What secrets and mysteries do lost civilizations keep? Do we need to unravel these mysteries? The Eternal Stones are reluctant to reveal their secrets. Will they help to figure out who we are now and who we will be tomorrow?

In this article, we have compiled a list of the most famous, mysterious ancient civilizations in the world.

Historians consider the period of the birth of civilization to be 4-3 millennia BC. Moreover, it is believed that it was the Sumerian civilization that became the basis for all subsequent ones. The Sumerians lived in the area between the Tigris and Euphrates. Their main activity was agriculture. However, the main distinguishing feature of the Sumerians was cuneiform writing. Given the historical data, we can confidently assume that the Sumerians already in those distant times had full knowledge and mining skills, smelted copper and were well aware of what a wheel was.

Each city, and was called "nome", inhabited by the Sumerians had its own leader and patron. According to historical data, about 50-60 thousand people lived in such towns, and Nippur was the center of the entire civilization. The most interesting thing is that the Sumerians, long before our era, already had class inequalities. So the inhabitants were divided into temple priests, artisans, merchants, farmers, warriors and do not believe the slaves. However, in the 24th century BC, the Sumerian community was absorbed into the Babylonian kingdom and ceased to exist as an independent unit.

The oldest civilization that existed from the 14th to the 16th centuries. According to the legends, the Aztecs themselves came from giant caves, which got their name in honor of the mysterious place Aztlan. The Aztec culture has survived to this day in jewelry, statues of various gods, pottery and architecture. In addition, the Aztecs were considered excellent writers. But the most interesting legacy of the Aztecs is considered to be two calendars, which are combined into a 52-year cycle. One of the calendars was solar. It had 18 months, each of which had 20 days. The second - the ritual calendar, consisted of 260 days. It is believed that it was thanks to this calendar that the Aztecs predicted fate.

The Maya civilization begins its history from 2000 BC on the Yucatan Peninsula and the nearby territory of Mexico. Many scholars argue that the Mayan settlements appeared long before the indicated historical dates, and this is confirmed by the calendars of calculation, which begin from an earlier period. The decline of this ancient civilization is considered to be 850-900 AD. However, scientists are still trying to unravel the mystery of these settlements today. In the middle of the last century, scientists, trying to decipher the Mayan script, completely refuted the theory that the inhabitants of this civilization were peaceful and calm. Their records indicate that the tribes constantly came into conflict with each other and never created a “single state”, the only common place where the tribes met was the pyramids, in which rituals and sacrifices were performed. The cause of the collapse of civilization is still an unsolved mystery.

A civilization sunk as a result of a powerful earthquake. To this day, scientists are trying to uncover the mystery of the sunken island, but all in vain, so far no evidence has been found, no confirmation or refutation of its existence. The only thing that is known, and then notice in Plato's notes, that it existed 9 thousand years ago and was located on islands near the Strait of Gibraltar.

Another civilization that does not have reliable evidence of its existence. Historians have found little information about Lemuria in the records of the inhabitants of India and Tibet. However, their legend says that this is an island inhabited by snake-headed inhabitants. Whether this is true or not is still not known for certain, there are only assumptions by scientists who believe that the territory of Lemuria could be located on the sunken part of Madagascar. Later studies say that Madagascar was part of Hindustan more than 60 million years ago, and Lemuria is probably just a part of the Hindustan plate that separated from the Asian continent.

In the 7th century BC. the ancient Greek poet Gesod mentions the country of Hyperborea in his works, and a little later Herodotus also speaks about it in his historical records. Both of them claim that exceptionally hardworking and very smart people inhabited Hyperborea. There are references that even Apollo himself fell in love with this country and patronized it in every possible way. According to ancient sources, a subtropical climate reigned in this area, and it was these conditions that made it the favorite of all artists and architects of those times. To this day, the mystery of the disappearance of this country remains not completely solved, however, there are suggestions that the inhabitants of Hyperborea were forced to leave their lands due to the dramatically changed climate.

Until recently, it was believed that the development of civilizations in India happened quite late, what was the surprise of scientists who discovered the remains of the ancient Harappan civilization in the Indus Valley. Many scholars believed that the inhabitants of the valley were Sumerians, others believed that they were Indo-Aryans. But unfortunately, no facts have been found that reliably determine the origin of the inhabitants of this area. The only thing we can say for sure is that the inhabitants of the valley were originally engaged in gathering and only with time began to engage in agriculture and cattle breeding. The culture of the Harappan civilization developed quite quickly, and soon the local population began to build trade relations with nearby neighbors. there is no exact information about the death of the Harappan civilization. There are two assumptions that say that the inhabitants of the valley left their native area due to unfavorable natural conditions or were captured by hostile tribes. One thing can be said, its collapse is as swift as its unexpected development.

ancient left behind a lot of mysteries over the solution that the best scientists of the Earth are still struggling with. Hermit archaeologist David Hatcher Childress has made many unimaginable journeys to some of the oldest and farthest regions in the world. Describing lost cities and ancient civilizations of the world, he published 6 books: a chronicle of wanderings from the Gobi Desert to Puma Punka in Bolivia, from Mohenjo-Daro to Baalbek. Specially for Atlantis Rising magazine, he was asked to explain secrets of civilizations and write this article.

1. Mu or Lemuria

According to various secret sources originated 78,000 years ago on the giant continent known as Mu or Lemuria. And it existed for an amazing 52,000 years. Civilization was destroyed by earthquakes caused by the shift of the earth's pole, which occurred approximately 26,000 years ago, or in 24,000 BC.

While Mu civilization did not achieve as high technology as other, later civilizations, however, the peoples of Mu succeeded in erecting mega-stone buildings that were able to withstand earthquakes. This building science was the greatest achievement of Mu.

Perhaps in those days there was one language and one government on the whole Earth. Education was the key to the prosperity of the Empire, every citizen was versed in the laws of the Earth and the Universe, by the age of 21 he was given an excellent education. By the age of 28, a person became a full citizen of the empire.

2. Ancient Atlantis

When the continent of Mu sank into the ocean, today's Pacific Ocean was formed, and the water level in other parts of the Earth dropped significantly. Small in the time of Lemuria, the islands in the Atlantic increased significantly in size. The lands of the Poseidonis archipelago formed a whole small continent. This continent is called Atlantis by modern historians, however, its real name was Poseidonis.

Atlantis possessed a high level of technology that surpassed the modern one. In the book "The Inhabitant of Two Planets", dictated in 1884 by philosophers from Tibet to the young Californian Frederick Spencer Oliver, as well as in the continuation of 1940 "The Earthly Return of the Inhabitant", there is a mention of amazing among which are such inventions and devices as: air conditioners for cleaning the air from harmful vapors; vacuum cylinder lamps, fluorescent lamps; electric rifles; transport on a monorail; water generators, a tool for compressing water from the atmosphere; aircraft controlled by anti-gravity forces.

The clairvoyant Edgar Cayce spoke of the use of planes and crystals in Atlantis to generate tremendous energy. He also mentioned the misuse of power by the Atlanteans, which led to the destruction of their civilization.

3. Rama Empire in India

Fortunately, the ancient books of the Indian Empire of Rama have survived, in contrast to the documents of China, Egypt, Central America and Peru. Now the remains of the empire are swallowed up by the impenetrable jungle or rest on the bottom of the ocean. And yet India, despite numerous military devastation, has managed to preserve much of its ancient history.

It was believed that civilization of ancient india appeared not much earlier than 500 AD, 200 years before the invasion of Alexander the Great. However, in the last century, the cities of Mojenjo-Daro and Harappa were discovered in the Indus Valley on the territory of modern Pakistan.
The discovery of these cities forced archaeologists to move the date of the Indian civilization thousands of years ago. To the surprise of modern researchers, these cities were highly organized and were a brilliant example of urban planning. And the sewerage system was more developed than it is now in many Asian countries.

4. The civilization of Osiris in the Mediterranean

During the time of Atlantis and Harappa, the Mediterranean basin was a large fertile valley. The ancient civilization that flourished there was the progenitor of dynastic Egypt, and is known as the Osiris Civilization. The Nile previously flowed in a completely different way than today and was called the Styx. Instead of emptying into the Mediterranean Sea in northern Egypt, the Nile turned west, formed a huge lake in the region of the central part of the modern Mediterranean Sea, flowed out of the lake in the area between Malta and Sicily and emptied into the Atlantic Ocean at the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar). When Atlantis was destroyed, the waters of the Atlantic slowly flooded the Mediterranean Basin, destroying the large cities of the Osirians and forcing them to relocate. This theory explains the strange megalithic remains found at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

It is an archaeological fact that at the bottom of this sea there are more than two hundred sunken cities. Civilization of ancient Egypt, along with the Minoan (Crete) and Mycenaean (Greece) are traces of one large, ancient culture. The Ossyrian civilization left huge earthquake-resistant megalithic structures, owned electricity and other amenities that were common in Atlantis. Like Atlantis and Rama's empire, development of civilization The Osirians reached a high level and they had airships and other vehicles, mostly electrical in nature. Mysterious paths in Malta, which are found under water, may be part of the ancient transport route of the Osirian civilization.

Probably the best example of the high technology of the Osirians is the amazing platform found in Baalbek (Lebanon). The main platform is made up of the largest cut rock blocks. Their weight is from 1200 to 1500 tons each.

5. Civilizations of the Gobi Desert

Many ancient cities The Uighurs existed in the time of Atlantis in the place of the Gobi desert. However, now the Gobi is a lifeless land scorched by the sun, and it is hard to believe that the waters of the ocean once splashed here.

So far, no traces of this civilization have been found. However, vimanas and other technical devices were not alien to the Wiger area. Notes about the finds of burials have repeatedly appeared in the press, which indicate that the tallest man on Earth was from these places, but they have not received scientific confirmation. The famous Russian explorer Nicholas Roerich reported his observations of flying discs in the region of northern Tibet in the 1930s.

Some sources claim that the elders of Lemuria, even before the cataclysm that destroyed their civilization, moved their headquarters to an uninhabited plateau in Central Asia, which we now call Tibet. Here they founded a school known as the Great White Brotherhood.

The great Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote the famous book Tao Te Ching, where he tried to reveal secrets of ancient civilizations. At the approach of his death, he went west to the legendary land of Hsi Wang Mu. Could this land be the domain of the White Brotherhood?

6. Tiwanaku

As in Mu and Atlantis, construction in South America reached megalithic scale in the construction of earthquake-resistant structures.

Residential houses and public buildings were built from ordinary stones, but using a unique polygonal technology. These buildings are still standing today. Cusco, the ancient capital of Peru, which was probably built before the Incas, is still quite a populated city, even after thousands of years. Most of the buildings located in downtown Cusco today unite walls that are many hundreds of years old (while younger buildings, already built by the Spaniards, are collapsing).

A few hundred kilometers south of Cusco lie the fantastic ruins of Puma Punqui, high in the Bolivian altiplano. Puma Punka is not far from the famous Tiahuanaco, a massive magalic site where 100-ton blocks are scattered all over the place by an unknown force. This happened when the South American continent was suddenly subjected to a great cataclysm, probably caused by a pole shift. The former sea ridge can now be seen at an altitude of 3900 m in the Andes mountains. A possible confirmation of this is the many oceanic fossils around Lake Titicaca.

Mayan pyramids found in Central America have their twins on the Indonesian island of Java. The Sukuh Pyramid on the slopes of Mount Lavu near Surakarta in central Java is an amazing temple with a stone stele and a stepped pyramid, which is more likely to be located in the jungles of Central America. The pyramid is virtually identical to the pyramids found at the Vashaktun site near Tikal.

The ancient Mayans were brilliant astronomers and mathematicians whose early cities lived in harmony with nature. They built canals and garden cities in the Yucatan Peninsula.

As pointed out by Edgar Cayce, artifacts Maya civilization, records of all the wisdom of this people and other ancient civilizations are in three places in the earth. Firstly, this is Atlantis or Posidonia, where some of the temples may still be found under many years of bottom overlays, for example, in the Bimini region off the coast of Florida. Secondly, in temple records somewhere in Egypt. And finally, on the Yucatan Peninsula, in America.

It is assumed that the ancient Hall of Records can be located anywhere, probably under some kind of pyramid, in an underground chamber. Some sources say that this repository of ancient knowledge contains quartz crystals that are capable of storing large amounts of information, similar to modern CDs.

8. Ancient China

Ancient China, known as Hanshui China, like other civilizations, was born from the vast Pacific continent of Mu. Ancient Chinese records are known for descriptions of celestial chariots and the jade production they shared with the Maya. Indeed, the ancient Chinese and Mayan languages ​​seem to be very similar.

The mutual influences of China and Central America on each other are evident, both in the field of linguistics and in mythology, religious symbolism, and even trade.

great civilization Ancient China invented everything from toilet paper to earthquake detectors and rocket technology and printing techniques. In 1959, archaeologists discovered aluminum strips made several thousand years ago, this aluminum was obtained from raw materials using electricity.

9. Ancient Ethiopia and Israel

From the ancient texts of the Bible and the Ethiopian book Kebra Negast, we know about the high technology of ancient Ethiopia and Israel. The temple in Jerusalem was built on three giant blocks of hewn stone, similar to those found in Baalbek. Solomon's temple earlier and a Muslim mosque now exist on the site, whose foundations are apparently rooted in the civilization of Osiris.

Solomon's Temple, another example of megalithic construction, was built to contain the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant was an electrical generator, and people who carelessly touched it were electrocuted. The ark itself and the golden statue were taken out of the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid by Moses at the time of the Exodus.

10. Aroe and the Kingdom of the Sun in the Pacific

At the time when the Mu continent sank into the ocean 24,000 years ago due to the pole shift, the Pacific Ocean was later repopulated by many races from India, China, Africa and America.

The resulting new civilization Aroe in the islands of Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia built many megalithic pyramids, platforms, roads and statues.

In New Caledonia, cement columns have been found dating back to 5120 BC. before 10950 BC

The Easter Island statues were placed in a clockwise spiral around the island. And on the island of Pohnpei, a huge stone city was built.
The Polynesians of New Zealand, the Easter Islands, Hawaii and Tahiti still believe that their ancestors had the ability to fly and traveled by air from island to island.

The history of mankind can be compared with the biography of one family - over time, some members of the household leave, others are born, and everyone lives life in his own way, leaving certain memories of himself. In the case of the global “family” of homo sapiens, entire civilizations act as its members - some of them manage to exist for thousands of years, and some of them are not allowed to last even several centuries, however, one way or another, the place of the lost civilization is immediately occupied by the next one - in this is great justice and the great meaning of history.

1. Olmec civilization

The Olmecs are one of the oldest civilizations in Central America, with an outstanding culture and an unusually high level of development of science and technology for their time.

The "visiting card" of the Olmecs are giant sculptures in the form of heads, located in modern Mexico. The heyday of the Olmec state fell on the period between 1500 and 400 BC, according to historians, this people achieved impressive success in architecture, agriculture, medicine, writing and other branches of knowledge. The Olmecs had a fairly accurate calendar and a mathematical system that used the number "0", which can be considered a real breakthrough.

Having existed for more than a thousand years, the Olmec civilization, for reasons still unclear, fell into decline, but other states arose on its ruins, such as ...

2. Aztec Empire

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The "golden age" of the Aztec civilization is considered the period between 1428 and 1521 - at that time the empire covered vast territories, where, according to some estimates, about 5 million people lived, while the population of its capital, Tenochtitlan, located on the site of the modern Mexico City, was about 200 thousand people.

The Aztecs borrowed a lot from the Olmec civilization, including religious beliefs, ritual games, traditions of human sacrifice, language, calendar, and some achievements of science and culture. The Aztec Empire was one of the richest and most highly developed states of pre-Columbian America - suffice it to mention at least the most complex aqueducts they built, designed to irrigate the famous floating gardens.

With the isolation of the Aztec state from the rest of the world, and along with the state itself, it was over when the detachment of the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes was allowed to enter Tenochtitlan. One can imagine the surprise of the Spaniards, who were expecting a meeting with the "primitive barbarians" - their eyes saw a huge rich city with wide streets and stunningly beautiful architecture.

It is likely that greed, the envy of the Spaniards for the wealth of the townspeople, as well as European diseases and modern weapons of the conquistadors, led to the destruction

the Aztec state and the genocide of a great people, and just a few years later, another Indian civilization fell victim to European invaders ...

3. Inca Empire

The Inca state, which occupied the territory of modern Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador, existed for more than three centuries - from the beginning of the 13th to the end of the 16th, when conquistadors came to the country under the command of the Spaniard Francisco Pizarro.

The capital of the Inca Empire was located in the mountains, on the site of the modern city of Cusco. Thanks to the unusually high level of technological development at that time, the Incas managed to build an effective system of agriculture, turning mountain slopes into fertile fields and developing technologies for irrigating them. The buildings of the city of Machu Picchu and other structures that have survived to our time testify to the highest skill of Inca architects. Based on astronomical observations and their mathematical system, the Incas created an accurate calendar, they developed their own script, and achieved notable successes in medicine and other sciences. Scientists are still puzzling over how the people, who did not have modern tools and devices, managed to build architectural and engineering masterpieces.

Acquaintance with European civilization was a real tragedy for the Incas (as well as for other indigenous peoples of the American continent) - most of the population was destroyed by European diseases, the weapons of the conquistadors and the civil strife of various tribes that had begun, and their cities were plundered.

Such is the sad fate of the once powerful country, the size of which was comparable to the largest Eurasian states, for example, what we call ...

4. Persian Empire

The Persian Empire has been one of the main players in the world political arena for several centuries. Possessing outstanding technologies and knowledge, the Persians built a road network, unique in its branching and quality, connecting the most developed cities of the empire, developed an unparalleled sewage system, created an alphabet and numbers. They were the first to use the assimilation of conquered peoples instead of their extermination, trying to make the religious and cultural traditions of foreigners a part of their culture, thanks to which they managed to create one of the largest and most influential states on the planet, such examples in the history of mankind are quite rare and one of them…

5. Macedonian Empire

By and large, this state owes its existence to one person - Alexander the Great. His empire covered part of modern Greece and Egypt, the territory of the former power of the Achaemenids and part of India. Alexander managed to subjugate many countries thanks to his talent as a commander and the high level of training of troops. Not the last role in the creation of the empire was also played by the assimilation of the peoples of the occupied territories - marriages between the soldiers of the Macedonian army and representatives of the local population.

After the death of Alexander the Great, the empire lasted for about three centuries. As a result of numerous conflicts between the heirs of the legendary conqueror, the country fell apart and most of it became part of another great state, called ...

6. Roman Empire

Roman civilization originated in the city-states on the territory of modern Italy, the main of which was, of course, Rome. The empire was formed under the strong influence of Greek civilization - the Romans borrowed from the Greeks many ideas of state and social structure, which they were able to successfully translate into life.

zn, as a result of which one of the greatest empires in the history of mankind appeared on the world map. Under the rule of the Caesars, the scattered regions of Italy united, and due to the successes of the Roman military leaders, the young state gradually turned into the most influential empire in the world, which included modern Italy, Spain, Greece, France, significant parts of Germany and Great Britain, regions in North Africa (including - Egypt) and vast territories in the Middle East.

The victorious march of the Romans around the world was prevented by the collapse of the empire into the western and eastern parts. The history of the Western Roman Empire ended in 476, the Eastern Roman Empire, which is also called the Byzantine Empire, lasted almost a thousand years longer - until 1453.

The unified Roman Empire was one of the largest states in the history of mankind, only some giants surpassed it in size, for example ...

7. Mongol Empire

The state, covering the most extensive contiguous territory in history, was born at the behest of the great Mongol commander, whose name became almost synonymous with a successful policy of conquest. The history of the empire of Genghis Khan lasted a little more than a century and a half, from 1206 to 1368 - during this time, the territories of modern Russia, India, China and some countries of Eastern Europe, in total, the area of ​​occupied lands were under the rule of the first great khan and his successors was about 33 million km2. The military successes of the Mongols are explained, first of all, by the widespread use of cavalry - their opponents simply did not have a chance to cope with countless hordes of skillful horsemen who appeared as if from nowhere and smashed the infantry to smithereens.

The death of the great Khan Ogedei, the third son of Genghis Khan, prevented the continuation of the aggressive policy of the Mongols. Who knows - if it were not for a combination of circumstances, perhaps Western Europe would have got acquainted with all the "charms" of the Mongol invasion. During the struggle for power of several Mongol political leaders, the empire broke up into four states - the Golden Horde, the Ilkhanate in the Middle East, the Yuan Empire in China and the Chagatai ulus in Central Asia.

It is worth noting that the Mongols were not mindless barbarians, as Western historians often try to present them in their works. In the occupied territories, they introduced laws that were quite humane in relation to the indigenous population - for example, it was strictly forbidden to persecute local residents for their religious beliefs. Such a progressive domestic policy should be learned, for example, by the elite of such a state as ...

8 Ancient Egypt

The state, located in the Nile River valley, existed in various forms for more than 4 thousand years. Countless studies, thousands of books, feature films and documentaries have been devoted to the history of Egyptian civilization, but scientists continue to argue about the technologies and knowledge of the ancient Egyptians, which allowed them to create, for example, the famous pyramids of Giza and other wonders of architectural thought.

The heyday of Ancient Egypt is characterized by the highest level of development of traditional religion, the Egyptian language, medicine, architecture, agricultural technology, mathematics and various arts. Egypt is one of the three oldest states on the planet, including Sumerian and

The Indian civilization, the latter also bears the name ...

9. Harappan Civilization

The Indian civilization is far from being as well known as Ancient Egypt, although both states were formed at about the same time - in the middle of the fourth millennium BC. The period of existence of a civilization located on the territory of modern Pakistan covers more than one and a half thousand years.

One of the distinguishing features of the Harappan civilization can be considered a peaceful, creative policy of the authorities, both internal and external.

While the rulers of other countries were waging wars and intimidating their own citizens, considering violence to be the main tool for strengthening power, the leaders of the Harappan state directed all their efforts to the development of society, strengthening the economy and improving technology.

Archaeologists claim that in the course of studying the settlements of the Indus civilization, they found only a small number of weapons, while there were no human remains with signs of violent death, which allows us to conclude that the Indus state was peaceful.

The Harappans lived in clean, well-planned cities with sewerage and water systems, and virtually every house had a bathroom and toilet. Unfortunately, we know little about the Indus civilization, however, the available information indicates that it was one of the most progressive countries of that era.

Goodwill and peacefulness were also characteristic of the people who created the state on the islands of the Caribbean - we know it under the name ...

10. Arawaks

The Arawaks are the collective name for a whole group of peoples who inhabited the islands of the Caribbean and the northern part of South America. It was the Arawaks who were the first of the Indian tribes to meet Christopher Columbus upon his arrival in the New World. According to various estimates, during the first expedition

Columbus, the number of island Arawaks ranged from 300 to 400 thousand people, although some sources give other figures - up to several million.

Possessing a developed culture, the Arawaks were very friendly to each other and to strangers - according to the testimony of the expedition members, the natives shouted to the European ships approaching their islands: “Tainos!”, which means “peace” in the local dialect. From here came the second common name of the island Arawak tribes - Taino.

The Taino were engaged in trade, agriculture, fishing and hunting, unlike many other Indian tribes, they practically did not participate in military conflicts. The only people with whom the Arawaks were at enmity were the cannibals who lived on the territory of the modern state of Puerto Rico.

The Arawak civilization is characterized by a highly organized structure of society, its hierarchy, as well as the commitment of the population to universal human values ​​- for example, Arawak women had the right to refuse a man to marry, which was unheard of for the Indians, however, as well as for many Europeans of that time.

With the advent of the conquerors, the state of the Arawaks quickly fell into decay - the population decreased several times due to the lack of immunity to diseases of the Old World and armed conflicts with the Spaniards. The Taino are now considered extinct, although some of the islands in the Caribbean still have remnants of the culture of this once highly developed civilization.

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Ancient Civilizations Mironov Vladimir Borisovich

The birth of the first civilizations. Who are the Sumerians?

Where did the first civilization originate? Some consider the land of Shinar (Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia) to be such, which is located in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The ancient inhabitants called this land the "House of Two Rivers" - Bit-Nakhrein, the Greeks - Mesopotamia, other peoples - Mesopotamia or Mesopotamia. The Tigris River originates in the mountains of Armenia, south of Lake Van, the sources of the Euphrates lie east of Erzurum, at an altitude of 2 thousand meters above sea level. The Tigris and Euphrates connected Mesopotamia with Urartu (Armenia), Iran, Asia Minor, and Syria. The inhabitants of southern Mesopotamia called themselves "the people of Sumer." It has been established that Sumer was located in the south of Mesopotamia (south of present-day Baghdad), Akkad occupied the middle part of the country. The border between Sumer and Akkad ran just above the city of Nippur. According to climatic conditions, Akkad is closer to Assyria. The climate here was more severe (it often snowed in winter). The time of the appearance of the Sumerians in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates is about the 4th millennium BC. e. Who they are and where they came from, despite many years of persistent research, it is difficult to say for sure. “The Sumerians considered the country of Dilmun, corresponding to the modern islands of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, to be the place of the appearance of mankind,” writes I. Kaneva. “Archaeological data allow us to trace the connection of the Sumerians with the territory of ancient Elam, as well as with the cultures of the northern Mesopotamia.”

G. Dore. global flood

Ancient authors very often talk about Egypt, but there is no information about Sumer and the Sumerians. The Sumerian language is original and absolutely unlike the Semitic languages, which at the time of its appearance did not exist at all. It is also far from the developed Indo-European languages. The Sumerians are not Semites. Their writing and language (the name of the type of writing in 1700 was given by Oxford University professor T. Hyde) are not related to the Semitic-Hamitic ethno-linguistic group. After the decipherment of the Sumerian language at the end of the 19th century, the country of Sumer was traditionally associated with the name of this country found in the Bible - Sin,ar.

It is still unclear what caused the Sumerians to appear in those places - the Flood or something else ... Science admits that the Sumerians most likely were not the first settlers of the Central and Southern Mesopotamia. The Sumerians appeared on the territory of the Southern Mesopotamia no later than the 4th millennium BC. e. But where they came from is still unknown. There are a number of hypotheses regarding the place where they came from. Some believe that it could be the Iranian Plateau, the distant mountains of Central Asia (Tibet) or India. Others recognize the Caucasian people in the Sumerians (Sh. Otten). Still others consider them to be the original inhabitants of Mesopotamia (G. Frankfort). The fourth speak of two waves of Sumerian migration from Central Asia or from the Middle East through Central Asia (B. Grozny). The patriarch of modern "world history" W. McNeil believed that the Sumerian written tradition is consistent with the idea that the founders of this civilization came from the south by sea. They conquered the native population, the "black-headed people" who formerly lived in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates. They learned how to drain the swamps and irrigate the land, because the words of L. Woolley that the Mesopotamia had previously lived in a golden age are hardly accurate: “It was a blessed alluring land. She called, and many responded to her call.

Although according to legend, Eden was once here. In the Book of Genesis 2, 8-14 its location is indicated. Other scholars argue that the Gardens of Eden may have been in Egypt. In Mesopotamian literature there is no indication of traces of an earthly paradise. Others saw him at the source of four rivers (Tigris and Euphrates, Pison and Geon). The Antiochians believed that paradise was somewhere in the east, perhaps somewhere where the earth meets the sky. According to Ephraim the Syrian, paradise was supposed to be located on an island - in the Ocean. The ancient Greeks imagined the location of "paradise", that is, the posthumous abode of the righteous, on islands in the ocean (the so-called islands of the Blessed). Plutarch described them in his biography of Sertorius: "They are separated from one another by a very narrow strait, located ten thousand stadia from the African coast." There is a favorable climate due to the temperature and the absence of sudden changes in all seasons. Paradise was a land covered with an evergreen garden. This is how the image of the promised land was seen, where people are full and happy, eat fruits in the shade of gardens and cool streams.

The idea of ​​a paradise earth (according to A. Kircher)

The imagination of people supplemented these fabulous features of well-being with new and new colors. In "The Life of St. Brendan ”(XI century), the picture of the paradise island is drawn as follows:“ Many herbs and fruits grew there ... We went around it for fifteen days, but could not find its limit. And we did not see a single grass that would not bloom, and not a single tree that would not bear fruit. The stones there are only precious ... "

Bahrain map

Research scientists have given food for new conjectures and hypotheses. In the 50s of the 20th century, a Danish expedition led by J. Bibby discovered on the island of Bahrain traces of what others immediately called the ancestral home of the Sumerian civilization. Many believed that the legendary Dilmun was located here. Indeed, after all, such ancient sources as the poem about the adventures of the gods (mother earth Ninhursag and Enki, the patron god of the most ancient of the cities of Mesopotamia - Eridu), rewritten in the 4th millennium BC. e. from an even more ancient source, already mentions a certain Arabian country Dilmun. The poem begins with the lines of glorification of this country:

Give the holy cities to Enki,

the sacred land of Dilmun,

Holy Sumer grant him.

Holy land of Dilmun,

The immaculate country of Dilmun,

The pure country of Dilmun...

This "sacred and immaculate country" seems to have once been located on the island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, as well as on the nearby lands of the Arabian coast. There is no doubt that she was famous for her wealth, developed trade, and the luxury of her palaces. In the Sumerian poem "Enki and the Universe" it is also noted as a well-known fact that the ships of Dilmun carried timber, gold and silver from Melluh (India). It also speaks of the mysterious country of Magan. The Dilmuns traded in copper, iron, bronze, silver and gold, ivory, pearls, etc. Truly it was a paradise for the rich. For example, in the II century BC. e. a Greek traveler described Bahrain as a country where "doors, walls and roofs of houses were inlaid with ivory, gold, silver and precious stones." The memory of the wonderful world of Arabia was preserved for a very long time.

Oannes the fish man

Apparently, this circumstance caused the expedition of J. Bibby, who described his odyssey in the book "In Search of Dilmun". On the site of the Portuguese fortress (Portugal took possession of these places and stayed here from 1521 to 1602), he discovered the remains of ancient buildings. Nearby they found a sacred well in which stood the mysterious "throne of God." Then the memory of the Holy Throne of Dilmun passed from people to people and from era to era, being reflected in the Bible: “And the Lord God planted paradise in Eden in the east; and placed there the man whom he had created. This is how a fairy tale-tale arose about this magical country, from where the expulsion of a person was so painful, if it took place, of course.

C. Crivelli. Riches of the Land of Dilmun

The symbols of paradise are similar everywhere: the presence of the characteristic features of a "paradise civilization": an abundance of products, fertile natural conditions, luxury items. Among the peoples of Mesopotamia, the magical kingdom of Siduri is presented as a place where plants from precious stones grow, which bring people “beautiful in appearance and great in taste” juicy fruits. It is also interesting that all these legends were also known in Russia. In the message of the Novgorod Archbishop Vasily Kaliki to the Bishop of Tver Theodore the Good (compiled around 1347), it is reported that the Novgorod travelers also reached an allegedly certain island where paradise was located. They arrived there on three boats, one of which was lost. This place is located near high mountains; Everything around is illuminated with a wondrous light that cannot be expressed in words, and exclamations of jubilation are heard from those mountains. In 1489, the traveler John de José also described a similar island near India, on which Mount Eden was located. The ancient Greeks identified the islands of the Blessed with the real-life islands of the Atlantic Ocean (Azores or Canaries). It is worth remembering Plato's famous story about Atlantis.

Thus, we see that each nation represented its own land as a heavenly abode. Paradise was transferred from the south to the Far East, then to the North Pole, to America, even beyond the boundaries of the earth. John the Theologian gave a description of the heavenly Jerusalem, the walls of which are lined with precious stones. The Egyptians in "The Tale of the Shipwrecked" describe a journey through the Red Sea. It speaks of a ghost island, the island of the Spirit, inhabited by certain ghosts. Heaven and hell are most likely ghosts with which people brighten up the dullness of their being.

Looking at the lifeless and dead space of Mesopotamia, where sandstorms rage, the bright sun mercilessly burns, it is somehow difficult to correlate this with paradise, which should please the eyes of people. Indeed, as M. Nikolsky wrote, it is not easy to find a more inhospitable country (although the climate could have been different before). For the Russian and European eyes accustomed to greenery, there is nothing to keep an eye on here - only deserts, hills, dunes and swamps. Rain is rare. In spring and summer, the view of Lower Mesopotamia is especially sad and gloomy, for here everyone is languishing from the heat. Both in autumn and winter, this region is a sandy desert, but in spring and summer it turns into a water desert. In early March, the Tigris floods, and in mid-March, the Euphrates begins to flood. The waters of the overflowing rivers unite, and the country in a significant part turns into one continuous lake. The myths of Sumer and Babylonia reflected this eternal struggle of the elements. In the creation poem (Enuma Elish) we read:

When the sky is not named above,

And the land below was nameless,

Apsu, the firstborn, the all-creator,

Foremother Tiamat, who gave birth to everything,

Their waters interfered together ...

The nature of Mesopotamia was described by many ancient authors, and it is quite severe. Among the sources, we will name the most famous: Herodotus' History, Ctesias of Cnidus's Persian History, Diodorus' Historical Library, Xenophon's Cyropaedia, Cyrus' Cylinder, Strabo's Geography, Josephus's Jewish Wars. In these writings, it was extremely sparingly spoken about the life of the people, because these writers did not know the language of the Babylonians and Assyrians. Of interest was the book of the Babylonian priest Beross, who lived 100-150 years after Herodotus. He wrote in Greek a large work on Babylon, using the authentic records of the priests, the scientists of Babylon. Unfortunately, this work is almost completely lost. Only fragments have been preserved, as cited by the church writer Eusebius of Caesarea.

G. Dore. The death of all living things

Centuries and centuries will pass until, finally, thanks to the excavations of Layard, Woolley, Gilbrecht, Fresnel, Opper, Grotefend, Rawlinson, and others, these cuneiform texts have been deciphered. But at first, readers were forced to form an impression of life in Mesopotamia from biblical texts. As N. Nikolsky wrote, “the Assyrians seemed to be cruel, bloodthirsty conquerors, drinking human blood, almost cannibals; the Babylonian kings and Babylonians were depicted as vicious, pampered people, accustomed to luxury and sensual pleasures. There was no thought that these scourges of ancient Israel and Judah could be highly cultured peoples, even teachers of the Greeks and Romans. For a long time, all the stories about the populous cities and powerful rulers of Assyria and Babylonia seemed to be an exaggeration, and the Bible was the main source of information. But from the middle of the 19th century, and especially intensively in the 20th century, more or less regular excavations of the lands of ancient Babylon and Nineveh began.

Portrait of an ancient Sumerian

Mesopotamia was a type of agricultural civilization based on irrigation. If in Egypt the role of the king of agriculture was performed by the Nile, then here - the Tigris and the Euphrates. The drainage of swamps made it possible to obtain quite stable crops, and as a result of this, the first settlements and cities began to appear here. The occupation of navigation allowed the inhabitants of these places to bring the necessary building materials, tools and raw materials from other regions, often hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away from them. Simultaneously with them, the inhabitants of Egypt and the Indus Valley built their own civilizations, thanks in part to borrowed experience and the ideas they acquired through their contacts with Mesopotamia. Two main reasons lay at the basis of the decisive historical advances - the migration of tribes and peoples, changing the picture of the world, and certain changes in natural and climatic conditions. This is a kind of milestones of historical evolution.

It would be natural to assume (if McNeil was right in saying that skirmishes with foreigners are the engine of social change) that the earliest complex societies arose in the river valleys of Mesopotamia, Egypt, northwestern India, adjacent to the land bridge to the Old World, where the the largest land masses on the planet. "Continental grouping and climatic conditions made this region the main node of land and sea communications in the Old World, and it can be assumed that it was for this reason that civilization first arose here."

English archaeologist L. Woolley

Many believed that the Sumerian culture was a derivative culture. The Englishman L. Woolley, a researcher of the royal burials in Ur (by the way, Ur-Nammu is considered the creator of the city of Ur and the ziggurat temple), for example, made the following guess: “There is no doubt that the Sumerian civilization arose from elements of three cultures: El Obeida, Uruk and Jemdet-Nasr, and finally took shape only after their merger. Only from that moment on, the inhabitants of Lower Mesopotamia can be called Sumerians. Therefore, I believe, - writes L. Woolley, - that by the name "Sumerians" we should mean a people whose ancestors, each in their own way, created Sumer with scattered efforts, but by the beginning of the dynastic period, individual features merged into one civilization.

Euphrates River

Although the origin of the Sumerians (“blackheads”) remains a mystery to this day, it is known that in the middle of the 4th millennium BC. e. settlements arose - the city-principalities of Eredu, Ur, Uruk, Lagash, Nippur, Eshnunna, Nineveh, Babylon, Ur. As for the ethnic roots of the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, we can only say about the presence here at different times of different peoples and languages. Thus, the well-known researcher of the East L. Oppenheim believes that from the beginning of the invasion of nomads from the plateaus and deserts and until the final Arab conquest, the Semites most likely constituted the overwhelming majority of the population of this region.

Clay figurine of the Mother Goddess. Uruk. 4000? BC e.

Tribal groups in search of new pastures, hordes of warriors striving for the riches of "Gardariki" ("Lands of cities", as the Normans have long called Russia), they all moved in a continuous stream, mainly from Upper Syria, using permanent routes leading south, or across the Tigris, to the east. These groups of Semites differed markedly not only in languages, but also in their attitude to urban culture, which was a feature of social and political life in Mesopotamia. Some of them were inclined to settle in cities, and thus made a rather significant contribution to urbanization; others preferred to roam freely, not settling down, not engaging in productive labor - "roaming without loving anyone."

The freemen evaded military and labor service, from paying taxes, and in general were unstable, eternally dissatisfied or rebellious material. The Amorites had a particularly noticeable influence on the nature of political processes in the region. Oppenheim believes that they are associated with the transition from the concept of city-states to the idea of ​​territorial states, the growth of trade relations through private initiative, the expansion of the horizons of international politics, and within states - a rapid change in power and orientation among rulers. Then (probably around the 12th century BC) Aramaic-speaking tribes came here and settled in Upper Syria and along the Euphrates. The Arameans sided with Babylonia against Assyria. At the same time, Aramaic alphabetic writing slowly but inevitably began to supplant the cuneiform tradition of writing. We can also talk about the influence of the Elamites and other peoples. At least there is no doubt that for almost three millennia Mesopotamia was in constant contact and conflict with its neighbors, which is confirmed by numerous written documents. The region with which the inhabitants had contacts - direct or through various intermediaries - stretched from the Indus Valley through Iraq (sometimes even significantly beyond its borders), up to Armenia and Anatolia, to the Mediterranean coast and further, all the way to Egypt. .

"Standart from Ur": scenes of peace and scenes of war. Sumer. OK. 2500? BC e.

Others consider the Sumerians a side branch of the ethnic tree of the Slavs, or rather, the superethnos of the Rus in the Middle East. “Apparently, the Sumerians became the first Russ to lose their main subspecies trait, and the second ethnic group that emerged from the superethnos of the Rus,” writes Yu. Petukhov, who studied the genesis of the Indo-Europeans, Russian, and other Slavic peoples. What is put forward by him as a justification and confirmation of such a point of view? According to his version, the bulk of the Protorians could have settled in the Middle East and Asia Minor 40-30 thousand years ago. Although they did not yet have a written language, they already had a fairly developed culture. It is clear that the “brilliant and written Sumer” did not immediately appear in Mesopotamia. He was preceded by allegedly many agricultural and pastoral villages of these very "Indo-European Russ".

Figurine of Ibi-il from Mari

The clans, settlements of the Russ of the mountainous regions and the Russ of Palestine-Suriya-Rusiya moved along the riverbeds to the south for hundreds of years, reaching by the middle of the VI millennium BC. e. the southernmost points of Mesopotamia, that is, precisely the places where the Euphrates flows into the Bitter River, into a narrow branch of the Persian Gulf. The Sumerians were not outsiders in the Middle East. They were, in his opinion, a commonality of the clans of the Near Eastern Rus with minor infusions of the Rus of the Indus Valley and the Rus of Central Asia. The aforementioned culture was the successor of the cultures of the Khalaf and Samarra Rus and the forerunner of the famous Sumerian culture. More than 40 settlements of the Ubeids have already been found in the Ur region. There are 23 settlements in the Uruk region, each with an area of ​​over 10 hectares. These ancient cities, and this is significant, have non-Sumerian names. It was here that the Rus from the Armenian Highlands rushed, and then the Rus from Central Asia and the Indus valleys.

Ziggurat at Agar Kufa. III millennium BC e. Modern look

The Sumerians managed to create a vast state with the capital in Ur (2112-2015 BC). The kings of the third dynasty did everything possible to appease the gods. The founder of the dynasty, Urnammu, took part in the creation of the first codes of the Ancient Mesopotamia. No wonder S. Kramer called him the first "Moses". He became famous as a magnificent builder, erecting a number of temples and ziggurats. "To the glory of his mistress Ningal Urnammu, a mighty man, king of Ur, king of Sumer and Akkad, erected this magnificent Gipar." The tower was completed by the sons. The capital had a sacred quarter, which was dedicated to the moon god Nanna and his wife Ningal. The ancient city, of course, did not resemble modern cities in any way.

Ur was an irregular oval, only about a kilometer long and up to 700 meters wide. It was surrounded by a wall with a slope of raw brick (something like a medieval castle), which was surrounded by water on three sides. Inside this space, a ziggurat, a tower with a temple, was erected. It was called "Heavenly Hill" or "Mountain of God". The height of the "Mountain of God", on top of which stood the temple of Nanna, was 53 meters. By the way, the ziggurat in Babylon (“Tower of Babel”) is a copy of the ziggurat in Ur. Probably, of all such ziggurats in Iraq, the one in Ur was in the best condition. (The Tower of Babel was destroyed by the soldiers of Alexander the Great.) The ziggurat of Ur was an observatory temple. It took 30 million bricks to make it. Little has survived from ancient Ur, the tombs and temples of Ashur, Assyrian palaces. The fragility of the structures was explained by the fact that they were created from clay (in Babylon, two buildings were built from stone). The Sumerians are skilled builders. Their architects invented the arch. The Sumerians imported material from other countries - cedars were delivered from Aman, stones for statues from Arabia. They created their own letter, an agricultural calendar, the world's first fish hatchery, the first forest plantations, a library catalog, the first medical prescriptions. Others believe that their oldest treatises were used by the compilers of the Bible when writing texts.

Outwardly, the Sumerians differed from the Semitic peoples: they were beardless and beardless, and the Semites wore long curly beards and shoulder-length hair. Anthropologically, the Sumerians belong to a large Caucasian race with elements of a small Mediterranean race. Some of them came from Scythia (according to Rawlinson), from the Hindustan peninsula (according to I. Dyakonov, etc.), while some came from the island of Dilmun, present-day Bahrain, the Caucasus, etc. It is also argued that, since the Sumerian legend tells of a mixture languages ​​and that “in the good old days they were all one people and spoke the same language”, it is likely that all peoples came from one first people (superethnos). Yu. Petukhov believes that these first people of Sumer were the Rus, the first farmers of Sumer. Further, the common and similar names of the gods are emphasized (the Sumerian "air god" En-Lil and the god of the Slavs Lel, whose name is preserved in our ritual poetry). Common were, he believes, heroes of thunder, defeating the snake-dragon. It passes among the Rus (or their filial ethnic groups) through centuries and millennia: Nin-Khirsa-Gor-Khors-George the Victorious ... "Who could give both Sumer and Egypt one deity of Horus-Khoros-Khirsu?" - our researcher asks a question and answers it himself: “Only one ethnic group. The very one that became the basis of both the Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations is the superethnos of the Rus. All "mysterious" peoples are unraveled, all "dark ages" are highlighted if we study history from a scientific point of view, and not from a political one, in which the mention of the Rus earlier than the 9th century. n. e. the strictest taboo.

Sumerian beauty

The appearance of documents (c. 2800 BC) was preceded by a long period, a thousand years or more. None of the countries of the Ancient East has such an abundance of documents as in Mesopotamia. For that time, this is a high level of civilization. In the III millennium BC. e. a significant proportion of men in this country could read and write. The ruins and inscriptions of Mesopotamia told a lot. As A. Oppenheim wrote, thanks to these documents, we learned hundreds of names of kings and other prominent people, starting with the rulers of Lagash who lived in the III millennium and up to the kings and scientists of the Seleucid era. There was also an opportunity to observe the rise and fall of cities, to assess the political and economic situation, to trace the fate of entire dynasties. The documents were written not by professional scribes, but by ordinary people, which indicates a high level of literacy among the population. Although a lot of texts perished (the cities of Mesopotamia were destroyed during the wars, some of them were destroyed by water or covered with sand), but what has come down and comes to researchers (and these are hundreds of thousands of texts) is an invaluable material. Fortunately, the clay tablets on which the texts were written were used as building material in the construction of walls. Therefore, the earth, having absorbed them over time, has preserved entire archives.

Reconstruction of the temple in Tepe-Gavra near the city of Mosul. Iraq. IV millennium BC e.

A huge success for science was the discovery of the ancient economic archives of Uruk and Jemdet-Nasr (tables with acts of accounting for receipts and issuance of products, the number of workers, slaves). Moreover, many more documents came from the II and I millennia BC. e. First of all, these are temple and royal archives, business papers of merchants, receipts, court records. Tens of thousands of "books" written in cuneiform have been found. Therefore, one can hardly agree with the opinion of the respected R. J. Collingwood, who believes that the Sumerians “did not and do not have a real history”: “The ancient Sumerians did not leave behind anything at all that we could call history.” He believes that these texts, at best, fit the definition as a historical ersatz, a document, a fragment of a historical canvas. The author also denies the Sumerians the existence of historical consciousness: “If they had something like historical consciousness, then nothing has been preserved that would testify to its existence. We could argue that they would certainly have had it; for us, historical consciousness is such a real and all-pervading property of our being that we do not understand how it could be absent from anyone.” However, among the Sumerians, if one sticks to the facts, Collingwood continues, such consciousness nevertheless appeared in the form of a "hidden essence." I believe that as this “hidden essence” is discovered and deciphered, our understanding of the nature of the history of the Sumerian civilization itself may change.

Stone statue of Gudea - ruler of Lagash

And now in the museums of Europe, Asia, America, Russia there are already about a quarter of a million Sumerian tablets and fragments. The oldest place (or "city") where the Sumerians settled (if we accept the migration version) was Eredu (the modern name is Abu Shahrayon). The King's List says: "After royalty descended from heaven, Eredu became the seat of royalty." Perhaps the lines gave rise to an extravagant point of view. Others read the word "Sumer" as "man from above" ("shu" - from above and "mer" - man): supposedly the Americans, using the latest computers, deciphered and "found out": the Sumerians are from another planet, from a twin of the Earth, not discovered astronomers. In confirmation of this, lines from the legend of Gilgamesh were even cited, where the hero calls himself a superman. In Eredu, according to the myth, there was supposedly the palace of the god Enki, erected at the bottom of the ocean. Eredu became the place of worship of the god Enki (Eya) among the Sumerians.

Stone figurine of a pilgrim from Lagash

Gradually, the Sumerians began to move north. So they captured and began to develop Uruk, the biblical Erech (now Varka). The temple of the god An (“White Sanctuary”), a section of the pavement made of raw limestone blocks, was also discovered right there - the oldest stone structure in Mesopotamia. Impressive dimensions (80 by 30 m), perfection of architectural form, vaulted niches framing the courtyard with a sacrificial table, walls oriented to the four cardinal directions, stairs leading to the altar - all this made the temple a real miracle of architectural art, even in the eyes of a very experienced archaeologists. In the Sumerian temples, writes M. Belitsky, there were dozens of rooms where princes-priests, ensi, rulers, officials and priests, who held supreme secular and spiritual power, lived with their families. In the cultural layers of Uruk, the first tablets with pictographic writing were found, one of which is kept in the Hermitage (2900 BC). Later, the pictograms were replaced by ideograms. There were about 2000 such icons. Their meaning is extremely difficult to unravel. Perhaps for this reason, despite the huge number of tablets, history is still silent. Traces of the influence of Uruk culture on the culture of the Mediterranean countries - Syria, Anatolia, etc.

Sumerian board game

In Egypt (the era of Nagada II, corresponding to the culture of Uruk IV), luxury items brought from Sumer, vessels with handles, etc. were found. On the slate tiles of the ancient ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt, the legendary Menes, there is a typical Sumerian motif dating back to the Uruk era - fantastic-looking animals with long necks. On the hilt of a dagger found at Jebel el-Arak, near Abydos, in Upper Egypt, there is an extremely curious motif - scenes of battles on land and sea. Scientists have come to the conclusion that the handle, dating back to the era of Jemdet-Nasr (2800 BC), depicts a battle that took place between the Sumerians, who arrived from the Red Sea, and the local population. All this means that even in such a distant time, the Sumerians not only could already reach Egypt, but also had a certain impact on the formation of Egyptian culture. The hypothesis that not only hieroglyphic writing arose thanks to the Sumerians, but the very idea of ​​creating written characters was born in Egypt under their influence, already has a considerable number of supporters. In a word, a talented people of builders, artists, organizers, warriors, and scientists appeared before us.

White Temple in Uruk. Reconstruction

So how was life in the city-state of the Sumerians? Let's take as an example Uruk, which was located in the south of Mesopotamia. In the middle of the III millennium BC. e. This city occupied an area of ​​over 400 hectares. It was surrounded by double walls of adobe bricks, 10 kilometers long. The city had over 800 watchtowers and a population of 80,000 to 120,000 people. One of its rulers, who was called "en" or "ensi", apparently, was the legendary Gilgamesh. The German scientist H. Schmekel in the book "Ur, Assyria and Babylon" reconstructed the life of the city. On city streets, in residential areas, traffic, noise, bustle. The sultry, stuffy day is over. The long-awaited evening chill has arrived. Blacksmiths and potters, gunsmiths and sculptors, masons and carvers walk along the blank clay walls, the monotony of which is broken by small openings leading inside the houses. Women are seen with jugs of water. They rush home to quickly prepare dinner for their husbands and children. In the crowd of passers-by, there are also quite a few warriors... Slowly, as if afraid to lose dignity, important priests, palace officials, and scribes are walking along the street. Elegant fashionable skirts make them more noticeable. After all, in the social hierarchy they are higher than artisans, workers, farmers, shepherds. Noisy, mischievous boys, after a long day of exhausting study at the school of scribes, have abandoned the signs and, with a carefree laugh, see off the caravan of donkeys. They are loaded with baskets of goods from ships unloaded at the pier. Suddenly, a cry is heard from somewhere far away, then another, then a third. The screams are getting closer and louder.

A goat eating the leaves of a tree. Ornament from Ur

Street in a Sumerian city

The crowd on the street parted, forming a wide corridor and humbly bowing their heads: an ensi was riding towards the temple. Together with his family and courtiers, he worked all day on the construction of a new irrigation canal and now, after a hard day, he returns to the palace, which is located next to the temple. Erected on a high platform, surrounded by wide stairs leading to the very top, this temple is the pride of the inhabitants of Uruk. Eleven halls stretched along its courtyard, 60 meters long and 12 meters wide. In the utility rooms there are pantries, barns, warehouses. Here the priests put the tablets in order: on them are the sacrificial offerings made in the morning in the temple, all the income of the past day received by the treasury, which will further increase the wealth of the god - the lord and ruler of the city. And the ensi, the prince-priest, the ruler of Uruk, is only a servant of the god, in whose care are the lands belonging to the god, wealth and people. This is how the life of the city is reconstructed.

Head of the statue of Gudea from Lagash

Statue of Gudea (Ensi)

In the III-II millennium BC. e. the main ways of economic development of the region were determined. The upper stratum of state people (officials, the highest ranks of the army, priests, a number of artisans) acted as the owner of communal lands, had slaves and female slaves, exploiting their labor. The Sumerian civilization (sometimes considered the beginning of Western civilization) developed, having two sectors: one sector we will conditionally call "state", the other - "private property". The first sector included mainly large farms (they were owned by temples and the elite of the nobility), the other - the lands of large family communities (led by their patriarchs). The farms of the first sector later became the property of the state, the latter became the property of territorial communities. People on public sector lands had the right to own land. It was a kind of payment for the state service. The resulting crop was used to feed the families. However, the land could have been taken away, and many public sector workers did not have it at all. It seems to us symptomatic and important the fact of peaceful coexistence at the dawn of the history of two economic sectors - the state and the community-private (with a noticeable predominance of the first). The tenants of the land paid off the owners. They also paid tax to the state on the basis of income tax. Their land was cultivated by hired workers (for shelter, bread, clothing).

Courtyard of a wealthy inhabitant of Ur in the II millennium BC. e.

With the spread of irrigated agriculture and technology (potter's wheel, loom, copper, iron, water-lifting machines, tools), labor productivity also grew. As in Egypt, there are many channels. Herodotus also pointed out serious differences between the northern Mesopotamia - Assyria, and the southern - Babylonia: “The land of the Assyrians is irrigated with little rain; rainwater is only sufficient to feed the roots of cereal plants: crops grow and bread ripens with the help of irrigation from the river; this river does not overflow, however, over the fields, as in Egypt; irrigated here by hand and with the help of pumps. Babylonia is all, like Egypt, cut up by canals; the largest of them, navigable, stretches from the Euphrates south to another river, the Tigris. Creating such channels, of course, required a lot of effort.

Carriage of the winged bull

The inhabitants also faced another dilemma: crops would be flooded with too much water, or they would die from its lack and drought (Strabo). As you can see, everything or almost everything in Mesopotamia depended only on whether or not it was possible to maintain the system of agriculture and irrigation in a working and good condition. Water is life. And it is no coincidence that King Hammurabi, in his introduction to the code of famous laws, emphasized the special importance of the fact that he "gave Uruk life" - "delivered water in abundance to people." The system worked under the vigilant control of the "supervisor of the canals." The dug channels could simultaneously serve as a transport route, reaching a width of 10–20 m. This allowed ships of a rather large tonnage to pass. The banks of the canals were framed with brickwork or wicker mats. At high places, water was poured from well to well with the help of water-drawing structures. People cultivated this land with the help of ordinary hoes (the hoe was often depicted as an emblem of the god of the earth Marduk) or a wooden plow.

A married couple from Nippur. III millennium BC e.

Enlil - the "greatest god" of Sumer, the son of Heaven and Earth

The work required huge labor costs on the part of the masses of people. Without irrigation and agriculture, life here would be completely impossible. The ancients understood this very well, paying tribute to the farmer's calendar, toilers, hoe and plow. In the work “The Dispute Between the Hoe and the Plow”, it is especially emphasized that the hoe is “the child of the poor”. With the help of a hoe, a huge amount of work is done - digging the earth, creating houses, canals, erecting roofs and laying streets. The days of labor of a hoe, that is, a digger or builder, are "twelve months." If the plow is often idle, then the worker of the hoe knows neither an hour nor a day of rest. He builds "city with palaces" and "gardens for kings." He is also obliged to unquestioningly carry out all the work on the orders of the king or his dignitaries, in particular, he has to build fortifications or transport the figures of the gods to the right place.

The population of Mesopotamia and Babylonia consisted of free farmers and slaves. Theoretically, the land in Babylonia belonged to the gods, but in practice - to the kings, temples and large landowners who rented it out. N. M. Nikolsky noted that throughout the entire ancient history of Mesopotamia, “an individual person becomes the owner of the land temporarily and conditionally, as a member of the collective, but never the private owner of the land.” Sometimes, the kings placed soldiers on the land, distributed it to officials, etc. All of them had to pay taxes to the state (a tenth of the income). The bulk of the slaves then were of local origin. The slave was not a full citizen, being the full property of the owner. He could be sold, pledged, or even killed. The source of replenishment of slaves is debt slavery, captives and children of slaves. As in Egypt, abandoned children could be turned into slaves. This practice was widespread in antiquity.

Such orders existed in Babylonia, Egypt, in ancient Greece. Prisoners of war captured during wars from other countries were turned into slaves. The thieves themselves were made slaves of those who suffered from theft. The same fate awaited the killer's family. It is curious that the laws of Hammurabi allowed a husband to sell a prostitute or spendthrift wife. Slaves are slaves. Their life was hard. They were starving, dying of hunger and cold. Therefore, in order to make them work, they were shackled, often imprisoned.

In a number of cases, poor married couples, unable to feed their young children, threw them into a pit or in a basket into a river, or threw them on the street. Anyone could pick up a foundling and raise it, and then do with it as they wish (adopt, adopt or include in a dowry, sell into slavery). The custom to doom a child or save an infant from inevitable death was called “throw a child into the mouth of a dog” (or “tear it out of its mouth”). Oppenheim cites a document that says how one woman, in the presence of witnesses, held her son in front of the dog's mouth, and a certain Nur-Shamash managed to snatch him out of there. Anyone could pick him up and raise him, make him a slave, adopt him or adopt him. Although the adoption of girls, apparently, was resorted to relatively rarely. There was a firm rule: adopted children were obliged to supply the former owners with food and clothing for the rest of their lives. The fate of adopted children was different. Some of them became full members of the family and even became heirs, others faced an unenviable fate. Laws somehow regulated this process.

Goddess of death, mistress of the "Land of no return" - Ereshkigal

The work of a farmer, a digger or a builder was undoubtedly hard... Echoes of this can be found in the “Tale of Atrahasis”, which has come down to us from the Old Babylonian period (1646–1626 BC). It speaks in poetic form of the time when the gods ("Igigi") were forced to work, like mere mortals. “When the gods, like people, carried the burden, dragged the baskets, the baskets of the gods were huge, the work was hard, the hardships were great.” The gods themselves dug rivers, dug canals, deepened the bed of the Tigris and Euphrates, worked in the water depths, built a dwelling for Enki, etc., etc. So they worked for years and years, day and night, “two and a half thousand years". Immensely tired of such backbreaking work, they began to fill with anger and shout at each other. After long and heated debates, they decided to go to the main one, Enlil, to complain about their bitter fate. They "burned their guns", "burned their shovels, set their baskets on fire" and, holding hands, moved "to the holy gates of the warrior Enlil." In the end, there they arranged a council of the higher gods, where they reported to Enlil that such an unbearable burden was killing the Igigi.

Victory Stele of King Naramsin

They conferred for a long time, until they unanimously decided to create a human race and place a heavy and hard labor burden on it. "Let a man bear the yoke of God!" So they did… Since then, man dutifully began to do the work of the gods. He builds, digs, cleans, earning food for himself and the gods. In less than twelve hundred years, the country has grown, people have bred in it. And the gods began to be disturbed by a mass of people: "Their hubbub worries us."

And then they sent wind upon the earth to dry it up, and downpours to wash away the crops. The gods declared: “People will be destroyed by deprivation and hunger. May the womb of the earth rise upon them! Grasses will not grow, cereals will not sprout! Let pestilence be sent down to people! The uterus will shrink, babies will not be born! Why do people need such gods?! The most complete list of the Assyrian era mentions over 150 names of various deities. Moreover, at least 40-50 of them had their own temples and cult in the Assyrian era. Approximately in the III millennium BC. e. the college of priests came to an agreement and created a myth about the triad of great gods: Anu, Enlil and Ea. The sky went to Anu, the earth to Enlil, the sea to Ea. Then the old gods handed the fate of the world into the hands of their young son, Marduk. Thus a revolution took place in the realm of the gods. Remaking the Sumerian myths, the Babylonian priests put Marduk in the place of Enlil. Obviously, this divine hierarchy had to correspond to the earthly hierarchy of kings and their environment. This purpose was served by the cult of the first kings of Ur. The legendary king of Uruk, Gilgamesh, who was declared the son of Anu, was also deified. Many rulers were deified. The king of Akkad, Naramsin, called himself the god of Akkad. The king of Isin and the king of Larsa, the kings of Ur of the third dynasty (Shulgi, Bursin, Gimilsin) called themselves the same way. In the era of the first Babylonian dynasty, Hammurabi equated himself with the gods and began to be called the "god of kings."

The legendary ruler of Uruk, Enmerkar, can also be attributed to this category. He, having become king and reigned for 420 years, actually created the city of Uruk. I must say that the emergence, existence of these city-states, as well as in ancient Greece (at a later time), will take place in constant rivalry with nearby settlements and formations. Therefore, it is not surprising that ancient history is filled with incessant wars. At that time, among the rulers, all were aggressors and there were no (almost no) peace lovers.

In the epic poem, conditionally called by S. N. Kramer "Enmerkar and the ruler of Arrata", it is said about the most acute political conflict that arose in ancient times between Iraq and Iran. The poem tells how in ancient times the city-state of Uruk, located in southern Mesopotamia, was ruled by the glorious Sumerian hero Enmerkar. And far north of Uruk, in Iran, there was another city-state called Aratta. It was separated from Uruk by seven mountain ranges and stood so high that it was almost impossible to reach it. Aratta was famous for its wealth - all kinds of metals and building stone, that is, exactly what the city of Uruk, located on a flat treeless plain of Mesopotamia, lacked so much. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that Enmerkar looked with lust at Aratta and its treasures. He decided at all costs to subjugate the people of Aratta and its ruler. To this end, he began a kind of "war of nerves" against them. He managed to intimidate the lord of Aratta and its inhabitants so much that they obeyed Uruk. The king of Uruk threatened to destroy all cities, devastate the earth, so that all Aratta would be covered with dust, like a city cursed by the god Enki, and turn into "nothing." Perhaps it was these old, almost forgotten feelings, reinforced by religion and geopolitics, that forced the ruler of Iraq to attack Iran in modern times.

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Which of the human ancient civilizations appeared earlier than others? Scientists for many years, literally bit by bit, collect information about our ancestors, learning more and more new facts. Our planet at different times was inhabited by various civilizations that ceased to exist many thousands of years ago. Did you know that the most ancient civilization on the planet surpassed the modern one in terms of the amount of knowledge and scientific achievements? Find out about this and much more from the ranking of the oldest civilizations in the world.

The most ancient civilizations

Kingdom of the Sun

After the Lemurian civilization was submerged under water in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, many islands were formed, on which the Aroe peoples began to live. Thanks to their knowledge, the Aroe peoples excelled in the construction of roads, pyramids, unique stone statues and even streets. The civilization of the Aroe peoples or the "Kingdom of the Sun" existed about 13 thousand years ago, which makes it one of the oldest among the developed civilizations in the world.

Ancient Israel and Ethiopia

The peoples living in Ancient Israel and Ethiopia were famous for their super-technological achievements, which were ahead of all other civilizations of that time. Direct evidence of the high development of the ancient Israelites was the construction of the temple in Jerusalem, which was located on hewn stones, similar to the buildings in Baalbak, as well as the Temple of Solomon, built on the principle of megalithic buildings. Also in the Temple of Solomon, according to the Bible, the Ark of the Covenant was built.

Rama Empire (India)

The remains of this ancient civilization are now located deep at the bottom of the ocean or overgrown with impenetrable jungle. Some scholars argue that Indian civilization began its existence a little earlier than 500 AD. But literally at the end of the last century, in the territory of Pakistan, in the Indus Valley, the more ancient Indian cities of Harappa and Mozhenjo-Daro were found. Thus, archaeologists have moved the date of the emergence of Indian civilization by several millennia back. Cities were an example of excellent urban planning, where there were central districts of government and residential areas. The sewerage system was much more elaborate than in many Asian countries today.

Ancient Atlantis

After the complete sinking of the Mu continent to the bottom of the ocean, as a result of the catastrophe, the boundaries of the modern Pacific Ocean were formed, and therefore the water level in other parts of the planet dropped significantly. On the territory of the lands of the Poseidonis Archipelago, a whole continent was formed. Modern historians are accustomed to calling this continent Atlantis, but Poseidonis remains its original name.

Scientists have long agreed that Atlantis was superior to modern civilization in almost all areas of development. Many ancient scriptures and books written by early scientists mention the presence of such inventions as water generators, fluorescent lamps, monorail vehicles, electricity-firing rifles, aircraft, and even the semblance of modern air conditioners to purify the air in stuffy and dusty rooms. Scientists believe that Atlantis ceased to exist due to the misuse of power.

Lemuria or Mu

The most ancient civilization on earth existed almost 80 thousand years ago, on a huge continent called Lemuria or Mu. According to ancient sources, civilization existed for about 52 thousand years. Unfortunately, Lemuria was destroyed at the very peak of development by a strong earthquake that occurred about 26 thousand years ago.

Lemuria never set itself the goal of overtaking other civilizations in development, and, in many respects, was inferior to them. But the main achievement of civilization was the construction of surprisingly strong stone buildings that could withstand the strongest earthquakes.

Scientists also believe that the civilization of Mu gave the whole world a unique language of communication, a control scheme. The key to the rapid development of civilization was education, thanks to which every citizen was well versed in the laws of the Universe and the Earth. Already by the age of 21, the citizens of Lemuria were well-versed in basic sciences, and at the age of 28, every inhabitant of Lemuria became a full member of the Empire and could count on receiving a place among high-ranking officials.

The mysteries of many other peoples and civilizations that existed on earth, scientists have yet to learn in the future. Will we be able to understand our ancestors and accept the fact that perhaps they were much better developed than us and possessed such unique technologies that we do not even know about. One conclusion we can draw for sure is that our ancestors were imperious, disciplined and educated peoples who so riskily plunged into dangerous experiments for the sake of the prosperity of mankind.

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