An Ancient Sumerian Settlement

Photo: An Ancient Sumerian Tablet

Courtesy: AFP


A news report published by AFP says that Iraqi archaeologists have discovered a Sumerian settlement in southern Iraq dated to 2,000 B.C.

AFP - Iraqi archaeologists said on Friday they have discovered a 2,000-year-old Sumerian settlement in southern Iraq, yielding a bounty of historical artefacts.

The site, in the southern province of Dhi Qar, is in the desert near ancient Ur, the biblical birthplace of Abraham.

"There are walls and cornerstones carrying Sumerian writings, dating back to the era of the third Sumerian dynasty," said Abdul Amir al-Hamdani, head of the provincial government's archaeology department.

Hamdani said the artefacts, which included sickles and knives, largely dated back to around 2000 BC, during the rule of King Amarsin, the third king of the third Sumerian dynasty.

He said the site "changes our perceptions about the Sumerian settlements, because they used to be near water or rivers, and this one is located in the desert."

The newly discovered site lies around 80 kilometres (50 miles) southeast of Nasiriyah, the capital of Dhi Qar, and is close to the ancient city of Ur.

Ur of the Chaldees was one of the great urban centres of the Sumerian civilisation of southern Iraq, and remained an important city until its conquest by Alexander the Great three centuries before Christ.

The report mistakenly says the settlement is 2,000 years old. The settlement is dated to 2,000 B.C., thus making it 4,000 years old.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


Tags: Sumerians

The Veil in Sumerian Culture

Muazzez Çiğ, a Turkish Sumerologist who worked with the great Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer in producing many translations of Sumerian literary texts, was taken to court two years ago at the age of 92 for writing about the veil in Muslim society.

In the Muslim world, conservative Muslims believe that women should keep their heads covered with a veil, while secularists believe wearing them should continue to be banned.

However, according to Çiğ and research that she had been carrying out for several years, Sumerian women who were priestesses and offered sexual services were the first to wear veils.

A Turkish lawyer took Çiğ to court on the grounds that she was fomenting religious hatred. She was acquitted of the charges against her.

Read her story here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Sumerians, Veil

The Cuneiform Digital Library

If you are not familiar with the Cuneiform Digital Library, you should visit the home page of this wonderful project. The Cuneiform Digital Library seeks to make available to the public ancient cuneiform documents dated from the final third of the 4th and of the entire 3rd millennium BC. The texts are written in Sumerian, in early Akkadian, and in other languages, some of them, still undeciphered.

The Cuneiform Digital Library home page provides a good description of the project:

The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) represents the efforts of an international group of Assyriologists, museum curators and historians of science to make available through the internet the form and content of cuneiform tablets dating from the beginning of writing, ca. 3350 BC, until the end of the pre-Christian era. We estimate the number of these documents currently kept in public and private collections to exceed 500,000 exemplars, of which now more than 200,000 have been catalogued in electronic form by the CDLI.

Visit the Cuneiform Digital Library by clicking here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Archaeology, Cuneiform, Sumerians