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The history of Sumer spans through the 5th to 3rd millennia BCE in southern Mesopotamia, and is taken to include the prehistoric Ubaid and Uruk periods. Sumer was the region's earliest known civilization and ended with the downfall of the Third Dynasty of Ur around 2004 BCE.
Uruk, one of Sumer's largest cities, has been estimated to have had a population of 50,000–80,000 at its height. [62] 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. [63]
Map showing the extent of Mesopotamia. The Civilization of Mesopotamia ranges from the earliest human occupation in the Paleolithic period up to Late antiquity.This history is pieced together from evidence retrieved from archaeological excavations and, after the introduction of writing in the late 4th millennium BC, an increasing amount of historical sources.
Sumerian literature constitutes the earliest known corpus of recorded literature, including the religious writings and other traditional stories maintained by the Sumerian civilization and largely preserved by the later Akkadian and Babylonian empires.
During the Old Babylonian Period, the Sumerian and Akkadian languages were retained for religious purposes; the majority of Sumerian mythological literature known to historians today comes from the Old Babylonian Period, [5] either in the form of transcribed Sumerian texts (most notably the Babylonian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh) or in the ...
The Sumerian King List (abbreviated SKL) or Chronicle of the One Monarchy is an ancient literary composition written in Sumerian that was likely created and redacted to legitimize the claims to power of various city-states and kingdoms in southern Mesopotamia during the late third and early second millennium BC.
Music was a normal part of social life in Mesopotamia [14] and was used in many secular contexts. [15] Music played important roles at funerals, [16] among royalty, [17] and was also depicted in relation to sports and sex. [18] Mesopotamian love songs, which represented a distinct genre of music, nevertheless shared features in common with ...
Tablet of Hammurabi (𒄩𒄠𒈬𒊏𒁉, 4th line from the top), King of Babylon. British Museum. [4] [5] [6] With little evidence on hand, there is not much known about the reigns of the kings from Sumuabum through Sin-muballit — other than the fact they were Amorites rather than Akkadians. What is known, however, is that they did not add ...