8. The Sumerians - Fall of the First Cities

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Uruk is linked to the oldest surviving world literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh, whose king was two-thirds divine and one-third human.
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One Sumerian factory produced 1,100 tons of flour yearly, plus bread, beer, and linseed oil, using 134 specialists and 858 skilled workers, most women.
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Ishbi-Ira requested transport for grain, used the request to stay in Isin with the supplies, and declared himself king.
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Lagash accumulated wealth through raiding, enslavement, and selling captives, exposing the organized violence beneath urban prosperity.
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Around 3500 BC, Uruk reached approximately 50,000 inhabitants, making it the largest city the world had yet seen.
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For Sumerians and Akkadians, kur meant both “mountain” and the rebellious, barbaric wilderness beyond settled society.
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Sumerian’s linguistic isolation has led historians to ask whether its speakers reached southern Iraq by boat.
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Babylonian and Assyrian kings invoked Ur and Sumer in their titles to claim legitimacy from Mesopotamia’s earliest civilization.
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Ur stood where the Euphrates met the sea, turning its location into a prosperous trading port and fishing town.
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Irrigation poisoned southern Iraq’s soil with salt. Evaporation left minerals behind, while rainfall could not wash them away.
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Sumerian recipes used beer, onions, rocket, coriander, semolina, cumin, beetroot, leeks, garlic, and carrots.
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The first writing tracked food rations and supplies with pictorial signs for quantities and objects.
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Cuneiform began with wedge-shaped reeds pressed into clay, using two abundant local materials.
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Sumerian base-60 mathematics still divides hours, minutes, seconds, and circles into 60, 60, and 360.
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Mountain erosion releases quartz and feldspar particles that rivers carry downstream as fertile silt.
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Sargon weakened conquered cities by demolishing their walls, stripping rebels of their strongest defenses.
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Ur-Nammu standardized bronze market weights and divided silver into fixed units, laying foundations for monetary exchange.
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Sumerian tradition treated civilization as a package of crafts, wisdom, government, and inheritance rules, alongside conquest and plunder.
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Utu-Hengal’s victory launched the Third Dynasty of Ur, also called the Sumerian Empire or Sumerian Renaissance.
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Akkadian and Sumerian communities coexisted for centuries, sharing cities, achievements, and failures.
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A climate disruption reduced rainfall across the Middle East and made the Akkadian Empire’s river-fed agriculture unreliable.

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