|
Sumerian Overview
last
updated - 07.16.2009
INTRODUCTION
About 20 years ago, I was at a social gathering, and
anyone who knows me, knows I’m social person, I love
to talk, listen, and exchange ideas. I truly
relish in hearing other peoples perspectives and
views, even when they differ from my own, because
this is how we grow and learn.
So as I flitted about, I met a woman, whom had just
finished her Bachelorette in Anthropology. Well,
for me, I thought I’d hit the conversation jackpot.
After all, Anthropology is the study of human
existence, and how we’ve evolved over time, both
physically and socially, by tracing our origins and
our transformation over time. So, with my
excitement being difficult to contain, I asked her,
“So, what do you think of the Sumerians?” Her
response to me was, “Who are the Sumerians?” At
first, I truly thought she was pulling my leg, but I
slowly and shockingly realized she had no idea who
the Sumerians were. I simply couldn’t believe that
someone could graduate, in Anthropology of all
things, in let’s say 1989, and not know about the
Sumerians and Sumer. I asked her if she had heard
of the author Samuel Noah Kramer and his book
History Begins at Sumer? She of course said
no.
So, me, not being the bashful type, began to share
with her what Kramer and Zecharia Sitchin have
written about Sumer, Sumerian’s and all of the
amazing things discovered and written on the 6,000
year old tablets. With much enthusiasm, I went on,
hoping something would strike a chord and resonate
with her, but eventually she developed a very
parochial expression, turned and just walked away.
I was dumped at prom and I wasn’t even at the prom,
and it certainly wasn't about a physical dance, but
an intellectual one. This experience was key for
me, because it demonstrated how even the "quote un
quote" educated are not aware of some of the most
important and amazing human history, so how is the
average person ever going to know these things?
So, let’s take a giant step backwards and provide
some basic information on Sumer, the Sumerians and
highlight some of their writings, beliefs, and
accomplishments. Sumer, was located in modern day
Iraq, pretty much right where the heart of all of
ancient Mesopotamian stories are written about,
running along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers,
stretching down to the Persian Gulf, and reaching up
to the Mediterranean Sea. Interestingly, the
Biblical Patriarch Abraham was from Ur, which is
Sumer, which actually makes him a Sumerian (Genesis
Ch. 11 and 15). As things come together
together, I believe you will find that of keen
interest, in particular, the part about Yahweh
calling him out of Ur as a part of his "covenant (or
deal) with Abraham".
Map of Ancient Sumer
There are many great scholars of Sumerian history,
but I will reference two the most. Samuel Noah
Kramer, who wrote the book “History Begins At Sumer”
in 1956 approaches the subject from a strictly raw
translation perspective, which is great.
Samuel Kramer was the first well known Sumerologist
to represent the parallels in the Sumerian stories,
Just two examples are the Epic of Gilgamesh
(strongly parallels the Flood of Noah) and The Epic
of Creation (strongly parallels the Biblical
Creation), yet both predate the Hebrew Old Testament
by at least 1,500 years, some scholars argue as much
as 2,000 years. Zecharia Sitchen, who is very
literate in ancient Semitic languages and fluent in
Hebrew, leverages much of Kramer’s work, but cast
the first lights on the strong similarities of Sumer
and the Old Testament. Additionally, Sitchen adds
some interesting interpretations, some of which seem
very logical and appear to be quite reasonably
substantiated, others, maybe not so much. However,
anyone studying the Sumerian subject owes both of
these authors a great deal of gratitude.
The age of the Sumerian culture varies by scholar,
but most agree it ranged from 6,000BC to about
4,000BC, possibly 3,500BC. Kramer writes of “39
first” for humans in his book History Begins At
Sumer. Such things as, math, agriculture,
architecture, economics, animal domestication,
government, science philosophy, law, justice
systems, and more. So, how did we go from
basically wandering the deserts and wilderness to
suddenly mastering so many things of obvious higher
thinking and intelligence, all, seemingly overnight?
Ancient Sumerian Tablet
Date - 6,000 - 4,000BC
There is a story, that I read many years ago, and I
have struggled to find it again in my vast library
of books, or even on the internet. This is how I
remember it as I read back then. A 19 year old
museum intern, working during the summer, I believe
in the 1850's, at the British Museum of History, was
directed to perform a menial task of organizing
thousand of tablets that had been excavated from the
areas of Nineveh, Babylon, and Ur. It was a dark
and poorly lit room, that was rarely visited,
really, no one cared about it. Amazingly, no one
knew, the magnitude of what was in the room, the
amazing history, chronicled prior to even the Bible,
potentially substantiating many things, that prior
to 300AD were considered TRUTH and NOT MYTH. There
were countless long tables, with old wooden boxes on
them, with many thousands of broken tablets in
them. Of course, the first pain staking and slow
process was working on the larger pieces. Just
like one would work on a jigsaw puzzle, this fits
into that one, and that one there into fits this
other one, and together, they make a bigger one.
Well, that process ended eventually, and this young
intern was left with thousands of tiny fragments
that were very difficult to piece together. So, he
decided to teach himself the text and memorize all
of the characters on the tablets, thus allowing him
to read the text and match up the smaller fragments
with the larger ones. A by-product of this was he
began to understand what the characters were saying,
or portraying and with additional help, much of the
ancient Sumerian character set was translated. The
rest is history, well, if you're into this kind of
thing.......
Close-up of a High-Quality Sumerian Tablet
Date - 2,500BC to 3,000BC
UNDER
DEVELOPMENT / TO BE CONTINUED - LAST EDIT ON JULY
16TH, 6PM
|
