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

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

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

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with monumental architecture 
and large populations—

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and they built them 
entirely out of mud.

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Sumer occupied the southern part 
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
irrigation channels, dams, and reservoirs

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

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

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But Sumerians were the first
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
homes and temples.

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They invented the wheel—

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

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Those clay bricks gave rise 
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
were priests and priestesses,

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who were considered nobility,

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then merchants, craftspeople,
farmers, and enslaved people.

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The Sumerian empire 
consisted of distinct city-states

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that operated like small nations.

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They were loosely linked 
by language and spiritual belief

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but lacked centralized control.

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The earliest cities were Uruk, 
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 
somewhere between a priest and a ruler.

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Sometimes they fought against 
each other to conquer new territories.

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

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

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the ziggurat, a temple designed
as a stepped pyramid.

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Around 3200 BCE, Sumerians began 
to expand their reach.

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

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They built boats out of reeds 
and date palm leaves,

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

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To supplement scarce resources, 
they built a trade network

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with the rising kingdoms in Egypt, 
Anatolia, and Ethiopia,

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importing gold, silver, 
lapis lazuli, and cedar wood.

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Trade was the unlikely impetus

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for the invention 
of the world’s first writing system.

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It started as a system of accounting
for Sumerian merchants

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conducting business with traders abroad.

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After a few hundred years, 
the early pictogram system

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called cuneiform turned into a script.

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The Sumerians drafted up the first
written laws

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

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and pioneered some less exciting
innovations, like bureaucracy and taxes.

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In the schools, scribes studying 
from dawn to dusk,

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from childhood well into adulthood.

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They learned accounting, mathematics,
and copied works of literature—

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hymns, myths, proverbs, animal fables, 
magic spells,

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and the first epics on clay tablets.

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Some of those tablets told 
the story of Gilgamesh,

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

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

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or even in Mesopotamia.

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

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

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and using the cuneiform script 
to express their own languages.

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

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But Sargon respected Sumerian culture,

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and Akkadians and Sumerians
existed side-by-side for centuries.

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Other invading groups focused 
only on looting and destruction.

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Even as Sumerian culture spread,

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

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Afterward, Sumer disappeared 
back into the desert dirt,

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not to be rediscovered
until the 19th century.

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But Sumerian culture lived 
on for thousands of years—

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first through the Akkadians,
then the Assyrians, then the Babylonians.

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The Babylonians passed Sumerian 
inventions and traditions through

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along Hebrew, Greek, and Roman cultures.

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Some persist today.