MADE BY

MUHAMMAD USMAN KARIM Social Studies

Task;3

RISE AND FALL OF SUMERIAN CIVILIZATION

Despite the Sumerian’s leading role of Other races should not be underestimated. While with prehistory only approximate dates can be offered, historical periods require a firm chronological frame work, which, unfortunately, has not yet been established for the first half of the 3rd millennium BC.

The basis for the chronological after about 1450 BC is provided by the data in the Assyrian and Babylonia king lists, which can often be checked by dated tablets and the Assyrian lists of eponyms (annual officials whose names served to identify each year).

It is, however, still uncertain how much time separated the middle of the 15th century BC from the end of the first 1st dynasty of Babylon, which is therefore variously dated to 1594 BC (“middle”), 1530 BC(“short”), or 1730 BC (“long” chronology. As a compromise, the middle chronology is used here.

From 1594 BC several chronologically over lapping dynasties reach back to the beginning of the 3rd dynasties of Ur, about 2112 BC. From this point to the beginning of the dynasty of Akkad (c. 2334 BC) the interval can only be calculated to with in 40 to 50 years, via the ruling houses of Lagash and the rather uncertain tradition regarding the succession of Gutian viceroys.

With Ur-Nanshe(c. 2520 BC), the first king of the 1st dynasty of Lagash there is a possible variation of 70 to 80 years, and earlier dates are a matter of guess work; they depend upon factors of only limited relevance, such as computation of occupation of destruction levels, the degree of development in the script (paleography),

the characters of the sculpture, pottery, and cylinder seal, and their correlation at different sites. In short the chronology of the first half of the 3rd millennium is largely a matter for the intuition of the individual author. Carbon-14 dates are present too few and far between to be given undue weight.

Consequently, the turn of the 4th to 3rd millennium is to be accepted, with due caution and reservations, as the date of the flourishing of the archaic civilization of uruk and of the invention of writing

Key FeaturesIn uruk and probably also in their cities of comprable size,

the sumerians led a city life that can be more or less reconstruced as follows: temples and residential districts; intensive agriculture , stock breeding, fishing ,and date palm cultivation forming the four main stays of the ecnomy; and highly specialized industries carried on by sculptors, seal engravers, smiths, carpenters, ship builders, potters, and workers of reed and textiles.

That organized city life existed is demonstrated chiefly by the existence of inscribed tablets. The earliest tablets contain figures with the items they enumerate and measures with the items they measure, as well as personal names and, occasionally, probably professions. This shows the purely practical origins of writing in Mesopotamia: it began not as a means of magic or as a way for the ruler to record his achievements, for example , but as an aid to memory for an admistration that was ever expanding its area of operations.

The earliest examples of writing are very difficult to penetrate because of their extremely laconic formulation, which presupposes a knowledge of the context, and because of the still very imperfect rendering of the spoken word. More over, many of the archaic signs were pruned away after a short period of use and cannot be traced in the paleography of later periods, so that they cannot be identified

Part of the population was supported with ratios from a central point of distribution, which relieved people of the necessity of providing their basic food them selves, in return for their work all day and every day, at least for most of the year. The cities kept up activate trade with foreign lands

Impact on surrounding world one of the most important question that has to be met

when dealing with “organization” and “city life” is that of social structure and the form of government ;

However, it can be answered only with difficulty, and the use of evidence from later periods carry with it thedanger of anachronisms. The Sumerians word for ruler,

excellence is lugal, which etymologically means “big person”. The first occurrence comes form kish about 2700 BC, since an earlier instance form uruk is uncertain because it cold simply be intended as a personal name: “monsieur legrand” in uruk the rulers special tittles was “EN”. In later periods this word (etymology unknown), which is also found in divine names such

Enlil and enki had a predominantly religious connotation that is translated, for want of a better designation, as “en-priest, en-priestess”. En, as the rulers title, is encountered in the traditional epics of the Sumerians (Gilgamesh is the “En of kullab,” a district of Uruk) and particularly in the personal name , such as “the- en-has-abundanse” , “the-en-occupies-the-throne,” and many others

major achievement It has often been asked if the ruler of uruk is to

be recognized in artistic representation. A man feeding sheep with flowering branches, a prominent personality in seal design, might thus represent the ruler or a priest in his capacity as administrator and protector of flocks. The same question may be posed in the cased of a man who is depicted on a stelaaiming an arrow at a lion. These question are purely speculative, however: even if the “protector of flocks” were identical with the en, there is no ground for seeing in the ruler a person with a predominantly religious function

Reference : wikipedia.com thank you the end