All language subtitles for 8. The Sumerians - Fall of the First Cities

In the year 1625,
an Italian nobleman named Pietro della

Valle
went on a tour of the Middle East.

Della Valle was a prolific traveller.
He journeyed around Asia, North Africa,

and even India.
He married an Assyrian Christian

princess in Damascus,
and now the two of them traveled

together, journeying by horseback and
camel,

accompanied by local guides.
At this time, travel in this region

couldn't have been more dangerous.
The Ottoman and Persian Empires were at

war,
fighting over who would rule in Baghdad,

and meanwhile, local bandits took
advantage of the chaos to prey on

travelers.
In those days, lions even roamed in these

hills.
Due to these various dangers, Della

Valle's guides were constantly on
edge. It was June the 18th,

1625, when they spotted a distant group
of tribesmen

on the horizon. Their guides
decided that they might be in danger, and

began to search for a place to hide.
In the distance, they spotted the looming

mass
of a series of enormous ruins, as Della

Valle
later wrote in his memoirs.

Being suspicious to some Arabian
vagrants or vagabonds,

for more security we removed a mile
further,

and took up our station under a little
hill near some ruins of buildings

which we saw from far away.

Della Valle’s group stayed in those ruins
for several nights

while their guides negotiated with the
local ruler,

asking for safe passage.
During the day, under the baking Iraqi

sun,
Della Valle passed his time by walking

among those monumental ruins.

Our removal hence being still deferred, I
went in the forenoon to take a more

diligent view
of the ruins of the above said ancient

building.
What it had been, I could not understand,

but I had found it to have been built
with very good bricks,

most of which were stamped with certain
unknown letters which appeared very

ancient.
I observed that they had been cemented

together not with lime,
but with bitumen or pitch.

Della Valle was fascinated by the broken
fragments of writing that littered the

ground of this ruined place.
He explored further and wrote down some

of the symbols
that he saw again and again stamped

into the stones and pieces of clay brick.
Surveying the ruins again, I found on the

ground some pieces of
black marble, hard and fine, engraven

with the same letters as the bricks
which seemed to me to be a kind of seal.

Amongst other symbols which I discovered
in that short time,

two I found in many places. One
was like a pyramid, and the other

resembled a star of eight points.

Della Valle and his wife didn't know it, but
they had stumbled

across the ruins of Ur, a city
that had formed the center of one of

mankind's first
civilizations. This society

was known as Sumer, and it was where
so much of the world we know today first

began.

Eventually, negotiations with the local
leader

fell apart, and Della Valle's guides
no longer felt safe camped out there in

the ruins.
They departed in the dead of night and

fled to safety across the desert.
In Della Valle’s bags were a few of the

clay tablets
that he had found scattered around the

ruins of Ur.
These would be the first examples ever

seen in Europe
of a language that had been dead and

forgotten for thousands of years.
All the way home, Della Valle must have

turned those tablets over in his hands,
gazed at their mysterious ancient

symbols.
He must have wondered to himself, who had

built
those enormous mounds of brick and earth,

all alone out there in the middle of the
desert?

What did the symbols on those broken
pieces of clay mean,

and if such a great city had once stood
there,

what in all the world could have
happened to it?

My name's Paul Cooper, and you're
listening to the Fall of Civilizations

podcast.
Each episode, I look at a civilization of

the past that rose to glory
and then collapsed into the ashes of

history.
I want to ask, what did they have in

common?
What led to their fall, and what did it

feel like to be a person
alive at the time who witnessed the end

of their world?

In this episode, I want to go back to the
very beginning

and look at a society that is one of the
candidates

for the first-ever technological human
civilization.

These are the people of Sumer who we call
the Sumerians. I want to show how,

over the course of millennia, the
Sumerians would build a society

that would form the blueprint for all
that followed after.

I want to show how they rose to invent
writing,

mathematics, and the wheel, and built the
largest cities that humanity

had ever seen. I want to explore what
happened

to cause their final and devastating
collapse.

In the highlands of Southeastern Turkey,
a range of snow-topped limestone peaks

rise over 3,000 meters above the flat
plains beneath.

These are the Taurus mountains.
The mountains of Turkey rise so sharply

that rain clouds find it difficult to
pass over them.

Instead, these clouds pool in their
hollows and valleys,

and give these hills an exceptionally
high rate of annual rainfall.

In spring and summer, the warm air means
that the clouds are even denser,

and violent thunderstorms rock these
mountains, too,

echoing of the stones of the valleys.
As a result, this is a landscape shaped

by water.
The steep sides of the Taurus mountains

have been eroded to form
streams and waterfalls, while underground

rivers
have cut into the rock and hollowed out

some of the largest caves in Asia.

Just as it has shaped the rocks, water
has also shaped the beliefs

of this region's people. The name of
these mountains,

Taurus, comes from the Latin word for
bull,

and the reason for this isn't hard to
see.

Temples have been unearthed all across
these mountains,

decorated with terracotta statues of
bulls.

Since ancient times, the people who lived
here worshipped the storm god

Teshub. They believed he rode on the back
of a bull,

perhaps because the sound of the
thunderstorms reminded them

of the thumping of enormous hooves.

Accompanied with the cracking and
booming of these thunderstorms,

these heavy spring rains drain into
streams,

and join rivers already flowing down
from the snowy mountain passes of

Armenia.
Soon, these small rivers join together

and flow down from the mountains
and out onto the wide, flat plains

beneath
in two great majestic watercourses

that run together in near parallel for
nearly 2,000

kilometers. The vast floodplain of these
rivers

is today the land we call Iraq.
In Arabic, this area is called Bilad

al-Rafidayn,
the land of the two rivers. In the

west, it has been known since ancient
times

by its Greek name, combining the words
mesos,

or middle, and potamos, or river.
Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers.

These two great waterways are known
as the Tigris and the Euphrates.

For millennia, these rivers have brought
life

down into the flat floodplain of Iraq,
and the source of that life comes from

some of the most lifeless things;
the rocks of the mountains themselves.

Virtually all rocks are held together
with tiny flecks of two different

materials
called quartz and feldspar.

Quartz is a clear, glittering crystal
formed from oxygen and silicon,

while feldspar is a complex mineral
derived from silicon.

Together, they make up over 60 percent of
the earth's crust,

and when rivers cut their roots through
the mountain gullies

and underground streams, their waters
wash

over the rocks, and dissolve their
soluble parts.

But quartz and feldspar don't dissolve
in water,

and so, these tiny crystals are carried
along by the river

in a cloud of glittering particles.
We call this substance silt.

Silt is sometimes known by the more
poetic name,

rock flower, and its particles are
smaller than a grain of sand.

But these tiny specks can have an
enormous impact.

Soil with a high silt content tends to
hold water better,

and promotes air circulation.
For this reason, silty soil forms the

perfect habitat
for most plants.

The rivers Tigris and Euphrates
transport

vast amounts of silt down into the
lowlands of Iraq

every year, and as a consequence,
this flat stretch of otherwise arid

desert
has become exceptionally fertile.

For the history of this region and the
history of all humanity,

these tiny particles would prove
immensely significant.

Other than its rich clay soil, the desert
plains of southern Iraq

are an inhospitable landscape. In fact,
this is perhaps the last place you might

expect the first human civilizations to
arise.

For one thing, the climate of this region
is extremely hot

and dry. Summer temperatures
can reach over 52 degrees centigrade or

126 degrees Fahrenheit.
Rainfall is rare, especially in

summer.
Coupled with the strong winds that blow

across these plains,
this means that the soil is arid and

windswept.
Although the seasonal flooding of

the rivers brings life to the earth,
these floods are also unpredictable.

In Egypt, the River Nile flows directly
from the Great Lakes of Africa

which act as a stabilizing and
regulating force.

But the Tigris and Euphrates depend on
the amount of rain

that fell on the mountains of Turkey,
Armenia, and Kurdistan,

a quantity that varies greatly from year
to year.

Years of drought can often be followed
by years of devastating floods,

and during winter, the whole plain is
covered

with a thick layer of mud.
The region of southern Iraq is also poor

in natural resources. The land
is essentially nothing but a flood plain

made of clay and silt. There were no
metals to be mined here,

and virtually no stone. Because of
all these challenges,

it took early humans a long time to
reach

this hostile environment.
In the far prehistoric, archaic humans

like Homo Erectus
vied for survival in the upper reaches

of the rivers.
Archaeologists have found stone axes and

other artifacts
dating back to nearly half a million

years ago.
But the river lands of southern Iraq

weren't suitable for this
hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

But about 13,000 years ago, things began
to change.

The first nomadic hunter-gatherers began
to settle down

in permanent villages. These early
innovators

had noticed something interesting; they
saw that when they threw away the

discarded seeds of edible plants,
that same plant would later sprout out

of their rubbish dumps.
This gave them an idea.

They realized that if you buried plant
seeds in the earth,

fed them and watered them, more of the
same plants would grow.

These were some of the first farmers, and
once they found a good patch of land,

they quite understandably didn't want to
move.

They soon built houses nearby, and
storehouses to keep

food through the winter. They banded
together

into larger communities in order to
divide the labor of farming

and to protect their grain should anyone
else try to take it.

They learned how to take the clay from
the ground and shape it into pots,

but they were still limited to areas
where the rains were plentiful,

to the mountains and the foothills.
From about the year 6500 BC,

these human settlements began to spread.
Century by century, millennium by

millennium,
they worked their way down the courses

of the two great rivers,
and into the inhospitable land of

southern Iraq. Who these people were,
what language they spoke, and what they

called themselves,
we have no idea. Today,

we call this stretch of several thousand
years

the Ubaid Period, named quite arbitrarily
after the site where their first

artifacts were found.

As the Ubaid people moved down the
rivers of Iraq,

they began to notice other things, too.
They noticed that date palms grew

in some areas of the river, providing
them

with a rich and delicious source of
calories.

They soon found out that these, too, could
be cultivated

and planted in orchards. They also
noticed that these palms

could provide shade for other more
fragile plants,

allowing them to be grown, too, beneath
the harsh Iraqi sun.

They made another crucial discovery,
too.

They realized that they didn't have to
grow their plants only on the banks of

the river.
With a bit of hard work, they could dig

channels
that diverted the life-giving water

inland.
Now, they could grow crops just about

anywhere,
so long as you could dig a canal long

enough.
The people of this region would soon

become very good
at digging canals.

Worked properly in this manner, this
landscape

could be immensely productive.
In their fields, the people here grew

wheat, millet,
and sesame. In gardens beneath the

shade of their date palms,
they also grew pomegranates, grapes, and

figs,
as well as chickpeas, lentils, leeks,

garlic, cucumbers, and watercress.

But there was one noticeable patch of
green

in the midst of all this desert.
In the south of Iraq, the rivers Tigris

and Euphrates
branched into deltas and shallow lakes

before they meet the ocean,
creating an ancient marsh landscape.

Here, dense thickets of reeds grow,
so tall you can't see over the tops of

them, populated with buffalo,
wild boar, and marshland birds.

Since ancient times, the people here have
built their houses out of reeds,

binding them together into incredibly
strong beams of up to a meter thick,

and building large, vaulted houses out of
nothing but reeds.

It's in this marshy southern
landscape that the greatest Sumerian

cities

rose.

Just as Mesopotamia was watered by two
great rivers,

its lands were also populated by two
great peoples.

These were the people of Sumer and the
people of Akkad.

Over the course of their history, the
Sumerians and the Akkadians

grew together in such a symbiotic way
that it's impossible to tell the story

of one
without the other. We know

a decent amount about the Akkadian people
in the north.

They spoke a language in the Semitic
family,

meaning that it's in the same language
family as the Aramaic of the Bible,

and later Hebrew and Arabic.
This language seems to have been

indigenous to the region,
and it shares grammar and words with

many other languages that surrounded it.
But the Sumerian people are much more

mysterious.
In fact, they are such a mystery that

they have caused archaeologists to refer
to what's called The Sumerian Problem.

Sumerians spoke what we call a language
isolate.

That is, it has no relation to any of the
languages around it,

and it's essentially in a language
family all of its own.

Sumerian was so alien to the region that
early scholars who discovered its first

texts didn't believe it could be a real
language at all.

They thought it must have been a kind of
code used to communicate in secret.

This alone has led some historians to
ask

whether the Sumerians may have arrived
in southern Iraq

from somewhere else.

The Sumerian culture centered on the sea
coast

of Iraq's far south, and so, some have
suggested

that they may have arrived by boat. Some
backing for this theory may come in the

writings
of Roman historian Flavius Josephus, who

wrote down a Babylonian legend
that he heard in the first century AD.

It relates the story of a half-man,
half-fish

called Oannes who walked out of the sea
and taught the people of Mesopotamia the

secrets of culture.
He brought them the knowledge of letters,

sciences, and all kinds of techniques.
He also taught them how to found cities,

build temples,
create laws, and measure plots of land. He

revealed to them how to work the land
and gather fruits.

After teaching mankind all these secrets,
Oannes leaps back into the sea and swims

away.
It's possible that in this myth, ancient

storytellers have preserved
some memory of the arrival of the

Sumerians
landing en masse by boat, and bringing

with them
their advanced urban culture.

Some have even argued that the Sumerians
may have come

from as far afield as India.

More evidence for the migration
theory seems to come from the words

that the Sumerians used for their
professions.

For more common jobs, the ones that
involved manual labor,

the Sumerians used old, pre-Sumerian
words.

Meanwhile, they brought new words with
them to describe more sophisticated

and urban occupations. For instance,
the words for ‘scribe’ and ‘winemaker’ are

both
distinctly Sumerian.

But others have proposed a more
interesting theory

which does seem to solve some of these
contradictions.

Although it does seem a little
far-fetched, I think it is worth

mentioning here.
The clue to this theory comes, once again,

from mythology.

The Sumerian version of history was
dominated

by a devastating event of apocalyptic
proportions.

If you were brought up reading Bible
stories, you may

find it familiar. The Sumerians believed
that in a time long before,

in the time of their most distant
ancestors,

a great flood had washed over the world.
This same story would later pass on into

the legends of the Babylonian Empire,
and from there, to the Hebrew poets who

wrote the first books of the Bible.
For this reason, the story of the flood

is perhaps the oldest,
continuously-told story, and it's in this

legend
that the clue to the origin of the

Sumerians might lie.
The story of the flood is so striking

that many historians with
varying degrees of credibility have

tried to come up with some historical
event

that may have inspired it, and history is
actually

full of great inundations.

When the last ice age ended around
10,000 BC,

global temperatures rose between four to
seven degrees

over a period of about five thousand
years.

Up until that point, vast ice sheets had
covered the land in the north of the

planet,
reaching as far south as Berlin.

But as temperatures rose, these ice caps
melted,

and their water poured back into the
oceans.

Global sea levels rose an average of two-
-and-a-half centimeters a year,

until by the end, the sea had risen an
incredible

120 meters, or enough to completely
swallow

a 30-storey building.
Around the world, the sea engulfed vast

regions of the coast.
The land bridge that had once connected

Russia and Alaska
was submerged, separating Asia and the

Americas forever.
Low-lying regions of what is now

Europe's North Sea
flooded, turning Great Britain into an

island.
In the Middle East, the effects were

felt just as dramatically.
During the low sea levels of the ice age,

the Tigris and Euphrates had flowed for
a further 600 kilometers,

joining into a single river, and
meandering along a stretch of low-lying

valley
wedged between what is now Iran and

Saudi Arabia.
This grand river would have met the

Indian Ocean
around the region of Dubai today.

Some historians have argued that
Neolithic humans

may have made their home in this fertile
valley,

having journeyed down from the mountains
of Iran.

But as the glaciers melted, the sea
advanced. Slowly at first, but with an

increasing speed.
Over the next five thousand years, the

coastline
would have moved an average rate of 120

meters
a year. That's over a kilometer

every ten years, or one meter
every three days. If there were humans

living in this low-lying region at the
time,

this event must have been utterly
terrifying.

The next centuries would see these
people driven north

by the encroaching waves which swallowed
whole forests and villages.

These people would have been pressed
into ever-denser populations,

forced to adapt as they went. They would
have been

a roving band of refugees, never able to
settle anywhere for long

before the sea made its next advance.
This exodus would have continued until

the planet's temperature
stabilized and the sea coast reached its

furthest point,
right around the year 5000 BC,

just at the time that Sumerian culture
as we know it

burst onto the historical stage.

This is a theory that I think
deserves some consideration;

that as the waves of Semitic-speaking
farmers

moved down the rivers from the mountains
to the north,

they met another population coming up
from the south,

a ravaged and devastated people speaking
a language

that had evolved independently, and
telling tales

of a flood that had drowned the whole
world.

This theory could be supported by that
legend

of the amphibious fish-man Oannes.
Is it possible that the Sumerians came

to southern Iraq
not by boat, but actually walking out of

a land
that was now at the bottom of the sea?

Another legend called The Myth of Enki
and Ninhursag

relates a creation story in which the
god Enki

creates man in a land called Dilmun.
Like the Garden of Eden, Dilmun is an

earthly paradise.

In Dilmun, the crow does not utter its
cry, the lion does not kill,

the wolf does not seize the lamb, the
wild dog,

devourer of kids, is unknown.

Dilmun is thought to have been what is
now Bahrain,

an island in the middle of the Persian
Gulf,

that body of water that was once a
fertile river valley.

All we have on this subject is
speculation,

and until any further evidence is found,
this

will remain just a theory. But as a
storyteller,

I can't help but be drawn to this
colorful explanation.

When we try to work out the truth of
what happened

in this incredibly distant past, we
are reminded that history is not a rigid

set
of dates and facts, but a continuing

process
of inquiry and debate. It can sometimes

feel
like mapping the surface of a planet in

another solar system,
or like exploring the dark depths of the

deep sea, and
all we have to work with are the

small spots of light
that history provides.

We may never know the truth about where
the Sumerians came from,

but there is plenty that we do know.

The Sumerians referred to themselves as
ùĝ saĝ gíg ga,

or ‘the black-headed people’, and the
Akkadians called them tsalmat-qaqqadi,

which meant the same thing in their own
language.

From carvings that depict Sumerians, we
can see how they wore their hair;

curly on top, and cut short on the sides.
Common men wore sheepskin kilts while

the richer people
would have worn coloured fabrics spun

from wool, decorated
with tassels and beads.

Among the wealthy, both men and women
wore jewelry;

anklets, bracelets, necklaces, and ear
ornaments,

made of copper and sometimes gold.
Remarkably, we also have a great deal of

evidence
about Sumerian music. Like everything

else,
the Sumerians wrote their music down on

clay tablets,
and we've also discovered other texts

that explain how to play it,
including how to tune the instruments.

Today, we're able to hear the
sounds of the music

that once played in the temples and
courtyards

of cities like Eridu, Ur, and Uruk.

These two great peoples, the Semitic
Akkadians

and the Sumerians, formed a symbiosis
over the next centuries

that would see their cultures run in
parallel,

just like their two great rivers.
They shared their successes and advances,

they shared the cities that were even
now growing

to become the largest ever seen, but they
also shared

their failures. As a result,
their fates became inextricably

intertwined.

The Sumerians believed that the world
was a roughly

circular landmass surrounded on all
sides by a huge body of water.

They believed that another ocean also
lay above their heads,

held in place by the solid structure of
the sky

which occasionally let some of this
water through as

rain. They divided water into two types;
that of the rain and rivers, sweet water,

and that of the sea, bitter water.
Sumerians called their homeland

ki-en-gi(-r),
which means ‘the land of the noble lords’.

To describe the settled societies of the
Sumerians and Akkadians,

they used the word ‘kalam’, meaning
‘civilized’,

while they used the word ‘kur’ to describe
the mountainous zones

bordering the plains. ‘Kur’, in the Sumerian
language,

meant ‘mountain’, but it also came to mean
‘rebellious’, ‘barbarous’, and ‘wild’.

At this time, that's how the outside
world must have looked to them.

To their south and west, the vast desert
of Arabia yawned,

a rolling sea of sand dunes where
nothing grew,

home to fierce nomadic tribes.
To the north, the rocky Taurus mountains

of Turkey
and Kurdistan hemmed them in, full

of hardy mountain people, while the
Zagros mountains of Iran

formed the edge of their world to the
east.

Today, the Arabic word for the region of
upper Mesopotamia

still holds within it a sense of this
feeling of isolation.

They call it Al-Jazeerah, meaning
‘the island.’ But despite the challenges of

their landscape,
the Sumerians flourished. They had no

stone to build with,
so instead they learned to make bricks

from the river mud,
mixing them with straw, gravel, and broken

pottery,
and baking them. With clay, they made

everything from pots
and plates to sickles and writing

tablets.
They had no wood, so instead they

harvested vast numbers of reeds,
tying them together into bundles, and

platting them together into mats.

The Sumerians invented or adopted the
pottery wheel,

the wagon wheel, the plow, and the
sailboat.

Their buildings used complex arches and
domes.

They worked out how to cast metals such
as copper,

and later, bronze. The Sumerians were
also

avid mathematicians. They developed
complex systems of measurement,

as well as methods for dividing,
multiplying, and calculating angles,

even writing down the first-ever
multiplication tables on clay tablets.

We actually use Sumerian mathematics
every day.

It was the Sumerians who divided time
into the minutes and seconds we still

use,
and since their number system worked on

a base of 60
rather than our system of 10, that's why

we have 60 minutes
in an hour. The reason for using 60 as

the base of a number system
is actually quite simple, and it's rooted

in the design
of our bodies. If you hold your hand out

in front of you right now,
you'll notice that each of your four

fingers is divided into three segments.
It's thought that ancient people would

use the thumb of their right hand
to tap each segment of the finger

counting up to 12.
When they reached 12, they would raise a

finger on their left hand,
counting up the 12s. When you had

five fingers raised on your left hand
you had 60, and you had to start again.

The fact that there were 12 cycles of
the moon in each year

would have confirmed for the Sumerians
that this was the number system

intended by the gods. The 360 degrees we
still use in angle measurement

is another relic of this system.

Due to this spark of ingenuity, Sumerian
society grew

at a slow but steady pace.
They dug vast networks of irrigation

canals
that extended the agricultural zone

around the rivers,
and also allowed them to transport goods

in canal boats.
They built dams to regulate the flow of

the rivers
and ensure that the spring floods came

in a more controlled way.
In fact, the Sumerian language has a vast

array of words
to describe the different kinds of

canals, reservoirs,
dams, and lock gates required to control

their water.
Gradually, the landscape of southern Iraq

transformed
from dusty salt flats and marshy swamps

to a green patchwork of farmland.

Many historians have argued that it was
the digging of these canals and

watercourses
that originally led to the greater

social organization
we see during the Sumerian period.

These extensive systems of water
management needed careful planning,

engineering expertise, and mathematical
calculations.

Work teams needed to be organized, and
paid in

food and beer. Foremen and overseers
needed to be appointed, and all of this

led to a kind of early bureaucracy that
gave rise to the first

true states. In the 1930s,
historian Arnold Toynbee famously argued

that it was just these environmental
challenges in southern Iraq

that created the conditions in which
civilization

could be created.

The desiccation of the region impelled
the fathers of the Sumeric civilization

to come to grips with the jungle swamp
of the lower valley of the Tigris and

Euphrates,
and to transform it. The ordeal through

which the fathers of the Sumeric
civilization

passed is commemorated in Sumeric
legend.

The slaying of the dragon Tiamat by the
god Marduk

and the creation of the world out of her
mortal remains

signifies the subjugation of the
primeval wilderness

and the creation of the land by the
canalization of the waters and the

draining of the soil.

The tough semi-desert landscape created
what he called

a ‘stimulus and response effect’ in these
early people.

Toynbee argues that in conditions that
are too comfortable,

people have little need of increased
social organization

or technological development. In
conditions that are too harsh,

society finds it impossible to develop.
He argues that it's in environments such

as southern Iraq,
where the challenges are numerous but

not overwhelming,
that a cradle of civilization can occur.

According to Sumerian texts, the first
city in the region

was the city of Eridu.
One controversial document known as the

Sumerian King List
describes Eridu as the place where the

god Enki
first decided that a king should rule.

When kingship from heaven was lowered,
the kingship was in Eridu.

In Eridu, Alulim became king. He ruled for
28,800

years. Alalngar ruled
for 36,000 years.

For obvious reasons, many historians have
questioned

the reliability of this source.
Some have even gone so far as to call it

a piece of utter
fiction, or a later piece of propaganda

designed to legitimize a usurper to the
throne.

But the King List does tell us how the
Sumerians,

of at least one point, thought of their
history,

and many have argued that Eridu may well
have been

the world's first city.
Eridu was founded around the year

5400 BC.
That's nearly seven and a half millennia

ago.
At this time, populations of woolly

mammoths,
survivors of the end of the ice age,

still
roamed in remote parts of the world.

Eridu was populated by Sumerian speakers,
and soon it would make up just one of a

whole constellation
of small cities that dotted the

landscape
of southern Iraq. These independent

city-states were centered around their
temples,

and ruled by priest kings known as the
Ensi. Records show that these

Ensi were often assisted by a council of
elders

which included both men and women.
Most of the largest cities in this

period were probably no bigger than
about 10,000

people. The borders of these
city states

were defined by the courses of canals
and specially-created boundary stones,

carved monuments
left jutting out of the earth to mark

the line between one territory and
another.

Slowly, these cities began to eclipse the
old Ubaid culture that had preceded them.

Art and architecture began to take on
the form that we would truly call

Sumerian, and technology also began to
take huge leaps forward.

This first period seems to have been a
time

of relative peace. There's little
evidence of

organized warfare or the keeping of
professional soldiers

in these early cities. Most
towns during this period went without

walls.
One exceptionally ancient Sumerian myth

called The Gifts of Inanna seems to
capture

some of the spirit of this period of
transition.

It describes technology and the
refinements of civilization

being handed down by Enki, the king of
the gods,

to his daughter, the goddess Inanna.
She later passes them down to the people

of Sumer.
Holy Inanna received the craft of the

carpenter,
the craft of the coppersmith, the craft

of the scribe,
the craft of the smith, the craft of the

leatherworker,
the craft of the builder, the craft of

the reed worker.
Holy Inanna received wisdom, the

shepherd's hut,
the knowledge to pile up glowing

charcoals, the sheepfold.

Enki teaches Inanna about family, the
proper laws of inheritance,

and the art of good judgment. But he also
goes on to give her other gifts,

some of which show that the darker side
of civilization

was already beginning to make itself
known.

Holy Inanna received deceit and the
rebel lands.

Holy Inanna received heroism, power,
wickedness, the plundering of cities, and

the making of lamentations.
It may be that the ancient Sumerians

already recognized,
right at the dawn of settled human

society,
what the scholar Walter Benjamin would

one day write,
that there is no record of civilization

that is not at the same time
a record of barbarism.

It's true that during this period,
the Sumerians began

practices that would begin a sorrowful
phase

of human history. Among them is the use
of slave labor.

They captured men and women from the
hill countries outside their borders,

and used their labor to fuel the growth
of their own

economy.

In the last episode, I used the metaphor
of the death of stars

to talk about the life cycle that
empires often pass through,

but we might also think about the birth
of civilizations

in this way. The first stars
were born from gas clouds compacted

together under the weight of their own
gravity

into a spinning ball of matter.
Under enough pressure, the temperature of

the star's core
increased and finally, nuclear fusion

began. The first stars
burst into light.

When enough people gather together in
one place, that settlement obtains a kind

of gravity.
It draws other people towards it, and as

the size of the settlement increases,
so does pressure on its various systems.

In some cases, this pressure results in
those people

being fused together into more complex
forms of organization.

Sometime around the year 3200 BC,
the first stars of these human

settlements began to burst into light.
That light was the invention of

writing.

One Sumerian epic poem called Enmerkar
and the Lord of Aratta

gives the first known story about the
invention of writing.

This poem attributes the invention to a
king

who has to send so many messages that
his messenger can't remember them all.

Because the messenger's mouth was heavy
and he couldn't repeat the message,

the Lord of Kulaba patted some clay and
put words on it like a tablet.

Until then, there had been no putting
words on clay.

The Sumerians had two things around them
in virtually

limitless abundance; that's the clay
beneath their feet,

and the reeds that grew in the marshes
and along the banks of the rivers.

It's these two resources that
combined to form

the first human writing.
Sumerian scribes would pick up a lump of

clay big enough to fit
in their hand. In fact, about the size of

a modern smartphone.
They would take a piece of reed cut

into the shape of a wedge,
and print it over and over into the clay

to form symbols.
The distinctive wedge shapes of the

reeds give this form of writing its name.
We call it

cuneiform.

The oldest cuneiform clay tablets come
from the city of Uruk, and date to the

late
fourth millennium, probably around the

32nd
or 31st centuries.

This script originally consisted of
pictographs,

small pictures designed to depict
objects so everyone could understand

what they represented.
These were first used to keep track of

everyday things
like rations and supplies. On some of

these very early tablets,
you can still see very clearly what they

mean.
A bowl of food is depicted with an

eating mouth
next to six impressions, and a sheaf of

wheat next to five.
This indicates that a worker can

exchange this tablet
for six bowls of food and five sheaths

of wheat.
Scribes would have had to work fast,

copying hundreds of documents throughout
their day.

Slowly, this pressure meant that the
signs

had to become simpler and more abstract.
Before long, they no longer looked like

the objects they described.
After the year 3000, the number of

symbols was reduced
from around 1,500 to about 600,

and someone else had the bright idea
that each symbol

could stand for a certain sound instead
of a whole idea.

This was the beginning of the first
alphabet,

but it meant that now only an educated
few

could understand writing, and soon,
a separate class of scribes emerged.

The human brain would never be the same
again.

People could now read the words of kings
and scribes

who had died hundreds of years before.
They could also begin to write down

everything that they had learned
so it could be remembered, and more

importantly,
it could be built upon.

Partly due to this ability to record
knowledge, the technology of Sumer around

this time
began to take even greater leaps forward.

This next period of history would be
known as the Period of Uruk.

The period is named after the city of
Uruk,

which by the middle of the 4th
millennium BC,

had grown into the largest and most
powerful city

in southern Mesopotamia.
One of the key ways that historians mark

the shift into the Uruk Period
is by observing a dramatic change that

occurred around this time
in the region's pottery. If you're

thinking that the pottery must have got
more sophisticated and ornate as

technology improved,
then you're mistaken. In fact, the ancient

pottery of the Ubaid Period
was exceptionally beautiful. It was made

on a device known as a slow wheel,
and painted with distinctive geometrical

designs
in brown or black. It was a luxury item

for the select few. The shift to the Uruk
Period

saw a great increase in the amount of
pottery produced,

but the quality fell dramatically.
Thanks to a technology known as the fast

wheel,
clay jars and pots could now be made in

great numbers
by workmen in intensive workshops.

This was the first era of mass
production.

The booming economy of the Sumerian
cities

comes to life in their documents.
The clay tablets tell us that in the

city of Girsu, for instance,
fifteen thousand women were employed in

the textile Industry.
One factory produced eleven hundred tons

of flour a year,
as well as bread, beer, and linseed oil.

This factory employed 134 specialists
and 858 skilled workers,

of which the vast majority were women.
Since there was no currency at this time,

workers were paid directly in
food and other goods. The minimum ration

of an unskilled factory worker consisted
of 20 liters of barley a month,

along with 2 litres of oil, and two kilos
of wool per year.

Meanwhile, their supervisor would earn
roughly twice this ration.

The poor in Sumerian society were
downtrodden

and were probably pretty miserable. They
often had to borrow

food or silver from predatory money
lenders

at crushing interest rates of as high as
30 percent.

But despite this rising inequality, by
the middle of the

fourth millennium BC, economic
advancement

meant that the city of Uruk had grown
into the largest and most powerful city

in southern Mesopotamia. This
was around the year 3500 BC,

or over 5,000 years ago.

By this time, nearly 2,000 years had
already passed

since the original founding of the first
city at Eridu.

That's enough time to take us from the
present moment to the age of Julius

Caesar.
By this time, Sumerian civilization was

already ancient,
but the very earliest of the pyramids of

Egypt would still not be built
for another 900 years.

In Britain, the Neolithic monument
Stonehenge

was at this time just a series of
barrows and earthworks,

and its large stones would not be moved
into place

for another 1,300 years.
When writing was invented in Uruk in the

32nd
century BC, the last population of woolly

mammoths to survive the end of the ice
age

were still clinging to life on a rocky
outcrop

in the East Siberian Sea known as
Wrangel Island.

By this time, Uruk would have had about
50,000

inhabitants. That's only enough to
fill

a modern medium-sized football stadium.
But at this time, it was the largest city

that the earth had ever seen.
The world's earliest surviving piece of

literature,
known as the Epic of Gilgamesh, begins in

this city.
It is the story of a king of Uruk named

Gilgamesh,
who likely ruled some time in the third

millennium.
Whatever the historical facts of his

reign are, Gilgamesh made enough of an
impression as a ruler

that he went down into legend as a
mythical hero,

two-thirds god and one-third man.
Although there's much more myth than

fact in this ancient
tale, the Gilgamesh epic does tell us a

little about how Sumerian society
changed

in the early centuries of the third
millennium.

For one thing, it's clear that warfare
had begun to increase

in the region. The tale opens in the
powerful city of Uruk,

and one feature of the city is mentioned
as a great source of pride.

That's a ring of enormous fortified
walls,

as these lines from the epic of
Gilgamesh show.

Behold the outer walls which gleam like
copper!

See the inner wall which none can rival!
Touch the threshold stone – it is from

ancient
days! Go up and walk on the wall of Uruk!

Inspect the cornerstone, and examine its
brickwork!

Is it not built of baked brick?
It's clear that city walls were now a

necessity,
but we can tell from the great pride

shown in Uruk’s fortifications
that they may have also been quite rare.

In fact, throughout the story, the city is
referred to repeatedly

as ‘strong walled Uruk.’
We also get a sense of how the city was

divided during this time,
suggesting some level of urban planning

from its rulers.
These parts comprise Uruk. One-third for

city,
one-third for garden, one-third for field,

and a precinct for the temple of Ishtar.
At the height of the Uruk Period, the

city covered an area of two and a half
square kilometers.

It had a port on the river, along with
workshops and cluttered houses.

At the center of the city was Uruk's
famous White Temple.

It was elevated 21 meters, and covered in
white

gypsum plaster that reflected the
sunlight

and would have caused the temple to glow
during the day.

If you walked the streets of Uruk during
this time,

you would have seen markets full of
produce like beans and lentils,

pomegranates and dates, jars of date
syrup, and oil.

In the richer parts of town, houses would
be built from baked bricks.

But elsewhere they would be mud and clay,
dried in the sun. The houses would likely

be arranged in a chaotic way,
creating a labyrinth of alleys and

warrens,
covered by reed matting to keep them

cool in the heat of the day.
Farmers would be carrying large bundles

of reeds and wheat on their backs,
and herders would bring their

long-haired sheep and oxen into the city.

Here and there, you would see men sitting
in circles

in shaded courtyards, sharing a large jar
of beer in the center,

all sipping it through long straws made
of hollow reeds.

While the Sumerians did import some
wines from the northern regions,

it was beer that they loved most of all.
They had over 30 different varieties,

with names like ‘white’, ‘dark’, ‘cloudy’,
and ‘sweetened with honey’.

Some of their beer was flavoured with
herbs. It was brewed directly from the

wheat and barley of the fields,
and if you bought the cheapest kind, it

would often still have seeds of grain
floating at the bottom. One cuneiform

text
has even preserved a kind of drinking

song.
I will summon brewers and cupbearers to

serve us floods of beer and pass it
around!

What pleasure! What delight! Blissfully to
take it in,

to sing jubilantly of this noble liquor,
our hearts enchanted and our souls

radiant.

We can imagine the conversations that
these ancient people would have had

around their jars of beer; probably
not that different to the conversations

you'd find in any bar
or pub today.

Some of these everyday concerns have
been preserved in lists of ancient

Sumerian proverbs.
These groups of beer-drinkers would

doubtless have complained
that they were not appreciated at work.

I am a thoroughbred steed but I am
hitched to a mule,

and must draw a cart and carry reeds and
stubble.

Others would have commiserated about one
of the oldest human concerns;

not having enough money.

The poor man is better dead than alive;
if he has bread,

he has no salt. If he has salt, he has no
bread.

As with drinkers in all parts of
history, they would have fallen out,

and shouted insults at each other in the
streets.

If you were put in water, the water would
become foul.

If you were put in a garden, the fruit
would rot.

At night, people usually slept on their
rooftops,

since the heat inside the houses would
have been too much for them.

The city would have been a pungent
mixture of smells.

Pottery kilns and brickworks would have
belched smoke throughout the day.

There were no drainage systems in the
roads, and people would have thrown their

waste
out into the street. In the houses,

people laid down layers of clay, crushed
gypsum dust,

and reed mats to create a soft,
carpet-like effect.

From the epicentre of this great
metropolis,

the Uruk civilization sent out ripples
across the world,

and eventually, a number of similarly
great cities

rose up around it. But as the fourth
millennium drew to a close,

another Sumerian city was rising in
power,

and soon, it would take Uruk's place as
the new

center of Sumerian culture.
It would flourish into realms of untold

wealth,
and push the boundaries of what humanity

thought possible
in the realms of art and architecture.

It's the city whose ruins we opened this
episode with,

and the name of that city was Ur.

Ur was situated right at the point where
the Euphrates River met the sea.

It was a trading port and fishing town
where seagulls would have circled,

and fishermen came in with their catches
of fish,

oysters, and turtles. Its position both on
the sea

and the river would have made it a
booming hub

of the region's trade.
As we've already seen, if you needed clay

or
reeds, southern Iraq was the place to be.

But for virtually everything else they
needed, the Sumerians had to import

from other lands. But luckily for them,
they always had something to trade.

They were alone among almost all the
nations of the ancient

Middle East, in that they produced a
large surplus and variety of food.

Archaeology shows that due to their
farming abilities,

the Mesopotamians of antiquity enjoyed a
far more rich and varied diet

than their neighbors in either Turkey or
Iran.

We have even uncovered some ancient
Sumerian recipes

written down on clay tablets.
This is the recipe for a dish they

called Tuh’u,
and it gives you a sense of the variety

they enjoyed.

Get the water ready. Add fat, salt,
beer, onion, rocket, coriander,

semolina, cumin, and beetroot.
Add them to the cooking pot, then pound

leek and garlic together, and add.
Let all blend and reduce to a pulp, then

sprinkle with coriander and carrot.

Boats full of wheat and grains, dried
reeds, and figs

were now forging up the rivers, bringing
food to all the neighboring lands.

In return, other resources flowed
back.

Copper came down from the mountains of
northwestern Iran,

and later by ship from the island of
Cyprus.

Tin travelled through the long mountain
passes from Afghanistan,

as it would throughout the later Bronze
Age.

Silver came down the Euphrates on barges
from Turkey's Taurus mountains, while

gold came over land from Egypt,
and by ship from India. Ordinary wood for

everyday building
could be chopped in the Zagros mountains

of Iran to the east.
But for finer constructions; for palaces

and ornate city gates,
only the prized wood of the cedar tree

would do.
This was brought by ship from Lebanon,

where it grew
among the high mountain passes.

In fact, one episode in the epic of
Gilgamesh

relates the king's quest to slay a
monster in the mountains of Lebanon,

and steal this beautiful wood from its
forest.

The ancient Sumerians traded in what we
would consider a truly globalized way.

From their tiny coasts on the Persian
Gulf, their ships sailed out to trading

ports in modern Bahrain and Oman.
From there, they sailed along the

coast to trade with another of the
world's most ancient and mysterious

cultures,
the people we know today as the Indus

Valley Civilization.

From there, the Sumerians got all kinds
of spices,

and gemstones like carnelian, as well as
the brilliant blue Lapis Lazuli

that the Sumerians adored. They used it
to make jewelry and amulets,

inlays in gaming boards, musical
instruments, and sculptures of

astonishing beauty.

All of this trade would have passed
through Ur

and swelled the city to a wealth that
likely no

other human habitation had ever achieved.
Grave goods uncovered in Ur show not

only the incredible wealth of its rulers,
but also magnificent craftsmanship that

suggests an advanced community of
artists.

One such artifact found in a royal tomb
in Ur has given us an incredible insight

into the lives and manners of the
ancient Sumerians.

It's an ornate, decorative piece of
furniture,

inlaid with a mosaic of shell, red
limestone, and Lapis Lazuli.

Its images show detailed scenes from
everyday life

around 4,600 years ago.

Today, it is called the Standard of Ur.

On one side, the artifact shows images of
the Sumerians at war;

the chariots pulled by donkeys, the
soldiers wearing leather capes and

helmets,
the men carrying spears and axes.

On the other side, it depicts the
Sumerians at peace;

farmers and herders working on one level,
and above them, the scribes with their

shaved heads
sitting at their desks.

At this time, urbanism in the Sumerian
world was reaching its peak.

By the end of the third millennium, a
majority of the region's population

would live
in cities, and in this newly urbanized

world,
the economic power of Ur remained king.

Over the next centuries, its power
expanded and contracted,

and at one point, some of its kings wrote
inscriptions

calling themselves both the King of Ur
and the King of Kish,

another city that lay nearby. This
suggests that Ur

may have subdued some of its neighbors
under its political control.

But by the mid-third millennium, it seems
the influence of Ur

began to wane. This was a new
militarized age, when the power of trade

and diplomacy
seems to have no longer been enough.

One city called Lagash truly came
into its own

in this era of violence.

Lagash was a slaving city.
It had grown rich by raiding villages in

the hills,
kidnapping people, and selling them

across the region.
Sometime around the year 2500 BC,

Lagash fell out with its neighbor, a city
called Umma. The dispute seems to have

been over a stretch of farmland along
the river,

and it caused the two cities to go to
war.

One carved stone monument from this time,
known as a stelae, captures something of

the spirit
of this age. It is known as the Stelae

of the Vultures. The upper part of the
stone is normal enough.

It shows the King of Lagash, a man named
Eannatum,

leading his soldiers into battle. They
wear leather helmets and skirts made of

reeds,
shouldering their spears. These spears

would have likely been topped with
blades of copper or bronze,

and would have flashed red in the sun as
they marched.

The king is riding ahead of them in an
early chariot,

wearing an animal skin slung across his
chest,

with a spear and a container of javelins
beside him.

When the armies met, the stelae shows King
Eannatum of Lagash

dismounting from his chariot, and
proceeding to lead his men

on foot. They advance in a phalanx,
a tight square of men with broad shields

protecting their fronts,
and a porcupine of short spears jutting

out ahead.
The fighting was bitter. Eannatum was

struck in the eye by an
arrow, but he lived on to see his army to

victory,
as the inscription on the stelae records.

Eannatum struck at Umma. The bodies were
soon

3,600 in number.
I, Eannatum, like a fierce storm wind,

I unleashed the tempest!

As the soldiers of Umma tried to flee the
bloody battlefield,

the stelae shows the soldiers of Lagash
cutting them down

and trampling them beneath their feet.
There's something to this carving that

to me, embodies something of a change in
the spirit of Sumerian warfare.

It's a particular kind of nastiness that
revels in the suffering of your enemies,

and this is shown most clearly in the
part of the carving

that gives it its name. These
are the vultures flying overhead,

carrying the severed heads of the
soldiers of Umma

in their beaks, picking at their tongues
and eyes.

It clearly shows a kind of massacre
perpetrated by the

city of Lagash, and it does so with
relish.

Due to military victories of this kind,
the slaving city of Lagash

went on to conquer much of southern
Mesopotamia.

Lagash established what some historians
have called the first

true empire in the world, but its rule
was short-lived. In these ancient times,

administrating even one city was
difficult,

and the Empire of Lagash, despite its
military success,

was soon critically overstretched.
To make matters worse, King Eannatum

seems to have ruled
through what amounts to a campaign of

terror.
Unsurprisingly, his rule was unpopular,

and revolts rose up against him.

As the hated Empire of Lagash fractured
and collapsed,

the ruler of one of its subjugated
cities seized his

chance. He was the King of Umma,
the city whose defeat and humiliation is

depicted with such relish
on the Stelae of the Vultures, and his

name
was Lugalzaggesi.

It's not clear exactly what made
Lugalzaggesi so

successful, but it's clear he was
animated

by an ardent desire for revenge against
the Empire of Lagash.

Perhaps he had even been at the battle
when King Eannatum

had slaughtered thousands of his fellow
citizens.

He rose in rebellion against Lagash,
and quickly toppled kings that were

still loyal to the empire
in the cities of Kish and Larsa.

Then he marched on the great city of Ur
itself,

and the mighty walled fortress of Uruk.
These both fell in turn, and the rebel

Lugalzaggesi
moved his capital to Uruk.

Finally, he marched on the city of Lagash
itself,

the heart of the empire, and it's here
that that fiery vengeance in his heart

burst out.
The city didn't hold out for long.

Lugalzaggesi burst over its walls,
sacked the city, and burned it to the

ground.

Even by the standards of the time, this
seems to have been a shocking

act, as one piece of Sumerian poetry
recalls with sorrow.

Because the man of Umma destroyed the
bricks of Lagash, he committed a sin

against the city's god. The god will cut
off any hand raised against him.

May Nidaba, the personal goddess of
Lugalzaggesi,

make him bear all these sins.

After sacking Lagash, Lugalzaggesi’s
momentum

seems to have been unstoppable. He worked
his way north,

up the course of the two rivers, and soon,
he had conquered all the regions that

Lagash had once claimed.
One inscription written by him even

claims to have conquered
all the lands between what he calls the

upper
and the lower seas, meaning from the

Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean coast.
The great god Enlil gave kingship of the

land to him,
the region from the lower sea through

the Tigris and Euphrates,
to the upper sea. Thirty-two kings

gathered against him,
but he defeated them and smote their

cities, and prostrated their lords,
and destroyed the whole countryside as

far as the silver mines.

Admittedly, this is probably something of
an exaggeration.

The Sumerians had never been able to
maintain distant colonies

or occupy far-off lands for very long.
It's more likely that Lugalzaggesi

pulled off something like a successful
raiding party on the coast, perhaps

looting some towns and cities,
and bringing treasure back to Uruk.

But this was the first time that a
Sumerian prince had ever made this claim.

For them, this upper sea was the western
edge of their entire world,

and the idea of a king who might conquer
all the lands between the seas

began to possess the imaginations of all
the kings who came after.

But King Lugalzaggesi, like the rulers
of Lagash before him,

had made the critical mistake of
overstretching his resources.

This empire was simply too big.
Before long, civil wars and rebellions

broke out between the various Sumerian
cities.

In this time of chaos, the other great
people of Mesopotamia

began to fancy their chances at ruling.

These were the people who, up until this
moment, had been something of a junior

partner
in the civilization of southern Iraq.

These were the people of Akkad.

One man would soon lead them in an
outright rebellion

against the Sumerian Empire. He
would go down in history with a name

that in Akkadian
means ‘the one true king’. That name

was Sargon, and he ushered in the
twilight

of the Sumerian age.

Like many episodes in Sumerian history,
the origin story of Sargon of Akkad is

one you might find familiar
if you were brought up on the stories of

the Bible.
He was born sometime in the middle of

the 24th century BC,
and legend has it that as a baby, he was

found in a reed basket
on the banks of the Tigris. He was found

by a gardener
who worked in the palace in the city of

Kish,
and who brought him up as his son.

But like the biblical Moses, this
foundling child

had big ambitions.

There seems to have been something
special about him.

Something about his charming manners
meant that he was soon taken on as a

cupbearer in the palace,
bringing wine to the lords and royalty

of the kingdom.
This was a position of high honor, and a

way for a young man to gain
influence at court. The young Sargon

must have proven himself in other ways,
too.

That's because he was soon entrusted
with a mission of the utmost secrecy

and importance.

At this time, Kish was still part of
Lugalzaggesi’s Sumerian Empire,

stretching over all the lands between
the two seas.

The Sumerian King Lugalzaggesi was away
on a distant campaign,

possibly fighting in the lands of Syria
or putting down a rebellion

in a far-flung province. The young Sargon
was given a small band of fighting men

and told to travel to the city of Uruk,
where Lugalzaggesi kept his royal court.

Their plan was to strike the city in a
surprise attack,

to knock out the capital of this new
empire,

and free the city of Kish from imperial
control.

It was a daring plan. The tall city walls
of Uruk,

immortalized in legend, must have looked
daunting to the young Sargon

and his men as they readied for their
attack.

But Lugalzaggesi had taken much of his
army with him on campaign,

and left few behind to defend his
capital.

The attack came as a complete surprise.
Sargon's men overcame their defenses,

poured over their walls,
and the defenders fled. Sargon captured

the city,
and before reinforcements could arrive,

he broke down
several sections of those famous city

walls.
It was a deeply symbolic act, and a

strike against the might
of Lugalzaggesi’s empire.

King Lugalzaggesi must have been
enraged.

He swung around from his distant war-
-making and marched back home,

gathering all his subject kings to him
as he went.

Inscriptions record that as many as 50
kings may have marched under his banner,

and their task was easy enough; to crush
the forces of one

small city-state. But Sargon seems to
have been one of those characters from

history,
one of those geniuses like Hannibal or

Napoleon,
who are able to turn battles in their

favor no matter
the odds. We don't know how he did it,

but in a pitched battle with the whole
amassed force of the empire,

it was Sargon's army that emerged

victorious.
Lugalzaggesi was captured, and Sargon

marched him through the gates of the
Holy city of Nippur

wearing a neck stock, a heavy piece of
wood

clapped around his neck and shoulders
like an oxen.

This would have been humiliating of
course, but here again

is where Sargon sets himself apart from
other rulers of the time.

That's because he seems to have had
something of a merciful streak.

The old King Lugalzaggesi wasn't killed.
Incredibly, he was allowed to continue on

as the governor of Uruk,
so long as he swore an oath to the high

King Sargon.
Sargon founded a new city to act as his

empire's capital,
and he named it Akkad.

From there, he would go on to conquer
much of what the preceding empires

had before, as one inscription beneath a
statue in the city of Nippur

claims. Sargon, the King of Kish,
triumphed in 34 battles over the cities,

up to the edge of the sea, and destroyed
their walls.

He bowed down to the gods, and the gods
gave him the upper land

up to the cedar forest, and up to the
silver mountain.

Sargon didn't make the mistakes of
his predecessors.

At each city he conquered, he made a
point of destroying the city's walls,

reducing its ability to defend itself,
and therefore reducing the likelihood

of it rebelling against his rule.
He conducted a ceremony to symbolize his

mastery
over the whole land. He washed his

weapons in the waters
of both the Persian Gulf and the

Mediterranean Sea.
But once the dust of war had settled, his

achievements went on.
He made efforts to centralize the

empire's administration,
and even reformed the dating system. His

reforms
strengthened the central state and

increased the stability of the empire.
In many ways, he was something of a

progressive and enlightened ruler.
But Sargon was also Akkadian,

and he was what we today might call a
nationalist.

Until now, Sumerian had been the official
language of royal inscriptions

on palaces and temples. But during
Sargon's reign,

Akkadian began to be used in official
inscriptions for the first time.

The cuneiform alphabet was now
re-engineered to write Akkadian,

and Sargon also gave himself the new
title,

King of Akkad. He appointed
only his fellow Akkadians to key

positions in the government,
and garrisoned Sumerian cities with

Akkadian troops
to ensure their loyalty.

The two people of Mesopotamia who had
lived and grown together for millennia,

were now beginning to drift apart.
Resentment in the southern

Sumerian-speaking cities
began to reach a boiling point.

Sargon ruled for 55 years,
and towards the end of his reign, this

resentment bubbled over,
as one later Babylonian text recalls.

In his old age, all the lands revolted
against him,

and they besieged him in Akkad the city.
But he went forth to battle, and defeated

them. He knocked them over and destroyed
their vast army.

For the meantime, it's clear that
Sargon's flair for battle

kept his empire together, but as the old
king weakened,

virtually all the southern cities burst
out in open rebellion.

When Sargon of Akkad died around the
year 2284,

his two sons had to take over and try to
fix the mess he had left behind.

The first of these sons was called
Rimush. He ruled for nine years

and spent most of them in bitter battles
to reconquer the rebellious Sumerian

cities of the south.
He crushed rebellions in Ur, Umma, Lagash,

and Adab, and one of the years in which
he ruled

is even known as ‘the year that Adab was
destroyed’.

When Rimush died, Sargon's other son,
Manishtushu,

took over. He seems to have resorted to
the kinds of terror tactics

that had once made the kings of Lagash
so hated.

It was Sargon's grandson, a man named
Naram-Sin,

who would return the empire to its
former greatness.

He managed to quell the Sumerian
rebellion in its southern heartlands,

and returned the Empire of Akkad to
stability.

Naram-Sin didn't rule only by force;
it seems he made some effort to

reconcile the two
intertwined peoples of Mesopotamia,

breaking from his grandfather's title,
King of Akkad, and ruling under the more

diplomatic title
King of Sumer and Akkad.

But this didn't entirely heal the rift
there was even now

continuing to grow between these two
peoples.

Part of the problem was that the
Sumerian people were no longer the

primary cultural
force in the region. For centuries,

Akkadian had been gradually replacing
Sumerian as a spoken language.

Some of this may have been down to the
official policies of the Akkadian Empire,

discouraging the use of Sumerian in
official documents.

But it was also affected by the
increasingly cosmopolitan makeup of the

empire.
Sumerian, as we've seen, was a language

isolate
with a different structure and sound to

all the languages around it.
But the people who lived in all the

surrounding lands
spoke languages that were linguistic

cousins of Akkadian,
all in the Semitic family of languages.

They had the same grammar, and even
shared sounds and words with Akkadian.

Learning Akkadian for them would have
been like an English speaker

learning French or Spanish, while
Sumerian

would have been like learning Korean.
Akkadian was just easier to learn for

these people,
and so, it would naturally become the

language of trade and commerce.
The people of Mesopotamia had been

largely bilingual for centuries,
but gradually, all Sumerians would have

learned to speak Akkadian,
and fewer and fewer Akkadians would have

needed to learn
Sumerian. Slowly, the Sumerian language

began to fade.
But the days of the Akkadian Empire

were also
numbered, and the Sumerians would get

one more chance to leave their mark on
the world's history.

When the great Akkadian King Naram-Sin
died,

his son Shar-Kali-Sharri took over.
He was Sargon of Akkad's great grandson,

and four years into his reign, a great
celestial sign

would have appeared in the skies
overhead.

Far out in the depths of space, nearly
200 million kilometers away from Earth,

a giant ball of ice and dust 40
kilometers across

flew past, sometime around the year
2213 BC. This

was the comet Hale-Bopp.
It would spend the next four millennia

or so
flying through our solar system on a

deep elliptical orbit,
until it flew past the Earth again as a

blazing streak of light
in the year 1997.

It was the brightest comet with the
longest tail

that has ever been observed in our night
skies.

It remained visible with the naked eye
for 18 months.

In 1997, the site of the comet
in San Diego, California caused 39

members of an apocalyptic
cult called Heaven's Gate to commit

suicide
by drinking a lethal mixture of vodka

and phenobarbital.
They believed that their souls would be

carried away on a spaceship
that was hidden behind the iridescent

tail of the comet,
and we can only imagine what effect the

sight of this comet
may have had on ancient people.

Some may have looked up and seen the
blessings of the gods,

smiling on the lands of Sumer and Akkad.
Others may have stared up at that lonely

cosmic traveler
and seen a sign of doom.

Ultimately, it was these latter who would
prove correct.

During the reign of King
Shar-Kali-Sharri,

the world's climate underwent a
mysterious

and sudden shift. This change is known
only by the cryptic

name, the ‘4.2 kilo year event’.
It has been tentatively linked to

changes that took place in the sea ice
of the North Atlantic,

causing ripples throughout the world's
delicate and intimately interlinked

climate systems.
But whatever the causes, its effects were

dramatic.
In various places around the world, it

coincided with periods of reduced
rainfall.

Studies of dust layers in Iraq and the
Middle East

have shown that around this time, annual
rainfall dropped dramatically,

and the climate became much more arid.
The annual floods of the rivers on which

so much of the agriculture of the region
depended

would now routinely fail, and famine
would set in.

This dry period wasn't brief.
In fact, it would last for well over a

century,
and some think it may have even lasted

for the next 300 years.
This period of drought and the famines

it caused were mentioned in Egyptian
texts of the time,

too, and has affected cultures all around
the globe.

It's been linked to civilizational
collapses in Egypt's old kingdom,

the Indus Valley Civilization in India,
and the Liangzhu culture in China.

In Mesopotamia around this time, still
ruled by the Akkadian Empire,

it's clear that resources became
suddenly scarce.

The days of a booming surplus of food
were over,

and it's around this time that the first
towns and cities

began to be abandoned in the drier zones
of the north.

After the death of King Shar-Kali-Sharri
around the year 2193 BC,

a period of chaos and bitter civil war
descended on the Empire of Akkad.

The Sumerian King List records this
period

with an almost sarcastic tone.
Then who was king? Who was not the king?

Four of them ruled in only three years.

All this chaos did not go unnoticed.
In the mountains overlooking the plains

of Mesopotamia,
a nomadic tribal people known as the

Guti
were watching.

Who the Guti were, what language they
spoke, and which gods they worshipped,

we don't know. They seem to have been
an unsophisticated nomadic people,

and the ancient Sumerian texts reserve
particular contempt for them.

The Guti were unhappy people, unaware of
how to revere the gods,

and ignorant of the right religious
practices.

The Guti had raided and plundered along
the borders of the Akkadian Empire for

years,
burning villages and stealing cattle.

One remarkable letter, dating from the
reign of King

Shar-Kali-Sharri, was written by an Akkadian
lord who owned land on the borders of

the Guti territory.
He tells his workers to ignore the Guti

attacks
and keep working, although it's clear he

does this while keeping himself
at a safe distance.

Cultivate the field and watch over the
cattle.

Do not tell me, ‘the Guti enemies are
around. I could not cultivate the field.’

Post sentries at one-mile intervals, and if
the Guti try to attack you,

take all the cattle into the village. Now,
I swear on the life of King Shar-Kali-

-Sharri that if the Guti men drive off the
cattle and you cannot pay for them

yourself,
I won't pay you any silver when I come

to town.

For years now, these hill people had
watched

as drought ravaged the settled societies
of the river valley.

They watched as the city-dwellers fought
over the increasingly scarce farmland,

and it's in this moment of weakness that
they chose to strike.

The Guti gathered their forces and
marched down from the hills

into the lands of Sumer, this time
not to raid, but to invade and take these

lands for themselves.

One remarkable literary text relates the
tragic events of those days.

It was written a few centuries later, and
is called

The Curse of Akkad.
In this version of the story, the great

god Enlil
is angry at the king of Akkad for

disrespecting the gods,
and he summons the Guti as a punishment.

The hill people are imagined as
monstrous creatures,

half-animal, with a language that sounded
to the Sumerians

like the barking of dogs.

Enlil…what destruction he wrought.
He raised his eyes to the mountain, and

mustered the whole mountain as one.
The rebellious people, the land whose

people is without number.
Gutium, that land that brooks no control,

whose understanding is human, but whose
appearance and stuttering words are that

of a dog.
Enlil brought them down from the

mountain in vast numbers.
Like locusts, they covered the earth.

Nothing escaped their arm. No one escaped
their arm.

All the lands raised a bitter cry on
their city walls.

It's not clear how many men were in the
Guti army,

but they were enough to quickly
overwhelm the weakened forces of

Akkad. It seems the Guti practiced
hit-and-run tactics,

raiding supply lines, and leaving
scorched earth behind them.

Their attacks devastated the economy of
Akkad,

and the already drought-ridden and
war-torn society

began to fall apart.

For the first time since cities were
built and founded,

the great agricultural tracks produced
no grain,

the inundated tracts produced no fish,
the irrigated orchards produced neither

syrup nor wine.
The gathered clouds did not rain, the

plants did not grow.
He who slept on the roof died on the

roof.
He who slept in the house had no burial.

People were flailing at themselves from
hunger.

The weakened Akkadian society folded
completely

beneath the pressure of the Guti attacks.
The demoralized Akkadian army went out

to meet this fearsome enemy in battle,
and was defeated. Soon after,

the Gutis swept down on the city of
Akkad,

and burned it to the ground. They
destroyed Sargon city

so utterly that its ruins have never
been

found. The Guti
attempted to set up their own dynasty

and rule
over the lands of Sumer, but for a number

of reasons,
they were not successful. After all,

as empires in our own day have found out,
it's much easier to conquer a country

than it is to rule it. Cuneiform sources
suggest that the Guti administration

showed little concern for maintaining
agriculture, written records, or public

safety.
The Guti were not literate, and would

have struggled to administrate an
empire that for over a millennium, had

relied on the power of the written word.
For reasons known only to them, and

perhaps relating to their nomadic
lifestyle,

they didn't believe in keeping animals
in pens.

They released all of the land's
livestock to roam about the countryside

freely.
Their policies soon brought even further

famine,
and caused a massive increase in the

price of grain.
Under neglect and lack of investment, the

land's
infrastructure began to crumble.

The poetry of The Curse of Akkad shows
how the roads of the kingdom began to

fall apart,
and become overgrown with weeds, while

long grass grew
on the towpaths where oxen used to pull

barges. The grass grows long
on your canal-bank towpaths, the grass of

mourning grows on your highways laid for
wagons!

Wild rams and snakes of the mountains
allow no one to pass on your towpaths

built up with canal sediment.

The destruction of the central authority
of the Akkadian Empire

meant that during this time, a number of
Sumerian city states

reasserted their independence.
It seems the Guti, weakened by their

failing attempt
to hold an empire together, don't seem to

have been able to do much to stop them.
The Guti occupied southern Iraq for more

than 150 years,
and this period was by all accounts a

time of suffering.
It was a miniature dark age where

written records are unsophisticated,
as well as few and far between.

But as resentment to their rule grew,
rebellions rose around the country,

and one Sumerian man would see the
opportunity this period of crisis

provided. He was filled with a desire to
return the lands of Sumer

to the rule of a Sumerian king, and his
name

was Utu-Hengal.

Little is known about the life of
Utu-Hengal.

He was a Sumerian, and may have been the
governor of Uruk

during the final years of the Gutian
Period.

He must have watched as the ongoing
famine ravaged his people,

and the arrogant Guti kings refused to
do anything about it,

violently punishing any resistance to
them.

At this time, a new Guti king had just
ascended to the throne of Sumer and

Akkad.
His name was Tirigan, and he seems to

have been
typical of the Guti rulers. He cared

little for maintaining the land's
infrastructure,

and even destroyed elements of it to
punish populations who rebelled against

him,
as recalled in the Sumerian King List.

Tirigan's troops established themselves
everywhere.

Nobody would leave their cities to face
him. In the south,

in Sumer, he blocked the water from the
fields.

In the uplands, he closed off the roads.
Because of him,

the grass grew high on the highways of
the land.

Tirigan had been on the throne for only
forty days,

and he was still in the middle of
consolidating his rule.

It's clear that Utu-Hengal, the governor
of Uruk,

thought that this was the time to make
his move.

His plan may have been in place for
years.

Perhaps he sent out secret envoys to the
other Sumerian cities of the south,

telling them to prepare for war the
moment a new king

ascended to the throne. Then when
everything was in place

and his moment came, he struck.

When Tirigan heard of this rebellion, he
must have been enraged.

But he doesn't seem to have been the
bravest of kings.

He sent two of his generals, men named
Ur-Ninazu and Nabi-Enlil,

to lead his armies in his place while he
stayed back home in the palace.

Meanwhile, the rebel leader Utu-Hengal
massed his forces, and marched to meet

the two Guti generals on the field.
On his way to the decisive battle, he

stopped at the temple of Iškur,
the Sumerian god of storms, and made an

offering.

He may have sacrificed a lamb or goat,
and sang an ancient prayer in the

Sumerian tongue
before the altar of the god. Then,

he marched out to meet Tirigan's armies.

After departing from the temple of
Ishkur, on the fourth day, he set up camp

in Naĝsu on the Surungal canal.
He captured the generals of Tirigan sent

as envoys to Sumer,
and put chains on their hands.

Utu-Hengal was victorious, and here again,
we see that the Guti King Tirigan wasn't

the courageous sort.
After getting the news that his generals

had been defeated,
he fled north to a city called Dabrum.

The Sumerian King List records what
happened next.

Then Tirigan, the King of the Guti, ran
away,

alone, on foot. He thought himself safe in
Dabrum,

where he fled to save his life, but since
the people of Dabrum knew that Utu-Hengal

was a king
endowed with power by Enlil, they did not

let Tirigan go,
and an envoy of Utu-Hengal arrested

Tirigan,
together with his wife and children, in

Dabrum. They
put handcuffs and a blindfold on him.

After centuries, the Sumerians finally
rejected

both Guti and Akkadian rule.
For the first time since the reign of

Sargon, a Sumerian king
would once again rule over the lands of

Sumer.

Utu-Hengal made the Guti, the fanged snakes
of the mountains, go back to drink again

from the rocky crevices.
He brought back the kingship of Sumer.

Utu-Hengal’s successful rebellion
ushered in an era

known today as the Third Dynasty of Ur,
and sometimes called the Neo-Sumerian

Empire.
Others have even called this the

Sumerian Renaissance.
It was the final flourishing of Sumerian

culture,
but it was a flourishing that would

leave an indelible mark
on human history.

Despite bringing the kingship back to
Sumer,

the rebel king Utu-Hengal didn't rule
for long.

He died in unusual circumstances after
only seven years,

apparently killed when a river dam that
he was inspecting

burst, sweeping him away in a flood.
If you think this sounds suspicious, it's

because it probably
is. One of Utu-Hengal’s more ambitious

governors,
a man named Ur-Nammu, came to the throne

soon after, and some historians have
certainly raised questions

about whether he had a hand in that dam
bursting,

if indeed any dam burst at all.

Regardless of the way he rose to power,
Ur-Nammu proved to be an effective ruler,

and an outstanding administrator.
He standardized bronze weights that

merchants used in the market,
and created a standardized weight that

would lay down the foundations for the
first currencies.

He divided silver into a unit known as
the mina,

which was made up of 60 shekels.
Ur-Nammu also wrote down a code of laws

that today is the earliest surviving
example of a legal code,

three centuries older than the more
famous Code of Hammurabi.

Here are a few examples of the laws
contained within.

Number 17: if a slave escapes from the
city limits and someone returns him,

the owner shall pay two shekels to the
one who returned him.

Number 18: if a man knocks out the eye of
another man,

he shall weigh out half a mina of
silver. Number 19:

if a man has cut off another man's foot,
he has to pay 10 shekels.

Among all his other achievements, Ur-Nammu
was also a prodigious

builder. He constructed buildings at the
cities of Nippur,

Larsa, Kish, Adab, and Umma.
He rebuilt the kingdom's roads and

irrigation ditches
after the long decades of neglect under

the Guti rule.
But more than anything, Ur-Nammu loved to

build
ziggurats. These are the distinctive

stepped
towers that were the hallmarks and

pinnacle
of Sumerian architecture.

Each one rose in three layers like a
wedding cake,

with steps leading up to the top.
They would have been painted with white

gypsum paint.
The priests who kept them may have grown

plants
and trees on the terraces that lined

them,
and birds would have roosted high up in

these tall
towers. Under Ur-Nammu,

soon every Sumerian city would have a
ziggurat,

and they formed the focal point of the
cities.

The greatest of these was the ziggurat
that Ur-Nammu built

in his home city of Ur.

The ziggurat of Ur is enormous.
In its day, it would have soared up to a

height of 30 meters
or nearly 10 stories, towering

over all the other low-lying buildings
in the city.

It was built purely from baked clay
bricks,

and held together with the tarry
substance bitumen.

It's thought that it would have taken at
least 1,500 workers

more than five years just to build its
base.

Farmers up to 20 kilometers away would
have been able to see this enormous

shape
rising on the horizon. To them,

it would have testified to the power of
the city of Ur,

and the god who lived there.
But despite this late flourishing, the

age of the Sumerians
was passing, and part of the reason for

this
lay in the soil beneath their feet.

All river water contains small amounts
of salts

and other minerals, and the Tigris and
Euphrates Rivers,

flowing over the limestone rocks of the
Taurus mountains,

contain more than most.
When ancient farmers diverted this water

into their fields to feed their crops,
the hot sun would evaporate this water,

and traces of salt would be left behind.

In places with a reasonable amount of
rainfall, the rain would wash this salt

away, but in the arid conditions of Iraq,
the salt stays right where it is.

Over time, this small amount builds up on
the surface of the soil,

and eventually, plants find it difficult
to grow.

The records of the Sumerian scribes
paint a bleak picture.

They kept meticulous notes of crop
yields,

year on year. From around 2350 BC,
their texts show the gradual reduction

of crops across the region. One
telltale detail shows us that the salt

content of the soil
might have been to blame.

While their main crop of wheat gradually
reduced over the centuries,

the rates of barley production remained
constant.

Barley, as we know today, is particularly
resistant

to salt-rich soil.

Texts uncovered from the city of Girsu
show that around the year 3550 BC,

wheat and barley were being produced in
equal amounts. But after a thousand years

of irrigation,
wheat accounted for only one-sixth of

the crop.
Only a few centuries later, in the

21st century BC,
wheat was less than two percent of the

annual harvest.
This all points to a sharp increase in

the salt content of the soil.

You can sometimes hear very simplistic
narratives surrounding soil

salination in the south of Iraq.
The Sumerians are sometimes portrayed as

stupid or greedy,
damaging the land in their ignorance, but

that's not entirely fair.
Although they didn't have our modern

understanding, they did know
that soil needed to be rested for

several seasons if it was to remain
fertile, and they did take steps to adapt

to the changing condition of the soil,
switching

almost exclusively to barley, and
replacing the role of wheat in their

diet.
They also developed methods for draining

the soil and reducing the rate of
salination,

but soil salinity is a challenge that
still causes problems for farmers in

Iraq today,
despite all our technology and

scientific knowledge.
While the ancient people worked hard to

mitigate the decline,
the overall trend as the centuries wore

on
was slow but unstoppable.

The soil was gradually failing,
and with the population of Sumerian

cities growing,
and the long drought dragging on, the

demands on this farmland
were only increasing.

Eventually, a thick layer of salt would
encrust the topsoil,

and little would grow at all.

Today when you walk around the deserts
of Iraq,

the soil in some areas has a crumbly
crust

that cracks underfoot, peeling like old
varnish.

This is the salt that slowly began to
choke the life from the earth,

and in turn, choke the life from the
civilization

of Sumer. But the end of Sumerian culture
would come not from the soil, but at the

tip
of a spear.

As the Sumerians struggled to eat
ever-decreasing barley crops from the

salty soil,
it seems that once again, hostile outside

forces
began to sense weakness in this

once-great
empire. After their failed attempt at

empire building,
the nomadic Guti had retreated to their

mountains,
and returned to their nomadic ways.

But they still posed a threat to
Sumerian lands,

just as they always had; raiding towns
and making away with cattle.

Putting a stop to these raids was the
focus of much of the king Ur-Nammu's reign.

He raised an army and marched into the
Guti lands

with the aim of putting a stop to the
threat forever.

It's unclear whether he actually met
them in battle

or whether he was struck by one of their
characteristic

ambushes. Either way, Ur-Nammu was killed
in the mountains far from home.

The death of this king, which would begin
the

final death spiral of Sumerian culture,
was commemorated in a lengthy epic poem

known as the death of Ur-Nammu.
He who was beloved by the troops could

not raise his neck anymore.
The wise one lay down. Silence descended

as he, who was the vigor of the land, had
fallen.

The land became demolished like a
mountain. Like a cypress forest,

it was stripped, its appearance changed.

The poem tells the story of Ur-Nammu
descending into the underworld, and

giving his offerings to the gods who
lived there.

In the afterlife, the poem gives
Ur-Nammu himself

this final lament.

Now, just as the rain pouring down from
heaven cannot turn back,

I can never return to see the beautiful
bricks of Ur!

Four Sumerian kings would follow Ur-Nammu.
Some, like the King Shulgi, enjoyed

successes on the battlefield,
and developed and reformed the economy

as much as they could.
But their reigns were characterized by

ongoing threats from the wild mountain
regions.

The drought was still biting. The soil
was becoming

increasingly choked by salt, and as food
got scarce,

more and more nomadic people were driven
to raiding and plundering to feed

themselves.
By now, the Guti were far from the only

people
who threatened the border of Sumer and

Akkad.

One tribe in particular, known as the
Martu,

posed a particular threat.
The Martu were a Semitic sheep-herding

people
from the mountains of Syria and Lebanon.

Like the Guti, the Sumerians considered
them to be wild and barbarous,

and tended to describe them in
contemptuous,

but also fearful terms.
The Martu, the powerful south wind, who,

from
the remote past, have not known cities.

The Martu, who know no grain. The Martu,
who know no house or town. The savages of

the mountains.
The Martu, who eat raw meat, who are not

buried after their death.
Another text describes them in similar

animalistic terms
as the Guti. The hostile Martu have

entered the plains.
The Martu, a ravaging people with canine

instincts like wolves.
It's clear that around this time of

drought and famine,
the Martu were finding their way of life

in Syria
increasingly impossible. Environmental

pressures
were pushing them further south into the

rich farmland
of the river valley into the lands

of the Sumerians.
Despite the weakened power of the

Sumerian state,
the later kings of Sumer were determined

to stop the Martu incursions.
One king named Shu Sin even ordered the

construction of a wall
that stretched almost 300 kilometers

between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
It would be called the Martu Wall, and

sometimes
‘The Wall Facing the High Lands’.

What form exactly this wall took is
unknown,

since its remains have never been found,
but it was likely an earthwork rampart

dotted with forts,
and perhaps fronted with a moat fed by

canals.
It was more than twice the length of

Hadrian's Wall,
and essentially turned the rich farmland

between the Tigris and Euphrates
into an island fortress, with the rivers

on either side,
the sea to the south, and the wall to the

north.
It would have been an enormous

engineering work,
and shows that even in its final years,

the Sumerian state
still commanded considerable manpower

and energy.
But ultimately, the wall would prove

useless.

Like all walls, it was only effective
with a constant garrison manning it.

Soon, it would become clear that the
building of this wall

was not an act of strength, but the last
resort

of an empire falling in on itself.

The last Sumerian king was a man named
Ibbi-Sin,

who took the throne in the year 2028.
Virtually as soon as he was crowned, the

empire began to fall apart.

In his first year of ruling, the eastern
city of Eshunna

broke free from the empire, and Susa,
a city in the region of Elam in the

Iranian lowlands,
successfully rebelled in the third year.

These Elamites were an ambitious people.
They were rivals for the later Assyrian

and Babylonian Empires,
but at this stage, were only just

beginning to flex their muscles.
Their rise would spell the end of the

Sumerian age.
The fracturing Sumerian Empire could no

longer maintain its defenses
along the 300 kilometers of the great

Martu Wall,
and so, in the fifth year of his reign,

the wall that Ibbi-Sin's father had built,
failed.

The Martu poured over the defenses and
overran the rich farmlands that lay

behind.
The effects of this loss were immediate

and devastating.
Food shortages ran rampant.

In years seven and eight of Ibbi-Sin's
kingship,

the price of grain increased to 60 times
the usual cost.

People would have starved in the streets.
The famine was hitting the capital city

of Ur
especially hard, and it's clear that at

this point,
the king Ibbi-Sin really began to panic.

Desperate to feed his people, King Ibbi-
-Sin summoned one of his generals

and told him to travel north to the city
of Isin

to buy grain, and pay many times its
usual cost.

This general was a man called Ishbi-Erra,
and it's clear that he wasn't the most

trusted of the king's generals.
In another letter, the king had even

complained that Ishbi-Erra was Akkadian,
not Sumerian, inferring that his loyalty

may have been in question. But at this
point,

it's clear the king didn't have much
choice.

One remarkable letter from this moment
has survived.

It was sent to the King Ibbi-Sin by this
general Ishbi-Erra,

once he reached the city of Isin.
It paints a vivid picture of Sumerian

society's collapse.

You ordered me to travel to Isin and
Kazallu to purchase grain.

With grain reaching the exchange rate of
one shackle of silver per

gur, 20 talents of silver have been
invested in the purchase.

But I heard news that the hostile Martu
have entered inside your territories.

I entered with the entire amount of
grain. Now,

I have let the Martu, all of them,
penetrate inside the land.

Because of the Martu, I am unable to hand
over this grain for threshing.

They are stronger than me, while I am
condemned to

sitting around. This letter shows
that the twin pressures of the Martu

invasions, coupled with the famine at
home,

were beginning to tear the very fabric
of the kingdom

apart. The Akkadian general Ishbi-Erra
urges the king to send a fleet of 600

boats up the river
to transport the grain. He also

kindly offers to stay behind in Isin,
and help to defend it against the

invasion.
That I should guard for you the cities

of Isin and Nibru;
let it be my responsibility. My lord

should know this!
It's possible that Ishbi-Erra knew that the

request for 600 boats
was impossible. In fact, he had no

intention of ever heading back to the
starving city of Ur.

He stayed in Isin with all the grain,
and soon declared himself its king.

This is just one story out of many
that shows the Sumerian state truly

beginning
to come apart.

Facing threats on multiple sides, the
king Ibbi-Sin

entered into a frantic series of
last-ditch

measures. He ordered fortifications
built at the important cities of Ur and

Nippur,
but these efforts were in vain.

Ultimately, the Sumerian Empire fell
apart

one city at a time, until only the
capital of Ur

remained, surrounded by hostile forces.

Soon the Elamite people, those former
subjects of the Sumerians

in the foothills of Iran, marched down
along the hill paths,

gathering with them an army of tribesmen,
and laid siege to the great city of Ur.

King Ibbi-Sin tried one last attempt
to beat them back, and it's clear at this

point
how desperate he was. He tried to enlist

the help
of his great enemy, the wild Martu, who had

poured over his father's wall.
He offered to pay them in exchange for

their help.
He even swallowed his pride and begged

for the help
of Ishbi-Erra, the general who had stabbed

him in the back
on that journey for grain, and was now

ruling as the king
of Isin. But it was all

useless. The Elamites
broke through the walls of Ur, and set

the city on fire.
They poured into its sacred precinct, and

looted it of all its valuables.
We can imagine them storming up the

steps of Ur's great ziggurat,
killing priests, and plundering its

treasures as they went.
The surrounding fields were burned, and

the waterways
became contaminated with disease.

The armies of Elam stormed the royal
palace,

and captured the king Ibbi-Sin.
They took him away in chains, marched him

back to their homeland,
and imprisoned him there. This was the

last king
of Sumer, a civilization that had endured

for millennia,
and he would die in chains, imprisoned by

his enemies
in a foreign land.

The ancient Sumerians who saw the
destruction of their cities

reacted to their sorrow in the same way
that humans always have;

they wrote poetry. In fact,
for each of their great ruined cities,

they wrote
a lament.

One of these poems, called The Lament for
Ur,

relates with tangible anguish the horror
of that time.

The gods have abandoned us. Like
migrating birds,

they have gone. Ur is destroyed.
Bitter is its lament. The country's blood

now fills its holes
like hot bronze in a mold. Bodies

dissolve like
fat in the sun. Our temple is destroyed.

Smoke lies on our city like a shroud.
Blood flows as the river does,

the lamenting of men and women. Sadness
abounds.

Ur is no more.

The fall of Ur was one of the great
turning points

in ancient history. It marked the end of
the unified Sumerian state,

and the region entered a small dark age
in which individual city states once

again vied for control
over the ruins of the former empire.

The wars of this period turned Sumerian
cities

to blackened heaps of burnt brick.
The people mourn. Its people like broken

potsherds littering the approaches.
The walls were gaping. The high gates, the

roads,
were piled with dead. In all the streets

and roadways, bodies lay.
In open fields that used to fill with

dancers, the people lay in heaps.

Meanwhile, the drought dragged on,
and the salt-ridden fields were no

longer producing enough barley.
Faced with these problems, the Sumerian

people began to flock
out of the region in huge numbers;

refugees
carrying with them their meager

belongings, and weeping for the home
they had left behind.

Over the next centuries, a vast
population movement

took place from the south of Mesopotamia
to the north. Some of these Sumerian

speakers
would settle in the Akkadian lands,

but with their connection to their
homeland severed, their cultural identity

went with it. They learned the Akkadian
language of the northerners,

and left theirs behind in the smoking
ruins of their cities.

The Martu, those wild hill people so
detested by the Sumerians,

would themselves settle down in the
cities they conquered

along the river valley. The migrating
Martu,

the fleeing Sumerians, and the native
Akkadians

would mix together. They would blend
their cultures

as the people of this region always had.
The foundations they laid would give

rise to the next chapter of Mesopotamian
and human history, and forge the region's

next superpowers.
These would rise as the legendary

empires
of Babylon and Assyria, but those

are stories that I will save for another
time.

Sumerian was now a dead language.
It would never again be heard spoken

in the streets
and the markets, but it did remain in use

for at least another 2,000 years,
preserved in the temples and scriptures

of later empires,
just as Latin once survived in the

churches of medieval Europe
after the fall of Rome.

For these later people, Sumerian became
the language of the gods,

the language of myth and magic.

The kings of Ur, those great Sumerian
rulers

themselves passed into legend,
and some of them would later be revered

as gods themselves.
All the kings of Mesopotamia in

Babylon and Assyria for the next two
thousand years,

would rule under a title that gave them
a kind of ancient legitimacy,

reaching right back to the first age
to the dawn of mankind's journey into

civilization;
King of Ur, King of Sumer

and Akkad.

Even after the fall of the Sumerian
Empire,

many of its great cities would continue
as population centers

into the post-Sumerian era.
Among these was the great coastal city

of Ur,
situated at the mouth of the Euphrates,

which would rise and fall a number of
times over its history.

But ultimately, it was the landscape that
had given birth to Ur,

and it was the landscape that would
bring about its demise.

Today, if you stand in the ruins of Ur,
the sea that once lapped its shores is

nowhere to be seen.
In fact, early archaeologists were

astonished
to see the remains of millions of

seashells
scattered in the sand here on this

lonely stretch of desert.
As the millennia passed, the continued

depositing of silt,
along with changes in global sea levels,

have
combined to push Iraq's gulf coast back

to its present position, about 150
kilometers to the south.

The Euphrates River that once brought
the rich bounties of trade down from the

north
has also disappeared, its course having

changed over the centuries.
In fact, around the barren mounds of

earth
where the city of Ur once stood, there's

nothing at all
but the lone and level sands of the

Iraqi desert,
boundless and bare for miles around.

Water had always been this city's
lifeblood,

and the loss of the river and the sea
meant the slow death

of Ur. People soon left
its houses and its streets. They stopped

working its fields and maintaining its
irrigation

canals, and soon, the land dried up
and the topsoil blew away in the wind.

The priests extinguished the fires that
burned

in the top chamber of Ur's great
ziggurat,

and stopped leaving their offerings there
to the moon god Sin.

The markets closed, and the mud brick
buildings of the city

began to crumble.

The wooden beams of the roofs rotted and
fell in.

The sands and desert winds rolled
through its streets,

and the dunes buried its fallen walls.
Before long, the greatest city the world

had ever known
was just a mound of ruins where the

occasional desert traveller would pass
by,

and where the Italian traveler Pietro
della Valle

would one day shelter with his wife from
a threatening group of bandits,

and discover the scattered fragments of
writing

that the Sumerians had left behind in
their forgotten language.

Somewhere buried in the ruins lay the
clay tablets

on which the lament for the city's
destruction was written.

May that storm swoop down no more on
your city.

May the door be closed on it like the
great city gate at night time.

Until distant days, other days, future
days.

In your city reduced to ruin mounds may
a lament be made to you.

O Nanna, may your restored city be
resplendent before you.

Following the sacking of Ur around the
year 2000 BC,

the city of Uruk went into a steep
decline,

and much of its population fled.
Uruk did have another period of

flourishing
when the later Assyrian Empire rebuilt

it as a regional capital.
But as the Euphrates River changed its

course, Uruk, too,
would be completely abandoned.

Today, the walls of Uruk, the same walls
that are boasted about

in the epic of Gilgamesh, are still
visible,

heaps of ancient brickwork lining the
flat,

lunar landscape of the desert. But they
are still

15 meters tall, encircling the whole
city now washed by a tide of broken

pottery and
bones. The English archaeologist

William Loftus was the first European
to rediscover the ruins of Uruk.

He was impressed with the haunting sight
of the vast mounds

rising out of the desert, and he later
wrote

about how the sight affected him.

Of all the desolate sights I ever beheld,
that of Uruk incomparably surpasses all.

The process of decay in all the cities
of ancient Sumer,

in Nippur, Eridu, Lagash, Ur, and Uruk,
would have been gradual but unstoppable.

Wind-borne sand and earth would pile up
against the walls that still stood,

and filled in the streets. Meanwhile,
rain water and wind wore down any

remaining structures.
The sight of these ruins amazed

travellers
who, like the Italian Della Valle, passed

by them
and saw their lonely shapes on the

horizon.
People told stories about what must have

happened to those people
who built such enormous constructions

and then disappeared forever.
Echoes of these stories still survive in

tales like the Tower of Babel, about a
people

who built a tower that would reach to
the heavens, and who were struck down by

god
on account of their pride.

With their cities lost, the Sumerian
people passed out of history.

The civilizations who replaced them, who
kept their language alive

in their temples and still told stories
of their kings,

would themselves pass into ruin.
The knowledge of how to read Sumerian

was forgotten
entirely, and its history turned to dust.

Only their clay tablets remained, buried
in the sands of Iraq,

fragments containing the voices of a
whole people,

waiting for archaeologists to discover
them and,

through arduous and painstaking work,
to find out how to read them.

These fragments give us little bursts of
light,

illuminating the dark ocean floor of
this most

distant past, giving us the records and
recipes of the Sumerian people,

their music and their prayers, their
loves and grief,

their triumphs, and their beautiful,
sorrowful lamentations

for the loss of the world's first cities.
It gives us, too, the wistful

philosophies of these ancient people,
as these lines from the epic of

Gilgamesh show.

Nobody sees Death, nobody sees the face
of Death,

nobody hears the voice of Death.
Savage Death just cuts mankind down.

Sometimes we build a house, sometimes we
make a nest,

but then brothers divide it upon
inheritance.

Sometimes there is hostility in the land,
but then the river rises and brings

flood water.
Dragonflies drift on the river, their

faces look upon the face of the sun,
but then suddenly there is nothing.

Sometime around the year 1700
BC, when the last kings of Ur

were already a distant memory, somewhere
on the other side of the world, on a

small rocky island
on the edge of the Arctic Ocean, the last

woolly mammoth
to ever live on earth lay down and died.

Sumerian society, in its imperial form,
rose, lived out its golden age,

and died, outlived by the woolly mammoth.
I want to end the episode with an

excerpt from that great Sumerian poem,
The Epic of Gilgamesh. This section

relates an episode that I think is one
of the most incredible sequences

in any piece of ancient literature.
It shows the king Gilgamesh weeping over

the loss of his dying friend,
and his friend reaches up to him and

tells him
that he has dreamed of the afterlife,

that he has seen
what awaits him after death.

This passage is a melancholy meditation
on

loss. It shows all the kings of the earth
who have ever ruled,

living on in this dark and silent place,
their crowns put away forever.

As you listen, imagine what it would have
felt like to live

in the great cities of Ur and Uruk,
watching the twilight begin to fall over

the Sumerian age.
Imagine what it would feel like to see

the crops grow weaker every year
as the white crust of salt begins to

form on the ground,
and the city's people go hungry in the

streets,
wailing year after year for the gods to

help them.
Imagine how it would have felt to see

the armies of the mountain people
gathering on the horizon, having to flee

the city with your possessions on your
back,

leaving your home behind forever as the
wind rustles through the dying reeds,

and the chanting of the priests still
goes on in the ziggurat’s tall

tower as the sun begins to set
over the desert.

Listen, my friend. This is the dream I
dreamed last night.

I stood before an awful being, the
somber-faced man-bird.

He turned his stare towards me, and he
led me away to the palace of

Irkalla, the Queen of Darkness, to the house
from which

none who enters ever returns, down the
road from which there is no coming back.

There is the house whose people sit in
darkness;

dust is their food, and clay their meat.
They are clothed

like birds with wings for covering. They
see no light,

they sit in darkness. I entered the house
of dust,

and I saw the kings of the earth, their
crowns put away forever;

rulers and princes, all who once wore
kingly crowns and ruled the world in the

days of old.
They who had stood in the place of the

gods stood now like
servants. In the house of dust were high

priests and acolytes,
priests of the incantation and of

ecstasy,
and there was Ereshkigal, the Queen of the

Underworld,
she who keeps the books of the dead.

She raised her head; she saw me and spoke,
‘Who has brought this one here?’ Then I

awoke
like a man drained of blood, who wanders

alone
in a waste.

Thank you once again for listening to
the Fall of Civilizations podcast.

I'd like to thank my voice actors for
this episode Rhy Brignell,

Jake Barrett-Mills, Shem Jacobs,
Nick Bradley, and Emily Johnson.

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responses on Twitter, so please come and

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This episode has touched a number of
times on the power and necessity of the

written word,
a gift that ancient Iraq once gave to

the world,
and I thought it would be fitting to

take a moment here to promote a charity
that really needs your help today. Its

name
is Book Aid. In 2015,

the terrorist group ISIS burned over one
million books

in the library of Iraq's Mosul
University.

Today, the Book Aid team is trying to
rebuild that library,

and give the students of Mosul some hope
for their future.

If you think you can spare anything,
please head onto bookaid.org

and see how you can help today.
For every two pound you give, they can

send another book to Mosul's university
library.

There's also a list of other ways
you can help to provide resources,

equipment, and even training to bring the
gift of the written word

back to the place where it first began.
For now, goodbye and thanks for listening.