The Rise and Fall of the Sumerians

In the marsh-fed cities of southern Mesopotamia, Sumerian-speaking communities built institutions and stories that outlived the political world that created them. The Rise and Fall of the Sumerians follows the making of the world's earliest enduring urban tradition from Ubaid villages and Uruk accounting to the rival city-states, Akkadian conquest, the Third Dynasty of Ur and the political fragmentation that followed. It explains kingship, irrigation, labour, women, trade, warfare, law, religion, literature and archaeology without reducing Sumer to a list of inventions or legendary rulers. Drawing on tablets, settlements, monuments and burials, Murat Smith distinguishes contemporary evidence from later memory and shows why Sumerian language and learning remained powerful long after Sumerian-speaking dynasties had disappeared.