The Royal Standard of Ur: circa 2600 - 2400 B.C. In the top panel, the king (top center) leads his troops and chariots to war. The scene shows lines of marching Sumerian soldiers, a brief battle, and a chariot attack. The bottom panel shows some peaceful pursuits. The king (top row, third from the left) drinks and celebrates his victory while listening to the music of a bull-headed lyre (see below). The bottom rows show his subjects in a victory procession. The details of the standard show up much better with enlargement. Enlarge war, peace.
The Ram in the Thicket: Excavated, like the above Royal Standard, from the Tombs of Ur. For several enlarged views, see Exploration of the Royal Tombs of Ur.
Cylinder seal impression. A carved stone cylinder was rolled across a wet clay tablet to form an official, individualized seal. This one shows the winged goddess Inanna standing above the sun god Utu as he rises between the mountains. To the left of her is an unidentified hunter/warrior god. To the right is Enki, the god of the Abzu (the underground water table) surrounded by water and fish. Beside him is Isimud, his two-faced minister. The writing in the background identifies the seal as belonging to Adda, a scribe. Click to enlarge.
Cylinder seal used to make the above seal impression. Enlarge.
Cuneiform writing:
Shulgi commemorative tablet.
Gudean inscription: dedicated to the goddess Ba-u.
Another Gudean inscription, dedicating a statue of himself to the goddess Geshtinanna. The inscription is written on the back of the statue of Gudea seen at the top of the page in the Gudea translation.
The earliest form of writing: Pictographs, the precursor to cuneiform writing, where the sign resembles the object it represents (grain, hand, etc.). On the early tablets, the signs are written vertically.
The evolution of writing: from its earliest form (column I, circa 3200 B.C.) until the end of Sumerian civilization (column VIII, circa 2000 B.C.). Enlarge.
In column I, the signs are simple pictographs ("picture words"). In col. II, the signs are rotated 90 degrees, from the vertical to the horizontal. The pictographs become abstract symbols in columns III - VI, and they become more simplified in the last two columns.
Note: The reason a female servant/slave is equated with a foreign/mountain woman is because the Sumerians (who lived in low-lying river regions) were often at war with barbaric tribespeople from the neighboring mountains. As is so often the case in history, the prosperous, cultivated lowlanders were at war with the rough, uncivilized highlanders. The captives from these wars provided the Sumerians with a steady supply of slaves and conscript labor, although it was sometimes the Sumerians who got the worst of it during these frequent border raids.
Interestingly enough, all but two of the signs on this chart can also be found on Tablet #36.
Photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Cuneiform tablet: in a clay envelope with a (faint) seal impression. Business transactions were often wrapped in a clay envelopes and then impressed with the writer's seal to prevent tampering with the contents. This tablet was written by Lugal-e-ban-sha, a scribe for the governor of Umma. Lugal-e-ban-sha lived at about the same time as the scribe who wrote "The Great Fatted Bull". More than a hundred tablets by Lugal-e-ban-sha can be seen in museums all around the world, along with those of his brother, En-kash. Sadly, when a large cache of tablets is found, it usually means the office (or temple or school) where the tablets were stored, was destroyed when the city was sacked, and the tablets were buried en-masse beneath the fallen debris. Sometimes the tablets were hardened into brick by the flames of the burning buildings. Ironically, it was the destruction of the civilization around them that preserved these tablets for prosperity. The tablet of "The Great Fatted Bull" might have been preserved in the same way. The date of the tablets suggests they may have been buried in the final collapse of Sumerian civilization. One can only guess at the fate of the scribes who wrote these tablets.
Cylinder seals:
Cylinder seal, and the impression it makes when rolled across wet clay. The manufacture of cylinder seals was a highly regarded art form in ancient Sumer. The engravers had to carve the hard cylinder stones using only simple tools. The images and lettering had to be carved in both spatial and photographic reverse, so that they would be raised from the surface, and facing in the right direction.
Cylinder seal impression showing fighting/dancing animals (bulls and lions). A common motif.
Royal ostrich hunt, cylinder seal impression. This seal is from a later period. The look on the ostrich's face is priceless. Enlarge.
Cylinder seal belonging to Queen Pu-abi, and seal impression showing a royal banquet. The middle of of the top panel shows a man and a woman drinking from a vat of beer using long straws. The straws were used to avoid the foul-tasting foam on top of the beer. Other people are shown feasting and drinking wine. Enlarge.
A cylinder seal impression showing Enki and other gods. Enki is on the right. The gods are recognizable by their horned helmets. Click to enlarge.
Inanna, the goddess of love and war, with a lion. No other image of Inanna better illustrates her dual nature. She is depicted as a goddess of love, "showing some leg"; while the lion, and the weapons of battle (maces) seen rising up behind her shows that she is also the goddess of war. In all of ancient mythology, no other deity is the goddess of love and war combined. The eight-pointed star (Venus) is another symbol associated with Inanna. Enlarge. This image is in photograpic reverse. See the complete seal impression. Also see a line-drawing of the seal by S. Beaulieu.
Sumerian bulls:
Bull-headed lyre: All the bull heads shown on this website are lyre ornamentations. This bull and the one pictured on the Home Page are from the Royal Tombs of Ur. The Sumerians often depicted bulls with a false beards. In this picture, and in the one below it, one can see the strap of the beard going across the bull's nose.
A divine bullman associated with the sun god. Circa 2500 B.C. Click here to see a different, enlarged view.
Musician playing a bull-headed lyre. Detail from the Royal Standard of Ur. The woman, probably a singer, is the only woman pictured on the Standard of Ur.
During the burial of a king in the Royal Tombs of Ur, men and women were sacrificed to be the servants of royalty in the afterlife. They were arranged as shown, then they were given poison to drink. Enlarge.
A decorated sledge used in the funeral of Queen Pu-abi (see below). A higer resolution photo of the sledge can be found in The Royal Tombs of Ur, Exploration.
Artist reconstruction of the ziggurat at Ur: Because of the scarcity of timber in Sumer, only the external bricks of a ziggurat were kiln-fired, and therefore waterproof. The interiors of the walls were filled with clay and sun-dried bricks.
King Shulgi, son of Ur-Namma, with the royal family, at the dedication of the ziggurat at Ur. They all stand with their hands folded in the prayer position, watching as the statue of Nanna, the moon god, is carried into his sanctuary at the top of the temple. Enlarge.
Sumerian dagger.
Sumerian ring and coil money. The silver was cut to length as needed.
Game Board, from the Royal Tombs of Ur. Believed to be a precursor of backgammon.
A Sumerian reed house under construction. Young reed saplings were planted in the square outline of a house. When the reeds had grown to full height, they were bundled together and bent over the middle to form the roof, as shown. This kind of house is still built in Iraq today. Note the supervisor on the right. Artist: Richard Hook. Enlarge.
A reed house, as it would appear in a Sumerian village. Enlarge.
Four views of Anzud, the lion-headed eagle. See Gudea translation on this website.
Anzud, with two lions.
Stone mace head: A votive offering to a temple; it is too large to have been used as a weapon. Anzud is also known as Imdugud. Enlarge.
Bas relief of Anzud attacking a man-headed bull. For more information on Imdugud/Anzud, see Beijing World Art Museum for an article by Richard Zettler.
Pendant, gold and lapis lazuli. See an enlarged view of the pendant.
Sumerian battle scene. Artist: HongNian Zhang. Click on the picture to enlarge it.
Stele of Naram-Suen: The Akkadian king (top) advances to victory against a tribe of hillsmen. Enlarge.
The Vulture Stele of king Eannatum, which shows vultures feeding on the enemy dead. Enlarge.
Photograph of another section of the Vulture Stele: This is the world's first depiction of modern, organized warfare; and the first depiction of a modern soldier: In both panels, King Eannatum (on foot, and in a chariot) leads his soldiers to war. These are indeed "soldiers", not just warriors, but soldiers, in the modern sense of the word. Every man is "in uniform", identically armed and equipped, as supplied by the state; rather than each man bringing his own weapons to the battle, as occurs in tribal warfare. Notice how the soldiers attack in a tight, disciplined formation, with many men acting as a single unit, as they advance to victory over the bodies of their enemies. This isn't the disorganized mob of individual combatants that's typical of the more primitive forms of warfare. These soldiers are professionals. Circa 2500 B.C. Click here for a color view.
The aftermath of battle: A king, wearing a shepherd's hat and holding a shepherd's crook, stands with his foot astride a cringing prisoner of war. The king receives the blessings of Inanna, the goddess of war, who holds a prisoner at the end of a rope. The lower register shows the captives being "herded" into slavery. This image is sometimes mistaken to be a Sumerian king, but it is actually an Akkadian/Babylonian king since he wears the short skirt typically worn by the people of this region. On the other hand, the stylized shepherd's hat was worn as a crown by the Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian kings. Enlarge.
Interestingly, this king performs the same "Napoleonic gesture" of placing his hand on the lapel of his robe, just like Naram-Suen on the Victory Stele seen above.
Decorative rein post: used to separate the reins on a chariot, as pictured above. Enlarge. The Sumerians did not have horses, in the modern sense of the word. Instead, they used donkeys, as seen on the post above. The donkeys were not very large; this is the reason why four of them were needed to pull a war chariot.
Royal sceptre: from the Royal Tombs of Ur; made of gold, shell, and lapis lazuli. Enlarge.
Heaven.
Wall painting from the city of Mari, showing the home of the gods. In the top panel is an unidentified god; possibly An, the god of heaven, or Utu, the god of the sun. On the upper right is a winged bullman.
Bottom panel: Enlil, the chief Sumerian god, is attended by a minor female goddess (shown wearing a horned helmet) and by two kings, wearing shepherds' hats. Wind pours out of a jar, signifying that Enlil is the god of the winds that bring life-giving rains. The first of the two kings symbolically waters The Tree of Life (it's a rather scrawny-looking Tree of Life, in my opinion; see Ur-Namma and Enlil, below). Note the bull on the left, and the celestial figure on the right. This mosaic is from a later period (1800 B.C.) but it's typically Sumerian in appearance and subject matter. Click on the picture to enlarge it.
Gold and lapis beads with etched carnelian. Enlarge.
Miscellaneous Sumerian jewelry: Clockwise from top left: animal figurine, gold and carnelian necklace, ear pendant, arm bands, gold frontlet, and cylinder seal with gold caps. Enlarge.
Gold and lapis lazuli triangular beads.
Modern jewelry constructed of Mesopotamian cylinder seals (2200 - 350 B.C.) given by the British explorer Henry Layard to his wife. The jewelry is very impressive when enlarged. Also see a portrait of Lady Enid Layard wearing the jewelry.
Assorted jewelry. Gold, carnelian, and lapis lazuli. From the city of Ur (2600 - 2500 B.C.). Enlarge.
Gold, lapis lazuli, and carnelian bracelets. Enlarge.
Rings. Enlarge. Queen Pu-abi had 10 rings on her fingers.
Golden bowl. The orangish color of the bowl is due fact that the gold is alloyed with copper. Gold is not indigenous to Sumer, and had to be imported. It was often alloyed with other metals to maximize the supply, or to enhance the color. Enlarge.
Bottom of a fluted gold drinking cup. Click here to see the cup.
Sumerian woman at the time of Gudea (circa 2130 B.C.) possibly a member of his family. Her hands are in the prayer position. The same is true for priestess pictured above.
The statue of the Sumerian woman pictured above.
The "Uruk woman", named for the city in which it was found. The joined eyebrows, seen on many Sumerian statues, is a symbol of beauty.
Part of a votive plaque devoted to the goddess Ninsun.
A reproduction ascribed to be Inanna, but most probably a minor goddess, because there aren't enough horns on the helmet to signify a higher rank. See the original Sumerian statute.
Golden headdress worn by Queen Pu-abi. Excavated from the Royal Tombs of Ur. Most of the best known Sumerian artifacts came from her tomb. More of these artifacts can be seen in the Royal Tombs of Ur. It's not known for certain if she was actually a queen. She is referred to as nin, which means "lady" or "queen". In either case, Pu-abi was obviously a woman of high status, given the wealth and abundance of her grave goods, and by the number of people sacrificed to serve her in the afterlife.
Another headdress from the same tomb; worn by one of the women who was sacrificed to attend Queen Pu-abi in the afterlife.
Sumerian men:
Gudea, the ruler of Lagash. See the real face of Gudea.
Heaven.
