A diorite statue of Gudea, ruler of Lagash, seated with his hands clasped
Statue of Gudea, named “Gudea, the man who built the temple, may his life be long”, ca. 2090 BCE
Marked Uruk

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

Sumer and the first cities

In southern Mesopotamia, now Iraq, the first true cities grew up: Uruk, Ur, Lagash and others, each with its temple, its ruler and its scribes. Here writing began, as records of grain and beer.

Place
Uruk · Ur · Lagash · NippurThe Middle East
Laid out as
A civilisationA society seen from the inside: its rulers, places, work, beliefs and daily life, laid out like the rooms of a house.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IUruk, the first city
  2. IIFrom tokens to writing
  3. IIITemples and ziggurats
  4. IVThe royal tombs of Ur
  5. VGilgamesh
  6. VIEnheduanna, the first named author

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Enheduanna
  • Gilgamesh (in legend)
  • Leonard Woolley

Objects

  • The Warka Vase
  • Clay tablets
  • The Standard of Ur

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

4000 BC to 2000 BC. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?