The rise and fall of history’s first empire - Soraya Field Fiorio

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

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

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

with monumental architecture and
large populations—

and they built them
entirely out of mud.

Sumer occupied the Southern part of
modern Iraq

in the region called Mesopotamia.

Mesopotamia means “between two rivers”—

the Tigris and the Euphrates.

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

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

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

But Sumerians were the first
to take the next step.

Using clay bricks made from river mud,

they began to build multi-storied
homes and temples.

They invented the wheel—

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

Those clay bricks gave rise to the world’s
first cities, probably around 4500 BCE.

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

who were considered nobility,

then merchants, craftspeople,
farmers, and enslaved people.

The Sumerian empire consisted
of distinct city-states

that operated like small nations.

They were loosely linked by language
and spiritual belief

but lacked centralized control.

The earliest cities were Uruk, Ur,
and Eridu,

and eventually there were a dozen cities.

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

Sometimes they fought against each
other to conquer new territories.

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

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

the ziggurat, a temple designed
as a stepped pyramid.

Around 3200 BCE, Sumerians began to
expand their reach.

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

They built boats out of reeds and date
palm leaves,

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

To supplement scarce resources,
they built a trade network

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

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

Trade was the unlikely impetus

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

It started as a system of accounting
for Sumerian merchants

conducting business with traders abroad.

After a few hundred years, the early
pictogram system

called cuneiform turned into a script.

The Sumerians drafted up the first
written laws

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

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

In the schools, scribes studying from
dawn to dusk,

from childhood well into adulthood.

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

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

and the first epics on clay tablets.

Some of those tablets told the story of
Gilgamesh,

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

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

or even in Mesopotamia.

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

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

and using the cuneiform script to express
their own languages.

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

But Sargon respected Sumerian culture,

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

Other invading groups focused only
on looting and destruction.

Even as Sumerian culture spread,

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

Afterward, Sumer disappeared back into
the desert dirt,

not to be rediscovered
until the 19th century.

But Sumerian culture lived on
for thousands of years—

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

The Babylonians passed Sumerian inventions

and traditions through along Hebrew,
Greek, and Roman cultures.

Some persist today.