The oldest settlements known to mankind date back to the beginning of the 4th millennium BC. e. and are located in different places of Mesopotamia. One of the Sumerian settlements was discovered under the hill Tell el-Ubaid, after which the entire period was named. (Similar hills, called "telli" in Arabic by the modern local population, were formed from the accumulation of construction remains.)
The Sumerians built houses that were round, and later rectangular in plan, from stems of reeds or reeds, the tops of which were tied with a bundle. The huts were covered with clay to retain heat. Images of such buildings are found on ceramics and on seals. A number of cult, dedicatory stone vessels are made in the form of huts (Baghdad, Iraqi Museum; London, British Museum; Berlin Museum).
Belonging to the same period, primitive clay figurines depict the mother goddess (Baghdad, Iraqi Museum). Clay molded vessels are decorated with geometric paintings in the form of birds, goats, dogs, palm leaves (Baghdad, Iraqi Museum) and have subtle decorations.
The culture of the Sumerians of the second half of the 4th millennium BC. e.
Temple at al-Ubaid
An example of a temple building is the small temple of the fertility goddess Ninhursag in al-Ubayd, a suburb of the city of Ur (2600 BC). It was located on an artificial platform (area 32x25 m) made of tightly compacted clay, to which a staircase led with a canopy on pillars in front the front door. According to the ancient Sumerian tradition, the temple walls and platforms were dissected by shallow vertical niches and projections. The retaining walls of the platform were coated with black bitumen at the bottom and whitewashed at the top and thus were also divided horizontally. This horizontal rhythm was echoed by the frieze ribbons on the walls of the sanctuary. The cornice was decorated with hammered nails made of baked clay with caps in the form of symbols of the goddess of fertility - flowers with red and white petals. In the niches above the cornice there were copper figures of walking bulls 55 cm high. Even higher on the white wall, as already indicated, three friezes were laid out at some distance from each other: a high relief with figures of lying bulls made of copper, and above it two flat ones, inlaid with white mother-of-pearl on a black slate background. On one of them there is a whole scene: priests in long skirts, with shaved heads, milking cows and churning butter (Baghdad, Iraqi Museum). On the upper frieze, on the same black slate background, there are images of white doves and cows facing the entrance to the temple. Thus, the color scheme of the friezes was common with the coloring of the temple platform, making up a single, holistic color scheme.
On the sides of the entrance were placed two statues of lions (Baghdad, Iraqi Museum), made of wood covered with a layer of bitumen with chased copper sheets. The eyes and protruding tongues of the lions were made of colored stones, which greatly enlivened the sculpture and created a colorful saturation.
Above the entrance door was placed a copper high relief (London, British Museum), turning in places into a round sculpture, depicting a fantastic lion-headed eagle Imdugud holding two deer in its claws. The fully established heraldic composition of this relief, repeated with minor changes in a number of monuments of the mid-3rd millennium BC. e. (silver vase of the ruler of the city of Lagash, Entemena - Paris, Louvre; seals, dedicatory reliefs, for example, a palette, Dudu from Lagash - Paris, Louvre), and was, apparently, the emblem of the god Ningirsu.
The columns that supported the canopy over the entrance were also inlaid, some with colored stones, mother-of-pearl and shells, others with metal plates attached to a wooden base with nails with colored heads. The steps of the staircase were made of white limestone, and the sides of the staircase were lined with wood.
What was new in the architecture of the temple at al-Ubaid was the use of round sculpture and relief as decoration for the building, and the use of a column as a load-bearing part. The temple was a small but elegant building.
Temples similar to the one at al-Ubaid were opened in the settlements of Tell Brak and Khafaje.
Ziggurat
A unique type of religious building also developed in Sumer - the ziggurat, which for thousands of years played, like the pyramid in Egypt, a very important role in the architecture of all of Western Asia. This is a stepped tower, rectangular in plan, lined with solid masonry of raw brick. Sometimes only a small room was built in the front part of the ziggurat. On the upper platform there was a small temple, the so-called “home of God.” A ziggurat was usually built at the temple of the main local deity.
Sculpture
Sculpture in Sumer did not develop as intensively as architecture. Mortuary cult buildings associated with the need to convey portrait likeness, as in Egypt, did not exist here. Small cult dedicatory statues, not intended for a specific place in a temple or tomb, depicted a person in a praying pose.
The sculptural figures of the southern Mesopotamia are distinguished by barely outlined details and conventional proportions (the head often sits directly on the shoulders without a neck, the entire block of stone is very little dissected). Vivid examples are two small statues: the figure of the head of the granaries of the city of Uruk named Kurlil (height - 39 cm; Paris, Louvre) found in al-Ubayd and the figure of an unknown woman originating from Lagash (height - 26.5 cm; Paris, Louvre) . There is no individual portrait resemblance in the faces of these statues. These are typical images of Sumerians with sharply emphasized ethnic features.
In the centers of the northern Mesopotamia, plastics developed generally along the same path, but also had its own specific characteristics. Very unique, for example, are the figurines from Eshnunna depicting adorants (prayers), a god and a goddess (Paris, Louvre; Berlin Museum). They are characterized by more elongated proportions, short clothes that leave their legs and often one shoulder exposed, and huge inlaid eyes.
Despite all the conventionality of their execution, the dedicatory figurines of ancient Sumer are distinguished by their great and unique expressiveness. Just as in reliefs, certain rules for conveying figures, poses and gestures have already been established here, which pass from century to century.
Relief
A number of votive pallets and steles have been found in Ur and Lagash. The most important of them, the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. e., are the palette of the ruler of Lagash Ur-Nanche (Paris, Louvre) and the so-called “Stele of the Vultures” of the ruler of Lagash Eannatum (Paris, Louvre).
The Ur-Nanshe palette is very primitive in its artistic form. Ur-Nanshe himself is depicted twice, in two registers: on the upper one he goes to the ceremonial foundation of the temple at the head of the procession of his children, and on the lower one he feasts among those close to him. High social status Ur-Nanshe and his main role in the composition are emphasized by his large stature compared to others.
"The Stele of the Vultures"
The “Stele of the Vultures” was also solved in narrative form, which was created in honor of the victory of the ruler of the city of Lagash, Eannatum (XXV century BC) over the neighboring city of Umma and its ally the city of Kish. The height of the stele is only 75 cm, but it makes a monumental impression due to the peculiarities of the relief covering its sides. On the front side there is a huge figure of the god Ningirsu, the supreme god of the city of Lagash, who holds a net with small figures of defeated enemies and a club. On the other side, in four registers, there are several scenes sequentially telling about the campaigns of Eannatum. The subjects of the reliefs of ancient Sumer, as a rule, are either religious-cult or military.
Artistic craft of Sumer
In the field of artistic craft, during this period of development of the culture of ancient Sumer, significant achievements were observed, developing the traditions of the time of Uruk - Jemdet-Nasr. Sumerian craftsmen already knew how to process not only copper, but also gold and silver, alloyed various metals, minted metal products, inlaid them with colored stones, and knew how to make products with filigree and graining. Remarkable works that give an idea of the high level of development of the artistic craft of this time were revealed by excavations in the city of Ur of the “Royal Tombs” - the burials of the rulers of the city of the 27th-26th centuries BC. e. (I dynasty of the city of Ur).
The tombs are large rectangular pits. Along with the buried nobles in the tombs, there are many killed members of their retinue or slaves, slaves and warriors. A large number of different objects were placed in the graves: helmets, axes, daggers, spears made of gold, silver and copper, decorated with chasing, engraving, and granulation.
Among the grave goods is the so-called “standard” (London, British Museum) - two boards mounted on a shaft. It is believed that it was worn on a march in front of the army, and perhaps over the head of the leader. On this wooden base, using the technique of inlay on a layer of asphalt (shells - figures and lapis lazuli - background), scenes of the battle and feast of the victors are laid out. Here is the same already established line-by-line, narrative style in the arrangement of the figures, a certain Sumerian type of faces and many details documenting the life of the Sumerians of that time (clothing, weapons, carts).
Remarkable products of jewelers are a golden dagger with a lapis lazuli handle, in a golden scabbard covered with grain and filigree found in the “Royal Tombs” (Baghdad, Iraqi Museum), a golden helmet forged in the shape of a magnificent hairstyle (London, British Museum), a figurine of a donkey, made of an alloy of gold and silver, and a figurine of a goat pinching flowers (made of gold, lapis lazuli and mother-of-pearl).
The harp (Philadelphia, University Museum), discovered in the burial place of the noble Sumerian woman Shub-Ad, is distinguished by its colorful and highly artistic design. The resonator and other parts of the instrument are decorated with gold and inlaid with mother-of-pearl and lapis lazuli, and the upper part of the resonator is crowned with the head of a bull made of gold and lapis lazuli with eyes made of white shell, giving an unusually lively impression. The inlay on the front side of the resonator consists of several scenes based on the themes of the Mesopotamia folk tale.
Art of the second heyday of Sumer, XXIII-XXI centuries BC. e.
The end of the heyday of Akkadian art was marked by the invasion of the Gutians - tribes that conquered the Akkadian state and ruled in Mesopotamia for about a hundred years. The invasion affected the southern Mesopotamia to a lesser extent, and some of the ancient cities of this area experienced a new flourishing based on widespread trade exchanges. This applies to the cities of Lagash and Uru.
Lagash time Gudea
As evidenced by cuneiform texts, the ruler (the so-called “ensi”) of the city of Lagash, Gudea, carried out extensive construction work and was also involved in the restoration of ancient architectural monuments. But very few traces of this activity have survived to this day. But a clear idea of the level of development and stylistic features of the art of this time is given by quite numerous monuments of sculpture, which often combine features of Sumerian and Akkadian art.
Gudea Time Sculpture
During the excavations, more than a dozen dedicatory statues of Gudea himself were found (most are in Paris, in the Louvre), standing or sitting, often in a prayer position. They are distinguished by a high level of technical performance and demonstrate knowledge of anatomy. The statues are divided into two types: squat figures, reminiscent of early Sumerian sculpture, and more elongated, regular proportions, clearly executed in the traditions of Akkad. However, all the figures have a softly modeled naked body, and the heads of all the statues are portraits. Moreover, it is interesting to try to convey not only similarities, but also signs of age (some statues depict Gudea as a youth). It is also important that many of the sculptures are quite significant in size, up to 1.5 m in height, and are made of solid diorite brought from afar.
At the end of the 22nd century BC. e. the Gutians were expelled. Mesopotamia was united this time under the leadership of the city of Ur during the reign of the III dynasty, which headed the new Sumerian-Akkadian state. A number of monuments of this time are associated with the name of the ruler of Ur, Ur-Nammu. He created one of the earliest sets of laws of Hammurabi.
Architecture of Ur III Dynasty
During the reign of the III dynasty of Ur, especially under Ur-Nammu, the construction of temples became widespread. The best preserved of all is a large complex consisting of a palace, two large temples and the first large ziggurat in the city of Ur, which was built in the 22nd-21st centuries BC. e. The ziggurat consisted of three ledges with an inclined profile of the walls and was 21 m high. Stairs led from one terrace to another. The rectangular base of the lower terrace had an area of 65x43 m. The ledges or terraces of the ziggurat were of different colors: the lower one was painted with black bitumen, the upper one was whitewashed, and the middle one was red with the natural color of burnt brick. Perhaps the terraces were landscaped. There is an assumption that ziggurats were used by priests to observe the heavenly bodies. In its severity, clarity and monumentality of forms, as well as its general outline, the ziggurat is close to the pyramids of ancient Egypt.
The rapid development of temple construction was also reflected in one of the significant monuments of this time - a stele depicting a scene of a procession to the ritual foundation of the temple of the ruler Ur-Nammu (Berlin Museum). In this work they united characteristic features Sumerian and Akkadian art: line-by-line division comes from monuments such as the Ur-Nanshe palette, and the correct proportions of the figures, subtlety, softness and realistic plastic interpretation are the heritage of Akkad.
Literature
- V. I. Avdiev. History of the Ancient East, ed. II. Gospolitizdat, M., 1953.
- C. Gordon. The Ancient East in the light of new excavations. M., 1956.
- M. V. Dobroklonsky. Art history foreign countries, Volume I, Academy of Arts of the USSR. Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after I. E. Repin., 1961.
- I. M. Loseva. Art Ancient Mesopotamia. M., 1946.
- N. D. Flittner. Culture and arts of Mesopotamia. L.-M., 1958.
When did Sumerian culture begin? Why did it fall into decay? What were they like? cultural differences between the independent cities of Southern Mesopotamia? Doctor talks about the culture of independent cities, the dispute between winter and summer and the image of the sky in the Sumerian tradition philosophical sciences Vladimir Emelyanov.
You can describe Sumerian culture, or you can try to give its characteristic features. I will take the second path, because the description of Sumerian culture is given quite fully by both Kramer and Jacobsen, and in the articles of Jan van Dyck, but it is necessary to highlight the characteristic features in order to determine the typology of Sumerian culture, to place it among others similar to it according to certain criteria.
First of all, it must be said that Sumerian culture originated in cities very distant from each other, each of which was located on its own canal, diverted from the Euphrates or the Tigris. This is a very significant sign not only of the formation of a state, but also of the formation of a culture. Each city had its own independent idea of the structure of the world, its own idea of the origin of the city and parts of the world, its own idea of the gods and its own calendar. Each city was governed by a popular assembly and had its own leader or high priest who headed the temple. There was constant competition for political supremacy between the 15–20 independent cities of Southern Mesopotamia. For most of Mesopotamia's history during the Sumerian period, cities tried to wrest this leadership from each other.
In Sumeria there was a concept of kingship, that is, royal power as a substance that passes from city to city. It transfers entirely arbitrarily: it was in one city, then it left from there, this city was defeated, and royalty was entrenched in the next dominant city. This is a very important concept, which shows that in Southern Mesopotamia for a long time there was no single political center, there was no political capital. In conditions where political competition occurs, the culture becomes characterized by competitiveness, as some researchers say, or agonism, as others say, that is, a competitive element is fixed in the culture.
For the Sumerians, there was no earthly authority that was absolute. If such authority does not exist on earth, it is usually sought in heaven. Modern monotheistic religions found such authority in the image of the one God, and among the Sumerians, who were very far from monotheism and lived 6,000 years ago, Heaven became such authority. They began to worship heaven as a sphere in which everything is exclusively correct and occurs according to once established laws. The sky has become the standard for earthly life. This explains the attraction of the Sumerian worldview to astrolatry - belief in the power of celestial bodies. From this belief, astrology would develop already in Babylonian and Assyrian times. The reason for the Sumerians' attraction to astrolatry and subsequently to astrology is precisely that there was no order on earth, there was no authority. Cities constantly fought with each other for supremacy. Either one city was strengthened, then another dominant city arose in its place. They were all united by the Sky, because when one constellation rises, it’s time to harvest barley, when another constellation rises, it’s time to plow, when the third one, it’s time to sow, and thus the starry sky determined the entire cycle of agricultural work and the entire life cycle of nature, to which it is very The Sumerians were attentive. They believed that order exists only at the top.
Thus, the agonistic nature of Sumerian culture largely predetermined its idealism - the search for an ideal at the top or the search for a dominant ideal. The sky was considered the dominant principle. But in the same way Sumerian culture the dominant principle was sought everywhere. There were a large number of literary works, which were based on a dispute between two objects, animals or some kind of tools, each of which boasted that it was better and more suitable for humans. And this is how these disputes were resolved: in the dispute between sheep and grain, grain won, because grain can feed most people for a longer period of time: there are grain reserves. In the dispute between the hoe and the plow, the hoe won because the plow stands on the ground only 4 months a year, and the hoe works all 12 months. Whoever can serve longer, whoever can feed more people, is right. In the dispute between summer and winter, winter won, because at this time irrigation work is carried out, water accumulates in the canals, and a reserve is created for the future harvest, that is, it is not the effect that wins, but the cause. Thus, in every Sumerian dispute there is a loser, called the "remainer", and there is a winner, called the "leader". “The grain is out, the sheep remains.” And there is an arbitrator who resolves this dispute.
This wonderful genre of Sumerian literature gives a very vivid idea of Sumerian culture as one that strives to find an ideal, to put forward something eternal, unchanging, long-lived, useful for a long time, thereby showing the advantage of this eternal and unchanging over that which changes quickly or that only serves for a short time. There is an interesting dialectic here, so to speak, a pre-dialectic of the eternal and the changeable. I even call Sumerian culture realized Platonism before Plato, because the Sumerians believed that there were certain primordial forces, or essences, or potencies of things, without which the very existence of the material world is impossible. They called these potencies or essences the word “me”. The Sumerians believed that the gods are not able to create anything in the world if these gods do not have “me”, and no heroic feat is possible without “me”, no work and no craft has meaning and has no meaning if they are not provided with their own “ meh." Seasons of the year have “meh”, crafts have “meh”, and musical instruments have their own “meh”. What are these “me” if not the embryos of Plato’s ideas?
We see that the Sumerians' belief in the existence of pre-eternal entities, pre-eternal forces is a clear sign of idealism, which manifested itself in Sumerian culture.
But this agonism and this idealism are quite tragic things, because, as Kramer rightly said, continuous agonism gradually leads to the self-destruction of culture. Continuous rivalry between cities, between people, continuous competition weakens the state, and, indeed, the Sumerian civilization ended quite quickly. It died out within a thousand years, and was replaced by completely different peoples, and the Sumerians assimilated with these peoples and completely dissolved as an ethnic group.
But history also shows that agonistic cultures, even after the destruction of the civilization that gave birth to them, exist for quite a long time. They live after their death. And if we move on to typology here, we can say that two more such cultures are known in history: these are the Greeks in Antiquity and these are the Arabs at the junction of antiquity and early Middle Ages. Both the Sumerians, the Greeks, and the Arabs were extreme admirers of Heaven, they were idealists, each was the best astrologer, astronomer, and astrologer in their era. They placed great faith in the power of Heaven and the celestial bodies. They destroyed themselves, destroyed themselves with continuous competition. The Arabs survived only through unification under the rule of a heavenly or even super-heavenly, supernatural principle in the form of the religion of Allah, that is, Islam allowed the Arabs to survive. But the Greeks had nothing like that, so the Greeks were quickly absorbed into the Roman Empire. In general, we can say that a certain typology of agonistic civilizations in history is being built. It is no coincidence that the Sumerians, Greeks and Arabs are similar to each other in their search for truth, their search for an ideal, both aesthetic and epistemological, their desire to find one generative principle through which the existence of the world can be explained. We can say that the Sumerians, the Greeks, and the Arabs did not live very well great life in history, but they left a legacy from which all subsequent peoples fed.
Idealistic states, agonistic states of the Sumerian type live much longer after their death than in the period of time allotted to them by history.
Vladimir Emelyanov, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor of the Eastern Faculty of St. Petersburg State University.
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Vladimir Emelyanov
What are the theories of the origin of the Sumerian civilization? How did the Sumerians portray themselves? What is known about the Sumerian language and its relationship with other languages? About reconstruction appearance Doctor of Philosophy Vladimir Emelyanov talks about the Sumerians, the self-name of the people and the worship of sacred trees.
Vladimir Emelyanov
What versions of the origin of Gilgamesh are there? Why were Sumerian sports games associated with the cult of the dead? How does Gilgamesh become the hero of the twelve-part calendar year? Doctor of Philosophy Vladimir Emelyanov talks about this. Historian Vladimir Emelyanov about the origin, cult and transformation of the heroic image of Gilgamesh.
Vladimir Emelyanov
The book by orientalist-Sumerologist V.V. Emelyanov tells in detail and fascinatingly about one of the most ancient civilizations in the history of mankind - Ancient Sumer. Unlike previous monographs devoted to this issue, here the components of Sumerian culture - civilization, artistic culture and ethnic character - are presented in unity for the first time.
In the seventies last century The discovery of the biblical flood made a huge impression. One fine day, a modest employee of the British Museum in London, George Smith, began deciphering cuneiform tablets sent from Nineveh and stored in the basement of the museum. To his surprise, he came across the oldest poem of mankind, describing the exploits and adventures of Gilgamesh, the legendary hero of the Sumerians. One day, while examining the tablets, Smith literally could not believe his eyes, because on some tablets he found fragments of the legend about the flood, strikingly similar to the biblical version.
Vladimir Emelyanov
There are very few pseudoscientific ideas, pseudoscientific theories in the study of Ancient Mesopotamia. Assyriology is unattractive to fantasy lovers, it is unattractive to freaks. This is a difficult science that studies the civilization of written monuments. There are very few images left from Ancient Mesopotamia, and there are no color images. There are no luxurious temples that have reached us in excellent condition. Basically, what we know about Ancient Mesopotamia, we know from cuneiform texts, and you need to be able to read cuneiform texts, and your imagination won’t run wild here. Nevertheless, interesting cases are also known in this science when pseudoscientific ideas or insufficiently scientific ideas were put forward regarding Ancient Mesopotamia. Moreover, the authors of these ideas were both people who had nothing to do with Assyriology or reading cuneiform texts, and Assyriologists themselves.
The transition to agriculture and livestock breeding began earliest in the Middle East region. There were already large settlements there in the 6th millennium, whose inhabitants knew the secrets of agriculture, pottery production and weaving. By the turn of the 3rd millennium, the first civilizations began to take shape in this region.
As already noted, the founder of anthropology L. G. Morgan used the concept of “civilization” to designate a higher stage of development of society than barbarism. IN modern science the concept of civilization is used to designate the stage of development of society at which there are: cities, class society, state and law, writing.
Those features that distinguish civilization from the primitive era arose in the 4th millennium, and fully manifested themselves in the 3rd millennium BC. e. in the lives of people who developed the valleys of rivers flowing in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Later, in the middle of the 3rd millennium, civilizations began to emerge in the Indus River Valley (in the territory of modern Pakistan) and in the Yellow River Valley (China).
Let us trace the process of formation and development of the first civilizations using the example of the Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer.
Irrigation agriculture as the basis of civilization
The Greeks called Mesopotamia (Interfluve) the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which in the territory of modern Iraq flow almost parallel to each other. In southern Mesopotamia, a people called the Sumerians created the first civilization in the region. It existed until the end of the 3rd millennium and became the basis for the development of other civilizations in the region, primarily for the Babylonian culture of the 2nd and 1st millennium BC. e.
The basis of Sumerian, like all other eastern civilizations, was irrigation agriculture. The rivers brought fertile silt from their upper reaches. Grains thrown into the mud gave high yields. But it was necessary to learn how to drain excess water during the flood period and supply water during the drought period, that is, to irrigate the fields. Irrigation of fields is called irrigation. As the population grew, people had to irrigate additional areas of land, creating complex irrigation systems.
Irrigation agriculture was the basis for the civilizational breakthrough. One of the first consequences of the development of irrigation was an increase in the population living in one area. Now dozens of clan communities, i.e. several thousand people, lived together, forming a new community: a large territorial community.
In order to maintain a complex irrigation system and ensure peace and order in a region with a large population, special authorities were required. This is how the state arose - an institution of power and management, which stood above all the tribal communities of the district and performed two internal functions: economic management and socio-political management (maintaining public order). Management required knowledge and experience, therefore, from the clan nobility, who had accumulated management skills within the clan, a category of people was formed who carried out the functions of public administration on an ongoing basis. State power extended to the entire territory of the district, and this territory was quite defined. This is where another meaning of the concept of state arose - a certain territorial entity. It was necessary to defend its territory, so the main external function of the state became the protection of its territory from external threats.
The appearance in one of the settlements of governing bodies, whose power extended to the entire district, turned this settlement into the center of the district. The center began to stand out among other villages in size and architecture. The largest buildings of a secular and religious nature were built here, and crafts and trade developed most actively. This is how cities appeared.
In Sumer, cities with adjacent rural areas existed independently as city-states for a long time. At the beginning of the 3rd millennium, Sumerian city-states such as Ur, Uruk, Lagash, and Kish numbered up to 10 thousand inhabitants. By the middle of the 3rd millennium, population density increased. For example, the population of the city-state of Lagash exceeded 100 thousand people. In the second half of the 3rd millennium, a number of city-states were united by the ruler of the city of Akkad, Sargon the Ancient, into the kingdom of Sumer and Akkad. However, the unification was not durable. More durable large states existed in Mesopotamia only in the 2nd and 1st millennia (Old Babylonian Kingdom, Assyrian Empire, New Babylonian Kingdom, Persian Empire).
Social order
How the city-state of Sumer was structured in the 3rd millennium. It was headed by a ruler (en or ensi, then lugal). The power of the ruler was limited by the people's assembly and the council of elders. Gradually, the position of ruler from an elective one became hereditary, although for a long time the procedures for confirming the right of a son to take over the post of his father by the people's assembly remained in place for a long time. The formation of the institution of hereditary power was due to the fact that the ruling dynasty had a monopoly on management experience.
The process of sacralization of the ruler’s personality played an important role in the formation of hereditary power. It was stimulated by the fact that the ruler combined secular and religious functions, since religion among farmers was closely intertwined with industrial magic. The cult of fertility played the main role, and the ruler, as the main manager of economic work, performed rituals designed to ensure a good harvest. In particular, he performed the ritual of “sacred marriage”, which was carried out on the eve of sowing. If the main deity of the city was feminine, then the ruler himself entered into a sacred marriage with him, if it was masculine, then the daughter or wife of the ruler. This gave the ruler’s family special authority; it was considered closer and more pleasing to God than other families. The deification of living rulers was atypical for the Sumerians. Only at the end of the 3rd millennium did rulers demand to consider themselves living gods. They were officially called that, but it does not follow from this that people believed that they were ruled by living gods.
The unity of secular and religious power was also secured by the fact that at first the community had a single administrative, economic and spiritual center - a temple, the house of God. There was a temple economy attached to the temple. It created and stored grain reserves to insure the community in case of crop failure. Plots were allocated on temple land for officials. Most of them combined administrative and religious functions, which is why they are traditionally called priests.
Another category of people who separated from the community were fed from the temple reserves - professional artisans who donated their products to the temple. Weavers and potters played an important role. The latter made ceramics on a potter's wheel. Foundry workers melted copper, silver and gold, then pouring them into clay molds; they knew how to make bronze, but there was little of it. A significant part of the artisans' products and surplus grain were sold. The centralization of trade in the hands of the temple administration made it possible to more profitably purchase those goods that were not available in Sumer itself, primarily metals and wood.
A group of professional warriors was also formed at the temple - the embryo of a standing army, armed with copper daggers and spears. The Sumerians created war chariots for leaders, harnessing donkeys to them.
Irrigation agriculture, although it required collective work to create an irrigation system, at the same time made it possible to make the patriarchal family the main economic unit of society. Each family worked on a plot of land allocated to it, and other relatives had no right to the result of the family’s labor. Family ownership of the produced product arose because each family could feed itself, and therefore there was no need to socialize and redistribute this product within the clan. The presence of private ownership of the produced product of labor was combined with the absence of complete private ownership of land. According to the Sumerians, the land belonged to God, the patron saint of the community, and people only used it, making sacrifices for it. Thus, collective ownership of land was preserved in a religious form. Community land could be leased for a fee, but there are no firmly established cases of sale of community land to private ownership.
The emergence of family property contributed to the emergence of wealth inequality. Due to dozens of everyday reasons, some families became richer, while others became poorer.
However, a more important source of inequality was professional differentiation in society: wealth was concentrated primarily in the hands of the managerial elite. The economic basis of this process was the emergence of a surplus product - an excess in food products. The greater the surplus, the greater the opportunity for the managerial elite to appropriate part of it, creating for themselves certain privileges. To a certain extent, the elite had the right to privileges: managerial work was more qualified and responsible. But gradually property received according to merit became a source of income disproportionate to merit.
The ruler's family stood out for its wealth. This is evidenced by the burials of the mid-3rd millennium in Ur. Here the tomb of the priestess Puabi was found, buried with a retinue of 25 people. Beautiful utensils and jewelry made of gold, silver, emeralds and lapis lazuli were found in the tomb. Including a crown of golden flowers and two harps decorated with sculptures of a bull and a cow. The bearded wild bull is the personification of the Ur god Nanna (god of the Moon), and the wild cow is the personification of Nanna's wife, the goddess Ningal. This suggests that Puabi was a priestess, a participant in the ritual of sacred marriage with the moon god. Burials with a retinue are rare and are associated with some very significant event.
The nature of the decorations shows that the nobility was already living a different life. Ordinary people at this time were content with little. Men's clothes in summer consisted of a loincloth, women wore skirts. In winter, a woolen cloak was added to this. The food was simple: barley cake, beans, dates, fish. Meat was eaten on holidays associated with the sacrifice of animals: people did not dare to eat meat without sharing it with the gods.
Social stratification gave rise to conflicts. The most serious problems arose when impoverished community members lost their land and fell into bondage to the rich due to their inability to repay what they had borrowed. In cases where the community was threatened with major conflicts caused by debt bondage, the Sumerians used a custom called “return to the mother”: the ruler canceled all bonded transactions, returned the mortgaged plots of land to its original owners, and freed the poor from debt slavery.
So, Sumerian society had mechanisms that protected community members from loss of freedom and livelihood. However, it also included categories of unfree people, slaves. The first and main source of slavery was intercommunal wars, that is, people who were strangers to the community became slaves. At first, only women were taken prisoner. Men were killed because it was difficult to keep them in obedience (a slave with a hoe in his hands was little inferior to a war with a spear). Women slaves worked in the temple economy and gave birth to children who became temple workers. These were not free people, but they could not be sold; they were trusted with weapons. They differed from the free ones in that they could not receive plots of communal land and become full members of the community. As the population grew, men were also taken captive. They worked at the temple and on family farms. Such slaves were sold, but they, as a rule, were not subjected to harsh exploitation, since it created the danger of an uprising and associated losses. Slavery in Sumer was predominantly patriarchal in nature, that is, slaves were viewed as junior and inferior members of the family.
These were the main features of the social structure of the Sumerian city-states of the first half of the 3rd millennium.
Spiritual culture
Writing. We know about the Sumerians because they invented writing. The growth of the temple economy made it important to record land, grain reserves, livestock, etc. These needs became the reason for the creation of writing. The Sumerians began writing on clay tablets, which dried in the sun and became very durable. The tablets have survived to this day in large quantities. They are deciphered, although sometimes very roughly.
At first, the letter took the form of stylized pictograms indicating the most important objects and actions. The sign of the foot meant “go”, “stand”, “bring”, etc. Such writing is called pictographic (pictured) or ideographic, since the sign conveyed a whole idea, an image. Then signs appeared to indicate the roots of words, syllables and individual sounds. Since the signs were extruded on clay with a wedge-shaped stick made of reed, scientists called the Sumerian script wedge-shaped or cuneform (kuneus - wedge). Squeezing out the signs was easier than drawing on clay with a stick. It took six centuries for writing to evolve from reminder signs into a system for transmitting complex information. This happened around 2400 BC. e.
Religion. The Sumerians moved from animism to polytheism (polytheism): from animation and veneration of natural phenomena to belief in gods as supreme beings, creators of the world and man. Each city had its own main patron god. In Uruk, the supreme god was An, the god of the sky. In Ur - Nanna, god of the moon. The Sumerians sought to place their gods in the sky, believing that it was from there that the gods watched over and ruled the world. The heavenly or stellar (astral) nature of the cult increased the authority of the deity. Gradually, a common Sumerian pantheon emerged. Its basis was: An - the god of the sky, Enlil - the god of the air, Enki - the god of water, Ki - the goddess of the earth. They represented the four main, according to the Sumerians, elements of the universe.
The Sumerians imagined the gods as anthropomorphic beings. Special temples were dedicated to the gods, where priests performed certain rituals every day. In addition to temples, each family had clay figurines of gods and kept them in special niches in the house.
Mythology and literature
The Sumerians composed and recorded many myths.
At first, myths were created orally. But with the development of writing, written versions of myths also appeared. Fragments of surviving records date back to the second half of the 3rd millennium.
There is a well-known cosmogonic myth about the creation of the world, according to which the primary element of the world was water chaos or the great ocean: “It had neither beginning nor end. Nobody created it, it has always existed.” In the depths of the ocean, the sky god An, depicted with a horned tiara on his head, and the earth goddess Ki were born. Other gods came from them. As can be seen from this myth, the Sumerians had no idea of a creator God who created the earth and all life on earth. Nature in the form of watery chaos existed forever, or at least until the rise of the gods.
Myths associated with the cult of fertility played an important role. A myth has reached us about a ruler named Dumuzi, who achieved the love of the goddess Inanna and thereby ensured the fertility of his land. But then Inanna fell into the underworld and, in order to get out of it, she sent Dumuzi there in her place. For six months of the year he sat in a dungeon. During these months, the earth became dry from the sun and gave birth to nothing. And per day autumn equinox the New Year holiday was approaching: Dumuzi came out of the dungeon and entered into marital relations with his wife, and the earth gave a new harvest. Every year, the cities of Sumer celebrated the sacred marriage between Inanna and Dumuzi.
This myth gives insight into the Sumerian attitude towards the afterlife. The Sumerians believed that after death their souls fell into the underworld, from which there was no way out, and there it was much worse than on earth. Therefore, they viewed earthly life as the highest reward that the gods bestowed on people in exchange for service to the gods. It was the Sumerians who created the idea of an underground river as the border of the underworld and of a carrier that transports the souls of the deceased there. The Sumerians had the beginnings teachings about retribution: Wars who died in battle, as well as parents with many children, receive clean drinking water and peace in the underworld. You could improve your life there by properly observing funeral rites.
Heroic or epic myths played an important role in shaping the worldview of the Sumerians - tales of heroes. The most famous myth is about Gilgamesh, the ruler of Uruk at the end of the 27th century. Five stories of his exploits have survived. One of them was a trip to Lebanon for a cedar tree, during which Gilgamesh kills the guardian of the cedars, the giant Humbaba. Others are associated with victories over a monstrous bull, a gigantic bird, a magical snake, and communication with the spirit of his deceased friend Enkidu, who spoke about the gloomy life in the underworld. In the next, Babylonian, period of Mesopotamian history, a whole cycle of myths about Gilgamesh will be created.
In total, more than one hundred and fifty monuments of Sumerian literature are currently known (many are only partially preserved). Among them, in addition to myths, there are hymns, psalms, wedding and love songs, funeral laments, laments about social disasters, psalms in honor of kings. Teachings, debates, dialogues, fables, anecdotes, and proverbs are widely represented.
Architecture
Sumer is called the civilization of clay, because clay bricks were used as the main material in architecture. This had dire consequences. Not a single surviving architectural monument has survived from the Sumerian civilization. The architecture can only be judged by the surviving fragments of the foundations and lower parts of the walls.
The most important task was the construction of temples. One of the early temples was excavated in the Sumerian city of Eredu and dates back to the end of the 4th millennium. This is a rectangular building made of bricks (clay and straw), at the ends of which there was, on the one hand, a statue of a deity, and on the other hand, a table for sacrifices. The walls are decorated with protruding blades (pilasters) that break up the surface. The temple was placed on a platform made of stone, since the area was swampy and the foundation sank.
Sumerian temples were quickly destroyed, and then a platform was made from the bricks of the destroyed temple and a new temple was placed on it. Thus, gradually, by the middle of the 3rd millennium, a special Sumerian type of temple emerged - a stepped tower ( ziggurat). The most famous is the ziggurat at Ur: the 21 m high temple stood on three platforms, decorated with tiles and connected by ramps (XXI century BC).
The sculpture is mainly represented by small figures made of soft stones, which were placed in the niches of the temple. Few statues of deities have survived. The most famous is the head of the goddess Inanna. Of the statues of rulers, several sculptural portraits of Gudea, the ruler of the city of Lagash, have been preserved. Several wall reliefs have survived. There is a known relief on the stele of Naram-Suen, the grandson of Sargon (circa 2320 BC), where the king is depicted at the head of an army. The figure of the king is larger than the figures of the warriors; the signs of the Sun and Moon shine above his head.
Glyptics, stone carving, is a favorite form of applied art. Carving was done on signets, first flat, then cylindrical seals appeared, which were rolled over clay and left friezes (decorative compositions in the form of a horizontal stripe).
One of the seals preserves a relief depicting King Gilgamesh as a mighty hero with a curly beard. The hero fights with a lion, with one hand he restrains the rearing lion, and with the other he plunges a dagger into the predator’s scruff.
The high level of development of jewelry is evidenced by the above-mentioned Puabi jewelry - a harp, a crown of golden flowers.
Painting represented mainly by painting on ceramics. The surviving images allow us to judge the canons. The person was depicted like this: face and legs in profile, eyes in front, torso turned 3/4. The figures are shortened. The eyes and ears are shown emphatically large.
Science. The economic needs of the Sumerians laid the foundation for the development of mathematical, geometric, and astronomical knowledge. To keep track of temple reserves, the Sumerians created two counting systems: decimal and sexagesimal. And both have survived to this day. Hexadecimal was preserved in the calculation of time: there are 60 minutes in 1 hour, 60 seconds in 1 minute. The number 60 was chosen because it was easily divisible by many other numbers. It was convenient to divide by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30. The needs associated with laying irrigation systems, measuring field areas, and constructing buildings led to the creation of the foundations of geometry. In particular, the Sumerians used the Pythagorean theorem 2 thousand years before the Greeks formulated it. They were probably the first to divide the circle into 360 degrees. They made observations of the sky, linking the positions of the luminaries with river floods. Various planets and constellations were identified. Particular attention was paid to those luminaries that were associated with deities. The Sumerians introduced standards for measures of length, weight, area and volume, and value.
Right. Order could exist only if there were laws known to everyone, that is, mandatory norms. The set of mandatory norms protected by the power of the state is usually called law. Law arises before the emergence of the state and exists in the form of customs - norms developed on the basis of tradition. However, with the advent of the state, the concept of “law” is always associated with state power, since it is the state that officially establishes and protects legal norms.
From the III dynasty of Ur, the oldest known set of laws, compiled by the ruler of Shulgi, the son of Ur - Nammu (XXI century BC), has reached us, although not completely. Laws protected the property and personal rights of citizens: the fields of community members from seizures, from flooding by negligent neighbors, from lazy tenants; provided for compensation to the owner for damage caused to his slave; protected the wife’s right to monetary compensation in the event of a divorce from her husband, the groom’s right to the bride after paying her father a marriage gift, etc. Obviously, these laws were based on a long legal tradition that has not reached us. The Sumerian legal tradition had a religious basis: it was believed that it was the gods who created a set of rules that everyone must follow.
Legacy of Sumerian civilization
Around 2000, the III Dynasty of Ur fell under attacks new wave Semitic tribes. The Semitic ethnic element became dominant in Mesopotamia. The Sumerian civilization seems to be disappearing, but in fact all the main elements of its culture continue to live within the framework of the Babylonian civilization, which was named after Babylon - the main city of Mesopotamia in the 2nd and 1st millennia BC. e.
The Babylonians took the cuneiform writing system from the Sumerians and for a long time used the already dead Sumerian language as the language of knowledge, gradually translating Sumerian scientific, legal, religious documents, as well as monuments of Sumerian literature, into the Semitic (Akkadian) language. It was the Sumerian heritage that helped the most famous king of the Old Babylonian kingdom, Hammurabi (1792 - 1750 BC), create the largest set of laws of the Ancient World, consisting of 282 articles, regulating in detail all the main aspects of the life of Babylonian society. Famous Tower of Babel, which became a symbol of the New Babylonian kingdom, which existed in the middle of the 1st millennium BC. e., was also a direct descendant of the stepped Sumerian ziggurats.
Back in the 4th millennium BC. e. in the southern part of Mesopotamia on the territory of modern Iraq, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a high culture of the Sumerians (the self-name of the Saggig people - black-headed) was formed, which was then inherited by the Babylonians and Assyrians. On at the turn of III-II millennium BC e. Sumer declines, and over time the Sumerian language was forgotten by the population; only the Babylonian priests knew it; it was the language of sacred texts. At the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. primacy in Mesopotamia passes to Babylon.
Introduction
In the south of Mesopotamia, where agriculture was widespread, the ancient city-states of Ur, Uruk, Kish, Umma, Lagash, Nippur, and Akkad developed. The youngest of these cities was Babylon, built on the banks of the Euphrates. Most of the cities were founded by the Sumerians, so the ancient culture of Mesopotamia is usually called Sumerian. Now they are called the "progenitor of modern civilization" The rise of city-states is called the Golden Age ancient state Sumerians. This is true both in the literal and figurative meaning of the word: items for a wide variety of household purposes and weapons were made from gold here. The Sumerian culture had a great influence on the subsequent progress not only of Mesopotamia, but of all mankind.
This culture was ahead of the development of other great cultures. Nomads and trading caravans spread news of it throughout.
Writing
The Sumerians' cultural contributions were not limited to discovering metalworking techniques, making wheeled carts and the potter's wheel. They became the inventors of the first form of recording human speech.
At the first stage, it was pictography (picture writing), that is, a letter consisting of drawings and, less often, symbols denoting one word or concept. The combination of these drawings conveyed in writing certain information. However, Sumerian legends say that even before the advent of picture writing, there existed even more ancient way fixation of thoughts - tying knots on a rope and notches in trees. At subsequent stages, the drawings were stylized (from a complete, fairly detailed and thorough depiction of objects, the Sumerians gradually moved to their incomplete, schematic or symbolic depiction), which accelerated the writing process. This is a step forward, but the possibilities of such writing were still limited. Thanks to simplifications, individual characters could be used multiple times. Thus, for many complex concepts there were no signs at all, and even in order to designate such a familiar phenomenon as rain, the scribe had to combine the symbol of the sky - a star and the symbol of water - ripples. This type of writing is called ideographic rebus.
Historians believe that it was the formation of the management system that led to the appearance of writing in temples and royal palaces. This ingenious invention should apparently be considered the merit of Sumerian temple officials, who improved pictography to simplify the recording of economic events and trade transactions. Records were made on clay tiles or tablets: the soft clay was pressed with the corner of a rectangular stick, and the lines on the tablets had the characteristic appearance of wedge-shaped indentations. In general, the entire inscription was a mass of wedge-shaped dashes and therefore Sumerian writing is usually called cuneiform. The oldest tablets with cuneiform writing, which made up entire archives, contain information about the temple economy: lease agreements, documents on control of work performed and registration of incoming goods. These are the oldest written monuments in the world.
Subsequently, the principle of picture writing began to be replaced by the principle of transmitting the sound side of the word. Hundreds of signs indicating syllables and several alphabetic signs corresponding to the main letters appeared. They were used mainly to denote function words and particles. Writing was a great achievement of Sumerian-Akkadian culture. It was borrowed and developed by the Babylonians and spread widely throughout Western Asia: cuneiform was used in Syria, ancient Persia, and other states. In the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. e. Cuneiform became an international writing system: it was known and used even egyptian pharaohs. In the middle of the 1st millennium BC. e. Cuneiform becomes an alphabetic script.
Language
For a long time, scientists believed that the Sumerian language was not similar to any living or dead language known to mankind, so the question of the origin of this people remained a mystery. To date, the genetic connections of the Sumerian language have not yet been established, but most scientists suggest that this language, like the language of the ancient Egyptians and the inhabitants of Akkad, belongs to the Semitic-Hamitic language group.
Around 2 thousand BC, the Sumerian language was replaced by the Akkadian language from colloquial speech, but continued to be used as a sacred, liturgical and scientific language until the beginning of the century. e.
Culture and religion
In ancient Sumer, the origins of religion had purely materialistic, rather than “ethical” roots. Early Sumerian deities 4-3 thousand BC. acted primarily as givers life's blessings and abundance. The cult of the gods was not aimed at “purification and holiness” but was intended to ensure a good harvest, military success, etc. - this is precisely why mere mortals revered them, built temples for them, and made sacrifices. The Sumerians argued that everything in the world belonged to the gods - temples were not the place of residence of the gods, who were obliged to take care of people, but the granaries of the gods - barns. Most of the early Sumerian deities were formed by local gods, whose power did not extend beyond a very small territory. The second group of gods were the patrons of large cities - they were more powerful than the local gods, but they were revered only in their cities. Finally the gods who were known and worshiped in all Sumerian cities.
In Sumer, the gods were like people. In their relationships there are matchmaking and wars, anger and vindictiveness, deception and anger. Quarrels and intrigues were common among the gods; the gods knew love and hate. Like people, they did business during the day - they decided the fate of the world, and at night they retired.
Sumerian hell - Kur - a gloomy dark underground world, on the way where there were three servants - “door man”, “underground river man”, “carrier”. Reminiscent of the ancient Greek Hades and Sheol of the ancient Jews. There a man went through trial, and a gloomy, dreary existence awaited him. A person comes into this world for a short time, and then disappears into the dark mouth of Kur. In the Sumerian culture, for the first time in history, man made an attempt to morally overcome death, to understand it as a moment of transition to eternity. All the thoughts of the inhabitants of Mesopotamia were turned to the living: the living wished for well-being and health every day, multiplication of the family and a happy marriage for their daughters, a successful career for their sons, and that in the house “beer, wine and all sorts of goods would never run out.” The posthumous fate of a person interested them less and seemed to them rather sad and uncertain: the food of the dead is dust and clay, they “do not see the light” and “dwell in darkness.”
In Sumerian mythology there are also myths about the golden age of humanity and heavenly life, which over time became part of the religious ideas of the peoples of Western Asia, and later - into biblical stories.
The only thing that can brighten up a person’s existence in the dungeon is the memory of those living on earth. The people of Mesopotamia were raised in the deep belief that they needed to leave a memory of themselves on earth. Memory lasts longest in erected cultural monuments. It was they, created by the hands, thought and spirit of man, that constituted the spiritual values of this people, this country and truly left behind a powerful historical memory. In general, the views of the Sumerians were reflected in many later religions.
The most powerful gods
An (in Akkadian transcription Annu) God of the sky and the father of other gods, who, like people, asked him for help if necessary. Known for his disdainful attitude towards them and evil antics.
Patron of the city of Uruk.
Enlil, the God of wind, air and all space from earth to sky, also treated people and lower deities with disdain, but he invented the hoe and gave it to humanity and was revered as the patron of the earth and fertility. His main temple was in the city of Nippur.
Enki (in Akkadian transcription Ea) Protector of the city of Eredu, was recognized as the god of the ocean and fresh underground waters.
Other important deities
Nanna (Akkadian Sin) God of the moon, patron of the city of Ur
Utu (Akkadian Shamash) Son of Nanna, patron of the cities of Sippar and Larsa. He personified the ruthless power of the drying heat of the sun and at the same time the warmth of the sun, without which life is impossible.
Inanna (Akkadian Ishtar) Goddess of fertility and carnal love, she granted military victories. Goddess of the city of Uruk.
Dumuzi (Akkadian Tammuz) Husband of Inanna, son of the god Enki, god of water and vegetation, which annually died and was resurrected.
Nergal Lord of the kingdom of the dead and god of plague.
Ninurt Patron of valiant warriors. Son of Enlil, who did not have his own city.
Ishkur (Akkadian Adad) God of thunder and storms.
The goddesses of the Sumerian-Akkadian pantheon usually acted as wives of powerful gods or as deities personifying death and the underworld.
In Sumerian religion, the most important gods, in whose honor ziggurats were built, were represented in human form as the lords of the sky, sun, earth, water and storm. In each city, the Sumerians worshiped their own god.
Priests acted as mediators between people and gods. With the help of fortune telling, spells and magical formulas, they tried to comprehend the will of the celestials and convey it to the common people.
Throughout 3 thousand BC. attitudes towards the gods gradually changed: new qualities began to be attributed to them.
The strengthening of statehood in Mesopotamia was also reflected in the religious beliefs of the residents. The deities who personified cosmic and natural forces began to be perceived as great “heavenly leaders” and only then as a natural element and “giver of blessings.” In the pantheon of gods, a god-secretary, a god-bearer of the ruler’s throne, and gods-gatekeepers appeared. Important deities have been associated with various planets and constellations:
Utu is with the Sun, Nergal is with Mars, Inanna is with Venus. Therefore, all townspeople were interested in the position of the luminaries in the sky, their relative positions, and especially the place of “their” star: this promised inevitable changes in the life of the city-state and its population, be it prosperity or misfortune. Thus, the cult of heavenly bodies gradually formed, and astronomical thought and astrology began to develop. Astrology was born among the first civilization of mankind - the Sumerian civilization. This was approximately 6 thousand years ago. At first, the Sumerians deified the 7 planets closest to Earth. Their influence on the Earth was considered as the will of the Divine living on this planet. The Sumerians first noticed that changes in the position of celestial bodies in the sky cause changes in earthly life. Observing the constantly changing dynamics of the starry sky, Sumerian clergy constantly studied and explored the influence of the movement of celestial bodies on earthly life. That is, they correlated earthly life with the movement of celestial bodies. There in the sky there was a sense of order, harmony, consistency, and legality. They made the following logical conclusion: if earthly life is consistent with the will of the Gods living on the planets, then a similar order and harmony will arise on Earth. Predictions of the future were based on studying the position of stars and constellations in the sky, the flights of birds, and the entrails of animals sacrificed to the gods. People believed in the predetermination of human destiny, in man's subordination to higher powers; believed that supernatural forces are always invisibly present in the real world and manifest themselves in mysterious ways.
Architecture and construction
The Sumerians knew how to build multi-storey buildings and wonderful temples.
Sumer was a country of city-states. The largest of them had their own ruler, who was also the high priest. The cities themselves were built up without any plan and were surrounded by an outer wall that reached considerable thickness. Residential houses of the townspeople were rectangular, two-story with a mandatory courtyard, sometimes with hanging gardens. Many houses had sewerage.
The center of the city was a temple complex. It included the temple of the main god - the patron of the city, the king's palace and the temple estate.
The palaces of the rulers of Sumer combined a secular building and a fortress. The palace was surrounded by a wall. To supply water to the palaces, aqueducts were built - water was supplied through pipes hermetically sealed with bitumen and stone. The facades of the majestic palaces were decorated with bright reliefs, usually depicting hunting scenes, historical battles with the enemy, as well as animals most revered for their strength and power.
Early temples were small rectangular buildings on a low platform. As cities grew richer and more prosperous, temples became more impressive and majestic. New temples were usually erected on the site of old ones. Therefore, temple platforms increased in volume over time; a certain type of structure arose - a ziggurat (see figure) - a three- and seven-step pyramid with a small temple at the top. All steps were painted in different colors - black, white, red, blue. The construction of the temple on a platform protected it from floods and river overflows. A wide staircase led to the upper tower, sometimes several staircases on different sides. The tower could be crowned with a golden dome, and its walls were lined with glazed bricks.
The lower powerful walls were alternating ledges and projections, which created a play of light and shadow and visually increased the volume of the building. In the sanctuary - the main room of the temple complex - there was a statue of the deity - the heavenly patron of the city. Only priests could enter here, and access to the people was strictly prohibited. There were small windows under the ceiling, and the main decoration of the interior were mother-of-pearl friezes and a mosaic of red, black and white clay nail heads driven into the brick walls. Trees and shrubs were planted on stepped terraces.
The most famous ziggurat in history is considered to be the temple of the god Marduk in Babylon - the famous Tower of Babel, the construction of which is mentioned in the Bible.
Wealthy townspeople lived in two-story houses with a very complex interior. The bedrooms were located on the second floor, with lounge rooms and a kitchen downstairs. All windows and doors opened onto the courtyard, and only blank walls faced the street.
In the architecture of Mesopotamia, columns have been found since ancient times, which, however, did not play a big role, as well as vaults. Quite early, the technique of dividing walls by projections and niches, as well as decorating walls with friezes made using the mosaic technique, appeared.
The Sumerians first encountered the arch. This design was invented in Mesopotamia. There was no forest here, and the builders came up with the idea of installing an arched or vaulted ceiling instead of a beam. Arches and vaults were also used in Egypt (this is not surprising, since Egypt and Mesopotamia had contacts), but in Mesopotamia they arose earlier, were used more often, and from there they spread throughout the world.
The Sumerians established the duration solar year, which allowed them to accurately orient their buildings to the four cardinal directions.
Mesopotamia was poor in stone, and the main building material raw brick, dried in the sun, served there. Time has not been kind to brick buildings. In addition, cities were often subjected to enemy invasions, during which homes were destroyed to the ground. ordinary people, palaces and temples.
Science
The Sumerians created astrology and substantiated the influence of stars on the destinies of people and their health. Medicine was mainly homeopathic. Numerous clay tablets have been found containing recipes and magical formulas against the demons of disease.
Priests and magicians used knowledge about the movement of the stars, the Moon, the Sun, the behavior of animals for fortune telling, and foresight of events in the state. The Sumerians knew how to predict solar and lunar eclipses and created a solar-lunar calendar.
They discovered the Zodiac belt - 12 constellations that form a large circle along which the Sun makes its way throughout the year. Learned priests compiled calendars and calculated the timing of lunar eclipses. In Sumer, the beginning of one of the most ancient sciences, astronomy, was laid.
In mathematics, the Sumerians knew how to count in tens. But the numbers 12 (a dozen) and 60 (five dozen) were especially revered. We still use the Sumerian heritage when we divide an hour into 60 minutes, a minute into 60 seconds, a year into 12 months, and a circle into 360 degrees.
The earliest extant mathematical texts, written down by the Sumerians in the 22nd century BC, show high computational skill. They contain multiplication tables that combine a well-developed sexagesimal system with the earlier decimal system. A penchant for mysticism was revealed in the fact that numbers were divided into lucky and unlucky - even the invented sexagesimal system of numbers was a relic of magical ideas: the number six was considered lucky. The Sumerians created a positional notation system in which a number would take on a different meaning depending on the place it occupied in a multi-digit number.
The first schools were created in the cities of Ancient Sumer. Rich Sumerians sent their sons there. The classes lasted all day. It was not easy to learn to write in cuneiform, count, and tell stories about gods and heroes. Boys were subjected to corporal punishment for failure to complete their homework. Anyone who successfully completed school could get a job as a scribe, official, or become a priest. This made it possible to live without knowing poverty.
An educated person was considered to be: fully proficient in writing, able to sing, mastering musical instruments, and able to make reasonable and legal decisions.
Literature
Their cultural achievements are great and indisputable: the Sumerians created the first poem in human history - the “Golden Age”, wrote the first elegies, and compiled the world’s first library catalogue. The Sumerians are the authors of the world's first and oldest medical books - collections of recipes. They were the first to develop and record the farmer's calendar and left the first information about protective plantings.
A large number of monuments of Sumerian literature have reached us, mainly in copies copied after the fall of the III dynasty of Ur and stored in the temple library in the city of Nippur. Unfortunately, partly due to the difficulty of the Sumerian literary language, partly due to the poor condition of the texts (some tablets were found broken into dozens of pieces, now stored in museums in various countries), these works have only recently been read.
Mostly these are religious hymns to the gods, prayers, myths, legends about the origin of the world, human civilization and agriculture. In addition, lists of royal dynasties have long been kept in churches. The oldest lists are those written in Sumerian by the priests of the city of Ur. Particularly interesting are several small poems containing legends about the emergence of agriculture and civilization, the creation of which is attributed to the gods. These poems also raise the question of the comparative value for humans of agriculture and cattle breeding, which probably reflects the fact of the relatively recent transition of the Sumerian tribes to an agricultural way of life.
The myth about the goddess Inanna, imprisoned in underground kingdom death and liberation from there; along with her return to the earth, life that had been frozen returns. This myth reflected the change in the growing season and the “dead” period in the life of nature.
There were also hymns addressed to various deities, historical poems(for example, a poem about the victory of the Uruk king over the Guteans). The largest work Sumerian religious literature is a poem set out in deliberately intricate language about the construction of the temple of the god Ningirsu by the ruler of Lagash, Gudea. This poem was written on two clay cylinders, each about a meter high. A number of poems of a moral and instructive nature have been preserved.
Literary monuments folk art little has reached us. Such people died for us folk works like fairy tales. Only a few fables and proverbs have survived.
The most important monument of Sumerian literature is the cycle of epic tales about the hero Gilgamesh, the legendary king of the city of Uruk, who, as follows from dynastic lists, ruled in the 28th century BC. In these tales, the hero Gilgamesh is presented as the son of a mere mortal and the goddess Ninsun. Gilgamesh's wanderings around the world in search of the secret of immortality and his friendship with the wild man Enkidu are described in detail. In its most complete form the text is large epic poem about Gilgamesh is preserved written down in the Akkadian language. But the records of primary individual epics about Gilgamesh that have reached us irrefutably testify to the Sumerian origin of the epic.
The cycle of tales about Gilgamesh had a great influence on the surrounding peoples. It was adopted by the Akkadian Semites, and from them it spread to Northern Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. There were also cycles of epic songs dedicated to various other heroes.
An important place in the literature and worldview of the Sumerians was occupied by legends about the flood, with which the gods supposedly destroyed all living things, and only the pious hero Ziusudra was saved in a ship built on the advice of the god Enki. The legends about the flood, which served as the basis for the corresponding biblical legend, took shape under the undoubted influence of memories of catastrophic floods that occurred in the 4th millennium BC. e. Many Sumerian settlements were destroyed more than once.
Art
Special place in Sumerian cultural heritage belongs to glyptic - carving on precious or semi-precious stone. Many Sumerian carved seals in the shape of a cylinder have survived. The seal was rolled over a clay surface and an impression was obtained - a miniature relief with a large number of characters and a clear, carefully constructed composition. For the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, a seal was not just a sign of ownership, but an object that had magical powers. The seals were kept as talismans, given to temples, and placed in burial places. In Sumerian engravings, the most common motifs were ritual feasts with figures seated eating and drinking. Other motifs included the legendary heroes Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu fighting monsters, as well as anthropomorphic figures of a man-bull. Over time, this style gave way to a continuous frieze depicting fighting animals, plants or flowers.
There was no monumental sculpture in Sumer. Small cult figurines are more common. They depict people in a position of prayer. All sculptures have an emphasis big eyes, since they were supposed to resemble the all-seeing eye. Large ears emphasized and symbolized wisdom; it is no coincidence that “wisdom” and “ear” are referred to as one word in the Sumerian language.
Sumerian art was developed in numerous bas-reliefs, the main theme being the theme of hunting and battles. The faces in them were depicted in front, and the eyes in profile, the shoulders in a three-quarter spread, and the legs in profile. The proportions of human figures were not respected. But in the compositions of bas-reliefs, the artists sought to convey movement.
The art of music certainly found its development in Sumer. Over more than three millennia, the Sumerians composed their spell songs, legends, laments, wedding songs, etc. The first stringed musical instruments - the lyre and the harp - also appeared among the Sumerians. They also had double oboes and big drums.
End of Sumer
After one and a half thousand years, the Sumerian culture was replaced by the Akkadian one. At the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. Hordes of Semitic tribes invaded Mesopotamia. The conquerors adopted a higher local culture, but did not abandon their own. Moreover, they turned Akkadian into the official state language, and left Sumerian the role of the language of religious worship and science. The ethnic type gradually disappears: the Sumerians dissolve into more numerous Semitic tribes. Their cultural conquests were continued by their successors: the Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians and Chaldeans.
After the emergence of the Akkadian Semitic kingdom, religious ideas also changed: there was a mixture of Semitic and Sumerian deities. Literary texts and school exercises preserved on clay tablets attest to the increasing literacy rate of the Akkadians. During the reign of the dynasty from Akkad (about 2300 BC), the severity and schematic nature of the Sumerian style was replaced by greater freedom of composition, three-dimensionality of figures and portraiture of features, primarily in sculpture and reliefs.
In a single cultural complex called the Sumerian-Akkadian culture, the Sumerians played a leading role. It is they, according to modern orientalists, who are the founders of the famous Babylonian culture.
Two and a half thousand years have passed since the decline of the culture of Ancient Mesopotamia, and until recently they knew about it only from the stories of ancient Greek writers and from biblical legends. But in the last century archaeological excavations Monuments of the material and written culture of Sumer, Assyria and Babylon were discovered, and this era appeared before us in all its barbaric splendor and gloomy grandeur. There is still much that remains unsolved in the spiritual culture of the Sumerians.
List of used literature
- Kravchenko A.I. Culturology: Study. manual for universities. - M.: Academic project, 2001.
- Emelyanov V.V. Ancient Sumer: Essays on culture. St. Petersburg, 2001
- History of the Ancient World Ukolova V.I., Marinovich L.P. (Online edition)Culture of the Renaissance
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Habitat and features of Sumerian culture
Every culture exists in space and time. The original space of a culture is the place of its origin. Here are all the starting points for the development of culture, which include geographical location, features of relief and climate, the presence of water sources, soil conditions, minerals, composition of flora and fauna. From these foundations, over the course of centuries and millennia, the form of a given culture is formed, that is, the specific location and relationship of its components. We can say that every nation takes the form of the area in which it lives for a long time.
Human society of archaic antiquity can use in its activities only those objects that are within sight and easily accessible. Constant contact with the same objects subsequently determines the skills of handling them, and through these skills - both the emotional attitude towards these objects and their value properties. Consequently, through material-objective operations with the primary elements of the landscape, the basic features of social psychology are formed. In turn, social psychology formed on the basis of operations with primary elements becomes the basis of the ethnocultural picture of the world. The landscape space of culture is the source of ideas about sacred space with its vertical and horizontal orientation. In this sacred space the pantheon is located and the laws of the universe are established. This means that the form of culture will inevitably consist of both the parameters of objective geographical space and those ideas about space that appear in the process of development of social psychology. Basic ideas about the form of culture can be obtained by studying the formal features of monuments of architecture, sculpture and literature.
As for the existence of culture in time, two types of relationships can also be distinguished. First of all, this is historical (or external) time. Any culture arises at a certain stage of the socio-economic, political and intellectual development of mankind. It fits into all the main parameters of this stage and, in addition, carries information about the time preceding its formation. Stage-typological features associated with the nature of the main cultural processes, when combined with a chronological scheme, can give a fairly accurate picture of cultural evolution. However, along with historical time, it is necessary to take into account sacred (or internal) time, revealed in the calendar and various rituals. This internal time is very closely related to recurring natural-cosmic phenomena, such as: the change of day and night, the change of seasons, the timing of sowing and ripening of cereal crops, the time of mating relations in animals, various phenomena of the starry sky. All these phenomena not only provoke a person to relate to them, but, being primary in comparison with his life, require imitation and assimilation to himself. Developing in historical time, man tries to consolidate his existence as much as possible in a series of natural cycles and integrate into their rhythms. From here arises the content of culture, deduced from the main features of the religious-ideological worldview.
Mesopotamian culture arose among the desert and marshy lakes, on an endless flat plain, monotonous and completely gray in appearance. In the south the plain ends with the salty Persian Gulf, in the north it turns into a desert. This dismal terrain encourages a person to either flee or active work in the fight against nature. On the plain, all large objects look the same, they stretch in an even line towards the horizon, resembling a mass of people moving in an organized manner towards a single goal. The monotony of the flat terrain greatly contributes to the emergence of tense emotional states that oppose the image of the surrounding space. According to ethnopsychologists, the people living on the plain are distinguished by great cohesion and a desire for unity, perseverance, hard work and patience, but at the same time they are prone to unmotivated depressive states and outbursts of aggression.
There are two deep rivers in Mesopotamia - the Tigris and the Euphrates. They overflow in the spring, in March - April, when the snow begins to melt in the mountains of Armenia. During floods, rivers carry a lot of silt, which serves as an excellent fertilizer for the soil. But the flood is destructive for the human community: it demolishes homes and exterminates people. In addition to the spring flood, people are often harmed by the rainy season (November - February), during which winds blow from the bay and the canals overflow. In order to survive, you need to build houses on high platforms. In the summer, terrible heat and drought reign in Mesopotamia: from the end of June to September not a single drop of rain falls, and the air temperature does not fall below 30 degrees, and there is no shade anywhere. A person who constantly lives in anticipation of a threat from mysterious external forces seeks to understand the laws of their action in order to save himself and his family from death. Therefore, most of all he is focused not on issues of self-knowledge, but on the search for the permanent foundations of external existence. He sees such foundations in the strict movements of objects in the starry sky and it is there, upward, that he turns all questions to the world.
Lower Mesopotamia has a lot of clay and almost no stone. People learned to use clay not only to make ceramics, but also for writing and sculpture. In the culture of Mesopotamia, modeling prevails over carving on solid material, and this fact says a lot about the peculiarities of the worldview of its inhabitants. For the master potter and sculptor, the forms of the world exist as if ready-made; they only need to be able to extract them from the formless mass. In the process of work, the ideal model (or stencil) formed in the master’s head is projected onto the source material. As a result, the illusion of the presence of a certain embryo (or essence) of this form in the objective world arises. This kind of sensation develops a passive attitude towards reality, a desire not to impose one’s own constructions on it, but to correspond to the imaginary ideal prototypes of existence.
Lower Mesopotamia is not rich in vegetation. There is practically no good construction timber here (for it you need to go east, to the Zagros mountains), but there is a lot of reed, tamarisk and date palms. Reeds grow along the shores of swampy lakes. Bundles of reeds were often used in dwellings as a seat; both the dwellings themselves and pens for livestock were built from reeds. Tamarisk tolerates heat and drought well, so it grows in large quantities in these places. Tamarisk was used to make handles for various tools, most often for hoes. The date palm was a real source of abundance for palm plantation owners. Several dozen dishes were prepared from its fruits, including flat cakes, porridge, and delicious beer. Various household utensils were made from palm tree trunks and leaves. Reeds, tamarisk, and the date palm were sacred trees in Mesopotamia, they were sung in spells, hymns to the gods and literary dialogues. Such a meager set of vegetation stimulated the ingenuity of the human collective, the art of achieving great goals with small means.
There are almost no mineral resources in Lower Mesopotamia. Silver had to be delivered from Asia Minor, gold and carnelian - from the Hindustan Peninsula, lapis lazuli - from the regions of what is now Afghanistan. Paradoxically, this sad fact played a very positive role in the history of culture: the inhabitants of Mesopotamia were constantly in contact with neighboring peoples, without experiencing periods of cultural isolation and preventing the development of xenophobia. The culture of Mesopotamia in all centuries of its existence was receptive to the achievements of others, and this gave it a constant incentive to improve.
Another feature of the local landscape is the abundance of deadly fauna. In Mesopotamia there are about 50 species of poisonous snakes, many scorpions and mosquitoes. It is not surprising that one of characteristic features This culture is the development of herbal and charm medicine. A large number of spells against snakes and scorpions, sometimes accompanied by recipes, have come down to us. magical actions or herbal medicine. And in the temple decor, the snake is the most powerful amulet, which all demons and evil spirits had to fear.
The founders of Mesopotamian culture belonged to different ethnic groups and spoke unrelated languages, but had a single economic way of life. They were mainly engaged in settled cattle breeding and irrigated agriculture, as well as fishing and hunting. Cattle breeding played an outstanding role in the culture of Mesopotamia, influencing the images of state ideology. The sheep and cow are most revered here. Sheep wool was used to make excellent warm clothing, which was considered a symbol of wealth. The poor were called "having no wool" (nu-siki). They tried to find out the fate of the state from the liver of the sacrificial lamb. Moreover, permanent epithet The king's epithet was "righteous shepherd of sheep" (sipa-zide). It arose from the observation of a flock of sheep, which can only be organized with skillful direction on the part of the shepherd. The cow, which provided milk and dairy products, was no less valued. They plowed with oxen in Mesopotamia, and the productive power of the bull was admired. It is no coincidence that the deities of these places wore a horned tiara on their heads - a symbol of power, fertility and constancy of life.
Agriculture in Lower Mesopotamia could only exist thanks to artificial irrigation. Water and silt were diverted into specially built canals to be supplied to the fields if necessary. Work on the construction of canals required large quantity people and their emotional unity. Therefore, people here have learned to live in an organized way and, if necessary, to sacrifice themselves without complaint. Each city arose and developed near its canal, which created the preconditions for independent political development. Until the end of the 3rd millennium, it was not possible to form a national ideology, since each city was a separate state with its own cosmogony, calendar and characteristics of the pantheon. The unification occurred only during severe disasters or to solve important political problems, when it was necessary to elect a military leader and representatives of various cities gathered in the cult center of Mesopotamia - the city of Nippur.
The consciousness of a person living by agriculture and cattle breeding was oriented pragmatically and magically. All intellectual efforts were directed toward accounting for property, finding ways to increase this property, and improving tools and skills for working with them. The world of human feelings of that time was much richer: a person felt his connection with the surrounding nature, with the world of celestial phenomena, with deceased ancestors and relatives. However, all these feelings were subordinated to him everyday life and work. And nature, and heaven, and ancestors were supposed to help a person get a high harvest, produce as many children as possible, graze livestock and stimulate their fertility, and move up the social ladder. To do this, it was necessary to share grain and livestock with them, praise them in hymns and influence them through various magical actions.
All objects and phenomena of the surrounding world were either understandable or incomprehensible to man. There is no need to be afraid of what is understandable; it must be taken into account and its properties studied. The incomprehensible does not fit into the consciousness entirely, since the brain cannot correctly respond to it. According to one of the principles of physiology - the principle of the “Sherrington funnel” - the number of signals entering the brain always exceeds the number of reflex responses to these signals. Everything incomprehensible through metaphorical transfers turns into images of mythology. Ancient man thought of the world with these images and associations, without realizing the importance of logical connections, without distinguishing a causal connection from an associative-analogue one. Therefore, at the stage of early civilizations it was impossible to separate logical motivations for thinking from magical-pragmatic ones.
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