Sumerian culture

The Sumerians are a mix of races. It is not known exactly from

where they come from but, due to some aspects of their language, they could
having arrived from Central Asia, looking for fertile land when the
oases dried up at the end of the last glaciation. They absorbed
the Ubaidians of El Obeid and created city-states along the
basin of the great rivers Euphrates and Tigris. Discover the civilization
which was a pioneer in using the technologies that underpin those
today we use, like hydraulic engineering, astronomy, the
mathematics, chemistry, medicine, pharmacopoeia or production to
large scale. They were also the ones who used for the first time the
teaching, the legislation, literature, poetry and they had a
political, religious, and social organization comparable to ours. Ana
Martos, combining its historical rigor and the simplicity that characterize it,
masterfully narrates the history and the vicissitudes of a town about it
that just a century ago began to be investigated and that has left us
a vast cultural legacy in inheritance.
 THE SUMERIAN TABLETS

Clay tablets (sometimes also clay tablets) were used at least since 6000 BC.
tiles ofTărtăriafrom theculture ofVinčaThese tablets from the Vinča culture could be even more
ancient as per analysis ofcarbon-14data from 3000 BC, but there is no consensus about its
interpretation. Tablets were used as a means of writing.clayfrom the fourth millennium B.C. in the
civilizationsSumeria, Mesopotamian, Hittite, MinoanyMycenaean.
the Sumerians have existed for the modern world for barely a century. It was in the early 20th century when
excavation took place in present-day Iraq and when the whole world marveled at a
unexpected discovery: the first civilization in history. Unexpected, because until then it
I believed that no culture had existed before Egypt and, moreover, because at that moment Egypt
It was in fashion. Sumerian civilization revealed knowledge, myths, and customs abundantly.
known because they were the same knowledge, myths, and customs of the later cultures that us
they have influenced and shaped our current culture.
in times when humanity lived a childhood governed by magical and mythical thinking
it was confused with the real. There is, therefore, a problem in separating reality from fantasy and for
to know which characters actually existed and which are part of Sumerian mythology.
Sumerian Gods - ENLIL
 Sumerian gods - ENLIL

We have met Enlil, the god of air, in the creation myths. But,
Like all Sumerian gods, Enlil suffered from all the
human imperfections. That is why he was able to violate the goddess of
wind, Ninlil, from whom the father of Inanna, Nanna, god of the
Luna. He, whom we also know as the god of the sky, fostered the
God of wisdom, Enki, who married the goddess of the reeds,
Ningikuga, and from their union was born Ningal, the mother of Inanna. This is the
genealogy of the most important goddess of
 Chapter 1 Creation of the Universe
In the beginning, before heaven and earth had even a name, there existed Nammu, the water, the infinite ocean, the goddess who gives life.
From her womb arose the Cosmic Mountain, the sky and the earth melded in an amalgam, which gave birth to An, the god of the sky, and Enlil, the god of
air. Each god set aside an element for himself and in this way they separated the sky from the earth. This is how the poem Gilgamesh, Enkidu begins.
the Hell and this is how many other Sumerian and Babylonian poems begin, regardless of their content: When the sky had
away from the earth... When the earth had separated from the sky... When the name of man had been fixed... When An had...
taken the sky... When Enlil had taken the earth...
Thus the creation began, giving rise to the four primordial elements: sky, earth, air, and water. Enlil and his mother, the Earth,
they gave rise to the organized universe, where the first man would later be born.

From these main gods, the other deities responsible for everything that exists in the universe were born, fifty of them,
important, according to a Sumerian tablet: 'The great gods, fifty in total...'. But the creation of the Sumerian world was not so simple
not only was it pleasant, but it was the result of an indescribable battle between opposing divine forces that fought for the dominion of the
four elements. This warlike creation myth does not appear in Sumerian poems but in a much later Babylonian poem, dated to
II millennium B.C. and is known as Enuma Elish or Babylonian Poem of Creation. In this poem, the figure of Marduk appears, a god
that the Babylonians adopted from the desert nomads and placed at the head of their pantheon. It is, in any case, not a Sumerian god,
but we must take into account that the Assyrians and the Babylonians, civilizations that followed the Sumerian civilization, absorbed its culture,
adapting it to their time and translating the names of their gods and heroes. The Romans did exactly the same with the culture
Greek. They copied their gods, their heroes and even their main epic, the Aeneid, which is almost a literal copy of the Odyssey, which, in turn, encompasses
the myths of the Epic of Gilgamesh. The universe emerged, as in the Sumerian myth, from a watery chaos. The god of freshwater, Apsu,
she united her sap with the goddess of the salty waters, Tiamat, giving life to all the gods. At that time, the earth was struggling between whirlpools of
freshwater and abyss of saltwater, until Ea, the god of vast intelligence, resorted to an invincible spell with which he succeeded
to put Apsu, her father, to sleep in order to kill him. Now free from the sweet waters, she had to confront the waters of the sea because Tiamat
She was so enraged by her husband's death that even Ea was unable to kill her, but had to seek the help of her.
own son Bel Marduk, the wisest, strongest, and most powerful of the gods.
 Chapter 1. Creation of the Universe

Marduk, born in that sanctuary of doom which is the bottom of the sea, chased Tiamat, trident in hand, who
defended by throwing spells and Brief history of the Sumerians www.librosmaravillosos.com Ana Martos Rubiomaldiciones
but finally had to succumb because that is how the raging waters succumbed to free the dry land. Without a hint
out of pity, the god divided the corpse of the dead goddess in two, like the two parts of a fish are separated, to
to form with the upper part the celestial vault and, with the lower part, the dry land isolated from the waters
 Creation of the First Sumerian
The History of Babylon that was written, already in the 3rd century B.C., by a Babylonian priest named
Beroso, the Chaldean, tells us in great detail how the Sumerian world was before the flood.
According to Berossus, the first man was named Uanna and received the nickname Adapa, the
Wise. Ea, the god of vast intelligence, adorned Adapa with all the qualities except the
immortality. The god An, annoyed with humanity, wanted to put an end to it and offered him the
food of death, but Adapa, warned by Ea, did not want to eat or drink anything. Thus, when
Adapa spoke to the gods and An, remorseful of his ill intention, offered him the food of the
eternal life, Adapa rejected it. With this, he lost the opportunity to be immortal. But also
we can take a look at a poem older than that of Berossos, the History of Atrahasis,
a text signed by the scribe Nur-Aya during the reign of Ammisaduga, from the Amorite dynasty of Babylon.
between the years 1702 and 1628 B.C. This text tells that the Great Mother goddess, the goddess of the womb,
Mammi3 created man as if he were a brick, mixing clay with mud and
putting seven pinches on the right and another seven on the left of its matrix. He separated them with
a clay brick and a cutter for the umbilical cord. After ten lunar months,
goddess opened her womb using a spade like those used for the clay oven and
he extracted the first seven men from the right side and the first seven women from the side
left.

Following our path backward, let us seek an older myth to understand how and why the Sumerian gods decided to create the first man. The belief that prevailed among
The people of Eridu, the oldest city, believed that the first man had been created by the Great Mother Goddess, who used clay mixed with the saliva and blood of a god. A god who...
that Ea, the one of vast intelligence, made a redeemer die beforehand, who gave his life for man, although probably involuntarily. But, in this ancient myth, the gods
they did not create man to find solace in reigning over the rest of creation, but rather to work for
Brief history of the Sumerians www.librosmaravillosos.com Ana Martos Rubio
They. When the main gods created the Anunnaki, second-order gods who descended from heaven to earth, they were unaware of agriculture, they did not know how to make bread nor
how to dress, for they ate "biting the plants just like rams and drinking water from a ditch."
 Creation of the First Sumerian

Previously, the gods had taken the trouble to create beautiful farms with livestock that produced milk, but the Anunnaki did not know.
manage them. Thus, they decided to create men who would take them out of that situation and manage the resources of the earth for them.
Brief history of the Sumerians www.librosmaravillosos.com Ana Martos Rubio
Collaboration by Sergio Barros 17 Prepared by Patricio Barros
• The idea originated from Nammu, the Creator Goddess, who turned to Enki, the god of the holy word (the creator word), to set it in motion.
his intelligence and gave life to the first creature. Obedient, Enki gathered the goddesses of childbirth and tasked them with the gestation of a new
being, whose heart he molded "with clay from the surface of the abyss" and fixed in it the image of the gods. He made it therefore of clay, in the image
and in the likeness of the gods and destined to be their servant on earth. Next, the word of the god created the animals and the plants. By
lastly, he founded five holy cities that were consecrated to him and gave each of them to a king for his governance. The first was,
naturally, Eridu, followed by Bad-tibira, Larak, Sippar, and Shurupak (the city of the flood).
 The Garden of Eden - Sumerian
There was a time when man fully enjoyed the earthly paradise. He dwelled in thick forests of trees.
leafy, always green, that provided him with the protection and shelter of their canopies, comfortable and cushioned with
leaves and tender branches. It fed exclusively on fruits, shoots, and similar vegetables; its life took place
comfortable and happy, as food and water were plentiful, the dangerous animals kept their distance thanks to the
height of its habitat that it only shared with monkeys, birds, and reptiles, but, as there was space and food
for everyone, I rarely had the need to contend with my surroundings. It was undoubtedly a happy period that reflects numerous
cultures in their myths and legends. But a passage from the Bible warns us that the days of wine and
roses and thus it happened with human presence in the garden of Eden. Drought came, a drought that desertified the
leafy African paradises for two million years and forced hominids to descend from the trees and to
to stand up to march through the savannah without losing sight of their destination nor the threats from their surroundings, The majority
The interpreters of the Bible have placed Eden between the Euphrates and the Tigris, although in the Renaissance there were those who
he placed it to the right of the West Indies. If we consider the interpretations of Isaac Asimov in his Guide to the
Bible, the biblical Eden was located in the territory that formed over time between the two
great rivers, Euphrates and Tigris, where the first civilization emerged. It is a plain whose name the author transcribes
by "Sumer" or "Sumeria" because, in the Sumerian language, "plain" is said eoden. And it is likely that the Sumerians
they will come from the mountains located further east with the idea of settling in the plain. However, the Sumerian paradise is
I found high on the mount Dilmún, 'the land of the living', a holy place, pure and clean from where it came.
their ancestors. This does not mean that the primitive Sumerians actually came from that mountain, but that the
ancient towns often used to locate the origin of their ancestors in the mountains. There is much mysticism in the idea of the
descent from highlands to lowlands. Moreover, we already said that the lowlands of Mesopotamia resulted
uninhabitable for a long time and the people had to take refuge in the caves of the mountains
 The Garden of Eden - Sumerian

• Sumerian poem Enki and Ninhursag describes an earthly paradise where the first humans lived happily under the gaze
benevolent of Ea. A paradise, by the way, much more populated and quite more civilized than the one
• Brief history of the Sumerians www.librosmaravillosos.com Ana Martos Rubio
• Collaboration of Sergio Barros 22 Prepared by Patricio Barros
• describe the Genesis. Life was eternal, no woman was ever old and no man could ever be called 'old man'.
There is no death or disease. Not even a headache disturbed the tranquility of the days. The rulers...
they behaved nobly and no one dared to divert the irrigation channels. The wild animals were as docile as the
goats, grazing on the grass without fear of lions or wolves. And the females gave birth to their kids without the threat of the evil eye. Without
Initially, the paradise of Dilmun was not perfect, because it lacked water to irrigate the plants and provide for the livestock.
animals. But Utu, the sun god, made a spring burst forth that turned Dilmun into a paradise, because Ninhurshag, goddess of the
land and hills, made eight plants grow, after giving birth, painlessly, by the way, three generations of goddesses
born from the water god. But also the paradise of Dilmun had its forbidden fruit, the cassia, and since the Eden
Sumer was densely populated, the god Ea made this prohibition known to the gardener who, as expected, ended up
for disobeying and eating the forbidden fruit. With this, evil and pain entered the earth, giving rise to terrible laments:
My pastures are drying up! My throat is thirsty! My health is perishing! The myth of the lost paradise is similar in all cultures.
It reflects the birth of a new sentiment that settled in the human spirit, once it acquired structure.
cerebral that gives rise to consciousness: guilt. We do not know who the first man was to feel guilty and deserving of
a divine punishment, but we do know that all cultures reflect, in one way or another, the wrath of the deity that, in punishment to the
Disobedience or the wickedness of man deprives him forever of paradise, extending this punishment to all his descendants.
• Just as it happens with the biblical story ofUniversal flood, and the story of Gilgameshof theSumerian mythology, points can be found u
common origin, or influence of earlier myths in the biblical story of the creation of Man.
• Thus, in theEnûma Elish(Babylonian poem that narrates the origin of the world), it is mentioned that the world was created in 7 days, and that it began with a garden;
being the world created byTiamat(a Babylonian goddess in the form of a giant serpent).
• In Sumerian mythology, more specifically in theMyth of Enki and Ninhursagthe Sumerian godEnkihe gave a rib to create the goddessNintLikewise
In Sumerian mythology, a cuneiform tablet found in Nippur speaks of a pure and bright land that knew neither illness nor...
death. In this peaceful kingdom, the king of the waters, Enki, made the fresh water allow a lush garden to grow. Here is where it is mentioned that the
godEnkihe created humans and in a place where man could live without fear of animals, a place without terror; but later Enki
he discovered that humans had inappropriate behavior, and for that reason, he expelled them from this paradise. Thus in theEpic of Gilgameshthe goddessAruru
(Ninhursag) assisted Enki in the creation of thehuman specieshe commanded his mother Nammu to form man from 'the clay that is above
from the abyss”. (Similarly in Egyptian mythology, the godKhnumshaping the bodies of human beings from clay on a potter's wheel.
• In the story of Gilgamesh, it is later described how Gilgamesh seeks the secret of eternal life, finding the fruit of the tree of the
life, which is taken away by the serpent. Similarly related to the myth of the biblical serpent and the
Trees of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life, we also find the Sumerian myth of the deityNingizzidawho was known as the
or the 'Lord/Lady of the Tree of Life', who was sometimes described as a serpent with a human head.
• In the files of El-Amarna, as in the library of Ashurbanipal, fragments of the account of the first man were found.Adapa", nombre
phonetically similar toAdamHebrew. Adapa would have torn the wings off a sky demon in a moment of fury, which is why Anu, the god of the sky, ...
he called the heavens to account. The god Ea, father of Adapa, understanding the danger warned him not to eat or drink anything. But Anu calmed down when
he saw him and forgave him. He ordered his servants to give him the bread and water of eternal life, but Adapá, already warned, refused to taste them. Enraged
Anu expelled him, and thus Adapa, due to a misunderstanding, lost the opportunity for immortality. 12

• In Assyrian and Phoenician art, the scene of cherubim or protective spirits guarding the tree of life in the form of a palm tree is very recurrent.
dates, a theme that is also described in the Bible as adorning the temple of Solomon.
 Cain and Abel (Sumerian tablets)

• In the myth of Cain and Abel, the shepherd kills the farmer out of envy for his production and way of life.
then he ran to hide in the east of Eden. If the biblical Eden was Sumer, Cain took refuge in Elam, to the southwest
of what is now Iran, where a parallel civilization developed, although inferior in progress, to that of the
Sumerians. In the Sumerian myth of Cain and Abel, it is Elam who attacks Sumer, with the Elamites being wicked and
cruel and the Sumerians, kind and just. These stories are, of course, subjective, because Isaac says
Asimov said that if we read the Elamite version, the myth would represent the evil of the farmers attacking
innocent shepherds to take away their grazing lands and turn them into fields.
 The universal flood (Sumerian)
• The oldest version of an allegory or story about a universal flood is found
written in the history ofUtnapishtimtm(inside theEpic of Gilgamesh) written
approximately in 2100 BC
• Basically, the Mesopotamian text narrates the following:Enlildecide to destroy humanity
because they are annoying and noisy to them.Eawarns toUta-na-fishtmso that it builds a
boat. The boat must be filled with animals and seeds. The day of the flood arrives and all the
humanity perishes, except for Uta-na-pistm and his companions. Uta-na-pistm realizes
that the waters flow down and let loose a raven that was hovering over the waters, going and
coming until the waters of the earth evaporated. Uta-na-pistm makes an offering to
the gods are satisfied with the sacrifice. A very similar story is told in
very ancient Sumerian tablets from the city ofUrin which the protagonist whom
Enki/Eit prevents from the flood isZiusudra. We can see the same in a story of origin.
acadian, titledAtrahasis, epic poem that recounts from creation to the flood
universal.
• This poem speaks of the time when humans and gods lived together on earth, in the city of Shurupakk.
In ancient times, the gods worked the earth, but they needed a lot of help, because the gods alone could not. That is why,
they created human beings. Just fourteen, seven men and seven women who began to multiply in such a way,
they made a lot of noise. And not only that, because the gods saw how humans became more and more
violent, noisy, and rebellious, the god Enlil decided to eliminate them all, but Ea wanted the humans and decided to protect them
even if it is to the just ones and he warned Utnapishtim to destroy his house and build a boat, to safeguard his
family and the living and known animal species and a few chosen people,
• A storm broke out so wild that the gods themselves were frightened and ascended to the sky to avoid it. After that, on the land, a storm unleashed.
a great storm that lasted six days and six nights. On the seventh day the storm calmed down and when Utnapishtim peeked out to see the landscape,
All humanity was clay. After seven days of waiting, Utnapishtim released a dove and later released a swallow. Both birds
they returned, but when he released a crow, it did not return, which meant it had found a place to perch and the waters
they were delaying.

• Then, as an offering, he burned reeds and cedar and myrtle wood.

• When Enlil saw his failed plan, he became furious and went to discuss it with Ea, but he defended everything he did, seeing that the animals and the
Utnapishtim's family was safe, and he defended them with such passion that Enlil was moved to the point of blessing Utnapishtim and his...
woman, so that they resembled the gods.

• All of this is recorded in the year 2500 BC. This story is not the first time we have heard it. As we have all realized, it is very
similar to what we know about the Ark of Noah, as it shows similarities that do not escape human knowledge.

• THE POEM OF UTNAPISHTIM

• In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Sumerian epic that is also the oldest narrative we know, it describes how the Babylonian god
She decides to eliminate humans and other animals from the planet with a great flood that will be known as 'the end of all flesh.'
Choose Utnapishtim (also Ut-napishtim, or Ziusudra, or Atrahasis) to build an ark and save some humans and animals.