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SumerKengir

Middle East & Central AsiaHeartland today: Iraq

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Sumer was a group of city-states in southern Mesopotamia, including Uruk, Ur and Lagash, where some of the earliest known writing appeared. Its scribes pressed accounts into clay in cuneiform, and its kings built stepped temple towers called ziggurats.

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Key events

  1. – Scribes at Uruk record grain, livestock and rations on clay tablets, the earliest known writingDisputed

    Sources place the first writing between about 3500 and 3200 BCE, depending on which Uruk tablets count as writing. The bar covers the proto-cuneiform phase to about 3000 BCE.

  2. – Ur's Royal Cemetery fills with burials rich in gold, silver and lapis lazuliDisputed

    The cemetery held some 2,000 burials over several centuries, but the rich royal tombs date mainly to about 2600–2500 BCE. One source runs the cemetery's use to about 2000 BCE.

  3. Sargon of Akkad defeats Lugalzagesi and takes Uruk, ending the independent Sumerian city-statesDisputed

    Sargon's reign is dated from 2334 BCE (middle chronology). Sources do not say which year of his reign Uruk fell, so the date given is the start of his reign.

  4. Ur-Nammu founds the Third Dynasty of Ur and commissions the great ziggurat of Ur
  5. – The Code of Ur-Nammu is written in Sumerian, the oldest surviving law codeDisputed

    Scholars debate whether Ur-Nammu or his son Shulgi had the laws written down, so the date could fall anywhere in a half-century.

  6. Elamites capture Ur and carry off its last king, Ibbi-Sin, ending the Third Dynasty of UrDisputed

    The date is c. 2004 BCE in the middle chronology; other chronologies place it decades later.

  7. A scribe records the Sumerian King List on a clay prism, tracing kingship back to before the Flood