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History’s first empire rose [br]out of a hot, dry landscape,

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without rainfall to nourish crops, [br]without trees or stones for building.

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In spite of all this, its inhabitants[br]built the world’s first cities,

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with monumental architecture [br]and large populations—

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and they built them [br]entirely out of mud.

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Sumer occupied the southern part [br]of modern Iraq

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in the region called Mesopotamia.

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Mesopotamia means “between two rivers”—

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the Tigris and the Euphrates.

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Around 5000 BCE, early Sumerians used[br]irrigation channels, dams, and reservoirs

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to redirect river water and farm [br]large areas of previously bone-dry land.

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Agricultural communities like this [br]were slowly springing up around the world.

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But Sumerians were the first[br]to take the next step.

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Using clay bricks made from river mud,

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they began to build multi-storied[br]homes and temples.

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They invented the wheel—

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a potter’s wheel, for turning mud [br]into household goods and tools.

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Those clay bricks gave rise [br]to the world’s first cities,

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probably around 4500 BCE.

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At the top of the city’s social ladder[br]were priests and priestesses,

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who were considered nobility,

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then merchants, craftspeople,[br]farmers, and enslaved people.

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The Sumerian empire [br]consisted of distinct city-states

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that operated like small nations.

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They were loosely linked [br]by language and spiritual belief

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but lacked centralized control.

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The earliest cities were Uruk, [br]Ur, and Eridu,

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and eventually there were a dozen cities.

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Each had a king who served a role [br]somewhere between a priest and a ruler.

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Sometimes they fought against [br]each other to conquer new territories.

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Each city was dedicated to a patron deity,[br]considered the city’s founder.

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The largest and most important building [br]in the city was this patron god’s home:

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the ziggurat, a temple designed[br]as a stepped pyramid.

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Around 3200 BCE, Sumerians began [br]to expand their reach.

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The potter’s wheel found a new home [br]on chariots and wagons.

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They built boats out of reeds [br]and date palm leaves,

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with linen sails that carried [br]them vast distances by river and sea.

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To supplement scarce resources, [br]they built a trade network

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with the rising kingdoms in Egypt, [br]Anatolia, and Ethiopia,

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importing gold, silver, [br]lapis lazuli, and cedar wood.

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Trade was the unlikely impetus

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for the invention [br]of the world’s first writing system.

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It started as a system of accounting[br]for Sumerian merchants

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conducting business with traders abroad.

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After a few hundred years, [br]the early pictogram system

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called cuneiform turned into a script.

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The Sumerians drafted up the first[br]written laws

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and created the first school system, [br]designed to teach the craft of writing—

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and pioneered some less exciting[br]innovations, like bureaucracy and taxes.

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In the schools, scribes studying [br]from dawn to dusk,

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from childhood well into adulthood.

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They learned accounting, mathematics,[br]and copied works of literature—

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hymns, myths, proverbs, animal fables, [br]magic spells,

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and the first epics on clay tablets.

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Some of those tablets told [br]the story of Gilgamesh,

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a king of the city of Uruk who was[br]also the subject of mythical tales.

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But by the third millennium BCE, Sumer[br]was no longer the only empire around,

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or even in Mesopotamia.

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Waves of nomadic tribes poured[br]into the region from the north and east.

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Some newcomers looked up to the Sumerians,[br]adopting their way of life

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and using the cuneiform script [br]to express their own languages.

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In 2300 BCE, the Akkadian king Sargon[br]conquered the Sumerian city-states.

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But Sargon respected Sumerian culture,

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and Akkadians and Sumerians[br]existed side-by-side for centuries.

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Other invading groups focused [br]only on looting and destruction.

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Even as Sumerian culture spread,

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a steady onslaught of invasions killed[br]off the Sumerian people by 1750 BCE.

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Afterward, Sumer disappeared [br]back into the desert dirt,

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not to be rediscovered[br]until the 19th century.

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But Sumerian culture lived [br]on for thousands of years—

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first through the Akkadians,[br]then the Assyrians, then the Babylonians.

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The Babylonians passed Sumerian [br]inventions and traditions through

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along Hebrew, Greek, and Roman cultures.

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Some persist today.