Los primeros días de la antigua Sumer son anteriores a la historia registrada, pero el impacto de la cultura ha trascendido los milenios. Esto es lo que sabemos sobre la civilización sumeria.

Relieve de arcilla de un desnudo femenino que se cree que es Inanna,  siglos XIX y XVIII a.C., sur de Mesopotamia; con la portada de la revista LIFE de junio de 1956 con la antigua reina sumeria Puabi, EE. UU., a través del Museo Británico, Londres

Inanna, Reina del Cielo, se lanzó hacia el sombrío inframundo donde pretendía robarle el trono a su hermana, Eshkegel. Al atravesar cada una de las siete puertas del infierno, se vio obligada a renunciar a una parte de su identidad. Al principio se quitó el turbante; en el segundo, su collar; luego sus joyas en el pecho en el tercero; en el cuarto, su pectoral; luego sus anillos, seguidos de su vara de medir; y, finalmente, en la séptima puerta se quitó el vestido.

Completamente desnuda, entró al inframundo y se encontró con su hermana que había estado conspirando contra ella. Eshkegel convenció a los siete jueces de Kur para que condenaran a Inanna por conspiración y la condenaran a muerte. Y así continúa la primera parte del antiguo mito sumerio más famoso: El Descenso de Inanna. Este mito, al igual que la civilización sumeria, influiría en otras culturas antiguas en todo el Mediterráneo y el Cercano Oriente.

Antigua Sumeria: una de las primeras civilizaciones

Relieve de arcilla de un desnudo femenino que se cree que es Inanna, siglos XIX-XVIII a. C., sur de Mesopotamia, a través del Museo Británico, Londres

La antigua Sumeria, una de las civilizaciones más antiguas de la historia de la humanidad y titular de una larga lista de “primicias”, influyó en todo el mundo antiguo con su panteón. Inanna fue llamada Ishtar en Akkadia e Isis en Egipto. Finalmente encontró su camino hacia el panteón fenicio como Astarté. Y Astarté se convirtió más tarde en Afrodita en la antigua Grecia.

Entre sus muchas otras primicias, la antigua Sumeria ostenta el título de ser la primera civilización en hacer la transición de una cultura oral a una escrita, participar en una guerra registrada e incluso conceptualizar y construir ciudades.

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En términos de historia lineal, Sumeria es lo más antigua posible. Cuando se completó la construcción de las pirámides de Giza, la civilización sumeria ya tenía al menos 1.600 años. Y a pesar de que sus ruinas se perdieron hasta el siglo XIX, el ingenio de la antigua Sumeria perduró a través de culturas posteriores. Ya sea que lo llames la Cuna de la Civilización o el Jardín del Edén, no se puede subestimar la importancia de la antigua Sumeria para la historia y la cultura humanas.

La antigua Sumeria en el mapa

Mapa de los límites de la antigua Sumer dentro del Gran Cercano Oriente ,  a través de Age of Empires

Sumer ocupó el sur de Mesopotamia, en lo que hoy es Irak, entre los ríos Tigris y Éufrates con el Golfo Pérsico al sur y la tierra de Acad al norte. Hacia el año 2.900 a.C., hay evidencia de una civilización firmemente arraigada, pero la existencia de su cultura material se remonta al año 5.000 a.C.

Al igual que la antigua Fenicia, Sumer nunca fue una nación gobernada por un rey singular. Era más bien una colección de ciudades-estado soberanas que compartían una identidad cultural y un sistema religioso.

Among the most notable cities were Eridu, the sacred place of the god Enki, principal Sumerian god and Inanna’s father; Ur, the biblical birthplace of Abraham, husband of Sarah and patriarch of the Abrahamic faiths; and Uruk, whose patron goddess was Inanna.

Its warm climate and position between two great rivers made for extremely fertile land. And a complex irrigation system throughout that land proved essential to the region’s massive population.

Six Periods Of Sumerian Civilization

Head of human statuette found in Nippur, Iraq, 2,600 BC, Sumerian, via The Penn Museum, Philadelphia

Archaeologists have defined six distinct periods of Sumerian civilization. The first, called the Ubaid Period, takes place between 5,000 and 4,100 BC. The earliest Sumerian material culture comes from these years. But where the inhabitants of the land originated and how they got there is unknown.

In the Uruk Period, from the end of the Ubaid until 2,900 BC, we begin to see evidence of a more sophisticated Sumer. It was at some point during this period that Sumerians invented the concept of the city, as we see the many city-states of southern Mesopotamia begin to crop up. Uruk in particular, called the “New York of ancient Mesopotamia” by one writer, is identified as the first major ancient city. It established hegemony throughout the region early on, and by the end of this period was home to some 40,000 people.

The Weld-Blundell Prism, a portion of the Sumerian King List, Iraq, 1800 BC, Sumerian, via The Ashmolean Museum Oxford

The Early Dynastic Period, 2,900 – 2,334 BC, is marked by the Sumerian King List — a clay tablet with inscriptions of all Sumerian kings dating back to the beginning of time. This period sees an adverse relationship between the rise of kings and the decline in the prominence of priests. In the Uruk Period, the temple, or ziggurat, was central to cities. But in the Early Dynastic Period, the royal palace complexes that were constructed began to supersede the ziggurats in importance.

The beginning of the Akkadian Period is marked by an invasion of Sumer by Sargon of Akkad, the civilization occupying northern Mesopotamia at the time. After he’d subdued all the city-states, he installed Akkadian officials in prominent positions throughout Sumer to maintain order. This period lasted until approximately 2,218 BC when the Gutian tribes, hailing from the Zagros Mountains to the northeast of Mesopotamia, descended on Akkadia.

And upon taking possession of the capital city of Akkad the Gutians inherited its Sumerian subjects. This ushered in what’s known as the Gutian Period. But it was short-lived.

Early Dynastic Period Stele of Ushumgal, 2900-2700 BC, Mesopotamia, via The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

In 2,047, the cities of Ur and Uruk rose up against their savage colonizers and restored the ancient kingdoms of southern Mesopotamia. This Renaissance of Sumerian civilization is known as the Ur III Period, and it lasted until the fall of Sumer in 1,750 BC.

Land Of ‘Firsts’

Cuneiform tablet with a small second tablet: private letter, 20th-19th century BC, Anatolia, via The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Many of the things we take for granted today were invented in ancient Sumer. Even, for example, a thing as fundamental as time. The Sumerians devised the concept of a 24-hour cycle marking one day with two 12-hour periods.

After structuring their lives around time, they became the first people to live in cities. Humans in the Near East had been primarily nomadic since the end of the last glacial period. But as they established a more static agrarian culture in Sumer, groups began organizing themselves around large administrative capitals.

With the rise of administrative cities came the development of a sophisticated religious tradition. In the wake of this came the first “Great Flood” story, predating the tale of Noah’s Ark.

And, in the ancient world, when great cities were within close proximity of one another, war almost always resulted. Ancient Sumer holds another ‘first’ for engaging in the first recorded war with its eastern neighbors, the Elamites.

A recently discovered fragment of a tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Iraq, via The Slemani Museum, Baghdad

Culturally, too, their ‘firsts’ can’t go unnoted. Sumerian civilization straddles a monumental gap in human development: the shift from prehistory to recorded history. It began as an illiterate, oral culture that developed into one with a dynamic writing system called cuneiform. What started as a crude list of symbols to support trade grew into a language sophisticated enough to produce a work of literature like the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Religion In Ancient Sumer

Votive statuettes dedicated to the minor Sumerian god, Abu, 2,800 – 2,600 BC, Iraq, via The Iraq Museum, Baghdad

Sumerian religion made an impact, at least to some degree, on the entire ancient world of the Near East and the Mediterranean.

In Mesopotamia itself, the Sumerian pantheon and belief system were adopted by ancient Sumer’s successors as well as most of its neighbors.

Sumerians envisaged their earthly world as a dome on a disk surrounded by water. Their underworld, Kur, was thought to be a geographical place beyond the Zagros Mountains to the northeast of Mesopotamia. Similar to Hades, it was a gloomy, dismal land that souls departed to after death.

The Sumerians had some notion of heaven or a land of paradise beyond the earth plane, but it was reserved solely for the gods.

The nature of their gods reflected that of the landscape and environment of the time: mercurial at best, cruel at worst. While the ancient Egyptians attempted to enlist the gods in their service, the Sumerians sought simply to appease them.

The role of the gods was to create a natural order out of nothingness and chaos. And the role of man was to ensure the satisfaction of the gods to keep the chaos from reemerging.

Enki, god of wisdom and water, was believed to be the creator of the human race. He was worshipped at the sacred city of Eridu, which was thought to be the oldest in the world during ancient times. Although Uruk, the sanctuary of his daughter Inanna, actually predates it.

Statuette of a priestess, Diorite, 1953 – 35 BC, Sumerian, via The Penn Museum, Philadelphia

Inanna, goddess of love, sex, fertility, justice, war, and politics, is the progenitor of the Aphrodite prototype. She was known for her trickery, like when she traveled to her father’s city to get him drunk and steal the “meh” which had been bestowed upon him.

Also spelled “me,” this mythological tablet had decrees of civilization inscribed on it by the most supreme gods.

Highest among the supreme deities was Enlil, god of air and wind. His consort Ninlil was also among those ranks as goddess of the southerly wind.

Cities And Architecture

Illustration of a Mesopotamian city-state by Jeff Brown Graphics

Interwoven between the two great rivers of Mesopotamia was a complex irrigation network that sustained the region’s prolific agricultural sector.

And at a certain point, the people of ancient Sumer became so proficient at farming that the task could be relegated to a smaller subset of the population. So while the professional farmers stayed in the fields, the rest of Sumerian society took up various trades and moved closer to commercial centers. The result was the dawn of the city-state.

Each city-state was walled for protection and had a great ziggurat at its center dedicated to a particular god.

Nippur, a holy city built around the banks of the Euphrates River, was dedicated as the sanctuary of Enlil. The name of its ziggurat translates to “the house binding heaven and earth,” as it was thus considered the umbilical cord to the celestial world.

The ziggurat like the one in Nippur was a feature characteristic of all Sumerian cities. Architecturally, it had a square foundation and pyramid-like shape — each level above the foundation becoming progressively smaller, culminating with a temple at the very top. Unlike the pyramids in Egypt, however, the ziggurats of ancient Sumer were holy places of worship. It was even believed that the patron god of the city-state lived inside the temple at the ziggurat’s peak.

Partially reconstructed ruins of the Sumerian ziggurat at Ur, originally constructed ca. 2,100 BC, via KlimtLover

So, naturally, life inside the city revolved around it. Most people resided within their city’s walls, which were key features of Sumerian urban design. As the southern Mesopotamia region lacks natural barriers, except for the Persian Gulf to its south, ancient Sumer was exposed to potential attackers on three fronts. Therefore, the walls proved to be critical.

Within the walls, a person’s status determined where he and his family could live. Neighborhoods surrounding the ziggurat were usually reserved for priests and high-ranking officials. Tradesmen, fisherfolk, and the lower classes were consigned to dwellings nearby the city’s periphery.

Wealth And Status In Ancient Sumer: The Royal Tombs Of Ur

Sumerian Early Dynastic Period Headdress of Queen Puabi, 2600-2450 BC, via The Penn Museum, Philadelphia

In the 1920s, British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley descended on southern Iraq with a joint team of excavators from the University of Pennsylvania and the British Museum. Committed to learning more about Sumerian civilization, which had only been discovered in the century prior, Woolley and the team uncovered some 1,800 royal tombs on the site of ancient Ur.

The fruits of Woolley’s digs were sumptuous: golden crowns, like the one belonging to “Queen” Puabi, and a profusion of jewels, cups, ostrich eggs, and other luxury items turned up. It’s from these excavations that we’ve gained better insight into ancient Sumer’s royalty and upper class.

Amulet from the Cemetery of Ur, Sumerian Early Dynastic Period, via The Penn Museum, Philadelphia

In January 1928, Woolley sent a telegram to update the Penn Museum on recent finds from the Cemetery of Ur: “I found the intact tomb, stone-built and vaulted over with bricks of Queen Shubad [Puabi] adorned with a dress in which gems, flowers, crowns and animal figures are woven. Tomb magnificent with jewels and golden cups.”

As Woolley’s hastily-written telegram exhibits, the treasure trove in and around the tomb of Puabi astounded excavators. And while we don’t know for certain if she was a queen per se, all evidence points to her being the sovereign ruler of Ur at some time before 2,450 BC.

Wreath made of gold beech leaves and lapis tubular and carnelian beads from a tomb in the Cemetery of Ur, Early Dynastic Period, Sumerian, via The Penn Museum, Philadelphia

Puabi’s exalted status led archaeologists and historians to delve deeper into the status of women in general in ancient Sumer. And the consensus seems to be that women, of both the upper and lower classes, shared broad equality with men in almost all aspects of society.

“[Women] were involved in industrial life and crafting, particularly in the textile industry,” says American archaeologist, Dr. William B. Hafford.

There is also evidence of women becoming merchants and scribes — positions they’d be barred from in later, more patriarchal ancient civilizations. With the decline of ancient Sumer, we also see a decline in the status of women in Mesopotamia.

Ostrich eggshell inlaid with gold, a luxury item of the ancient Near East, Early Dynastic Period, Sumerian, via The Penn Museum, Philadelphia

Pero a pesar del espíritu igualitario de la cultura entre los sexos, este ciertamente no fue el caso entre las clases. La gran cantidad de objetos de lujo descubiertos en Ur son prueba de una clase alta sumeria muy rica en la época del Período Dinástico Temprano.

Algunas élites sumerias eran tan poderosas que mantenían sirvientes como criados para llevarlos con ellos al inframundo después de la muerte.

Leonard Woolley encontró pruebas de este tipo de sacrificio humano masivo en lo que llamó el “Gran Pozo de la Muerte de Ur”. Su equipo descubrió una tumba sin etiqueta con unos 74 cuerpos cuidadosamente apilados y adornados con amuletos, armas y cascos.

Carnero en la espesura, descubierto en el Gran Pozo de la Muerte de Ur, Período Dinástico Temprano, Sumerio, a través del Museo Penn

El propietario del Gran Pozo de la Muerte no está claro. Pero investigadores de la Universidad de Pensilvania han teorizado que pudo haber pertenecido a una Entu-Sacerdotisa, una mujer santa dedicada al dios de la luna cuyo papel generalmente lo desempeñaba la hija del rey.

La transformación de Inanna y la antigua Sumer

Cuatro perspectivas del jarrón Warka, descubierto en el complejo del templo de Inanna en Uruk , 3200 – 3000 a. C., sumerio, en el Museo de Irak, Bagdad

Entonces, después de que Eshkegel mató a Inanna, ésta fue colgada de un gancho, y fue en esta condición que permaneció en el inframundo durante tres días. Al tercer día, incapaz de soportar la muerte de su hija, Enki intervino y la resucitó.

Los paralelos aquí con la muerte y resurrección de Jesús no han pasado desapercibidos para los estudiosos. Pero no hay evidencia concluyente de que la historia del descenso de Inanna haya influido en la Biblia cristiana de alguna manera. Inanna tuvo que transformarse después de su resurrección. Y al igual que Inanna, la cultura sumeria también transformó e impactó todas las civilizaciones humanas posteriores. Porque sus cimientos son la base del mundo.