In what sense is the Sumerian culture characterized. What was the history of Sumer? Culture of ancient Sumer briefly

CITY-STATES OF THE SUMERIANS IN THE III MILLION BC BC 1a. Population of Southern Mesopotamia; general appearance. 2. Proto-literate period (2900-2750). 2a. Writing. 2b. social structure. 2c. Economic relations. 2y. Religion and culture. 3. Early Dynastic Period I (2750-2600).

Even in the IV millennium BC. e. in the southern part of Mesopotamia on the territory of modern Iraq, between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, a high culture of the Sumerians was formed at that time (the self-name of the Saggi people is black-headed), which was then inherited by the Babylonians and Assyrians. At the turn of III-II millennia BC. e. Sumer is in decline, and over time, the Sumerian language was forgotten by the population; only the Babylonian priests knew it, it was the language of sacred texts. At the beginning of the II millennium BC. e. primacy in Mesopotamia passes to Babylon.

Introduction

In the south of Mesopotamia, where agriculture was widely carried out, the ancient city-states of Ur, Uruk, Kish, Umma, Lagash, Nippur, Akkad developed. The youngest of these cities was Babylon, built on the banks of the Euphrates. Most of the cities were founded by the Sumerians, so the ancient culture of Mesopotamia is usually called Sumerian. Now they are called "the progenitor of modern civilization" The heyday of city-states is called the golden age of the ancient state of the Sumerians. This is true both in the literal and figurative sense of the word: objects of the most diverse household purposes and weapons were made of gold here. The culture of the Sumerians had a great influence on the subsequent progress not only of Mesopotamia, but of all mankind.

This culture was ahead of the development of other great cultures. Nomads and trade caravans spread the news about her everywhere.

Writing

The cultural contribution of the Sumerians was not limited to the discovery of methods for working metals, the manufacture of wheeled carts and the potter's wheel. They became the inventors of the first form of recording human speech.

At the first stage, it was pictography (pictorial writing), that is, a letter consisting of drawings and, less often, symbols denoting one word or concept. The combination of these drawings conveyed certain information in writing. However, Sumerian legends say that even before the appearance of picture writing, there existed an even more ancient way of fixing thoughts - tying knots on a rope and notches on trees. At the subsequent stages, the drawings were stylized (the Sumerians gradually move from a complete, fairly detailed and thorough depiction of objects to their incomplete, schematic or symbolic depiction), which accelerated the process of writing. This is a step forward, but the possibilities of such writing were still limited. Thanks to simplifications, individual characters could be used multiple times. So, for many complex concepts, there were no signs at all, and even in order to designate such a familiar phenomenon as rain, the scribe had to combine the symbol of the sky - a star and the symbol of water - ripples. Such a letter is called ideographic-rebus.

Historians believe that it was the formation of the management system that led to the appearance of writing in temples and royal palaces. This brilliant invention should, apparently, be considered the merit of the Sumerian temple officials, who improved the pictography to simplify the registration of economic events and trade transactions. Records were made on clay tiles or tablets: soft clay was pressed with the corner of a rectangular stick, and the lines on the tablets had characteristic appearance wedge-shaped recesses. In general, the entire inscription was a mass of wedge-shaped lines, and therefore Sumerian writing is usually called cuneiform. The oldest cuneiform tablets, which made up entire archives, contain information about the temple economy: lease agreements, documents on control over the work performed and registration of incoming goods. These are the oldest written records in the world.

Subsequently, the principle of pictorial writing began to be replaced by the principle of conveying the sound side of the word. Hundreds of characters for syllables appeared, and several alphabetic characters corresponding to the main letters. They were used mainly to denote service words and particles. Writing was a great achievement of the Sumero-Akkadian culture. It was borrowed and developed by the Babylonians and spread widely throughout Asia Minor: cuneiform was used in Syria, ancient Persia, and other states. In the middle of the II millennium BC. e. Cuneiform became the international writing system: even the Egyptian pharaohs knew and used it. In the middle of the first millennium BC. e. cuneiform becomes alphabetic.

Language

For a long time, scientists believed that the Sumerian language was not similar to any of the living and dead languages ​​\u200b\u200bknown to mankind, so the question of the origin of this people remained a mystery. To date, the genetic links of the Sumerian language have not yet been established, but most scientists suggest that this language, like the language of the ancient Egyptians and the inhabitants of Akkad, belongs to the Semitic-Hamitic language group.

Around 2000 BC, the Sumerian language was supplanted by the Akkadian language from the spoken language, but continued to be used as a sacred, liturgical and scientific language until the beginning of AD. e.

Culture and religion

In ancient Sumer, the origins of religion had purely materialistic, and not "ethical" roots. Early Sumerian deities 4-3 thousand BC acted primarily as givers of life's blessings and abundance. The purpose of the cult of the gods was not "purification and holiness", but was intended to ensure a good harvest, military success, etc. - it was for this that ordinary mortals revered them, built temples for them, made sacrifices. The Sumerians claimed that everything in the world belongs to the gods - the temples were not the place of residence of the gods, who were obliged to take care of people, but the granaries of the gods - barns. Most of the early Sumerian deities were formed by local gods, whose power did not go beyond a very small territory. The second group of gods were the patrons of large cities - they were more powerful than the local gods, but they were revered only in their cities. Finally, the gods who were known and worshiped in all Sumerian cities.

In Sumer, the gods were like people. In their relationship there are matchmaking and wars, anger and revenge, deceit and anger. Quarrels and intrigues were common in the circle of the gods, the gods knew love and hate. Like people, they were engaged in business during the day - they decided the fate of the world, and at night they retired to rest.

Sumerian hell - Kur - a gloomy dark underworld, on the way where there were three servants - "door man", "underground river man", "carrier". Reminds the ancient Greek Hades and Sheol of the ancient Jews. There, a man passed through the court, and a gloomy, depressing existence awaited him. A person comes into this world for a short time, and then disappears into the dark mouth of the Kur. In Sumerian culture, for the first time in history, a person made an attempt to morally overcome death, to understand it as a moment of transition to eternity. All the thoughts of the inhabitants of Mesopotamia were directed to the living: they wished the living well-being and health every day, the multiplication of the family and a happy marriage for daughters, a successful career for sons, and that “beer, wine and all good things never run dry” in the house. The posthumous fate of a person was of less interest to them and seemed to them rather sad and uncertain: the food of the dead is dust and clay, they “do not see the light” and “live in darkness”.

In Sumerian mythology, there are also myths about the golden age of mankind and paradise life, which eventually became part of the religious ideas of the peoples of Western Asia, and later - in biblical stories.

The only thing that can brighten up the existence of a person in a dungeon is the memory of the living on earth. The people of Mesopotamia were brought up in the deep conviction that one should leave a memory of oneself on earth. Memory is preserved for the longest time in erected cultural monuments. It was they, created by the hands, thought and spirit of man, that constituted the spiritual values ​​of this people, this country and really left behind a powerful historical memory. In general, the views of the Sumerians were reflected in many later religions.

The most powerful gods

An (in the Akkadian transcription of Anna) God of the sky and the father of other gods, who, like people, asked him for help if necessary. Known for his dismissive attitude towards them and evil antics.

Patron of the city of Uruk.

Enlil God of the wind, air and all space from earth to sky, also treated people and lower deities with disdain, but he invented the hoe and gave it to humanity and was revered as the patron of the earth and fertility. His main temple was in the city of Nippur.

Enki (in the Akkadian transcription of Ea) The protector of the city of Eredu, was recognized as the god of the ocean and fresh underground waters.

Other important deities

Nanna (akkad. Sin) God of the moon, patron of the city of Ur

Utu (akkad. Shamash) Son of Nanna, patron of the cities of Sippar and Larsa. He personified the ruthless power of the withering heat of the sun and at the same time the warmth of the sun, without which life is impossible.

Inanna (akkad. Ishtar) Goddess of fertility and carnal love, she bestowed military victories. Goddess of the city of Uruk.

Dumuzi (Akkadian Tammuz) The husband of Inanna, the son of the god Enki, the god of water and vegetation, who annually died and resurrected.

Nergal Lord of the realm of the dead and god of the plague.

Ninurt Patron of valiant warriors. The son of Enlil, who had no city of his own.

Ishkur (Akkadian Adad) God of thunderstorms and storms.

The goddesses of the Sumerian-Akkadian pantheon usually acted as the wives of powerful gods or as deities personifying death and the underworld.

In the Sumerian religion, the most important gods, in whose honor the ziggurats were built, were represented in human form as the rulers of the sky, sun, earth, water and storm. In each city, the Sumerians worshiped their own god.

Priests acted as an intermediary between people and gods. With the help of divination, spells and magic formulas, they tried to comprehend the will of the celestials and convey it to the common people.

During 3 thousand BC. the attitude towards the gods gradually changed: they began to attribute new qualities.

The strengthening of statehood in Mesopotamia was also reflected in the religious ideas of the inhabitants. The deities, who personified cosmic and natural forces, began to be perceived as great "heavenly chiefs" and only then as the natural element and "giver of blessings." In the pantheon of the gods, the god-secretary, the god-bearer of the throne of the lord, the gatekeeper gods appeared. Important deities have been assigned to various planets and constellations:

Utu with the Sun, Nergal with Mars, Inanna with Venus. Therefore, all the townspeople were interested in the position of the luminaries in the sky, their relative position and especially the place of “their” star: this promised inevitable changes in the life of the city-state and its population, whether it be prosperity or misfortune. Thus, the cult of heavenly bodies gradually formed, astronomical thought and astrology began to develop. Astrology was born among the first civilization of mankind - the Sumerian civilization. It was about 6 thousand years ago. At first, the Sumerians deified the 7 planets closest to the Earth. Their influence on the Earth was considered as the will of the Deity living on this planet. The Sumerians first noticed that changes in the position of celestial bodies in the sky cause changes in earthly life. Observing the constantly changing dynamics of the starry sky, the Sumerian priests constantly studied and investigated the influence of the movement of celestial bodies on earthly life. That is, they correlated earthly life with the movement of heavenly bodies. There in heaven one could feel order, harmony, consistency, legality. They made the following logical conclusion: if earthly life is consistent with the will of the Gods living on the planets, then a similar order and harmony will arise on Earth. Predictions of the future were built on the basis of studying the position of stars and constellations in the sky, the flights of birds, and the entrails of animals sacrificed to the gods. People believed in the predestination of human destiny, in the subordination of man to higher powers; believed that supernatural forces are always invisibly present in the real world and manifest themselves in a mysterious way.

Architecture and construction

The Sumerians knew how to build high-rise buildings and wonderful temples.

Sumer was a country of city-states. The largest of them had their own ruler, who was also the high priest. The cities themselves were built up without any plan and carried over outer wall reaching considerable thickness. Residential houses of the townspeople were rectangular, two-story with an obligatory courtyard, sometimes with hanging gardens. Many houses had sewerage.

The center of the city was a temple complex. It included the temple of the main god - the patron of the city, the palace of the king and the temple estate.

The palaces of the rulers of Sumer combined a secular building and a fortress. The palace was surrounded by a wall. Aqueducts were built to supply water to the palaces - water was supplied through pipes hermetically insulated with bitumen and stone. The facades of the majestic palaces were decorated with bright reliefs depicting, as a rule, hunting scenes, historical battles with the enemy, as well as animals most revered for their strength and power.

Early temples were small rectangular buildings on a low platform. As cities grew rich and prospered, temples became more imposing and majestic. New temples were usually erected on the site of the old ones. Therefore, the platforms of the temples increased in volume over time; a certain type of structure arose - a ziggurat (see Fig.) - a three- and seven-step pyramid with a small temple at the top. All steps were painted in different colors- black, white, red, blue. The erection of the temple on a platform protected it from floods and flooding of rivers. A wide staircase led to the upper tower, sometimes several stairs from different sides. The tower could be crowned with a golden dome, and its walls were laid out with glazed bricks.

The lower powerful walls were alternating ledges and ledges, which created a play of light and shadow and visually increased the volume of the building. In the sanctuary - the main room of the temple complex - there was a statue of a deity - the heavenly patron of the city. Only priests could enter here, and access to the people was strictly prohibited. Small windows were located under the ceiling, and mother-of-pearl friezes and a mosaic of red, black and white clay nails driven into brick walls served as the main decoration of the interior. Trees and shrubs were planted on stepped terraces.

The most famous ziggurat in history is the temple of the god Marduk in Babylon - the famous Tower of Babel, the construction of which is mentioned in the Bible.

Wealthy citizens lived in two-story houses with a very complex interior. The bedrooms were located on the second floor, downstairs there were lounges and a kitchen. All windows and doors opened onto the inner courtyard, and only blank walls went out onto the street.

In the architecture of Mesopotamia, columns have been found since ancient times, which, however, did not play a big role, as well as vaults. Quite early, the technique of dismembering walls by ledges and niches, as well as ornamenting walls with friezes made in mosaic technique, appears.

The Sumerians first encountered the arch. This design was invented in Mesopotamia. There was no forest here, and the builders thought of arranging an arched or vaulted ceiling instead of a beam ceiling. Arches and vaults were also used in Egypt (this is not surprising, since Egypt and Mesopotamia had contacts), but in Mesopotamia they arose earlier, were used more often, and from there spread throughout the world.

The Sumerians established the length of the solar year, which allowed them to accurately orient their buildings to the four cardinal points.

Mesopotamia was poor in stone, and raw brick, dried in the sun, served as the main building material there. Time has not been kind to brick buildings. In addition, cities were often subjected to enemy invasions, during which the dwellings of ordinary people, palaces and temples were destroyed to the ground.

The science

The Sumerians created astrology, substantiated the influence of stars on the fate of people and their health. Medicine was mostly homeopathic. Numerous clay tablets with recipes and magic formulas against the demons of disease have been found.

Priests and magicians used knowledge about the movement of the stars, the Moon, the Sun, about the behavior of animals for divination, foreseeing events in the state. The Sumerians were able to predict solar and lunar eclipses, created a solar-lunar calendar.

They discovered the belt of the Zodiac - 12 constellations that form a large circle along which the Sun makes its way during the year. The learned priests compiled calendars, calculated the timing of lunar eclipses. One of the oldest sciences, astronomy, was founded in Sumer.

In mathematics, the Sumerians knew how to count in tens. But the numbers 12 (a dozen) and 60 (five dozen) were especially revered. We still use the legacy of the Sumerians when we divide an hour into 60 minutes, a minute into 60 seconds, a year into 12 months, and a circle into 360 degrees.

The earliest mathematical texts that have come down to us, written by the Sumerians in the 22nd century BC, show high computational art. They contain multiplication tables in which the well-developed sexagesimal system is combined with the earlier decimal system. A penchant for mysticism was found in the fact that numbers were divided into lucky and unlucky - even the invented sixty-digit system of numbers was a relic of magical ideas: the number six was considered lucky. The Sumerians created a positional notation system in which a number would take on a different meaning depending on the place it occupies in a multi-digit number.

The first schools were created in the cities of Ancient Sumer. Rich Sumerians sent their sons there. Classes continued throughout the day. Learning to write in cuneiform, to count, to tell stories about gods and heroes was not easy. Boys were subjected to corporal punishment for not doing their homework. Anyone who successfully completed school could get a job as a scribe, official, or become a priest. This made it possible to live without knowing poverty.

A person was considered educated: fully fluent in writing, able to sing, owning musical instruments, able to make reasonable and legal decisions.

Literature

Their cultural achievements are great and indisputable: the Sumerians created the first poem in human history - "Golden Age", wrote the first elegies, compiled the world's first library catalog. The Sumerians are the authors of the world's first and oldest medical books - collections of recipes. They were the first to develop and record the farmer's calendar and left the first information about protective plantings.

A large number of monuments of Sumerian literature have come down to us, mainly in copies copied after the fall of the III dynasty of Ur and stored in the temple library in the city of Nippur. Unfortunately, partly due to the difficulty of the Sumerian literary language, partly due to the poor condition of the texts (some tablets were found broken into dozens of pieces, now stored in museums in various countries), these works have only recently been read.

For the most part, these are religious hymns to the gods, prayers, myths, legends about the origin of the world, human civilization and agriculture. In addition, lists of royal dynasties have long been kept in temples. The most ancient are the lists written in the Sumerian language by the priests of the city of Ur. Of particular interest are several small poems containing legends about the origin of agriculture and civilization, the creation of which is attributed to the gods. These poems also raise the question of the comparative value for humans of agriculture and pastoralism, which probably reflects the relatively recent transition of the Sumerian tribes to an agricultural way of life.

The myth of the goddess Inanna, imprisoned in the underworld kingdom of death and freed from there, is distinguished by extremely archaic features; together with its return to earth, the life that was frozen returns. This myth reflected the change of the growing season and the "dead" period in the life of nature.

There were also hymns addressed to various deities, historical poems (for example, a poem about the victory of the Uruk king over the Guteis). The largest work of Sumerian religious literature is a poem written in deliberately intricate language about the construction of the temple of the god Ningirsu by the ruler of Lagash, Gudea. This poem was written on two clay cylinders, each about a meter high. A number of poems of a moral and instructive nature have been preserved.

Few literary monuments of folk art have come down to us. Such folk works as fairy tales have perished for us. Only a few fables and proverbs survive.

The most important monument of Sumerian literature is the cycle of epic tales about the hero Gilgamesh, the legendary king of the city of Uruk, who, as follows from the dynastic lists, ruled in the 28th century BC. In these tales, the hero Gilgamesh is presented as the son of a mere mortal and the goddess Ninsun. Gilgamesh's wanderings around the world in search of the secret of immortality and his friendship with the wild man Enkidu are described in detail. The most complete text of the great epic poem about Gilgamesh has been preserved written down in the Akkadian language. But the records of primary individual epics about Gilgamesh that have come down to us irrefutably testify to the Sumerian origin of the epic.

The cycle of tales about Gilgamesh had a great influence on the surrounding peoples. It was adopted by the Akkadian Semites, and from them it spread to Northern Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. There were also cycles of epic songs dedicated to various other heroes.

An important place in the literature and worldview of the Sumerians was occupied by the legends of the flood, by which the gods allegedly destroyed all life, and only the pious hero Ziusudra was saved in the ship built on the advice of the god Enki. The legends about the flood, which served as the basis for the corresponding biblical legend, took shape under the undoubted influence of memories of catastrophic floods, which in the 4th millennium BC. e. many Sumerian settlements were destroyed more than once.

art

A special place in the Sumerian cultural heritage belongs to glyptic - carving on precious or semi-precious stone. Numerous Sumerian cylinder-shaped carved seals have survived. The seal was rolled over a clay surface and an impression was obtained - a miniature relief with a large number of characters and a clear, carefully built composition. For the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, the seal was not just a sign of property, but an object with magical powers. The seals were kept as talismans, given to temples, placed in burial places. In Sumerian engravings, the most frequent motifs were ritual feasts with figures sitting down to eat and drink. Other motifs were the legendary heroes Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu fighting monsters, as well as anthropomorphic figures of a bull-man. Over time, this style gave way to a continuous frieze depicting fighting animals, plants or flowers.

There was no monumental sculpture in Sumer. Small cult figurines are more common. They depict people in a pose of prayer. All sculptures have emphasized large eyes, as they were supposed to resemble an all-seeing eye. Big ears emphasized and symbolized wisdom, it is no coincidence that “wisdom” and “ear” in the Sumerian language are denoted by one word.

The art of Sumer has found development in numerous bas-reliefs, the main theme is the theme of hunting and battles. The faces in them were depicted in front, and the eyes - in profile, the shoulders in a three-quarter turn, and the legs - in profile. The proportions of human figures were not respected. But in the compositions of the bas-reliefs, the artists sought to convey movement.

Musical art certainly found its development in Sumer. For more than three millennia, the Sumerians have composed their spell songs, legends, laments, wedding songs, etc. The first stringed musical instruments - the lyre and harp - also appeared among the Sumerians. They also had double oboes, big drums.

End of Sumer

After one and a half thousand years, the Sumerian culture was replaced by Akkadian. At the beginning of the II millennium BC. e. hordes of Semitic tribes invaded Mesopotamia. The conquerors adopted a higher local culture, but did not abandon their own. Moreover, they turned the Akkadian language into the official state language, and left the role of the language of religious worship and science to the Sumerian. The ethnic type also gradually disappears: the Sumerians dissolve into more numerous Semitic tribes. Their cultural conquests were continued by their successors: the Akkadians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians and the Chaldeans.

After the emergence of the Akkadian Semitic kingdom, religious ideas also changed: there was a mixture of Semitic and Sumerian deities. Literary texts and school exercises, preserved on clay tablets, testify to the increasing level of literacy of the inhabitants of Akkad. During the reign of the dynasty from Akkad (about 2300 BC), the rigor and sketchiness of the Sumerian style give way to greater freedom of composition, voluminous figures and portraiture of features, primarily in sculpture and reliefs.

In a single cultural complex called the Sumero-Akkadian culture, the Sumerians played the leading role. It is they, according to modern Orientalists, who are the founders of the famous Babylonian culture.

Two and a half thousand years have passed since the decline of the culture of Ancient Mesopotamia, and until recently it was known only from the stories of ancient Greek writers and from biblical traditions. But in the last century, archaeological excavations uncovered monuments of the material and written culture of Sumer, Assyria and Babylon, and this era appeared before us in all its barbaric splendor and gloomy grandeur. In the spiritual culture of the Sumerians, there is still a lot of unsolved.

List of used literature

1. Kravchenko A. I. Culturology: Uch. allowance for universities. - M.: Academic project, 2001.
2. Emelyanov VV Ancient Sumer: Essays on culture. SPb., 2001
3. History of the Ancient World Ukolova V.I., Marinovich L.P. (Online edition)

The ancient Sumerians are the peoples who inhabited the territory of the Southern Mesopotamia (the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers), at the very dawn of the historical period. The Sumerian civilization is considered one of the most ancient on the planet.

The culture of the ancient Sumerians is striking in its versatility - this is an original art, and religious beliefs, and scientific discoveries that amaze the world with their accuracy.

Writing and architecture

The writing of the ancient Sumerians was the derivation of written characters using a reed stick on a tablet made of raw clay, hence it got its name - cuneiform.

Cuneiform very quickly spread to the surrounding countries, and became in fact the main type of writing throughout the Middle East, right up to the beginning of a new era. Sumerian writing was a set of certain signs, thanks to which certain objects or actions were designated.

The architecture of the ancient Sumerians consisted of religious buildings and secular palaces, the material for the construction of which was clay and sand, since there was a shortage of stone and wood in Mesopotamia.

Despite the not very durable materials, the buildings of the Sumerians were highly durable and some of them have survived to this day. The religious buildings of the ancient Sumerians had the form of stepped pyramids. Usually the Sumerians painted their buildings with black paint.

Religion of the ancient Sumerians

Religious beliefs also played an important role in Sumerian society. The pantheon of the Sumerian gods consisted of 50 main deities, who, according to their beliefs, decided the fate of all mankind.

Like Greek mythology, the gods of the ancient Sumerians were responsible for various areas of life and natural phenomena. So the most revered gods were the sky god An, the goddess of the Earth - Ninhursag, the god of air - Enlil.

According to Sumerian mythology, man was created by the supreme god-king, who mixed clay with his blood, molded a human figure from this mixture and breathed life into it. Therefore, the ancient Sumerians believed in the close connection of man with God, and considered themselves representatives of deities on earth.

Art and Science of the Sumerians

The art of the Sumerian people may seem very mysterious and not entirely clear to modern man. The drawings depicted ordinary subjects: people, animals, various events - but all objects were depicted in different temporal and material spaces. Behind each plot is a system of abstract concepts that were based on the beliefs of the Sumerians.

Sumerian culture shocks the modern world also with its achievements in the field of astrology. The Sumerians were the first to learn to observe the movement of the Sun and Moon and discovered the twelve constellations that make up the modern Zodiac. The Sumerian priests learned to calculate the days of lunar eclipses, which is not always possible for modern scientists, even with the help of the latest astronomical technology.

The ancient Sumerians also created the first schools for children organized at temples. The schools taught writing and religious foundations. Children who showed themselves to be diligent students, after graduating from school, had the opportunity to become priests and secure a further comfortable life for themselves.

We all know that the Sumerians were the creators of the first wheel. But they made it by no means to simplify the workflow, but as a toy for children. And only over time, having seen its functionality, they began to use it in chores.

There are few trees and stone in Mesopotamia, so the first building material was raw bricks made from a mixture of clay, sand and straw. The architecture of Mesopotamia is based on secular (palaces) and religious (ziggurats) monumental structures and buildings. The first of the temples of Mesopotamia that have come down to us date back to the 4th-3rd millennia BC. These powerful cult towers, called ziggurats (ziggurat - holy mountain), were square and resembled a stepped pyramid. The steps were connected by stairs, along the edge of the wall there was a ramp leading to the temple. The walls were painted black (asphalt), white (lime) and red (brick). A constructive feature of monumental architecture was going from the 4th millennium BC. the use of artificially erected platforms, which is explained, perhaps, by the need to isolate the building from the dampness of the soil, moistened by spills, and at the same time, probably, by the desire to make the building visible from all sides. Another characteristic, based on an equally ancient tradition, was the broken line of the wall, formed by ledges. Windows, when they were made, were placed at the top of the wall and looked like narrow slits. Buildings were also illuminated through a doorway and a hole in the roof. The coverings were mostly flat, but the vault was also known. Residential buildings discovered by excavations in the south of Sumer had an open courtyard around which covered premises were grouped. This layout, which corresponded to the climatic conditions of the country, formed the basis for the palace buildings of the southern Mesopotamia. In the northern part of Sumer, houses were found that had a central room with a ceiling instead of an open courtyard.

One of the most famous works of Sumerian literature is the Epic of Gilgamesh, a collection of Sumerian legends later translated into Akkadian. The epic tablets were found in the library of King Ashurbanipal. The epic tells about the legendary king of Uruk Gilgamesh, his savage friend Enkidu and the search for the secret of immortality. One of the chapters of the epic, the story of Utnapishtim, who saved mankind from the global flood, is very reminiscent of the biblical story of Noah's Ark, which suggests that the epic was familiar even to the authors of the Old Testament. Although, it is unlikely that Moses (the author of Genesis, the book of the Old Testament that tells about the flood) used this epic in his writings. The reason for this is the fact that there are many more flood details in the Old Testament that are consistent with other sources. In particular, the shape and size of the ship.

Monuments of the New Stone Age, preserved in the territory of Western Asia, are very numerous and diverse. These are cult figurines of deities, cult masks, vessels. The Neolithic culture that developed on the territory of Mesopotamia in 6-4 thousand BC, in many respects preceded the subsequent culture of the early class society. Apparently, the northern part of Western Asia occupied an important position among other countries already in the period of the tribal system, as evidenced by the remains of monumental temples and preserved (in the settlements of Khassun, Samarra, Tell-Khalaf, Tell-Arpagia, in the neighboring Elam of Mesopotamia) used in funeral ceremonies. The thin-walled, regular-shaped, elegant and slender vessels of Elam were covered with clear brownish-black motifs of geometrized painting on a light yellowish and pinkish background. Such a pattern, applied by the confident hand of the master, was distinguished by an unmistakable sense of decorativeness, knowledge of the laws of rhythmic harmony. It has always been located in strict accordance with the form. Triangles, stripes, rhombuses, pouches of stylized palm branches emphasized the elongated or rounded structure of the vessel, in which the bottom and neck were especially distinguished by a colorful stripe. Sometimes combinations of the pattern that adorned the goblet told about the most important actions and events for a person of that time - hunting, harvesting, cattle breeding. In the figured patterns from Susa (Elam), one can easily recognize the outlines of hounds swiftly rushing in a circle, proudly standing goats crowned with huge steep horns. And although the artist's close attention to the transfer of animal movements resembles primitive paintings, the rhythmic organization of the pattern, its subordination to the structure of the vessel speaks of a new, more complex stage of artistic thinking.

In c. n. 4th millennium BC in the fertile plains of the Southern Mesopotamia, the first city-states arose, which by the 3rd millennium BC. filled the entire valley of the Tigris and Euphrates. Chief among them were the cities of Sumer. The first monuments of monumental architecture grew up in them, the types of art associated with it flourished - sculpture, relief, mosaic, various kinds of decorative crafts.

Cultural communication between different tribes was actively promoted by the invention of writing by the Sumerians, first pictography (which was based on picture writing), and then cuneiform writing. The Sumerians came up with a way to perpetuate their records. They wrote with sharp sticks on wet clay tablets, which were then burned on fire. Writing widely disseminated laws, knowledge, myths and beliefs. The myths written on the tablets brought to us the names of the patron deities of various tribes associated with the cult of the fruitful forces of nature and the elements.

Each city honored its gods. Ur honored the moon god Nanna, Uruk - the goddess of fertility Inanna (Innin) - the personification of the planet Venus, as well as her father, the god An, the lord of the sky, and her brother, the solar god Utu. The inhabitants of Nippur revered the father of the god of the moon - the god of air Enlil - the creator of all plants and animals. The city of Lagash worshiped the god of war, Ningirsu. Each of the deities was dedicated to its own temple, which became the center of the city-state. In Sumer, the main features of temple architecture were finally established.

In the country of turbulent rivers and swampy plains, it was necessary to raise the temple to a high bulk platform-foot. Therefore, an important part of the architectural ensemble became long, sometimes laid around the hill, stairs and ramps along which the inhabitants of the city climbed to the sanctuary. The slow ascent made it possible to see the temple from different points of view. The first powerful buildings of Sumer at the end of 4 thousand BC. there were the so-called "White Temple" and "Red Building" in Uruk. Even the surviving ruins show that these were austere and majestic buildings. Rectangular in plan, devoid of windows, with walls dissected in the White Temple by vertical narrow niches, and in the Red Building - by powerful semi-columns, simple in their cubic volumes, these structures clearly loomed on the top of an artificial mountain. They had an open courtyard, a sanctuary, in the depths of which a statue of a revered deity was placed. Each of these structures was distinguished from the surrounding buildings not only by rising up, but also by color. The White Temple got its name from the whitewashing of the walls, the Red Building (it apparently served as a place of public meetings) was decorated with a variety of geometric ornaments from clay burnt cone-shaped carnations “zigatti”, the hats of which are painted red, white and black. This motley and fractional the ornament, reminiscent of carpet weaving from a distance, merging from a distance acquired a single soft reddish hue, which gave rise to its modern name.

You can describe the Sumerian culture, or you can try to give its characteristic features. I will take the second path, because the description of the Sumerian culture is given quite fully by both Kramer and Jacobsen, and in the articles by Jan van Dyck, but it is necessary to highlight the characteristic features in order to determine the typology of the Sumerian culture, put it in a number of similar ones according to certain criteria.

First of all, it must be said that the Sumerian culture originated in cities very remote from each other, each of which was located on its own channel, diverted from the Euphrates or from the Tigris. This is a very significant sign not only of the formation of the state, but also of the formation of culture. Each city had its own independent idea of ​​the structure of the world, its own idea of ​​the origin of the city and parts of the world, its own idea of ​​the gods and its own calendar. Each city was ruled by a popular assembly and had its own leader or high priest who headed the temple. Between 15-20 independent cities of the Southern Mesopotamia there was a constant competition for political superiority. For most of the history of Mesopotamia during the Sumerian period, cities tried to wrest this leadership from each other.

In Sumeria, there was a concept of royalty, that is, royal power as a substance that passes from city to city. She moves exclusively arbitrarily: she was in one city, then left from there, this city was defeated, and royalty was entrenched in the next dominant city. This is a very important concept, which shows that in Southern Mesopotamia for a long time there was no single political center, no political capital. In conditions when political competition occurs, culture becomes inherent in competence, as some researchers say, or agonalism, as others say, that is, a competitive element is fixed in culture.

For the Sumerians, there was no earthly authority that would be absolute. If there is no such authority on earth, it is usually sought in heaven. Modern monotheistic religions have found such authority in the image of the one God, and among the Sumerians, who were very far from monotheism and lived 6,000 years ago, Heaven became such authority. They began to worship the sky as a sphere in which everything is exceptionally correct and occurs according to once established laws. The sky has become the standard for earthly life. This explains the craving of the Sumerian worldview for astrolatry - faith in the power of celestial bodies. Astrology would develop from this belief already in Babylonian and Assyrian times. The reason for such an attraction of the Sumerians to astrolatry and subsequently to astrology lies precisely in the fact that there was no order on earth, there was no authority. Cities were constantly at war with each other for supremacy. Either one city was strengthened, then another dominant city arose in its place. They were all united by the Sky, because when one constellation rises, it's time to harvest the barley, when another constellation rises, it's time to plow, when the third - it's time to sow, and thus the starry sky determined the entire cycle of agricultural work and the entire life cycle of nature, to which very the Sumerians were attentive. They believed that order is only at the top.

Thus, the agonal nature of the Sumerian culture largely predetermined its idealism - the search for an ideal at the top or the search for a dominant ideal. The sky was considered the dominant principle. But in the same way, in Sumerian culture, the dominant principle was looked for everywhere. There was a large number of literary works based on a dispute between two objects, animals or some kind of tools, each of which boasted that it was better and more suitable for a person. And this is how these disputes were resolved: in the dispute between sheep and grain, grain won, because grain can feed most people for a longer period of time: there are grain reserves. In a dispute between a hoe and a plow, the hoe won, because the plow is on the ground only 4 months a year, and the hoe works all 12 months. Whoever can serve longer, who can feed a larger number of people, is right. In the dispute between summer and winter, winter won, because at this time irrigation work is carried out, water accumulates in the canals, and a reserve is created for the future harvest, that is, it is not the effect that wins, but the cause. Thus, in every Sumerian dispute, there is a loser, who is called "remaining", and there is a winner, who is called "left". "The grain came out, the sheep remained." And there is an arbitrator who resolves this dispute.

This wonderful genre of Sumerian literature gives a very vivid picture of the Sumerian culture as one that seeks to find an ideal, to put forward something eternal, unchanging, long-lived, long-term useful, thereby showing the advantage of this eternal and unchanging over something that is rapidly changing or that lasts only a short time. Here lies an interesting dialectic, so to speak, a predialectic of the eternal and the changeable. I even call the Sumerian culture an accomplished Platonism before Plato, because the Sumerians believed that there were some eternal forces, or essences, or potencies of things, without which the very existence of the material world is impossible. These potencies or essences they called the word "me". The Sumerians believed that the gods are not able to create anything in the world if these gods do not have "me", and no heroic deed is possible without "me", no work and no craft make sense and do not matter if they are not provided with their own " me." The seasons of the year also have “me”, “me” have crafts, and musical instruments have their own “me”. What are these "me" if not the germs of Platonic ideas?

We see that the belief of the Sumerians in the existence of primordial entities, primordial forces is a clear sign of the idealism that manifested itself in the Sumerian culture.

But this agonalism and this idealism are rather tragic things, because, as Kramer rightly said, continuous agonalism gradually leads to the self-destruction of culture. Continuous rivalry between cities, between people, continuous competition weakens statehood, and, indeed, the Sumerian civilization ended rather quickly. It died out within a thousand years, and it was replaced by completely different peoples, and the Sumerians assimilated with these peoples and completely dissolved as an ethnic group.

But history also shows that agonal cultures, even after the death of the civilization that gave birth to them, exist for quite a long time. They live after their death. And if we turn to typology here, we can say that two more such cultures are known in history: these are the Greeks in Antiquity and these are the Arabs at the junction of antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Both the Sumerians, and the Greeks, and the Arabs were extreme admirers of the Sky, they were idealists, each of them was the best stargazers, astronomers, astrologers in their era. They relied very strongly on the power of Heaven and heavenly bodies. They have destroyed themselves, ruined themselves by continuous competition. The Arabs survived only by uniting under the rule of the heavenly or even the super-heavenly, supernatural principle in the form of the religion of Allah, that is, Islam allowed the Arabs to survive. But the Greeks had nothing of the kind, so the Greeks were quickly absorbed by the Roman Empire. In general, we can say that a certain typology of agonal civilizations in history is being built. It is no coincidence that the Sumerians, Greeks and Arabs are similar to each other in their search for truth, in their search for an ideal, both aesthetic and epistemological, in their desire to find one generative principle through which the existence of the world can be explained. It can be said that the Sumerians, the Greeks, and the Arabs did not live a very long life in history, but they left a legacy from which all subsequent peoples fed.

Idealistic states, agonal states of the Sumerian type, live much longer after their death than in the period of time allotted to them by history.

Vladimir Emelyanov, Doctor of Philosophical Sciences, Professor of the Oriental Faculty of St. Petersburg State University.

Vladimir Emelyanov

What are the theories about the origin of the Sumerian civilization? How did the Sumerians portray themselves? What is known about the Sumerian language and its relationship with other languages? About reconstruction appearance Sumerians, the self-name of the people and the worship of sacred trees, says Doctor of Philosophy Vladimir Yemelyanov.

Vladimir Emelyanov

What are the versions of the origin of Gilgamesh? Why were the Sumerian sports games associated with the cult of the dead? How does Gilgamesh become the hero of the twelvefold calendar year? Doctor of Philosophical Sciences Vladimir Yemelyanov talks about this. Historian Vladimir Emelyanov on the origin, cult and transformation of the heroic image of Gilgamesh.

Vladimir Emelyanov

The book of the Orientalist-Sumerologist V.V. Emelyanov tells in detail and fascinatingly about one of the most ancient civilizations in the history of mankind - Ancient Sumer. Unlike previous monographs devoted to this issue, here the components of the Sumerian culture - civilization, artistic culture and ethnic character - are presented in unity for the first time.

In the seventies of the last century, a discovery concerning the biblical flood made a great impression. One fine day, a humble worker at the British Museum in London, George Smith, set about deciphering the cuneiform tablets sent from Nineveh and stacked in the basement of the museum. To his surprise, he came across the oldest poem of mankind, describing the exploits and adventures of Gilgamesh, the legendary hero of the Sumerians. Once, while examining the tablets, Smith literally could not believe his eyes, because on some tablets he found fragments of the legend of the flood, strikingly similar to the biblical version.

Vladimir Emelyanov

In the study of ancient Mesopotamia, there are very few pseudoscientific ideas, pseudoscientific theories. Assyriology is unattractive to fantasy lovers, it is unattractive to freaks. This is a difficult science that studies the civilization of written monuments. There are very few images left of Ancient Mesopotamia, and even more so there are no color images. There are no luxurious temples that have come down to us in excellent condition. Basically, what we know about Ancient Mesopotamia, we know from cuneiform texts, and cuneiform texts need to be able to read, and fantasy does not roam particularly violently here. Nevertheless, interesting cases are known in this science too, when pseudoscientific ideas or insufficiently scientific ideas were put forward about Ancient Mesopotamia. Moreover, the authors of these ideas were both people who had no relation to Assyriology, to reading cuneiform texts, and the Assyriologists themselves.

Lesson topic: Historical heritage of ancient civilizations . Antiquity: difficulties of understanding. The unity of the world of ancient civilizations. Sumerian model of the world. Polis: three ideas for humanity. Roman law. The power of the idea and the passion for truth. Alphabet and writing. Egyptian medicine, mathematics, astronomy. Artistic values ​​of ancient civilizations

Target: provide an understanding of what heritage has come down to our days from ancient civilizations

Type of lesson - seminar lesson

During the classes:

1. Homework review

2. Working with new material

Introductory speech of the teacher: Civilization is made up of the historical heritage of the peoples who created it. The present is impossible without the past, without the memory of the people who lived before us. The history of modern peoples cannot be understood without getting acquainted with the heritage of their ancestors who lived many centuries ago.

Even today, living in the 21st century, we are often unable to appreciate the true value of the contribution that our ancient ancestors made to the foundation of modern civilization.

The legends and myths of different peoples speak of ancient, highly developed civilizations that have sunk into oblivion.

Great Plato, referring to ancient sources in Egypt, describes in detail the disappeared country of Atlantis, the high level of its state structure and economic life.

Different peoples have their own names for the disappeared civilizations and indicate their location in different ways. This is Atlantis in the Mediterranean Sea or in the Atlantic Ocean, the country of Lemuria in the Indian Ocean, Hyperborea in northern Europe, the mysterious Shambhala in the Himalayas.

Giant buildings have come down to us from antiquity. It is impossible not to admire the unique engineering structures, the pyramids of the peoples of Africa, Latin America, Asia.

These are the Sphinx and the pyramids at Giza, whose age is estimated at 12,000 years.

The buildings of the Inca or Maya pyramids are no less grandiose. The temple of the god Viracocha is composed of stone blocks weighing up to 300 tons, the precision of which is not inferior to the Egyptian one.

The ruins of the Temple of Baalbek in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon look impressive. Stone blocks weighing more than 800 tons were laid in the foundation of the temple.

It remains a mystery how in the pyramids of Egypt and South America, in Baalbek, the ancient peoples, not having construction equipment, cut down huge blocks in a quarry, processed them, and dragged them to the construction site.

The considered allows us to conclude that ancient civilizations had a high level of knowledge: they were able to create complex mechanisms, used complex technologies to obtain different materials; possessed amazing knowledge in astronomy and had ideas about the structure of the universe, coinciding in many respects with modern knowledge.

Accumulating knowledge, a person always strives to pass it on to his descendants. Since ancient times, chronicles of events, biographies of prominent personalities, scientific, philosophical and works of art.

Priests, oracles, druids, lamas, shamans were the keepers of many unique knowledge in those distant times.

A lot of information about the knowledge of ancient civilizations is contained in manuscripts. A lot of knowledge has disappeared in the conflagrations of wars. Over the past two thousand years, more than eleven thousand wars have taken place. It is tragic not only that people are dying, cities are collapsing - knowledge is being lost, the culture and history of peoples is being erased.

Today in the lesson you will get acquainted with tests about different civilizations and their heritage. You will work in groups.

1 group

2. Sumerian model of the world

Speaking about the Sumerian model of the world, one must take into account the striking closeness between the states of the Southern Mesopotamia and the realizable in the 20th century. model of a socialist state. Common here are the notions of the revolution as the cleansing of time from events, and the forced labor of the population for the state, and the desire of the state to provide everyone with equal rations. In general, one can probably say that Sumer represents, as it were, the subconscious of mankind - the Sumerian culture is fueled by primitive communal emotions, which modern man must overcome and transform in himself. This is the desire for physical superiority over others, and the desire for equality of all people (primarily property), and the denial of free will, and the denial of the human personality associated with it, and the desire to crack down on everything that seems useless in the legacy of the past. At the same time, one cannot ignore some special healing of the Sumerian culture, to which a person mired in complexes and conventions falls in search of sincerity, warmth and answers to the main questions of life. Behind this culture, it is as if childhood is forever lost - a time of big questions to life that a grown-up person, preoccupied with momentary affairs, could not answer. Homer and Shakespeare have always been just as naive and central to life - with all the rivers of blood, open passions - but also with that ultimate penetration into the essence of man, which only a being with the makings of both a child and a god is capable of. It can be said that the Sumerian culture, in Shakespearean style, is brilliant in the choice of its spiritual goal - and, just like Shakespeare, it averts modern man with a set of its means.

V. V. Emelyanov

Read text 2. What features, according to the author, are common for the Sumerian picture of the world and “realized in the XX century. models of a socialist state”, are noted in it? Do you agree with this statement? In what sense is the Sumerian culture characterized by the historian as the "subconscious of mankind"? In what way does he see the healing of the Sumerian culture? How do you understand the analogy proposed by the author between Sumerian culture and Shakespeare's work: ingenious in the choice of a spiritual goal, it averts humanity by defining means?

2 group

3 . Polis: three ideas for humanity

Polis bequeathed to mankind at least three great political ideas. This is primarily a civic idea. Awareness of oneself as a member of a civil collective, awareness of one's rights and obligations, a sense of civic duty, responsibility, involvement in the life of the entire community and its heritage, and finally, the great importance of the opinion or recognition of fellow citizens, dependence on it - all this found in the policy the most complete, most striking expression...

Then there is the idea of ​​democracy. By this we mean the idea that arose in the policy - and for the first time in history - of the rule of the people, of its fundamental possibility, of the involvement of every citizen in governance, of everyone's participation in public life and activities ... In the future, the idea of ​​democracy also undergoes a certain evolution. The most obvious example is the question of direct rule of the people. It goes without saying that outside the conditions and framework of the polis, i.e., in larger state formations, direct government by the people is unthinkable, but after all, even in representative systems, the very principle of government by the people lives and is preserved ...

Finally, the idea of ​​republicanism. In the policy - again for the first time in history - the principle of electivity of all government bodies was implemented. But it's not just a matter of choice. Three main elements of the political structure of the civil community were fused for subsequent generations into a single idea, into the idea of ​​a republic: electivity, collegiality, short-term magistracies. This is... the principle that subsequently could always be opposed - and in fact was opposed - to the principles of autocracy, monarchy, despotism...

S. L. Utchenko

4. Roman law

In Roman law, in perfect form, the Roman sense of sociality and statehood was reflected as the defining forms of the existence of human society and its history. Roman law reached the heights of abstraction in expressing and evaluating the richest and most diverse experience of live communication between people, presenting almost all types of relations between them in refined legal formulas and definitions, the correct application of which could give a definite and precise solution to any emerging personal and social collision.

For the first time in history, Roman law also introduced the universal legal concept of the individual, subject and object of law. Understanding law as a reflection of the world order in human society, the Romans believed that only strict adherence to the law could maintain harmony in relations between people. A strong state should be the guarantor of this harmony, because only a state that guards the rule of law can ensure the observance of those rights that a person has by nature and by laws - divine and human.

The Roman system of law, grandiose and perfect in its internal consistency and forms of expression, has become one of the most important foundations not only for all subsequent systems of law, but also for civilization itself, declaring the priority of humanistic values ​​and human rights.

V. I. Ukolova

Read texts 3, 4. What key messages did the polis bequeath to humanity? What role do they play in the modern world? What is the significance for our country? What is the historical significance of Roman law? What role has it played in human history? How do you understand the author's statement that it was in Roman law that the Roman sense of sociality and statehood was reflected in its perfect form?

3 group

5. Power of idea and passion for truth

During the period of ancient civilizations, the power of the idea was discovered as something opposed to the absolutization of ritualism. Based on the idea, it was possible to re-build the behavior of a person among people; hence, such colorfulness of unusual everyday details in the biographies of Greek philosophers, up to the barrel of Diogenes, is not an empty anecdotal side of the world history of philosophy, but an expression of the thought brought to a visual, shocking gesture about the need to follow not everyday life, not habit, but truth.

The thinkers of ancient civilizations are the heroes of legends, sometimes whimsical... but their criticism of everyday life by action, their superhuman authority is an alternative to the authority of habit that they have overcome.

The greatest discovery of ancient civilizations is the principle of criticism. The appeal to the idea, to the "truth" made it possible to criticize the givens of human life, along with myth and ritual... Buddha-Shakyamuni is only a man, but the gods bow before him, because he overcame the inertia of world captivity and worldly affection, but they did not ...

They liked to talk about the Old Testament prophets that they paid for the truth with their lives: Isaiah was allegedly sawn through with a wooden saw, Jeremiah was stoned. But the same motive very often appears in the legends about the philosophers of Greece: Zeno of Elea, during interrogation in the presence of the tyrant Nearchus, bit off his own tongue and spat it out in the face of the tyrant; Anaxarchus, being pounded with iron pestles in a mortar, shouted to the executioner: “Talking, talking about Anaxarh’s skin - don’t crush Anaxarchus!” The central image of the Greek tradition - Socrates calmly brings a cup of hemlock to his lips. Antiquity set the task - to seek the truth that makes a person free. Antiquity put forward an ideal of fidelity to the truth, which is stronger than the fear of violence. In other words, antiquity brought a person out of the “uterine”, prepersonal state, and he cannot return to this state without ceasing to be a person.

Read text 5. What outstanding spiritual discoveries of antiquity does it speak of? In what sense are the expressions used in it: the power of the idea, the absolutization of ritual, criticism of everyday life by action, the principle of criticism, the ideal of fidelity to truth? Why, according to the authors, it was in ancient times that a person became a personality, left the prepersonal state?

4 group

9. Antiquity: difficulties of understanding

Chronological distances are really impressive: if before Rome of the times of Augustus - two millennia, before Athens of the times of Themistocles - two and a half, then to Babylon of the times of Hammurabi - a little less than four, before the beginning of Egyptian statehood - about five, and before the birth of the most ancient urban settlements in Jericho and Chatal Huyuk - almost all ten ...

The world of ancient civilizations is very unusual, it is very incommensurable not only with our experience, with the experience of our era, but also with the experience of the old cultural tradition inherited by us ... Ancient civilizations have a fundamentally different level of "otherness" in relation to ours. Suffice it to recall such universally accepted customs of the ancient world as human sacrifice... We forget too easily that these customs were familiar even to Hellas. On the eve of the Battle of Salamis, Themistocles ordered solemnly to slaughter three noble Persian youths as a sacrifice to Dionysus the Devouring... The slaughter of Persian youths is not at all puzzling because it is cruel: in comparison with one Bartholomew night, slaughtering only three people is a drop in the ocean. But during the St. Bartholomew's night, the Huguenots were killed because they, the Huguenots, were infidels; to crack down on a person for his beliefs still means to take note of him as a person, albeit in a very terrible way. The very idea of ​​slaughter is fundamentally different: it’s just that a person is given the status of a victim, only of a particularly high class. By the way, about sacrificial animals - is it easy for us to imagine, in our reflections on classical ancient architecture, that during their functioning, ancient temples, including the Parthenon and other white marble wonders of Hellas, should have resembled slaughterhouses? How could we bear the smell of blood and burnt fat? ..

The psychology of slavery alone gave rise to astonishing phenomena at every step. The very people who created the ideal of freedom for subsequent eras, because they felt the rights of a citizen very keenly, could not feel the rights of the human person at all ... In the best time of democratic Athens, a slave who was not accused of anything, but only brought to the inquiry as witness, in without fail was supposed to be interrogated under torture ...

Cruelty does not yet need to be substantiated by means of fanaticism, nor covered by means of hypocrisy; in relation to a slave or a stranger, to one who stands outside the community, it is practiced and taken for granted. Only towards the end of antiquity does the picture change, and this marks the arrival of other times... In Rome, Seneca spoke of slaves as brothers in humanity...

All this is true, but only one side of the truth. It was in the bosom of ancient civilizations... that two principles were proclaimed for the first time and with primordial simplicity and force: universal unity and moral self-sufficiency of the individual.

S. S. Averintsev, G. M. Bongard-Levin

Read text 9. What are the difficulties in understanding ancient civilizations? What features of antiquity and modernity are they associated with? In what way do the authors see a fundamentally different, in comparison with other epochs, level of "otherness" of ancient societies? Think about what the meaning of the principles “discovered” by antiquity consists in for modern man: universal unity and moral self-reliance of the individual.

At the end of the work, the groups share their knowledge, complementing each other.

Homework: Supplement the materials presented in this and previous paragraphs with the information you know about the historical heritage of ancient civilizations.

The culture of Phenicia has become a derivative of the culture of other, ancient and powerful Middle Eastern civilizations. The Phoenicians borrowed a lot from the Hittites, Greeks and the peoples of Mesopotamia, they kind of processed neighboring cultures, mixed them, and created their own. For a long time, Phoenicia was under Egyptian rule, but there were periods in its history when the Hittites and Assyrians ruled on its lands. In general, their culture of ancient Phenicia began its origin as early as the 4th millennium BC.
The main cultural achievement of the Phoenicians can be called the creation of the Phoenician consonant script, which appeared around the second half of the second millennium BC. Researchers do not know exactly where the Phoenician writing came from, most historians believe that their writing was derived from the pseudo-hieroglyphic writing of the city of Byblos, or from the Proto-Sinaitic writing system. At the same time, the Phoenician alphabet became a kind of revolution in ancient writing - in a modified form it ended up in ancient Greece, from where it was borrowed by the Roman Empire. To this day, the alphabetic system developed by the Phoenicians is used to record the world's most popular languages.

The oldest monuments of Phoenician literature are considered to be texts from Ugarit containing mythical stories, inscriptions of the rulers of the largest Phoenician cities. However, their literary works have not reached our time. During the period of Hellenism and the rule of the Romans, Greek literature was widespread here. The authors of those times in their works referred to the so-called "Chronicles of Tyre" and other works from the heyday of Phoenicia. The texts transmitted in the presentation of the authors of ancient times, such as Diodorus and Justin, have also come down to our time.

Theoretically, the writings of the Carthaginian navigator Hanno can also be attributed to Phoenician literature, because Carthage was a colonial possession of the Phoenicians until the 6th century BC, so it is not surprising that the culture of ancient Phoenicia left its imprint on it. According to these texts, the Carthaginian navigators adopted the astronomical knowledge so necessary on the high seas from the Phoenicians. In addition, the Phoenicians produced the most extensive research of their time, in the 7th century BC. by order of the Egyptian pharaoh, their ships circled all of Africa. At the same time, shortly before this, Gannon also made a similar trip.

The culture of Phenicia, however, had something in common with the culture of other peoples of the ancient Near East. In particular, this was reflected in their architectural traditions. For construction, the Phoenicians used large blocks of stone, which were installed on mounds of stone and rubble. When laying stones, they tightly fitted them to each other, mixing them with a mixture of lime and sand. During the construction, they used the architectural traditions of the Egyptians and the Hittites, who ruled Phoenicia at different periods of history.
Religion was an important part of Phoenician culture. They erected temples to their supreme gods in their largest cities. At the same time, their religious zeal was great - despite the fact that the sea route from remote Phoenician colonies could take a very long time, priests from large colonial settlements in Spain and modern Tunisia. In some cases, the rulers themselves went to Tire in order to receive the blessing of Baal and other higher Phoenician deities.

History of the Sumerians

unknown where did the Sumerians come from, but when they appeared in Mesopotamia, people already lived there. The tribes that inhabited Mesopotamia in the deepest antiquity lived on islands that towered among the swamps. They built their settlements on artificial earth embankments. Draining the surrounding swamps, they created the oldest system of artificial irrigation. As finds in Kish indicate, they used microlithic tools

The earliest settlement discovered in southern Mesopotamia was near El Obeid (near Ur), on a river island that rose above a swampy plain. The population living here was engaged in hunting and fishing, but was already moving on to more progressive types of economy: cattle breeding and agriculture.

According to the skulls from the burials, it was determined that the Sumerians were not a monoracial ethnic group: there are also brachycephals ("round-headed") and dolichocephaly ("long-headed"). However, this could also be the result of mixing with the local population. So we can't even assign them to a particular ethnic group with complete certainty. At present, it can only be stated with some certainty that the Semites of Akkad and the Sumerians of southern Mesopotamia differed sharply from each other both in their appearance and in language.

After the Sumerians, a huge number of clay cuneiform tablets remained. It may have been the first bureaucracy in the world. The earliest inscriptions date back to 2900 BC. and contain business records. Researchers complain that the Sumerians left behind a huge number of "economic" records and "lists of gods" but did not bother to write down the "philosophical basis" of their belief system.

The property stratification that took place within rural communities led to the gradual disintegration of the communal system. The growth of productive forces, the development of trade and slavery, and finally, predatory wars contributed to the emergence of a small group of slave-owning aristocracy from the entire mass of community members. Aristocrats who owned slaves and partly land were called “big people” (lugal), who were opposed by “little people”, that is, free, poor members of rural communities.

If we talk about religion, it can be noted that, it seems, in Sumer, the origins of religion had purely materialistic, and not "ethical" roots. The cult of the Gods was not aimed at "purification and holiness", but was intended to ensure a good harvest, military success, etc. The most ancient of the Sumerian Gods, mentioned in the oldest tablets "with lists of gods" (mid-3rd millennium BC), personified the forces of nature - the sky, the sea, the sun, the moon, the wind, etc., then the gods appeared - patrons of cities, farmers, shepherds, etc. The Sumerians claimed that everything in the world belongs to the gods - the temples were not the place of residence of the gods, who were obliged to take care of people, but the granaries of the gods - barns.

The main deities of the Sumerian Pantheon were AN (heaven - masculine) and KI (earth - feminine). Both of these beginnings arose from the primordial ocean, which gave birth to the mountain, from the firmly connected heaven and earth.

From this union was born the god of air - Enlil, who divided heaven and earth.

There is a hypothesis that in the beginning the maintenance of order in the world was the function of Enki, the god of wisdom and the sea. But then, with the rise of the city-state of Nippur, whose god Enlil was considered, it was he who took the leading place among the gods.

Unfortunately, not a single Sumerian myth about the creation of the world has come down to us. The course of events presented in the Akkadian myth "Enuma Elish", according to researchers, does not correspond to the concept of the Sumerians, despite the fact that most of the gods and plots in it are borrowed from Sumerian beliefs.

One of the foundations of Sumerian mythology, the exact meaning of which has not been established, is "ME", which played a huge role in the religious and ethical system of the Sumerians. In one of the myths, more than a hundred "ME" are named, of which less than half were able to read and decipher. Here such concepts as justice, kindness, peace, victory, lies, fear, crafts, etc., everything, one way or another connected with public life. Some researchers believe that "me" are the prototypes of all living things, radiated by gods and temples, "Divine rules".

In general, in Sumer (Appendix 1) the Gods were like People. In their relationship there are matchmaking and wars, rape and love, deceit and anger. There is even a myth about a man who possessed the goddess Inanna in a dream (Appendix 2). It is noteworthy, but the whole myth is imbued with sympathy for man.

In general, the views of the Sumerians were reflected in many later religions, but now we are much more interested in their contribution to the technical side of the development of modern civilization.

One of the greatest experts on Sumer, Professor Samuel Noah Kramer, in his book "History Begins in Sumer" listed 39 subjects in which the Sumerians were pioneers. In addition to the first writing system, which we have already spoken about, he included in this list the wheel, the first schools, the first bicameral parliament, the first historians, the first "farmer's almanac" (Appendix 3); in Sumer, cosmogony and cosmology first arose, the first collection of proverbs and aphorisms appeared, and literary debates were held for the first time; for the first time the image of "Noah" was created; the first book catalog appeared here, the first money (silver shekels (Appendix 4) in the form of "bullions by weight") got into circulation, taxes began to be introduced for the first time, the first laws were adopted and social reforms were carried out, medicine appeared, and for the first time attempts were made to achieve peace and harmony in society.

In the field of medicine, the Sumerians had very high standards from the very beginning. In the library of Ashurbanipal found by Layard in Nineveh, there was a clear order, it had a large medical department, in which there were thousands of clay tablets. All medical terms were based on words borrowed from the Sumerian language. Medical procedures were described in special reference books, which contained information about hygiene rules, operations, such as cataract removal, and the use of alcohol for disinfection during surgical operations. Sumerian medicine was characterized by a scientific approach to diagnosis and prescription of treatment, both medical and surgical.

The Sumerians were excellent travelers and explorers - they are also credited with the invention of the world's first ships. One Akkadian dictionary of Sumerian words contained at least 105 designations for various types of ships - according to their size, purpose and type of cargo. One inscription excavated in Lagash speaks of the possibility of repairing ships and lists the types of materials that the local ruler Gudea brought to build the temple of his god Ninurta in about 2200 BC. The breadth of the range of these goods is amazing - ranging from gold, silver, copper - and to diorite, carnelian and cedar. In some cases, these materials have been transported over thousands of miles.

The first brick kiln was also built in Sumer. The use of such a large furnace made it possible to fire clay products, which gave them special strength due to internal stress, without poisoning the air with dust and ash. The same technology was used to smelt metals from ore, such as copper, by heating the ore to over 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit in a closed furnace with a low oxygen supply. This process, called smelting, became necessary in the early stages, as soon as the supply of natural native copper was exhausted. Researchers of ancient metallurgy were extremely surprised at how quickly the Sumerians learned the methods of ore dressing, metal smelting and casting. These advanced technologies were mastered by them only a few centuries after the emergence of the Sumerian civilization.

Even more astounding was that the Sumerians mastered the methods of obtaining alloys - a process by which various metals are chemically combined when heated in a furnace. The Sumerians learned how to make bronze, a hard but workable metal that changed the entire course of human history. The ability to alloy copper with tin was the greatest achievement for three reasons. First, it was necessary to choose a very accurate ratio of copper and tin (analysis of Sumerian bronze showed the optimal ratio - 85% copper to 15% tin). Secondly, there was no tin in Mesopotamia at all. (Unlike, for example, from Tiwanaku) Thirdly, tin does not occur in nature at all in its natural form. To extract it from the ore - tin stone - a rather complicated process is necessary. This is not a case that can be opened by accident. The Sumerians had about thirty words for various types of copper of various qualities, while for tin they used the word AN.NA, which literally means "Sky Stone" - which many consider to be evidence that Sumerian technology was a gift from the gods.

Thousands of clay tablets have been found containing hundreds of astronomical terms. Some of these tablets contained mathematical formulas and astronomical tables with which the Sumerians could predict solar eclipses, the various phases of the moon, and the trajectories of the planets. A study of ancient astronomy has revealed the remarkable accuracy of these tables (known as ephemeris). No one knows how they were calculated, but we may wonder why this was necessary?

"The Sumerians measured the sunrise and sunset of visible planets and stars relative to the earth's horizon, using the same heliocentric system that is used now. We also adopted from them the division of the celestial sphere into three segments - northern, central and southern (respectively, among the ancient Sumerians - " path of Enlil", "path of Anu" and "path of Ea"). In essence, all modern concepts of spherical astronomy, including a complete spherical circle of 360 degrees, zenith, horizon, axes of the celestial sphere, poles, ecliptic, equinox, etc. -- all this suddenly arose in Sumer.

All knowledge of the Sumerians regarding the movement of the Sun and the Earth was combined in the world's first calendar created by them, created in the city of Nippur - the solar-lunar calendar, which began in 3760 BC. The Sumerians considered 12 lunar months, which were approximately 354 days, and then 11 extra days were added to get a full solar year. This procedure, called intercalation, was done annually until, after 19 years, the solar and lunar calendars were aligned. The Sumerian calendar was drawn up very precisely so that the key days (for example, the New Year always fell on the day of the spring equinox). It is surprising that such a developed astronomical science was not at all necessary for this newly born society.

In general, the mathematics of the Sumerians had "geometric" roots and is very unusual. We rarely realize that not only our geometry, but also the modern way of calculating time, we owe to the Sumerian sexagesimal number system. The division of the hour into 60 seconds was not at all arbitrary - it is based on the sexagesimal system. Echoes of the Sumerian number system were preserved in the division of a day into 24 hours, a year into 12 months, a foot into 12 inches, and in the existence of a dozen as a measure of quantity. They are also found in modern system an account in which numbers from 1 to 12 are singled out, and then numbers like 10 + 3, 10 + 4, etc. follow.

The culture of Phenicia has become a derivative of the culture of other, ancient and powerful Middle Eastern civilizations. The Phoenicians borrowed a lot from the Hittites, Greeks and the peoples of Mesopotamia, they kind of processed neighboring cultures, mixed them, and created their own. For a long time, Phoenicia was under Egyptian rule, but there were periods in its history when the Hittites and Assyrians ruled on its lands. In general, their culture of ancient Phenicia began its origin as early as the 4th millennium BC.
The main cultural achievement of the Phoenicians can be called the creation of the Phoenician consonant script, which appeared around the second half of the second millennium BC. Researchers do not know exactly where the Phoenician writing came from, most historians believe that their writing was derived from the pseudo-hieroglyphic writing of the city of Byblos, or from the Proto-Sinaitic writing system. At the same time, the Phoenician alphabet became a kind of revolution in ancient writing - in a modified form it ended up in ancient Greece, from where it was borrowed by the Roman Empire. To this day, the alphabetic system developed by the Phoenicians is used to record the world's most popular languages.

The oldest monuments of Phoenician literature are considered to be texts from Ugarit containing mythical stories, inscriptions of the rulers of the largest Phoenician cities. However, their literary works have not reached our time. During the period of Hellenism and the rule of the Romans, Greek literature was widespread here. The authors of those times in their works referred to the so-called "Chronicles of Tyre" and other works from the heyday of Phoenicia. The texts transmitted in the presentation of the authors of ancient times, such as Diodorus and Justin, have also come down to our time.

Theoretically, the writings of the Carthaginian navigator Hanno can also be attributed to Phoenician literature, because Carthage was a colonial possession of the Phoenicians until the 6th century BC, so it is not surprising that the culture of ancient Phoenicia left its imprint on it. According to these texts, the Carthaginian navigators adopted the astronomical knowledge so necessary on the high seas from the Phoenicians. In addition, the Phoenicians produced the most extensive research of their time, in the 7th century BC. by order of the Egyptian pharaoh, their ships circled all of Africa. At the same time, shortly before this, Gannon also made a similar trip.

The culture of Phenicia, however, had something in common with the culture of other peoples of the ancient Near East. In particular, this was reflected in their architectural traditions. For construction, the Phoenicians used large blocks of stone, which were installed on mounds of stone and rubble. When laying stones, they tightly fitted them to each other, mixing them with a mixture of lime and sand. During the construction, they used the architectural traditions of the Egyptians and the Hittites, who ruled Phoenicia at different periods of history.
Religion was an important part of Phoenician culture. They erected temples to their supreme gods in their largest cities. At the same time, their religious zeal was great - despite the fact that the sea route from remote Phoenician colonies could take a very long time, priests from large colonial settlements in Spain and modern Tunisia. In some cases, the rulers themselves went to Tire in order to receive the blessing of Baal and other higher Phoenician deities.

The Sumerians are often referred to as the first true civilization. With all the relative nature of such a definition, there is an element of objectivity in it - since the true nature of a civilization can be understood only by its culture, which cannot be more or less completely restored without written sources. The Sumerian civilization is the first "literary", the knowledge about which we draw mainly from writing, so its contribution to world culture is very significant.

Literature is a great power

The most important achievement of the Sumerian civilization was the invention of writing, it was it that formed the basis of the entire culture of the Sumerians.

True, some scientists suggest that the Sumerian writing could be perceived by them from an older one, while unknown science civilization. However, no credible evidence has yet been found that the Sumerians had any "cultural predecessors", so historians continue to consider them the inventors of their own writing. But the followers of the Sumerian civilization, the Akkadians, Babylonians and representatives of other cultures of Mesopotamia borrowed cuneiform from the Sumerians.

Various peoples introduced both technical and graphic changes, as well as content and stylistic changes (for example, the famous literary monument of Mesopotamia "The Epic of Gilgamesh" is of Sumerian origin), but the Sumerian system of cuneiform writing was basically preserved. It is considered the universal scientific and ritual language of the entire region, similar to Latin for Medieval Europe. Sumerian literature was religious in nature, describing various myths associated with heroes and gods, prayers offered to deities, and so on. But a large number of surviving texts also have a practical economic content: many experts even believe that it was the need to streamline economic life that gave rise to writing among the Sumerians. As for religious hymns and legends, they could also exist in oral form.

Another important characteristic feature of the Sumerian culture was its scientific and pedagogical component. It is the presence of these features, along with the invention of writing, that allows us to fully consider the Sumerians as a cultural society, a civilization. The Sumerians were especially successful in astronomy. It is difficult to say whether the Sumerians were the first to guess before observing various planets, identifying certain patterns in their movement across the sky, identifying the twelve main constellations (the so-called signs of the Zodiac).

It is possible that the Sumerians had more ancient predecessors in astronomy, from whom they drew some of their knowledge, but this cannot be proven due to the lack of specific sources and facts. But there is plenty of evidence that the Sumerians created a very perfect lunisolar calendar for their time. By observing the stars, constellations, the moon and the Sun, they compiled their own calendar, in which the months were based, each of which began with a new moon . At the same time, Sumerian astronomers were able to determine that the lunar calendar did not coincide with the solar one and resorted to adding several days to the calendar to level the difference.

Closely connected with astronomy were the achievements of the Sumerians in mathematics. However, in this area, the Sumerians were mainly guided by the mystical component - they considered the number “60” to be a sacred number (according to scientists, it was from the Sumerians that world civilization inherited the division of a minute into sixty seconds, an hour into sixty minutes), special attention was also paid to the number "12" (so there were 12 months in a year). The Sumerian counting system in general was completely tied to the number 60, therefore it is called sexagesimal (as the modern counting system, focused on the number 10, is called decimal).

Accumulate and transfer knowledge - this is culture

However, the Sumerians had not only the exact types of scientific knowledge, but also humanitarian ones. Yes, Sumerians led their own historical chronicles, although the historical concept of the Sumerians was reduced to listing the kings who ruled in various Sumerian cities and a brief description of their deeds. However, even in such a limited format, Sumerian historians created their own concepts and formed an image of the continuous historical development and continuity of their civilization. The successes of the Sumerians in medicine were much more modest: their healing was limited to determining the external symptoms of the disease and treating them with various herbs, but primarily to various cleansing rituals, prayers, spells, and the like.

It developed in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and existed from the 4th millennium BC. until the middle of the VI century. BC. Unlike the Egyptian culture of Mesopotamia, it was not homogeneous, it was formed in the process of repeated interpenetration of several ethnic groups and peoples, and therefore was multilayer.

The main inhabitants of Mesopotamia were Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians and Chaldeans in the south: Assyrians, Hurrians and Arameans in the north. The cultures of Sumer, Babylonia and Assyria reached the greatest development and importance.

The origin of the Sumerian ethnos is still a mystery. It is only known that in the IV millennium BC. the southern part of Mesopotamia is inhabited by the Sumerians and lay the foundations for the entire subsequent civilization of this region. Like the Egyptian, this civilization was river. By the beginning of the III millennium BC. in the south of Mesopotamia, several city-states appear, the main of which are Ur, Uruk, Lagash, Jlapca, and others. They alternately play a leading role in uniting the country.

The history of Sumer knew several ups and downs. XXIV-XXIII centuries deserve special mention. BC when the elevation occurs Semitic city of Akkad north of Sumer. Under the reign of Sargon the Ancient, Akkad succeeded in bringing all of Sumer under his control. Akkadian replaces Sumerian and becomes the main language throughout Mesopotamia. Semitic art also has a great influence on the entire region. In general, the significance of the Akkadian period in the history of Sumer turned out to be so significant that some authors call the entire culture of this period Sumero-Akkadian.

Culture of Sumer

The basis of the economy of Sumer was agriculture with a developed irrigation system. Hence it is clear why one of the main monuments of Sumerian literature was the "Agricultural Almanac", containing instructions on farming - how to maintain soil fertility and avoid salinization. It was also important cattle breeding. metallurgy. Already at the beginning of the III millennium BC. the Sumerians began to manufacture bronze tools, and at the end of the 2nd millennium BC. entered the Iron Age. From the middle of the III millennium BC. potter's wheel is used in the production of dishes. Other crafts are successfully developing - weaving, stone-cutting, blacksmithing. Extensive trade and exchange take place both between the Sumerian cities and with other countries - Egypt, Iran. India, the states of Asia Minor.

It should be emphasized the importance Sumerian writing. The cuneiform script invented by the Sumerians turned out to be the most successful and effective. Improved in the II millennium BC. Phoenicians, it formed the basis of almost all modern alphabets.

System religious and mythological ideas and cults Sumer partly echoes the Egyptian. In particular, it also contains the myth of a dying and resurrecting god, which is the god Dumuzi. As in Egypt, the ruler of the city-state was declared a descendant of a god and was perceived as an earthly god. At the same time, there were notable differences between the Sumerian and Egyptian systems. So, among the Sumerians, the funeral cult, belief in the afterlife did not acquire great importance. Equally, the priests among the Sumerians did not become a special layer that played a huge role in public life. In general, the Sumerian system of religious beliefs seems to be less complex.

As a rule, each city-state had its own patron god. However, there were gods who were revered throughout Mesopotamia. Behind them stood those forces of nature, the importance of which for agriculture was especially great - sky, earth and water. These were the sky god An, the earth god Enlil and the water god Enki. Some gods were associated with individual stars or constellations. It is noteworthy that in Sumerian writing, the pictogram of a star meant the concept of "god". Great importance in the Sumerian religion had a mother goddess, the patroness of agriculture, fertility and childbearing. There were several such goddesses, one of them was the goddess Inanna. patroness of the city of Uruk. Some Sumerian myths - about the creation of the world, the global flood - had a strong influence on the mythology of other peoples, including Christian ones.

In Sumer, the leading art was architecture. Unlike the Egyptians, the Sumerians did not know stone construction and all structures were created from raw brick. Due to the swampy terrain, buildings were erected on artificial platforms - embankments. From the middle of the III millennium BC. The Sumerians were the first to widely use arches and vaults in construction.

The first architectural monuments were two temples, White and Red, discovered in Uruk (end of the 4th millennium BC) and dedicated to the main deities of the city - the god Anu and the goddess Inanna. Both temples are rectangular in plan, with ledges and niches, decorated with relief images in the "Egyptian style". Another significant monument is the small temple of the goddess of fertility Ninhursag in Ur (XXVI century BC). It was built using the same architectural forms, but decorated not only with relief but also with round sculpture. In the niches of the walls there were copper figurines of walking gobies, and on the friezes there were high reliefs of lying gobies. At the entrance to the temple - two statues of lions made of wood. All this made the temple festive and elegant.

In Sumer, a peculiar type of cult building developed - a ziggurag, which was a stepped, rectangular in plan tower. On the upper platform of the ziggurat there was usually a small temple - "the dwelling of the god." The ziggurat for thousands of years played approximately the same role as the Egyptian pyramid, but unlike the latter, it was not an afterlife temple. The most famous was the ziggurat (“temple-mountain”) in Ur (XXII-XXI centuries BC), which was part of a complex of two large temples and a palace and had three platforms: black, red and white. Only the lower, black platform has survived, but even in this form, the ziggurat makes a grandiose impression.

Sculpture in Sumer was less developed than architecture. As a rule, it had a cult, "initiatory" character: the believer placed a figurine made to his order, most often small in size, in the temple, which, as it were, was praying for his fate. The person was depicted conditionally, schematically and abstractly. without respect for proportions and without a portrait resemblance to the model, often in the pose of a prayer. An example is a female figurine (26 cm) from Lagash, which has mostly common ethnic features.

In the Akkadian period, sculpture changes significantly: it becomes more realistic, acquires individual features. The most famous masterpiece of this period is the copper head of Sargon the Ancient (XXIII century BC), which perfectly conveys the unique features of the king's character: courage, will, severity. This work, rare in expressiveness, is almost indistinguishable from modern ones.

Sumerian reached a high level literature. In addition to the above-mentioned "Agricultural Almanac", the most significant literary monument was the Epic of Gilgamesh. This epic poem tells about a man who saw everything, experienced everything, knew everything and who was close to unraveling the mystery of immortality.

By the end of the III millennium BC. Sumer gradually declines and is eventually conquered by Babylonia.

Babylonia

Its history is divided into two periods: the Ancient, covering the first half of the 2nd millennium BC, and the New, falling in the middle of the 1st millennium BC.

Ancient Babylonia reaches its highest rise under the king Hammurabi(1792-1750 BC). Two significant monuments remain from his time. The first one is Laws of Hammurabi - became the most outstanding monument of ancient Eastern legal thought. 282 articles of the Code of Law cover almost all aspects of the life of Babylonian society and constitute civil, criminal and administrative law. The second monument is a basalt pillar (2 m), which depicts King Hammurabi himself, sitting in front of Shamash, the god of the sun and justice, as well as a part of the text of the famous codex.

New Babylonia reached its highest peak under the king Nebuchadnezzar(605-562 BC). Under him were built famous "Hanging Gardens of Babylon", become one of the seven wonders of the world. They can be called a grandiose monument of love, since they were presented by the king to his beloved wife in order to alleviate her longing for the mountains and gardens of her homeland.

No less famous monument is also Tower of Babel. It was the highest ziggurat in Mesopotamia (90 m), consisting of several towers stacked on top of each other, on the top of which was the saint and she of Marduk, the main god of the Babylonians. Seeing the tower, Herodotus was shocked by its greatness. She is mentioned in the Bible. When the Persians conquered Babylonia (VI century BC), they destroyed Babylon and all the monuments that were in it.

The achievements of Babylonia deserve special mention. gastronomy and mathematics. The Babylonian stargazers calculated with amazing accuracy the time of the Moon's revolution around the Earth, compiled a solar calendar and a map of the starry sky. The names of the five planets and twelve constellations of the solar system are of Babylonian origin. Astrologers gave people astrology and horoscopes. Even more impressive were the successes of mathematicians. They laid the foundations of arithmetic and geometry, developed a “positional system”, where the numerical value of a sign depends on its “position”, knew how to square a power and extract a square root, created geometric formulas for measuring land.

Assyria

The third powerful power of Mesopotamia - Assyria - arose in the 3rd millennium BC, but reached its peak in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. Assyria was poor in resources but rose to prominence due to its geographic location. She found herself at the crossroads of caravan routes, and trade made her rich and great. The capitals of Assyria were successively Ashur, Calah and Nineveh. By the XIII century. BC. it became the most powerful empire in the entire Middle East.

In the artistic culture of Assyria - as in the whole Mesopotamia - the leading art was architecture. The most significant architectural monuments were the palace complex of King Sargon II in Dur-Sharrukin and the palace of Ashur-banapala in Nineveh.

The Assyrian reliefs, decorating the palace premises, the plots of which were scenes from royal life: religious ceremonies, hunting, military events.

One of the best examples of Assyrian reliefs is the “Great Lion Hunt” from the palace of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, where the scene depicting the wounded, dying and killed lions is filled with deep drama, sharp dynamics and vivid expression.

In the 7th century BC. the last ruler of Assyria, Ashur-banapap, created in Nineveh a magnificent library, containing more than 25 thousand clay cuneiform tablets. The library has become the largest in the entire Middle East. It contained documents that, to one degree or another, related to the entire Mesopotamia. Among them was kept the above-mentioned "Epic of Gilgamesh".

Mesopotamia, like Egypt, has become a real cradle of human culture and civilization. Sumerian cuneiform and Babylonian astronomy and mathematics - this is already enough to talk about the exceptional significance of the culture of Mesopotamia.

History of the Sumerians

unknown where did the Sumerians come from, but when they appeared in Mesopotamia, people already lived there. The tribes that inhabited Mesopotamia in the deepest antiquity lived on islands that towered among the swamps. They built their settlements on artificial earth embankments. Draining the surrounding swamps, they created the oldest system of artificial irrigation. As finds in Kish indicate, they used microlithic tools

The earliest settlement discovered in southern Mesopotamia was near El Obeid (near Ur), on a river island that rose above a swampy plain. The population living here was engaged in hunting and fishing, but was already moving on to more progressive types of economy: cattle breeding and agriculture.

According to the skulls from the burials, it was determined that the Sumerians were not a monoracial ethnic group: there are also brachycephals ("round-headed") and dolichocephaly ("long-headed"). However, this could also be the result of mixing with the local population. So we can't even assign them to a particular ethnic group with complete certainty. At present, it can only be stated with some certainty that the Semites of Akkad and the Sumerians of southern Mesopotamia differed sharply from each other both in their appearance and in language.

After the Sumerians, a huge number of clay cuneiform tablets remained. It may have been the first bureaucracy in the world. The earliest inscriptions date back to 2900 BC. and contain business records. Researchers complain that the Sumerians left behind a huge number of "economic" records and "lists of gods" but did not bother to write down the "philosophical basis" of their belief system.

The property stratification that took place within rural communities led to the gradual disintegration of the communal system. The growth of productive forces, the development of trade and slavery, and finally, predatory wars contributed to the emergence of a small group of slave-owning aristocracy from the entire mass of community members. Aristocrats who owned slaves and partly land were called “big people” (lugal), who were opposed by “little people”, that is, free, poor members of rural communities.

If we talk about religion, it can be noted that, it seems, in Sumer, the origins of religion had purely materialistic, and not "ethical" roots. The cult of the Gods was not aimed at "purification and holiness", but was intended to ensure a good harvest, military success, etc. The most ancient of the Sumerian Gods, mentioned in the oldest tablets "with lists of gods" (mid-3rd millennium BC), personified the forces of nature - the sky, the sea, the sun, the moon, the wind, etc., then the gods appeared - patrons of cities, farmers, shepherds, etc. The Sumerians claimed that everything in the world belongs to the gods - the temples were not the place of residence of the gods, who were obliged to take care of people, but the granaries of the gods - barns.

The main deities of the Sumerian Pantheon were AN (heaven - masculine) and KI (earth - feminine). Both of these beginnings arose from the primordial ocean, which gave birth to the mountain, from the firmly connected heaven and earth.

From this union was born the god of air - Enlil, who divided heaven and earth.

There is a hypothesis that in the beginning the maintenance of order in the world was the function of Enki, the god of wisdom and the sea. But then, with the rise of the city-state of Nippur, whose god Enlil was considered, it was he who took the leading place among the gods.

Unfortunately, not a single Sumerian myth about the creation of the world has come down to us. The course of events presented in the Akkadian myth "Enuma Elish", according to researchers, does not correspond to the concept of the Sumerians, despite the fact that most of the gods and plots in it are borrowed from Sumerian beliefs.

One of the foundations of Sumerian mythology, the exact meaning of which has not been established, is "ME", which played a huge role in the religious and ethical system of the Sumerians. In one of the myths, more than a hundred "ME" are named, of which less than half were able to read and decipher. Here such concepts as justice, kindness, peace, victory, lies, fear, crafts, etc., everything, one way or another connected with public life. Some researchers believe that "me" are the prototypes of all living things, radiated by gods and temples, "Divine rules".

In general, in Sumer (Appendix 1) the Gods were like People. In their relationship there are matchmaking and wars, rape and love, deceit and anger. There is even a myth about a man who possessed the goddess Inanna in a dream (Appendix 2). It is noteworthy, but the whole myth is imbued with sympathy for man.

In general, the views of the Sumerians were reflected in many later religions, but now we are much more interested in their contribution to the technical side of the development of modern civilization.

One of the greatest experts on Sumer, Professor Samuel Noah Kramer, in his book "History Begins in Sumer" listed 39 subjects in which the Sumerians were pioneers. In addition to the first writing system, which we have already spoken about, he included in this list the wheel, the first schools, the first bicameral parliament, the first historians, the first "farmer's almanac" (Appendix 3); in Sumer, cosmogony and cosmology first arose, the first collection of proverbs and aphorisms appeared, and literary debates were held for the first time; for the first time the image of "Noah" was created; the first book catalog appeared here, the first money (silver shekels (Appendix 4) in the form of "bullions by weight") got into circulation, taxes began to be introduced for the first time, the first laws were adopted and social reforms were carried out, medicine appeared, and for the first time attempts were made to achieve peace and harmony in society.

In the field of medicine, the Sumerians had very high standards from the very beginning. In the library of Ashurbanipal found by Layard in Nineveh, there was a clear order, it had a large medical department, in which there were thousands of clay tablets. All medical terms were based on words borrowed from the Sumerian language. Medical procedures were described in special reference books, which contained information about hygiene rules, operations, such as cataract removal, and the use of alcohol for disinfection during surgical operations. Sumerian medicine was characterized by a scientific approach to diagnosis and prescription of treatment, both medical and surgical.

The Sumerians were excellent travelers and explorers - they are also credited with the invention of the world's first ships. One Akkadian dictionary of Sumerian words contained at least 105 designations for various types of ships - according to their size, purpose and type of cargo. One inscription excavated in Lagash speaks of the possibility of repairing ships and lists the types of materials that the local ruler Gudea brought to build the temple of his god Ninurta in about 2200 BC. The breadth of the range of these goods is amazing - ranging from gold, silver, copper - and to diorite, carnelian and cedar. In some cases, these materials have been transported over thousands of miles.

The first brick kiln was also built in Sumer. The use of such a large furnace made it possible to fire clay products, which gave them special strength due to internal stress, without poisoning the air with dust and ash. The same technology was used to smelt metals from ore, such as copper, by heating the ore to over 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit in a closed furnace with a low oxygen supply. This process, called smelting, became necessary in the early stages, as soon as the supply of natural native copper was exhausted. Researchers of ancient metallurgy were extremely surprised at how quickly the Sumerians learned the methods of ore dressing, metal smelting and casting. These advanced technologies were mastered by them only a few centuries after the emergence of the Sumerian civilization.

Even more astounding was that the Sumerians mastered the methods of obtaining alloys - a process by which various metals are chemically combined when heated in a furnace. The Sumerians learned how to make bronze, a hard but workable metal that changed the entire course of human history. The ability to alloy copper with tin was the greatest achievement for three reasons. First, it was necessary to choose a very accurate ratio of copper and tin (analysis of Sumerian bronze showed the optimal ratio - 85% copper to 15% tin). Secondly, there was no tin in Mesopotamia at all. (Unlike, for example, from Tiwanaku) Thirdly, tin does not occur in nature at all in its natural form. To extract it from the ore - tin stone - a rather complicated process is necessary. This is not a case that can be opened by accident. The Sumerians had about thirty words for various types of copper of various qualities, while for tin they used the word AN.NA, which literally means "Sky Stone" - which many consider to be evidence that Sumerian technology was a gift from the gods.

Thousands of clay tablets have been found containing hundreds of astronomical terms. Some of these tablets contained mathematical formulas and astronomical tables with which the Sumerians could predict solar eclipses, the various phases of the moon, and the trajectories of the planets. A study of ancient astronomy has revealed the remarkable accuracy of these tables (known as ephemeris). No one knows how they were calculated, but we may wonder why this was necessary?

"The Sumerians measured the sunrise and sunset of visible planets and stars relative to the earth's horizon, using the same heliocentric system that is used now. We also adopted from them the division of the celestial sphere into three segments - northern, central and southern (respectively, among the ancient Sumerians - " path of Enlil", "path of Anu" and "path of Ea"). In essence, all modern concepts of spherical astronomy, including a complete spherical circle of 360 degrees, zenith, horizon, axes of the celestial sphere, poles, ecliptic, equinox, etc. -- all this suddenly arose in Sumer.

All knowledge of the Sumerians regarding the movement of the Sun and the Earth was combined in the world's first calendar created by them, created in the city of Nippur - the solar-lunar calendar, which began in 3760 BC. The Sumerians considered 12 lunar months, which were approximately 354 days, and then 11 extra days were added to get a full solar year. This procedure, called intercalation, was done annually until, after 19 years, the solar and lunar calendars were aligned. The Sumerian calendar was drawn up very precisely so that the key days (for example, the New Year always fell on the day of the spring equinox). It is surprising that such a developed astronomical science was not at all necessary for this newly born society.

In general, the mathematics of the Sumerians had "geometric" roots and is very unusual. We rarely realize that not only our geometry, but also the modern way of calculating time, we owe to the Sumerian sexagesimal number system. The division of the hour into 60 seconds was not at all arbitrary - it is based on the sexagesimal system. Echoes of the Sumerian number system were preserved in the division of a day into 24 hours, a year into 12 months, a foot into 12 inches, and in the existence of a dozen as a measure of quantity. They are also found in the modern counting system, in which numbers from 1 to 12 are singled out, and then numbers like 10 + 3, 10 + 4, etc. follow.

1. RELIGIOUS WORLD VIEW AND ART OF THE LOWER MESOPOTAMIAN POPULATION

The consciousness of a person of the early Eneolithic (Copper Stone Age) has already advanced far in the emotional and mental perception of the world. At the same time, however, the main method of generalization remained an emotionally colored comparison of phenomena according to the principle of metaphor, i.e., by combining and conditionally identifying two or more phenomena with some common typical feature (the sun is a bird, since both it and the bird soar above us ; earth is mother). This is how myths arose, which were not only a metaphorical interpretation of phenomena, but also an emotional experience. In circumstances where verification by socially recognized experience was impossible or insufficient (for example, outside the technical methods of production), apparently, “sympathetic magic” also acted, by which here is meant the indistinguishability (in judgment or in practical action) of the degree of importance of logical connections.

At the same time, people began to realize the existence of certain regularities that concerned their life and work and determined the "behavior" of nature, animals and objects. But they could not yet find any other explanation for these regularities, except that they are supported by the rational actions of some powerful beings, in which the existence of the world order was metaphorically generalized. These powerful living principles themselves were presented not as an ideal "something", not as a spirit, but as materially acting, and therefore, materially existing; therefore, it was supposed to be possible to influence their will, for example, to appease. It is important to note that actions that were logically justified and actions that were magically justified were then perceived as equally reasonable and useful for human life, including for production. The difference was that the logical action had a practical, empirically visual explanation, and the magical (ritual, cult) explanation was mythical; in the eyes of ancient man, it was a repetition of some action performed by a deity or an ancestor at the beginning of the world and performed in the same circumstances to this day, because historical changes in those times of slow development were not really felt and the stability of the world was determined by the rule: do as they did gods or ancestors at the beginning of time. The criterion of practical logic was inapplicable to such actions and concepts.

Magical activity - attempts to influence the personified patterns of nature with emotional, rhythmic, "divine" words, sacrifices, ritual body movements - seemed as necessary for the life of the community as any socially useful work.

In the era of the Neolithic (New Stone Age), apparently, there was already a feeling of the presence of some abstract connections and patterns in the surrounding reality. Perhaps this was reflected, for example, in the predominance of geometric abstractions in the pictorial transmission of the world - man, animals, plants, movements. The place of a disorderly heap of magical drawings of animals and people (even if very accurately and observantly reproduced) was occupied by an abstract ornament. At the same time, the image still did not lose its magical purpose and at the same time was not isolated from the daily activities of a person: artistic creativity accompanied the home production of things needed in every household, be it dishes or colored beads, figurines of deities or ancestors, but especially, of course, the production of items intended, for example, for cult and magical holidays or for burial (so that the deceased could use them in the afterlife).

The creation of both domestic and religious items was a creative process in which the ancient master was guided by artistic flair (regardless of whether he was aware of it or not), which in turn developed during work.

Pottery of the Neolithic and Early Eneolithic shows us one of the important stages of artistic generalization, the main indicator of which is rhythm. The sense of rhythm is probably organically inherent in a person, but, apparently, a person did not immediately discover it in himself and far from immediately managed to embody it figuratively. In Paleolithic images, we have little sense of rhythm. It appears only in the Neolithic as a desire to streamline, organize space. According to the painted dishes of different eras, one can observe how a person learned to generalize his impressions of nature, grouping and stylizing the objects and phenomena that opened to his eyes in such a way that they turned into a slender geometrized floral, animal or abstract ornament, strictly subject to rhythm. Starting from the simplest dot and dash patterns on early ceramics and ending with complex symmetrical, as if moving images on vessels of the 5th millennium BC. e., all compositions are organically rhythmic. It seems that the rhythm of colors, lines and forms embodied the motor rhythm - the rhythm of the hand slowly rotating the vessel during modeling (up to the potter's wheel), and perhaps the rhythm of the accompanying melody. The art of ceramics also created an opportunity to capture thought in conditional images, for even the most abstract pattern carried information supported by oral tradition.

We come across an even more complex form of generalization (but not only of an artistic nature) in the study of Neolithic and early Eneolithic sculpture. Statuettes molded from clay mixed with grain, found in places where grain was stored and in hearths, with emphasized female and especially maternal forms, phalluses and figurines of gobies, very often found next to human figurines, syncretically embodied the concept of earthly fertility. The most complex form of expression of this concept seems to us the Lower Mesopotamian male and female figurines of the beginning of the 4th millennium BC. e. with an animal-like muzzle and molded inserts for material samples of vegetation (grains, seeds) on the shoulders and in the eyes. These figurines cannot yet be called fertility deities - rather, they are a stage preceding the creation of the image of the patron deity of the community, the existence of which we can assume at a somewhat later time, examining the development of architectural structures, where evolution follows the line: an open-air altar - a temple.

In the IV millennium BC. e. Painted ceramics are replaced by unpainted red, gray or yellowish-gray dishes covered with vitreous glaze. In contrast to the ceramics of the previous time, made exclusively by hand or on a slowly rotating potter's wheel, it is made on a rapidly rotating wheel and very soon completely replaces hand-molded utensils.

The culture of the Proto-literate period can already be confidently called basically Sumerian, or at least Proto-Sumerian. Its monuments are distributed throughout Lower Mesopotamia, capture Upper Mesopotamia and the area along the river. Tiger. The highest achievements of this period include: the flourishing of temple building, the flourishing of the art of glyptics (carvings on seals), new forms of plastic arts, new principles of representation and the invention of writing.

All the art of that time, like the worldview, was colored by a cult. Note, however, that speaking of the communal cults of ancient Mesopotamia, it is difficult to draw conclusions about the Sumerian religion as a system. True, common cosmic deities were revered everywhere: “Heaven” An (Akkadian Anu); "Lord of the earth", the deity of the oceans on which the earth floats, Enki (Akkadian Eya); "Lord-Breath", the deity of terrestrial forces, Enlil (Akkadian Ellil), he is also the god of the Sumerian tribal union with the center in Nippur; numerous "mother goddesses", gods of the Sun and Moon. But greater value had local patron gods of each community, usually each with his wife and son, with many close associates. Countless were the small good and evil deities associated with grain and cattle, with the hearth and grain barn, with diseases and misfortunes. They were for the most part different in each of the communities, they were told by different, contradictory myths.

Temples were not built for all the gods, but only for the most important, mainly for the god or goddess - the patrons of a given community. The outer walls of the temple and the platform were decorated with protrusions evenly spaced from each other (this technique is repeated with each successive rebuilding). The temple itself consisted of three parts: the central one in the form of a long courtyard, in the depths of which the image of a deity was placed, and symmetrical side aisles on both sides of the courtyard. At one end of the courtyard was an altar, at the other end - a table for sacrifices. Approximately the same layout had temples of this time in Upper Mesopotamia.

So in the north and south of Mesopotamia, a certain type of cult building is formed, where certain building principles are fixed and become traditional for almost all later Mesopotamian architecture. The main ones are: 1) the construction of the sanctuary in one place (all later reconstructions include the previous ones, and the building is thus never transferred); 2) a high artificial platform on which the central temple stands and to which stairs lead from two sides (later, perhaps, precisely as a result of the custom to build a temple in one place instead of one platform, we already meet three, five and, finally, seven platforms, one above the other with a temple at the very top - the so-called ziggurat). The desire to build high temples emphasized the antiquity and primordial origin of the community, as well as the connection of the sanctuary with the heavenly abode of God; 3) a three-part temple with a central room, which is a courtyard open at the top, around which side outbuildings are grouped (in the north of Lower Mesopotamia, such a courtyard could be covered); 4) dividing the outer walls of the temple, as well as the platform (or platforms) with alternating ledges and niches.

From ancient Uruk, we know a special building, the so-called "Red Building" with a stage and pillars decorated with mosaic ornaments - presumably a courtyard for a people's gathering and council.

With the beginning of urban culture (even the most primitive one), a new stage opens in the development of the fine arts of Lower Mesopotamia. The culture of the new period becomes richer and more diverse. Instead of seals-stamps, a new form of seals appears - cylindrical.

Sumerian cylinder seal. St. Petersburg. Hermitage

The plastic art of early Sumer is closely related to glyptics. Amulet seals in the form of animals or animal heads, which are so common in the Proto-literate period, can be considered a form that combines glyptics, relief and round sculpture. Functionally, all these items are seals. But if this is an animal figurine, then one side of it will be cut flat and additional images will be carved on it in deep relief, intended for imprinting on clay, usually associated with the main figure, for example, on the reverse side of the lion's head, executed in rather high relief. , small lions are carved, on the back of the figure of a ram - horned animals or a person (probably a shepherd).

The desire to convey the depicted nature as accurately as possible, especially when it comes to representatives of the animal world, is typical of the art of Lower Mesopotamia of this period. Small figures of domestic animals - bulls, rams, goats, made in soft stone, various scenes from the life of domestic and wild animals on reliefs, cult vessels, seals are striking, first of all, with an accurate reproduction of the body structure, so that not only the species, but also the breed is easily determined. animal, as well as poses, movements, conveyed vividly and expressively, and often surprisingly succinctly. However, there is still almost no real round sculpture.

Another characteristic feature of early Sumerian art is its narrative. Each frieze on the cylinder seal, each relief image, is a story that can be read in order. A story about nature, about the animal world, but most importantly - a story about yourself, about a person. For only in the proto-literate period does man appear in art, his theme.

Stamps. Mesopotamia. End of IV - beginning of III millennium BC St. Petersburg. Hermitage

Images of a person are found even in the Paleolithic, but they cannot be considered an image of a person in art: a person is present in Neolithic and Eneolithic art as part of nature, he has not yet separated himself from it in his mind. Early art is often characterized by a syncretic image - human-animal-vegetable (as, say, figurines resembling a frog with dimples for seeds and seeds on their shoulders, or an image of a woman feeding a young animal) or human-phallic (i.e., a human phallus, or just a phallus, as a symbol of reproduction).

In the Sumerian art of the proto-literate period, we can already see how man began to separate himself from nature. The art of Lower Mesopotamia of this period appears before us, therefore, as a qualitatively new stage in the relationship of man to the world around him. It is no coincidence that the cultural monuments of the Proto-literate period leave the impression of the awakening of human energy, a person's awareness of his new possibilities, an attempt to express himself in the world around him, which he is mastering more and more.

Monuments of the Early Dynastic period are represented by a significant number of archaeological finds, which allow us to speak more boldly about some general trends in art.

In architecture, the type of temple on a high platform is finally taking shape, which sometimes (and even usually the entire temple area) was surrounded by a high wall. By this time, the temple takes on more concise forms - the utility rooms are clearly separated from the central cult ones, their number is decreasing. Columns and semi-columns disappear, and with them the mosaic lining. The main method of decorating the monuments of temple architecture is the segmentation of the outer walls with ledges. It is possible that during this period the multi-stage ziggurat of the main city deity was established, which would gradually replace the temple on the platform. At the same time, there were temples of minor deities, which were smaller, built without a platform, but usually also within the temple area.

A peculiar architectural monument was discovered in Kish - a secular building, which is the first example of the combination of a palace and a fortress in Sumerian construction.

Most of the monuments of sculpture are small (25-40 cm) figurines made of local alabaster and softer rocks (limestone, sandstone, etc.). They were usually placed in the cult niches of temples. For the northern cities of Lower Mesopotamia, exaggeratedly elongated, for the southern, on the contrary, exaggeratedly shortened proportions of figurines are characteristic. All of them are characterized by a strong distortion of the proportions of the human body and facial features, with a sharp emphasis on one or two features, especially often - the nose and ears. Such figures were placed in temples so that they represented there, prayed for the one who placed them. They did not require a specific resemblance to the original, as, say, in Egypt, where the early brilliant development of portrait sculpture was due to the requirements of magic: otherwise the soul-double could confuse the owner; here a short inscription on the figurine was quite enough. Magical goals, apparently, were reflected in the emphasized facial features: large ears (for the Sumerians - receptacles of wisdom), wide-open eyes, in which a pleading expression is combined with the surprise of magical insight, hands folded in a prayerful gesture. All this often turns clumsy and angular figures into lively and expressive ones. The transfer of the internal state turns out to be much more important than the transfer of the external bodily form; the latter is developed only to the extent that it meets the internal task of sculpture - to create an image endowed with supernatural properties ("all-seeing", "all-hearing"). Therefore, in the official art of the Early Dynastic period, we no longer meet that peculiar, sometimes free interpretation that marked the best works of art of the time of the Proto-literate period. The sculptural figures of the Early Dynastic period, even if they depicted fertility deities, are completely devoid of sensuality; their ideal is the striving for the superhuman and even the inhuman.

In the nomes-states that constantly fought among themselves, there were different pantheons, different rituals, there was no uniformity in mythology (except for the preservation of the common main function of all deities of the 3rd millennium BC: these are primarily communal gods of fertility). Accordingly, with the unity of the general character of the sculpture, the images are very different in detail. In glyptics, cylinder seals depicting heroes and rearing animals begin to predominate.

Jewelry from the Early Dynastic period, known mainly from the excavations of the Ursk tombs, can rightly be classified as masterpieces of jewelry.

The art of the Akkadian period is perhaps most characterized by the central idea of ​​a deified king, who appears first in historical reality, and then in ideology and in art. If in history and legends he appears as a person not from a royal family, who managed to achieve power, gathered a huge army, and for the first time in the existence of the nome states in Lower Mesopotamia subjugated all of Sumer and Akkad, then in art he is a courageous person with emphatically energetic features of a lean face: regular, well-defined lips, a small hooked nose - an idealized portrait, perhaps generalized, but quite accurately conveying the ethnic type; this portrait fully corresponds to the conception of the victorious hero Sargon of Akkad formed from historical and legendary data (such, for example, is a copper portrait head from Nineveh - the alleged image of Sargon). In other cases, the deified king is depicted making a victorious campaign at the head of his army. He climbs the steeps in front of the warriors, his figure is given larger than the figures of the others, the symbols-signs of his divinity shine above his head - the Sun and the Moon (Naram-Suen's stele in honor of his victory over the highlanders). He also appears as a mighty hero in curls and with a curly beard. The hero fights with a lion, his muscles tense, with one hand he restrains a rearing lion, whose claws scratch the air in impotent fury, and with the other he plunges a dagger into the scruff of a predator (a favorite motif of Akkadian glyptics). To some extent, changes in the art of the Akkadian period are associated with the traditions of the northern centers of the country. Sometimes one speaks of "realism" in the art of the Akkadian period. Of course, realism in the sense that we now understand this term is out of the question: not really visible (even if typical), but essential features for the concept of a given subject are fixed. Nevertheless, the impression of lifelikeness depicted is very sharp.

Found in Susa. Victory of the king over the Lullubeys. OK. 2250 B.C.

The events of the time of the Akkadian dynasty shook the established Sumerian priestly traditions; accordingly, the processes that took place in art reflected for the first time an interest in the individual. The influence of Akkadian art has been felt for centuries. It can also be found in the monuments of the last period of Sumerian history - the III dynasty of Ur and the dynasty of Issin. But in general, the monuments of this later time leave the impression of monotony and stereotype. This is true: for example, the gurus masters of the huge royal craft workshops of the 3rd dynasty of Ur worked on the seals, who got their hands on a clear reproduction of the same prescribed theme - the worship of a deity.

2. SUMERIAN LITERATURE

In total, we currently know about one hundred and fifty monuments of Sumerian literature (many of them have been preserved in the form of fragments). Among them are poetic records of myths, epic tales, psalms, wedding-love songs associated with the sacred marriage of a deified king with a priestess, funeral laments, lamentations about social disasters, hymns in honor of kings (starting from the 3rd dynasty of Ur), literary imitations of royal inscriptions; didactics is very widely represented - teachings, edifications, disputes-dialogues, collections of fables, anecdotes, sayings and proverbs.

Of all the genres of Sumerian literature, hymns are most fully represented. The earliest records of them date back to the middle of the Early Dynastic period. Of course, the hymn is one of the most ancient ways of collective address to the deity. The recording of such a work had to be done with special pedantry and punctuality, not a single word could be changed arbitrarily, since not a single image of the anthem was random, each had a mythological content. Hymns are designed to be read aloud - by an individual priest or choir, and the emotions that arose during the performance of such a work are collective emotions. The great importance of rhythmic speech, perceived emotionally and magically, comes to the fore in such works. Usually the hymn praises the deity and lists the deeds, names and epithets of the god. Most of the hymns that have come down to us have been preserved in the school canon of the city of Nippur and are most often dedicated to Enlil, the patron god of this city, and other deities of his circle. But there are also hymns to kings and temples. However, hymns could only be dedicated to deified kings, and not all kings were deified in Sumer.

Along with hymns, liturgical texts are laments, which are very common in Sumerian literature (especially laments about national disasters). But the most ancient monument of this kind, known to us, is not liturgical. This is a "lament" about the destruction of Lagash by the king of Umma Lugalzagesi. It enumerates the destruction made in Lagash and curses their culprit. The rest of the cries that have come down to us - the cry about the death of Sumer and Akkad, the cry “The curse of the city of Akkad”, the cry about the death of Ur, the cry about the death of King Ibbi-Suen, etc. - are certainly of a ritual nature; they are turned to the gods and are close to spells.

Among the cult texts is a wonderful series of poems (or chants), beginning with "Inapa's Journey to the Underworld" and ending with "The Death of Dumuzi", reflecting the myth of dying and resurrecting deities and associated with the corresponding rites. The goddess of carnal love and animal fertility, Yinnin (Inana), fell in love with the god (or hero) shepherd Dumuzi and took him as her husband. However, she then descended into the underworld, apparently to challenge the power of the queen of the underworld. Mortified, but brought back to life by the cunning of the gods, Inana can return to earth (where, meanwhile, all living things have ceased to multiply), only by giving the underworld a living ransom for herself. Inana is revered in various cities of Sumer and in each has a spouse or son; all these deities bow before her and pray for mercy; only one Dumuzi proudly refuses. Dumuzi is betrayed by the evil messengers of the underworld; in vain his sister Geshtinana ("Vine of heaven") turns him into an animal three times and hides him at home; Dumuzi is killed and taken to the underworld. However, Geshtinana, sacrificing herself, achieves that Dumuzi is released to the living for six months, for which time she herself goes to the world of the dead in return for him. While the shepherd god reigns on earth, the plant goddess dies. The structure of the myth turns out to be much more complicated than the simplified mythological plot of the death and resurrection of the deity of fertility, as it is usually presented in popular literature.

The Nippur canon also includes nine tales about the exploits of heroes attributed by the "Royal List" to the semi-legendary I dynasty of Uruk - Enmerkar, Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh. The Nippur canon, apparently, began to be created during the III dynasty of Ur, and the kings of this dynasty were closely connected with Uruk: its founder traced his family to Gilgamesh. The inclusion of Uruk legends in the canon was most likely due to the fact that Nippur was a cult center that was always associated with the city that dominated at that time. During the 3rd dynasty of Ur and the 1st dynasty of Issin, a uniform Nippur canon was introduced in the e-oaks (schools) of other cities of the state.

All heroic tales that have come down to us are at the stage of formation of cycles, which is usually characteristic of the epic (grouping heroes according to their place of birth is one of the stages of this cyclization). But these monuments are so heterogeneous that they can hardly be united by the general concept of "epos". These are compositions of different times, some of which are more perfect and complete (like a wonderful poem about the hero Lugalband and the monstrous eagle), others less so. However, even a rough idea of ​​the time of their creation is impossible - various motifs could be included in them at different stages of their development, legends could change over the centuries. One thing is clear: we have before us an early genre, from which the epic will develop later. Therefore, the hero of such a work is not yet an epic hero-hero, a monumental and often tragic personality; it is rather a lucky fellow from a fairy tale, a relative of the gods (but not a god), a mighty king with the features of a god.

Very often in literary criticism, the heroic epic (or praepos) is opposed to the so-called mythological epic (people act in the first, gods act in the second). Such a division is hardly appropriate in relation to Sumerian literature: the image of a god-hero is much less characteristic of it than the image of a mortal hero. In addition to those named, two epic or proto-epic tales are known, where the hero is a deity. One of them is a legend about the struggle of the goddess Innin (Inana) with the personification of the underworld, called “Mount Ebeh” in the text, the other is a story about the war of the god Ninurta with the evil demon Asak, also an inhabitant of the underworld. Ninurta at the same time acts as an ancestor hero: he builds a dam-embankment from a pile of stones to fence off Sumer from the waters of the primordial ocean, which spilled as a result of the death of Asak, and diverts the flooded fields of water to the Tigris.

More common in Sumerian literature are works devoted to descriptions of the creative deeds of deities, the so-called etiological (i.e., explanatory) myths; at the same time, they give an idea of ​​the creation of the world, as it was seen by the Sumerians. It is possible that there were no complete cosmogonic legends in Sumer (or they were not written down). It is difficult to say why this is so: it is hardly possible that the idea of ​​the struggle of the titanic forces of nature (gods and titans, older and younger gods, etc.) is not reflected in the Sumerian worldview, especially since the theme of dying and resurrection of nature (with the departure deities to the underworld) in Sumerian mythography is developed in detail - not only in the stories about Innin-Inan and Dumuzi, but also about other gods, for example about Enlil.

The arrangement of life on earth, the establishment of order and prosperity on it is almost a favorite topic of Sumerian literature: it is filled with stories about the creation of deities who must monitor the earthly order, take care of the distribution of divine duties, the establishment of a divine hierarchy, and the settlement of the earth by living beings and even about the creation of individual agricultural implements. The main active creator gods are usually Enki and Enlil.

Many etiological myths are composed in the form of a debate - either representatives of one or another area of ​​the economy, or the economic objects themselves, who are trying to prove their superiority to each other, are arguing. Sumerian e-oak played an important role in the spread of this genre, typical of many literatures of the ancient East. Very little is known about what this school was in the early stages, but it existed in some form (as evidenced by the presence of teaching aids from the very beginning of writing). Apparently, as a special institution of e-oak, it takes shape no later than the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. e. Initially, the goals of education were purely practical - the school trained scribes, land surveyors, etc. As the school developed, education became more and more universal, and at the end of the 3rd - beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. e-oak becomes something like an "academic center" of that time - it teaches all branches of knowledge that existed then: mathematics, grammar, singing, music, law, study lists of legal, medical, botanical, geographical and pharmacological terms, lists of literary essays, etc.

Most of the works discussed above have been preserved precisely in the form of school or teacher records, through the school canon. But there are also special groups of monuments, which are commonly called “e-duby texts”: these are works that tell about the structure of the school and school life, didactic essays (teachings, teachings, instructions) specially addressed to schoolchildren, very often composed in the form of dialogue-disputes , and, finally, monuments of folk wisdom: aphorisms, proverbs, anecdotes, fables and sayings. Through e-oak, the only example of a prose fairy tale in the Sumerian language has come down to us.

Even from this incomplete review, one can judge how rich and diverse the monuments of Sumerian literature are. This heterogeneous and multi-temporal material, most of which was recorded only at the very end of the III (if not at the beginning of the II) millennium BC. e., apparently, was still almost not subjected to special "literary" processing and largely retained the techniques inherent in oral verbal creativity. The main stylistic device of most mythological and praepic stories is multiple repetitions, for example, the repetition of the same dialogues in the same expressions (but between different consecutive interlocutors). This is not only an artistic device of three times, which is so characteristic of the epic and fairy tale (in Sumerian monuments it sometimes reaches nine times), but also a mnemonic device that contributes to better memorization of the work - the legacy of the oral transmission of myth, epic, a specific feature of rhythmic, magical speech, according to a form reminiscent of a shamanic ritual. Compositions made up mainly of such monologues and dialogue-repetitions, among which the unexpanded action is almost lost, seem to us loose, unprocessed and therefore imperfect (although in ancient times they could hardly have been perceived that way), the story on the tablet looks like just a summary, where notes of individual lines served as a kind of memorable milestones for the narrator. However, why then was it pedantic, up to nine times, to write out the same phrases? This is all the more strange because the recording was made on heavy clay and, it would seem, the material itself should have prompted the need for conciseness and economy of the phrase, a more concise composition (this happens only by the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, already in Akkadian literature). The above facts suggest that Sumerian literature is nothing more than a written record of oral literature. Not knowing how, and not trying to break away from the living word, she fixed it on clay, retaining all the stylistic devices and features of oral poetic speech.

It is important, however, to note that the Sumerian "literary" scribes did not set themselves the task of recording all oral creativity or all its genres. The selection was determined by the interests of the school and partly of the cult. But along with this written proto-literature, the life of oral works, which remained unrecorded, continued, perhaps much richer.

It would be wrong to present this Sumerian written literature making its first steps as of little artistic or almost devoid of artistic, emotional impact. The metaphorical way of thinking itself contributed to the figurativeness of the language and the development of such a technique, which is most characteristic of ancient Eastern poetry, as parallelism. Sumerian verses are rhythmic speech, but they do not fit into a strict meter, since neither stress counts, nor longitude counts, nor syllable counts can be found. Therefore, repetitions, rhythmic enumerations, epithets of gods, the repetition of initial words in several lines in a row, etc. are the most important means of emphasizing rhythm here. All these, in fact, are attributes of oral poetry, but nevertheless retain their emotional impact in written literature.

Written Sumerian literature also reflected the process of collision of primitive ideology with the new ideology of class society. When getting acquainted with the ancient Sumerian monuments, especially mythological ones, the lack of poeticization of images is striking. The Sumerian gods are not just earthly beings, the world of their feelings is not just the world of human feelings and actions; the baseness and rudeness of the nature of the gods, the unattractiveness of their appearance are constantly emphasized. Primitive thinking, suppressed by the unlimited power of the elements and the feeling of their own helplessness, apparently, was close to the images of gods creating a living creature from the mud from under the nails, in a drunken state, capable of destroying the humanity they created by one whim, having arranged the Flood. What about the Sumerian underworld? According to the surviving descriptions, it seems to be extremely chaotic and hopeless: there is no judge of the dead, no scales on which people's actions are weighed, there are almost no illusions of "posthumous justice".

The ideology, which had to oppose something to this elemental feeling of horror and hopelessness, was itself very helpless at first, which found expression in written monuments, repeating the motives and forms of ancient oral poetry. Gradually, however, as the ideology of class society becomes stronger and becomes dominant in the states of Lower Mesopotamia, the content of literature also changes, which begins to develop in new forms and genres. The process of separating written literature from oral literature is accelerating and becoming obvious. The emergence of didactic genres of literature at the later stages of the development of Sumerian society, the cyclization of mythological plots, etc., signify the increasing independence acquired by the written word, its other direction. However, this new stage in the development of Asiatic literature was essentially continued not by the Sumerians, but by their cultural heirs, the Babylonians, or Akkadians.