What about the Sumerian states. City-states of Sumer

TOPIC 3. METER

Study questions:

1. Sumerian city-states (6000-2300 BC).

2. Akkad: the formation of a centralized state (2300-2000 BC).

3.Babylonian power (2000-1200 BC).

4. Assyrian Empire (1200-600 BC).

1. Sumerian city-states (6000-2300 BC)

Among the countries of Western Asia, the most convenient for the widespread development of agriculture was Mesopotamia (Mesopotamia) - a country lying between the Tigris and Euphrates, which were its main not only irrigation, but also transport routes.

The natural wealth of Southern and Middle Mesopotamia is not great. By mixing clay with asphalt, the inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia made a material that replaced stone, which is rare in the southern part of Mesopotamia. Equally characteristic of Mesopotamia is the absence of metal, which made the local population dependent on the northern and eastern metallurgical regions.

The flora of Mesopotamia is also not rich. The most ancient population of this country acclimatized cereals, barley and wheat. Of great importance in the economic life of the country were the date palm and reed, which grew wild in the southern part of Mesopotamia. Sesame, as well as tamarisk, from which sweet resin was extracted, belonged to local plants. In the eastern mountains there were sheep and goats, and in the swampy thickets of the south - wild pigs, which were tamed already in ancient times. The rivers were rich in fish and birds. Various types of poultry were already known in antiquity.

The natural conditions of Southern and Middle Mesopotamia were favorable for the development of cattle breeding and agriculture, they required the organization of economic life, and the use of significant labor for a long time.

The oldest settlements in the territory of the middle part of Mesopotamia appeared in the late Neolithic era. The tribes that inhabited Mesopotamia in the deepest antiquity lived on islands that towered among the swamps. They built their settlements on artificial earth embankments. Draining the surrounding swamps, they created the oldest system of artificial irrigation. Its true creators were the Sumerians, who came to southern Mesopotamia from the eastern mountainous regions and gave it its original name - Sumer, as well as the Semitic tribes of Akkad - a territory located north of Sumer.

Significant development of agriculture, the emergence of metallurgy and the spread of barter led to the growth of productive forces and the need to increase the labor force. The result of this was the decomposition of the ancient clan-communal system and occurrence on it ruins of ancient slave states in the III millennium BC

Primitive forms of economy, hunting and fishing retained some importance in the country's economy. However, the leading and progressive role was played by agriculture, which arose due to natural conditions in ancient times and received its further development in the 3rd millennium BC. The high population density is indicated by the fact that the ruins of large cities, such as Larsa and Uruk, are only 24 km from each other. The vast meadows and steppes stretching west of the Euphrates made it possible to engage in cattle breeding. Short-horned and long-horned bulls were kept on pasture and fed with grain. Working cattle were used for irrigating the soil, plowing and threshing, as well as for transporting goods. They also bred meat and dairy cattle, which provided a large amount of meat and dairy products. Small cattle were very widespread, especially fat-tailed and merino sheep, as well as goats of various breeds. Bulls and donkeys were used for transport needs. The horse appears much later, obviously, only in the 2nd millennium BC.

Despite the fact that already in ancient times a dense network of irrigation canals was created in Mesopotamia, the technique for making agricultural tools was very primitive and stagnation. The extraordinary fertility of the irrigated soil did not require special efforts from a person to cultivate it, thereby objectively hindering the development of agriculture.

In Mesopotamia, since ancient times, various types of cereals have been known, among which barley occupied the first place. Along with barley, spelled was also known, which served mainly for the manufacture of bread and beer. Wheat culture in Mesopotamia was less common; the cost of wheat was twice the cost of spelt and barley. Finally, durra was cultivated (a type of sorghum grain plant known in Asia and Africa) , preserved to this day in the East. In addition to various vegetables and fruit trees, the date palm is of great economic importance, the culture of which dates back to ancient times.

Along with agriculture, handicrafts also developed in ancient Mesopotamia. However, the development of handicrafts was largely hampered by the lack of the most important types of raw materials. In the southern part of Mesopotamia there was neither metal nor enough stone and wood. Therefore, already in antiquity, mainly clay and reeds began to be used here to replace these missing types of raw materials. Clay was often used as a substitute for wood, stone and metal. From clay, they made barrels, boxes, pipes, stoves, hearths, seals, lamp spindles, burial boxes.

The most important substitutes for wood in ancient Mesopotamia were reeds and reeds, various types of which grow in large numbers in Mesopotamia. Reeds and reeds were used to make various wicker things, as a building material, as well as in shipbuilding. The tree was rare in Mesopotamia and extremely highly valued.

A major revolution in technology was made by the discovery of metals. One of the first metals known to the peoples of southern Mesopotamia was copper. Bronze appeared a little later. In the middle of the III millennium BC. in Mesopotamia, iron was known, obviously meteoric. Iron products of this time were found in very small quantities. Obviously, iron in Mesopotamia in this era was not very common. It had to be brought from distant regions of the Transcaucasus or from Asia Minor.

The need to obtain from neighboring countries various types of missing raw materials contributed to the development of a rather significant foreign trade. The Sumerians brought copper from Elam, Iran and Assyria, and wood from the mountainous regions north and east of Mesopotamia. However, this trade was still very primitive, since it had an exchange character. Cattle and grain acted as money. Subsequently, with the spread of metals, metal ingots acquire the value of money.

With the development of productive forces in Sumerian society, with the growth of labor productivity, slavery. Initially, even in a latent form. So, in the Sumerian code, the father was allowed to sell his children into slavery, and the conditions for such a sale were recorded in special documents.

A characteristic feature of the patriarchal family in ancient Mesopotamia is the inferior position of women, aggravated by the custom of polygamy. Daughters were often sold into slavery. The development of slavery was greatly facilitated by debt bondage. Many documents record loans, in particular grain, that the poor were forced to take from the rich. Entangled in debt, the poor often became a victim of the usurer. He was threatened with imminent slavery.

However, the most ancient and most important source of slavery were wars, which were constantly waged among themselves, first by tribal unions, and then by individual city-states of Sumer, as well as larger state formations with neighboring peoples. These wars primarily resulted in the capture of large numbers of prisoners, usually turned into slaves.

Property stratification within rural communities, led to the gradual disintegration communal system, which contributed to the allocation of a small group of slave-owning aristocracy from the whole mass of community members. Along with this, the least well-to-do strata of the community members were gradually ruined, turned into the poor and even into slaves.

Already in IVthousand BC on the territory of Sumer arise cities as economic, political and cultural centers individual small states. In the southernmost part of the country was the city of Eridu, located on the shores of the Persian Gulf. The city of Ur, which was the center of a strong state, was of great political importance. The religious and cultural center of all Sumer was the city of Nippur with its common Sumerian sanctuary, the temple of the god Enlil. Among other cities of Sumer, Lagash, which was in constant struggle with neighboring Umma, and the city of Uruk were of great political importance.

To beginningIIIthousand BC appear in Mesopotamia first slave states led by kings. In the principalities that had lost their independence, the highest representatives of the slave-owning aristocracy ruled, bearing the ancient semi-priestly title patesi.

The economic basis of these ancient slave-owning states was the land fund of the country centralized in the hands of the state. Communal lands cultivated by free peasants were considered the property of the state, and their population was obliged to bear all kinds of duties in favor of the latter, usually quite heavy. The main form of economy in this era was agriculture, based on artificial irrigation. Therefore, one of the most important functions of the ancient slave state was the function of organizing and maintaining the irrigation network.

Deserves special attention Sumerian art and literature. In total, about one hundred and fifty monuments of Sumerian literature are known. Among them are poetic records of myths, epic tales, wedding-love songs, funeral laments, hymns in honor of kings, teachings, edifications, fables, anecdotes, sayings, proverbs. Of all the genres of literature, hymns are most fully represented, acting as a way of collective appeal to the deity. Of great importance were heroic tales that sang of the exploits of heroes, their long campaigns and adventures.

Closely connected with mythology and epic pantheon of gods. Until the end of the III millennium BC. there was no single systematization, although there were several Sumerian deities: “the lord of the air”, “king of gods and people” Enlil (god of the city of Nippur); the lord of underground fresh waters and the world ocean Enki (the god of the city of Eredu); the sky god An and the goddess of war and carnal love Inanna (the deities of the city of Uruk); moon god Nanna (patron of the city of Ur); the warrior god Ningirsu, revered in Lagash.

1. CREATION OF ORDERED IRRIGATION IN THE LOWER OF THE EUPHRATS

We already know that this country, separated from the rest of Asia Minor by barely passable deserts, was inhabited around the 6th millennium BC. e. During the 6th-4th millennia, the tribes that settled here lived extremely poorly: barley, sown on a narrow strip of land between swamps and a scorched desert and irrigated by unregulated and uneven floods, brought small and unstable crops. Sowing was better on lands that were irrigated by canals diverted from the small Diyala River, a tributary of the Tigris. Only by the middle of the IV millennium BC. e. separate groups of communities coped with the creation of rational drainage and irrigation systems in the Euphrates basin.

The basin of the lower Euphrates is a vast flat plain, bounded from the east by the river. The Tigris, behind which stretches the spurs of the Iranian mountains, and from the west - the cliffs of the Syrian-Arabian semi-desert. Without proper irrigation and reclamation works, this plain is in some places a desert, in some places - swampy shallow lakes, bordered by thickets, huge reeds, teeming with insects. At present, the desert part of the plain is crossed by ramparts of emissions from canal digging, and if the canal is active, then date palms stretch along these ramparts. In some places, clay hills rise above the flat surface - telli and ash - ishans. These are the ruins of cities, more precisely, hundreds of mud-brick houses and temple towers, reed huts and adobe walls that existed in succession in the same place. However, in ancient times there were no hills or ramparts here. Marshy lagoons occupied much more space than now, stretching across all of what is now southern Iraq, and only in the extreme south came across low-lying deserted islands. Gradually, the silt of the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Elamite rivers running from the northeast (which also flowed into the Persian Gulf, like the Tigris and the Euphrates, but at an angle of 90 ° to them) created an alluvial barrier that expanded the territory of the plain by 120 kilometers to the south. There, where previously swampy estuaries freely communicated with the Persian Gulf (this place was called in ancient times the “Bitter Sea”), now the river flows. Shatt al-Arab, in which the Euphrates and the Tigris now merge, each previously having its own mouth and its own lagoons.

The Euphrates within Lower Mesopotamia was divided into several channels; of these, the most important were the western, or the Euphrates proper, and the more eastern, Iturungal; from the latter to the lagoon in the southeast, another canal I-Nina-gena departed. To the east, the Tigris River flowed, but its banks were deserted, except for the place where the Diyala tributary flowed into it.

From each of the main channels in the IV millennium BC. e. several smaller canals were diverted, and with the help of a system of dams and reservoirs, it was possible to retain water on each for regular irrigation of fields throughout the growing season. Thanks to this, yields immediately increased and the accumulation of products became possible. This, in turn, led to the second great division of labor, i.e., to the singling out of specialized crafts, and then to the possibility of class stratification, namely, to the singling out of a slave-owning class, on the one hand, and to the widespread exploitation of slave-type bonded people, or slaves in the broadest sense (patriarchal slaves and helots), on the other.

At the same time, it should be noted that the extremely hard work of building and cleaning canals (as well as other earthworks) was carried out mainly not by slaves, but by community members in the order of duty; every free adult spent an average of a month or two a year on this, and this was the case throughout the history of ancient Mesopotamia. The main agricultural work - plowing and sowing - was also carried out by free community members. Only noble people, invested with power and performing positions that were considered socially important, did not personally participate in the duties, and they did not plow the land either.

A massive survey by archaeologists of the traces of the most ancient settlements of Lower Mesopotamia shows that the process of settling local reclamation and irrigation systems was accompanied by the resettlement of residents from the scattered smallest settlements of large family communities to the center of the nomes, where the main temples with their rich granaries and workshops were located. The temples were centers for collecting nome reserve funds; from here, on behalf of the temple administration, trading agents - tamkars - were sent to distant countries to exchange bread and fabrics of Lower Mesopotamia for timber, metals, slaves and slaves. At the beginning of the second quarter of the III millennium BC. e. densely populated areas around the main temples are surrounded by city walls. Around 3000-2900 BC e. Temple households are becoming so complex and extensive that it took a record of their economic activities. As a result, writing was born.

2. THE INVENTION OF WRITING. PROTOWRITTEN PERIOD

At first, writing in Lower Mesopotamia arose as a system of three-dimensional chips or drawings. They painted on plastic tiles made of clay with the angle of a reed stick. Each sign-drawing denoted either the depicted object itself, or any concept associated with this object. For example, the firmament, drawn with strokes, meant "night" and thus also "black", "dark", "sick", "illness", "darkness", etc. The sign of the foot meant "go", "walk", “stand”, “bring”, etc. The grammatical forms of words were not expressed, and it was not necessary, since usually only numbers and signs of countable objects were entered into the document. True, it was more difficult to convey the names of the recipients of the objects, but even here at first it was possible to get by with the names of their professions: the forge denoted a coppersmith, the mountain (as a sign of a foreign country) - a slave, a terrace (?) (perhaps, a kind of tribune) - a leader - priest, etc. But soon they began to resort to a rebus: if na meant “stone”, “weight”, then the sign of the weight next to the sign of the foot suggested the reading of the gene - “walking”, and the sign of the heap - ba next to the same sign suggested reading a lip - “standing”, etc. Sometimes whole words were written in a rebus way, if the corresponding concept was difficult to convey with a drawing; so, gi "return, add" was denoted by the sign of "reed" gi. It took at least 400 years until the letter from a system of purely reminder signs turned into an ordered system for transmitting information in time and at a distance. This happened around 2400 BC. e.

By this time, due to the impossibility of quickly drawing curvilinear figures without burrs, etc., on the clay, the signs had already turned into simple combinations of straight lines, in which it was difficult to recognize the original drawing. At the same time, each dash, due to the pressure on the clay with the corner of a rectangular stick, received a wedge-shaped character; hence such writing is called cuneiform. Each sign in cuneiform can have several verbal meanings and several purely sound ones (usually they talk about syllabic meanings of signs, but this is not true: sound values \u200b\u200bcan also mean half a syllable, for example, the syllable bab can be written with two “syllabic” signs: ba-ab; the value will be then same as with one sign bab, the difference is in the convenience of memorization and in saving space when writing signs, but not in reading). Some signs could also be "determinatives", that is, unreadable signs that only indicate to which category of concepts the neighboring sign belongs (wooden or metal objects, fish, birds, professions, etc.); thus facilitating the correct choice of reading from several possible ones.

Despite all the inaccuracy of the written transmission of speech in the archaic period of the history of Lower Mesopotamia, the Soviet scientist A. A. Vayman still managed to read some of the oldest economic documents. This circumstance, as well as the study of the drawings themselves used for writing, along with archeological data, allow us to restore to a certain extent the most ancient social history of this country, although individual events over a long historical period remain unknown.

First of all, we are faced with the question of what kind of people first created the civilization of Lower Mesopotamia. What language did he speak? The study of the language of some later cuneiform inscriptions (from about 2500 BC) and proper names mentioned in the inscriptions (from about 2700 BC) showed scientists that already at that time a population lived in Lower Mesopotamia who spoke (and later wrote) two completely different languages - Sumerian and East Semitic. The Sumerian language, with its bizarre grammar, is not related to any of the languages that have survived to this day. East Semitic, later called Akkadian or Babylonian-Assyrian, belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afroasian family of languages; currently belong to the same branch: a number of languages of Ethiopia, Arabic, the language of the island of Malta in the Mediterranean Sea, the Hebrew language in Israel and the New Aramaic language of a small people who call themselves Assyrians and live scattered in different countries, including in the USSR. Akkadian itself, or Babylonian-Assyrian, the language, like a number of other Semitic languages, died out before the beginning of our era. The Afroasian family (but not its Semitic branch) also included the ancient Egyptian language, and it still includes a number of languages of North Africa, up to Tanganyika, Nigeria and the Atlantic Ocean.

There is reason to think that in the IV millennium BC. e., and maybe later, in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, a population still lived who spoke other, long-extinct languages.

As for the most ancient Mesopotamian written texts (from about 2900 to 2500 BC), they are undoubtedly written exclusively in the Sumerian language. This is evident from the nature of the rebus use of signs: it is obvious that if the word "reed" - ha coincides with the word "return, add" - gi, then we have exactly the language in which such a sound coincidence exists. And this is the Sumerian language. However, this does not mean that the Eastern Semites, and perhaps the speakers of another language unknown to us, did not live in Lower Mesopotamia on an equal footing with the Sumerians already at that time and even earlier. There is no reliable data, neither archaeological nor linguistic, that would make us think that the Eastern Semites were nomads and that they did not participate, together with the Sumerians, in the great work of developing the river. Euphrates. There is also no reason to believe that the Eastern Semites invaded Mesopotamia around 2750 BC. e., as many scholars have suggested; on the contrary, linguistic data rather make us think that they settled, between the Euphrates and the Tigris, already in the Neolithic era. Yet, apparently, the population of southern Mesopotamia until about 2350 spoke mainly Sumerian, while in the central and northern part of Lower Mesopotamia, East Semitic was also spoken along with Sumerian; it also prevailed in Upper Mesopotamia.

Judging by the available data, there was no ethnic hostility between people who spoke these languages so different from each other. Obviously, at that time people did not yet think in such large categories as monolingual ethnic arrays and were friends with each other, and smaller units were at enmity - tribes, nomes, territorial communities. All inhabitants of Lower Mesopotamia referred to themselves equally as "Blackheads" (in Sumerian sang-ngiga, in Akkadian Tsalmat-kâkkadi), regardless of the language each spoke.

Since the historical events of such an ancient time are unknown to us, historians use archaeological periodization to subdivide the ancient history of Lower Mesopotamia. Archaeologists distinguish between the Proto-Written Period (2900-2750 BC, with two sub-periods) and the Early Dynastic Period (2750-2310 BC, with three sub-periods).

Three archives have come down to us from the Proto-Written Period, with the exception of individual random documents: two (one older, the other younger) from the city of Uruk (now Varka), in the south of Lower Mesopotamia, and one, modern to the later Uruk, - from the settlement of Jemdet-nasr, in the north (the ancient name of the city is unknown). The social structure of the proto-written period was studied by Soviet scientists A.I. Tyumenev, who proceeded only from the study of drawings-signs, as such, and by A.A. Vayman, who managed to read some of the documents in their entirety.

Note that the writing system used in the Proto-writing period was, despite its cumbersomeness, completely identical in the south of Lower Mesopotamia and in the north. This speaks in favor of the fact that it was created in one center, authoritative enough for the local invention to be borrowed by various nome communities of Lower Mesopotamia, despite the fact that there was neither economic nor political unity between them and their main channels were separated. from each other stripes of the desert. This center, apparently, was the city of Nippur, located between the south and north of the lower Euphrates plain. Here was the temple of the god Enlil, who was worshiped by all the "blackheads", although each nome had its own mythology and pantheon (system of deities). Probably, there was once a ritual center of the Sumerian tribal union in the pre-state period. Nippur was never a political center, but it remained an important cultural center for a long time.

St. Petersburg. Hermitage

All documents come from the economic archive of the temple of Eanna, which belonged to the goddess Inana, around which the city of Uruk was consolidated, and from a similar temple archive found at the site of Dzhemdet-nasr. From the documents it can be seen that in the temple economy there were many specialized artisans and many captive slaves and slaves; however, male slaves probably merged with the general mass of people dependent on the temple - in any case, this was undoubtedly the case two centuries later. It also turns out that the community allocated large plots of land to its chief officials - the priest-soothsayer, the chief judge, the senior priestess, and the foreman of commercial agents. But the lion's share went to the priest, who bore the title en.

En was the high priest in those communities where the goddess was revered as the supreme deity; he represented the community to the outside world and presided over its council; he also participated in the rite of "sacred marriage", for example, with the goddess Inana of Uruk - a rite that was apparently considered necessary for the fertility of the entire Uruk land. In communities where the supreme deity was a god, there was a priestess-en (sometimes known under other titles), who also participated in the rite of sacred marriage with the corresponding deity.

The land allotted to the enu - ashag-en, or nig-ena - gradually became specially temple land; the harvest from it went to the community's reserve insurance fund, for exchange with other communities and countries, for sacrifices to the gods, and for the maintenance of the temple staff - its artisans, warriors, farmers, fishermen, etc. (priests usually had their own personal land in communities in addition to the temple ). Who cultivated the land of the nig-en in the Proto-literate period is not yet entirely clear to us; later it was cultivated by helots of various kinds. We are told about this by another archive from the city adjacent to Uruk - the archaic Ur, as well as some others; they belong already to the beginning of the next, Early Dynastic period.

3. EARLY DYNASTIC PERIOD

The identification of the Early Dynastic period as a distinct one, distinct from the Proto-Written Period, has various archaeological reasons, which it would be difficult to analyze here. But even purely historically, the Early Dynastic period stands out quite clearly.

At the end of the III millennium BC. e. the Sumerians created a kind of primitive history - the “King List”, a list of kings who allegedly ruled in turn and sequentially from the beginning of the world in different cities of Mesopotamia. The kings who ruled in succession in the same city, conditionally constituted one "dynasty". In fact, this list included both historical and mythical characters, and the dynasties of individual cities often actually ruled not sequentially, but in parallel. In addition, most of the listed rulers were not yet kings; they bore the titles of high priests-en, "big people" (i.e., military leaders, lu-gal, lugal) or priest-builders (? - ensi). The adoption by the ruler of one or another title depended on the circumstances, on local urban traditions, etc. The numbers of years expressing the duration of individual reigns in the list are only rarely reliable, but more often they are the result of later arbitrary manipulations with numbers; The "Royal List" is based, in essence, on the count of generations, and along two main, originally independent lines connected with the cities of Uruk and Ur in the south of Lower Mesopotamia and with the city of Kish in the north. If we discard the fantastic dynasties of the "King's List" that ruled "before the flood", then the beginning of the I Kish dynasty - the first "after the flood" - will approximately correspond to the beginning of the Early Dynastic period according to archaeological periodization (this part of the Early Dynastic period is conventionally called RD I). It is to this time that the above-mentioned archaic archive from the city of Ur, adjacent to Uruk, dates back.

The penultimate of the rulers of the 1st dynasty of Kish is En-Menbaragesi, the first Sumerian statesman, about whom we are informed not only by the “King List”, but also by his own inscriptions, so there is no doubt about his historicity. He fought with Elam, that is, with the cities in the valley of the Karuna and Kerkhe rivers, neighboring Sumer and passing the same path of development. Perhaps, the historicity of the son of En-Menbaragesi, Aggi, is also beyond doubt, known to us, apart from the "King's List", only from an epic song that has come down in a recording made almost a thousand years later. According to this song, Agga tried to subjugate southern Uruk to his native Kish, and the council of elders of Uruk was ready to agree to this. But the people's assembly of the city, having proclaimed the leader-priest (ena) named Gilgamesh as the leader-commander (lugal), decided to resist. Agga's siege of Uruk was unsuccessful, and as a result, Kish itself was forced to submit to Gilgamesh of Uruk, who, according to the King's List, belonged to the 1st dynasty of Uruk.

Gilgamesh was subsequently the hero of a number of Sumerian epic songs, and then the greatest epic poem composed in Akkadian (East Semitic) language. They will be discussed in lectures on the Sumerian and Babylonian cultures. We only note here that the linking of an epic plot to a historical person is a very common phenomenon in the history of ancient literatures; nevertheless, the myths that make up the plot of the epic songs about Gilgamesh are much older than the historical Gilgamesh. But he, in any case, was obviously a remarkable enough personality to be remembered so firmly by later generations (he was deified soon after his death, and his name was known in the Middle East as early as the 11th century AD). The epics present as his most important exploits the construction of the city wall of Uruk and the campaign against Lebanon for the cedar forest; whether such a campaign actually took place is unknown.

With Gilgamesh, the second stage of the Early Dynastic Period (RD II) begins. The socio-economic conditions of that time are known from another archive found in the ancient town of Shuruppak and containing economic and legal documents, as well as educational texts of the 26th century. BC e. One part of this archive comes from the temple economy, while the other part comes from the private homes of individual community members.

From these documents we learn that the territorial community (nom) Shuruppak was part of a military alliance of communities headed by Uruk. Here, apparently, then the direct descendants of Gilgamesh ruled - the I dynasty of Uruk. Some of the Shuruppak warriors were stationed in various cities of the union, but for the most part, the Uruk lugals, apparently, did not interfere in the internal communal affairs. The economy of the temple was already quite clearly separated from the land of the territorial community and the private households of household large-family communities located on it, but the connection between the temple and the community remained, for all that, quite tangible. Thus, the territorial community helped the temple economy at critical moments with draft power (donkeys), and perhaps with the labor of its members, and the temple economy supplied food for the traditional feast, which accompanied the people's assembly. The ruler of the nome Shuruppak was an ensi - an insignificant figure; he was allocated a relatively small allotment, and, apparently, the council of elders and some priests were more important than him. Years were counted not according to the years of the ensi's rule, but according to the annual periods, during which, apparently, some kind of ritual position was performed in turn by representatives of different temples and lower-order territorial communities that made up the nome of Shuruppak.

Craftsmen, pastoralists and farmers of various social denominations worked in the temple economy, mainly, apparently, for rations, but some of them, on condition of service, were also given land allotments - of course, not in ownership. All of them were deprived of ownership of the means of production and exploited by non-economic means. Some of them were fugitives from other communities, some were descendants of captives; women workers were directly designated as slaves. But many may have been people of local origin.

Outside the temple, household extended families sometimes sold their land; the payment for it was received by the patriarch of the family community or, if he died, undivided brothers of the next generation; other adult members of the community received gifts or a token treat for agreeing to the deal. The payment for the land (in produce or in copper) was very low, and perhaps after a certain period of time the "purchaser" had to return the plot to the home community of the original owners.

By the middle of the III millennium BC. e. along with the military and cult leaders (lugals, enami and ensi), who were in complete political dependence on the councils of the elders of their nomes, a new figure was clearly outlined - the hegemon lugal. Such a lugal relied on his personal followers and retinue, which he could maintain without asking the council of elders; with the help of such a squad, he could conquer other nomes and thus rise above individual councils, which remained purely nome organizations. Lugal-hegemon usually took the title of lugal Kish in the north of the country (in a play on words, this simultaneously meant “lugal of forces”, “lugal of armies”), and in the south of the country - the title of lugal of the whole country; to receive this title, one had to be recognized in the temple of the city of Nippur.

In order to gain independence from the new communal self-government bodies, the lugals needed independent means, and above all land, because it was much more convenient to reward their supporters with land plots from which they would feed themselves, than to fully support them on bread and other rations. . Both funds and land were at the temples. Therefore, the Lugali began to strive to take over the temples - either by marrying the high priestesses, or by forcing the council to elect themselves both as a commander and high priest at the same time, while entrusting the temple administration instead of the community elders to dependent people who were personally obliged to the ruler.

During excavations in Ur, archaeologists came across an amazing burial. A gentle passage led to it, in which carts drawn by oxen stood; the entrance to the crypt was guarded by warriors in helmets and with spears. Both oxen and warriors were killed during the burial. The crypt itself was a fairly large room dug into the ground; Dozens of women, some with musical instruments, sat near its walls (or rather, once sat - archaeologists found their skeletons fallen to the floor). Their hair was once thrown back and held over their foreheads instead of a ribbon with a silver stripe. One of the women, apparently, did not have time to put on her silver hoop, it remained in the folds of her clothes, and prints of expensive fabric were preserved on the metal.

In one corner of the crypt was a small brick chamber under a vault. It turned out not to be an ordinary Sumerian burial, as one might expect, but the remains of a bed on which a woman lay on her back in a cloak of blue beads made from imported stone - lapis lazuli, in rich beads of carnelian and gold, with large gold earrings and in a kind of headdress made of golden flowers. Judging by the inscription on her seal, the woman's name was Puabi. Many gold and silver Puabi utensils were found, as well as two extraordinary harp works with sculptures of a bull and a cow made of gold and lapis lazuli on the resonator.

Archaeologists have found nearby several more burials of the same kind, but worse preserved; none of them preserved the remains of the central character.

This burial caused great controversy among researchers, which have not stopped to this day. It is unlike other burials of this era, including the mine burial of the king of that time, also discovered in Ur, where the deceased was found in a golden headdress (helmet) of unusually fine workmanship.

No signs of violence were found on any of the victims in Puabi's burial. Probably they were all poisoned - put to sleep. It is quite possible that they voluntarily submitted to their fate in order to continue in the other world the habitual service of their mistress. In any case, it is incredible that Puabi's guards and her court women in their expensive attire were mere slaves. The unusualness of this and other similar burials, the plant symbols on Puabi's dress, the fact that she was lying as if on a marriage bed, the fact that her golden harps depicted a bearded wild bull, the personification of the Ursk god Nanna (god of the moon), and a wild cow , the personification of the wife of Nanna, the goddess Ningal - all this led some researchers to the idea that Puabi was not a simple wife of an Uruk lugal, but a priestess-en, a participant in the rites of a sacred marriage with the god of the moon.

Be that as it may, the burial of Puabi and other burials of the I dynasty of Ur (about the 25th century BC) testify to the exceptional wealth of the ruling elite of the Ur state, which apparently headed the southern union of the Lower Mesopotamian Sumerian nomes. One can quite confidently indicate the source of this wealth: the gold and carnelian beads of Puabi come from the Hindustan Peninsula, lapis lazuli - from the mines of Badakhshan in Northern Afghanistan; one must think that he also arrived at Ur by sea through India. It is no coincidence that the burials of the lugals of Kish of the same time are much poorer: it was Ur that was the port of maritime trade with India. High-nosed Sumerian ships, connected from long reed trunks and smeared with natural asphalt, with a sail of mats on a mast of thick reed, sailed along the coast of the Persian Gulf to the island of Dilmun (now Bahrain) and further to the Indian Ocean and, possibly, reached the ports Melakhi - the countries of the ancient Indian civilization - not far from the mouth of the river. Ind.

The last stage of the Early Dynastic Period (RD III) begins with the I Dynasty of Ur. In addition to the city of Ur, there were other independent nome communities at that time in Lower Mesopotamia, and some of them were led by lugals who, no less than the lugals of Ur, aspired to hegemony. They all lived in constant skirmishes with each other - this is a characteristic feature of the period; fought over fertile strips of land, over canals, over accumulated wealth. Among the states whose rulers claimed hegemony, the most important was the nome of Kish in the north of Lower Mesopotamia and the nome of Lagash in the south. Lagash was located on the branch of the Euphrates - I-Nina-gene and overlooked the lagoon of the river. Tiger. The capital of Lagash was the city of Girsu.

Much more documents and inscriptions from this period have come down to us from Lagash than from other cities of Lower Mesopotamia. Especially important is the surviving archive of the temple economy of the goddess Baba. From this archive we learn that the temple land was divided into three categories: 1) the actual temple land of the nig-en, which was cultivated by the dependent farmers of the temple, and the income from it went partly to the maintenance of the household staff, but mainly constituted a sacrificial reserve and exchange fund; 2) allotment land, which consisted of plots that were given to part of the temple staff - to small administrators, artisans and farmers; from the holders of such allotments, the military squad of the temple was also recruited; often the allotment was given to a group, and then some of the workers were considered dependent "people" of their boss; the allotments did not belong to the holders on the right of ownership, but were only a form of feeding the staff; if for some reason it was more convenient for the administration, it could take away the allotment or not give it out at all, but content the worker with a ration; only rations were provided to slave women engaged in weaving, spinning, caring for livestock, etc., as well as their children and all male laborers: they were in fact in a slave position and were often acquired through purchase, but the children of slave women were subsequently transferred to another category of workers ; 3) share-cropping land, which was given out by temples, apparently, to everyone on rather favorable terms: a certain share of the crop had to be ceded to the temple by the holder of a plot of such land.

In addition, the lands of large family home communities still existed outside the temple; on these lands, slave labor, as far as we can tell, was used only occasionally.

Major officials of the nome state, including priests and the ruler himself, received very significant estates for their position. They had their dependent "people" working for them, just like those on the temple grounds. It is not entirely clear whether such lands were considered to belong to the state fund and were only in the use of officials or their property. Apparently, this was not clear enough to the Lagashians themselves. The fact is that property, unlike possession, consists primarily in the ability to dispose of its object at one's discretion, in particular, to alienate it, that is, to sell, donate, bequeath. But the concept of the possibility of complete alienation of the land contradicted the most fundamental ideas inherited by the ancient Mesopotamians from primitive times, and the need for land alienation could not arise among rich and noble people; on the contrary, poor families of community members sometimes had to alienate land in order to pay off their debts, but such transactions, apparently, were not considered completely irreversible. Sometimes the rulers could force someone to alienate land in their favor. Property relations, fully reflecting the antagonistic class structure of society, in Lower Mesopotamia of the III millennium BC. e., apparently, have not yet resulted in sufficiently distinct forms. For us, it is important that there was already a stratification of society into a class of the propertied, who had the opportunity to exploit the labor of others; the class of working people who are not yet exploited, but who do not exploit the labor of others; and the class of persons deprived of ownership of the means of production and subjected to non-economic exploitation; it included exploited workers assigned to large farms (helots), as well as patriarchal slaves.

Although this information came to us mainly from Lagash (XXV-XXIV centuries BC), there is reason to believe that a similar situation existed in all other nomes of Lower Mesopotamia, regardless of whether their population spoke Sumerian or in East Semitic. However, Mr. Lagash was in many ways in a special position. In terms of wealth, the Lagash state was second only to Uru-Uruk; the Lagash port of Guaba competed with Ur in maritime trade with neighboring Elam and with India. Trade agents (tamkars) were members of the staff of the temple households, although they also accepted private orders for the purchase of overseas goods, including slaves.

The rulers of Lagash, no less than others, dreamed of hegemony in Lower Mesopotamia, but the path to the center of the country was blocked by the neighboring city of Umma near the place where the I-Nina-gene branch departed from the Iturungal branch; with Umma, moreover, for many generations there were bloody disputes because of the fertile region bordering between it and Lagash. The rulers of Lagash bore the title of ensi and received the title of lugal from the council or the people's assembly only temporarily, along with special powers - for the duration of an important military campaign or any other important events.

The army of the ruler of the Sumerian nome of this time consisted of relatively small detachments of heavily armed warriors. In addition to a copper cone-shaped helmet, they were protected by heavy felt cloaks with large copper plaques or huge copper-forged shields; they fought in close formation, and the back rows, protected by the shields of the front row, put forward, like bristles, long spears. There were also primitive chariots on solid wheels, harnessed, apparently, by onagers or large semi-wild donkeys, with quivers for throwing darts mounted on the front of the chariot.

In skirmishes between such detachments, the losses were relatively small - the dead numbered no more than dozens. The warriors of these detachments received allotments on the land of the temple or on the land of the ruler, and in the latter case were betrayed to him. But the lugal could raise the people's militia, both from the dependent people of the temple, and from free community members. The militias were light infantry and were armed with short spears.

At the head of both heavily armed and militia detachments, the ruler of Lagash, Eanatum, temporarily elected by the lugal, defeated shortly after 2400 BC. e. neighboring Ummah and inflicted huge losses in people at that time. Although in his native Lagash he had to be satisfied with only the title of ensi in the future, he successfully continued the wars with other nomes, including Ur and Kish, and eventually appropriated the title of Kish lugal. However, his successors were not able to maintain hegemony over other nomes for a long time.

St. Petersburg. Hermitage

After some time, power in Lagash passed to a certain Enentarzi. He was the son of the high priest of the local nome god Ningirsu, and therefore he himself was its high priest. When he became the ensi of Lagash, he connected the ruler's lands with the lands of the temple of the god Ningirsu, as well as the temples of the goddess Baba (his wife) and their children; thus, the actual property of the ruler and his family turned out to be more than half of the entire land of Lagash. Many priests were removed, and the administration of the temple lands passed into the hands of the ruler's servants, dependent on him. The people of the ruler began to collect various fees from petty priests and persons dependent on the temple. At the same time, it must be assumed, the situation of the community members worsened - there is vague news that they were indebted to the nobility: there are documents about the sale of their children by parents due to impoverishment. The reasons for it in particular are not clear: the increased requisitions associated with the growth of the state apparatus, and the unequal distribution of land and other resources as a result of the social and economic stratification of society, and in connection with this, the need for a loan for the purchase of seed grain, tools and others: after all, there was very little metal (silver, copper) in circulation.

All this caused discontent among the most diverse segments of the population in Lagash. Enentarzi's successor, Lugalanda, was deposed, although he may have continued to live in Lagash as a private individual, and was elected in his place (apparently by the popular assembly) Uruinimgin (2318 - 2310 [?] B.C. .) . In the second year of his reign, he received the powers of a lugal and carried out a reform, about which, at his order, inscriptions were drawn up. Apparently, he was not the first to carry out such reforms in Sumer - they were periodically carried out earlier, but we only know about the reform of Uruinimgina thanks to his inscriptions in somewhat more detail. It formally boiled down to the fact that the lands of the deities Ningirsu, Baba, etc. were again withdrawn from the property of the ruler's family, that the exactions contrary to custom and some other arbitrary actions of the ruler's people were stopped, the position of the junior priesthood and the wealthier part of the dependent people in temple households was improved. , canceled debt transactions, etc. However, in essence, the situation has changed little: the withdrawal of temple facilities from the property of the ruler was purely nominal, the entire government administration remained in its place. The reasons for the impoverishment of the community members, which forced them to take on debt, were also not eliminated. Meanwhile, Uruinimgina got involved in a war with neighboring Umma; this war had grave consequences for Lagash.

At the beginning of the III millennium BC. e. Mesopotamia had not yet been politically united, and there were several dozen small city-states on its territory.

The cities of Sumer, built on hills and surrounded by walls, became the main carriers of the Sumerian civilization. They consisted of quarters, or rather, of separate villages, dating back to those ancient communities, from the combination of which the Sumerian cities arose. The center of each quarter was the temple of the local god, who was the lord of the entire quarter. The god of the main quarter of the city was revered as the master of the whole city.

On the territory of the Sumerian city-states, along with the main cities, there were other settlements, some of which were conquered by the main cities by force of arms. They were politically dependent on the main city, the population of which, perhaps, had more rights than the population of these "suburbs".

The population of such city-states was not numerous and in most cases did not exceed 40-50 thousand people. Between the individual city-states lay a lot of undeveloped lands, since there were no large and complex irrigation facilities yet and the population was grouped near rivers, around irrigation facilities of a local nature. In the inner parts of this valley, too far from any source of water, and at a later time, there were considerable expanses of uncultivated land.

In the extreme south-west of Mesopotamia, where the settlement of Abu Shahrein is now located, the city of Eridu was located. With Eridu, located on the shores of the "wavering sea" (and now separated from the sea at a distance of about 110 km), the legend of the emergence of the Sumerian culture was associated. According to later legends, Eridu was also the oldest political center of the country. So far, we know best about the oldest culture of Sumer on the basis of the already mentioned excavations of the El Oboid hill, located about 18 km northeast of Eridu.

The city of Ur, which played a prominent role in the history of Sumer, was located 4 km east of the El Obeid hill. To the north of Ur, also on the banks of the Euphrates, lay the city of Larsa, which probably arose somewhat later. To the northeast of Larsa, on the banks of the Tigris, was Lagash, which left the most valuable historical sources and played an important role in the history of Sumer in the III millennium BC. e., although a later tradition, reflected in the list of royal dynasties, does not mention him at all. The constant enemy of Lagash - the city of Umma was located to the north of it. Valuable economic accounting documents have come down to us from this city, which are the case basis for determining the social system of Sumer. Along with the city of Umma, the city of Uruk, on the Euphrates, played an exceptional role in the history of the unification of the country. Here, during excavations, an ancient culture was discovered that replaced the culture of El Obeid, and the oldest written monuments were found, showing the pictographic origins of the Sumerian cuneiform writing, i.e. writing, which already consisted of conventional signs, in the form of wedge-shaped depressions on clay. To the north of Uruk, on the banks of the Euphrates, was the city of Shuruppak, from where Ziusudra (Utnapishtim), the hero of the Sumerian flood myth, originated. Almost in the center of Mesopotamia, somewhat south of the bridge where the two rivers now converge closest to each other, was located on the Euphrates Nippur, the central sanctuary of all Sumer. But Nippur, it seems, was never the center of any state that had serious political significance.

In the northern part of Mesopotamia, on the banks of the Euphrates, there was the city of Kish, where many monuments were found during excavations in the 20s of our century, dating back to the Sumerian period in the history of the northern part of Mesopotamia. In the north of Mesopotamia, on the banks of the Euphrates, there was also the city of Sippar. According to the later Sumerian tradition, the city of Sippar was one of the leading cities of Mesopotamia already in the deepest antiquity.

Outside the valley there were also several ancient cities, the historical destinies of which were closely intertwined with the history of Mesopotamia. One of these centers was the city of Mari on the middle reaches of the Euphrates. The lists of royal dynasties compiled at the end of the 3rd millennium also mention the dynasty from Mari, which allegedly ruled the entire two rivers.

Eshnunna played a significant role in the history of Mesopotamia. The city of Eshnunna served for the Sumerian cities as a link in trade with the mountain tribes of the Northeast. Intermediary in the trade of the Sumerian cities c. the northern regions were the city of Ashur on the middle reaches of the Tigris, later the center of the Assyrian state. Numerous Sumerian merchants settled here, probably already in very ancient times, bringing elements of Sumerian culture here.

Resettlement in Mesopotamia Semites.

The presence of several Semitic words in the ancient Sumerian texts testifies to very early relations between the Sumerians and pastoral Semitic tribes. Then Semitic tribes appear within the territory inhabited by the Sumerians. Already in the middle of the III millennium in the north of Mesopotamia, the Semites began to act as heirs and successors of the Sumerian culture.

The oldest of the cities founded by the Semites (much later than the most important Sumerian cities were founded) was Akkad, located on the Euphrates, probably not far from Kish. Akkad became the capital of the state, which was the first unifier of the entire Mesopotamia. The enormous political significance of Akkad is evident from the fact that even after the fall of the Akkadian kingdom, the northern part of Mesopotamia continued to be called Akkad, and the name Sumer remained behind the southern part. Among the cities already founded by the Semites, one should probably also include Isin, which is supposed to have been located near Nippur.

The most significant role in the history of the country fell to the share of the youngest of these cities - Babylon, which was located on the banks of the Euphrates, southwest of the city of Kish. The political and cultural importance of Babylon grew continuously over the centuries, starting from the 2nd millennium BC. e. In the first millennium BC. e. its brilliance so eclipsed all other cities of the country that the Greeks began to call the entire Mesopotamia Babylonia after the name of this city.

Ancient documents in the history of Sumer.

Excavations of recent decades make it possible to trace the development of productive forces and changes in production relations in the states of Mesopotamia long before their unification in the second half of the 3rd millennium BC. e. The excavations also gave science lists of royal dynasties that ruled in the states of Mesopotamia. These monuments were written in the Sumerian language at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. in the states of Isin and Larsa on the basis of a list compiled two hundred years earlier in the city of Ur. These royal lists were strongly reflected in the local traditions of those cities in which the lists were compiled or revised. Nevertheless, critically considering this, it is still possible to use the lists that have come down to us as the basis for establishing a more or less accurate chronology of the ancient history of Sumer.

For the most distant times, the Sumerian tradition is so legendary that it has almost no historical significance. Already from the data of Berossus (a Babylonian priest of the 3rd century BC, who compiled a consolidated work on the history of Mesopotamia in Greek), it was known that the Babylonian priests divided the history of their country into two periods - “before the flood” and “after the flood”. Berossus in his list of dynasties "before the flood" has 10 kings who ruled for 432 thousand years. Equally fantastic is the number of years of reign of the kings "before the flood", noted in the lists compiled at the beginning of the 2nd millennium in Isin and Lars. The numbers of the years of the reign of the kings of the first dynasties "after the flood" are also fantastic.

During the excavation of the ruins of the ancient Uruk and the Dzhemdet-Nasr hill, as mentioned earlier, documents of economic reporting of temples were found that preserved, in whole or in part, the pictorial (pictographic) appearance of the letter. From the first centuries of the 3rd millennium, the history of Sumerian society can be reconstructed not only from material monuments, but also from written sources: the writing of Sumerian texts at that time began to develop into the “wedge-shaped” writing characteristic of Mesopotamia. So, on the basis of the tablets excavated in Ur and dating back to the beginning of the III millennium BC. e., it can be assumed that the ruler of Lagash was recognized here at that time; along with him, the tablets mention the sanga, i.e., the high priest of Ur. Perhaps the king of Lagash was subject to other cities mentioned by the tablets of Ur. But around 2850 BC. e. Lagash lost its independence and apparently became dependent on Shuruppak, who by this time began to play a major political role. Documents testify that Shuruppak's warriors were garrisoned in a number of cities in Sumer: in Uruk, in Nippur, in Adab, located on the Euphrates southeast of Nippur, in Umma and Lagash.

Economic life.

Agricultural products were undoubtedly the main wealth of Sumer, but along with agriculture, handicrafts also begin to play a relatively large role. Representatives of various crafts are mentioned in the oldest documents from Ur, Shuruppak and Lagash. Excavations of the tombs of the 1st royal dynasty of Ur (circa XXVII-XXVI centuries) showed the high skill of the builders of these tombs. In the tombs themselves, along with a large number of dead members of the retinue of the buried, possibly slaves and slaves, helmets, axes, daggers and spears made of gold, silver and copper were found, indicating a high level of Sumerian metallurgy. New methods of metal processing are being developed - chasing, engraving, granulating. The economic importance of metal increased more and more. The fine jewelry that was found in the royal tombs of Ur testifies to the art of the goldsmiths.

Since deposits of metal ores were completely absent in Mesopotamia, the presence of gold, silver, copper and lead there already in the first half of the 3rd millennium BC. e. indicates the significant role of exchange in the Sumerian society of that time. In exchange for wool, fabrics, grain, dates and fish, the Sumerians also received stone and wood. Most often, of course, either an exchange of gifts took place, or semi-trading, semi-predatory expeditions were carried out. But one must think that even then, at times, genuine trade was taking place, which was conducted by the Tamkars - trading agents of the temples, the king and the slave-owning nobility surrounding him.

Exchange and trade led to the emergence of monetary circulation in Sumer, although at its core the economy continued to be subsistence. Already from the documents from Shuruppak it is clear that copper acted as a measure of value, and later silver played this role. By the first half of the III millennium BC. e. include references to cases of sale and purchase of houses and lands. Along with the seller of land or house, who received the basic payment, the texts also mention the so-called "eaters" of the purchase price. These were obviously neighbors and relatives of the seller, who were given some additional payment. In these documents, the dominance of customary law was also reflected, when all representatives of rural communities had the right to land. The scribe who executed the sale also received a fee.

The standard of living of the ancient Sumerians was still low. Among the huts of the common people, the houses of the nobility stood out, however, not only the poorest population and slaves, but also people of average income at that time huddled in tiny mud brick houses, where mats, bundles of reeds that replaced the seats, and earthenware made up almost all the furniture and utensils. . The dwellings were incredibly crowded, they were located in a narrow space inside the city walls; at least a quarter of this space was occupied by the temple and the palace of the ruler with outbuildings attached to them. The city contained large, carefully constructed state bins. One such barn was excavated in the city of Lagash in a layer dating back to about 2600 BC. e. Sumerian clothing consisted of loincloths and coarse woolen cloaks or a rectangular piece of cloth wrapped around the body. Primitive labor tools - copper-tipped hoes, stone grain graters - used by the mass of the population, made labor unusually difficult. Food was scarce: a slave received about a liter of barley grain per day. The living conditions of the ruling class were, of course, different, but even the nobility had no more refined food than fish, barley and occasionally wheat cakes or porridge, sesame oil, dates, beans, garlic, and not every day lamb.

Socio-economic relations.

Although a number of temple archives have come down from ancient Sumer, including those dating back to the period of the Jemdet-Nasr culture, however, the social relations reflected in the documents of only one of the Lagash temples of the 24th century have been sufficiently studied. BC e. According to one of the most common points of view in Soviet science, the lands surrounding the Sumerian city were divided at that time into naturally irrigated and high fields that required artificial irrigation. In addition, there were also fields in the swamp, that is, in the territory that did not dry out after the flood and therefore required additional drainage work in order to create soil suitable for agriculture here. Part of the naturally irrigated fields was the "property" of the gods, and as the temple economy passed into the jurisdiction of their "deputy" - the king, it actually became royal. Obviously, high fields and fields-“swamps” until the moment of their cultivation were, along with the steppe, that “land without a master”, which is mentioned in one of the inscriptions of the ruler of Lagash, Entemena. The processing of high fields and fields-“swamps” required large expenditures of labor and funds, so relations of hereditary ownership gradually developed here. Apparently, it is about these ignoble owners of high fields in Lagash that the texts relating to the 24th century speak. BC e. The emergence of hereditary ownership contributed to the destruction from within the collective farming of rural communities. True, at the beginning of the III millennium, this process was still very slow.

The lands of rural communities have been located in naturally irrigated areas since ancient times. Of course, not all naturally irrigated land was distributed among rural communities. They had their allotments on that land, on the zeros of which neither the king nor the temples conducted their own economy. Only lands that were not in the direct possession of the ruler or the gods were divided into allotments, individual or collective. Individual allotments were distributed among the nobility and representatives of the state and temple apparatus, while collective allotments were reserved for rural communities. The adult males of the communities were organized into separate groups, which, both in war and in agricultural work, acted together, under the supervision of their elders. In Shuruppak they were called gurush, i.e. "strong", "well done"; in Lagash in the middle of the III millennium they were called Shublugal - "subordinates of the king." According to some researchers, the “subordinates of the king” were not community members, but workers of the temple economy already cut off from the community, but this assumption remains controversial. Judging by some inscriptions, the “subordinates of the king” are not necessarily considered as the staff of any temple. They could also work on the land of the king or ruler. We have reason to believe that in the event of war, the "subordinates of the king" were included in the army of Lagash.

The allotments given to individuals, or perhaps, in some cases, to rural communities, were small. Even the allotments of the nobility at that time amounted to only a few tens of hectares. Some allotments were given free of charge, while others were given for a tax equal to 1/6 -1/8 of the crop.

The owners of allotments worked in the fields of temple (later also royal) households, usually for four months. Draft cattle, as well as a plow and other tools of labor, were given to them from the temple economy. They also cultivated their fields with the help of temple cattle, since they could not keep cattle on their small plots. For four months of work in the temple or royal household, they received barley, in a small amount - emmer, wool, and the rest of the time (i.e., for eight months) they fed on the harvest from their allotment (There is also another point of view on social relations in early Sumer. According to this point of view, the communal lands were in equal measure both naturally flooded and high lands, since the irrigation of the latter required the use of communal water reserves and could be carried out without large expenditures of labor, possible only with the collective work of communities. According to the same point of view, the persons who worked on the land allocated to temples or the king (including - as indicated by the sources - and on the land reclaimed from the steppe) had already lost contact with the community and were subjected to exploitation. They, like slaves, worked in the temple economy all year round and received in-kind allowances for work, and at the beginning also land allotments. Harvest on temple land was not considered the harvest of communities. Works the people who lived on this land had neither self-government, nor any rights in the community or benefits from the conduct of the community economy, therefore, according to this point of view, they should be distinguished from the community members proper, who were not involved in the temple economy and had the right, with the knowledge of the great families and the communities they belonged to, buy and sell land. According to this point of view, the landed estates of the nobility were not limited to the allotments that they received from the temple. - Ed.).

Slaves worked all year round. Prisoners captured in the war were turned into slaves, slaves were also bought by tamkars (trading agents of the temples or the king) outside the state of Lagash. Their labor was used in construction and irrigation works. They guarded the fields from birds and were also used in horticulture and partly in cattle breeding. Their labor was also used in fishing, which continued to play a significant role.

The conditions in which the slaves lived were extremely difficult, and therefore the mortality rate among them was enormous. The life of a slave was little valued. There is evidence of the sacrifice of slaves.

Wars for hegemony in Sumer.

As the flat lands are further developed, the borders of the small Sumerian states begin to touch, a fierce struggle unfolds between individual states for land, for the head sections of irrigation structures. This struggle fills the history of the Sumerian states already in the first half of the III millennium BC. e. The desire of each of them to seize control of the entire irrigation network of Mesopotamia led to a struggle for hegemony in Sumer.

In the inscriptions of this time, there are two different titles for the rulers of the states of Mesopotamia - lugal and patesi (some researchers read this title ensi). The first of the titles, as can be assumed (there are other interpretations of these terms), denoted the independent head of the Sumerian city-state. The term patesi, which originally may have been a priestly title, denoted the ruler of a state that recognized the dominance of some other political center. Such a ruler played basically only the role of the high priest in his city, while political power belonged to the lugal of the state, to which he, patesi, obeyed. Lugal - the king of some Sumerian city-state - was by no means the king over other cities of Mesopotamia. Therefore, in Sumer in the first half of the III millennium there were several political centers, the heads of which bore the title of king - lugal.

One of these royal dynasties of Mesopotamia became stronger in the 27th-26th centuries. BC e. or somewhat earlier in Ur, after the loss of Shuruppak's former dominant position. Until that time, the city of Ur was dependent on the nearby Uruk, which occupies one of the first places in the royal lists. For a number of centuries, judging by the same royal lists, the city of Kish was of great importance. The legend about the struggle between Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, and Akka, the king of Kish, which is part of the cycle of Sumerian epic poems about the knight Gilgamesh, was mentioned above.

The power and wealth of the state created by the first dynasty of the city of Ur is evidenced by the monuments left by it. The aforementioned royal tombs, with their rich inventory - wonderful weapons and jewelry - testify to the development of metallurgy and improvements in the processing of metals (copper and gold). From the same tombs, interesting monuments of art have come down to us, such as, for example, the “standard” (more precisely, a portable canopy) with images of military scenes made in mosaic technology. Objects of applied art of high perfection have also been unearthed. The tombs also attract attention as monuments of building skill, for we find in them the use of such architectural forms as vaults and arches.

In the middle of the III millennium BC. e. Kish also claimed dominance in Sumer. But then Lagash advanced. Under the patesi of Lagash, Eannatum (about 247.0), the army of Umma was defeated in a bloody battle, when the patesi of this city, supported by the kings of Kish and Akshak, dared to violate the ancient border between Lagash and Umma. Eannatum commemorated his victory in an inscription which he carved on a large stone slab covered with images; it depicts Ningirsu, the main god of the city of Lagash, throwing a net over the army of enemies, the victorious advance of the army of Lagash, his solemn return from the campaign, etc. The plate of Eannatum is known in science under the name "Kite Steles" - according to one of its images, which presents a battlefield where kites torment the corpses of killed enemies. As a result of the victory, Eannatum restored the border and returned the fertile plots of land previously captured by the enemies. Eannatum also managed to defeat the eastern neighbors of Sumer - over the highlanders of Elam.

Eannatum's military successes, however, did not secure a lasting peace for Lagash. After his death, the war with the Ummah resumed. It was victoriously completed by Entemena, Eannatum's nephew, who also successfully repelled the Elamite raids. Under his successors, the weakening of Lagash began, again, apparently, submitting to Kish.

But the domination of the latter was also short-lived, perhaps due to the increased pressure of the Semitic tribes. In the struggle with the southern cities, Kish also began to suffer heavy defeats.

Military equipment.

The growth of productive forces and the constant wars that were waged between the states of Sumer created the conditions for the improvement of military equipment. We can judge its development on the basis of a comparison of two remarkable monuments. The first, more ancient of them, is the "standard" noted above, found in one of the tombs of Ur. It was decorated on four sides with mosaic images. On the front side are depicted scenes of war, on the back - scenes of triumph after the victory. On the front side, in the lower tier, there are chariots harnessed by four donkeys, trampling prostrate enemies with their hooves. In the body of a four-wheeled chariot stood a driver and a fighter armed with an ax, they were covered by the front of the body. A quiver with darts was attached to the front of the body. In the second tier, on the left, infantry is depicted, armed with heavy short spears, advancing on the enemy in a rare formation. The heads of the warriors, as well as the heads of the charioteer and the fighter on the chariot, are protected by helmets. The torso of foot soldiers was protected by a long cloak, made, perhaps, of leather. On the right, lightly armed warriors are depicted finishing off wounded enemies and stealing prisoners. On the chariots fought, presumably, the king and the highest nobility surrounding him.

The further development of Sumerian military equipment went along the line of strengthening heavily armed infantry, which could successfully replace chariots. This new stage in the development of the armed forces of Sumer is evidenced by the already mentioned "Stela of kites" by Eannatum. One of the images of the stele shows a tightly closed phalanx of six rows of heavily armed infantry at the moment of its crushing attack on the enemy. The soldiers are armed with heavy spears. The heads of the fighters are protected by helmets, and the body from the neck to the soles of the feet is covered with large quadrangular shields, so heavy that they were held by special shield bearers. The chariots on which the nobility used to fight have almost disappeared. Now the nobility fought on foot, in the ranks of a heavily armed phalanx. The armament of the Sumerian phalangites was so expensive that only people with a relatively large land plot could have it. People who had small plots of land served in the army lightly armed. Obviously, their combat value was considered small: they only finished off an already defeated enemy, and the heavily armed phalanx decided the outcome of the battle.

However, the question is whether there Sumerian civilization remained only a scientific hypothesis until, in 1877, an employee of the French consulate in Baghdad, Ernest de Sarzhak, made a discovery that became a historical milestone in the study of the Sumerian civilization.

In Tello, at the foot of a high hill, he found a figurine made in a completely unknown style. Monsieur de Sarzhac organized excavations there, and sculptures, figurines and clay tablets began to appear from the earth, decorated with ornaments never seen before.

Among the many items found was a statue of green diorite stone depicting the king and high priest of the city-state of Lagash. Many signs indicated that this statue was much older than any piece of art found until then in Mesopotamia. Even the most cautious archaeologists have admitted that the statue belongs to the 3rd or even 4th millennium BC. e. - that is, to the era preceding the emergence of the Assyrian-Babylonian culture.

Sumerian seals found

The most interesting and "informative" works of applied art, found in the course of lengthy excavations, were Sumerian seals. The earliest examples date back to around 3000 BC. These were stone cylinders from 1 to 6 cm high, often with a hole: apparently, many owners of seals wore them around their necks. Inscriptions (in mirror image) and drawings were cut out on the working surface of the seal.

Various documents were fastened with such seals, they were placed by craftsmen on made pottery. Documents were compiled by the Sumerians not on scrolls of papyrus or parchment, and not on sheets of paper, but on tablets of raw clay. After drying or firing such a tablet, the text and seal impression could be preserved for a long time.

The images on the seals were very diverse. The most ancient of them are mythical creatures: bird people, animal people, various flying objects, balls in the sky. There are gods in helmets, standing near the "tree of life", heavenly boats above the lunar disk, carrying creatures that look like people.

It should be noted that the motif known to us as the "tree of life" is interpreted by modern scientists in different ways. Some consider it an image of a certain ritual structure, others - a memorial stele. And, according to some, the "tree of life" is a graphical representation of the DNA double helix, the carrier of the genetic information of all living organisms.

The Sumerians knew the structure of the solar system

Experts in Sumerian culture consider one of the most mysterious seals the one that depicts the solar system. It was studied, among other scientists, by one of the most prominent astronomers of the 20th century, Carl Sagan.

The image on the seal irrefutably testifies that 5-6 thousand years ago the Sumerians knew that it was the Sun, and not the Earth, that was the center of our "near space". There is no doubt about this: the Sun on the seal is located in the middle, and it is much larger than the celestial bodies surrounding it.

However, the most surprising and important is not even this. The figure shows all the planets known to us today, and in fact the last of them, Pluto, was discovered only in 1930.

But this, as they say, is not all. First, in the Sumerian diagram, Pluto is not in its current location, but between Saturn and Uranus. And secondly, between Mars and Jupiter, the Sumerians placed some other celestial body.

Zecharia Sitchin on Nibiru

Zakharia Sitchin, a modern scholar with Russian roots, a specialist in biblical texts and culture of the Middle East, who speaks several languages of the Semitic group, is an expert in cuneiform writing, a graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science, journalist and writer, author of six books on paleoastronautics ( officially unrecognized science, searching for evidence of the existence of interplanetary and interstellar flights in the distant past, with the participation of both earthlings and inhabitants of other worlds), a member of the Israel Research Society.

He is convinced that the celestial body depicted on the seal and unknown to us today is another, the tenth planet of the solar system - Marduk-Nibiru.

Here is what Sitchin himself says about this:

There is another planet in our solar system that appears between Mars and Jupiter every 3600 years. The inhabitants of that planet came to Earth almost half a million years ago and did much of what we read about in the Bible, in the Book of Genesis. I predict that this planet, whose name is Nibiru, will approach Earth in our day. It is inhabited by intelligent beings - the Anunnaki, and they will move from their planet to ours and back. They created Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens. Outwardly, we look just like them.

An argument in favor of such a radical Sitchin hypothesis is the conclusion of a number of scientists, including Carl Sagan, that Sumerian civilization possessed vast knowledge in the field of astronomy, which can only be explained as a consequence of their contacts with some extraterrestrial civilization.

Sensational discovery - "Platonov's Year"

Even more sensational, according to some experts, is the discovery made on the Kuyunjik Hill, in Iraq, during the excavations of the ancient city of Nineveh. A text with calculations was found there, the result of which is represented by the number 195,955,200,000,000. This 15-digit number expresses in seconds 240 cycles of the so-called "Plato year", the duration of which is about 26 thousand "normal" years.

The study of this result of the strange mathematical exercises of the Sumerians was taken up by the French scientist Maurice Chatelain, a specialist in communication systems with spacecraft, who worked for more than twenty years in the American space agency NASA. For a long time, Chatelain's hobby was the study of paleoastanonomy - the astronomical knowledge of ancient peoples, about which he wrote several books.

High-precision calculations of the Sumerians

Chatelain suggested that the mysterious 15-digit number can express the so-called Great Constant of the solar system, which allows you to calculate with high accuracy the repetition rate of each period in the movement and evolution of the planets and their satellites.

So Chatelain comments on the result:

In all the cases I have verified, the period of revolution of a planet or comet has been (to within a few tenths) a fraction of the Great Constant from Nineveh, equal to 2268 million days. In my opinion, this circumstance serves as a convincing confirmation of the high accuracy with which the Constant was calculated thousands of years ago.

Further studies showed that in one case the inaccuracy of the Constant still manifests itself, namely in the cases of the so-called "tropical year", which is 365, 242,199 days. The difference between this value and the value obtained using the Constant was one whole and 386 thousandths of a second.

However, American experts doubted the inaccuracy of the Constant. The fact is that, according to recent studies, the duration of the tropical year every thousand years decreases by about 16 millionths of a second. And dividing the aforementioned error by this amount leads to a truly stunning conclusion: The Great Constant from Nineveh was calculated 64,800 years ago!

I consider it appropriate to recall that the ancient Greeks - the largest number was 10 thousand. Everything that exceeded this value was considered by them as infinity.

Clay tablet with a guide to space flight

The next “incredible but obvious” artifact of the Sumerian civilization, also found during the excavations of Nineveh, is an unusual round clay tablet with an inscription ... a guide for spaceship pilots!

The plate is divided into 8 identical sectors. Various drawings are visible on the surviving sections: triangles and polygons, arrows, straight and curved dividing lines. The deciphering of the inscriptions and meanings on this unique tablet was carried out by a group of researchers, which included linguists, mathematicians and space navigation specialists.

Researchers have concluded that the tablet contains descriptions of the "travel route" of the supreme deity Enlil, who headed the heavenly council of the Sumerian gods. The text indicates which planets Enlil flew by during his journey, which was carried out in accordance with the compiled route. It also provides information about the flights of "cosmonauts" arriving on Earth from the tenth planet - Marduk.

Map for spaceships

The first sector of the tablet contains data on the flight of the spacecraft, which, on its way, flies around the planets encountered along the way from the outside. Approaching the Earth, the ship passes through the "puffs of steam" and then descends lower into the "clear sky" zone.

After that, the crew turns on the landing system equipment, starts the brake engines and leads the ship over the mountains to a pre-planned landing site. The flight path between the astronauts' home planet Marduk and the Earth passes between Jupiter and Mars, which follows from the surviving inscriptions in the second sector of the tablet.

In the third sector, the sequence of actions of the crew in the process of landing on Earth is given. There is also a mysterious phrase: "Landing is controlled by the deity Ninya."

The fourth sector contains information on how to navigate by the stars during the flight to the Earth, and then, already above its surface, bring the ship to the landing site, guided by the terrain.

According to Maurice Chatelain, a round tablet is nothing more than a guide to space flights with an appropriate map-scheme attached.

Here, in particular, the schedule for the implementation of the successive stages of the landing of the ship is given, the moments and place of passage of the upper and lower layers of the atmosphere, the inclusion of brake engines, the mountains and cities over which you should fly over are indicated, as well as the location of the spaceport where the ship should land.

All this information is accompanied by a large number of numbers containing, probably, data on the altitude and airspeed that should be observed when performing the steps mentioned above.

It is known that the Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations arose suddenly. Both were characterized by an inexplicably vast amount of knowledge in various spheres of human life and activity (in particular, in the field of astronomy).

Cosmodromes of the ancient Sumerians

After studying the content of the texts on the Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian clay tablets, Zecharia Sitchin came to the conclusion that in the ancient world, covering Egypt, the Middle East and Mesopotamia, there must have been several such places where spacecraft from the planet Marduk could land. And these places, most likely, were located in the territories that ancient legends speak of as the centers of the most ancient civilizations and where traces of such civilizations were actually discovered.

According to cuneiform tablets, aliens from other planets used an air corridor to fly over the Earth, extending over the basins of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. And on the surface of the Earth, this corridor was marked by a number of points that served as "road signs" - they could navigate and, if necessary, adjust the flight parameters, the crew of the spacecraft going to land.

The most important of these points was undoubtedly Mount Ararat, towering over 5,000 meters above sea level. If we draw a line on the map running from Ararat strictly to the south, then it will intersect with the imaginary axial line of the mentioned air corridor at an angle of 45 degrees. At the point of intersection of these lines is the Sumerian city of Sippar (literally "City of the Bird"). Here is the ancient cosmodrome, on which they landed and from which the ships of the "guests" from the planet Marduk took off.

To the southeast of Sippar, along the center line of the air corridor, ending over the swamps of the then Persian Gulf, strictly on the center line or with small (up to 6 degrees) deviations from it, a number of other control points were located at the same distance from each other:

Nippur
Shuruppak
Larsa
Ibira
Lagash
Eridu

Central among them, both in location and in importance, were Nippur (“Crossing Place”), where the Mission Control Center was located, and Eridu, located in the very south of the corridor and served as the main landmark when spacecraft landed.

All these points became, in modern terms, city-forming enterprises, settlements gradually grew around them, which then turned into large cities.

Aliens lived on Earth

For 100 years, the planet Marduk was at a fairly close distance from the Earth, and these years, "older brothers in mind" regularly visited the earthlings from space.

The deciphered cuneiform texts suggest that some aliens remained forever on our planet and that the inhabitants of Marduk could land troops from mechanical robots or biorobots on some planets or their satellites.

In the Sumerian epic legend about Gilgamesh, the semi-legendary ruler of the city of Uruk, in the period 2700-2600 BC. the ancient city of Baalbek, located on the territory of modern Lebanon, is mentioned. It is known, in particular, for the ruins of gigantic structures made of stone blocks processed and fitted to each other with high precision, the weight of which reaches 100 tons or more. Who, when and for what purpose erected these megalithic structures remains a mystery to this day.

According to the texts of the clay tablets by the Anunnaki Sumerian civilization called "alien gods" who arrived from another planet and taught them to read and write, transferred their knowledge and skills from many fields of science and technology.

In the introductory lecture to this section, it was told about the course of the emergence of the first class society and about the specific path of its development that took shape in the lower part of the Euphrates valley - in ancient Sumer and in the Nile valley - in Egypt. Let us consider more specifically how historical development took place in early antiquity in the lower valley of the Euphrates, or Lower Mesopotamia (the ancient Greeks called Mesopotamia the interfluve of the Tigris and Euphrates. Now the territory of historical Mesopotamia is included in Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Lower Mesopotamia (the southern part of modern Iraq) is called also Mesopotamia).

We already know that this country, separated from the rest of Asia Minor by barely passable deserts, was inhabited around the 6th millennium BC. During the VI-IV millennia, the tribes that settled here lived extremely poorly: barley, sown on a narrow strip of land between swamps and a scorched desert and irrigated by unregulated and uneven floods, brought small and unstable crops. Sowing was better on lands that were irrigated by canals diverted from the small Diyala River, a tributary of the Tigris. Only by the middle of the IV millennium BC. separate groups of communities coped with the creation of rational drainage and irrigation systems in the Euphrates basin.

The basin of the lower Euphrates is a vast flat plain, bounded from the east by the river. The Tigris, followed by the spurs of the Iranian mountains, and from the west - the cliffs of the Syrian-Arabian semi-desert. Without proper irrigation and reclamation works, this plain is in places a desert, in places - swampy shallow lakes, bordered by thickets of huge reeds teeming with insects. At present, the desert part of the plain is crossed by ramparts of emissions from canal digging, and if the capal is active, then date palms stretch along these ramparts. In some places, clay hills - telli - rise above the flat surface. and ash - ishans. These are the ruins of cities, or rather, hundreds of mud brick houses and temple towers, reed huts and adobe groans that existed successively on the same bridge. However, in ancient times there were no hills or ramparts here. Marshy lagoons occupied much more space than now, stretching across all of what is now southern Iraq, and only in the extreme south came across low-lying deserted islands. Gradually, the silt of the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Elamite rivers running from the northeast (which also flowed into the Persian Gulf, like the Tigris and the Euphrates, but at an angle of 90 ° to them) created an alluvial barrier that expanded the territory of the plain by 120 kilometers to the south. There, where previously swampy estuaries freely communicated with the Persian Gulf (this place was called in ancient times the “Bitter Sea”), now the river flows. Shatt-el-Arabd, in which the Euphrates and the Tigris now merge, each previously having its own mouth and its own lagoons.

The Euphrates within Lower Mesopotamia was divided into several channels; of these, the most important were the western, or Euphrates proper, and the more eastern, Iturungal; from the latter to the lagoon in the southeast, another canal I-Yaina-gena departed. To the east, the Tigris River flowed, but its banks were deserted, except for the place where the Diyala tributary flowed into the Ness.

From each of the main channels in the IV millennium BC. several smaller canals were diverted, and with the help of a system of dams and reservoirs, it was possible to retain water on each for regular irrigation of fields throughout the growing season. Thanks to this, yields immediately increased and the accumulation of products became possible. This, in turn, led to the second great division of labor, i.e. to the allocation of specialized crafts, and then to the possibility of class stratification, namely, to the allocation of a class of slave owners, on the one hand, and to the widespread exploitation of bonded people of the slave type, or slaves in the broad sense (patriarchal slaves and helots), on the other.

At the same time, it should be noted that the extremely hard work of building and cleaning canals (as well as other earthworks) was carried out mainly not by slaves, but by community members in the order of duty (These works were necessary for the very existence of people; nevertheless, they were a duty, t i.e. a form of tax, just like military service or defense taxes, but not every tax should be considered as exploitation.); every free adult spent an average of a month or two a year on this, and this was the case throughout the history of ancient Mesopotamia. The main agricultural work - plowing and sowing - was also carried out by free community members. Only noble people, invested with power and performing positions that were considered socially important, did not personally participate in the duties, and they did not plow the land either.

A massive survey by archaeologists of the remains of the most ancient settlements of Lower Mesopotamia shows that the process of settling local reclamation and irrigation systems was accompanied by the resettlement of residents from the scattered smallest settlements of large family communities to the center of the nomes, where the main temples with their rich granaries and workshops were located. The temples were centers for collecting nome reserve funds; from here, on behalf of the temple administration, trading agents, tamkars, were sent to distant countries to exchange bread and fabrics of Lower Mesopotamia for timber, metals, slaves and slaves. At the beginning of the second quarter of the III millennium BC. densely saline spaces around the main temples are surrounded by city walls. Around 3000-2900 BC. Temple households are becoming so complex and extensive that it took a record of their economic activities. As a result, writing was born.

The invention of writing. proto-literate period.

Already very early in the course of human history it was necessary to make messages not only orally, from face to face, but also through time and space. For this, special mnemonic (memorial) signs were used, depicting waxes about which something had to be reported or which evoked some necessary associations. We know quite a lot about such signs among tribes that lived back in the 19th-20th centuries. in primitive conditions, but, unfortunately, until recently there was no information about the mnemonic signs of the ancient Neolithic tribes, until the American researcher D. Schmandt-Besserat discovered that the Neolithic population of Western Asia no later than the 6th-5th millennium BC. used for communication not only things that had a different main purpose (for example, a bunch of arrows for declaring war), and not only long-vanished drawings of paint or soot, but also three-dimensional images of objects, sometimes collected in special clay containers - “envelopes”. In form, these three-dimensional mnemonic signs for communication are very similar to the first Mesopotamian pictorial signs, which already constituted a certain system.

On the verge of IV and III millennia BC. in Lower Mesopotamia, signs were drawn on plastic tiles made of clay with the angle of a reed stick. Each sign-drawing denoted either the depicted object itself, or any concept associated with this object. For example, the firmament, drawn with strokes, meant "night" and thus also "black", "dark", "sick", "illness", "darkness", etc. The sign of the foot meant "to go", "walk", "stand", "bring", etc. The grammatical forms of words were not expressed, and this was not necessary, since usually only numbers and signs of countable objects were entered in the document. True, it was more difficult to convey the names of the recipients of the objects, but even here at first it was possible to get by with the names of their professions: the bugle denoted a coppersmith, a mountain (as a sign of a foreign country) a slave, a terrace (?) (maybe a kind of tribune) - a leader- priest, etc. But soon they began to resort to a rebus: if na meant “stone”, “weight”, then the sign of the weight next to the sign of the foot suggested the reading of the gene - “going”, and the sign of the “heap” - ba next to the same sign suggested the reading of the lip - “ standing, etc. Sometimes whole words were written in a rebus way, if the corresponding concept was difficult to convey in a drawing; so, gi "return, add" was denoted by the sign of "reed" - gi. The oldest texts written in pictorial mnemonic signs date back to about 3000 BC. or somewhat later, but at least 600 years passed, until writing from a system of purely reminder signs turned into an ordered system for transmitting speech information in time and at a distance. This happened around 2400 BC.

By this time, due to the impossibility of quickly drawing curvilinear figures without burrs, etc., on clay. the signs had already turned into simple combinations of straight lines, in which it was difficult to recognize the original design. At the same time, each dash, due to the pressure on the clay with the corner of a rectangular stick, received a wedge-shaped character; hence such writing is called cuneiform. Each sign in cuneiform can have several verbal meanings and several purely sound ones (they usually talk about the syllabic meanings of signs, but this is not true: sound values \u200b\u200bcan also mean half a syllable, for example, the syllable bab can be written with two “syllabic” signs: ba-ab; the meaning will be same as with one sign bab, the difference is in the convenience of memorization and in saving space when writing signs, but not in reading). Some signs could also be "determinatives", i.e. unreadable signs that only indicate which category of concepts the neighboring sign belongs to (wooden or metal objects, fish, birds, professions, etc.); thus facilitating the correct choice of reading from several possible ones.

Despite all the inaccuracy of the written transmission of speech in the archaic period of the history of Lower Mesopotamia, the Soviet scientist A.A. Wyman nevertheless managed to read some of the most ancient economic documents of the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. This circumstance, as well as the study of the drawings themselves used for writing, along with archeological data, allow us to restore to a certain extent the most ancient social history of this country, although individual events over a long historical period remain unknown.

First of all, we are faced with the question of what kind of people first created the civilization of Lower Mesopotamia. What language did he speak? The study of the language of some later cuneiform inscriptions (from about 2500 BC) and proper names mentioned in the inscriptions (from about 2700 BC) showed scientists that already at that time a population lived in Lower Mesopotamia who spoke (and later wrote) at least two completely different languages - Sumerian and East Semitic. The Sumerian language, with its bizarre grammar, is not related to any of the languages that have survived to this day. East Semitic, which was later called Akkadian or Babylonian-Assyrian, belongs to the Semitic family of the Afroasian superfamily of languages; currently belong to the same family: a number of Ethiopian languages (Including the Tigre language, the native language of Pushkin's ancestor - Hannibal"), Arabic, the language of the island of Malta in the Mediterranean, the Hebrew language in Israel and the New Aramaic language of a small people, calling themselves Assyrians and living scattered in different countries, including the USSR. Akkadian itself, or Babylonian-Assyrian, the language, like a number of other Semitic languages, died out before the beginning of our era. The Afroasian superfamily (but not the Semitic family) also included the ancient Egyptian language, and it still includes a number of languages of North Africa, up to Tanzania, Nigeria and the Atlantic Ocean.

There is reason to think that in the 4th millennium BC, and maybe later, in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, a population still lived who spoke other, long-extinct languages. Perhaps it was this population that first created the irrigation of the land in the valley of the river. Diyali, and also began to develop the plain of Lower Mesopotamia, although in the latter case, the main role, obviously, belonged to the Sumerians, and in the northern part of the region - to the eastern Semites.

As for the most ancient Mesopotamian written texts (from about 2900 to 2500 BC), they are undoubtedly written exclusively in the Sumerian language. This is evident from the nature of the rebus use of signs: it is obvious that if the word "reed" - gi coincides with the word "return, add" - gi, then we have exactly the language in which such a sound coincidence exists. And this is the Sumerian language. However, this does not mean that the Eastern Semites, and perhaps the speakers of another language unknown to us, did not live in Lower Mesopotamia on an equal footing with the Sumerians already at that time and even earlier. There is no reliable data, neither archaeological nor linguistic, that would make us think that the Eastern Semites were nomads and that they did not participate, together with the Sumerians, in the great work of developing the river. Euphrates. There is also no reason to believe that the Eastern Semites invaded Mesopotamia around 2750 BC, as many scholars have assumed; on the contrary, linguistic data rather make us think that they settled between the Euphrates and the Tigris already in the Neolithic era. Yet, apparently, the population of southern Mesopotamia until about 2350 spoke mainly Sumerian, while in the central and northern parts of Lower Mesopotamia, along with Sumerian, East Semitic was also spoken; it also prevailed in Upper Mesopotamia.

Judging by the available data, there was no ethnic hostility between people who spoke these languages so different from each other. Obviously, at that time people did not yet think in such large categories as monolingual ethnic arrays: they were friends with each other, and smaller units were at enmity - tribes, nomes, territorial communities. All the inhabitants of Lower Mesopotamia called themselves the same "black-headed" (in Sumerian sanz-ngiga, in Akkadian tsalmat-kakkadi.) regardless of the language each spoke.

Since the historical events of such an ancient time are unknown to us, historians use archaeological periodization to subdivide the ancient history of Lower Mesopotamia. Archaeologists distinguish between the Proto-literate period (2900-2750 BC, with two sub-periods) (Perhaps these dates should be somewhat older.) and the Early Dynastic period (2750-2310 BC, with three sub-periods).

From the Proto-written period, if we count individual random documents, three archives have come down to us: two (one older, the other younger) - from the city of Uruk (now Varka), in the south of Lower Mesopotamia, and one, contemporary to the later Uruk, - from the settlement of Dzhemdet-nasr, to the north (the ancient name of the city is unknown). The social structure of the proto-written period was studied by Soviet scientists L.I. Tyumenev, who proceeded only from the study of drawings-signs, as such, and A.L. Wyman, who managed to read some of the documents in their entirety.

Note that the writing system used in the Proto-writing period was, despite its cumbersomeness, completely identical in the south of Lower Mesopotamia and in the north. This speaks in favor of the fact that it was created in one center, authoritative enough for the local invention to be borrowed by various nome communities of Lower Mesopotamia, despite the fact that there was neither economic nor political unity between them and their main channels were separated. from each other stripes of the desert. This center, apparently, was the city of Nippur, located between the south and north of the lower Euphrates plain. Here was the temple of the god Enlil, who was worshiped by all the "blackheads", although each nome had its own mythology and pantheon (system of deities). Probably, there was a ritual center of the Sumerian tribal union here even in the pre-state period. Nippur has never been a political center; it remained an important cultural center for a long time.

All documents come from the economic archive of the temple of Eanna, which belonged to the goddess Inana, around which the city of Uruk was consolidated, and from a similar temple archive found at the site of Dzhemdet-nasr. From the documents it can be seen that in the temple economy there were many specialized ones: artisans and many captive slaves and slaves; however, male slaves probably merged with the general mass of people dependent on the temple - in any case, this was undoubtedly the case two centuries later. It also turns out that the community allotted large tracts of land to its main official limes - the priest-soothsayer, the chief judge, the senior priestess, and the foreman of commercial agents. But the lion's share went to the priest who bore the rank of en.

The land allotted to the enu - ashag-en, or nig-ena - gradually became specially temple land; the harvest from it went to the community's reserve insurance fund, for exchange with other communities and countries, for sacrifices to the gods and for the maintenance of the temple staff - its artisans, warriors, farmers, fishermen, etc. (Priests usually had their own personal land in communities in addition to the temple) . Who cultivated the land of the nig-en in the Proto-literate period is not yet entirely clear to them; later it was cultivated by helots of various kinds. Another archive tells us about this from the archaic city of Ur, neighboring Uruk, as well as some others; they belong already to the beginning of the next, Early Dynastic period.

early dynastic period.

At the end of the III millennium BC. The Sumerians created a kind of primitive history - the “King List”, a list of kings who allegedly ruled in turn and sequentially from the beginning of the world in different cities of Mesopotamia. The kings who ruled in a row in the same city conventionally constituted one “dynasty”. In fact, this list included both historical and mythical characters, and the dynasties of individual cities often actually ruled not sequentially, but in parallel. In addition, most of the listed rulers were not yet kings: they bore the titles of high priests-en, "big people" (i.e. leaders-warlords, lu-gal, lugal) or priest-builders (?-ensi). The adoption by the ruler of one or another title depended on the circumstances, on local urban traditions, etc. The figures of years, expressing in the list the duration of individual reigns, are only rarely reliable, but more often they are the fruit of later arbitrary manipulations with numbers; The "Royal List" is based, in essence, on the count of generations, and along two main, originally independent lines connected with the cities of Uruk and Ur in the south of Lower Mesopotamia and with the city of Kish in the north. If we discard the fantastic dynasties of the "King's List" that ruled "before the flood", then the beginning of the I Kish dynasty - the first "after the flood" - will approximately correspond to the beginning of the Early Dynastic period according to archaeological periodization (this part of the Early Dynastic period is conventionally called RD I). It is to this time that the above-mentioned archaic archive from the city of Ur, adjacent to Uruk, dates back.

The penultimate of the rulers of the 1st dynasty of Kish is En-Menbaragesi, the first Sumerian statesman, about whom we are informed not only by the “King List”, but also by his own inscriptions, so there is no doubt about his historicity. He fought with Elam, i.e. with cities in the valley of the rivers Karuna and Kerkhe. neighboring Sumer and passing the same path of development. Perhaps, the historicity of the son of En-Mepbaragesi, Aggi, is also beyond doubt, known to us, apart from the “Royal List”, only from an epic song that has come down in a recording made almost a thousand years later. According to this song, Agga tried to subjugate southern Uruk to his native Kish, and the council of elders of Uruk was ready to agree to this. But the people's assembly of the city, proclaiming the leader-priest (ene) named resistance. Agga's siege of Uruk was unsuccessful, and as a result, Kish itself was forced to submit to Gilgamesh of Uruk, who, according to the King's List, belonged to the 1st dynasty of Uruk.

Gilgamesh was subsequently the hero of a number of Sumerian epic songs, and then the greatest epic poem, “compiled in the Akkadian (East Semitic) language. They will be discussed in a lecture on the Sumerian and Babylonian cultures. We only note here that the linking of an epic plot to a historical person is a very common phenomenon in the history of ancient literatures; nevertheless, the myths that make up the plot of the epic songs about Gilgamesh are much older than the historical Gilgamesh. But he, in any case, was obviously a remarkable enough personality to be remembered so firmly by later generations (already soon after his death he was deified, and his name was known in the Middle East as early as the 11th century AD). The epics present as his most important feats the construction of the urban moan of Uruk and the campaign for the cedar forest (according to a later tradition - to Lebanon, but originally, probably, the legend spoke of a campaign for the forest in the closer mountains of Iran. Whether there really was such a campaign is unknown) .

With Gilgamesh, the second stage of the Early Dynastic Period (RD II) begins. The socio-economic conditions of that time are known from another archive found in the ancient town of Shuruppak and containing economic and legal documents, as well as educational texts of the 26th century. before. AD (Such texts, as well as the first records of literary works, were also found at another settlement of the same time, now called Abu Salabikh.). One part of this archive comes from the temple economy, while the other part comes from the private donations of individual community members.

From these documents we learn that the territorial community (nom) Shuruppak was part of a military alliance of communities headed by Uruk. Here, apparently, then the direct descendants of Gilgamesh ruled - the I dynasty of Uruk. Some of the Shuruppak warriors were stationed in various cities of the union, but for the most part, the Uruk Lugals, apparently, did not interfere in the internal communal affairs. The economy of the temple was already quite clearly separated from the land of the territorial community and the private farms of household large-family communities located on it, but the connection between the temple and the community remained, for all that, quite tangible. Thus, the territorial community helped the temple economy at critical moments with draft power (donkeys), and perhaps the labor of its members, and the temple economy supplied food for the traditional feast, which was accompanied by the people's gathering. The ruler of the nome Shypyppak was an ensi-insignificant figure; he was allocated a relatively small allotment, and, apparently, the council of elders and some priests were more important than him. The lot was counted not by the years of the ensi's reign, but by annual periods. during which, apparently. some kind of ritual position was performed in turn by representatives of different temples and territorial communities of a lower order, which constituted the nome of Shuruppak.

Outside the temple, household extended families sometimes sold their land; the payment for it was received by the patriarch of the family community or, if he died, undivided brothers of the next generation; other adult members of the community received gifts or a token treat for agreeing to the deal. Pay. for land (in produce or copper) was very low, and perhaps after a certain period of time the "buyer" had to return the plot to the home community of the original owners.

By the middle of the III millennium BC. along with the military and cult leaders (lugals, eps and ensi), who were: in complete political dependence on the advice of the elders of their nomes, a new figure-lugal-hegemon was clearly outlined. Such a lugal relied on his personal followers and retinue, which he could maintain without asking the council of elders; with the help of such a squad, he could conquer other nomes and thus rise above individual councils, which remained purely nome organizations. Lugal-hegemon usually took the title of lugal Kish in the north of the country (in a play on words, this simultaneously meant “lugal of forces”, “lugal of hosts” (Often also translated as “king of the universe”, but this is apparently inaccurate.)), but on in the south of the country, the title of lugal of the whole country; to receive this title, one had to be recognized in the temple of the city of Nippur.

In order to gain independence from the new communal self-government bodies, the lugals needed independent means, and above all land, because it was much more convenient than completely to reward their supporters with land plots from which they would feed themselves. to keep them on bread and other rations. Both funds and land were at the temples. Therefore, the Lugali began to strive to take over the temples - either by marrying the high priestesses, or by forcing the council to elect themselves both as a commander and high priest at the same time, while entrusting the temple administration instead of the community elders to dependent people who were personally obliged to the ruler.

The richest lugals were the rulers of the 1st dynasty of Ur, which replaced the 1st dynasty of neighboring Uruk - Mesanepada and his successors (the later of them moved from Ur to Uruk and formed the 2nd dynasty of Uruk). Their wealth was based not only on their seizure of temple land (which we can guess from some indirect data) (Thus, Mesanepada titled himself “the husband of a (heavenly?) harlot” - does this mean “heavenly harlot, the goddess Inana of Uruk”, or “priestesses of the goddess Inana.” In any case, this means that he claimed power over the temple of Inana.), but also on trade.

During excavations in Ur, archaeologists stumbled upon an amazing: a burial. A gentle passage led to it, in which carts pulled by oxen stood; the entrance to the crypt was guarded by warriors in helmets and with spears. Both oxen and warriors were killed during the burial. The crypt itself was a fairly large room dug into the ground; Dozens of women, some with musical instruments, sat near its walls (or rather, once sat - archaeologists found their skeletons fallen to the floor). Their hair was once swept back and held over their foreheads instead of a mite with a silver stripe. One of the women, apparently, did not have time to put on her silver hoop, it remained in the folds of her clothes, and prints of expensive fabric were preserved on the metal.

In one corner of the crypt was a small brick chamber under a vault. It turned out not to be an ordinary Sumerian burial, as one might expect, but the remains of a bed on which a woman lay on her back in a cloak of blue beads made from imported stone - lapis lazuli, in rich beads of carnelian and gold, with large gold earrings and in a kind of headdress made of golden flowers. Judging by the inscription on her seal, the woman's name was Puabi (The reading of the name, as often happens in ancient Mesopotamian inscriptions, is unreliable, but in any case, it cannot be read Shub-ad, as suggested in popular and some special works.). Many gold and silver Puabi utensils were found, as well as two extraordinary harp works with sculptures of a bull and a cow made of gold and lapis lazuli on the resonator.

Archaeologists have found nearby several more burials of the same kind, but worse preserved; none of them preserved the remains of the central character.

No signs of violence were found on any of the victims in Puabi's burial. Probably they were all poisoned - put to sleep. It is quite possible that they voluntarily submitted to their fate in order to continue in the other world the habitual service of their mistress. In any case, it is unbelievable that Nuabi's guards and her court women in their expensive attire were simple slaves. The unusualness of this and other similar burials, plant symbols and Nyabi’s dress, the fact that she lay as if on a marriage bed, the fact that a bearded wild bull, the personification of the Ursk god Naina (the god Lupa), and a wild cow were depicted on her golden harps , the personification of the wife of Naina, the goddess Ningal - all this led some researchers to the idea that Nuabi was not a simple wife of an Uruk lugal, but a priestess-ep, a participant in the rites of a sacred marriage with the god of the moon.

Be that as it may, the burial of Puabi and other burials of the I dynasty of Ur (c. XXV century BC) testify to the exceptional wealth of the ruling elite of the Ur state, which apparently headed the southern union of the Lower Mesopotamian Sumerian nomes. One can quite confidently indicate the source of this wealth: the gold and carnelian beads of Puabi come from the Hindustan Peninsula, lapis lazuli - from the mines of Badakhshan in Northern Afghanistan; one must think that he also arrived at Ur by sea through India. It is no coincidence that the burials of the lugals of Kish of that time are much poorer: it was Ur that was the port of maritime trade with India. High-nosed Sumerian ships, connected from long reed trunks and smeared with natural asphalt, with a sail of mats on a mast of thick reed, sailed along the coast of the Persian Gulf to the island of Dilmun (now Bahrain) and further to the Indian Ocean and, possibly, reached the ports Melakhi (In the literature it is also called Meluhkha; both readings are acceptable.) - the countries of the ancient Indian civilization - not far from the mouth of the river. Ind.

The last stage of the Early Dynastic Period (RD III) begins with the I Dynasty of Ur. In addition to the city of Ur, in Lower Mesopotamia at that time there were other independent nome communities, and some of them were headed by lugals, no less than the lugals of Ur, striving for hegemony. All oi lived in constant skirmishes with each other - this is a characteristic feature of the period; fought over fertile strips of land, over canals, over accumulated wealth. Among the states whose rulers claimed hegemony, the most important was the nome of Kish in the north of Lower Mesopotamia and the nome of Lagash in the southeast. Lagash was located on the branch of the Euphrates - I-Nina-gene and overlooked the lagoon of the river. Tiger. The capital of Lagash was the city of Girsu.

Much more documents and inscriptions of this period have come down to us from Lagash than from other cities of Lower Mesopotamia. Especially important is the surviving archive of the temple economy of the goddess Baba. From this archive we learn that the temple land was divided into three categories: 1) the actual temple land of the nig-en, which was cultivated by the dependent farmers of the temple, and the income from it went partly to the maintenance of the household staff, but mainly constituted a sacrificial, reserve and exchange fund ; 2) allotment land, which consisted of plots that were given out to part of the staff of the temple - petty administrators, artisans and farmers; from the holders of such allotments, the military squad of the temple was also recruited; often the allotment was given to a group, and then some of the workers were considered dependent "people" of their boss; the allotments did not belong to the holders on the right of ownership, but were only a form of feeding the staff; if for some reason it was more convenient for the administration, it could take away the allotment or not give it out at all, but content the worker with a ration; only slaves were provided with rations, weaving, spinning, caring for livestock, etc., as well as their children and all male laborers: they were actually in a slave position and were often acquired through purchase, but the children of slaves were subsequently transferred to another category of workers ; 3) share-cropping land, which was given out by temples, apparently, to everyone on rather favorable terms: a certain share of the crop had to be ceded to the temple by the holder of a plot of such land.

In addition, outside the temple, the lands of large family home communities still existed; on these lands, slave labor, as far as we can tell, was used only occasionally.

Major officials of the pomo state, including priests and the ruler himself, received very significant estates for their position. They had their dependent "people" working for them, just like those on the temple grounds. It is not entirely clear whether such lands were considered to belong to the state fund and were only in the use of officials or their property. Apparently, this was not clear enough to the Lagashians themselves. The fact is that property, unlike ownership, consists primarily in the ability to dispose of its object at one’s discretion, in particular, to alienate it, i.e. sell, donate, bequeath. According to the concept of the possibility of complete alienation of land, it contradicted the most fundamental ideas inherited by the ancient Mesopotamians from primitive times, and rich and noble people could not have a need to alienate land: on the contrary, poor families of community members sometimes had to alienate land in order to pay off their debts, however, such transactions were apparently not considered completely irreversible. Sometimes the rulers could force someone to alienate land in their favor. Property relations, fully reflecting the antagonistic class structure of society, in Lower Mesopotamia of the 3rd millennium BC, apparently, have not yet developed into fairly distinct forms. It is important for us that there already existed a stratification of society into a class of property-owners who had the ability to exploit the labor of others; the class of workers, but still exploited, but still exploiting the labor of others: and the class of persons deprived of ownership of the means of production and subjected to non-economic exploitation; it included exploited workers assigned to large farms (helots), as well as patriarchal slaves.

The rulers of Lagash, no less than others, dreamed of hegemony in Lower Mesopotamia, but the neighboring city of Umma blocked their path to the center of the country near the place where the branch of I-Nina-gena departed from the sleeve of Iturupgal; with Umma, moreover, for many generations there were bloody disputes because of the fertile region bordering between it and Lagash. The rulers of Lagash bore the title of ensi and received the title of lugal from the council or the people's assembly only temporarily, along with special powers - for the duration of an important military campaign or any other important events.

The army of the ruler of the Sumerian nome of this time consisted of relatively small detachments of heavily armed warriors. In addition to a copper cone-shaped helmet, they were protected by heavy felt cloaks with large copper plaques or huge copper-forged shields; they fought in close formation, and the back rows, protected by the shields of the front row, put forward, like bristles, long spears. There were also primitive chariots on solid wheels, harnessed, apparently, by onagers (The horse had not yet been domesticated, but it is possible that mares were already caught in the mountainous regions of Western Asia for crossing with donkeys.) - large semi-wild donkeys, with chariots mounted on the apron quivers for throwing darts.

At the head of both heavily armed and militia detachments, the ruler of Lagash, Eanatum, temporarily elected by the lugal, defeated shortly after 2400 BC. neighboring Ummah and inflicted huge losses in people at that time. Although in his native Lagash he had to be satisfied with only the title of ensi in the future, he successfully continued the wars with other nomes, including Ur and Kish, and eventually appropriated the title of Kish lugal. However, his successors were not able to maintain hegemony over other nomes for a long time.

All this caused discontent among the most diverse segments of the population in Lagash. Enentarzi's successor, Lugaland, was deposed, although perhaps he continued to live in Lagash as a private individual, and was elected (apparently by the popular assembly) Uruinimgin (2318-2310 [?] BC) in his place. )(Earlier, his name was misread "Urukagina".). In the second year of his reign, he received the powers of a lugal and carried out a reform, about which, at his order, inscriptions were drawn up. Apparently, he was not the first to carry out such reforms in Sumer - they were periodically carried out earlier, but we only know about the reform of Uruinimgina thanks to his inscriptions in a little more detail. It formally boiled down to the fact that the lands of the deities Ningirsu, Baba, etc. were again withdrawn from the property of the ruler's family, that the exactions contrary to custom and some other arbitrary actions of the ruler's people were stopped, the position of the junior priesthood and the wealthier part of the dependent people in temple households was improved. , canceled debt transactions, etc. However, in essence, the situation has changed little: the removal of temple facilities from the property of the ruler was purely nominal, the entire government administration remained in its place. The reasons for the impoverishment of the community members, which forced them to take on debt, were also not eliminated. Meanwhile, Uruinimgina got involved in a war with neighboring Umma; this war had grave consequences for Lagash.

At that time, Lugalzagesi ruled in Umma, who inherited power over the entire south of Lower Mesopotamia, except for Lagash, from the I dynasty of Ur-II of the dynasty of Uruk. His war with Uruinimgina lasted several years and ended with the capture of a good half of the territory of Uruinimgina and the decline of the rest of his state. Having defeated Lagash in 2312 BC. (date is conditional) (The weight of the dates given in this chapter may contain an error of the order of one hundred years in one direction or another, but in relation to each other, the distances between the two indicated dates do not differ by more than one generation. For example, the date of the beginning of the Proto-Written Period (2900 in this chapter) may actually fluctuate between 3000 and 2800 BC, the date of the beginning of the reign of Eanatum (2400 in this chapter) is from 2500 to 2300. But the distance from the swing of the reign of Eanatum to the end reign of Uruinimgina (90 years, or three generations, according to the chronological calculations adopted in this chapter) cannot be less than two or more than four generations.), Lugalzagesi then defeated Kish, having ensured that the northern rulers began to let his merchants through, for whom already before that, the way was opened for the Persian Gulf to India, also to the north - to the Mediterranean Sea, to Syria and Asia Minor, from where valuable varieties of wood, copper and silver were delivered. But soon Lugalzagesi himself suffered a crushing defeat.

source "Historic.Ru: World History"

Portal for the student. Self-training

Resettlement in Mesopotamia Semites.

Ancient documents in the history of Sumer.

Economic life.

Socio-economic relations.

Wars for hegemony in Sumer.

Military equipment.

Sumerian seals found

The Sumerians knew the structure of the solar system

Zecharia Sitchin on Nibiru

Sensational discovery - "Platonov's Year"

High-precision calculations of the Sumerians

Clay tablet with a guide to space flight

Map for spaceships

Cosmodromes of the ancient Sumerians

Aliens lived on Earth

The invention of writing. proto-literate period.

early dynastic period.

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