The Sumerian Period

The Sumerian Period, generally dated from roughly 4500 to 1900 BCE across its Uruk, Early Dynastic and later phases, was the era in which Sumer, in southern Mesopotamia, produced what is widely regarded as the world's earliest urban civilization, centered on independent city-states including Uruk, Ur, Eridu and Lagash, each ruled by its own king and dedicated to its own patron deity. Sumerians developed cuneiform script, the earliest known writing system, initially for administrative record-keeping and later for literature, law and religious texts, including the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest surviving works of literature. The period saw foundational human innovations including the wheel, the plow, systematic irrigation agriculture, and some of the earliest law codes, alongside monumental temple architecture in the form of stepped ziggurats built to honor each city's god. Sumerian city-states periodically fought one another and were repeatedly conquered by outside powers, most significantly the Akkadian Empire under Sargon of Akkad around 2334 BCE, though Sumerian culture, religion and cuneiform writing continued to shape Mesopotamian civilization for two more millennia even after Sumerian ceased to be a widely spoken language.