Was there something in the daily life of the Sumerians that distinguished them from many other peoples? So far, no clear distinguishing evidence has been found. Each family had its own yard next to the house, surrounded by dense bushes. The bush was called “surbatu.” With the help of this bush it was possible to protect some crops from the scorching sun and cool the house itself.
A special jug of water was always installed near the entrance to the house, intended for washing hands. There is equality between men and women. Archaeologists and historians are inclined to believe that, despite the possible influence of surrounding peoples who were dominated by patriarchy, the ancient Sumerians took equal rights from their gods.
The pantheon of Sumerian gods in the stories described gathered for “heavenly councils.” Both gods and goddesses were equally present at the councils. Only later, when stratification is visible in society, and farmers become debtors to the richer Sumerians, do they give their daughters under a marriage contract, respectively, without their consent. But, despite this, every woman could be present at the ancient Sumerian court and had the right to own a personal seal...
The waters of the Tigris and Euphrates made vast territories fertile, thanks to which, more than five thousand years ago, favorable conditions were created for the emergence and development of highly developed civilizations. Powerful states extended not only in Mesopotamia, but also in the territory of Syria, Western Asia, and often even on the borders with Egypt. Their wealth irresistibly attracted neighboring aggressive barbarian tribes, who in large numbers randomly moved throughout the Middle East. In contrast to the conservative, stable statehood of Egypt, hostile despotic empires chaotically replaced each other here. Over the course of a thousand-year history, the territory of Mesopotamia was consistently dominated by the Sumerians, who laid the foundations of civilization here and gradually assimilated it. Then the Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians.
In countless destructive wars and fires over time, naturally, neither the royal throne nor any other piece of furniture dating back to the times “before our era” was preserved. Today we can imagine the attributes of home furnishings, the decoration of palaces and temples only from archaeological finds, relief images, fragments of memorial plates and steles, since the tradition of depicting gods, priests, and later kings has existed in Sumer since ancient times. Scenes of rituals, mythological subjects, compositions from the lives of kings and courtiers are abundantly supplied with everyday details - samples of clothing of the nobility and ordinary warriors, interior elements and samples of furniture of palaces and temples. It should be noted that archaeological finds with similar images in the territory of Mesopotamia largely provided evidence for scientists of the existence of the ancient Sumerian civilization and the highest level of development of their culture...
The main value of the Sumerian family was children. The sons became by law the full heirs of all their father's property and economy, the continuers of his craft. They were given the great honor of ensuring the posthumous cult of their father. They were to see to the proper burial of his ashes, the continued honoring of his memory and the perpetuation of his name.
Even as minors, children in Sumer had fairly broad rights. According to the deciphered tablets, they had the opportunity to carry out acts of purchase and sale, trade transactions and other business transactions.
All contracts with minor citizens, according to the law, had to be formalized in writing in the presence of several witnesses. This was supposed to protect inexperienced and not very intelligent youth from deception and prevent excessive wastefulness.
A significant part of the court documents that have reached us, “ ditill”, was devoted to issues of marriage and family relations. The found archives of the courts are thousands of clay tablets with records of marriage contracts, agreements and wills, which, according to the laws of the city-states of Sumer, were required to be drawn up in writing and officially certified. The archives contain a huge number of court records in divorce cases, adultery cases, controversial issues in the division of inheritance, and a great variety of cases considered in all areas of family relations. This indicates a high level of development of Sumerian jurisprudence in the field of family law, the basis of which was the respect of its citizens for public order and justice, a clear awareness of their responsibilities and the guarantee of rights. The main link of society in Sumer was the family, family clans, so the highly developed judicial system stood for the protection of family values and the order that had developed over centuries.
The way of life in the Sumerian family was patriarchal. The father, a man, was in charge. His power was a copy of the power of the ruler or ensi within one family clan; his word was decisive in the most important family and economic issues. Already at the beginning of the third millennium BC, marriage was monogamous, although a man was allowed to have a concubine, usually a slave. If the wife was infertile, she herself could choose a second wife-concubine for her husband, but she, by her position, occupied a step lower, and could not demand equality with her legal wife-citizen...
Most of the known Sumerian court documents were discovered during excavations of the famous "hill of tablets" in Lagash. According to scientists, this is where the court archive was located, where the records of trials were kept. Tablets containing court records are arranged in a certain order established by custom and are strictly systematized. They have a detailed “card index” - a list of all documents, in accordance with the dates of their writing.
French scientists and archaeologists made a huge contribution to deciphering court documents from Lagash. J.-V. Sheil and Charles Virollo, who at the very beginning of the 20th century were the first to copy, publish and partially translate the texts of the tablets from the found archive. Later, already in the mid-twentieth century, the German scholar Adam Falkenstein published several dozen detailed translations of court records and verdicts, and largely thanks to these documents, today we can quite accurately restore legal procedures in the city-states of Sumer.
The recording of court decisions by the most ancient secretaries was called ditilla, which literally means “final verdict”, “completed trial”. All legal and legislative regulation in the city-states of Sumer was in the hands of the enzi - the local rulers of these cities. They were the supreme judges, they were the ones who had to dispense justice and monitor the implementation of the laws.
In practice, on behalf of ensi, righteous justice was carried out by a specially appointed panel of judges, who made decisions in accordance with established traditions and current laws. The composition of the court was not constant. There were no professional judges; they were appointed from representatives of the city nobility - temple officials, prefects, sea merchants, clerks, augurs. The trial was usually conducted by three judges, although in some cases there could be one or two. The number of judges was determined by the social status of the parties, the severity of the case and a number of other reasons. Nothing is known about the methods and criteria for appointing judges; it is also not clear for how long judges were appointed and whether their work was paid...
The fate of great archaeological discoveries is sometimes very interesting. In 1900 An expedition from the University of Pennsylvania discovered during excavations at the site of the ancient Sumerian city of Nippur two heavily damaged fragments of a clay tablet with almost illegible text. Among other more valuable exhibits, they did not attract much attention and were sent to the Museum of the Ancient East, which was located in Istanbul. Its keeper F.R. Kraus, having connected parts of the table with each other, determined that it contained the texts of ancient laws. Kraus cataloged the artifact in the Nippur collection and forgot about the clay tablet for five long decades.
Only in 1952 Samuel Kramer, at the prompting of the same Kraus, again drew attention to this table, and his attempts to decipher the texts were partially crowned with success. The poorly preserved table, covered in cracks, contained a copy of the legal code of the founder of the Third Dynasty, Urr, who ruled at the very end of the third millennium. BC - King Ur-Nammu.
In 1902, the discovery of the French archaeologist M. Jacquet, who during excavations in Susa, thundered throughout the world, found a slab of black diorite - a more than two-meter stele of King Hammurabi with a code of laws engraved on it. The Code of Ur-Nammu was compiled more than three centuries earlier. Thus, the dilapidated tablets contained the text of the earliest legal code that has reached us.
It is likely that it was originally carved on a stone stele, just like the codex of King Hammurabi. But neither it, nor even its modern or later copy has survived. The only thing that researchers have at their disposal is a partially damaged clay tablet, so it is not possible to completely restore the code of laws of Ur-nammu. To date, only 90 of the 370 lines that scientists believe constitute the full text of Ur-Nammu's legal code have been deciphered.
In the prologue to code, it is said that Ur-Nammu was chosen by the gods as their earthly representative in order to establish the triumph of justice, eradicate disorder and lawlessness in Ur in the name of the well-being of its inhabitants. His laws were designed to protect “the orphan from the tyranny of the rich, the widow from those in power, the man who has one shekel from the man with one mina (60 shekels).”
Researchers have not reached a consensus on the total number of articles in the Ur-Nammu codex. With some degree of probability, it was possible to reconstruct the text of only five of them, and then only with certain assumptions. Fragments of one of the laws talk about the return of a slave to the owner, another article addresses the issue of the guilt of witchcraft. And only three laws, which, however, are also not completely preserved and are difficult to decipher, represent extremely interesting material for the study of social and legal relations that developed in Sumerian society.
They sound something like this:
- “If a person injures another person’s foot with a weapon, he will pay 10 shekels of silver.”
- “If a man breaks another man’s bone with a weapon, he pays one mina in silver.”
- “If a person injures another person’s face with a weapon, then he pays two-thirds of a mina of silver”...
The transition from hunting and collecting wild plants to agriculture and cattle breeding, which occurred in the Neolithic era about 10 thousand years ago, marked fundamental changes in human life. It became the impetus for truly revolutionary changes in society. Agriculture leads to the emergence of the first settled settlements in the Middle East, and with them the first property. There is a need to certify the rights to what you own, to brand your property. The first seals that appeared in Mesopotamia served this purpose. Seals can serve as an interesting object for research. They clearly demonstrate the change in the technology of processing various materials in the Middle East after the resettlement of Sumerian tribes there.
Materials and processing techniques used by the Ancient Sumerians
First of all, it should be noted that to process any material, a mineral or stone is used, the hardness of which is no less, or even better, greater than the material being processed. Of these minerals that are hard enough to cut stone, quartz is especially worth noting. There are two main types of it. The first type is macrocrystalline, transparent quartz - amethyst, rock crystal, rose quartz. Rock crystal could be found in the form of stones of various sizes in the Tigris and Euphrates, so it has been available and used since ancient times. Mesopotamia also had its own rose quartz; amethyst had to be imported from Egypt, Turkey or Iran.
The second variety of quartz is chalcedony and various microcrystalline layered quartz - agate, tiger's eye, jasper, carnelian. This also includes flint. Jasper was found in the Zagros mountains, and chalcedony, agate, and carnelian were brought from India and Iran.
In the technique of cutting seals, there were three main methods of processing the material. The first is preliminary rough processing with a rotating grinding wheel. Then drilling using a bow drill. The “bow” of such a drill moved back and forth, depending on this, the drill turned first in one direction, then in the other. The carver could either secure the sample being processed and hold the drill vertically, or hold the sample itself and position the drill horizontally. The third technique is final hand finishing. The cutter was held directly in the hand or mounted on a wooden handle...
The son continued his father's work, ruling with a firm hand for 53 years: from 605 to 562 BC. At that time, Babylon already numbered two hundred thousand people. He erected temples, restored ancient buildings, built canals and palaces. Under him, the southern part of the city was completed, the first stone bridge across the Euphrates was built. There is a myth that tunnels were also built under the river! Nebuchadnezzar built the Hanging Gardens for his incomparable wife Semiramis. Moreover, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, Semiramis was one of the most cruel and lustful women of that time. But also the most beautiful.
It was under this ruler that Babylon began to look the way historians described it: streets clearly drawn in accordance with the geometry, a smooth wall surrounding the city in the form of a regular quadrangle. This city is still the largest known walled city in the world. Along the wall there was a deep ditch filled with water. The wall itself was almost thirty meters wide!...
“Beautiful” was the sacrificial sheep intended for the ritual. They could award the epithet “beautiful” to a priest who possessed the necessary ritual attributes and a symbol of power, or an object made according to ancient ritual canons. Beautiful, possessing the highest degree of beauty, among the ancient Sumerians was that which most closely corresponds to its inner essence and its divine destiny, and therefore is most suitable for fulfilling a certain function assigned to it - cult, memorial.
The cult function of the object was to participate in ritual ceremonies, royal or church. These objects provided a symbolic connection with deities and deceased ancestors.
If an object participates in current social life and confirms the high social position of its owner, then it fulfills the pragmatic function assigned to it.
Today it is believed that Babylonia was not a separate country. Babylon is the last surge of the dying kingdom of the Sumerians. The first king of the most beautiful and most mysterious city is believed to have been the great Hammurabi, who reigned from 1792-1750 BC. It was he who, with a strong hand, united the country, which had been scattered after the next turmoil, and who resumed trade, construction, and tightened laws that made it possible to prolong the death throes of the Sumerian civilization.
The Code of Hammurabi contained 282 articles, which included criminal, administrative, and civil laws. A real find for our lawyers, who saw that in ancient times people were not judged by their position in society or wealth. It was believed that the scroll with the laws of Hammurabi was given by the sun god himself. The strong were punished if he offended the weak. The basic form of vendetta flourished: an eye for an eye. Everything was simple and at the same time bloody. But it is effective. They were executed for robbery. If the robber had previously broken through a wall in the house, then just before the break he was buried, it’s good that he wasn’t alive. Children were killed for stealing. Robbers of temples and palaces were killed. Dealers were killed. The sheltered white slave was killed. For adultery, both were drowned: the cheater and the one with whom she cheated. If a wife killed her husband because of another man, she was impaled. If someone who came to put out a fire stole something, he was thrown into the same fire. If a son raised his hand against his father, both of his upper limbs were cut off. If a house that a builder built collapsed and killed the homeowner, the builder was executed. For a failed operation, the doctor's hands were cut off. Some of the administrative articles seem very successful in light of the rampant corruption and negligence of officials, doctors and various companies that exist today...
Life and activities of the inhabitants of the Sumerian city!
The Sumerians are an ancient people who once inhabited the territory of the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the south of the modern state of Iraq (Southern Mesopotamia or Southern Mesopotamia). In the south, the border of their habitat reached the shores of the Persian Gulf, in the north - to the latitude of modern Baghdad.
Sumerian astronomy and mathematics were the most accurate in the entire Middle East. We still divide the year into four seasons, twelve months and twelve signs of the zodiac, measure angles, minutes and seconds in sixties - just as the Sumerians first began to do.
Sumerians are "black-headed". This people, who appeared in the south of Mesopotamia in the middle of the 3rd millennium BC from nowhere, are now called the “progenitor of modern civilization,” but until the mid-19th century no one even suspected about them. Time erased Sumer from history and, if not for linguists, perhaps we would never have known about Sumer.
But I will probably start from 1778, when the Dane Carsten Niebuhr, who led the expedition to Mesopotamia in 1761, published copies of the cuneiform royal inscription from Persepolis. He was the first to suggest that the 3 columns in the inscription are three different types of cuneiform writing, containing the same text.
In 1798, another Dane, Friedrich Christian Munter, hypothesized that 1st class writing is an alphabetic Old Persian script (42 characters), 2nd class - syllabic writing, 3rd class - ideographic characters. But the first to read the text was not a Dane, but a German, a Latin teacher in Göttingen, Grotenfend. A group of seven cuneiform characters caught his attention. Grotenfend suggested that this is the word King, and the remaining signs were selected based on historical and linguistic analogies. Eventually Grotenfend made the following translation: Xerxes, the great king, king of kings Darius, king, son, Achaemenid
In the Sumerian system, the base is not 10, but 60, but then this base is strangely replaced by the number 10, then 6, and then again by 10, etc. And thus, the positional numbers are arranged in the following series: 1, 10, 60, 600, 3600, 36,000, 216,000, 2,160,000, 12,960,000.
The Sumerian-Akkadian civilization was the cradle of modern writing. Sumerian writing was borrowed by the Phoenicians, from the Phoenicians by the Greeks, and Latin is largely based on Greek, which has become the basis for most modern languages. The Sumerians discovered copper and metallurgy based on it. The first foundations of statehood and reformism. Temple architecture, a special type of temple appeared there - a ziggurat, this is a temple in the form of a stepped pyramid.
The Sumerian civilization arose sharply, suddenly, achieved incredible development and remained the center of the World for centuries. This mysterious and unknown civilization causes fierce debate in scientific circles, and their amazing mythology and cosmogony excite imagination and give rise to the most amazing hypotheses.
- 56.00 KbMoscow Institute of Humanities and Economics
Chuvash branch
Department: State - legal disciplines
Discipline: History of state and law of foreign countries
State and law of Ancient Sumer
Completed by: student of group 11yus 4/11d
Polyakova Veronika Olegovna
Checked by: K. Yu. n. Skuratova I. N
Cheboksary 2011
1. Sumerians. The emergence of the Sumerians.
2. State.
State system
Social order
3. Law of Ancient Sumer.
Ownership.
Family law.
Inheritance law.
Criminal law.
Court and trial.
Sumerians. The emergence of the Sumerians.
The Sumerians were not a monoracial ethnos: brachycephals (“round-headed”) and dolichocephals (“long-headed”) are found. The Sumerians were not a monoracial ethnos: brachycephalics (“round-headed”) and dolichocephalic (“long-headed”) are found, Sumerians (“black-headed”) ), which differed sharply from each other both in their appearance and in language. However, this could also be the result of mixing with the local population. This people, who appeared in the south of Mesopotamia in the middle of the 3rd millennium BC from nowhere, are now called the “progenitor of modern civilization.”
We don't know where the Sumerians came from, but when they appeared in Mesopotamia, people were already living there. The tribes that inhabited Mesopotamia in ancient times lived on islands that rose among the swamps. They built their settlements on artificial earthen embankments. By draining the surrounding swamps, they created an ancient artificial irrigation system.
It must be said that southern Mesopotamia is not the best place in the world. Complete absence of forests and minerals. Swampiness, frequent floods accompanied by changes in the course of the Euphrates due to low banks and, as a consequence, a complete absence of roads. The only thing there was in abundance there was reed, clay and water. Vessels were sculpted from clay, the most important building material - brick - was made in large quantities, and metals were also known to the Sumerians: copper, bronze, iron. The population was engaged in hunting and fishing, but was already moving on to more progressive types of economy: cattle breeding and agriculture. Since the combination of fertile soil fertilized by floods was enough for the first city-states of ancient Sumer to flourish there at the very end of the 3rd millennium BC.
State.
Political system.
The ruler of the Sumerian city in the initial period of the history of Sumer was en ("lord, owner"), or ensi. He combined the functions of a priest, military leader, mayor and chairman of parliament. His responsibilities included the following:
1. Leadership of community worship, especially participation in the rite of sacred marriage.
2. Management of construction work, especially temple construction and irrigation.
3. Leadership of an army of persons dependent on the temples and on him personally.
4. Presidency of the people's assembly, especially the council of community elders.
En and his people, according to tradition, had to ask permission for their actions from the people's assembly, which consisted of the “youths of the city” and the “elders of the city.” Subsequently, as power was concentrated in the hands of one political group, the role of the people's assembly completely disappeared.
In addition to the position of city ruler, the title lugal - “big man” or “king” - is also known from Sumerian texts. Originally it was the title of a military leader who temporarily occupied the position of master of the country with the powers of a dictator. But later they became kings not by choice, but by inheritance. although during enthronement the old Nippur rite was still observed. Thus, one and the same person was simultaneously both the Enn of a city and the Lugal of the country, so the struggle for the title of Lugal went on at all times in the history of Sumer. There were also those close to the king.
Community system.
In Sumer, thanks to theocratic rule, all classes were oriented along a hierarchical axis. Such a society is convenient for management, when each person is assigned to his own “workshop”, it is easy to keep records and control over him. Therefore, the population of the Sumerian city-state was divided as follows:
1. Nobles: the ruler of the city, the head of the temple administration, priests, members of the council of elders of the community. These people had tens and hundreds of hectares of communal land in the form of family-community or clan, and often individual ownership, exploiting clients and slaves. The ruler, in addition, often used the temple land for personal enrichment.
2. Ordinary community members who owned plots of communal land as family-communal ownership. They made up more than half of the total population.
3. Temple clients: a) members of the temple administration and artisans; b) people subordinate to them. These are former community members who have lost community ties.
4. Slaves: a) temple slaves, who differed little from the lower categories of clients; b) slaves of private individuals (the number of these slaves was relatively small).
Thus, we see that the social structure of Sumerian society is quite clearly divided into two main economic sectors: community and temple. Nobility is determined by the amount of land, the population either cultivates their plot or works for the temple and large landowners, artisans are attached to the temple, and priests are assigned to communal land.
Ownership.
The lands surrounding the Sumerian city were divided at that time into naturally irrigated fields and into high fields that required artificial irrigation. In addition, there were also fields in the swamp. Part of the naturally irrigated fields was the “property” of the gods and, as the temple economy passed into the hands of their “deputy” - the king, it became actually royal. Obviously, the high fields and “swamp” fields, until the moment of their cultivation, were, along with the steppe, that “land without a master.” The cultivation of high fields and “swamp” fields required a lot of labor and money, so relations gradually developed here hereditary possession. The emergence of hereditary ownership contributed to the destruction from within the collective farming of rural communities.
Since ancient times, not all lands of rural communities were located on naturally irrigated areas. They had their own plots on that land, on the fields of which neither the king nor the temples conducted their own farming. Allotments were divided into individual or collective. Individual plots were distributed among the nobility and representatives of the state and temple apparatus, while collective plots were retained by rural communities. Adult men of the communities were organized into separate groups, which acted together in war and agricultural work, under the command of their elders. Also, some community members were attracted by the ruler to build various structures.
The plots given to individuals or, 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 plots were given free of charge, while others were given for a tax equal to 1/6 -1/8 of the harvest.
The owners of the plots worked in the fields of temple (later also royal) farms for usually four months. Draft cattle, as well as plows and other tools of labor, were given to them from the temple household. 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, a small amount of emmer, wool, and the rest of the time (i.e., for eight months) they fed on the harvest from their plot
Slaves worked all year round. Their labor was used in construction and irrigation work. They protected fields from birds and were also used in gardening and partly in livestock farming. Their labor was also used in fishing, which continued to play a significant role.
Family law.
A significant part of the court documents that have reached us, “ditill,” was devoted to issues of marriage and family relations. This indicates a high level of development of Sumerian jurisprudence in the field of family law, the basis of which was the respect of its citizens for public order and justice, a clear awareness of their responsibilities and the guarantee of rights. The main link of society in Sumer was the family, family clans, so the highly developed judicial system stood for the protection of family values and the order that had developed over centuries.
The way of life in the Sumerian family was patriarchal. The father, a man, stood at the head. His word was decisive in the most important family and economic issues. Already at the beginning of the third millennium BC, marriage was monogamous, although a man was allowed to have a concubine, usually a slave. If the wife was infertile, she herself could choose a second wife-concubine for her husband, but she, by her position, occupied a step lower, and could not demand equality with the legal wife-city dweller.
A woman's rights in Sumer were more limited than those of her husband. In the family, she occupied a subordinate position (a man had the right to give his wife into bondage to a creditor to work off a debt), nevertheless, she had considerable economic and social freedoms in society. A woman had the opportunity to independently, without the consent of her husband, carry out trade deals and operations, she could file a complaint in court and act as a witness, she had the right to hold public positions, and sometimes entire cities were often ruled by women. Most often these were the widows of kings or ensi, but a case arose when a commoner who was engaged in trade arbitrarily took the throne and successfully ruled the city for quite a long time.
Sumerian law legally strictly regulated all property and personal relations between parties to marriage and family. The issue of marriage was usually decided between the fathers of the bride and groom. For both parties, this was a transaction during which an agreement was reached on the amount of the ransom, usually not exceeding the value of the slave, and the date of marriage. The bride's father gave his daughter a dowry and abdicated all further responsibilities towards her. The daughter went to her husband’s family, and with her additional workers. The bride's family suffered losses, since the amount of the dowry was usually more than the wedding price, but the daughter had no further rights to a share in the division of her father's inheritance. An agreement between families on marriage was considered reached only after the official signing of all necessary documents. The conclusion of a marriage contract between the parents of the young people imposed certain responsibilities on them.
The marriage had to be recorded in an official document certified by the city authorities.
All gifts from the groom to the bride for the wedding were strictly recorded in the marriage contract, just as gift cards had to be drawn up for all gifts made by the husband during family life. If the marriage was dissolved, the husband had the right to return all his gifts. The marriage contract usually stipulated the “widow's share,” that part of the property that went to the woman after the death of her husband.
Divorce was not uncommon in Sumerian society, but only a man could initiate divorce proceedings in court. The most common reason for the dissolution of family relationships was the wife's infertility. The court could agree with the husband's arguments and dissolve the marriage. In this case, the woman was usually entitled to financial compensation. The husband had to return the entire dowry or pay a certain amount of money. According to the law, if the wife objected to the divorce, the man was obliged, after the official dissolution of the marriage in court, to provide her with a house and lifelong maintenance. The husband could prove in court that the woman was guilty of more serious sins, for example, embezzlement or theft of household money, or she refused to fulfill marital duties for some reason. In this case, he had the right to deprive her of shelter and drive her out onto the street without monetary compensation, or the ex-wife became a slave in his house.
The laws of Sumer were especially harsh for women who insulted and cheated on their husbands, but only if their guilt was proven.
A marriage was considered dissolved if the man was captured or enslaved during the war. According to the laws of Sumer, a woman was obliged to wait for her husband for five years, then the city administration paid her financial benefits for two years. If during this time the husband did not return, only then could the woman remarry. A woman could freely marry if her husband left the city community without permission.
Inheritance law.
The main value of the Sumerian family was children. Sumerian laws imposed many responsibilities on parents, but also gave them quite a lot of power over their children, although it cannot be considered complete and absolute.
The father's responsibility was to fully provide for the children. The father had to allocate money for the wedding price to his son from his property. He must also provide a dowry for his daughters in the amount required by law. The process of dividing inheritance after the death of parents took place strictly in accordance with laws that were practically unchanged in most Sumerian city-states.
After the death of the head of the family, all property passed to the sons. Usually, they did not break it up into parts, ran a common household and divided the income received from the property. The eldest son was given a privileged right in the division of inherited property, which was expressed in a somewhat larger share in the income from his father's inheritance. The rights of the other brothers were equal.
Description of work
The Sumerians are an ancient people who once inhabited the territory of the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the south of the modern state of Iraq (Southern Mesopotamia or Southern Mesopotamia). In the south, the border of their habitat reached the shores of the Persian Gulf, in the north - to the latitude of modern Baghdad.
For a millennium, the Sumerians were the main protagonists in the ancient Near East. Sumerian astronomy and mathematics were considered the most accurate in the entire Middle East. We still divide the year into four seasons, twelve months and twelve signs of the zodiac, measure angles, minutes and seconds in sixties - just as the Sumerians first began to do.
At the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. e. Mesopotamia was not yet politically unified 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 neighborhoods or, rather, of individual 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 ruler of the entire quarter. The god of the main quarter of the city was considered the lord of the entire city.
On the territory of the Sumerian city-states, along with the main cities, there were other settlements, some of which were conquered by force of arms by the main cities. They were politically dependent on the main city, whose population may have had greater rights than the population of these “suburbs.”
The population of such city-states was small and in most cases did not exceed 40-50 thousand people. Between individual city-states there was a lot of undeveloped land, since there were no large and complex irrigation structures yet and the population was grouped near rivers, around irrigation structures of a local nature. In the interior parts of this valley, too far from any source of water, there remained at a later time considerable tracts of uncultivated land.
In the extreme southwest of Mesopotamia, where the site of Abu Shahrain is now located, the city of Eridu was located. The legend about the emergence of the Sumerian culture was associated with Eridu, located on the shores of the “waving sea” (and now located at a distance of about 110 km from the sea). According to later legends, Eridu was also the oldest political center of the country. So far, we know best the ancient culture of Sumer on the basis of the already mentioned excavations of the El Oboid hill, located approximately 18 km northeast of Eridu.
4 km east of the El-Obeid hill was the city of Ur, which played a prominent role in the history of Sumer. 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, Lagash was located, which left the most valuable historical sources and played an important role in the history of Sumer in the 3rd millennium BC. e., although a later legend, 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. From this city, valuable documents of economic reporting have come down to us, which are the case basis for determining the social system of Sumer. Along with the city of Umma, the city of Urukh, 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 El Obeid culture, and the most ancient written monuments were found that showed the pictographic origins of Sumerian cuneiform writing, that is, writing that already consisted of conventional characters in the form of wedge-shaped depressions on clay. North of Uruk, on the banks of the Euphrates, was the city of Shuruppak, where Ziusudra (Utnapishtim), the hero of the Sumerian flood myth, came from. Almost in the center of Mesopotamia, somewhat south of the bridge where the two rivers now most closely converge with each other, was located on the Euphrates Nippur, the central sanctuary of all Sumer. But Nippur seems to have never been the center of any state of serious political importance.
In the northern part of Mesopotamia, on the banks of the Euphrates, there was the city of Kish, where during excavations in the 20s of our century many monuments were found 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 the city of Sippar. According to the later Sumerian tradition, the city of Sippar was one of the leading cities of Mesopotamia already in ancient times.
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. In the lists of royal dynasties compiled at the end of the 3rd millennium, the dynasty from Mari is also mentioned, which allegedly ruled the entire Mesopotamia.
The city of Eshnunna played a significant role in the history of Mesopotamia. The city of Eshnunna served as a link for Sumerian cities in trade with the mountain tribes of the North-East. An intermediary in the trade of Sumerian cities. 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 probably settled here in very ancient times, bringing elements of Sumerian culture here.
Relocation of Semites to Mesopotamia.
The presence of several Semitic words in ancient Sumerian texts indicates 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 3rd millennium in the north of Mesopotamia, Semites began to act as heirs and continuers of 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 southern part retained the name Sumer. Among the cities founded by the Semites we should probably also include Isin, which is believed to have been located near Nippur.
The most significant role in the history of the country fell to the lot 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 1st millennium BC. e. its splendor so eclipsed all other cities in the country that the Greeks began to call the entire Mesopotamia Babylonia by the name of this city.
The oldest 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. Excavations gave science lists of the royal dynasties that ruled in the states of Mesopotamia. These monuments were written in Sumerian at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. in the states of Isin and Larsa based on a list compiled two hundred years earlier in the city of Ur. These royal lists were heavily influenced by the local traditions of the cities in which the lists were compiled or revised. Nevertheless, taking this into account critically, the lists that have reached us can still be used 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 Beross (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” includes 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 number of years of reign of the kings of the first dynasties “after the flood” is also fantastic. 
During excavations of the ruins of the ancient Uruku and the Jemdet-Nasr hill, as mentioned earlier, documents of the economic records of the temples were found that preserved, in whole or in part, the picture (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 began at this time to develop into the “wedge-shaped” writing characteristic of Mesopotamia. So, on the basis of tablets excavated in Ur and dating back to the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. e., it can be assumed that the ruler of Lagash was recognized as king here at that time; Along with him, the tablets mention the sanga, that is, the high priest of Ur. Perhaps other cities mentioned in the Ur tablets were also subordinate to the king of Lagash. 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 indicate that Shuruppak's warriors garrisoned 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, crafts also began to play a relatively large role. The oldest documents from Ur, Shuruppak and Lagash mention representatives of various crafts. Excavations of the tombs of the 1st royal dynasty of Ur (circa 27th-26th centuries) showed the high skill of the builders of these tombs. In the tombs themselves, along with a large number of killed members of the entourage of the deceased, possibly male and female slaves, helmets, axes, daggers and spears made of gold, silver and copper were found, testifying to the high level of Sumerian metallurgy. New methods of metal processing are being developed - embossing, engraving, granulating. The economic importance of the metal increased more and more. The art of goldsmiths is evidenced by the beautiful jewelry that was found in the royal tombs of Ur.
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 Sumerian society of that time. In exchange for wool, fabric, grain, dates and fish, the Sumerians also received amen and wood. Most often, of course, either gifts were exchanged, or half-trading, half-robbery expeditions were carried out. But one must think that even then, at times, genuine trade was taking place, conducted by tamkars - trading agents of the temples, the king and the slave-holding nobility surrounding him.
Exchange and trade led to the emergence of monetary circulation in Sumer, although at its core the economy continued to remain subsistence. Already from the documents from Shuruppak it is clear that copper acted as a measure of value, and subsequently this role was played by silver. By the first half of the 3rd millennium BC. e. There are references to cases of purchase and sale of houses and lands. Along with the seller of land or house, who received the main payment, the texts also mention the so-called “eaters” of the purchase price. These were obviously the neighbors and relatives of the seller, who were given some additional payment. These documents also reflected the dominance of customary law, when all representatives of rural communities had the right to land. The scribe who completed the sale also received payment. 
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, but not only the poorest population and slaves, but also people of average income at that time huddled in tiny houses made of mud brick, where mats, bundles of reeds that replaced seats, and pottery 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 ruler’s palace with outbuildings attached to them. The city contained large, carefully constructed government granaries. One such granary was excavated in the city of Lagash in a layer dating back to approximately 2600 BC. e. Sumerian clothing consisted of loincloths and coarse woolen cloaks or a rectangular piece of cloth wrapped around the body. Primitive tools - hoes with copper tips, stone grain graters - which were used by the mass of the population, made the work unusually difficult. Food was meager: the 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 did not have 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, 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 widespread points of view in Soviet science, the lands surrounding the Sumerian city were divided at that time into naturally irrigated fields and into high fields that required artificial irrigation. In addition, there were also fields in the swamp, that is, in the area that did not dry out after the flood and therefore required additional drainage work in order to create soil suitable for agriculture. Part of the naturally irrigated fields was the “property” of the gods and, as the temple economy passed into the hands of their “deputy” - the king, it became actually royal. Obviously, the high fields and “swamp” fields, 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. Cultivation of high fields and “swamp” fields required a lot of labor and money, so relations of hereditary ownership gradually developed here. Apparently, it is these humble owners of the high fields in Lagash that the texts dating back to the 24th century speak of. 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 3rd millennium this process was still very slow.
Since ancient times, the lands of rural communities have been located on naturally irrigated areas. Of course, not all naturally irrigated land was distributed among rural communities. They had their own plots on that land, on the fields of which neither the king nor the temples conducted their own farming. Only lands that were not in the direct possession of the ruler or the gods were divided into plots, individual or collective. Individual plots were distributed among the nobility and representatives of the state and temple apparatus, while collective plots were retained by rural communities. Adult men of the communities were organized into separate groups, which acted together in war and agricultural work, under the command of their elders. In Shuruppak they were called gurush, i.e. “strong”, “well done”; in Lagash in the middle of the 3rd millennium they were called shublugal - “subordinates of the king.” According to some researchers, the “subordinates of the king” were not members of the community, but workers of the temple economy already separated from the community, but this assumption remains controversial. Judging by some inscriptions, “the king’s subordinates” do not necessarily have to be considered as personnel of any temple. They could also work on the land of the king or ruler. We have reason to believe that in case of war, the “king’s subordinates” were included in the army of Lagash.
The plots 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 plots were given free of charge, while others were given for a tax equal to 1/6 -1/8 of the harvest.
The owners of the plots worked in the fields of temple (later also royal) farms for usually four months. Draft cattle, as well as plows and other tools of labor, were given to them from the temple household. 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, a small amount of 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, communal lands were equally natural and high lands, since 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. From the same point of view, people who worked on land allocated to temples or the king (including - as indicated by sources - and on land reclaimed from the steppe) had already lost contact with the community and were subject to exploitation. They, like slaves, worked. in the temple economy all year round and received wages in kind for their work, and at the beginning also land plots. The harvest on the temple land was not considered the harvest of the communities. The people who worked on this land had neither self-government, nor any rights in the community or benefits from management communal economy, therefore, according to this point of view, they should be distinguished from the community members themselves, who were not involved in the temple economy and had the right, with the knowledge of the large family and the community to which they belonged, to buy and sell land. According to this point of view, the land holdings of the nobility were not limited to the plots that they received from the temple - Ed.).
Slaves worked all year round. Captives captured in war were turned into slaves; slaves were also bought by tamkars (trading agents of temples or the king) outside the state of Lagash. Their labor was used in construction and irrigation work. They protected fields from birds and were also used in gardening and partly in livestock farming. 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 of little value. There is evidence of slaves being sacrificed.
Wars for hegemony in Sumer.
With the further development of the lowland lands, the borders of small Sumerian states begin to touch, and a fierce struggle unfolds between individual states for land and for the main areas of irrigation structures. This struggle fills the history of the Sumerian states already in the first half of the 3rd 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 one might assume (there are other interpretations of these terms), designated the head of the Sumerian city-state, independent of anyone. 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 over itself. Such a ruler basically played only the role of the high priest in his city, while political power belonged to the lugal of the state, to which he, patesi, was subordinate. Lugal, the king of some Sumerian city-state, was by no means yet king over the other cities of Mesopotamia. Therefore, in Sumer in the first half of the 3rd millennium there were several political centers, the heads of which bore the title of king - lugal.
One of these royal dynasties of Mesopotamia strengthened in the 27th-26th centuries. BC e. or a little earlier in Ur, after Shuruppak lost his former dominant position. Until this time, the city of Ur was dependent on 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. Mentioned above was the legend of the struggle between Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, and Akka, king of Kish, which is part of the cycle of Sumerian epic poems about the knight Gilgamesh. 
The power and wealth of the state created by the first dynasty of the city of Ur are evidenced by the monuments it left behind. The above-mentioned royal tombs with their rich inventory - wonderful weapons and decorations - 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, a “standard” (more precisely, a portable canopy) with images of military scenes made using mosaic techniques. Objects of applied art of high perfection were also excavated. Tombs also attract attention as monuments of construction skills, for we find in them the use of such architectural forms as vault and arch.
In the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. e. Kish also laid claim to dominance in Sumer. But then Lagash moved forward. 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 Akshaka, dared to violate the ancient border between Lagash and Umma. Eannatum immortalized his victory in an inscription that he carved on a large stone slab covered with images; it represents Ningirsu, the main god of the city of Lagash, who threw a net over the army of enemies, the victorious advance of the army of Lagash, his triumphant return from the campaign, etc. The Eannatum slab is known in science as the “Kite Steles” - after one of its images, which depicts a battlefield where kites are tormenting the corpses of killed enemies. As a result of the victory, Eannatum restored the border and returned fertile areas of land previously captured by enemies. Eannatum also managed to defeat the eastern neighbors of Sumer - the highlanders of Elam.
Eannatum's military successes, however, did not ensure lasting peace for Lagash. After his death, the war with the Ummah resumed. It was finished victoriously by Entemena, the nephew of Eannatum, who also successfully repelled the raids of the Elamites. Under his successors, the weakening of Lagash began, again, apparently, submitting to Kish.
But the dominance of the latter was also short-lived, perhaps due to the increased pressure of the Semitic tribes. In the fight against the southern cities, Kish also began to suffer heavy defeats.
Military equipment.
The growth of productive forces and the constant wars that were fought between the states of Sumer created the conditions for the improvement of military equipment. We can judge its development based on 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. The front side depicts scenes of war, the reverse side depicts scenes of triumph after the victory. On the front side, in the lower tier, chariots are depicted, drawn by four donkeys, trampling with their hooves prostrate enemies. In the back of the four-wheeled chariot stood a driver and a fighter armed with an axe, they were covered by the front panel of the body. A quiver of 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 in sparse formation on the enemy. The heads of the warriors, like the heads of the charioteer and chariot fighter, are protected by helmets. The body of the foot soldiers was protected by a long cloak, perhaps made of leather. On the right are lightly armed warriors finishing off wounded enemies and driving away prisoners. Presumably, the king and the high nobility surrounding him fought on chariots.
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 the Vultures” of 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 fighters are armed with heavy spears. The fighters' heads are protected by helmets, and the torso from the neck to the feet is covered with large quadrangular shields, so heavy that they were held by special shield bearers. The chariots on which the nobility had previously fought have almost disappeared. Now the nobility fought on foot, in the ranks of a heavily armed phalanx. The weapons of the Sumerian phalangites were so expensive that only people with a relatively large land plot could have them. 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 outcome of the battle was decided by a heavily armed phalanx.
