The history of Sumerians

Sumer, the land which came to be known in classical times as Babylonia, consists of the lower half of Mesopotamia, roughly identical with modern Iraq from north of Bagdad to the Persian Gulf.

About 7,000 years ago, the Sumerians made their home in a new land and one of the first civilizations was born. Although starting out as small villages and groups of hunter-gatherers, Sumer is notable because of its development into a chain of cities.

The people of Sumer built city walls and temples and dug canals, which may be counted as some of the earlier of the world’s first engineering works of their kind. It is also of interest to note that these people from the beginning of recorded history fought over water rights and agricultural land, and irrigation were extremely vital to them.

The Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia had an unusual flair for technological invention. Even the earliest settlers had come upon the idea of irrigation, which made it possible for them to collect and channel the rich silt laden overflow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and use it to water and fructify their field and gardens.

The first great city of Sumer was called Eridu. The Sumerians believed that this city was given to them by a god called Enki, who they also believed created mankind. From 5400 BC to 2900 BC Eridu was the most prominent city in Sumer until there was great flood. During the 5th Millennium BCE, Sumerians began to develop large towns which became city-states. This was made by possible by their systems of cultivation of crops, including some of the world’s earliest irrigation systems.

Sumerians created an advanced civilization with its own system of elaborate language and writing, architecture and arts, astronomy and mathematics. Their religious system was a complex one comprised of hundreds of gods.

The Sumerians disappeared from history about 2000 BC as a result of military domination by various Semitic peoples.
The history of Sumerians

The origin of Assyrians

The Assyrians come from Mesopotamia, the area between the two famous rivers, the Tigris (Idiglat) and the Euphrates (Purattu). It is a well-known fact that Mesopotamia was the center of an enormously rich culture. Its history goes back to the dawn of civilization and of sedentary society. Assyria is to be found in the North of Mesopotamia.

Originally, Assyria was the region around the city of Ashur, situated east of Aram Naharaim, along the banks of the river Tigris, but after the Assyrian kings had subjugated much of the ancient Near East, it also became the name of the Assyrian empire (c. 1,300 -612 BC).

The Assyrians occupied Babylon for a brief period in the thirteenth century B.C. Invasions of iron-producing peoples into the Near East and into the Aegean region in approximately 1200 B.C. disrupted the indigenous empires of Mesopotamia.

The first Assyrian ruler bears the title of Ishakku, which seems to mean priest-prince, and implies subjection to some other ruler elsewhere. These early rulers must have been subject princes of the kings in Babylonia. Apparently the first of them are Ishme-Dagan and his son, Shamshi-Adad I.

The latter of these built a great temple in the city of Asshur and dedicated it to the gods Anu and Adad. The capital of the Assyrian Empire was a city called Nineveh. Nineveh became a great city of learning. It had a famous librarythat held thousands of clay tabletswith writings from Sumer and Babylon. The Assyrians began to expand to the west in the early part of the ninth century B.C.; by 859 they had reached the Mediterranean Sea, where they occupied Phoenician cities.
The origin of Assyrians