Enheduana of Sumer

Sumer is a place located in Mesopotamia now-a-days known as Iraq. Sumer has had many leaders of which one of them, came to be King Sargon, a father of twin boys and a girl, Enheduana. Enheduana however was more known then her brothers, she was the first writer. At the time she could be considered the world’s first bestselling author. Of course in those times not many people knew how to read and write, she was one of the lucky ones. Writing in those days was made on soft clay with a tool called a stylus.  The hard thing about Sumerian writing (cuneiform), was that it was made up of symbols, and if one mistake was made it would mess up the whole sentence because erasing on clay was hard.  Enheduana’s brothers had a desire to be kings but they had no talent, however they did rule for a bit each once their father dad. While King Sargon was still alive, he awarded his daughter by putting her into the position of a high priestess to Nanna, moon-god of Sumer.  She was awarded with this position because she loved to write letter, stories and poems, so she would write important quotes and talk to the goddess. While serving the goddess, she loved in the ziggurat’s highest storey, nearest the heavens so she could communicate with the gods, she was the one who created rituals and conducted animal sacrifices to please the gods.  Being a high priestess, took 25 years of her whole life, she wrote a set of forty-two poems, many stories which were found on multiple clay plates meaning more people had them, and sung in celebrations/ceremonies. Both older brothers were killed while they were kings by enemy palaces who hated them, finally a nephew took over.  He kicked Enheduana out of the ziggurat, it is believed somewhere into the dessert however she was remember even after her disappearance and he wasn’t.  So after all, Enheduana was the earliest author male/female to be known by her name, in other ways the first creation credited to an individual person. She brought the idea of writing poems and stories, and thanks to her we can have writing now and compare it to old writings(the surviving clay plates).

Leon, Vicki. "Enhaduana of Sumer." Outrageous Women of Ancient Times. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 49-53. Print. 

Cuneiform Reflection

What difficulties did you have? Was it easier or harder than using English? Was it hard to read your partners cuneiform, how?

Since a few weeks we have been studying the beginning of civilizations and writing. Every city/country has some differences from the other with writing; the oldest form of writing is cuneiform. This type of writing includes only symbols and it is understandable in nearly every language but might seem different every time you translate it. As my class and I were doing this activity, the hardest part about writing and drawing the symbols was that you could not outline nor make a mistake, if you did then you just had to go with it because in the ancient times, when one would write on clay, he couldn’t erase. In my perspective writing in English and with normal writing is much more easier, this might be because I am used to it and I use I every day, however if I were to only write cuneiform I might get used to it. I noticed that writing with symbols takes much more space than writing with letters and that they get confusing when you try to put them apart to figure out a sentence. While writing, I could not memorize one symbol so I kept on looking back to make sure I wrote the right letters, but imagining people in the olden days memorizing these symbols and writing them on soft clay must have been hard because if you messed up one symbol you messed up the whole sentence. I was going to start out with my sentence being: “The Sumerians were smart people who created these weird symbols you are reading so they could communicate,” now imagine that sentence in a format 6times bigger, and with symbols which take up a lot of space, because of the paper we received I decided to shorten my sentence down to: “Sumerians created these weird symbols.”  The hardest part of writing in cuneiform was making all the symbols the same size and keeping distance between them so they look like one word if they weren’t. However, because I didn’t have enough time, I had to rush which might have changed the symbols a bit, but my partner understood most of the sentence.

                When it came to reading my partners sentence, all the fun began.  It was hard to read my partners sentence because some of the symbols were totally different from the box with the alphabet the teacher gave us, however after asking her I understood what she meant. The good thing about cuneiform is that it doesn’t matter what type of handwriting one has, because it’s all just symbols. The thing about reading cuneiform is that a lot of the symbols are similar because they have triangular shaped symbols and they intersect. My partner’s sentence was: “Trade of four horses at ur city.” I was lucky that the sentence was short otherwise I would have messed up and been frustrated from the fact that there are many symbols. However I am happy that writing was invented and developed into letters instead of symbols.

Hammurabi's Babylonia

Hammurabi's Babylonia from The Babylonians

There is always a way something started, this also includes law. Believe it or not, our ancestors from Mesopotamia, the Sumerians, were some of the first to invent these rulers/punishments that now-a-days are given in court. Hammurabi’s code was the one that marked the beginning of law. Laws are not always fair, and his was an example of it. His code covered marriage, divorce, adoption, assault, trade, stealing, renting etc. the whole code consisted of 280 sections. Laws might seem fair from one point of view, and unfair from the other, some of these laws were for example:

• ·         If a son strikes his father, his hand may be cut off

• ·         A surgeon operating a wealthy man and saves his life, will be paid 10 coins, if he operates a average person, he gets paid 5 coins, if it’s a slave he will get paid 2coins but if he fails at a surgery, his hand will be cut off.

In societies like this, there were different ranks for different people, such as:

the highest-king/priest                 

second highest-government officials and military officers
medium-artisans, traders, merchants
low rank- workers/farmers
lowest-slaves
In the second rule I mentioned above, it shows how the lower the rank is of the person you operate/help etc. the less money or reward you will receive. In the eyes of a slave, the rules might seem unfair but the king thought they were correct. Of course he didn’t cover every single thing that could happen, but nearly everything bad had a punishment. “Hammurabi claimed that the gods instructed him to write there early legal statues” if it’s true or not we may not know, but we will know he was the first one to create laws. However, Hammurabi’s purpose for having laws was so everyone has some restrictions, so the city can work together and no bad actions should happen.
I think this ruler was very intelligent, because he was the first one to figure out that people can’t do everything they want, and even thought his punishments (cutting off hands/ears/killing etc.) weren’t the nicest, he still created laws which are still used in our daily life. Laws have changed by now, for example:
His law: A husband must stay by his sick women and care for her health even if problems have occurred between them.
Our rules: A husband can leave his women/girlfriend to his free will
Or the fact that dentists and doctors get paid the same from every patient not thinking if they are a lower or higher rank in society. Jails exist now which is why no more ears or hands are being cut off, those may be done only for surgical purposes. However, thanks to Hammurabi’s codes, law now exist and is successfully continuing into the future.

Landau, Elaine. "Hammurabi's Babylonia." The Babylonians. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 39-44. Print. 

A Day in the Life of The Bronze Age

(From A Child Perspective) 

Dear Diary,

There are famous people, there are kings, there are farmers, there are weird people, and then there is me. I have never considered myself to be anything special, I come from a family that has learned to survive life the hard way, my father used to be a hunter, meaning he was one of the lowest ranked free members in our little society. I am writing to you because my family left me alone at home today, sounds kind of creepy, but honestly, there are so many people all around, a person might wish to be left alone. Many of my friends say their lives are very boring; they just do what their parents tell them to, get orders all the time, and are treated like slaves. In this case, where I live right now the highest person in our society is King Julius the 2^nd, his weird rules most of the time make our lives easier, but we don’t always get respect. Both my parents are traders,  this means every day they go out with whatever we have, usually with the things my 3 older brothers  bring back, they are real good hunters.  My parents taught them how to go hunting and how to farm crops. Farming takes longer, so usually that is my mum’s job, she gives all her effort into growing healthy crops which are usually cereals, and making sure they can be sold or in our case traded for something better. Hunting is a hard task, nothing is guaranteed, sometimes my bros even stay away for 5 days… that scares me a little because I always get the feeling some wild animals might have killed them, but they are 3, so they should be able to help each other.  Talking about the ranks of society, there are 4 stages, from highest to the lowest, my family is medium/low ranked, we aren’t anything special, just a random family from the whole city, I like to consider my 3 big bro’s my slaves, if they don’t do what I want, I tell mum, but that’s only sometimes, on the other hand they are the ones who are sacrificing their lives for us. I must say, I probably have the best life of all, I don’t have to do anything, if I wanted I could just stay home forever, but no, that’s not me. I believe everyone here has to do something for the society, and my role, is to listen and stay out of people’s ways.

                I could never say I’m rich, I do live a pretty healthy life style, but I don’t have everything I want, and I believe life is just about that. There are traders here that trade bronze I think that’s what they call it, I am not sure what it is though, nobody will tell me, I only know that adults talk about how they melt rock and get some sort of other material, and mix it with another and something happens.. arghh I don’t even know what else, being an adult must be so confusing. I love to sleep, and when I wake up everyone is already gone, I usually get up when the sun is about half way past its daily routine, the sun must be very fit, everyday appear  and then disappear into nowhere, who knows how much energy it is consuming.  I like my city very much, it has many buildings, of which one is huge, I guess it’s the kings. I’ve never been in there, the king does look kind, but his voice just scares me…  Behind our houses there are stable, big brown “sticks “ with some green stuff which look like clouds from a distance, I’ve decided to call them trees but no one listens to me so I’m keeping the name to myself for now. Most of the time the sun always shines, however there are some days that big drops of water fall from the sky, they remind me of someone crying from the sky, we believe that when someone dies they go up into the blue sky. Whenever it rains I think of our dead dog hondije, it means puppy, he was the best dog I ever met, he protected us from any harm. He died last year when my brothers took him for a hunt, he tried to track down an animal, and my second oldest brother accidentally threw the arrow right at him. So every time it rains it makes me think he is crying but when the sun shows up, he is telling me to be strong and walk proudly.  My whole family loved him and we always will, he is buried up in the field close to our city, at the exact spot where he died, I go to visit him whenever I feel something bad is going to happen, I talk to him and he talks back, even thought he is gone, he really isn’t.

                Every afternoon is nearly always the same, it becomes dark, my parents come back from the trading market, my brothers return from the hunt, my dad makes a fire so we stay warm, and my mum either puts the dead animals to cook or she prepares something new.  My mum is like my role model, it might be because I am a girl, or maybe because she does the most in our whole family. She is the one who makes sure my brothers don’t wake me up, she cooks for us, she wakes up in the morning to go trade goods, and she is the best person I’ve ever met.  Every night she tells me stories about her and her childhood, how her and her sisters got along, how time has changed since she was small, but probably what I admire most about her, is that she never forgets who she is and continues believing. She believes I will grow up and discover something that hasn’t been discovered yet, I hope so too, even thought there are so many things already, bronze was discovered, more advanced building were built, what could I possibly find. Oh, there it goes, I’ll go talk to the king about the big fluffy green looking “clouds”, I believe they should be called trees, and who knows, maybe they will become that, wish me luck dairy! Here I go, and the adventure begins again : D