian Empire, just as the Old Assyrian Empire had already done in the north from the late 21st century BC. The Sumerian language continued as a sacerdotal language taught in schools in Babylonia and Assyria, much as Latin was used in the Medieval period, for as long as cuneiform was used.

Fall and transmission
This period is generally taken to coincide with a major shift in population from southern Mesopotamia toward the north. Ecologically, the agricultural productivity of the Sumerian lands was being compromised as a result of rising salinity. Soil salinity in this region had been long recognized as a major problem. Poorly drained irrigated soils, in an arid climate with high levels of evaporation, led to the buildup of dissolved salts in the soil, eventually reducing agricultural yields severely.

During the Akkadian and Ur III phases, there was a shift from the cultivation of wheat to the more salt-tolerant barley, but this was insufficient, and during the period from 2100 BC to 1700 BC, it is estimated that the population in this area declined by nearly three-fifths. This greatly upset the balance of power within the region, weakening the areas where Sumerian was spoken, and comparatively strengthening those where Akkadian was the major language. Henceforth, Sumerian remained only a literary and liturgical language, similar to the position occupied by Latin in medieval Europe.

Following an Elamite invasion and sack of Ur during the rule of Ibbi-Sin (c. 2028–2004 BC), Sumer came under Amorite rule (taken to introduce the Middle Bronze Age). The independent Amorite states of the 20th to 18th centuries are summarized as the "Dynasty of Isin" in the Sumerian king list, ending with the rise of Babylonia under Hammurabi c. 1800 BC.

Later rulers who dominated Assyria and Babylonia occasionally assumed the old Sargonic title "King of Sumer and Akkad", such as Tukulti-Ninurta I of Assyria after c. 1225 BC.

Population
Uruk, one of Sumer's largest cities, has been estimated to have had a population of 50,000–80,000 at its height. Given the other cities in Sumer, and the large agricultural population, a rough estimate for Sumer's population might be 0.8 million to 1.5 million. The world population at this time has been estimated at 27 million.

The Sumerians spoke a language isolate. A number of linguists have claimed to be able to detect a substrate language of unknown classification beneath Sumerian, because names of some of Sumer's major cities are not Sumerian, revealing influences of earlier inhabitants. However, the archaeological record shows clear uninterrupted cultural continuity from the time of the early Ubaid period (5300–4700 BC C-14) settlements in southern Mesopotamia. The Sumerian people who settled here, farmed the lands in this region that were made fertile by silt deposited by the Tigris and the Euphrates.

Some archaeologists have speculated that the original speakers of ancient Sumerian may have been farmers, who moved down from the north of Mesopotamia after perfecting irrigation agriculture there. The Ubaid period pottery of southern Mesopotamia has been connected via Choga Mami transitional ware, to the pottery of the Samarra period culture (c. 5700–4900 BC C-14) in the north, who were the first to practice a primitive form of irrigation agriculture along the middle Tigris River and its tributaries. The connection is most clearly seen at Tell el-'Oueili near Larsa, excavated by the French in the 1980s, where eight levels yielded pre-Ubaid pottery resembling Samarran ware. According to this theory, farming peoples spread down into southern Mesopotamia because they had developed a temple-centered social organization for mobilizing labor and technology for water control, enabling them to survive and prosper in a difficult environment.

Others have suggested a continuity of Sumerians, from the indigenous hunter-fisherfolk traditions, associated with the bifacial assemblages found on the Arabian littoral. Juris Zarins believes the Sumerians may have been the people living in the Persian Gulf region before it flooded at the end of the last Ice Age.

Social and family life
In the early Sumerian period, the primitive pictograms suggest that
 * "Pottery was very plentiful, and the forms of the vases, bowls and dishes were manifold; there were special jars for honey, butter, oil and wine, which was probably made from dates. Some of the vases had pointed feet, and stood on stands with crossed legs; others were flat-bottomed, and were set on square or rectangular frames of wood. The oil-jars, and probably others also, were sealed with clay, precisely as in early Egypt. Vases and dishes of stone were made in imitation of those of clay."
 * "A feathered head-dress was worn. Beds, stools and chairs were used, with carved legs resembling those of an ox. There were fire-places and fire-altars."
 * "Knives, drills, wedges and an instrument that looks like a saw were all known. While spears, bows, arrows, and daggers (but not swords) were employed in war."
 * "Tablets were used for writing purposes. Daggers with metal blades and wooden handles were worn, and copper was hammered into plates, while necklaces or collars were made of gold."
 * "Time was reckoned in lunar months."

There is considerable evidence concerning Sumerian music. Lyres and flutes were played, among the best-known examples being the Lyres of Ur.

Sumerian culture was male-dominated and stratified. The Code of Ur-Nammu, the oldest such codification yet discovered, dating to the Ur III, reveals a glimpse at societal structure in late Sumerian law. Beneath the lu-gal ("great man" or king), all members of society belonged to one of two basic strata: The "lu" or free person, and the slave (male, arad; female geme). The son of a lu was called a dumu-nita until he married. A woman (munus) went from being a daughter (dumu-mi), to a wife (dam), then if she outlived her husband, a widow (numasu) and she could then remarry another man who was from the same tribe.

In early Sumer women played an important public rule as priestesses. They could also own property, transact business and had their rights protected by the courts. Sons and daughters inherited property on equal terms. The status of women deteriorated in the centuries after 2300 BC. Their right to dispose of their property was limited, and the female deities also lost their former importance.

Inscriptions describing the reforms of king Urukagina of Lagash (c. 2350 BC) say that he abolished the former custom of polyandry in his country, prescribing that a woman who took multiple husbands be stoned with rocks upon which her crime had been written.

Marriages were usually arranged by the parents of the bride and groom; engagements were usually completed through the approval of contracts recorded on clay tablets. These marriages became legal as soon as the groom delivered a bridal gift to his bride's father. One Sumerian proverb describes the ideal, happy marriage, through the mouth of a husband, who boasts that his wife has borne him eight sons and is still eager to have sex.

The Sumerians considered it desirable for women to still be virgins at the time of marriage, but did not expect the same of men,  although one author considers premarital sex in general to have been discouraged. Neither Sumerian nor Akkadian had a word exactly corresponding to the English word 'virginity', and the concept was expressed descriptively, for example as a/é-nu-gi4-a (Sum.)/la naqbat (Akk.) 'un-deflowered', or giš nunzua, 'never having known a penis'. It is unclear whether terms such as šišitu in Akkadian medical texts indicate the hymen, but it appears that the intactness of the hymen was much less relevant to assessing a woman's virginity than in later cultures of the Near East. Most assessments of virginity depended on the woman's own account.

From the earliest records, the Sumerians had very relaxed attitudes toward sex. Their sexual mores were determined not by whether a sexual act was deemed immoral, but rather by whether or not it made a person ritually unclean. The Sumerians widely believed that masturbation enhanced sexual potency, both for men and for women, and they frequently engaged in it, both alone and with their partners. The Sumerians did not regard anal sex as taboo either. Entu priestesses were forbidden from producing offspring and frequently engaged in anal sex as a method of birth control.

Prostitution existed, but it is not clear if sacred prostitution did.

Language and writing
The most important archaeological discoveries in Sumer are a large number of clay tablets written in cuneiform script. Sumerian writing is considered to be a great milestone in the development of humanity's ability to not only create historical records but also in creating pieces of literature, both in the form of poetic epics and stories as well as prayers and laws.

Although the writing system was first hieroglyphic using ideograms, logosyllabic cuneiform soon followed.

Triangular or wedge-shaped reeds were used to write on moist clay. A large body of hundreds of thousands of texts in the Sumerian language have survived, including personal and business letters, receipts, lexical lists, laws, hymns, prayers, stories, and daily records. Full libraries of clay tablets have been found. Monumental inscriptions and texts on different objects, like statues or bricks, are also very common. Many texts survive in multiple copies because they were repeatedly transcribed by scribes in training. Sumerian continued to be the language of religion and law in Mesopotamia long after Semitic speakers had become dominant.

A prime example of cuneiform writing is a lengthy poem that was discovered in the ruins of Uruk. The Epic of Gilgamesh was written in the standard Sumerian cuneiform. It tells of a king from the early Dynastic II period named Gilgamesh or "Bilgamesh" in Sumerian. The story relates the fictional adventures of Gilgamesh and his companion, Enkidu. It was laid out on several clay tablets and is thought to be the earliest known surviving example of fictional literature.

The Sumerian language is generally regarded as a language isolate in linguistics, because it belongs to no known language family. Akkadian, by contrast, belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. There have been many failed attempts to connect Sumerian to other language families. It is an agglutinative language. In other words, morphemes ("units of meaning") are added together to create words, unlike analytic languages where morphemes are purely added together to create sentences. Some authors have proposed that there may be evidence of a substratum or adstratum language for geographic features and various crafts and agricultural activities, called variously Proto-Euphratean or Proto Tigrean, but this is disputed by others.

Understanding Sumerian texts today can be problematic. Most difficult are the earliest texts, which in many cases do not give the full grammatical structure of the language and seem to have been used as an "aide-mémoire" for knowledgeable scribes.

Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as a spoken language somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC. Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary, and scientific language in Babylonia and Assyria until the 1st century AD.

Religion
The Sumerians credited their divinities for all matters pertaining to them and exhibited humility in the face of cosmic forces, such as death and divine wrath.

Sumerian religion seems to have been founded upon two separate cosmogenic myths. The first saw creation as the result of a series of hieroi gamoi or sacred marriages, involving the reconciliation of opposites, postulated as a coming together of male and female divine beings, the gods.

This pattern continued to influence regional Mesopotamian myths. Thus, in the later Akkadian Enuma Elish, creation was seen as the union of fresh and salt water, between male Abzu, and female Tiamat. The products of that union, Lahm and Lahmu, "the muddy ones", were titles given to the gate keepers of the E-Abzu temple of Enki in Eridu, the first Sumerian city.

Mirroring the way that muddy islands emerge from the confluence of fresh and salty water at the mouth of the Euphrates, where the river deposits its load of silt, a second hieros gamos supposedly resulted in the creation of Anshar and Kishar, the "sky-pivot" (or axle), and the "earth pivot", parents in turn of Anu (the sky) and Ki (the earth).

Another important Sumerian hieros gamos was that between Ki, here known as Ninhursag or "Lady of the Mountains", and Enki of Eridu, the god of fresh water which brought forth greenery and pasture.

At an early stage, following the dawn of recorded history, Nippur, in central Mesopotamia, replaced Eridu in the south as the primary temple city, whose priests exercised political hegemony on the other city-states. Nippur retained this status throughout the Sumerian period.

Deities
Sumerians believed in an anthropomorphic polytheism, or the belief in many gods in human form. There was no common set of gods; each city-state had its own patrons, temples, and priest-kings. Nonetheless, these were not exclusive; the gods of one city were often acknowledged elsewhere. Sumerian speakers were among the earliest people to record their beliefs in writing, and were a major inspiration in later Mesopotamian mythology, religion, and astrology.

The Sumerians worshiped:
 * An as the full-time god equivalent to heaven; indeed, the word an in Sumerian means sky and his consort Ki, means earth.
 * Enki in the south at the temple in Eridu. Enki was the god of beneficence and of wisdom, ruler of the freshwater depths beneath the earth, a healer and friend to humanity who in Sumerian myth was thought to have given humans the arts and sciences, the industries and manners of civilization; the first law book was considered his creation.
 * Enlil was the god of storm, wind, and rain. He was the chief god of the Sumerian pantheon   and the patron god of Nippur.  His consort was Ninlil, the goddess of the south wind.
 * Inanna was the goddess of love, sexuality, and war; the deification of Venus, the morning (eastern) and evening (western) star, at the temple (shared with An) at Uruk. Deified kings may have re-enacted the marriage of Inanna and Dumuzid with priestesses.
 * The sun-god Utu at Larsa in the south and Sippar in the north,
 * The moon god Sin at Ur.

These deities formed the main pantheon, and in addition to this there were hundreds of other minor gods. Sumerian gods were often associated with different cities, and their religious importance often waxed and waned with those cities' political power. The gods were said to have created human beings from clay for the purpose of serving them. The temples organized the mass labour projects needed for irrigation agriculture. Citizens had a labor duty to the temple, though they could avoid it by a payment of silver.

Cosmology
Sumerians believed that the universe consisted of a flat disk enclosed by a dome. The Sumerian afterlife involved a descent into a gloomy netherworld to spend eternity in a wretched existence as a Gidim (ghost).

The universe was divided into four quarters:
 * To the north were the hill-dwelling Subartu, who were periodically raided for slaves, timber, and other raw materials.
 * To the west were the tent-dwelling Martu, ancient Semitic-speaking peoples living as pastoral nomads tending herds of sheep and goats.
 * To the south was the land of Dilmun, a trading state associated with the land of the dead and the place of creation.
 * To the east were the Elamites, a rival people with whom the Sumerians were frequently at war.

Their known world extended from The Upper Sea or Mediterranean coastline, to The Lower Sea, the Persian Gulf and the land of Meluhha (probably the Indus Valley) and Magan (Oman), famed for its copper ores.

Temple and temple organisation
Ziggurats (Sumerian temples) each had an individual name and consisted of a forecourt, with a central pond for purification. The temple itself had a central nave with aisles along either side. Flanking the aisles would be rooms for the priests. At one end would stand the podium and a mudbrick table for animal and vegetable sacrifices. Granaries and storehouses were usually located near the temples. After a time the Sumerians began to place the temples on top of multi-layered square constructions built as a series of rising terraces, giving rise to the Ziggurat style.

Funerary practices
It was believed that when people died, they would be confined to a gloomy world of Ereshkigal, whose realm was guarded by gateways with various monsters designed to prevent people entering or leaving. The dead were buried outside the city walls in graveyards where a small mound covered the corpse, along with offerings to monsters and a small amount of food. Those who could afford it sought burial at Dilmun. Human sacrifice was found in the death pits at the Ur royal cemetery where Queen Puabi was accompanied in death by her servants.

Agriculture and hunting
The Sumerians adopted an agricultural lifestyle perhaps as early as c. 5000–4500 BC. The region demonstrated a number of core agricultural techniques, including organized irrigation, large-scale intensive cultivation of land, monocropping involving the use of plough agriculture, and the use of an agricultural specialized labour force under bureaucratic control. The necessity to manage temple accounts with this organization led to the development of writing (c. 3500 BC).

In the early Sumerian Uruk period, the primitive pictograms suggest that sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs were domesticated. They used oxen as their primary beasts of burden and donkeys or equids as their primary transport animal and "woollen clothing as well as rugs were made from the wool or hair of the animals. ... By the side of the house was an enclosed garden planted with trees and other plants; wheat and probably other cereals were sown in the fields, and the shaduf was already employed for the purpose of irrigation. Plants were also grown in pots or vases."

The Sumerians were one of the first known beer-drinking societies. Cereals were plentiful and were the key ingredient in their early brew. They brewed multiple kinds of beer consisting of wheat, barley, and mixed grain beers. Beer brewing was very important to the Sumerians. It was referenced in the Epic of Gilgamesh when Enkidu was introduced to the food and beer of Gilgamesh's people: "Drink the beer, as is the custom of the land... He drank the beer-seven jugs! and became expansive and sang with joy!"

The Sumerians practiced similar irrigation techniques as those used in Egypt. American anthropologist Robert McCormick Adams says that irrigation development was associated with urbanization, and that 89% of the population lived in the cities.

They grew barley, chickpeas, lentils, wheat, dates, onions, garlic, lettuce, leeks and mustard. Sumerians caught many fish and hunted fowl and gazelle.

Sumerian agriculture depended heavily on irrigation. The irrigation was accomplished by the use of shaduf, canals, channels, dykes, weirs, and reservoirs. The frequent violent floods of the Tigris, and less so, of the Euphrates, meant that canals required frequent repair and continual removal of silt, and survey markers and boundary stones needed to be continually replaced. The government required individuals to work on the canals in a corvée, although the rich were able to exempt themselves.

As is known from the "Sumerian Farmer's Almanac", after the flood season and after the Spring equinox and the Akitu or New Year Festival, using the canals, farmers would flood their fields and then drain the water. Next they made oxen stomp the ground and kill weeds. They then dragged the fields with pickaxes. After drying, they plowed, harrowed, and raked the ground three times, and pulverized it with a mattock, before planting seed. Unfortunately, the high evaporation rate resulted in a gradual increase in the salinity of the fields. By the Ur III period, farmers had switched from wheat to the more salt-tolerant barley as their principal crop.

Sumerians harvested during the spring in three-person teams consisting of a reaper, a binder, and a sheaf handler. The farmers would use threshing wagons, driven by oxen, to separate the cereal heads from the stalks and then use threshing sleds to disengage the grain. They then winnowed the grain/chaff mixture.

Art
The Sumerians were great artists. Sumerian artefacts show great detail and ornamentation, with fine semi-precious stones imported from other lands, such as lapis lazuli, marble, and diorite, and precious metals like hammered gold, incorporated into the design. Since stone was rare it was reserved for sculpture. The most widespread material in Sumer was clay, as a result many Sumerian objects are made of clay. Metals such as gold, silver, copper, and bronze, along with shells and gemstones, were used for the finest sculptures and inlays. Small stones of all kinds, including more precious stones such as lapis lazuli, alabaster, and serpentine, were used for cylinder seals.

Some of the most famous masterpieces are the Lyres of Ur, which are considered to be the world's oldest surviving stringed instruments. They were discovered by Leonard Woolley when the Royal Cemetery of Ur was excavated between 1922 and 1934.

Architecture
The Tigris-Euphrates plain lacked minerals and trees. Sumerian structures were made of plano-convex mudbrick, not fixed with mortar or cement. Mud-brick buildings eventually deteriorate, so they were periodically destroyed, leveled, and rebuilt on the same spot. This constant rebuilding gradually raised the level of cities, which thus came to be elevated above the surrounding plain. The resultant hills, known as tells, are found throughout the ancient Near East.

According to Archibald Sayce, the primitive pictograms of the early Sumerian (i.e. Uruk) era suggest that "Stone was scarce, but was already cut into blocks and seals. Brick was the ordinary building material, and with it cities, forts, temples and houses were constructed. The city was provided with towers and stood on an artificial platform; the house also had a tower-like appearance. It was provided with a door which turned on a hinge, and could be opened with a sort of key; the city gate was on a larger scale, and seems to have been double. The foundation stones—or rather bricks—of a house were consecrated by certain objects that were deposited under them."

The most impressive and famous of Sumerian buildings are the ziggurats, large layered platforms that supported temples. Sumerian cylinder seals also depict houses built from reeds not unlike those built by the Marsh Arabs of Southern Iraq until as recently as 400 CE. The Sumerians also developed the arch, which enabled them to develop a strong type of dome. They built this by constructing and linking several arches. Sumerian temples and palaces made use of more advanced materials and techniques, such as buttresses, recesses, half columns, and clay nails.

Mathematics
The Sumerians developed a complex system of metrology c. 4000 BC. This advanced metrology resulted in the creation of arithmetic, geometry, and algebra. From c. 2600 BC onwards, the Sumerians wrote multiplication tables on clay tablets and dealt with geometrical exercises and division problems. The earliest traces of the Babylonian numerals also date back to this period. The period c. 2700–2300 BC saw the first appearance of the abacus, and a table of successive columns which delimited the successive orders of magnitude of their sexagesimal number system. The Sumerians were the first to use a place value numeral system. There is also anecdotal evidence the Sumerians may have used a type of slide rule in astronomical calculations. They were the first to find the area of a triangle and the volume of a cube.

Economy and trade
Discoveries of obsidian from far-away locations in Anatolia and lapis lazuli from Badakhshan in northeastern Afghanistan, beads from Dilmun (modern Bahrain), and several seals inscribed with the Indus Valley script suggest a remarkably wide-ranging network of ancient trade centered on the Persian Gulf. For example, Imports to Ur came from many parts of the world. In particular, the metals of all types had to be imported.

The Epic of Gilgamesh refers to trade with far lands for goods, such as wood, that were scarce in Mesopotamia. In particular, cedar from Lebanon was prized. The finding of resin in the tomb of Queen Puabi at Ur, indicates it was traded from as far away as Mozambique.

The Sumerians used slaves, although they were not a major part of the economy. Slave women worked as weavers, pressers, millers, and porters.

Sumerian potters decorated pots with cedar oil paints. The potters used a bow drill to produce the fire needed for baking the pottery. Sumerian masons and jewelers knew and made use of alabaster (calcite), ivory, iron, gold, silver, carnelian, and lapis lazuli.

Trade with the Indus valley
Evidence for imports from the Indus to Ur can be found from around 2350 BC. Various objects made with shell species that are characteristic of the Indus coast, particularly Turbinella pyrum and Pleuroploca trapezium, have been found in the archaeological sites of Mesopotamia dating from around 2500–2000 BC. Carnelian beads from the Indus were found in the Sumerian tombs of Ur, the Royal Cemetery at Ur, dating to 2600–2450. In particular, carnelian beads with an etched design in white were probably imported from the Indus Valley, and made according to a technique of acid-etching developed by the Harappans. Lapis lazuli was imported in great quantity by Egypt, and already used in many tombs of the Naqada II period (c. 3200 BC). Lapis lazuli probably originated in northern Afghanistan, as no other sources are known, and had to be transported across the Iranian plateau to Mesopotamia, and then Egypt.

Several Indus seals with Harappan script have also been found in Mesopotamia, particularly in Ur, Babylon and Kish.

Gudea, the ruler of the Neo-Summerian Empire at Lagash, is recorded as having imported "translucent carnelian" from Meluhha, generally thought to be the Indus Valley area. Various inscriptions also mention the presence of Meluhha traders and interpreters in Mesopotamia. About twenty seals have been found from the Akkadian and Ur III sites, that have connections with Harappa and often use Harappan symbols or writing.

The Indus Valley Civilization only flourished in its most developed form between 2400 and 1800 BC, but at the time of these exchanges, it was a much larger entity than the Mesopotamian civilization, covering an area of 1.2 million square meters with thousands of settlements, compared to an area of only about 65.000 square meters for the occupied area of Mesopotamia, while the largest cities were comparable in size at about 30–40,000 inhabitants.

Money and credit
Large institutions kept their accounts in barley and silver, often with a fixed rate between them. The obligations, loans and prices in general were usually denominated in one of them. Many transactions involved debt, for example goods consigned to merchants by temple and beer advanced by "ale women".

Commercial credit and agricultural consumer loans were the main types of loans. The trade credit was usually extended by temples in order to finance trade expeditions and was nominated in silver. The interest rate was set at 1/60 a month (one shekel per mina) some time before 2000 BC and it remained at that level for about two thousand years. Rural loans commonly arose as a result of unpaid obligations due to an institution (such as a temple), in this case the arrears were considered to be lent to the debtor. They were denominated in barley or other crops and the interest rate was typically much higher than for commercial loans and could amount to 1/3 to 1/2 of the loan principal.

Periodically, rulers signed "clean slate" decrees that cancelled all the rural (but not commercial) debt and allowed bondservants to return to their homes. Customarily, rulers did it at the beginning of the first full year of their reign, but they could also be proclaimed at times of military conflict or crop failure. The first known ones were made by Enmetena and Urukagina of Lagash in 2400–2350 BC. According to Hudson, the purpose of these decrees was to prevent debts mounting to a degree that they threatened the fighting force, which could happen if peasants lost their subsistence land or became bondservants due to inability to repay their debt.

Military
The almost constant wars among the Sumerian city-states for 2000 years helped to develop the military technology and techniques of Sumer to a high level. The first war recorded in any detail was between Lagash and Umma in c. 2450 BC on a stele called the Stele of the Vultures. It shows the king of Lagash leading a Sumerian army consisting mostly of infantry. The infantry carried spears, wore copper helmets, and carried rectangular shields. The spearmen are shown arranged in what resembles the phalanx formation, which requires training and discipline; this implies that the Sumerians may have used professional soldiers.

The Sumerian military used carts harnessed to onagers. These early chariots functioned less effectively in combat than did later designs, and some have suggested that these chariots served primarily as transports, though the crew carried battle-axes and lances. The Sumerian chariot comprised a four or two-wheeled device manned by a crew of two and harnessed to four onagers. The cart was composed of a woven basket and the wheels had a solid three-piece design.

Sumerian cities were surrounded by defensive walls. The Sumerians engaged in siege warfare between their cities, but the mudbrick walls were able to deter some foes.

Technology
Examples of Sumerian technology include: the wheel, cuneiform script, arithmetic and geometry, irrigation systems, Sumerian boats, lunisolar calendar, bronze, leather, saws, chisels, hammers, braces, bits, nails, pins, rings, hoes, axes, knives, lancepoints, arrowheads, swords, glue, daggers, waterskins, bags, harnesses, armor, quivers, war chariots, scabbards, boots, sandals, harpoons and beer. The Sumerians had three main types of boats:
 * clinker-built sailboats stitched together with hair, featuring bitumen waterproofing
 * skin boats constructed from animal skins and reeds
 * wooden-oared ships, sometimes pulled upstream by people and animals walking along the nearby banks

Legacy
Evidence of wheeled vehicles appeared in the mid-4th millennium BC, near-simultaneously in Mesopotamia, the Northern Caucasus (Maykop culture) and Central Europe. The wheel initially took the form of the potter's wheel. The new concept led to wheeled vehicles and mill wheels. The Sumerians' cuneiform script is the oldest (or second oldest after the Egyptian hieroglyphs) which has been deciphered (the status of even older inscriptions such as the Jiahu symbols and Tartaria tablets is controversial). The Sumerians were among the first astronomers, mapping the stars into sets of constellations, many of which survived in the zodiac and were also recognized by the ancient Greeks. They were also aware of the five planets that are easily visible to the naked eye.

They invented and developed arithmetic by using several different number systems including a mixed radix system with an alternating base 10 and base 6. This sexagesimal system became the standard number system in Sumer and Babylonia. They may have invented military formations and introduced the basic divisions between infantry, cavalry, and archers. They developed the first known codified legal and administrative systems, complete with courts, jails, and government records.

The first true city-states arose in Sumer, roughly contemporaneously with similar entities in what are now Syria and Lebanon. Several centuries after the invention of cuneiform, the use of writing expanded beyond debt/payment certificates and inventory lists to be applied for the first time, about 2600 BC, to messages and mail delivery, history, legend, mathematics, astronomical records, and other pursuits. Conjointly with the spread of writing, the first formal schools were established, usually under the auspices of a city-state's primary temple.

Language

 * Sumerian Language Page, perhaps the oldest Sumerian website on the web (it dates back to 1996), features compiled lexicon, detailed FAQ, extensive links, and so on.

title: Sumer