Download Nippur: The History and Legacy of One of the Ancient Sumerians' Oldest Cities AudioBook Free
In southern Iraq, a crushing silence hangs within the dunes. For practically 5000 years, the sands of the Iraqi desert have presented the remains of the oldest known civilization: the Sumerians. When American archaeologists uncovered a assortment of cuneiform tablets in Iraq in the later 19th century, these were met with a language and a people who had been at that time only scarcely recognized to even the most proficient scholars of ancient Mesopotamia. The exploits and accomplishments of other Mesopotamian peoples, including the Assyrians and Babylonians, were already recognized to a large section of the population through the Old Testament and the nascent field of Near Eastern studies experienced unraveled the enigma of the Akkadian language that was widely used throughout the spot in ancient times, however the discovery of the Sumerian tablets brought to light the life of the Sumerian culture, that was the oldest of all Mesopotamian cultures. Although the Sumerians continue to get second or even third billing compared to the Babylonians and Assyrians, perhaps because they never built an empire as great as the Assyrians or set up a city as long lasting and great as Babylon, these were the people who provided the design template of civilization that later Mesopotamians built upon. The Sumerians are credited with being the first visitors to invent writing, libraries, towns, and universities in Mesopotamia, and many would dispute that these were the first visitors to create and do those ideas anywhere in world. For a people so excellent it is regrettable that their achievements and efforts, not and then Mesopotamian civilization but to civilization in general, largely go undetected by a lot of the public.
