Sumerians: Words and figures

The Sumerians were the first people to develop a system of arithmetic.

Adding subtracting and multiplying were important skills when handling goods such as sacks of grain or heads of cattle in quantities.

The Sumerians also developed an efficient system of weights and measures and their supreme invention – that of writing – arose from the practical need to keep records of goods for the purposes of trade, or tax collection.

Those records began in the simplest way with picture images of the item - an ox head for example – and a number of dots to indicate the quantity.

Symbols were drawn on a soft clay tablet using a sharpened reed. The tablet was then baked in a kiln to harden it.

Originally list of items were arranged in vertical columns starting from the top right hand side.

Around the 3000 BC, however, scribes found that they could write better by turning the tablets and writing from left to right, in horizontal rows.

At the same times, the original pointed stylus was abandoned in favor of one with a wedge shaped tip.

Scratching with a point was prone to leave untidy ridges: the new wedge shaped stylus could be pressed into clay to leave a crisper impression.

Stylized images, composed entirely of cuneiform, or ‘wedge-shaped’, marks made up the writing system used in Mesopotamia.
Sumerians: Words and figures

Signs and Syllables during Sumerians

Signs and Syllables during Sumerians
By about 2500 BC, however, the original picture signs were reduce d to such stylized symbolisms that the original objects could hardly be recognized

Scribes also started to use characters to represent t ideas , actions, feelings and soon , rather than concrete objects alone.

Ambiguities sometimes resulted, however.


The picture of image a foot, for example, might mean to come or go or stand and so on.

Thousand of different characters would have to be invented to encompass the full range of words in use.

The eventual solution was to use signs phonetically – that is, to indicate sounds rather than actual objects.

By this method, in English, abstract concepts such as ‘treason’ might be represented by placing the image of ‘tree’ alongside that of, say, the ‘sun’.

Using a fairly limited repertoire of of syllables it was possible to build up any word.

The Sumerian system included some 600 signs which had to be memorized.

The scribes failed to condense the system further by breaking syllables down into the two dozen or so letters that make up the modern alphabet.

Nevertheless, their own method proved remarkably flexible, permitting a rich literature to flourish alongside workaday texts such as legal contracts and bill of sale.

The Sumerian system of arithmetic was based on the unit of 10 – and has survived through the centuries in our hour of 60 minutes and circle of 360 degrees.
Signs and Syllables during Sumerians

Society of Sumerian in Mesopotamian: Death of Kings

Society of Sumerian in Mesopotamian: Death of Kings
When a king of the Sumerian city state of Ur died he did not go alone to his tomb. His entire household of some 70 people was buried with him, having taken poison in order to follow their sovereign into the next life – where they would continue to serve him loyally as before. The preparation for this mass burial was meticulous. First along, sloping shaft was dug down to a pit that would serve as the tomb chamber. This was filled with rich offerings, and the king’s corpse was placed in it. The chamber was then sealed, and a great procession of attendants moves down into the shaft. These included court ladies in resplendent golden headdresses, guard with sheathed daggers, musicians strumming bulls’ head lyres, grooms with ox-drawn chariots, and soldiers wearing coppers spears.

All carried small cup from which they drank a lethal drug before lying down by the tomb chamber to prepare for the eternity. The musicians continued to play their lyres until the end, when they took poison and succumbed. The shaft was then filled in with several layers of earth and clay, amid further ritual offerings and libations. The lack of resistance on the part of the attendants indicated a fatalistic obedience both of their sovereign and to their gods. Certainly all the evidences suggest that religion was very importance to the Sumerians. They believe that gods ruled the earth and that men were created to be their servants. Each city was regarded as belonging to a particular god and goddess, whose earthly home was the city’s temple, the scene of elaborate rituals conducted by a hierarchy priests.
Society of Sumerian in Mesopotamian: Death of Kings