Near East Kingdoms

Sumer (Ki-en-gir / Kengi)

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Located in southern Mesopotamia, close to the rivers Euphrates and Tigris between modern Iraq's Baghdad and the tip of the Persian gulf, Sumer was one of the first great civilisations (see feature link). It emerged a little way ahead of that of Africa's ancient Egypt, and up to a millennium before that of the Indus Valley culture. It developed out of the end of the Pottery Neolithic across the Fertile Crescent. This period had seen Neolithic Farmer practices spread far and wide across the Near East and beyond.

As irrigation improved so the more southerly reaches of the Euphrates could at last be occupied by humans and their animals. Southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and the western edge of Iran) was subjected to permanent settlement, mainly pastoralists at first, herding sheep or goats. Cultures around the edges of this progression included the Hassuna and Samarra which began this settlement process, and perhaps elements of the Hissar culture in the Iranian highlands were also involved.

By the late fourth millennium BC, Sumer (or Ki-en-gir, 'Land of the Sumerian tongue') was divided into approximately a dozen city states which were independent of one another and which used local canals and boundary stones to mark their borders.

However, that name, Ki-en-gir, or Kengi, seems originally to refer to a central place which provided a pivotal role in a third millennium BC wider political association. This association included Adab, Lagash, Nippur, Shuruppak, Umma, Ur, and Uruk. The city of Kish, while being independent of this group, seems to have been seen as an associate member. This 'central place' is otherwise unknown, and the name itself eventually came to be used for the region as a whole.

Many early historical events in the region are found only in the Sumerian king list, which notates the rulers of the city states (and see feature link), along with another list which continued to be updated until about two centuries after the fall of Sumer. Archaeology has also uncovered a wealth of detail, as described in each of the city state pages.

(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information from Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City, Gwendolyn Leick (Penguin Books, 2001), from Encyclopaedia Britannica (Eleventh Edition, Cambridge (England), 1910), from The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character, Samuel Noah Kramer ('List 1' of Sumerian rulers, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1963), from Political Change and Cultural Continuity in Eshnunna from the Ur III to the Old Babylonian Period, Clemens Reichel (List of Eshnunna's rulers, providing some names which are not on the Bruce R Gordon list as part of a dissertation proposal for the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, 11 June 1996), from First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies, Peter Bellwood (Second Ed, Wiley-Blackwell, 2022), from Excavations at Tepe Hissar, Damghan, Erich F Schmidt (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), from Historical Atlas of the Ancient World, 4,000,000 to 500 BC, John Heywood (Barnes & Noble, 2000), from The Ancient Near East, c.3000-330 BC, Amélie Kuhrt (Routledge, 2000, Vol I & II), from Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East, Michael Road (Facts on File, 2000), from Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Enrico Ascalone (Dictionaries of Civilizations 1, University of California Press, 2007), from The Archaeology of Mesopotamia, S Lloyd (Revised Ed, London, 1984), from Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History, J N Postgate (Routledge, 1994), from The First Empires, J N Postgate (Oxford 1977), from History of the Ancient Near East c.3000-323 BC, Marc van der Mieroop (Blackwell Publishing, 2004, 2007), from Ancient History: A Theory About Ancient Times, L C Gerts ('List 4' of Sumerian rulers, Chapter 12: The Sumerian king list, 2002), from Mesopotamia, Chris Scarre (Ed, Past Worlds - The Times Atlas of Archaeology, Guild Publishing, London 1989), from The Age of the God-Kings, Kit van Tulleken (Ed, Time Life Books, Amsterdam 1987), and from External Links: Tracing the Origin and Spread of Agriculture in Europe, Ron Pinhasi, Joaquim Fort, & Albert J Ammerman (PLOS Biology, published online 29 Nov 2005), and Ancient Worlds, and Archaeobotany: Plant Domestication, Chris Stevens & Leilani Lucas (Reference Module in Social Sciences, 2023, available via Science Direct), and The Sumerian Kings List, J A Black, G Cunningham, E Fluckiger-Hawker, E Robson, & G Zólyomi ('List 2' of Sumerian rulers, available via the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Oxford, 1998), and Ancient History, Anthony Michael Love ('List 3' of Sumerian rulers at Sarissa.org), and Eshnunna (the late Bruce R Gordon's Regnal Chronologies list of Eshnunna's rulers, providing some names which are missing from the Clemens Reichel list), and Ninhursag, Micha F Lindemans (formerly available via Encyclopaedia Mythica), and Images from History (University of Alabama), and Tepe Hissar (Encyclopaedia Iranica), and Hissar I, Erich F Schmidt (The Museum Journal XXIII, No 4, December, 1933, pp 340-365, accessed via Pennsylvania Museum).)