a historical region in southern Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in what is now the southern part of Iraq.
Until the end of the third millennium B.C., Sumer was inhabited primarily by Sumerians and, to a lesser extent, the Akkadians, an Eastern Semitic people who circa 2400 B.C. founded the city of Agade, from which the northern regions of Sumer, as far as the latitude of the modern city of Baghdad, came to be called Akkad. The time when the Sumerians settled southern Mesopotamia remains obscure; during the period of the Jemdet Nasr archaeological culture and probably during the period of earlier cultures— the Uruk and Ubaid (Ubayd or Obeid) cultures (fifth and fourth millennia B.C.) —the population was Sumerian (seeJEMDET NASR). A class society and state emerged in Sumer circa 3000 B.C. (the Protoliterate period). Researchers refer to the period 2700–2300 B.C., when a genuine writing system—the cuneiform system—had developed, as the Early Dynastic period.
The Early Dynastic period was characterized by numerous city-states, whose centers were vast temple domains, surrounded by large family communities. The chief producers were the community members, who possessed full rights, and temple clients, or dependents who were deprived of the ownership of the means of production. Slavery was a recognized institution. There was a wealthy community elite. The economy was based on river irrigation; floodwaters were collected in reservoirs, a practice that gave rise to continuous wars for head channels and irrigated fields. The military chieftains of individual city-states alternately achieved temporary hegemony over neighboring cities; the earliest well-known chieftains were the rulers of the First Dynasty of Kish and the First Dynasty of Uruk (or Erech) (28th and 27th centuries B.C.) and later rulers of Ur, Lagash, and other city-states. (SeeKISH; URUK; UR; and LAGASH.)
Within the cities a struggle was waged for power over the temple domains between the priestly-clan nobility and the secular palace nobility, which supported the ruler’s claims. The best-known manifestation of this struggle was the reform instituted by Urukagina (Uru’inimgina) in Lagash in the 24th century B.C. (seeURUKAGINA). The last Early Dynastic ruler was Lugal-zaggesi, the ruler of Umma, which bordered on Lagash, and later of Uruk as well (seeLUGAL-ZAGGESI and UMMA). The king of the city of Agade, Sargon I the Ancient (seeSARGON I THE ANCIENT), subjugated Umma, Uruk (Erech), Lagash, and other independent Sumerian states and established the Kingdom of the Four Regions of the World in Mesopotamia (Akkadian dynasty, 24th to 22nd centuries B.C.). The state of Akkad was destroyed by the onslaught of mountain Guti tribes. At the end of the 22nd century B.C., the Guti were driven out by the king of Uruk, Utu-khegal, after whose death power passed to Ur-Nammu, founder of the Third Dynasty of Ur and the Kingdom of Sumer and Akkad. The economy of this state was based on vast royal domains administered by an enormous apparatus of officials and overseers. Workers were reduced, in effect, to the status of slaves. The economic, political, and cultural life of the communities died out. Under the Third Dynasty of Ur, the pantheon of gods was unified, and kings were deified during their lifetimes. The idea of man’s slavelike dependence on the gods was inculcated. Circa 2000 B.C., the Third Dynasty of Ur fell as a result of the incursion of the Amor-ites, Western Semitic stock raisers, and the Elamites, a mountain people. (For information on Sumerian culture, seeBABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN CULTURE.)
I. M. D’IAKONOV