Civilization is an interesting word.  It’s often thrown about haphazardly by people, like they would speak of nations or continents.  In recent years westerners have often appealed to peoples idealized concepts of civilization.  Western leaders have spoke of protecting the “civilized world”.  This is even more so interesting in today’s political climate given that civilization began some 5500 years ago in Sumer, a lush stretch of land in the south of modern Iraq.

The Sumerians, like fairies or unicorns, existed early on among western academic circles as a sort of mythical animal.  They created densely formed language and written text and formed a cultural crutch that propped up the Babylonians and Assyrians to follow centuries later.  It was around a bar table that a young German man, like so many Europeans of his age deeply interested in the plunder of the ancient orient, took up a bet that he could crack the code of cuneiform text.  In 1802 Georg Friedrich Grotefend presented his first findings to an astounded group at the Academy of Sciences in Gottingen.  This work, and those of many academic cowboys to follow, led to the early whispers.  Surely a language with such a depth of alphabetic, syllabic, and pictographic scripts could not have appeared with the first Babylonians.  There must have been a predecessor group that led early kings to declare themselves the “King of Sumer and Akkad”. 

Men simply love power. Once man got the idea to become the king of a land, the idea to rule over an empire was soon to follow.  Around 2400 BCE the king of Kish, a small city-state, marched against Uruk, another city-state.  The king won and moved on to conquer the cities of Ur, Lagash and Umma.  The king rolled on, tearing down walls in his wake and soon had united the whole of Iraq and the known world under one man.  Sargon of Akkad washed his weapon in the Persian Gulf and stood over his empire, the first the world had known.  Sargon I like any proper mythic ruler had legendary beginnings, it seems that an emperor cannot simply seize power.  He was the son of a virgin and was cast out in a basket adrift in a stream, he survived and later gods raised him and with there help became a king. 

The appeal of the earliest Mesopotamians was appealing to even ancient ones.  Nabonidus, a Neo-Babylonian king of the 6^th century BCE has been regarded as an early “archaeologist”.  While his methods differ from those today, he had excavations undertook during the construction of a ziggurat to find evidence of kings before him.  He was surely pleased when a stele was discovered.  His daughter, Bel-shalti-nannar, was a historian herself collecting together a wonderful hoard of already ancient artefacts into what was probably the first museum.  The discovery of which caused great confusion for Sir Leonard Whoolley excavating at Ur.  In the same level he found Kassite remains, a statue of King Shulgi and tribute to a king of Larsa.  One can picture his old English face, turned up from years of saying “fetch us a tea then there chappy” and other such like, contorting and twisting with confusion.  A wonderful thought.

After Sargon I many empires grew and fell each adding precious elements to the baggage of western culture.  Few today have any appreciation for the additions these ancients have made to their lives and culture.  While its no Blackberry, Mesopotamian culture introduced many important firsts.  In addition to the creation of agriculture the Mesopotamians introduced organized commerce and trade as represented in early seals (when one stamps for the arrival of something then organized trade exists).  They introduced concepts of ownership and advanced laws concerning inheritance.  The guided society with dense laws and structures laid down and codified. 

The Sumerians themselves introduced schools, historians, pharmacology, astronomy, taxes, jobs, library catalogues and love songs, not to mention a literary history that provides the basis for about half of the Old Testament readings.  They used arched architecture centuries before the Greeks.  All this, and the pedestrian view of historical cultures still maintains that the Greeks invented everything and they themselves jumped out of the primordial ooze fully developed and wrapped in toga’s.