The destruction of cities by foreign invaders, and its resulting catastrophic suffering, unfortunately, was very common in the ancient Near East and, therefore, we can observe examples of the lament form / genre concerning destroyed cities and temples from extra-biblical sources, particularly from early Sumerian Literature dating to the late third and early second millennia BC.

Akkadian fell into disuse, but both it and Sumerian were still used in temples for some centuries.

* In Sumerian epic texts such as Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, Nu-Gig were priestesses in temples dedicated to Inanna and may be a reference to the goddess herself.

* Quadishtu served in the temples of the Sumerian goddess Qetesh.

There were libraries in most towns and temples ; an old Sumerian proverb averred that " he who would excel in the school of the scribes must rise with the dawn.

Sumerian temples, fortifications, and palaces made use of more advanced materials and techniques, such as buttresses, recesses, and half columns.

Chronologically, Sumerian temples evolved from earlier Ubaid temples.

The bent axis approach is an innovation from the Ubaid temples which had a linear axis approach, and is also a feature of Sumerian houses.

The most impressive and famous of Sumerian buildings are the ziggurats, large layered platforms which supported temples.

Sumerian temples and palaces made use of more advanced materials and techniques, such as buttresses, recesses, half columns, and clay nails.

There were libraries in most towns and temples ; an old Sumerian proverb averred that " he who would excel in the school of the scribes must rise with the dawn.

The temples of nearby Nippur, the religious capital of the Neo Sumerian culture, were the main destinations of the livestock.

* In Sumerian epic texts such as Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, Nu-Gig were priestesses in temples dedicated to Inanna, or may be a reference to the goddess herself.

Quadishtu were temple prostitutes who served in the temples of the Sumerian goddess Qetesh.

The city contained a ziggurat and temples dedicated to Sumerian gods, as well as a royal palace.

Later still in Babylonian times there were libraries in most towns and temples ; an old Sumerian proverb averred that " he who would excel in the school of the scribes must rise with the dawn.

Shuruppak or Shuruppag ( Sumerian: " The Healing Place ") was an ancient Sumerian city situated about 35 miles south of Nippur on the banks of the Euphrates at the site of modern Tell Fara in Iraq's Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate.

The Sumerian historical record remains obscure until the Early Dynastic period, when a now deciphered syllabary writing system was developed, which has allowed archaeologists to read contemporary records and inscriptions.

The Vinča culture may have created the earliest system of writing, the Vinča signs, though it is almost universally accepted amongst archeologists that the Sumerian cuneiform script was the earliest true form of writing and the Vinča signs most likely represented pictograms and ideograms rather than a truly developed form of writing.

The earliest example of writing is the Sumerian pictographic system found on clay tablets, which eventually developed around 3200 BC into a modified version called cuneiform.

The Elamite city appears to have been quite ancient ; it makes an appearance in the early Sumerian epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta as being en route between Uruk and the legendary Aratta, supposedly around the time writing was developed.

The Sumerian Renaissance also developed c. 21st century BC.

Scholarly works from the early 1800s onward have developed some facility translating the various Sumerian documents.

The period 2700 – 2300 BC saw the first appearance of the Sumerian abacus, a table of successive columns which delimited the successive orders of magnitude of their sexagesimal number system.

Akkad is sometimes regarded as the first empire in history, though there are earlier Sumerian claimants.

The first known mention of the city of Akkad is in an inscription of Enshakushanna of Uruk, where he claims to have defeated Agade — indicating that it was in existence well before the days of Sargon of Akkad, whom the Sumerian King List claims to have built it.

Sargon has often been cited as the first ruler of a combined empire of Akkad and Sumer, although more recently discovered data suggests there had been Sumerian expansions under previous kings, including Lugal-Anne-Mundu of Adab, Eannatum of Lagash, and Lugal-Zage-Si.

* Urukagina – Sumerian king and creator of what is sometimes cited as the first example of a legal code in recorded history.

Although the first recorded dictionaries date back to Sumerian times ( these were bilingual dictionaries ), the systematic study of dictionaries as objects of scientific interest themselves is a 20th century enterprise, called lexicography, and largely initiated by Ladislav Zgusta.

Ninlil followed him to the underworld where she bore his first child, Nergal, and / or the moon god Sin ( Sumerian Nanna / Suen ).

Adapa, the first man fashioned, later goes and acts as the advisor to the King of Eridu, when in the Sumerian Kinglist, the " Me " of " kingship descends on Eridu ".

* English am ( first person present tense of to be ), Etruscan am ( to be ), and Sumerian am ( to be )

The Sumerian civilization spanned over 3000 years and began with the first settlement of Eridu in the Ubaid period ( mid-6th millennium BC ) through the Uruk period ( 4th millennium BC ) and the Early Dynastic periods ( 3rd millennium BC ) until the rise of Assyria and Babylonia in the late 3rd and early 2nd millennium BC respectively.

Among the rivers and streams, the Sumerian people built the first cities along with irrigation canals which were separated by vast stretches of open desert or swamp where nomadic tribes roamed.

Urukagina, the king of the Sumerian city-state Lagash, established the first laws that forbade compelling the sale of property .< ref > Samuel Noah Kramer.

So far evidence for the earliest periods of the Early Bronze Age in Mesopotamia is very limited. Mesh-Ane-pada is the first king mentioned in the Sumerian King List, and appears to have lived in the 26th century BC.

The first documents unequivocally written in the Sumerian language date to the 31st century, found at Jemdet Nasr.

The " Mistress of the animals ", later called Artemis, who was the first nymph, may be identified as the Minoan Britomartis, and has similar functions with the Sumerian Ninhursag.

Unique types of maces known as " Gada " were used extensively in ancient Indian warfare, and the enchanted talking mace Sharur made its first appearance in Sumerian / Akkadian mythology during the epic of Ninurta.

Akkadian proper names were first attested in Sumerian texts from ca.

The Sumerian city of Eridu, on what was then the Persian Gulf, was the world's first city, where three separate cultures fused-that of peasant farmers, living in mud-brick huts and practising irrigation ; that of mobile nomadic pastoralists living in black tents and following herds of sheep and goats ; and that of fisher folk, living in reed huts in the marshlands.

Credit for being first to scientifically treat a bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian text belongs to Paul Haupt, who published Die sumerischen Familiengesetze ( The Sumerian family laws ) in 1879.

Ernest de Sarzec began excavating the Sumerian site of Tello ( ancient Girsu, capital of the state of Lagash ) in 1877, and published the first part of Découvertes en Chaldée with transcriptions of Sumerian tablets in 1884.

Aside from this extended epic " The Descent of Inanna ," a previously unknown " Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi " was first translated into English and annotated by Sumerian scholar Samuel Noah Kramer and folklorist Diane Wolkstein working in tandem, and published in 1983.

Sumerian records also show Nin-Kasalsi as the first ruler of the city of Adab.

External to the city, Sumerian irrigation agriculture created some of the first garden forms in history.