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- [00:00]
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Podcast Host
More than 5,000 years ago, in what is today southern Iraq, one of the world's first civilizations emerged a civilization often credited with the invention of writing, the wheel and cities. The Sumerians. The Sumerians are a people that you have probably heard of but might not know too much about. And in today's episode of the Ancients, we are re releasing our episode from a few years back where we finally delved into their story. We're going to explore their cities, their language, their artifacts and so much more. This is the story of the Sumerians with our guest, the Assyriologist and great friend of the podcast, Dr. Paul Collins.
- [03:00]
Interviewer (Host)
Paul, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today.
- [03:03]
Dr. Paul Collins
Thank you very much. Delighted to be here.
- [03:05]
Interviewer (Host)
And it's great to be doing it in person at the Ashmolean Museum. And this is an incredible place when talking about the Sumerians, isn't it?
- [03:10]
Dr. Paul Collins
Straight off the bat, we're extraordinarily lucky here. I mean, we've got such a rich collection, which means we can explore 10,000 years of ancient Middle Eastern history, and of course, within that, a great deal of material which relates to the Sumerians.
- [03:27]
Interviewer (Host)
First of all, Paul, this is a really intriguing ancient Mesopotamian culture, isn't it? Because it feels almost. We mentioned it just before we started talking about the Phoenicians and the Assyrians. The Sumerians is another name that I'm sure most people have heard of, but probably don't know actually too much about.
- [03:45]
Dr. Paul Collins
Well, the Sumerians may seem familiar because, of course, they've been credited in lots of books, usually just the first few pages when exploring history with the invention of writing, sometimes with the invention of the wheel, with the invention of cities. So they sit very much in people's minds, if they know anything at all, as the roots of our modern way of life.
- [04:09]
Interviewer (Host)
And so who are the Sumerians? When and where are we talking?
- [04:14]
Dr. Paul Collins
Well, traditionally, one thinks of the Sumerians as a people who occupied the southern region of modern Iraq, ancient Mesopotamia, at the head of the Persian Gulf. And in a period between roughly 3,500 and 2,000 B.C. they created some of the world's first cities.
- [04:36]
Interviewer (Host)
So this is before the Assyrians, before the Akkadians, before the Babylonians. This is going back, as you say, millennia.
- [04:42]
Dr. Paul Collins
So this is the moment we move from prehistory to history, because, again, it is that moment when writing is developed.
- [04:50]
Interviewer (Host)
So what sorts of sources? I think I know the answer to this already. Then, Paul, what sorts of sources do we have when trying to learn more about the Sumerians?
- [04:59]
Dr. Paul Collins
Well, there is our challenge, because of course, we have lots of excavated sites dating to this period, but we see the emergence of technologies of writing which begin to then express spoken languages. And by around 3000 B.C. 2800 B.C. scholars are able to read in that writing the Sumerian language.
- [05:27]
Interviewer (Host)
We will delve into the language. But first of all, you mentioned the scholars figuring out the Sumerian language. So let's actually talk about the discovery of the Sumerians first of all, because this is interesting in itself because I guess in human history, our knowledge of the Sumerians.
- [05:41]
Dr. Paul Collins
It comes quite late. It does. The Sumerians were unknown until about 150 years ago. So whereas people in the west could read about the Assyrians, they could read about the Babylonians, the Phoenicians, the other people of the ancient Middle east, through both the classical sources, but also primarily the biblical text, the Hebrew Bible recorded stories of these people, but the Sumerians are not mentioned. And so when the ancient texts of Mesopotamia began to be uncovered and read, what was first discovered were the languages of some of these familiar people, the languages of the Assyrians and the Babylonians. And it was only through close analysis of those texts that the Sumerians began to emerge.
- [06:32]
Interviewer (Host)
So talk me through how these people and who these people were who deciphered who discovered the Sumerian language.
- [06:40]
Dr. Paul Collins
Well, the work began really in the middle of the 19th century with big excavations in northern Iraq at places like Nineveh and Nimrud. And there was revealed lots and lots of texts using the cuneiform script of Mesopotamia, this wedge shaped writing system. And scholars began to investigate what these signs actually represented. Lots of scholars engaged in this activity in France and in England. And one scholar in particular made a fundamental breakthrough. And this was a man who gets very little credit in the literature, someone called Edward Hincks. He's actually a vicar in Ireland and he was a brilliant linguist. And in 1846, he realized that these cuneiform signs were actually syllabic. They were used to build up using sound values, words and meanings. And he recognized that the language encoded in that script was a Semitic language like Arabic and Hebrew, which was the language of the Assyrians and Babylonians. But he also then recognized about three years later that some of these signs were being used in a rather peculiar way, which suggested that there was an underlying other language there. This is the language which we now recognize as Sumerian. At the time, of course, this was completely unknown, and it had a very different grammatical structure to Semitic. It was something new.
- [08:17]
Interviewer (Host)
And this is so interesting, Paul, because four Jo Boggs we're looking at, let's say, cuneiform, I guess it's perhaps easy to think that cuneiform, it's just one sort of language, shall we say, which stays the same. But from what you're saying for the scholars looking at cuneiform tablets, when you delve into the detail, you can see different cuneiform languages within the cuneiform tablets that survive.
- [08:41]
Dr. Paul Collins
So cuneiform is an incredibly flexible system, actually, because, of course, the signs represent essentially sound values. So it can be used to write any language. It can be used to write English. English, essentially. But with using that system, you can use also signs to represent entire words, or signs to represent a sense of meaning. Although the earliest languages recognized within this system were these Semitic languages, they were actually relatively late in terms of recording. And hidden within these late recorded languages were these elements which pointed to this earlier recorded language. And just to clarify quickly, what do.
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Interviewer (Host)
We mean by Semitic language?
- [09:29]
Dr. Paul Collins
Semitic is the way in which a language is formed grammatically, so the way in which it functions in terms of the structure of the verbs, the way in which it organizes itself, essentially. And I say Semitic languages include modern day Arabic and modern day Hebrew. So they have basically the same grammatical structure. And that's what we find with these earlier Semitic languages like Assyrian and Babylonian. Now, the language that was being teased out from these ancient texts, which we now call Sumerian, had a very different structure. And so grammatically, it's unique. It doesn't belong to the Semitic family of languages, and in fact may have belonged to a much wider family of languages which is no longer spoken. And so it's often now described as an isolate, rather like modern day Basque. It has no connection with other spoken languages.
- [10:30]
Interviewer (Host)
So how does this language get the name Sumerian? Did the people who were writing this thousands of years ago, do they not consider themselves Sumerians?
- [10:39]
Dr. Paul Collins
The scholars who are discovering this language, of course, didn't know what to call it because there was no word essentially in the text that helped them do that. And another scholar in the late 1860s came up with a suggestion which he offered to the scholarly community, which he based actually on a Semitic text. And this was a phrase which read king of sumer and accad. But this is Semitic, this is Babylonian. But because Sumerian was so poorly known, it was agreed among the scholars that they would use this term Sumer and Sumerian as the way forward. And so it sort of stuck. So we're actually left with a Semitic term to refer to this other language.
- [11:33]
Interviewer (Host)
It's quite interesting, isn't it, a Semitic term to refer to a non Semitic language? But, Paul, that is really interesting. And I want to keep on the writing a bit longer because I want to delve more into this. I mean, so what sorts of writings have survived in the cuneiform tablets that are in Sumerian?
- [11:50]
Dr. Paul Collins
So the earliest tablets in Sumerian that are readable are very bureaucratic. They are lists of things. They're created by administrators designed to manage big agricultural estates. So it's about moving resources between storerooms or distributing things to workers. But among those very early texts, around 2,800 BC are also contracts. So a record of the transfer of property or other goods between individuals. And those are very often carved on stone because they're intended to last as a legal document. Whereas all the other documents, the administrative text, are on clay, which were not intended to last. They're rather ephemeral, post it notes almost, which was just for business.
- [12:47]
Interviewer (Host)
So are we quite lucky to have those clay tablets that do survive? I mean, are these ones which would have been excavated at particular sites and were under the ground and have been uncovered by archaeologists, let's say were very.
- [12:58]
Dr. Paul Collins
Lucky in digging sites within ancient Iraq, because the clay tablets survive. Even the sun dried tablets survive extraordinarily well in other cultures. Say for example in Egypt, where they're using perishable materials, you have to rely on other factors to preserve the papyrus or the parchment. But clay survives remarkably well. And so we've got these very, very early record surviving in their thousands. And clay, of course, is cheap. It's everywhere in southern Iraq. That's the world that it's based on. You're building your houses from it, you're making your pottery from it, and you're using it to write on. So it's an incredibly flexible material. And because it's cheap and flexible and you have a system which is sufficiently complex to record a spoken language and all the ideas that come out of that, it lasts for thousands of years.
- [13:58]
Interviewer (Host)
Do we have any idea if there were any other languages that were being spoken alongside Sumerian during this Sumerian period?
- [14:06]
Dr. Paul Collins
Almost certainly. And we get hints of that in the texts themselves. So within texts that are written in Sumerian, there are grammatical elements which suggest that there are Semitic languages in the background, as it were. And it may well be that the scribes of Mesopotamia in this period were taught to write Sumerian, even if their spoken language in the street was Semitic or another language. And so it was the tool of administration and that you had to learn Sumerian essentially just to function as an administrator.
- [14:48]
Interviewer (Host)
So as we wrap up writing there, from the latest archaeological evidence that we have, can we still say that we believe that the Sumerians, these people, are the first people that we know of to develop writing?
- [15:02]
Dr. Paul Collins
I think we can be relatively confident that the person who developed writing spoke Sumerian. That, however, is an assumption. Because the earliest texts, we can't read the language behind the science. They are simply recording information which could essentially be written by anybody speaking any language. But after several centuries of using those techniques, of recording, we find the Sumerian language as the first one to express grammatically. So that most scholars, I think, agree that the likelihood is that the majority of the population in southern Iraq in the late fourth millennium, early third millennium, are speaking Sumerian. And it was one of them who came up with this idea.
- [15:56]
Interviewer (Host)
You mentioned southern Iraq. So what does this area of Mesopotamia, what does it look like at the time of the Sumerians?
- [16:06]
Dr. Paul Collins
Certainly in the late fourth millennium, through much of the third millennium B.C. it's an incredibly watery place. The waters of the Persian Gulf were much further north than they are today. And so cities that are very familiar in the Sumerian world, like Ur and Eridu and Uruk, would have been almost maritime worlds looking out to the Persian Gulf on one side, but then looking inland to an incredibly rich agricultural world of lagoons and waterways and marshlands. And it's in that marshy environment of which pockets survive in modern Iraq, that this Sumerian culture emerged. So where transport was easy along all the river streams, and of course, the alluvial soil that the rivers had been depositing over millennia was incredibly rich for agricultural produce.
- [17:05]
Interviewer (Host)
That's interesting when you mentioned the Sumerian culture emerging. So I'm guessing this is really shrouded in the mystery of the origins of the Sumerians, but I'm guessing it's more. Do we think that they are the population of that area and then they become the Sumerian civilization, or that they came from elsewhere and settled there?
- [17:20]
Dr. Paul Collins
Well, it's a difficult question because, of course, we talk about the Sumerians, but only from the point of view, really, when we can understand their language. So before we're in prehistory, and then we don't know about population groups or the languages, indeed, that they're speaking, but there's sufficient archaeological continuity from deep, free history, actually to suggest that large parts of the population are simply there and not changing. So it's possible that they're already speaking, as it were, Sumerian in those places. And we have good evidence now for the sort of watery worlds where areas of land which were above the flood waters became the focus for these early settlements. And the style of architecture, for example, continues then through into the historic period. So we don't need to necessarily look for people coming from outside. However, early scholars from the mid 19th century assumed from the beginning that they could talk about people as groups of mobile groups that moved as one, and they came, according to their theories, from outside, bringing Sumerian civilization with them.
- [18:47]
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- [20:20]
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- [21:52]
Interviewer (Host)
Over. As you said, it's only been 150 years or so since the Sumerians been discovered. But over that time there's been a lot of development of ideas, of theories, and I think that's probably a great example of one of those, isn't it?
- [22:04]
Dr. Paul Collins
It is. And the Sumerians were caught up very much with 19th and early 20th century ideas around race, which came with the understanding that people belong to certain groups by their physical characteristics, by the way in which they thought, the way in which they worked together, the way in which they spoke their languages. So you had these groups of people emerging in different parts of the world and then were placed on a slight sliding scale of how they compared to essentially Western civilization. So you could move along that sliding scale both in the contemporary world, but also in the past. And the Sumerians, because they were envisaged as having this language different than the Semitic people of the Middle east, were thought to come from outside the region, bringing with them this extraordinary developments of cities and writing. So you had a model that was being imposed essentially on the evidence, one that of course, we now completely reject. Absolutely.
- [23:17]
Interviewer (Host)
But let's move on back onto the Sumerians, because you did mention something else that I know a lot of us will be keen, I'd love to ask about now, and that is, of course, cities. And so we know from this area of southern Iraq, we know of many, shall we say, many cities or city states linked to the Sumerians.
- [23:35]
Dr. Paul Collins
Well, cities is a difficult term in a way, because how do you define a city? So that's open to debate. And it was assumed from the early excavations in the late 19th, early 20th century that Southern Iraq, this great alluvial floodplain of the region, was the place where the world's first cities emerge, tied very much to this idea of the Sumerian population. And of course, there are enormous settlements there around 3000 BC. The city of Uruk is about one square mile, which makes it probably the largest settlement on the planet at that date, with tens of thousands of people. We now know, however, since those excavations began in the early 20th century, that the idea of urban centers is actually much older. And we can look to sites further up the River Euphrates in modern day Syria, to places like Tell Brak way north of the alluvial plains of Iraq, where about 4000 BC. So 1000 years earlier, we have a large urban center with monumental architecture and some of the technologies that would eventually lead to administrative ideas like writing. So we can now trace back some of those ideas much, much earlier, beyond the world usually associated with the Sumerians.
- [25:05]
Interviewer (Host)
From research such as that at other places like Tel Brak, is it giving people like yourself more an idea of how cities. Well, I'll put cities in Denmark in the Sumerian area, settlements interacted with other settlements, perhaps further away, perhaps trade or resources that were available, and of course, just relations in general. Are we learning a bit more about that too?
- [25:26]
Dr. Paul Collins
Oh, incredible. New evidence coming to light and very often the result of new areas being explored by archaeology, simply because they haven't looked, they haven't found it. And you're finding examples of not just urban complexity, large numbers of people coming together, but also dispersed settlements which are effectively doing the same things as cities. These smaller communities are all working together and cities are effect just clumping together, types of living in a more sort of compact arrangement, which you can find in other patterns elsewhere. So different ways of people sharing ideas, sharing materials, but over long, long distances.
- [26:12]
Interviewer (Host)
It's absolutely remarkable. I love that we're learning more about that too. And I guess one thing I'd also like to ask about, and I kind of hinted at it with the city states idea, do we think there's one Sumerian overlord in southern Iraq during this period, or is it divided between the various settlements with, like a powerful local figure ruling over that particular area?
- [26:32]
Dr. Paul Collins
It's very difficult to determine what's happening in the early third millennium. So from around 3,000 to 2,600, that sort of period, the evidence just isn't sufficient. And of course they're not actually telling us very much in their writing is largely bureaucratic. But by around 2500 BC, the texts begin to be used to document the achievements of kings, and you then start to be able to identify, not just in the text, but in the architecture of palaces and larger buildings, the emergence of powerful centers, and you get a clearer picture of a divided world of city states, rather like classical Greece or Renaissance Italy, competing centres sharing a common.
- [27:23]
Interviewer (Host)
Culture vs. Uruk could be like Thebes vs. Athens or something like that. If you want a parallel.
- [27:28]
Dr. Paul Collins
Correct? Yes, absolutely.
- [27:30]
Interviewer (Host)
Well, I would like. Therefore, you've mentioned art and architecture. I'd love to focus in. Let's look at a case study of one of these cities that has been excavated and look at the art and architecture from it. And I've got top of my list, I've got a rook. But first I want to go to urban, because this is a very, very interesting one, isn't it? Talk to me about the excavations at. During the 20th, was it the 19th century, which seems to be really significant in the uncovering of archaeology at this centre.
- [27:54]
Dr. Paul Collins
There had always been the focus for exploration and visitors in the 19th century. Europeans passing through the region as merchants or diplomats were always intrigued by the ancient mound at this site, which known as the Mound of Pich Tell El Mukya in Arabic. And it was from that site that some of the first bricks inscribed in cuneiform were recovered and brought back to Europe. So it was always well known. And early explorations in the 19th century began to uncover some other monuments from the site. But it really only began to be excavated in an extensive way, with hundreds of workers digging enormous holes in the soil. When a joint excavation was undertaken between the British Museum and the University Museum of Pennsylvania. And that joint excavation was led by Leonard Woolley, who was an experienced archaeologist and was chosen by the two museums to lead the digs from 19.
- [29:03]
Interviewer (Host)
What did he uncover? Did he start in one of the main areas? Because I know he goes to the cemeteries, which we're kind of hinting at as well. But what leads him, therefore, to talk us through his excavations? What do we know about him uncovering so much incredible archaeology from this area of the world?
- [29:18]
Dr. Paul Collins
Well, the site is enormous and there's very much that's visible on the ground, as it were, the remains of decayed mud brick structures. And dominating the site is an enormous mound which is the decayed remains of the so called ziggurat, the stepped tower, which was a feature of all Mesopotamian cities, part of the religious complex built from thousands of bricks which piled up to create effectively a step pyramid. And almost certainly with a little shrine at the summit and led up by staircase. Most of that had disappeared, but nonetheless you had this mound of decayed brick. So that was the focus for Woolley, surrounding temples at the foot of the Ziggurat mound and palace complex. So he was really digging the sacred heart of the city where royalty and religion came together.
- [30:20]
Interviewer (Host)
What was the Ziggurat? The Ziggurat, was that in use in Sumerian times or slightly later? And as you say, was this. Because you can see the reconstructed version today, can't you? But was this the focal point of the ancient Sumerian city of Ur?
- [30:36]
Dr. Paul Collins
Yes. And temples were built on raised platforms from the 4th millennium BC so much earlier, and almost certainly at Ur, as well as at other sites, your house of your God, relatively small building, was raised up above the level of everybody else's houses on a brick platform. And those gradually got higher through ty. And by the end of the third millennium B.C. so around 2100 B.C. the idea of creating these massive stepped towers really became a feature of the kings that were dominating the region. And so lots of cities had them built. And the one at Ur was at that time the capital city and was almost certainly the grandest and most obvious marker in the landscape.
- [31:27]
Interviewer (Host)
This is absolutely stunning building. I mean, were they. If we don't know, absolutely. Let's just say. But were these excavators, were they able to get into the ziggurat itself? Was there, like an inside chamber or. I mean, what did they really find from it?
- [31:41]
Dr. Paul Collins
So the ziggurat is solid? Yes. It's unlike an Egyptian pyramid, for example. It's not designed to hold anything. It's a solid mountain brick. And the idea was very much to raise up a monument. And one has to remember that southern Iraq is immensely flat. It's a landscape which is an alluvial plain. And so traveling from a distance, you'd be able to see this effective mountain in the distance over the city walls. And it may well be that the ziggurat is an attempt to bring the mountains where the gods were believed to live, out there to the east in the mountains of Iran, down onto the plain and bring their home into the center of the city.
- [32:28]
Interviewer (Host)
I'm delighted that we have talked about that monumental ziggurat because it is an incredible structure. But I would also like to go to something else. If we go back to Woolley's excavations, which seems to be really remarkable, talk me through how they discover these royal tombs, these cemeteries.
- [32:45]
Dr. Paul Collins
Woolley has workmen all over the site digging various parts, and some of his workmen begin very early on, in 1925, 26, to uncover burials within this religious complex. It's actually just to the edge of the ziggurat area. But he realizes that his workmen aren't sufficiently skilled in digging graves. These are very complex things to dig because although they're pits in the ground, the soil, decayed soil has fallen in, and there's very little surviving of the bodies. Soil is very acidic, so there's very little skeletal remains. So they come with challenges. But little beads of lapis lazuli and carnelian and gold were revealed. And he paused the excavations in that area until he felt his workforce was sufficiently skilled. So by 1927, 28, he returned to that area of the site and began to uncover thousands of graves. Now these were generally ordinary pits in the ground as it were, just simple pits in which an individual has laid out either in a coffin or wrapped up in a reed mat with a few of their possessions. But within the cemetery of thousands of individuals, there were 16 graves he uncovered which were completely different in scale, enormous in scale and contained extraordinary material.
- [34:19]
Interviewer (Host)
And so tell me a bit more about these 16 particular graves. What sorts of materials were uncovered and what did they believe that they were associated with?
- [34:28]
Dr. Paul Collins
So these are enormous pits in the ground, sometimes sort of 10 meters deep. And at the bottom of the pit, which was generally accessed by a shaft from above, would be a stone tomb. The stone tomb contained of various different shapes and sizes. Some contained little rooms, some were just simply almost like little huts, single one room creations. And inside those stone buildings, what Wooli took to be the primary burial, the king or the queen in his interpretation, was buried there, surrounded by the most extraordinary material, metal, copper, but also silver and gold. And remember, there is no metal in Iraq. This all has to be imported. So this again expressed wealth just by virtue of bringing the stuff to Ur, let alone the material itself. Beads of lapis, lazli and carnelian, again all imported from vast distances, reflecting the wealth of these individuals, spectacular stuff in themselves. But on the floor of some of these pits, outside the stone tomb lay the bodies of individuals who appear to be sacrificial victims. And this was a unique phenomenon. Indeed, it remains the same for Mesopotamia. One of these pits, the so called Great Death Pit, had 69 individuals lying in neat rows covered in extraordinary jewelry, mirroring that found on the principal burial in the stone chamber, but reproduced in vast amounts.
- [36:21]
Interviewer (Host)
So 69 bodies were found in there.
- [36:24]
Dr. Paul Collins
And these from analysis. And again, remember, the skeletons were preserved very, very poorly, but they appear to be all women. There are six apparent soldiers, again, based on what they're wearing at the foot of the shaft leading down into the pit. And so they're presumably guarding the entrance in some way. But the bodies, the rest of the bodies are all female. And so they appear to be in some sense the servants of the queen, perhaps courtiers, perhaps in life, killed for the purpose in death. Well, that's absolutely remarkable.
- [37:02]
Interviewer (Host)
Do we have any idea from the archaeology that survived of how they died? Is there evidence of trauma? I mean, as you said, there's probably poor condition that they survived. But do we have any ideas we.
- [37:12]
Dr. Paul Collins
Do now, again, thanks to modern techniques, Woolley himself came up with a sort of rather romantic tradition. Again, he's imagining the Sumerians as terribly civilized and therefore wouldn't indulge in anything too barbaric. So he imagines that everybody willingly takes poison and lays down to die to journey into the next world with their king or queen. And indeed, little cups were found next to some of the bodies. But we now know from analysis of the few skulls that were recovered, at least those individuals that were analyzed died horribly. Their skulls were smashed in with axes. Essentially, their bodies were then embalmed by being heated and they were treated with mercury. Now this may have been an attempt to preserve the body, having these individuals, having been killed, preserve the body for the length of time it would take to then lay them out and decorate them with this extraordinary jewelry before the entire tomb was closed.
- [38:26]
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- [40:09]
Interviewer (Host)
Let's keep moving on, but keeping actually talking about women in these tombs because there is this one particular tomb and I've got my notes Here, the queen's tomb. Now, what is this? It does seem to be one of the most extraordinary of all of them.
- [40:22]
Dr. Paul Collins
Extraordinary, really, because it was one of the few that survived intact. Most of these graves had either been looted in the past, probably soon after they were buried, potentially. And so Woolley was able to reconstruct what he thought the whole rituals behind the interment were from just a few surviving tombs. And this queen's tomb was one of the best surviving examples where the floor of the pit again contained sacrificial victims, these individuals. And then the queen herself was buried in a stone tomb in one corner of the pit.
- [41:01]
Interviewer (Host)
Do we have any idea who this particular woman was?
- [41:06]
Dr. Paul Collins
There's huge debates around who these individuals were in terms of as or were their profession, were they queens or were they high priestesses? Probably be difficult to separate those out. These are clearly important individuals in the city of Ur. We do, however, know this individual's name, and that's because associated with her body, actually lying close to her body, was a cylinder seal, a cylinder made of lapis lazuli carved with an image of a banquet and a cuneiform inscription, which was read when it was excavated in 1928. The signs, the cuneiform signs were read as Shu Ad so Queen Shuvad was suddenly revealed to the public as a Sumerian queen because it was assumed that the signs should be read as Sumerian, because it was assumed she must be a Sumerian queen in this great city.
- [42:07]
Interviewer (Host)
And it's an interesting time that you mentioned that being announced to the press, because of course, this is. Well, it's a few years later, but still, I say, hot on the heels of Tuts and Khamun, maybe even the Triple and treasure in Scotland. But there's the discovery of all these incredible new archaeological finds. And it feels like the announcing to the press of this. It's that interesting time of archaeological discovery, isn't it? And you then have this Sumerian discovery being announced, this woman, this particular woman also being announced to the press, too.
- [42:36]
Dr. Paul Collins
Yes. And of course, at this time, it was imagined from the chronology that was being reconstructed as the excavations continued. These tombs dated much earlier than the first, earliest tombs in Egypt. And it was tied in very much with this idea of the Sumerians as being at the roots of civilization. So they must be much earlier, but also tied in with the notion that the Sumerians were somehow connected to people in the west, that they weren't Semitic. They potentially could be actually the ancestors, as Leonard Woolley himself would say, in Print, perhaps even of the Neolithic barrow builders of Wessex. So there was a sense of ownership from the west over the Sumerians. And here was this queen, decked out in the most extraordinary jewellery with this apparent Sumerian name, which made that connection all the more explicit.
- [43:36]
Interviewer (Host)
You mentioned their apparent Sumerian name. There's more of a story to this, isn't there?
- [43:42]
Dr. Paul Collins
There is, because the reading of those signs on that cylinder seal is now much better understood. In the decades since the excavations, our understanding of these ancient languages, the way that the cuneiform script worked, has of course improved dramatically. And so Queen Shobhad, her name, is now understood to be read in fact as Poo Abi. Very different readings of those two signs, but actually with much more meaning. Shubad is meaningless, but Poo Abi actually is a Semitic way of writing a name, which means it relates her to her father, essentially. And so we now know her as Queen Pu Abi. But the point is, of course, that if language and perhaps names associates you with group identity, then Pu Abi is no longer Sumerian, but actually is Semitic.
- [44:43]
Interviewer (Host)
Well, there you go. See, that's an interesting twist in the whole story. Let's talk about art for a bit because you've mentioned all these incredible objects that show like the connections that these people had, the Sumerians. I know that you've got examples of these incredible statues of vases, houses from a rook and so many other places. I'd like to focus on one particular example which also comes from these particular cemeteries. It is quite a iconic example. And this is the standard of Ur. Now, Paul, what is this?
- [45:12]
Dr. Paul Collins
I wish I could tell you. This remains something of a mystery. It's an object which came to the British Museum as part of the so called division of finds, when the material excavated at Ur was shared between the Museum in Baghdad, the Iraq Museum and the University Museum in Pennsylvania and the British Museum, a division of finds which was practiced at the times, but is no longer the current way of doing things. But the British Museum got the standard of Ur as part of that. And what it is was reconstructed really by Woolley's ideas that this is some sort of box. You have two rectilinear panels of some size which are inlaid with scenes of procession of material and animals being led up towards a king in the top register. And on the other panel you have a scene of banqueting. Again, the movement of material towards that two images of kingship, one in which the king is shown as the warrior and one in which he's shown in sort of more peaceful banqueting scene. Well, these two panels, the inlay originally on wood which had decayed, Woolley thought, must have belonged to some sort of object which had been carried on the top of a pole as a standard. Why did he think that? Well, the inlay was found next to the shoulder of the body in the tomb. And so we have this idea of a box, a sort of truncated arrangement with no obvious purpose. Some people have thought, well, maybe it's the sounding box of a musical instrument, and you've just lost the elements above. Not many people, I think, accept that as meaningful. And I wonder myself whether what you're looking at is actually a series of panels which would have decorated a wall. And this we know from other examples, where squares, rectangles of wood inlaid with precious materials and carved scenes were set up in palaces and temples, really, as images of kingship or of religion. And these may have been stacked up against a wall, perhaps in this tomb. The idea being that the tomb would be the palace for eternity, for the individual. But when the tomb collapsed, the bricks from the top of the tomb fell down, smashing a lot of this inlay work. And so Woolley found two panels, one on top of each other, separated by a thin layer of dust, which he then assumed had been a box that had been crushed. In fact, I suspect they may well have been just separate panels. But you visit it now in the British Museum as a single object, as this mysterious box.
- [48:12]
Interviewer (Host)
But it is still an extraordinary piece of art, isn't it? Thousands of years old, and the detail that it shows. And you say that peaceful scene and that more military scene, too.
- [48:19]
Dr. Paul Collins
Yes, and comprised, again of this extraordinary blue lapis lazuli stone, which would have reached southern Iraq from Afghanistan, the only source we know of, many thousands of miles to the east, such a precious material that the Sumerians really valued it as evoking notions of the gods and that mysterious world to the east.
- [48:45]
Interviewer (Host)
Absolutely. Now, quickly, before we just quickly move on to. I'll ask a small question about the military king list and then we'll wrap up. But as hinted at earlier, we've got so many other examples of art from the Sumerian period, don't we? I mean, what sorts of examples and what shapes and forms do we have other examples of art from the ancient Sumer?
- [49:06]
Dr. Paul Collins
So we're talking about at least a thousand years, of course, when the Sumerian language is being recorded in cuneiform. And so the material ranges from the sorts of things found in temples. Votive figurines is one particular Class of art which is very familiar to this world. Images of both men and women made of stone 30 cm or so high, in general, carved to represent those individuals with their hands clasped before them in prayer, perhaps so intended to be taken into the temple to be in the presence of the God for all time. Sumerian temples were small spaces. These are homes of the gods, so only the priests could probably gain access. So if you were wealthy enough, if you had sufficient status or a position in society, you could have an image made of yourself, men or women, and carried into the presence of God.
- [50:14]
Interviewer (Host)
They are absolutely extraordinary. And, you know, people can learn more about it, looking it up. The Sumerians, for instance, at your book, and so on and so forth.
- [50:22]
Dr. Paul Collins
But we will keep going on because.
- [50:23]
Interviewer (Host)
I'd like to talk about one other thing before we talk about wrapping up, and that is quickly, very quickly on the military. Do we have any idea from the. I believe I remember seeing something about this. But do we have a slight idea of how the Sumerian military functioned?
- [50:38]
Dr. Paul Collins
We have representations of armies on some of these royal images. The standard of Ur, of course, is one good example, where on this battle side, you have images of carts, essentially, which are often described as chariots, but they're four wheeled vehicles being pulled by donkeys trundling across this flat landscape. And inside, you have a spear thrower and sometimes an archer. So you have effectively heavy. Heavy weapons of war alongside infantry, where rows of soldiers decked out in leather garments, we assume from the images, again carrying spears. Those appear also on monuments of stone where again we see kings in chariots leading forward, his infantry with their spears, ready to attack the enemy.
- [51:39]
Interviewer (Host)
And so what do we think ultimately happens to the Sumerians?
- [51:43]
Dr. Paul Collins
Well, remember, the Sumerians, as far as we know them, are only through their language. So we don't have to envisage a single group of people. There's no texts that talk about I am a Sumerian. There are only texts that record their language. And it becomes clear that by the end of the third millennium, that language is dying out as a spoken language. And this is a phenomenon that happens with languages around the globe over time and indeed with globalization. Languages are disappearing today at a fast rate as other languages, like English, for example, become more dominant. So for reasons that are difficult to determine, Sumerian gradually declines as a spoken language in the street. The language, however, is preserved by those bureaucrats, by the scribes, and by the intellectuals who associate the language with the ancient past and the heritage of the region. So it continues to be learned in scholarly communities and in the temple scribal communities. But in the street, most people are now speaking a Semitic language, become the Babylonian language, essentially, and Sumerian ceases to be present. So we don't see people disappearing, we just see the language disappearing.
- [53:15]
Interviewer (Host)
It's interesting, as you say, looking at the Sumerians through the language and then you do see it being removed as time goes on. I mean, with all of that knowledge that we therefore now have from the archaeology and the surviving cuneiform literature about the Sumerian language, how should we now look at the Sumerians today? I mean, how should we view the Sumerians?
- [53:42]
Dr. Paul Collins
I think we can certainly talk about a civilization of Sumer. Sumer was a term and we started the conversation around how that term was so influential. Sumer was a place, it was thought of as a real place by the ancient scribes. So we have the civilization of Sumer. But within Sumer there was almost certainly a multilingual population. The scribal tradition, perhaps the wealthy parts of the community may have spoken Sumerian as they wanted that language as the first to be recorded in the script. They developed, but gradually over time, other parts of the population came to the fore in terms of their language. But that melding of different linguistic traditions created a single unified cultural tradition that we now describe as the Sumerian world.
- [54:43]
Interviewer (Host)
Well, Paul, this has been amazing. We've only just scratched the surface. There's so much more we could have talked about. We've got to got to end it there, I'm afraid. Maybe we'll get you back on for a second podcast and due course. But it does also, it's really exciting for the future, I'm guessing, in the archaeology field of ancient Sumer and learning more about it. I'm guessing there's still so much more to find in the years ahead.
- [55:02]
Dr. Paul Collins
Almost certainly. I mean, Iraq is extraordinarily rich archaeologically and there are abandoned settlement mounds out there waiting to be uncovered. I also think it, it allows us to rethink our assumptions and presumptions based on our own more recent scholarship and revisit that.
- [55:24]
Interviewer (Host)
Quite right, indeed. And last but not least, your book, you have written a book on this.
- [55:28]
Dr. Paul Collins
Topic which is called, it's called the Sumerians as part of the so called Lost Civilizations series and explores many of the things we've been discussing today.
- [55:38]
Interviewer (Host)
Well, Paul, absolute pleasure, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.
- [55:42]
Dr. Paul Collins
My great pleasure. Thank you very much.
- [55:48]
Podcast Host
Well, there you go. There was Dr. Paul Collins talking through the story giving you an overview of the ancient Sumerians. I hope you enjoyed the episode. That was the first ever interview I did with the wonderful Paul Collins when he was still working at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. He is now at at the British Museum in London and has since done several more interviews with us on everything from Uruk and the First Cities to Sargon of Akkad to Nineveh and more to come. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Ancients. Please follow this show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour if you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating as well where we'd really appreciate that. Don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hit's podcasts ad free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe@historyhit.com subscribe.
- [56:53]
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Interviewer (Host)
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