The Sumerian City-State

The Sumerian City-State emerged in Mesopotamia during the 4th millennium BCE. At the dawn of the 4th millennium BCE around the year 4000, local tribes and villages began gradually to coalesce into larger, denser, singular communities which had developed into what we might call a true city by 3000 BCE.

The Sumerians developed sophisticated social structure, which became both more stratified and diversified as power became more centralized. Documentation, trade, literature, religion, politics all flourished and, since it was recorded, has given us a rich insight into the culture of these ancient peoples.

Some of the main Sumerian cities-states were Ur, Uruk, Lagash, Nippur, Eridu, and Kish. Though there were other major cities across Mesopotamia, and many more minor cities. The Sumerian city-state grew out of an increase in population density of Mesopotamia, which never ceased to increase. Villages grew to hold hundreds, cities to thousands and tens of thousands, while a large city might influence the lives of hundreds of thousands.

The heights of civilization achieved by the Sumerians in art, architecture, social structure, trade, pottery, history, science and religion soon spread throughout Mesopotamia and beyond its borders. Sumerian invention of writing seems to have prompted the Egyptian invention of writing. Schools trained doctors and architects, scribes and scholars.

Cities such as Mari, far to the northeast, became a powerful trading city. Independent, yet Sumerian. Sumerian culture also spread its cultural influence to cities to the east on the Iranian Plateau, such as Susa. Even passing down many important, intrinsic elements to all later cultures of the region and beyond.

The First Sumerian City-State

According to ancient Sumerian religious tradition there were five great cities of antediluvian times. They flourished in the early days before the flood. Said to be the first cities were kingship descended from heaven to Earth, from god to man, existing at a time when the power of the gods was receding from human sight, while the power of man waxed.

The Sumerian Creation Myth (glimpsed in its Babylonian form, the Enuma Elish or else in the Sumerian Flood Myth) tells of five great cities built after the world at been ravaged by the great flood. The Sumerians held them in such high esteem that they insisted they were established on their earlier foundations from antediluvian times.

The Sumerians recorded the first five cities as:

1. Eridu (Tell Abu Shahrain)
2. Bad-tibira (probably Tell al-Madain)
3. Larsa (Tell as-Senkereh)
4. Sippar (Tell Abu Habbah)
5. Shuruppak (Tell Fara)

Indeed, Eridu, has been dated to 5400 BCE and is one of the most ancient – if not the most ancient – city. Though many of the most exemplary of the Sumerian city-state – Ur, Nippur, Kish, Lagash, Girsu, Uruk, Isin, Akkad – were to come later.

Each city was well organized and powerful, a model maintained through millennia, enduring beyond the rise and fall of empires. The later Greek polis could be argued as an extension of the Sumerian city-state, just as every major city-state in Mesopotamia thereafter.

Each city was believed to be the home of an individual god of the Mesopotamian pantheon. The more powerful the god, the more powerful the city. Nippur was even believed to be the place where the council of the gods congregated to make major decisions, at times of crisis. Eridu was the home of the god Enki, listed on the Sumerian King List as the “city of the first kings,” where kingship first descended.

However Inanna’s city, the city of Uruk, is considered by many modern scholars to be the first true city of the world. Uruk was the largest city to yet emerge in Sumer, reaching a population of 80,000 people. Its growth began to intensify around 4000 BCE. People flocked to Uruk where major revolutions and developments in the arts of civilization were occurring.

The Culture of the Sumerian City-State

At Uruk and other major Sumerian Cities, human culture was developing explosively. Towards the end of the 4th millennium and into the 3rd millennium great industry emerged centered around a temple. The priests and leaders of the temple were generally educated men. They had gone to school in order to learn the scribal art and be trained as a scholar in the expansive knowledge the scribal art was the doorway to.

They studied historical knowledge, legends and stories of earlier times. They studied mathematics, trees, animals, the stars, religious literature, and even law. As trade intensified better written records were immortalized in the highly-durable clay tablets which bear their cuneiform script. Power in the city was becoming more structured resulting in what we might call today city officials, priests, and administrators.

All of this only lead to the growth of the ancient Sumerian city-state. This same culture was seen in Uruk, Ur, Nipper, and Kish. More people came. They built houses with mudbrick (mud pressed into brick often with bits of reed or straw mixed with the mud to increase its structural integrity and longevity).

Great weaving lanes developed radiating from the city-center outwards to the cities boundaries, which were protected from the uncivilized world by great, roughly circular walls. The heart of the city was generally dominated by a great temple, the Ziggurat, towering high above the city which could see – and be seen from – great distances around the city.

Shining embodiments of the advancement of their civilization. The center for religious power, the storehouse of knowledge, wealth, and the authority of god, king, and priest all exemplified by this enormous structures. A people who could reach into the sky towards the gods.

The Fall of Sumer, But Not Its Cities

Sumerian Culture peaked by 2500 BCE and faded shortly afterwords, only briefly resurging in power after its conquer at the hands of the Akkadians under Sargon the Great.

However, while Sumerian culture fell, it’s cities did not. We have the end of the Sumerian city-state only in that Sumer ceased to exist. However, the cities themselves endured under the same name. Uruk itself endured for some 5000 years.

Moreover the culture of Sumer carried on within these cities. The myths and traditions of Sumer are honored by all later peoples in the region. The Akkadians, Babylonians, Elamites, even the Hittites and Greeks all pay homage to them and remember them because they were not only the traditions of Sumer but of them all, probably in some original form.

A List of Sumerian City-States

The first five cities who where ruled by kings in times before the flood were

1. Eridu (Tell Abu Shahrain)
2. Bad-tibira (probably Tell al-Madain)
3. Larsa (Tell as-Senkereh)
4. Sippar (Tell Abu Habbah)
5. Shuruppak (Tell Fara)

Major Sumerian City-States

• Uruk (Warka)
• Kish (Tell Uheimir and Ingharra)
• Ur (Tell al-Muqayyar)
• Nippur (Afak)
• Lagash (Tell al-Hiba)
• Girsu (Tello or Telloh)
• Umma (Tell Jokha)
• Hamazi 1
• Adab (Tell Bismaya)
• Mari (Tell Hariri) 2
• Akshak*
• Akkad 1
• Isin (Ishan al-Bahriyat)

(*location uncertain)

**an outlying city in northern Mesopotamia)

Minor cities

Listed from south to north

• Kuara (Tell al-Lahm)
• Zabala (Tell Ibzeikh)
• Kisurra (Tell Abu Hatab)
• Marad (Tell Wannat es-Sadum)
• Dilbat (Tell ed-Duleim)
• Borsippa (Birs Nimrud)
• Kutha (Tell Ibrahim)
• Der (al-Badra)
• Eshnunna (Tell Asmar)
• Nagar (Tell Brak) 2
• (2an outlying city in northern Mesopotamia)

Further Reading

1. Popular Reading
   1. Eridu | Joshua J. Mark | Ancient History Encyclopedia | Accessed 12 Sept 2020
   2. Sumer, City-States In Mesopotamia | Wikipedia | 10 Feb 2020
2. Scholarly Reading