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ancient civilizations

Over the past two or three billion years, the map of the world has undergone tremendous changes. Geologists believe that initially all the lands were one single continent, Pangea, which stood in the middle of a vast ocean.

Then it broke up into Laurasia, which included the current North America, Europe, as well as North and Central Asia, and Gondwana, which included the current South America, Africa, Antarctica, India and Australia, between which lay the vast Mediterranean Sea (Tetris). Over the long centuries, Laurasia and Gondwana were overgrown with endless forests, destroyed by drastic climate changes. Then, tormented by glaciers and torn apart by underground pressure caused by fluctuations magnetic field Earths, colossal slabs earth's crust began to crack and slowly recede until they took their current form.

The ancients believed that the first earthly civilization originated in the Far North long before it was covered with Arctic ice. This realm of light and beauty was the Land of the gods. The Chinese believed that their emperor was endowed with power by the god of the Dragon, who resided at the Heavenly North Pole and was a symbolic incarnation of the King of the Cosmos. The Egyptians worshiped the Radiant Beings who stood behind Osiris in the constellation Ursa Major, and oriented the Great Pyramid to Alpha Draco (that is, the very bright star in the constellation Draco, Tuban), which at that time polar star. Some Indians believed that the Aryans came from the White Island, Sveta-dvipa, which, according to them, was in the Far North. The Vedas and the Mahabharata are said to contain astronomical data that can only be understood if the observer is at the North Pole. The Eskimos remember the Shining Spirits of the North. The Sioux speak of an island to the north, the cradle of their ancestors, swallowed up by the waters. The famous wheels of the prophet Ezekiel moved from the north. Zeus and Hermes appeared to the Greeks from Mount Olympus, which symbolized the northern regions. Even today, the Christmas grandfather (or Santa Claus) lives in his Wonderland at the North Pole. UFO researchers note that these objects usually first appear in the north, presumably through the pole passages in the Earth's radiation belts discovered by Van Allen. Or, perhaps, they are guided by the underground civilization of Agarta, which allegedly exists under our feet at a depth of many kilometers. A long time ago, the then tropical lands of the Far North certainly attracted the people of space as they approached the Earth. Adepts of secret knowledge teach that now covered with ice North Pole was once an idyllic Eden, the cradle of humanity.

The people of the second cycle lived among the fabulous beauties on the subpolar continent of Hyperborea, over which the sun did not set. Apollo visited there on his famous Arrow or in a chariot drawn by swans, which, apparently, meant a spaceship. According to ancient evidence, the Hyperboreans were very tall blondes with fair skin and blue eyes, that is, they were the ideal Nordic type of person. In the antediluvian period, it was hot in the polar regions, since the Earth was probably closer to the Sun and had an axis perpendicular to the orbit, and therefore its movement did not lead to a change in seasons. The legends say that the Hyperboreans were stellar aliens who colonized this part of the Earth, similar to their own planet, and became the progenitors of the white race. In the VI century BC. e. Hecateus of Miletus wrote that the Hyperboreans worshiped Apollo in a wonderful round temple often identified with Stonehenge, implying that the country of Hyperborea was in fact Ancient Britain. The Chinese writer Li Jie witnessed the arrival of white people from the North in China, communicating with the gods. Our ancient ancestors called the capital of this wonderful kingdom, located beyond the North Wind, Thule, which recalls the mythical home of the Mexican Toltecs called Tullan, supposedly meaning "Land of the Sun." Used by all ancient peoples, the swastika sign could symbolize the North Pole, around which the Earth revolves. The polar symbol of the fish meant the first dwelling of man, until it was later adopted by the Christians.

In the memory of the peoples, a vague echo of the colossal cataclysm that devastated these beautiful northern lands has been preserved. The legends say how the Sun changed its course, and the comet or the fallen Moon shifted the Earth's axis, thus completing one of the ages of the world. The traditions of the Maya and the Hindus even suggest some kind of nuclear war between the gods of Hyperborea and the magicians of Lemuria, which shook the entire planet, causing climate change and the onset of the ice age. The Scythians, the sons of the Hyperboreans, erected mysterious menhirs for their ancestors around the Black Sea.

The Divine Kings descended and taught people the sciences and arts, for man could no longer live in the first country that turned into a frozen corpse.

The third human race settled on the continent known among the peoples of the present Indian and Pacific regions as Lemuria, or, respectively, My. The continent stretched north to the Himalayas, and south, washed by the great inland Asian Sea, to Australia and Antarctica, west of the Philippines. The first peoples of Lemuria allegedly consisted of hermaphrodite giants. Over millions of years, they have evolved into men and women, and their height has decreased from 365 to about 215 centimeters. In general, the Lemurians in their appearance resembled the red-skinned Indians of the time of the Conquest, although their skin had a bluish tint. In the middle of their protruding forehead, they had a large bulge (bump) like a walnut, known as the "third eye", evidence of a highly developed psychic power. In occult traditions, it is said that teachers from Venus revealed cosmic truths to the initiates of Lemuria; from these sublime doctrines the secret knowledge of the East was formed.

After many centuries, men acquired the color of the rising sun and achieved god-like perfection, and women became bright and graceful, having developed such mental perception in which women's intuition surpassed scientific logic. Sex was seen as spiritual fellowship, marriage as the most sacred bond, and divorce was unknown. Death meant an ascent to higher realms, and the Lemurians could die whenever they wished. Life was far from perfect for them, the world in which they lived was devastated by cataclysms, volcanic eruptions tortured their land, ultimately splitting it in half and overthrowing it into the depths of the ocean. Some Lemurians probably returned with their teachers to other planets and acquired wonderful knowledge that is not available to us today. The Lemurians built huge cities. From white stone mountains (marble) and from black stone (underground lava) they carved their own images according to their size and likeness and worshiped them.

Based primarily on occult sources, tall mahogany houses are said to have a wide, projecting roof to provide maximum shade, as the sun's brilliance and heat, enhanced by the warmth of the volcanic soil, created serious problems for the Lemurians, already suffering from the earthquakes that were destroying their empire of the Sun. Giant palaces and temples, built of unusually strong stone, have not completely succumbed to the ravages of time, the remains of cyclopean buildings are still falling apart in lonely desolation among the wilds of America and Asia, where the Lemurian colonies survived after the disaster. Gold and silver were plentiful and were used not for minting coins, but for decorative purposes, and diamonds, due to their wide distribution, were valued no higher than glass. The most luxurious decorations were rare brightly colored feathers, so revered after thousands of years by the Mexican Aztecs. Sunlit buildings shone amidst the lush vegetation that covered the spacious avenues, as transportation was carried out mainly by water. The Lemurians were famous seafarers who founded settlements throughout the Earth, distinguished by their cyclopean stone structures. The peoples of this fan empire spoke the same language, the lighthouse, which has its roots in Sumerian and Chinese.

When the Lemurian priests drew their mysterious signs on skin or stone, they used to turn towards South Pole, while their hands moved in the direction of the East, the source of light. Accordingly, they wrote from right to left. When the white people learned to write from the dark-skinned Lemurians, instead of turning to the South, they faced the North, but also wrote towards the East. Scientists, probably taught by the people of space, have studied radionics based on solar and space energy, and brought light and heat into homes and industrial premises. Deep knowledge of precious stones revealed to them the amazing properties of semiconductors and laser beams. The Lemurians were also famous for their cold light, which did not die out in lamps for centuries. Ships and aircraft used some form of nuclear energy, perhaps the space energy of interstellar ships, the technology of which was bequeathed ancient india. American Colonel James Churchward, who claims to have studied all the temple records of previous civilizations, gives a fascinating description of the aircraft used by the Hindus about 20 thousand years ago.

When the oil wells on Earth dry up, scientists will no doubt someday use space forces, which were known to the Lemurians, represented in the form of crosses, circles and swastikas depicted on ancient stones found in the Yucatan and in India. With such powers at their disposal, the Lemurians used radionic inventions beyond our imagination, and may have adopted from the inhabitants of Venus much of the medical and electronic knowledge necessary for space flight.

“Then, with a powerful roar of rapid descent from an unimaginable height, surrounded by bright masses of fire that filled the sky with dancing flames, the Fire Lords’ ship rushed through the air space. He stopped over the White Island, lying in the Gobi Sea. It was green and emitted the brightest rays, for the Earth did everything in her power to meet her King with dignity.

This first description of a space flight probably dates back to the time of Lemuria and concerns the descent from Venus of Sanat Kumara, the real incarnation of the deity, together with the four Fire Lords and a hundred assistants to the city now buried in the sands of the Gobi desert. South American legends speak of the wonderful fair-haired Orejon, who once descended on a spaceship shining like gold to the island of the Sun in Lake Titicaca to give civilization to the progenitors of the Incas. Similar traditions about gods and goddesses in fiery chariots are kept in the traditions of all ancient peoples. Knowledge and power breed spiritual pride. The scientists of Lemuria were drawn into the occult practice, until the white and black magicians, who possessed crushing weapons, in the struggle with each other, destroyed their declined civilization. The legends of the Asian peoples tell of spaceships who came from Mars and Venus to save the elect, just as thousands of years later the Sons of Heaven had to save the survivors from the doomed Atlantis. Devoured by underground fire, the split continent sank into the depths of the sea, leaving behind only the mountain peaks of Mu in the form of a garland of Pacific islands. The chosen remnants of the race of Lemuria took refuge at its western extremity under the guidance of the Manu, or Divine Guide, whence they could reach Atlantis, a verdant young country which had recently risen from the ocean. Other refugees migrated to America, India and China, where they continued the sunny culture of their sunken homeland.

Cosmic symbols characteristic of Mu are still visible on stone tablets and rock sculptures in North and South America. Around Mount Shasta in California lives a mystical brotherhood whose members claim to be the descendants of people from this vanished continent. The knowledge and cult of the Sun, planted in Lemuria by the sons of heaven, reached Europe first through Atlantis, and then from India, Egypt and Babylon. It is believed that the Naakals, the holy brothers, brought their secret doctrines from Mu to India around 70,000 BC. e. The initiates founded cults in Upper Egypt and Sumer, where their knowledge was adopted by the Babylonian magicians. Thus, it influenced the first Books of the Bible, which became the religious heritage of the West.

Mentioned tropical islands in pacific ocean pose exciting problems. The Polynesians of Malekula remember the winged women descending from heaven; the giant statues of Easter Island suggest the existence of unanswered mysteries. In the Caroline Islands, the cyclopean ruins on Nan Matol conjure up some kind of grandiose civilization brought by creatures in flying machines. Aborigines of Australia remember "Dream Time", an idyllic era of the past. Their rock art has similarities with images of aliens on frescoes from the Tassilin-Ajer plateau in the Sahara and mysterious petroglyphs in the Andes. New Zealand Maori talk about the gods on magical birds that fly from the land of heaven to help people on Earth.

Ancient Civilizations Mironov Vladimir Borisovich

The birth of the first civilizations. Who are the Sumerians?

Where did the first civilization originate? Some consider the land of Shinar (Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia) to be such, which is located in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The ancient inhabitants called this land the "House of Two Rivers" - Bit-Nakhrein, the Greeks - Mesopotamia, other peoples - Mesopotamia or Mesopotamia. The Tigris River originates in the mountains of Armenia, south of Lake Van, the sources of the Euphrates lie east of Erzurum, at an altitude of 2 thousand meters above sea level. The Tigris and Euphrates connected Mesopotamia with Urartu (Armenia), Iran, Asia Minor, and Syria. The inhabitants of southern Mesopotamia called themselves "the people of Sumer." It has been established that Sumer was located in the south of Mesopotamia (south of present-day Baghdad), Akkad occupied the middle part of the country. The border between Sumer and Akkad ran just above the city of Nippur. According to climatic conditions, Akkad is closer to Assyria. The climate here was more severe (it often snowed in winter). The time of the appearance of the Sumerians in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates is about the 4th millennium BC. e. Who they are and where they came from, despite many years of persistent research, it is difficult to say for sure. “The Sumerians considered the country of Dilmun, corresponding to the modern islands of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, to be the place of the appearance of mankind,” writes I. Kaneva. “Archaeological data allow us to trace the connection of the Sumerians with the territory of ancient Elam, as well as with the cultures of the northern Mesopotamia.”

G. Dore. global flood

Ancient authors very often talk about Egypt, but there is no information about Sumer and the Sumerians. The Sumerian language is original and absolutely unlike the Semitic languages, which at the time of its appearance did not exist at all. It is also far from the developed Indo-European languages. The Sumerians are not Semites. Their writing and language (the name of the type of writing in 1700 was given by Oxford University professor T. Hyde) are not related to the Semitic-Hamitic ethno-linguistic group. After the decipherment of the Sumerian language at the end of the 19th century, the country of Sumer was traditionally associated with the name of this country found in the Bible - Sin,ar.

It is still unclear what caused the Sumerians to appear in those places - the Flood or something else ... Science admits that the Sumerians most likely were not the first settlers of the Central and Southern Mesopotamia. The Sumerians appeared on the territory of the Southern Mesopotamia no later than the 4th millennium BC. e. But where they came from is still unknown. There are a number of hypotheses regarding the place where they came from. Some believe that it could be the Iranian Plateau, the distant mountains of Central Asia (Tibet) or India. Others recognize the Caucasian people in the Sumerians (Sh. Otten). Still others consider them to be the original inhabitants of Mesopotamia (G. Frankfort). The fourth speak of two waves of Sumerian migration from Central Asia or from the Middle East through Central Asia (B. Grozny). The patriarch of modern "world history" W. McNeil believed that the Sumerian written tradition is consistent with the idea that the founders of this civilization came from the south by sea. They conquered the native population, the "black-headed people" who formerly lived in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates. They learned how to drain the swamps and irrigate the land, because the words of L. Woolley that the Mesopotamia had previously lived in a golden age are hardly accurate: “It was a blessed alluring land. She called, and many responded to her call.

Although according to legend, Eden was once here. In the Book of Genesis 2, 8-14 its location is indicated. Other scholars argue that the Gardens of Eden may have been in Egypt. In Mesopotamian literature there is no indication of traces of an earthly paradise. Others saw him at the source of four rivers (Tigris and Euphrates, Pison and Geon). The Antiochians believed that paradise was somewhere in the east, perhaps somewhere where the earth meets the sky. According to Ephraim the Syrian, paradise was supposed to be located on an island - in the Ocean. The ancient Greeks imagined the location of "paradise", that is, the posthumous abode of the righteous, on islands in the ocean (the so-called islands of the Blessed). Plutarch described them in his biography of Sertorius: "They are separated from one another by a very narrow strait, located ten thousand stadia from the African coast." There is a favorable climate due to the temperature and the absence of sudden changes in all seasons. Paradise was a land covered with an evergreen garden. This is how the image of the promised land was seen, where people are full and happy, eat fruits in the shade of gardens and cool streams.

The idea of ​​a paradise earth (according to A. Kircher)

The imagination of people supplemented these fabulous features of well-being with new and new colors. In "The Life of St. Brendan ”(XI century), the picture of the paradise island is drawn as follows:“ Many herbs and fruits grew there ... We went around it for fifteen days, but could not find its limit. And we did not see a single grass that would not bloom, and not a single tree that would not bear fruit. The stones there are only precious ... "

Bahrain map

Research scientists have given food for new conjectures and hypotheses. In the 50s of the 20th century, a Danish expedition led by J. Bibby discovered on the island of Bahrain traces of what others immediately called the ancestral home of the Sumerian civilization. Many believed that the legendary Dilmun was located here. Indeed, after all, such ancient sources as the poem about the adventures of the gods (mother earth Ninhursag and Enki, the patron god of the most ancient of the cities of Mesopotamia - Eridu), rewritten in the 4th millennium BC. e. with even more ancient source, already mentions a certain Arabian country Dilmun. The poem begins with the lines of glorification of this country:

Give the holy cities to Enki,

the sacred land of Dilmun,

Holy Sumer grant him.

Holy land of Dilmun,

The immaculate country of Dilmun,

The pure country of Dilmun...

This "sacred and immaculate country" seems to have once been located on the island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, as well as on the nearby lands of the Arabian coast. There is no doubt that she was famous for her wealth, developed trade, and the luxury of her palaces. In the Sumerian poem "Enki and the Universe" it is also noted as a well-known fact that the ships of Dilmun carried timber, gold and silver from Melluh (India). It also speaks of the mysterious country of Magan. The Dilmuns traded in copper, iron, bronze, silver and gold, ivory, pearls, etc. Truly it was a paradise for the rich. For example, in the II century BC. e. a Greek traveler described Bahrain as a country where “doors, walls and roofs of houses were inlaid with ivory, gold, silver and precious stones". memory of wonderful world Arabia survived for a very long time.

Oannes the fish man

Apparently, this circumstance caused the expedition of J. Bibby, who described his odyssey in the book "In Search of Dilmun". On the site of the Portuguese fortress (Portugal took possession of these places and stayed here from 1521 to 1602), he discovered the remains of ancient buildings. Nearby they found a sacred well in which stood the mysterious "throne of God." Then the memory of the Holy Throne of Dilmun passed from people to people and from era to era, being reflected in the Bible: “And the Lord God planted paradise in Eden in the east; and placed there the man whom he had created. This is how a fairy tale-tale arose about this magical country, from where the expulsion of a person was so painful, if it took place, of course.

C. Crivelli. Riches of the Land of Dilmun

The symbols of paradise are similar everywhere: the presence characteristic features"paradise civilization": an abundance of products, fertile natural conditions, luxuries. Among the peoples of Mesopotamia, the magical kingdom of Siduri is presented as a place where plants from precious stones grow, which bring people “beautiful in appearance and great in taste” juicy fruits. It is also interesting that all these legends were also known in Rus'. In the message of the Novgorod Archbishop Vasily Kaliki to the Bishop of Tver Theodore the Good (compiled around 1347), it is reported that the Novgorod travelers also reached an allegedly certain island where paradise was located. They arrived there on three boats, one of which was lost. This place is located near high mountains; Everything around is illuminated with a wondrous light that cannot be expressed in words, and exclamations of jubilation are heard from those mountains. In 1489, the traveler John de José also described a similar island near India, on which Mount Eden was located. The ancient Greeks identified the islands of the Blessed with the real-life islands of the Atlantic Ocean (Azores or Canaries). It is worth remembering Plato's famous story about Atlantis.

Thus, we see that each nation represented own land like a paradise. Paradise was transferred from the south to Far East, then to the North Pole, to America, even beyond the earth. John the Theologian gave a description of the heavenly Jerusalem, the walls of which are lined with precious stones. The Egyptians in "The Tale of the Shipwrecked" describe a journey through the Red Sea. It speaks of a ghost island, the island of the Spirit, inhabited by certain ghosts. Heaven and hell are most likely ghosts with which people brighten up the dullness of their being.

Looking at the lifeless-dead space of Mesopotamia, where sandstorms are raging, mercilessly firing bright sun, it is somehow difficult to correlate this with paradise, which should please the eyes of people. Indeed, as M. Nikolsky wrote, it is not easy to find a more inhospitable country (although the climate could have been different before). For the Russian and European eyes accustomed to greenery, there is nothing to keep an eye on here - only deserts, hills, dunes and swamps. Rain is rare. In spring and summer, the view of Lower Mesopotamia is especially sad and gloomy, for here everyone is languishing from the heat. Both in autumn and winter, this region is a sandy desert, but in spring and summer it turns into a water desert. In early March, the Tigris floods, and in mid-March, the Euphrates begins to flood. The waters of the overflowing rivers unite, and the country in a significant part turns into one continuous lake. The myths of Sumer and Babylonia reflected this eternal struggle of the elements. In the creation poem (Enuma Elish) we read:

When the sky is not named above,

And the land below was nameless,

Apsu, the firstborn, the all-creator,

Foremother Tiamat, who gave birth to everything,

Their waters interfered together ...

The nature of Mesopotamia was described by many ancient authors, and it is quite severe. Among the sources, we will name the most famous: Herodotus’ History, Ctesias of Cnidus’s Persian History, Diodorus’s Historical Library, Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, Cyrus’ Cylinder, Strabo’s Geography, Josephus’s Jewish Wars. In these writings, it was extremely sparingly spoken about the life of the people, because these writers did not know the language of the Babylonians and Assyrians. Of interest was the book of the Babylonian priest Beross, who lived 100-150 years after Herodotus. He wrote in Greek a large work on Babylon, using the authentic records of the priests, the scientists of Babylon. Unfortunately, this work is almost completely lost. Only fragments have been preserved, as cited by the church writer Eusebius of Caesarea.

G. Dore. The death of all living things

Centuries and centuries will pass until, finally, thanks to the excavations of Layard, Woolley, Gilbrecht, Fresnel, Opper, Grotefend, Rawlinson, and others, these cuneiform texts have been deciphered. But at first, readers were forced to form an impression of life in Mesopotamia from biblical texts. As N. Nikolsky wrote, “the Assyrians seemed to be cruel, bloodthirsty conquerors, drinking human blood, almost cannibals; the Babylonian kings and Babylonians were depicted as vicious, pampered people, accustomed to luxury and sensual pleasures. There was no thought that these scourges of ancient Israel and Judah could be highly cultured peoples, even teachers of the Greeks and Romans. For a long time, all the stories about the populous cities and powerful rulers of Assyria and Babylonia seemed to be an exaggeration, and the Bible was the main source of information. But from the middle of the 19th century, and especially intensively in the 20th century, more or less regular excavations began. ancient Babylon and Nineveh.

Portrait of an ancient Sumerian

Mesopotamia was a type of agricultural civilization based on irrigation. If in Egypt the role of the king of agriculture was performed by the Nile, then here - the Tigris and the Euphrates. The drainage of swamps made it possible to obtain quite stable crops, and as a result of this, the first settlements and cities began to appear here. The occupation of navigation allowed the inhabitants of these places to bring the necessary building materials, tools and raw materials from other regions, often hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away from them. Simultaneously with them, the inhabitants of Egypt and the Indus Valley built their own civilizations, thanks in part to borrowed experience and the ideas they acquired through their contacts with Mesopotamia. Two main reasons lay at the basis of the decisive historical advances - the migration of tribes and peoples, changing the picture of the world, and certain changes in natural and climatic conditions. This is a kind of milestones of historical evolution.

It would be natural to assume (if McNeill was right in saying that skirmishes with foreigners are the engine of social change) that the earliest complex societies arose in the river valleys of Mesopotamia, Egypt, northwestern India, adjacent to the land bridge in old light, where the largest land masses of the planet are connected. "Continental grouping and climatic conditions made this region the main hub of land and sea communications in the Old World, and it can be assumed that it was for this reason that civilization first arose here."

English archaeologist L. Woolley

Many believed that the Sumerian culture was a derivative culture. The Englishman L. Woolley, a researcher of royal burials in Ur (by the way, Ur-Nammu is considered the creator of the city of Ur and the ziggurat temple), for example, made the following conjecture: “There is no doubt that the Sumerian civilization arose from elements of three cultures: El Obeida, Uruk and Jemdet-Nasr, and finally took shape only after their merger. Only from that moment on, the inhabitants of Lower Mesopotamia can be called Sumerians. Therefore, I believe, - writes L. Woolley, - that by the name "Sumerians" we should mean a people whose ancestors, each in their own way, created Sumer with scattered efforts, but by the beginning of the dynastic period, individual features merged into one civilization.

Euphrates River

Although the origin of the Sumerians (“blackheads”) remains a mystery to this day, it is known that in the middle of the 4th millennium BC. e. settlements arose - the city-principalities of Eredu, Ur, Uruk, Lagash, Nippur, Eshnunna, Nineveh, Babylon, Ur. As for the ethnic roots of the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, we can only say about the presence here at different times different peoples and languages. Thus, the well-known researcher of the East L. Oppenheim believes that from the beginning of the invasion of nomads from the plateaus and deserts and until the final Arab conquest, most likely the Semites constituted the overwhelming majority of the population of this region.

Clay figurine of the Mother Goddess. Uruk. 4000? BC e.

Tribal groups in search of new pastures, hordes of warriors striving for the riches of "Gardariki" ("Lands of cities", as the Normans have long called Rus'), they all moved in a continuous stream, mainly from Upper Syria, using permanent routes leading south, or across the Tigris, to the east. These groups of Semites differed markedly not only in languages, but also in their attitude to urban culture, which was a feature of the social and political life in Mesopotamia. Some of them were inclined to settle in cities, and thus made a rather significant contribution to urbanization; others preferred to roam freely, not settling down, not engaging in productive labor - "roaming without loving anyone."

Freemen shied away from military and labor service, from paying taxes, and in general were unstable, eternally dissatisfied or rebellious material. The Amorites had a particularly noticeable influence on the nature of political processes in the region. Oppenheim believes that they are associated with the transition from the concept of city-states to the idea of ​​territorial states, the growth of trade relations through private initiative, the expansion of the horizons of international politics, and within states - a rapid change in power and orientation among rulers. Then (probably around the 12th century BC) Aramaic-speaking tribes came here and settled in Upper Syria and along the Euphrates. The Arameans sided with Babylonia against Assyria. At the same time, Aramaic alphabetic writing slowly but inevitably began to supplant the cuneiform tradition of writing. We can also talk about the influence of the Elamites and other peoples. At the very least, there is no doubt that for almost three millennia Mesopotamia was in constant contact and conflict with its neighbors, which is confirmed by numerous written documents. The region with which the inhabitants had contacts - direct or through various intermediaries - stretched from the Indus Valley through Iraq (sometimes even significantly beyond its borders), up to Armenia and Anatolia, to the Mediterranean coast and further, all the way to Egypt. .

"Standart from Ur": scenes of peace and scenes of war. Sumer. OK. 2500? BC e.

Others consider the Sumerians a side branch of the ethnic tree of the Slavs, or rather, the superethnos of the Rus in the Middle East. “Apparently, the Sumerians became the first Russ to lose their main subspecific feature, and the second ethnic group that emerged from the superethnos of the Rus,” writes Yu. Petukhov, who studied the genesis of the Indo-Europeans, Russian, and other Slavic peoples. What is put forward by him as a justification and confirmation of such a point of view? According to his version, the bulk of the Protorians could have settled in the Middle East and Asia Minor 40-30 thousand years ago. Although they did not yet have a written language, they already had a fairly developed culture. It is clear that the “brilliant and written Sumer” did not immediately appear in Mesopotamia. He was preceded by allegedly many agricultural and pastoral villages of these very "Indo-European Russ".

Figurine of Ibi-il from Mari

The clans, settlements of the Russ of the mountainous regions and the Russ of Palestine-Suriya-Rusiya moved along the riverbeds to the south for hundreds of years, reaching by the middle of the VI millennium BC. e. the southernmost points of Mesopotamia, that is, precisely the places where the Euphrates flows into the Bitter River, into a narrow branch of the Persian Gulf. The Sumerians were not outsiders in the Middle East. They were, in his opinion, a commonality of the clans of the Near Eastern Rus with minor infusions of the Rus of the Indus Valley and the Rus of Central Asia. The aforementioned culture was the successor of the cultures of the Khalaf and Samarra Rus and the forerunner of the famous Sumerian culture. More than 40 settlements of the Ubeids have already been found in the Ur region. There are 23 settlements in the Uruk region, each with an area of ​​over 10 hectares. These ancient cities, and this is significant, have non-Sumerian names. It was here that the Rus from the Armenian Highlands rushed, and then the Rus from Central Asia and the Indus valleys.

Ziggurat at Agar Kufa. III millennium BC e. Modern look

The Sumerians managed to create a vast state with the capital in Ur (2112-2015 BC). The kings of the third dynasty did everything possible to appease the gods. The founder of the dynasty, Urnammu, took part in the creation of the first codes of the Ancient Mesopotamia. No wonder S. Kramer called him the first "Moses". He became famous as a magnificent builder, erecting a number of temples and ziggurats. "To the glory of his mistress Ningal Urnammu, a mighty man, king of Ur, king of Sumer and Akkad, erected this magnificent Gipar." The tower was completed by the sons. The capital had a sacred quarter, which was dedicated to the moon god Nanna and his wife Ningal. Ancient city nothing, of course, did not resemble modern cities.

Ur was an irregular oval, only about a kilometer long and up to 700 meters wide. It was surrounded by a wall with a slope of raw brick (something like a medieval castle), which was surrounded by water on three sides. Inside this space, a ziggurat, a tower with a temple, was erected. It was called "Heavenly Hill" or "Mountain of God". The height of the "Mountain of God", on top of which stood the temple of Nanna, was 53 meters. By the way, the ziggurat in Babylon (“Tower of Babel”) is a copy of the ziggurat in Ur. Probably, of all such ziggurats in Iraq, the one in Ur was in the best condition. (The Tower of Babel was destroyed by the soldiers of Alexander the Great.) The ziggurat of Ur was an observatory temple. It took 30 million bricks to make it. Little has survived from ancient Ur, the tombs and temples of Ashur, Assyrian palaces. The fragility of the structures was explained by the fact that they were created from clay (in Babylon, two buildings were built from stone). The Sumerians are skilled builders. Their architects invented the arch. The Sumerians imported material from other countries - cedars were delivered from Aman, stones for statues from Arabia. They created their own letter, an agricultural calendar, the world's first fish hatchery, the first forest plantations, a library catalog, the first medical prescriptions. Others believe that their oldest treatises were used by the compilers of the Bible when writing texts.

Outwardly, the Sumerians differed from the Semitic peoples: they were beardless and beardless, and the Semites wore long curly beards and shoulder-length hair. Anthropologically, the Sumerians belong to a large Caucasian race with elements of a small Mediterranean race. Some of them came from Scythia (according to Rawlinson), from the Hindustan peninsula (according to I. Dyakonov, etc.), while some came from the island of Dilmun, present-day Bahrain, the Caucasus, etc. It is also argued that, since the Sumerian legend tells of a mixture languages ​​and that “in the good old days they were all one people and spoke the same language”, it is likely that all peoples came from one first people (superethnos). Yu. Petukhov believes that these first people of Sumer were the Rus, the first farmers of Sumer. Further, the common and similar names of the gods are emphasized (the Sumerian "air god" En-Lil and the god of the Slavs Lel, whose name is preserved in our ritual poetry). Common were, he believes, heroes of thunder, defeating the snake-dragon. It passes among the Rus (or their filial ethnic groups) through centuries and millennia: Nin-Khirsa-Gor-Khors-George the Victorious ... "Who could give both Sumer and Egypt one deity of Horus-Khoros-Khirsu?" - our researcher asks a question and answers it himself: “Only one ethnic group. The same one that became the basis of both the Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations- the superethnos of the Rus. All "mysterious" peoples are unraveled, all " dark ages” are highlighted if we study history from a scientific point of view, and not from a political one, in which the mention of the Rus earlier than the 9th century. n. e. the strictest taboo.

Sumerian beauty

The appearance of documents (c. 2800 BC) was preceded by a long period, a thousand years or more. None of the countries of the Ancient East has such an abundance of documents as in Mesopotamia. For that time, this is a high level of civilization. In the III millennium BC. e. a significant proportion of men in this country could read and write. The ruins and inscriptions of Mesopotamia told a lot. As A. Oppenheim wrote, thanks to these documents, we learned hundreds of names of kings and other prominent people, starting with the rulers of Lagash who lived in the III millennium and up to the kings and scientists of the Seleucid era. There was also an opportunity to observe the rise and fall of cities, to assess the political and economic situation, to trace the fate of entire dynasties. The documents were not written by professional scribes, but ordinary people, which indicates high level literacy of the population. Although the mass of texts perished (the cities of Mesopotamia were destroyed during the wars, some of them were destroyed by water or covered with sand), but what has come down and comes to researchers (and these are hundreds of thousands of texts) is an invaluable material. Fortunately, the clay tablets on which the texts were written were used as building material in the construction of walls. Therefore, the earth, having absorbed them over time, has preserved entire archives.

Reconstruction of the temple in Tepe-Gavra near the city of Mosul. Iraq. IV millennium BC e.

A huge success for science was the discovery of the ancient economic archives of Uruk and Jemdet-Nasr (tables with acts of accounting for receipts and issuance of products, the number of workers, slaves). Moreover, many more documents came from the II and I millennia BC. e. First of all, these are temple and royal archives, business papers of merchants, receipts, court records. Tens of thousands of "books" written in cuneiform have been found. Therefore, one can hardly agree with the opinion of the respected R. J. Collingwood, who believes that the Sumerians "did not have and do not have real history":" The ancient Sumerians left behind nothing at all that we could call history. He believes that these texts, at best, fit the definition as a historical ersatz, a document, a fragment of a historical canvas. The author also denies the Sumerians the existence of historical consciousness: “If they had something like historical consciousness, then nothing has been preserved that would testify to its existence. We could argue that they would certainly have had it; for us, historical consciousness is such a real and all-penetrating property of our being that it is incomprehensible to us how it could be absent from anyone. However, among the Sumerians, if one sticks to the facts, Collingwood continues, such consciousness nevertheless appeared in the form of a "hidden essence." I believe that as this “hidden essence” is discovered and deciphered, our understanding of the nature of the history of the Sumerian civilization itself may change.

Stone statue of Gudea - ruler of Lagash

And now in the museums of Europe, Asia, America, Russia there are already about a quarter of a million Sumerian tablets and fragments. The oldest place (or "city") where the Sumerians settled (if we accept the migration version) was Eredu ( modern name- Abu Shahrayon). The King's List says: "After royalty descended from heaven, Eredu became the seat of royalty." Perhaps the lines gave rise to an extravagant point of view. Others read the word "Sumer" as "man from above" ("shu" - from above and "mer" - man): supposedly the Americans, using the latest computers, deciphered and "found out": the Sumerians are from another planet, from a twin of the Earth, not discovered astronomers. In confirmation of this, lines from the legend of Gilgamesh were even cited, where the hero calls himself a superman. In Eredu, according to the myth, there was supposedly the palace of the god Enki, erected at the bottom of the ocean. Eredu became the place of worship of the god Enki (Eya) among the Sumerians.

Stone figurine of a pilgrim from Lagash

Gradually, the Sumerians began to move north. So they captured and began to develop Uruk, the biblical Erech (now Varka). The temple of the god An (“White Sanctuary”), a section of the pavement made of raw limestone blocks, was also discovered right there - the oldest stone structure in Mesopotamia. Impressive dimensions (80 by 30 m), perfection of architectural form, vaulted niches framing the courtyard with a sacrificial table, walls oriented to the four cardinal directions, stairs leading to the altar - all this made the temple a real miracle of architectural art, even in the eyes of a very experienced archaeologists. In the Sumerian temples, writes M. Belitsky, there were dozens of rooms where the prince-priests, ensi, rulers, officials and priests, who held the supreme secular and spiritual power, lived with their families. In the cultural layers of Uruk, the first tablets with pictographic writing were found, one of which is kept in the Hermitage (2900 BC). Later, the pictograms were replaced by ideograms. There were about 2000 such icons. Their meaning is extremely difficult to unravel. Perhaps for this reason, despite the huge number of tablets, history is still silent. Traces of the influence of Uruk culture on the culture of the Mediterranean countries - Syria, Anatolia, etc.

Sumerian board game

In Egypt (the era of Nagada II, corresponding to the culture of Uruk IV), luxury items brought from Sumer, vessels with handles, etc. were found. Lower Egypt, the legendary Menes, there is a typical Sumerian motif dating back to the era of Uruk - fantastic-looking animals with long necks. On the hilt of a dagger found at Jebel el-Arak, near Abydos, in Upper Egypt, there is an extremely curious motif - scenes of battles on land and sea. Scientists have come to the conclusion that the handle, dating back to the era of Jemdet-Nasr (2800 BC), depicts a battle that took place between the Sumerians, who arrived from the Red Sea, and the local population. All this means that even in such a distant time, the Sumerians not only could already reach Egypt, but also had a certain impact on the formation of Egyptian culture. The hypothesis that not only hieroglyphic writing arose thanks to the Sumerians, but the very idea of ​​creating written characters was born in Egypt under their influence, already has a considerable number of supporters. In a word, a talented people of builders, artists, organizers, warriors, and scientists appeared before us.

White Temple in Uruk. Reconstruction

So how was life in the city-state of the Sumerians? Let's take as an example Uruk, which was located in the south of Mesopotamia. In the middle of the III millennium BC. e. This city occupied an area of ​​over 400 hectares. It was surrounded by double walls of adobe bricks, 10 kilometers long. The city had over 800 watchtowers and a population of 80,000 to 120,000 people. One of its rulers, who was called "en" or "ensi", apparently, was the legendary Gilgamesh. The German scientist H. Schmekel in the book "Ur, Assyria and Babylon" reconstructed the life of the city. On city streets, in residential areas, traffic, noise, bustle. The sultry, stuffy day is over. The long-awaited evening chill has arrived. Blacksmiths and potters, gunsmiths and sculptors, masons and carvers walk along the blank clay walls, the monotony of which is broken by small openings leading inside the houses. Women are seen with jugs of water. They rush home to quickly prepare dinner for their husbands and children. In the crowd of passers-by, there are also quite a few warriors... Slowly, as if afraid to lose dignity, important priests, palace officials, and scribes are walking along the street. Elegant fashionable skirts make them more noticeable. After all, in the social hierarchy they are higher than artisans, workers, farmers, shepherds. Noisy, mischievous boys, after a long day of exhausting study at the school of scribes, have abandoned the signs and, with a carefree laugh, see off the caravan of donkeys. They are loaded with baskets of goods from ships unloaded at the pier. Suddenly, a cry is heard from somewhere far away, then another, then a third. The screams are getting closer and louder.

A goat eating the leaves of a tree. Ornament from Ur

Street in a Sumerian city

The crowd on the street parted, forming a wide corridor and humbly bowing their heads: an ensi was riding towards the temple. Together with his family and courtiers, he worked all day on the construction of a new irrigation canal, and now after labor day returns to the palace, which is located next to the temple. Erected on a high platform, surrounded by wide stairs leading to the very top, this temple is the pride of the inhabitants of Uruk. Eleven halls stretched along its courtyard, 60 meters long and 12 meters wide. In the utility rooms there are pantries, barns, warehouses. Here the priests tidy up the tablets: on them are the sacrifices made in the morning in the temple, all the income received by the treasury last day, which will further increase the wealth of the god - the lord and ruler of the city. And the ensi, the prince-priest, the ruler of Uruk, is only a servant of the god, in whose care are the lands belonging to the god, wealth and people. This is how the life of the city is reconstructed.

Head of the statue of Gudea from Lagash

Statue of Gudea (Ensi)

In the III-II millennium BC. e. identified the main ways economic development region. The upper stratum of state people (officials, the highest ranks of the army, priests, a number of artisans) acted as the owner of communal lands, had slaves and female slaves, exploiting their labor. The Sumerian civilization (sometimes considered the beginning of Western civilization) developed, having two sectors: one sector we will conditionally call "state", the other - "private property". The first sector included mainly large farms (they were owned by temples and the elite of the nobility), the other - the lands of large family communities (led by their patriarchs). The farms of the first sector later became the property of the state, the latter became the property of territorial communities. People on public sector lands had the right to own land. It was a kind of payment for the state service. The resulting crop was used to feed the families. However, the land could have been taken away, and many public sector workers did not have it at all. It seems to us symptomatic and important the fact of peaceful coexistence at the dawn of history of two economic sectors - the state and the community-private (with a noticeable predominance of the first). The tenants of the land paid off the owners. They also paid tax to the state on the basis of income tax. Their land was cultivated by hired workers (for shelter, bread, clothing).

Courtyard of a wealthy inhabitant of Ur in the II millennium BC. e.

With the spread of irrigated agriculture and technology (potter's wheel, loom, copper, iron, water-lifting machines, tools), labor productivity also grew. As in Egypt, there are many channels. Herodotus also pointed out serious differences between the northern Mesopotamia - Assyria, and the southern - Babylonia: “The land of the Assyrians is irrigated with little rain; rainwater is only sufficient to feed the roots of cereal plants: crops grow and bread ripens with the help of irrigation from the river; this river does not overflow, however, over the fields, as in Egypt; irrigated here by hand and with the help of pumps. Babylonia is all, like Egypt, cut up by canals; the largest of them, navigable, stretches from the Euphrates south to another river, the Tigris. Creating such channels, of course, required a lot of effort.

Carriage of the winged bull

The inhabitants also faced another dilemma: crops would be flooded with too much water, or they would die from its lack and drought (Strabo). As you can see, everything or almost everything in Mesopotamia depended only on whether or not it was possible to maintain the system of agriculture and irrigation in a working and good condition. Water is life. And it is no coincidence that King Hammurabi, in his introduction to the code of famous laws, emphasized the special importance of the fact that he "gave Uruk life" - "delivered water in abundance to people." The system worked under the vigilant control of the "supervisor of the canals." The dug channels could simultaneously serve as a transport route, reaching a width of 10–20 m. This allowed ships of a rather large tonnage to pass. The banks of the canals were framed with brickwork or wicker mats. On high places Water was poured from well to well with the help of water-drawing facilities. People cultivated this land with the help of ordinary hoes (the hoe was often depicted as an emblem of the god of the earth Marduk) or a wooden plow.

A married couple from Nippur. III millennium BC e.

Enlil - the "greatest god" of Sumer, the son of Heaven and Earth

The work required huge labor costs on the part of the masses of people. Without irrigation and agriculture, life here would be completely impossible. The ancients understood this very well, paying tribute to the farmer's calendar, toilers, hoe and plow. In the work “The Dispute Between the Hoe and the Plow”, it is especially emphasized that the hoe is “the child of the poor”. With the help of a hoe, a huge amount of work is done - digging the earth, creating houses, canals, erecting roofs and laying streets. The days of labor of a hoe, that is, a digger or builder, are "twelve months." If the plow is often idle, then the worker of the hoe knows neither an hour nor a day of rest. He builds "city with palaces" and "gardens for kings." He is also obliged to unquestioningly carry out all work on the orders of the king or his dignitaries, in particular, he has to build fortifications or transport them to Right place god figures.

The population of Mesopotamia and Babylonia consisted of free farmers and slaves. Theoretically, the land in Babylonia belonged to the gods, but in practice - to the kings, temples and large landowners who rented it out. N. M. Nikolsky noted that throughout the entire ancient history of Mesopotamia, “an individual person becomes the owner of the land temporarily and conditionally, as a member of the collective, and never the private owner of the land.” Sometimes, the kings placed soldiers on the land, distributed it to officials, etc. All of them had to pay taxes to the state (a tenth of the income). The bulk of the slaves then were of local origin. The slave was not a full citizen, being the full property of the owner. He could be sold, pledged, or even killed. The source of replenishment of slaves is debt slavery, captives and children of slaves. As in Egypt, abandoned children could be turned into slaves. This practice was widespread in antiquity.

Such orders existed in Babylonia, Egypt, in ancient Greece. Prisoners of war captured during wars from other countries were turned into slaves. The thieves themselves were made slaves of those who suffered from theft. The same fate awaited the killer's family. It is curious that the laws of Hammurabi allowed a husband to sell a prostitute or spendthrift wife. Slaves are slaves. Their life was hard. They were starving, dying of hunger and cold. Therefore, in order to make them work, they were shackled, often imprisoned.

In a number of cases, poor married couples, unable to feed their young children, threw them into a pit or in a basket into a river, or threw them on the street. Anyone could pick up a foundling and raise it, and then do with it as they wish (adopt, adopt or include in a dowry, sell into slavery). The custom to doom a child or save an infant from inevitable death was called “throw a child into the mouth of a dog” (or “tear it out of its mouth”). Oppenheim cites a document that says how one woman, in the presence of witnesses, held her son in front of the dog's mouth, and a certain Nur-Shamash managed to snatch him out of there. Anyone could pick him up and raise him, make him a slave, adopt him or adopt him. Although the adoption of girls, apparently, was resorted to relatively rarely. There was a firm rule: adopted children were obliged to supply the former owners with food and clothing for the rest of their lives. The fate of adopted children was different. One of them became full members families and even became heirs, others faced an unenviable fate. Laws somehow regulated this process.

Goddess of death, mistress of the "Land of no return" - Ereshkigal

The work of a farmer, a digger or a builder was undoubtedly hard... Echoes of this can be found in the “Tale of Atrahasis”, which has come down to us from the Old Babylonian period (1646–1626 BC). It speaks in poetic form of the time when the gods ("Igigi") were forced to work, like mere mortals. “When the gods, like people, carried the burden, dragged the baskets, the baskets of the gods were huge, the work was hard, the hardships were great.” The gods themselves dug rivers, dug canals, deepened the bed of the Tigris and Euphrates, worked in the water depths, built a dwelling for Enki, etc., etc. So they worked for years and years, day and night, “two and a half thousand years". Immensely tired of such backbreaking work, they began to fill with anger and shout at each other. After long and heated debates, they decided to go to the main one, Enlil, to complain about their bitter fate. They "burned their guns", "burned their shovels, set their baskets on fire" and, holding hands, moved "to the holy gates of the warrior Enlil." In the end, there they arranged a council of the higher gods, where they reported to Enlil that such an unbearable burden was killing the Igigi.

Victory Stele of King Naramsin

They conferred for a long time, until they unanimously decided to create a human race and place a heavy and hard labor burden on it. "Let a man bear the yoke of God!" So they did… Since then, man dutifully began to do the work of the gods. He builds, digs, cleans, earning food for himself and the gods. In less than twelve hundred years, the country has grown, people have bred in it. And the gods began to be disturbed by a mass of people: "Their hubbub worries us."

And then they sent wind upon the earth to dry it up, and downpours to wash away the crops. The gods declared: “People will be destroyed by deprivation and hunger. May the womb of the earth rise upon them! Grasses will not grow, cereals will not sprout! Let pestilence be sent down to people! The uterus will shrink, babies will not be born! Why do people need such gods?! In the most complete list more than 150 names of various deities are mentioned in the Assyrian era. Moreover, at least 40-50 of them had their own temples and cult in the Assyrian era. Approximately in the III millennium BC. e. the college of priests came to an agreement and created a myth about the triad of great gods: Anu, Enlil and Ea. The sky went to Anu, the earth to Enlil, the sea to Ea. Then the old gods handed the fate of the world into the hands of their young son, Marduk. Thus a revolution took place in the realm of the gods. Remaking the Sumerian myths, the Babylonian priests put Marduk in the place of Enlil. Obviously, this divine hierarchy had to correspond to the earthly hierarchy of kings and their environment. This purpose was served by the cult of the first kings of Ur. The legendary king of Uruk, Gilgamesh, who was declared the son of Anu, was also deified. Many rulers were deified. The king of Akkad, Naramsin, called himself the god of Akkad. The king of Isin and the king of Larsa, the kings of Ur of the third dynasty (Shulgi, Bursin, Gimilsin) called themselves the same way. In the era of the first Babylonian dynasty, Hammurabi equated himself with the gods and began to be called the "god of kings."

The legendary ruler of Uruk, Enmerkar, can also be attributed to this category. He, having become king and reigned for 420 years, actually created the city of Uruk. It must be said that the emergence, existence of these city-states, as well as in Ancient Greece(at a later time) will be held in constant competition with nearby settlements and entities. Therefore, it is not surprising that ancient history filled with endless wars. At that time, among the rulers, all were aggressors and there were no (almost no) peace lovers.

In the epic poem, conditionally called by S. N. Kramer "Enmerkar and the ruler of Arrata", it is said about the most acute political conflict, which arose in antiquity between Iraq and Iran. The poem tells how in ancient times the city-state of Uruk, located in southern Mesopotamia, was ruled by the glorious Sumerian hero Enmerkar. And far north of Uruk, in Iran, there was another city-state called Aratta. It was separated from Uruk by seven mountain ranges and stood so high that it was almost impossible to reach it. Aratta was famous for its riches - all kinds of metals and building stone, that is, exactly what the city of Uruk, located on a flat treeless plain of Mesopotamia, lacked so much. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that Enmerkar looked with lust at Aratta and its treasures. He decided at all costs to subjugate the people of Aratta and its ruler. To this end, he began a kind of "war of nerves" against them. He managed to intimidate the lord of Aratta and its inhabitants so much that they obeyed Uruk. The king of Uruk threatened to destroy all cities, devastate the earth, so that all Aratta would be covered with dust, like a city cursed by the god Enki, and turn into "nothing." Perhaps it was these old, almost forgotten feelings, reinforced by religion and geopolitics, that forced the ruler of Iraq to attack Iran in modern times.

Emelyanov Vladimir Vladimirovich

Where did the Sumerians come from? It must be said right away that we do not have any exact answer to this question. During the century of development of Sumerology, various hypotheses about the relationship of the Sumerian language were expressed. So, still the father of Assyriology Rawlinson in 1853, defining