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History’s first empire rose out of a hot,
dry landscape,

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without rainfall to nourish crops, 
without trees or stones for building.

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In spite of all this, its inhabitants
built the world’s first cities,

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with monumental architecture and 
large populations—

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and they built them 
entirely out of mud.

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Sumer occupied the Southern part of
modern Iraq

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in the region called Mesopotamia.

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Mesopotamia means “between two rivers”—

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the Tigris and the Euphrates.

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Around 5000 BCE, early Sumerians used
irrigation channels, dams, and reservoirs

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to redirect river water and farm large
areas of previously bone-dry land.

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Agricultural communities like this were
slowly springing up around the world.

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But Sumerians were the first
to take the next step.

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Using clay bricks made from river mud,

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they began to build multi-storied
homes and temples.

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They invented the wheel—

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a potter’s wheel, for turning mud into
household goods and tools.

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Those clay bricks gave rise to the world’s
first cities, probably around 4500 BCE.

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At the top of the city’s social ladder
were priests and priestesses,

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who were considered nobility, then
merchants, craftspeople, farmers, and enslaved people.

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The Sumerian empire consisted 
of distinct city-states that operated like small nations.

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They were loosely linked by language
and spiritual belief

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but lacked centralized control.

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The earliest cities were Uruk, Ur,
and Eridu,

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and eventually there were a dozen cities.

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Each had a king who served a role 
somewhere between a priest and a ruler.

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Sometimes they fought against each 
other to conquer new territories.

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Each city was dedicated to a patron deity,
considered the city’s founder.

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The largest and most important building 
n the city was this patron god’s home:

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the ziggurat, a temple designed
as a stepped pyramid.

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Around 3200 BCE, Sumerians began to
expand their reach.

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The potter’s wheel found a new home 
on chariots and wagons.

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They built boats out of reeds and date
palm leaves,

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with linen sails that carried them 
vast distances by river and sea.

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To supplement scarce resources, 
they built a trade network

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with the rising kingdoms in Egypt, 
Anatolia, and Ethiopia,

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importing gold, silver, 
lapis lazuli, and cedar wood.

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Trade was the unlikely impetus for the
invention of the world’s first writing system.

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It started as a system of accounting
for Sumerian merchants

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conducting business with traders abroad.

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After a few hundred years, the early 
pictogram system

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called cuneiform turned into a script.

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The Sumerians drafted up the first
written laws

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and created the first school system, 
designed to teach the craft of writing—

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and pioneered some less exciting
innovations, like bureaucracy and taxes.

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In the schools, scribes studying from 
dawn to dusk, from childhood

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well into adulthood.

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They learned accounting, mathematics,
and copied works of literature––

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hymns, myths, proverbs, animal fables, 
magic spells,

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and the first epics on clay tablets.

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Some of those tablets told the story of
Gilgamesh,

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a king of the city of Uruk who was
also the subject of mythical tales.

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But by the third millennium BCE, Sumer
was no longer the only empire around,

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or even in Mesopotamia.

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Waves of nomadic tribes poured
into the region from the north and east.

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Some newcomers looked up to the Sumerians,
adopting their way of life

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and using the cuneiform script to express
their own languages.

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In 2300 BCE, the Akkadian king Sargon
conquered the Sumerian city-states.

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But Sargon respected Sumerian culture,
and Akkadians and Sumerians

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existed side-by-side for centuries.

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Other invading groups focused only 
on looting and destruction.

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Even as Sumerian culture spread,

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a steady onslaught of invasions killed
off the Sumerian people by 1750 BCE.

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Afterward, Sumer disappeared back into 
the desert dirt,

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not to be rediscovered
until the 19th century.

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But Sumerian culture lived on
for thousands of years—

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first through the Akkadians,
then the Assyrians, then the Babylonians.

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The Babylonians passed Sumerian inventions

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and traditions through along Hebrew,
Greek, and Roman cultures.

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Some persist today.