Chapter 3 The Social Conditions of the Sumerians
readx;? Legend has it that the last king of the Second Dynasty of Eredu was Shakarus, who was reminded by the priests that God had prophesied that the son born to his daughter would usurp the throne of the king. www.biquge.info So, in order to prevent trouble, Shakaros locked his daughter in a tower and prevented her from looking for a man.
Soon after, however, the king's daughter became pregnant and gave birth to a son, and the watchmen of the tower, fearing that the king would find out, threw the baby boy out of the tower. Strangely enough, an eagle flew outside the tower, took the child away, and brought it to a farmer who raised the child to adulthood, and when he grew up, he finally seized the throne of Shakaros.
There is a problem here, if it is such a simple seizure of power, there is no need to record it, so it should actually be a change of dynasty.
Historically, it should be deduced like this:
As the grandson of the last king of Eredu, this child was raised by a farmer and seized the throne of the city of Badtibila and established the Third Dynasty of Badtibera.
Later, with the strength of the state of Badtibila, the rule of the Second Dynasty of Eredu ended. The so-called prophecy of God was fulfilled.
In 3760 BC, it was conquered by the Second Dynasty of Badtibila. The Second Dynasty of Erethus falls.
The Sumerian civilization had two centers, Eredu in the south and Nipur in the north. The cultural influences of the two centers are very different. Nipur is the holy place of Enlil. Enlil is the chief god of the underworld. The spells and magic he gives to humans can drive good ghosts and evil spirits alike. His field is in a mountain, and his products live underground.
Eredu is the sanctuary of Enki, the god of culture and goodness, the god of light and goodness, the lord of the fresh water underground, the doctor and the friend of mankind. He brought art, science, industry, and civilization to humanity. It is said that the earliest Dharma books were his creation. Originally a seaport, Eredu undoubtedly played an important role in the development of its culture through trade with the outside world and the integration of various cultures. Its worldview is related to its geographical location: it thinks that the continent emerges from the sea, just as the mouth of the Euphrates River is constantly expanding.
Even before the beginning of the record, the culture of Eredu had merged with that of Nippur. In the fusion of the two cultures, the influence of Eridu seems to be dominant.
The Sumerian temple consisted of a central hall flanked by passages, the outer of which was where the priests lived. On one side of the hall there is a raised platform with a mud-brick table dedicated to animal and vegetable sacrifices. Granaries and warehouses are generally located near temples. Later the Sumerians began to build the temple on a square platform. These high platforms were constantly raised, forming a tower temple.
Most of these cities are located along the banks of the two rivers, with only four cities, Kish, Ataab, Shulupak, and Nipur, located far from the riverbanks.
The main architectural remnant of the Sumerians is the stepped pyramid temple dedicated to Enki, built of bricks. Because they believed that the gods always dwelled high on the top of the sacred mountains, they needed to pray at the top of the pyramid so that people could approach the palace of the gods and make it easier for the gods to be worshipped. The influence of this form of worship on the plains of Mesopotamia spread rapidly and remained so for thousands of years.
The Sumerians used to build new temples on the site of the old temple, and as successive generations continued to build, the temple foundation became a multi-storey tower-shaped platform with a shrine on top. This kind of high-rise building is called "Jigurat". This brick structure illustrates its inheritance from the Indus Valley civilization. In particular, the temples of Eretus were much larger than those of other Sumerian city-states, and were the prototype for the later Tower of Babel in Babylon.
The Sumerians used walls to protect their cities, but their walls were made of mud bricks, so the enemy had enough time to dig the walls during the siege and cause them to fall.
The Sumerian army consisted mainly of infantry. The weapons of the light infantry were axes, daggers and spears. The regular infantry was also equipped with copper helmets, felt capes and leather skirts.
There were also carts drawn by wild donkeys in the Sumerian army. These early chariots were not very useful in battle, and some believe that they were mainly used as a means of transport, but the soldiers on them wore tomahawks and spears. The Sumerian chariot had four wheels with two soldiers on it, pulled by four wild asses. The body is a woven basket with solid wheels.
The distant weapons used by the Sumerians included slings and simple bows.
The Sumerians cultivated crops and invented the plough later than the Chinese. Among the plants grown are barley, chickpeas, lentils, millet, wheat, turnips, dates, onions, garlic, bitter cauliflower, leek, and wasabi, and their livestock includes cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs. Domestic cattle are their main negative livestock, and donkeys are the main transport livestock. The Sumerians also hunted fish and birds.
The Sumerians had the skill of smelting copper, which was used to make tools and weapons, and most farmers still used wooden tools.
The alluvial plains of southern Iraq were then an area of frequent flooding. To survive here, the people here must have the ability to know and even control the Tigris and Euphrates rivers without being flooded. In Sumerian, words like canals, dams, reservoirs are abundant.
The Sumerians dug ditches in southern Mesopotamia and created a huge irrigation system. Its irrigation system includes water-drawing booms, canals, canals, dikes, weirs and reservoirs. Canals and canals must be repaired frequently to remove silt. The government has people who specialize in managing aqueducts and canals, and the wealthy have access to their own aqueducts. Relying on a complex irrigation network and successfully harnessing the turbulent waters of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the Sumerians created the first civilization in southern Mesopotamia, dismantling the original clan system in the southern region of the two river basins and making a rapid transition to an era of civilization.
Farmers used canals to flood their fields, drain water, use cattle to trample fields and kill grass, use pickaxes to dig the ground, hoe, harrow and shovel to loosen the soil when the ground is dry. However, it was also because of this method of flooding the fields that eventually destroyed their fields, and the canals carried a large amount of salt, and the direct flooding without any treatment was one of the main culprits of the destruction of Sumerian civilization.
In fact, this is to expand the area of the desert, the sea carries a lot of salt, and it is a forbidden area for freshwater plants on land, as long as the sea water flows in, the fresh water of the entire region will be salted, and the desert will not shrink, but expand, because what is a desert? A desert is a place where there is no life.
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