ਵਰਤੋਂਕਾਰ:Bhvintri/ਸੂਮਰ

ਵਿਕੀਪੀਡੀਆ, ਇੱਕ ਅਜ਼ਾਦ ਗਿਆਨਕੋਸ਼ ਤੋਂ

ਪੂਰਵ ਕਾਂਸਾ ਜੁੱਗ[ਸੋਧੋ]

ਤਸਵੀਰ:Ancient Sumer.jpg
ਸੂਮਰ

3000 ਈ . ਪੂ . ਦੇ ਆਸ-ਪਾਸ ਇਹ ਸ਼ਹਿਰੀ ਕੇਂਦਰ ਗੁੰਝਲਦਾਰ ਸਮਾਜ ਵਿੱਚ ਤਬਦੀਲ ਹੋ ਗਏ . ਸਿੰਚਾਈ ਵਿੱਚ ਤਰੱਕੀ ਹੋਈ. ਹਾਕਮਾਂ ਦੁਆਰਾ ਵੱਡੇ ਇਮਾਰਤੀ ਮਨਸੂਬੇ ਬਣਾਏ ਗਏ, ਅਤੇ ਰਾਜਨੀਤਕ (ਸਿਆਸੀ) ਸੰਗਠਨ (ਤਨਜ਼ੀਮਾਂ) ਵੀ ਹੋਰ ਗੁੰਝਲਦਾਰ ਹੋ ਚੁੱਕੀਆਂ ਸਨ. ਵੱਖ ਵੱਖ ਸ਼ਹਿਰੀ ਰਿਆਸਤਾਂ: ਕੀਸ਼ (Kish), ਊਰੂਕ (Uruk), ਊਰ (Ur) ਅਤੇ ਲਾਗਾਸ਼ (Lagash) ਸੱਤਾ ਲਈ ਟਕਰਾਹਟ ਹੋਈ. ਨੀਪੂਰ (Nippur), ਗੀਰਸੂ (Girsu) ਅਤੇ ਇਰੀਦੂ (Eridu) ਮਹੱਤਵਪੂਰਣ (ਅਹਿਮ) ਧਾਰਮਿਕ (ਮਜ਼ਹਬੀ) ਕੇਂਦਰ ਸਨ. ਮਸ਼ਹੂਰ ਗਿਲਗਾਮਿਸ਼ ਦਾ ਮਹਾਂਕਾਵਿ ਦਾ ਵਿਸ਼ਾ, ਉਰੁਕ ਦੀ ਇੱਕ ਅੱਧ-ਇਤਿਹਾਸਿਕ ਰਾਜਾ, ਗਿਲਗਾਮਿਸ਼ (Gilgamesh) ਵੀ ਇਸ ਸਮੇਂ ਹੀ ਹੋਇਆ. 2600 ਈ . ਪੂ ਤਕ ਸ਼ਬਦ ਚਿੰਨ੍ਹ (Logographs) ਕੀਲਾਕਾਰ ਲਿੱਪੀ (Cuneiform Script) ਵਿਚ ਬਦਲ ਗਏ .

ਸੂਮਰੀ ਰਾਜਿਆਂ ਦੀ ਸੂਚੀ (ਫ਼ਹਿਰਿਸਤ) ਇਸ ਦੌਰ ਦੇ ਸਿਆਸੀ ਇਤਿਹਾਸ ਦਾ ਇੱਕ ਰਿਕਾਰਡ ਹੈ . ਇਸ ਸੂਚੀ ਦੇ ਮੁਢਲੇ ਰਾਜੇ ਭਾਵੇਂ ਮਿਥਿਹਾਸਿਕ ਹਨ ਪਰ ਬਾਅਦ ਵਾਲੀਆਂ ਦੀ ਪੁਰਾਤਾਤਵਿਕ (ਆਸਾਰ ਕਦੀਮਾ) ਸਬੂਤਾਂ ਨੇ ਤਸਦੀਕ (ਪ੍ਰਮਾਣਿਤ) ਕੀਤੀ ਏ. ਇਹਨਾਂ ਵਿਚੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾ ਕੀਸ਼ ਦਾ Enmebaragesi (2600 ਈ . ਪੂ) ਹੈ .

ਊਰੂਕ ਦੇ Enshakushanna ਨੇ ਸੂਮਰ, ਅੱਕਦ, ਅਤੇ Hamazi ਸਭ ਉੱਤੇ ਫਤਹਿ ਪ੍ਰਾਪਤ ਕੀਤੀ , ਲਾਗਾਸ਼ ਦੇ Eannatum ਨੇ ਵੀ ਸੂਮਰ ਉੱਤੇ ਫਤਹਿ ਪ੍ਰਾਪਤ ਕੀਤੀ. ਕੁੱਝ ਸਮਾਂ ਬਾਅਦ , Adab ਦੇ Lugal-Anne-Mundu ਨੇ ਆਪਣੀ ਸਲਤਨਤ ਕਾਇਮ ਕੀਤੀ. Akkad ਦੇ Sargon ਦੀ ਸਰਵ-ਉੱਚਤਾ ਤੋਂ ਪਹਿਲਾਂ ਆਖ਼ਰੀ ਹੁਕਮਰਾਨ Lugal-Zage-Si ਸੀ.

ਅੱਕਦੀ ਸਾਮਰਾਜ[ਸੋਧੋ]

Around 2334 BC, Sargon became ruler of Akkad in northern Mesopotamia. He proceeded to conquer an area stretching from the Persian Gulf into the modern-day Syria. The Akkadians were a Semitic people and the Akkadian language came into widespread use during this period, but literacy remained in the Sumerian language. The dynasty continued until around c. 2154 BC, and reached its zenith under Naram-Sin, who began the trend for rulers to claim divinity for themselves. The Akkadian Empire lost power after the reign of Naram-Sin, and eventually was invaded by the Guti from the Zagros Mountains. For half a century the Guti controlled Mesopotamia, especially the south, but they left few inscriptions, so they are not well understood. The Guti hold loosened on southern Mesopotamia, where the second dynasty of Lagash came into prominence. Its most famous ruler was Gudea, who left many statues of himself in temples across Sumer. The Akkadians created the irrigation system.

ਨਵਾਂ-ਸੂਮਰੀ ਸਾਮਰਾਜ[ਸੋਧੋ]

Eventually the Guti were overthrown by Utu-hengal of Uruk, and the various city-states again vied for power. Power over the area finally went to the city-state of Ur, when Ur-Nammu founded the Ur III Empire (2112–2004 BC) and conquered the Sumerian region. Under his son Shulgi, state control over industry reached a level never again seen in the region. Shulgi may have devised the Code of Ur-Nammu, one of the earliest known law codes (three centuries before the more famous Code of Hammurabi). Around 2000 BC, the power of Ur waned, and the Amorites came to occupy much of the area, although it was Sumer's long-standing rivals to the east, the Elamites, who finally overthrew Ur. In the north, Assyria remained free of Amorite control until the very end of the 19th century BC. This marked the end of city-states ruling empires in Mesopotamia, and the end of Sumerian dominance, but the succeeding rulers adopted much of Sumerian civilization as their own.

ਸਮਾਜਿਕ ਅਤੇ ਘਰੇਲੂ ਜੀਵਨ[ਸੋਧੋ]

In the early Sumerian period (i.e. Uruk), the primitive pictograms suggest[26] that

"Pottery was very plentiful, and the forms of the vases, bowls and dishes were manifold; there were special jars for honey, butter, oil and wine, which was probably made from dates, and one form of vase had a spout protruding from its side. Some of the vases had pointed feet, and stood on stands with crossed legs ; others were flat-bottomed, and were set on square or rectangular frames of wood. The oil-jars - and probably others also - were sealed with clay, precisely as in early Egypt. Vases and dishes of stone were made in imitation of those of clay, and baskets were woven of reeds or formed of leather."
"A feathered head-dress was worn on the head. Beds, stools and chairs were used, with carved legs resembling those of an ox. There were fire-places and fire-altars, and apparently chimneys also."
"Knives, drills, wedges and an instrument which looks like a saw were all known, while spears, bows, arrows and daggers (but not swords) were employed in war."
"Tablets were used for writing purposes, and copper, gold and silver were worked by the smith. Daggers with metal blades and wooden handles were worn, and copper was hammered into plates, while necklaces or collars were made of gold."
"Time was reckoned in lunar months."

There is considerable evidence that the Sumerians loved music, which seems to have been an important part of religious and civic life in Sumer. Lyres were popular in Sumer.[citation needed]

Inscriptions describing the reforms of king Urukagina of Lagash (ca. 2300 BC) say that he abolished the former custom of polyandry in his country, by which a woman who took multiple husbands was stoned with rocks upon which her crime had been written.[27]

Though women were protected by late Sumerian law and were able to achieve a higher status in Sumer than in other contemporary civilizations, the culture was male-dominated. The Code of Ur-Nammu, the oldest such codification yet discovered, dating to the Ur-III "Sumerian Renaissance", reveals a glimpse at societal structure in late Sumerian law. Beneath the lu-gal ("great man" or king), all members of society belonged to one of two basic strata: The "lu" or free person, and the slave (male, arad; female geme). The son of a lu was called a dumu-nita until he married. A woman (munus) went from being a daughter (dumu-mi), to a wife (dam), then if she outlived her husband, a widow (numasu) who could remarry.

ਬੋਲੀ ਅਤੇ ਲਿੱਪੀ[ਸੋਧੋ]

The most important archaeological discoveries in Sumer are a large number of tablets written in cuneiform. Sumerian writing is the oldest example of writing on earth. Although pictures - that is, hieroglyphs were first used, symbols were later made to represent syllables. Triangular or wedge-shaped reeds were used to write on moist clay. A large body of hundreds of thousands of texts in the Sumerian language have survived, such as personal or business letters, receipts, lexical lists, laws, hymns, prayers, stories, daily records, and even libraries full of clay tablets. Monumental inscriptions and texts on different objects like statues or bricks are also very common. Many texts survive in multiple copies because they were repeatedly transcribed by scribes-in-training. Sumerian continued to be the language of religion and law in Mesopotamia long after Semitic speakers had become the ruling race. The Sumerian language is generally regarded as a language isolate in linguistics because it belongs to no known language family; Akkadian, by contrast belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic languages. There have been many failed attempts to connect Sumerian to other language groups. It is an agglutinative language; in other words, morphemes ("units of meaning") are added together to create words, unlike analytic languages where morphemes are purely added together to create sentences.

Understanding Sumerian texts today can be problematic even for experts.[citation needed] Most difficult are the earliest texts, which in many cases do not give the full grammatical structure of the language.

During the third millennium BC, they developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism.[8] The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian (and vice versa) is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a massive scale, to syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence.[8] This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the third millennium as a sprachbund.[8]

Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as a spoken language somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC,[23] but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary and scientific language in Babylonia and Assyria until the 1st century AD.

Religion[ਸੋਧੋ]

Main article: Sumerian religion



Tell Asmar votive sculpture 2750-2600 BC. There was no organized set of gods; each city-state had its own patrons, temples, and priest-kings. The Sumerians were probably the first to write down their beliefs, which were the inspiration for much of later Mesopotamian mythology, religion, and astrology.

The Sumerians worshipped:[citation needed]

Anu as the full-time god, equivalent to "heaven" - indeed, the word "an" in Sumerian means "sky" and his consort Ki, means "Earth".
Enki in the south at the temple in Eridu. Enki was the god of beneficence, ruler of the freshwater depths beneath the earth, a healer and friend to humanity who in Sumerian myth was thought to have given humans the arts and sciences, the industries and manners of civilization; the first law-book was considered his creation,
Enlil, lord of the ghost-land, in the north at the temple of Nippur. His gifts to mankind were said to be the spells and incantations that the spirits of good or evil were compelled to obey,
Inanna, the deification of Venus, the morning (eastern) and evening (western) star, at the temple (shared with An) at Uruk.
The sun-god Utu at Ur,
The moon god Nanna at Sippar.



Sumero-early Akkadian pantheon These deities were probably the original matrix;[citation needed] there were hundreds of minor deities. The Sumerian gods thus had associations with different cities, and their religious importance often waxed and waned with those cities' political power. The gods were said to have created human beings from clay for the purpose of serving them. If the temples/gods ruled each city it was for their mutual survival and benefit—the temples organized the mass labor projects needed for irrigation agriculture. Citizens had a labor duty to the temple which they were allowed to avoid by a payment of silver only towards the end of the third millennium. The temple-centered farming communities of Sumer had a social stability that enabled them to survive for four millennia.

Sumerians believed that the universe consisted of a flat disk enclosed by a dome. The Sumerian afterlife involved a descent into a gloomy netherworld to spend eternity in a wretched existence as a Gidim (ghost).[28]

Ziggurats (Sumerian temples) consisted of a forecourt, with a central pond for purification.[29] The temple itself had a central nave with aisles along either side. Flanking the aisles would be rooms for the priests. At one end would stand the podium and a mudbrick table for animal and vegetable sacrifices. Granaries and storehouses were usually located near the temples. After a time the Sumerians began to place the temples on top of multi-layered square constructions built as a series of rising terraces, giving rise to the Ziggurat style.[30]


ਖੇਤੀਬਾੜੀ ਅਤੇ ਸ਼ਿਕਾਰ[ਸੋਧੋ]

The Sumerians adopted an agricultural mode of life as by perhaps as early as c. 5000-4,500 BCE the region demonstrated a number of core agricultural techniques, including organized irrigation, large-scale intensive cultivation of land, mono-cropping involving the use of plough agriculture, and the use of an agricultural specialized labour force under bureaucratic control. The necessity to manage temple accounts with this organization led to the development of writing (ca. 3500 BC).

In the early Sumerian Uruk period, the primitive pictograms suggest that sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs. They used oxen as their primary beasts of burden and donkeys or equids as their primary transport animal and "woollen clothing as well as rugs were made from the wool or hair of the two first. ... By the side of the house was an enclosed garden planted with trees and other plants; wheat and probably other cereals were sown in the fields, and the shaduf was already employed for the purpose of irrigation. Plants were also grown in pots or vases."[26]

The Sumerians practiced similar irrigation techniques as those used in Egypt.[31] American anthropologist Robert McCormick Adams says that irrigation development was associated with urbanization,[32] and that 89% of the population lived in the cities.[33]

They grew barley, chickpeas, lentils, wheat, dates, onions, garlic, lettuce, leeks and mustard. Sumerians caught many fish and hunted fowl and gazelle.[34]

Sumerian agriculture depended heavily on irrigation. The irrigation was accomplished by the use of shadufs, canals, channels, dykes, weirs, and reservoirs. The frequent violent floods of the Tigris, and less so, of the Euphrates, meant that canals required frequent repair and continual removal of silt, and survey markers and boundary stones needed to be continually replaced. The government required individuals to work on the canals in a corvee, although the rich were able to exempt themselves.

As is known from the farmer's almanac, after the flood season and after the Spring Equinox and the Akitu or New Year Festival, using the canals, farmers would flood their fields and then drain the water. Next they let oxen stomp the ground and kill weeds. They then dragged the fields with pickaxes. After drying, they plowed, harrowed, and raked the ground three times, and pulverized it with a mattock, before planting seed. Unfortunately the high evaporation rate resulted in a gradual increase in the salinity of the fields. By the Ur III period, farmers had switched from wheat to the more salt-tolerant barley as their principal crop.

Sumerians harvested during the spring in three-person teams consisting of a reaper, a binder, and a sheaf handler.[35] The farmers would use threshing wagons, driven by oxen, to separate the cereal heads from the stalks and then use threshing sleds to disengage the grain. They then winnowed the grain/chaff mixture.

ਵਾਸਤੂ-ਕਲਾ (ਫ਼ਨ ਤਾਮੀਰ)[ਸੋਧੋ]

The Tigris-Euphrates plain lacked minerals and trees. Sumerian structures were made of plano-convex mudbrick, not fixed with mortar or cement. Mud-brick buildings eventually deteriorate, so they were periodically destroyed, leveled, and rebuilt on the same spot. This constant rebuilding gradually raised the level of cities, which thus came to be elevated above the surrounding plain. The resultant hills, known as tells, are found throughout the ancient Near East.

According to Archibald Sayce, the primitive pictograms of the early Sumerian (i.e. Uruk) era suggest that "Stone was scarce, but was already cut into blocks and seals. Brick was the ordinary building material, and with it cities, forts, temples and houses were constructed. The city was provided with towers and stood on an artificial platform; the house also had a tower-like appearance. It was provided with a door which turned on a hinge, and could be opened with a sort of key ; the city gate was on a larger scale, and seems to have been double. The foundation stones - or rather bricks - of a house were consecrated by certain objects that were deposited under them."[26]

The most impressive and famous of Sumerian buildings are the ziggurats, large layered platforms which supported temples. Some scholars[who?] have theorized that these structures might have been the basis of the Tower of Babel described in Genesis. Sumerian cylinder seals also depict houses built from reeds not unlike those built by the Marsh Arabs of Southern Iraq until as recently as 400 AD. The Sumerians also developed the arch, which enabled them to develop a strong type of roof called a dome. They built this by constructing several arches. Sumerian temples and palaces made use of more advanced materials and techniques,[citation needed] such as buttresses, recesses, half columns, and clay nails.

ਗਣਿਤ (ਹਿਸਾਬ)[ਸੋਧੋ]

The Sumerians developed a complex system of metrology c. 4000 BC. This metrology advanced resulting in the creation of arithmetic, geometry, and algebra. From 2600 BC onwards, the Sumerians wrote multiplication tables on clay tablets and dealt with geometrical exercises and division problems. The earliest traces of the Babylonian numerals also date back to this period.[36] The period 2700–2300 BC saw the first appearance of the abacus, and a table of successive columns which delimited the successive orders of magnitude of their sexagesimal number system.[37] The Sumerians were the first to use a place value numeral system. There is also anecdotal evidence the Sumerians may have used a type of slide rule in astronomical calculations. They were the first to find the area of a triangle and the volume of a cube.[38]

Economy and trade[ਸੋਧੋ]

Discoveries of obsidian from far-away locations in Anatolia and lapis lazuli from Badakhshan in northeastern Afghanistan, beads from Dilmun (modern Bahrain), and several seals inscribed with the Indus Valley script suggest a remarkably wide-ranging network of ancient trade centered around the Persian Gulf.

The Epic of Gilgamesh refers to trade with far lands for goods such as wood that were scarce in Mesopotamia. In particular, cedar from Lebanon was prized. The finding of resin in the tomb of Queen Puabi at Ur, was traded from as far away as Mozambique.

The Sumerians used slaves, although they were not a major part of the economy. Slave women worked as weavers, pressers, millers, and porters.

Sumerian potters decorated pots with cedar oil paints. The potters used a bow drill to produce the fire needed for baking the pottery. Sumerian masons and jewelers knew and made use of alabaster (calcite), ivory, iron, gold, silver, carnelian, and lapis lazuli.[39]


ਫੌਜ[ਸੋਧੋ]

The almost constant wars among the Sumerian city-states for 2000 years helped to develop the military technology and techniques of Sumer to a high level. The first war recorded was between Lagash and Umma in ca. 2525 BC on a stele called the Stele of Vultures.[citation needed] It shows the king of Lagash leading a Sumerian army consisting mostly of infantry. The infantrymen carried spears, wore copper helmets and carried leather or wicker shields. The spearmen are shown arranged in what resembles the phalanx formation, which requires training and discipline; this implies that the Sumerians may have made use of professional soldiers.

The Sumerian military used carts harnessed to onagers. These early chariots functioned less effectively in combat than did later designs, and some have suggested that these chariots served primarily as transports, though the crew carried battle-axes and lances. The Sumerian chariot comprised a four or two-wheeled device manned by a crew of two and harnessed to four onagers. The cart was composed of a woven basket and the wheels had a solid three-piece design.

Sumerian cities were surrounded by defensive walls. The Sumerians engaged in siege warfare between their cities, but the mudbrick walls were able to deter

ਤਕਨਾਲੋਜੀ[ਸੋਧੋ]

Examples of Sumerian technology include: the wheel, cuneiform, arithmetic and geometry, irrigation systems, Sumerian boats, lunisolar calendar, bronze, leather, saws, chisels, hammers, braces, bits, nails, pins, rings, hoes, axes, knives, lancepoints, arrowheads, swords, glue, daggers, waterskins, bags, harnesses, armor, quivers, war chariots, scabbards, boots, sandals, harpoons, and beer. The Sumerians had three main types of boats:[citation needed]

clinker-built sailboats stitched together with hair, featuring bitumen waterproofing
skin boats constructed from animal skins and reeds
wooden-oared ships, sometimes pulled upstream by people and animals walking along the nearby banks