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The Ancient Sumerian City of Uruk: A Hub of Civilization
Uruk, modern Warka in southern Iraq, grew into one of the largest early cities from about 3500 BCE. Its Eanna and Anu districts and long history explained.
Cradle of Civilization
Uruk, Eridu, Ur and Nippur, the first great cities.
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Uruk, modern Warka in southern Iraq, grew into one of the largest early cities from about 3500 BCE. Its Eanna and Anu districts and long history explained.
How Sumerians built with mud brick, temple platforms and ziggurats, seen at Nippur and other southern cities, and how their cities were laid out.
The Uruk period of the fourth millennium BCE: early administration, mass-produced pottery, seals, proto-cuneiform tablets and the debated spread of Uruk influence.
Eridu is the city Sumerian tradition names as the first kingship. Its temple of Enki, long sequence of rebuilt shrines and slow decline, with what archaeology shows.
Nippur was Sumer's religious heart: home of Enlil's temple, a place kings sought approval from, and the source of a huge archive of Sumerian clay tablets.
Ur was a Sumerian port and trading city best known for its Royal Cemetery, the ziggurat of Ur-Nammu and merchant links to Dilmun, Magan and the Indus.
Uruk as a centre of scribal training: its early tablets, temple learning, the Sumerian stories of Gilgamesh and Enmerkar, and its late scholars of astronomy.
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