The Sumerians were known for their “black heads.” These people, who arrived out of nowhere in Mesopotamia in the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, are today known as “the founder of modern civilization,” despite the fact that no one realized it until the middle of the 19th century.
Sumer was obliterated from history by time, and we may never have heard about it if it hadn’t been for linguists.
Let’s start in 1778, when Carsten Niebuhr, the Dane who led the expedition to Mesopotamia in 1761, released reproductions of Persepolis’ cuneiform royal inscription. He was the first to propose that the inscription’s three columns represent three separate forms of cuneiform, all holding the same text.
Another Dane, Friedrich Christian Munter, proposed in 1798 that the first-class letters are alphabetic Old Persian writing (42 characters), the second class syllabic writing, and the third class ideographic signals.
But it was a German, Grotenfend, a Latin instructor at Göttingen, who was the first to read the passage. He was drawn to a collection of seven cuneiform signs. This term was proposed by Grotenfend, and the rest of the symbols were chosen based on historical and linguistic parallels. Xerxes, the great king, ruler of the kings Darius, the king, the son, Achaemenides was Grotenfend’s final translation.
Only 30 years later, Frenchman Eugene Burnouf and Norwegian Christian Lassen discovered the right counterparts for virtually all of the 1st group’s cuneiform signs. A second multilingual inscription was discovered on a rock at Behistun in 1835, and Edwin Norris deciphered the second form of writing, which comprised of hundreds of syllabic characters, in 1855. The inscription was discovered to be written in Elamite (nomadic tribes are called Amorites or Amoritians in the Bible).
Type 3 proved to be considerably more challenging. It was a language that had been utterly lost. A single symbol might denote both a single syllable and an entire word. The consonants could only be seen as part of the syllable, but the vowels could be seen as independent marks. Depending on the context, the sound “p” might be represented by six distinct letters.
Linguist Jules Oppert announced on January 17, 1869, that the 3rd group’s language is…. Sumerian… So there must have been a Sumerian civilization… However, there is also the possibility that this is really a man-made – “holy language” of Babylonian priests. Archibald Says pulsated the first Sumerian text, Shulga’s royal inscription, in 1871. But it wasn’t until 1889 that the Sumerian concept became generally adopted.
The Sumerian language, as we know it now, is a man-made construct based on similarities with the inscriptions of the peoples that adopted the Sumerian cuneiform, such as Elamite, Akkadian, and Old Persian literature.
Now consider how the ancient Greeks mangled foreign names and assess the “restored Sumerian” sound’s potential trustworthiness. Strangely, there are no ancestors or descendants in the Sumerian language. Sumerian is often referred to as “the Latin of ancient Babylon,” however it should be noted that it did not become the parent of a major language family; only the origins of a few dozen words survived.
The Sumerians are the first people to appear on the scene.
Southern Mesopotamia is not the nicest region on the planet, in my opinion. Forests and minerals are completely absent. Swampiness, frequent floods, and a shift in the Euphrates’ path owing to low banks have resulted in a total absence of roadways. Reeds, clay, and water were the only things in plenty. However, this, along with the rich land nourished by floods, was sufficient for ancient Sumer’s earliest city-states to grow there around the end of the third millennium BC.
We don’t know where the Sumerians originated from, although people were already living in Mesopotamia when they arrived. The ancient Mesopotamian tribes dwelt on the islands, which towered above the wetlands. Their settlements were erected on artificial earth embankments. They developed the world’s oldest artificial irrigation system by emptying the surrounding marshes. They employed microlithic tools, as shown by the discoveries at Kish.
Near El Obeid (near Ur), on a river island that towered above a swampy plain, the oldest town in southern Mesopotamia was unearthed. The people who lived here used to hunt and fish, but they were transitioning to more modern forms of business, such as cattle raising and agriculture. El Obeid culture has been around for a long time.
It has its origins in Upper Mesopotamia’s old indigenous cultures. The initial characteristics of Sumerian culture, on the other hand, are already visible. The Sumerians were not a single-racial ethnic group, as shown by the skulls found in the tombs: there were brachycephalic (“round-headed”) and dolichocephalic (“long-headed”) individuals. This might, however, be due to mingling with the indigenous population.
As a result, we can’t even say with confidence that they belong to a single ethnic group. At this time, the only thing that can be said with confidence is that the Semites of Akkad and the Sumerians of Southern Mesopotamia were very different in look and language.
In the third millennium BC, in the most ancient villages of Mesopotamia’s southern region, practically all items were eaten locally, and subsistence farming was the norm. Clay and reed were often utilized materials. Vessels were sculpted from clay in ancient times, initially by hand and then on a unique potter’s wheel.
Finally, clay – brick – was used to make a major portion of the most essential construction material, which was mixed with reeds and straw. This brick was sun-dried on occasion and then burnt in a unique oven on other occasions. By the beginning of the third millennium BC., the most ancient structures had been constructed out of a kind of big bricks, one side of which had a flat surface and the other had a convex surface. The discovery of metals ushered in a technological revolution.
Copper, whose name appears in both the Sumerian and Akkadian languages, was one of the earliest metals known to the peoples of southern Mesopotamia. Bronze, which was created from a copper-lead alloy and then tin, emerged later. Recent archaeological finds show that iron, possibly meteorite, was known in Mesopotamia as early as the third millennium BC.
The Uruk era, named after the site of the most notable Sumerian archaic excavations, is the following stage of the Sumerian archaic. A new form of pottery was popular during this time. The clay pots, which have large spouts and high handles, are most likely replicas of an earlier metal prototype. The containers are manufactured on a potter’s wheel, but their decoration is much more restrained than that of El-painted Obeid’s pottery.
However, this period saw the advancement of economic life and culture. There is a need to create documents. In this sense, indications of rudimentary pictorial (pictographic) writing have been preserved on cylinder seals from the period. The inscriptions include a total of 1,500 graphic characters, from which Sumerian writing developed through time.
A large quantity of clay cuneiform tablets survived after the Sumerians. Perhaps it was the world’s first bureaucracy. Business records may be found in the oldest inscriptions, which date back to 2900 BC. The Sumerians left behind a massive number of “domestic” records and “lists of gods,” but they never bothered to set down the “philosophical underpinning” of their religious system, according to researchers.
As a result, our knowledge is based only on “cuneiform” sources, which were primarily translated and rewritten by priests of succeeding civilizations, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh or the poetry “Enuma Elish” from the first millennium BC. As a result, it’s possible that we’re reading a digest, comparable to the current children’s adaptation of the Bible. Especially as the majority of the texts are gathered from a variety of sources (due to poor preservation).
The progressive breakdown of the communal structure was caused by property stratification within rural communities. The rise of productive forces, commerce and slavery, and, lastly, predatory warfare all led to the isolation of a small number of slave-owning aristocrats from the rest of the communes. “Big people” (lugal) are aristocrats who control slaves and part of the land, who are opposed by “little people,” or free impoverished residents of rural villages.
The first evidence of slave states on Mesopotamian soil dates from the beginning of the third millennium BC. These were relatively minor states, or rather, fundamental state formations, led by emperors, according to sources from the time. The top members of the slave-owning nobility, who held the old semi-Greek title “tsateshi,” governed the principalities that had lost their independence (epsi).
The land fund of the nation, consolidated in the hands of the sovereign, was the economic foundation of these ancient slave-owning republics. The state regarded community lands farmed by free peasants to be its property, and the people were forced to fulfill a slew of tasks in the state’s favor.
The disunity of the city-states made precise chronology of events in Ancient Sumer difficult. Each city-state had its own chronicles, as a matter of fact. And the king lists that have survived are mostly created after the Akkadian era and are a jumble of shreds from numerous “temple lists” that have resulted in confusion and inaccuracies. However, everything seems to be as follows:
- 2900 – 2316 BC – the heyday of the Sumerian city-states;
- 2316 – 2200 BC – the unification of the Sumerian under the rule of the Akkadian dynasty (the Semitic tribes of the northern part of the Southern Mesopotamia adopted the Sumerian culture);
- 2200 – 2112 BC – Interregnum. The period of fragmentation and invasions of nomads-Kutians;
- 2112 – 2003 BC – Sumerian Renaissance, a period of flourishing culture;
- 2003 BC – the fall of Sumer and Akkad under the onslaught of the Amorites (Elamites). Anarchy;
- 1792 – the rise of Babylon at Hammurabi (Old Babylonian kingdom).
Ancient Sumerian religion
Let’s talk about Sumerian religion for a moment. It seems that the beginnings of religion in Sumer were simply materialistic, rather than having “ethical” underpinnings. The Gods’ religion was not about “purification and sanctity,” but about ensuring a prosperous crop, military victories, and so on…. The most ancient Sumerian Gods, as recorded in the earliest tablets “containing lists of gods” (mid-3rd millennium BC), represented natural elements such as the sky, sea, sun, moon, wind, and so on, before the gods arrived – patrons of towns, farmers, shepherds, and so on. The Sumerians believed that everything in the universe belonged to the gods and that temples were the gods’ granary, or barns, where they were obligated to care for mankind.
The Sumerian Pantheon’s principal deities were AN (heaven – masculine) and KI (earth – feminine). Both of these origins may be traced back to the primordial ocean, which gave rise to the mountain, and the securely linked heaven and earth. An conceived [the gods] of the Anunnaki on the summit of heaven and earth. Enlil, the deity of the air who split heaven and earth, was born from this marriage. According to legend, Enki, the deity of knowledge and the sea, was responsible for keeping the world in order at the beginning.
But, when the city-state of Nippur grew in power, it was Enlil, whose deity was revered, who climbed to the top of the gods. Unfortunately, no Sumerian creation story has survived to the present day. Despite the fact that most of the gods and storylines in the Akkadian tale “Enuma Elish” are drawn from Sumerian beliefs, academics claim that the events depicted in it do not correlate to the Sumerian notion. It was difficult for the gods at first since they had to do everything themselves because there was no one to serve them. After that, they made individuals to serve them.
An, like other creation gods, seems to have played a significant part in Sumerian mythology. He was respected, albeit most likely just figuratively. E. ANNA – “House of AN” – was the name of his temple in Ur. The “Kingdom of Anu” was the name of the first kingdom. However, according to Sumerian beliefs, An does not participate in people’s concerns and hence the major role in “daily life” is assigned to other gods, lead by Enlil.
Enlil, on the other hand, was not omnipotent since the ultimate authority was held by a council of fifty principal gods, with the seven primary gods “deciding destiny” standing out. The system of the council of gods is said to have been modeled by the “earthly hierarchy,” in which the rulers, Ensi, reigned alongside the “council of elders,” in which a group of the most deserving stood out…
“ME,” which had a significant part in Sumerian religious and ethical systems, is one of the pillars of Sumerian mythology, the precise meaning of which has yet to be determined. More than a hundred “ME” are mentioned in one of the stories, but only around half of them have been read and decoded. Justice, kindness, peace, triumph, falsehoods, fear, crafts, and so on, all of which are in some way related to social life, are discussed here. According to some experts, “Me” is the prototype of all living things, radiated by gods and temples, “Divine regulations”.
Of general, the Gods in Sumer resembled people. Matchmaking and war, rape and love, dishonesty and fury are all there in their connection. There’s even a legend of a guy who, in a dream, possessed the goddess Inanna. Surprisingly, the whole narrative is infused with compassion for a person. It’s worth noting that the Sumerian paradise isn’t designed for humans; rather, it’s the home of the gods, where melancholy, old age, disease, and death are unheard of, and the gods’ sole concern is a lack of fresh water.
By the way, there was no such thing as paradise in Ancient Egypt. Kur, the Sumerian underworld, was a bleak, dark place with three attendants guarding the entrance: “door man,” “subterranean river man,” and “carrier”. It reminds me of the old Greek Hades and the ancient Jewish Sheol.
The shadows of the dead, roaming without hope of return, and devils occupy the empty space between the ground and the clean ocean. In general, the Sumerian viewpoints were mirrored in many subsequent faiths. However, we are now considerably more interested in their contribution to the technological aspect of contemporary civilization’s progress.
In Sumer, the narrative starts
Professor Samuel Noah Kramer, one of the leading Sumerian specialists, named 39 categories in which the Sumerians were pioneers in his book “History Begins at Sumer”. He added the wheel, the first schools, the first bicameral legislature, the first historians, and the first “almanac of the farmer” in this list, in addition to the first writing system, which just reviewed.
For the first time, cosmogony and cosmology appeared in Sumer, as did the first collection of proverbs and aphorisms, literary debates, the creation of the image of “Noah,” the first book catalog, the first money (silver shekels in the form of “bars by weight”), taxes, the first laws, and social reforms, medicine, and for the first time, the image of “Noah” was created.
The Sumerians possessed very high standards in the realm of medicine from the start. Layard discovered a definite order in the Ashurbanipal library at Nineveh, which included a big medical section with thousands of clay tablets. The Sumerian language provided the basis for all medical terminology.
Medical procedures were covered in specific reference books that included information on hygiene standards, surgeries, such as cataract removal, and the use of alcohol for surgical cleaning. Sumerian medicine was known for its scientific approach to diagnosing and administering therapeutic and surgical treatments.
The Sumerians were skilled travelers and explorers, and they are credited with inventing the earliest ships in history. At least 105 classifications for different sorts of ships were found in one Akkadian lexicon of Sumerian terms, based on their size, function, and cargo type. One inscription discovered in Lagash discusses ship repair and lists the resources that the local monarch of Gudea imported to construct the temple of his deity Ninurta about 2200 BC. From gold, silver, and copper to diorite, carnelian, and cedar, the variety of these things is remarkable. These items have traveled thousands of kilometers in some situations.
Sumer was also the birthplace of the brick kiln. The use of such a big furnace allowed clay items to be baked without contaminating the air with pills and ash, which gave them a distinctive strength owing to internal tension. By heating ore to temperatures above 1500 degrees Fahrenheit in a closed furnace with a limited oxygen supply, the same process was used to smelt metals from ore, such as copper.
When the supply of natural native copper was reduced, this technique, known as smelting, became required. The Sumerians learned mineral beneficiation, metal smelting, and casting procedures exceptionally fast, according to ancient metallurgy researchers. Only a few decades after the Sumerian civilization emerged, they mastered these amazing technologies.
Even more amazing, the Sumerians figured out how to make alloys, which is the process of combining different metals chemically in a furnace. The Sumerians figured out how to create bronze, a tough yet malleable metal that altered the trajectory of human history. For three reasons, being able to fuse copper and tin was the most significant feat:
To begin, a precise copper-to-tin ratio had to be chosen (analysis of Sumerian bronze showed the optimal ratio – 85 percent copper to 15 percent tin).
Second, Mesopotamia was devoid of any tin (unlike, for example, Tiahuanaco)
Finally, tin isn’t found in nature in any form. It takes a lengthy procedure to remove it from the ore, which is tin stone. This isn’t a case that should be started by chance.
The Sumerians used roughly thirty titles for various varieties of copper of differing quality, whereas for tin, they used the name AN.NA, which literally means “Heavenly Stone” – implying that Sumerian technology was a gift from the gods, according to many.
Hundreds of astronomical phrases were discovered on thousands of clay tablets. Some of the tablets had mathematical formulae and astronomical tables that the Sumerians used to forecast solar eclipses, moon phases, and planet trajectories. The extraordinary precision of these tables has been shown through ancient astronomy studies (known as the ephemeris).
Nobody knows how they were computed, but we may speculate as to why they were required.
The Sumerians utilized the same heliocentric method that we use today to calculate the rising and setting of visible planets and stars in relation to the earth’s horizon.
We also took their categorization of the celestial sphere into three parts – northern, central, and southern – and applied it to our own (respectively, from the ancient Sumerians – “the path of Enlil”, “the path of Anu” and “the path of Ea”). In fact, all current notions of spherical astronomy existed in Sumer, including a 360-degree spherical circle, zenith, horizon, celestial axes, poles, ecliptic, and equinox.
The earliest calendar in the world, the solar-lunar calendar, was constructed in the city of Nippur in 3760 BC, combining all of the Sumerian knowledge about the movement of the Sun and the Earth. The Sumerians calculated a complete solar year by counting 12 lunar months (about 354 days), then adding 11 more days.
The intercalation method was repeated every year until the solar and lunar calendars were synchronized 19 years later. The Sumerian calendar was meticulously constructed in order to ensure that important dates were not missed (for example, New Year always falls on the vernal equinox). It’s remarkable that such advanced astronomical knowledge was not required for this fledgling civilization. Sumerian mathematics is remarkable since it has “geometric” origins. Personally, I have no idea how such a number system could have developed among primitive peoples. However, you should make your own judgment.
Mathematics in Sumer
The sexagesimal number system was employed by the Sumerians. Only two signs were employed to denote numbers: “wedge” signified 1; 60; 3600 and degrees beyond 60; “hook” meant 10; 60 x 10; 3600 x 10, etc.
The digital notation was founded on the positional concept, however, if you believe that numerals in Sumer were shown as powers of 60 based on the notation basis, you are mistaken. The basis of the Sumerian system is 60, rather than 10, but this base is bizarrely substituted by the numbers 10, 6, and 10, and so on. As a result, the positional numbers in the following row line up:
1, 10, 60, 600, 3600, 36,000, 216,000, 2,160,000, 12,960,000.
The Sumerians were able to compute fractions, multiply numbers to millions, root, and exponentiate using this complicated sexagesimal method. This system is preferable to the decimal system we now use in many respects.
To begin with, 60 has ten prime divisors, while 100 has just seven. Second, it is the only system that is appropriate for geometric calculations, which is why, for example, splitting a circle by 360 degrees, it is still used today.
We seldom recognize that we owe the Sumerian number system with a sexagesimal foundation not just for our geometry, but also for the present manner of counting time. The sexagesimal method was used to divide the hour into 60 seconds, which was not done arbitrarily. The split of the day into 24 hours, the year into 12 months, the foot into 12 inches, and the presence of the dozen as a unit of quantity are all echoes of the Sumerian number system. They may also be seen in the contemporary counting system, which separates the numbers 1 to 12 before moving on to numbers like 10 + 3, 10 + 4, and so on.
We shouldn’t be shocked that the Sumerians invented the zodiac, which was eventually copied by other cultures. The Sumerians, on the other hand, did not employ the zodiac signs, which we now associate with each month in horoscopes. They employed them in a strictly astronomical sense, in the sense of the earth’s axis deviation, which splits the whole precessional cycle of 25,920 years into 12 phases of 2,160 years due to its movement.
The image of the starry sky, which forms a vast sphere of 360 degrees, varies with the Earth’s twelve-month motion in its orbit around the Sun. The zodiac was born when this circle was divided into 12 equal parts (the sphere of the zodiac) of 30 degrees each. The stars in each group were then grouped together to form constellations, each with its own name that corresponded to their contemporary names.
As a result, there is no question that the zodiac was initially employed in Sumer. The contours of the zodiac signs (representing imaginative depictions of the starry sky) and their arbitrary partition into 12 spheres demonstrate that the comparable zodiac signs employed in other, later civilizations could not have developed independently.
Sumerian mathematics studies have shown that their number system is closely tied to the precessional cycle, much to the amazement of experts. The Sumerian sexagesimal number system’s peculiar moveable principle concentrates on the number 12,960,000, which is precisely 500 big precessional cycles happening in 25,920 years. The lack of any other feasible uses for the products of the numbers 25 920 and 2160, other than astronomical, can only suggest one thing: this system was created especially for astronomical reasons.
Scientists seem to be avoiding resolving the unpleasant issue of how the Sumerians, whose civilization lasted barely 2 thousand years, could have observed and documented a 25,920-year cycle of celestial motions. And why is the start of their civilization in the midst of the zodiac’s cycle? Doesn’t this imply that they got astronomy from the gods?
Sumerians and extraterrestrials
It’s worth noting that this isn’t just a story; there’s evidence in ancient Sumerian scriptures that these people made communication with aliens from the planet Niburu who traveled to Earth in the second millennium BC. According to the descriptions, this planet has a significantly extended orbit and goes through the solar system every 3600 years. It will be obvious in the near future whether or not this strange planet exists, since estimates predict that it will emerge shortly.
In the second half of the twentieth century, archaeologists and linguists produced findings that allowed the history of the Earth and past civilizations to be revised. Scientists discovered astounding evidence regarding alien civilization’s participation in the creation of humans and its effect on the evolution and culture of primitive peoples after researching thousands of manuscripts and astronomical data from the ancient Sumerian state.
The emissaries of another civilization, according to ancient Sumerian scriptures, arrived from a planet that revolves in its star system in an extremely extended orbit and comes near to the solar system every 3600 years. For hundreds of thousands of years, extraterrestrial culture and scientific knowledge have affected humans. And it is to them that mankind owes its existence on the planet.
Zachary Sitchin, an expert in the study of ancient Sumerian, Babylonian, and Egyptian literature, deserves a lot of credit for studying and summarizing all of this amazing knowledge over the course of 30 years. The gods flew from heaven in their chariots of fire, and could go wherever on Earth in a short time, as well as to the stars, according to Sumerian and Akkadian writings.
They occasionally brought a small group of people with them and showed them our world from space, and sometimes even took them back to their home planet. A deity with a golden hat riding a “black bird” came to Sumerian monarch Gudea and issued the command to begin constructing a structure for her, according to legend. Other gods guarded the structure once it was finished so that plain mortals wouldn’t be caught in the torrent of fire during the takeoff and landing of this bird.
The Sumerians referred to them as “black birds” – MU. “MU, they soared into the sky like lightning, and like a large fire went into the sky,” wrote the king of the Sumerian city of Palash. The illustrations on the Sumerian and Hittite tablets portray things that seem like current space rockets standing on launch platforms, as well as in flight against a starry backdrop.
The kings of Crete used these designs on their seals. They discovered a tablet with the picture of a big rocket, next to which are portrayed the symbols of the moon and certain stars, during excavations in ancient Canaan, near Jerusalem.
An artifact in the shape of a pyramid, known as “ben-ben,” was worshiped in a particular temple in Ancient Egypt. Legend has it that the gods soared on it, the Anunnaki, the gods of the lowest order. The Nephilim were in charge of the Anunnaki. They gave them directives on how and where to construct landing places for their spacecraft on Earth. The ships of the Nephilim were given the name NARU, which means “chariots spewing lightning” by the ancient peoples of Babylon and Akkad.
Gilgamesh, the king of the city of Uruk, was only a third man and two-thirds deity, according to Sumerian literature. Gilgamesh once traveled to the planet of the Nephilim on a “chariot of fire,” but as the spacecraft soared far into the sky and he observed from space how the great sea had changed into a little puddle, panic gripped him, and he started to beg the Anunnaki to return him to Earth, which they did.
In the mines, tablets depicting space rockets were also discovered during the excavations. A sphere is connected to a cone at the rocket’s apex. The rocket is depicted in section, and it can be seen that it has two hulls (outer and inner). The buildings are separated by circular bulkheads. The ship’s sections are connected via corridors. Figures with levers in their hands in one of the chambers of the head portion. There is still plenty of proof that the Sumerian gods own spacecraft.
The ships of the gods are well described through images on Sumerian clay tablets and explanatory pictograms. According to Sumerian astronomy texts, the solar system had 11 planets around 4400 BC. Nibiru, the home planet of the Nephilim and Anunnaki, is also pictured adjacent to it. The celestial gods imparted great knowledge about space, the Earth, the solar system, and the most significant planet – Nibiru – their homeland to the ancient Sumerians.
The gods reigned for 120 balls, according to the decoded texts. One ball represents Nibiru’s rotation around its star. Aliens first visited our planet 432 thousand years ago. The aliens arrived on Earth some 100 thousand years ago and started a genetic experiment with primitive mankind.
And a new species emerged, differentiated by the capacity to engage in intellectual behavior that could be controlled and steered along the evolutionary route. And roughly 4000 years ago, our civilization started to quickly expand. The aliens picked the rulers from the most advanced and brilliant humans, who then worshiped them as gods.
The Sumerian astronomical word OAK is equivalent to a 360-degree circle. Professor H. Hilprecht of the University of Pennsylvania determined that the Sumerians were aware of the big cosmic cycle, which lasts 25,920 solar years. The Sumerians explain how the asteroid belt formed between Mars and Jupiter in ancient books.
The Sumerians named a planet called Tiamat, which was bigger than Mars. However, 174 thousand great cycles ago, the planet Nibiru crossed the orbit of the planet Tiamat, which was eventually destroyed by the Nephilim to avert collision. Are many eyewitnesses on our planet associating recent UFO sightings with aliens from the planet Nibiru, which, according to ancient Sumerian writings, should have already appeared near our solar system?
Aren’t their spacecraft visible in space, in the earth’s atmosphere, and beneath the water to Earthlings? Perhaps they are astounded at the progress of our civilization during their absence. Unidentifiable flying objects will no longer be unidentified in the near future.
