Sumerian in ancient Asia Minor, Sumerian is represented by the largest number of monuments of all non-Semitic languages. For this reason, it is also the most studied in that region, which, however, does not concern the grammar of the Sumerian language, which is still not solved or, rather, not completely deciphered.
Geographically, the Sumerian language was distributed in the Mesopotamia of the Euphrates and the Tigris, from the line passing by the modern Iraqi city of Baghdad, south to the Persian Gulf. To what extent and when it was distributed as a living language north of this line is difficult to say.
The time of the appearance of the Sumerian language in Mesopotamia remains unclear. The alluvial, swampy lower reaches of the Euphrates and the Tigris were uninhabited for a long time and the Sumerians definitely did not inhabit it from time immemorial. On the contrary, it is well known that the names settlements(toponymy) Sumera is not always of Sumerian origin, and in the Sumerian language itself there are a number of words that may not be of Sumerian, but not even of Semitic origin. Therefore, it is likely that the Sumerians in the lower reaches of the Mesopotamia Tigris and Euphrates are alien people, although where they came from is an open question.
There is a theory that the Sumerians came from the East, from the mountains of Iran and from Central Asia. However, the evidence for this is not yet convincing enough. The Sumerians themselves associated their origin rather with the southeast, with the islands and the coast of the Persian Gulf.
The first Sumerian settlements (with "properly Sumerian" names) appear at the beginning of the 4th millennium BC. e. in the extreme south of the country. Written monuments have been known in Sumer since the last quarter of the 4th millennium. Around 3000 BC e. the "rebus" use of signs of writing is attested, and from this it is clear that then the language was already Sumerian.
In fact, the very composition of writing can be traced, and there is no reason to assume that the original writing was created for some other language and was only borrowed for Sumerian. Therefore, it is likely that Sumerian was spoken in the Southern Mesopotamia from the proto-written period, and judging by the continuity of culture, probably much earlier, at least from the middle or beginning of the 4th millennium BC. e.
In the III millennium BC. e. a different situation existed in the south of the country (south of Nippur - Shuruppak) and north of this center. South of Niipur and Shuruppak Semitic proper names until the XXIV-XXIII centuries. practically does not occur, to the north they were already common before, and in the future their number is increasing.
This northern part of the country was called in Sumerian Ki Uri, but in Akkadian first Varum, and later, according to the capital of the state, founded in the XXIV century. BC V. Sargon the Ancient Akkad. The central, and then the southern part was then called Sumer; earlier, the common name for the entire Sumerian-speaking territory was simply Country - kalam.
The Sumerian people also did not have a self-name; the inhabitants were called each according to their community - "the man of Ur", "the man of Uruk", "the man of Lagash"; all residents of Mesopotamia, regardless of language, were called " blackheaded» - ; the Semitic-speaking inhabitants of Mesopotamia also called themselves this way (acc. salmat kakkadim).
Gradually, moving from north to south, the Semitic Akkadian language displaces the archaic and, apparently, in living speech, the communal Sumerian dialects that differed greatly. Back in the 21st century, under the “Kingdom of Sumer and Akkad” (the so-called III dynasty of Ur), the Sumerian language was official language offices throughout the state. But already at that time, the Akkadian language penetrated into living use to the very south of the country.
The Sumerian language is preserved, apparently, in the swamps of the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates until the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. e., but from about the XVI-XV centuries. and here they cease to give children Sumerian names. However, Sumerian continues to be preserved as a language of religion and partly of science throughout the entire period of the existence of the Akkadian language and cuneiform writing, and as such is studied outside of Mesopotamia, in countries where cuneiform was common. Finally, the Sumerian language was forgotten only in the II-I centuries. BC.
It is curious that although the Sumerian language was supplanted by the Semitic Akkadian, there was no physical displacement of one people by another! The anthropological type has not changed (a variant of the Mediterranean race that coexisted with the Armenoid, or Assyroid, variant of the Balkan-Caucasian race), there have been almost no significant changes in culture, except for those due to the development of social conditions.
Simply put, the later Babylonians are the same people as the Sumerians (of course, with some admixture of the surrounding Semitic population), but who changed the language.
Sumerian cuneiform
Sumerian writing, which is known to scientists from the surviving cuneiform texts of the 29th-1st centuries BC. e., despite active study, is still largely a mystery. The fact is that the language of the Sumerians is not similar to any of the known languages, therefore it was not possible to establish its relationship with any language group.
Initially, the Sumerians kept records using hieroglyphs - drawings denoting specific phenomena and concepts. Further improvement took place sign system Sumerian alphabet, which led to the formation of cuneiform in the III millennium BC. e. This is due to the fact that the records were made on clay tablets: for the convenience of writing, hieroglyphic symbols were gradually transformed into a system of wedge-shaped strokes, applied in different directions and in various combinations. One cuneiform symbol denoted a word or syllable. The writing system developed by the Sumerians was adopted by the Akkadians, Elamites, Hittites and some other peoples. That is why the Sumerian writing persisted much longer than the Sumerian civilization itself existed.
According to research, a single writing system in the states of Lower Mesopotamia was already used in the 4th-3rd millennium BC. e. Archaeologists managed to find a lot of cuneiform texts. These are myths, legends, ritual songs and laudatory hymns, fables, sayings, disputes, dialogues and edifications. Initially, the Sumerians created writing for household needs, but soon began to appear and fiction. The earliest cult and literary texts date back to the 26th century BC. e. Thanks to the works of Sumerian authors, the genre of legend-dispute developed and spread, which became popular in the literature of many peoples of the Ancient East.
There is an opinion that the Sumerian writing spread from one place, which at that time was an authoritative cultural center. Many of the data obtained during scientific work, suggest that this center could be the city of Nippur, which housed a school for scribes.
Archaeological excavations of the ruins of Nippur first began in 1889. A lot of valuable finds was made during the excavations, which were carried out shortly after the Second World War. As a result, the ruins of three temples and a large cuneiform library with texts on a variety of issues were discovered. Among them was the so-called "school canon of Nippur" - a work intended for study by scribes. It included tales of the exploits of the great demigod heroes Enmesharr, Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh, as well as other literary works.
Sumerian cuneiform: top - a stone tablet from the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal; at the bottom - a fragment of a diorite stele on which the code of laws of the Babylonian king Hammurabi is written
Extensive cuneiform libraries were found by archaeologists on the ruins of many other Mesopotamian cities - Akkad, Lagash, Nineveh, etc.
One of the important monuments of Sumerian writing is the "Royal List", found during the excavations of Nippur. Thanks to this document, the names of the Sumerian rulers have come down to us, the first of which were the demigod heroes Enmesharr, Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh, and legends about their deeds.
Traditions tell of a dispute between Enmesharr and the ruler of the city of Aratta, located far in the East. The legend connects the invention of writing with this dispute. The fact is that the kings took turns asking each other riddles. No one was able to memorize one of Enmesharr's ingenious riddles, which is why there was a need for a different way of transmitting information than oral speech.
The key to deciphering cuneiform texts was found completely independently of each other by two amateur researchers G. Grotenfend and D. Smith. In 1802, Grotenfend, while analyzing copies of cuneiform texts found in the ruins of Persepolis, noticed that all cuneiform signs have two main directions: from top to bottom and from left to right. He came to the conclusion that texts should not be read vertically, but horizontally from left to right.
Since the texts he studied were gravestone inscriptions, the researcher suggested that they could begin in much the same way as later inscriptions in Persian: “Such and such, great king, the king of kings, the king of such and such places, the son of a great king ... "As a result of the analysis of the available texts, the scientist came to the conclusion that the inscriptions differ in those groups of signs that, according to his theory, should convey the names of kings.
In addition, there were only two variants of the first two groups of symbols that could mean names, and in some texts Grotenfend found both variants.
Further, the researcher noticed that in some places the initial formula of the text does not fit into its hypothetical scheme, namely, in one place there is no word denoting the concept of "king". The study of the location of signs in the texts made it possible to assume that the inscriptions belong to two kings, father and son, and the grandfather was not a king. Since Grotenfend knew that the inscriptions refer to Persian kings(according to the archaeological research during which these texts were discovered), he came to the conclusion that, most likely, we are talking about Darius and Xerxes. Correlating the Persian spelling of names with cuneiform, Grotenfend was able to decipher the inscriptions.
No less interesting is the history of the study of the Epic of Gilgamesh. In 1872, an employee of the British Museum, D. Smith, was deciphering cuneiform tablets found during excavations in Nineveh. Among the legends about the exploits of the hero Gilgamesh, who was two-thirds a deity and only one-third a mortal man, the scientist was especially interested in a fragment of the legend of the Great Flood:
so says the hero Utnapishti, who survived the flood and received immortality from the gods. However, later in the story, omissions began to occur, a piece of text was clearly missing.
In 1873, D. Smith went to Kuyunjik, where the ruins of Nineveh had previously been discovered. There he was lucky to find the missing cuneiform tablets.
After studying them, the researcher came to the conclusion that Utnapishti is none other than the biblical Noah.
The story of the ark, or ship, ordered by Utnapishti on the advice of the god Ea, the description of a terrible natural disaster that hit the earth and destroyed all life, except for those who boarded the ship, surprisingly coincides with the biblical story of the Great Flood. Even the dove and the raven, which Utnapishti releases after the end of the rain to find out whether the waters have receded or not, are also in the biblical legend. According to the Epic of Gilgamesh, the god Enlil made Utnapishti and his wife like gods, that is, immortal. They live across the river that separates the world of people from the other world:
Hitherto Utnapishtim was a man
From now on, Utnapishti and his wife are like us gods;
Let Utnapishti live at the mouth of the rivers, in the distance!
Gilgamesh, or Bilga-mes, whose name is often translated as "ancestor-hero", the hero of the Sumerian epic, was considered the son of the hero Lugalbanda, the high priest of Kulaba, the ruler of the city of Uruk, and the goddess Ninsun.
According to the "Royal List" from Nippur, Gilgamesh ruled Uruk for 126 years in the 27th-26th centuries BC. e.
Gilgamesh with a lion. 8th century BC e.
Gilgamesh was the fifth king of the first dynasty, to which his father Lugalbanda and Dumuzi, the husband of the goddess of love and war, Inanna, belonged. Gilgamesh for the Sumerians is not just a king, but a demigod with superhuman qualities, so his deeds and his life expectancy far exceed the corresponding characteristics of the subsequent rulers of Uruk.
The name of Gilgamesh and the name of his son Ur-Nungal were found in the list of rulers who took part in the construction of the common Sumerian Tummal temple in Nippur. The construction of a fortress wall around Uruk is also associated with the activities of this legendary ruler.
There are several ancient tales about the exploits of Gilgamesh. The legend "Gilgamesh and Agga" tells about real events at the end of the 27th century BC. e., when the warriors of Uruk defeated the troops of the city of Kish.
The legend "Gilgamesh and the Mountain of the Immortal" tells about a campaign in the mountains, where soldiers led by Gilgamesh defeat the monster Humbaba. The texts of two legends - "Gilgamesh and the heavenly bull" and "Death of Gilgamesh" - are poorly preserved.
Also, the legend “Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Underworld” has come down to us, which reflects the ideas of the ancient Sumerians about the structure of the world.
According to this legend, a magic tree grew in the garden of the goddess Inanna, from the wood of which the goddess intended to make a throne for herself. But the Anzud bird, a monster that caused a thunderstorm, and the demon Lilith settled on the tree, and a snake under the roots. At the request of the goddess Inanna, Gilgamesh defeated them, and from wood he made a throne for the goddess, a bed and magical musical instruments, to the sounds of which the young men of Uruk danced. But the women of Uruk resented the noise, and the musical instruments fell into the realm of the dead. The servant of the ruler of Uruk, Enkidu, went to fetch musical instruments, but failed to return. However, at the request of Gilgamesh, the gods allowed the king to speak with Enkidu, who told him about the laws of the realm of the dead.
Legends about the deeds of Gilgamesh became the basis of the Akkadian epic, the cuneiform records of which were discovered during the excavations of Nineveh in the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, dated to the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. e. There are also several different versions, the records of which were found during the excavations of Babylon and on the ruins of the Hittite kingdom.
The text that was discovered in Nineveh, according to legend, was written down from the words of the Uruk spellcaster Sinlike-uninni. The legend is written on 12 clay tablets. Separate fragments of this epic were found in Ashur, Uruk and Sultan-Tepe.
The audacity and strength of the king of Uruk forced the inhabitants of the city to turn to the gods for protection from his arbitrariness. Then the gods created from the clay the strong man Enkidu, who entered into single combat with Gilgamesh. However, the heroes became not enemies, but friends. They decided to take a trip to the mountains for cedars. The monster Humbaba lived in the mountains, whom they defeated.
The story goes on about how the goddess Inanna offered her love to Gilgamesh, but he rejected her, reproaching her for being unfaithful to her former lover. Then, at the request of the goddess, the gods send a gigantic bull, which seeks to destroy Uruk. Gilgamesh and Enkidu also defeat this monster, but Inanna's anger causes the death of Enkidu, who suddenly loses his strength and dies.
Gilgamesh mourns the death of a friend. He cannot come to terms with the fact that death awaits him, so he goes in search of the herb that gives immortality. Gilgamesh's travels are like those of many others. legendary heroes to another world. Gilgamesh passes the desert, crosses the "waters of death" and meets with the wise Utnapishti, who survived the flood. He tells the hero where to find the herb of immortality - it grows at the bottom of the sea. The hero manages to get it, but on the way home he stops at the source and falls asleep, and at this time the grass is swallowed by a snake - therefore the snakes change their skin, thereby renewing their life. Gilgamesh has to part with the dream of physical immortality, but he believes that the glory of his deeds will live in the memory of people.
It is interesting to note that the ancient Sumerian storytellers managed to show how the character of the hero and his worldview change. If at first Gilgamesh demonstrates his strength, believing that no one can resist him, then as the plot develops, the hero realizes that a person’s life is short and fleeting. He thinks about life and death, experiences grief and despair. Gilgamesh is not accustomed to humble himself even before the will of the gods, so the thought of the inevitability of his own end causes him protest.
The hero does everything possible and impossible to break out of the narrow framework destined by fate. The tests passed make him understand that for a person this is possible only thanks to his deeds, the glory of which lives in legends and traditions.
Another written monument, made in cuneiform, is the code of laws of the Babylonian king Hammurabi, dated approximately 1760 BC. e. A stone slab with the text of laws carved on it was found by archaeologists at the beginning of the 20th century during excavations in the city of Susa. Many copies of the Hammurabi code were also found during excavations in other cities of Mesopotamia, such as Nineveh. The Code of Hammurabi is distinguished by a high degree of legal elaboration of concepts and the severity of punishments for various crimes. The laws of Hammurabi had a huge impact on the development of law in general and on the codes of laws different peoples in later eras.
However, Hammurabi's code was not the first collection of Sumerian laws. In 1947, the archaeologist F. Stil during the excavations of Nippur discovered fragments of the legislative code of King Lipit-Ishtar, dated to the 20th century BC. e. Law codes existed in Ur, Isin and Eshnunna: they were probably taken as a basis by the developers of the Hammurabi code.
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The question of the language of the Sumerians is perhaps the most important secret of this civilization. Archaeologists have not so much, but still enough objects for excavation - the ruins of Sumerian cities hidden under the ground and sand. Historians study, translate and compare the texts of the cuneiform clay tablets of the Sumerians, which contain information about various spheres of the life of this society, from everyday household issues to diplomatic treaties and legendary epics. But for linguists, the task is still not solved: about a century and a half ago they deciphered the Sumerian cuneiform, but the research does not go further ...
Much is known about the Sumerian language...
However, it is not entirely correct to speak of the Sumerian language as a completely mysterious one. In fact, information about the language of this ancient civilization 
scientists have a lot. Thanks to the deciphering of cuneiform tablets, historians were able to find out that the Sumerian language spread to Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC and was used as the main spoken language until the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. After that, the language of the new conquerors, the Akkadians, became the spoken language of these territories, but the Sumerian language continued to be the main universal language for many centuries. written language region, actively used for contacts between different peoples and states. The use of the Sumerian language finally ceased around the 2nd century BC, that is, after the conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great 
.
In addition, based on the materials of cuneiform tablets, linguists were even able to identify periods in the development of the Sumerian language: archaic (3200 - 2750 BC); Old Sumerian (2750 - 2136 BC); Neo-Sumerian (2136 - 1196 BC); late Sumerian (1996 - 1736 BC); post-Sumerian, that is, the period when the language developed only in writing, without practical use oral speech living native speakers (XVIII - II centuries BC). Moreover: in our time, significant efforts are being made to restore the phonetics, the sound of the Sumerian language, that is, the restoration of its oral form. True, this is a rather difficult task, since Sumerian writing is polyphonic, that is, different characters have different pronunciations.
Major mysteries not solved
But so far, linguists cannot boast: the origin and connections of the Sumerian language have not been established, therefore, there are no answers to the questions of where the Sumerian ethnos was formed, by what route it came to Mesopotamia, and which ethnic groups were formed along with it. At the same time, many hypotheses have been created on this topic, and here are a few of them:
B. Sumerian
Sumerian is an agglutinative language, not an inflectional one like the Indo-European or Semitic languages. Its roots are generally immutable. The basic grammatical unit is a phrase rather than a single word. Its grammatical particles tend to retain their independent structure rather than appear in complex conjunction with the roots of words. Therefore, structurally, the Sumerian language closely resembles such agglutinative languages as Turkish, Hungarian and some Caucasians. In terms of vocabulary, grammar, and syntax, Sumerian still stands apart and does not seem to be related to any other language, living or dead.
Sumerian has three open vowels, a, e, o, and three corresponding closed vowels, a, k, and i. Vowels were not pronounced strictly, but often changed in accordance with the rules of sound harmony. This primarily concerned vowels in grammatical particles - they sounded short and were not accented. At the end of a word or between two consonants, they were often omitted.
The Sumerian language has fifteen consonants: b, p, t, e, g, k, z, s, w, x, r, l, m, n, nasal g (ng). The consonants could be omitted, i.e. they were not pronounced at the end of a word unless they were followed by a grammatical particle that began with a vowel.
Sumerian roots are mostly monosyllabic, although there are quite a few words that are polysyllabic. The doubling of the roots was used as an indication of the plurality of objects or actions. Substances often consist of compound words: lu-gal, "king"(big man) oak-cap, "clerk"(filling in the plates) di-ku, "judge"(deciding). Abstract names are formed using us: lu-gal - "king", nam-lu-gal - "kingdom", "reigning". Substances had no gender. Instead, they were divided into two categories: animate and inanimate. Grammatically, animals belonged to the inanimate category.
The Sumerian sentence consisted of: 1) several substantive complexes relating to the predicate (predicate) either as a subject, or as a direct or indirect object, or as a dimensional component; 2) grammatical particles that establish the relationship of the components; 3) predicate (predicate) - a verbal root, which is preceded by a thematic particle and which is accompanied by infixes that define the relationship between the root and substantive complexes. A substantive complex can consist only of a noun or a noun with all its definitions, such as adjectives, genitives (indicators of belonging), comparative turnovers and possessive pronouns. Particles that establish relationships always stand at the end of the entire substantive complex, therefore they are called post-positions.
The Sumerian language is quite poor in adjectives and often uses constructions with genitive case- genitives. Links and conjunctions are rarely used. (In this regard, the union "and" should be placed in brackets, but in the translations offered in this book, this feature is not always kept consistently.)
In addition to the main Sumerian dialect, probably known as emegir,"royal language", there were several others, less significant. One of them, emesal, used mainly in the speeches of deities female, women and eunuchs.
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Type: syllabo-ideographic
language family: not installed
Localization: Northern Mesopotamia
Propagation time:3300 BC e. - 100 AD e.
The homeland of all mankind, the Sumerians called the island of Dilmui, identified with modern Bahrain in the Persian Gulf.
The earliest is presented on texts found in the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Jemdet-Nasra, dated 3300 BC.
The Sumerian language still continues to be a mystery to us, since even now it has not been possible to establish its relationship with any of the known language families. Archaeological materials suggest that the Sumerians created the Ubaid culture in the south of Mesopotamia at the end of the 5th - beginning of the 4th millennium BC. e. Thanks to the emergence of hieroglyphic writing, the Sumerians left many monuments of their culture, imprinting them on clay tablets.
The cuneiform script itself was a syllabic script, consisting of several hundred characters, of which about 300 were the most common; they included more than 50 ideograms, about 100 signs for simple syllables and 130 for complex ones; there were signs for numbers in the sixdecimal and decimal systems.
Sumerian writing evolved over 2200 years
Most of the signs have two or more readings (polyphonism), since they often acquired a Semitic meaning next to the Sumerian. Sometimes they depicted related concepts (for example, "sun" - bar and "shine" - lah).
The very invention of Sumerian writing was undoubtedly one of the largest and most significant achievements of the Sumerian civilization. Sumerian writing, which has gone from hieroglyphic, figurative signs-symbols to signs that began to write the simplest syllables, turned out to be an extremely progressive system. It was borrowed and used by many peoples who spoke other languages.
At the turn of IV-III millennia BC. e. we have indisputable evidence that the population - Lower Mesopotamia was Sumerian. Wide famous history about the Great Flood is first found in the Sumerian historical and mythological texts.
Although Sumerian writing was invented exclusively for economic needs, the first written literary monuments appeared among the Sumerians very early: among the records dating back to the 26th century. BC e., there are already examples of genres of folk wisdom, cult texts and hymns.
Due to this circumstance, the cultural influence of the Sumerians in the Ancient Near East was enormous and outlived their own civilization for many centuries.
Subsequently, writing loses its pictorial character and transforms into cuneiform.
Cuneiform writing was used in Mesopotamia for almost three thousand years. However, she was later forgotten. For decades, cuneiform kept its secret, until in 1835 an unusually energetic Englishman, Henry Rawlinson, an English officer and lover of antiquities, deciphered it. Once he was informed that an inscription was preserved on a sheer cliff in Behistun (near the city of Hamadan in Iran). It turned out to be one and the same inscription made in three ancient languages, including Old Persian. Rawlinson first read the inscription in this language he knew, and then managed to understand another inscription, identifying and deciphering more than 200 cuneiform characters.
In mathematics, the Sumerians knew how to count in tens. But the numbers 12 (a dozen) and 60 (five dozen) were especially revered. We still use the legacy of the Sumerians when we divide an hour into 60 minutes, a minute into 60 seconds, a year into 12 months, and a circle into 360 degrees.
In the figure you can see how, over 500 years, the hieroglyphic images of numerals turned into cuneiform ones.
Modification of Sumerian numerals from hieroglyphs to cuneiform
