Sumer

Sumer was one of the oldest, if not the first as is often claimed, human civilizations in the world—beginning about 4000 BC—and credited most of all with the the most transforming of all human intellectual creations: writing. Sumer is not to be understood as a country for it preceded the time when the idea of a nation or kingdom was still, at best, nascent and amorphous. Sumerian culture was centered around the floodplains of Mesopotamia (in what is the far south-east of modern Iraq) and embracing the cities of Eridu (the oldest), Uruk (Erech of the Old Testament), Ur (later the home of Abraham), Umma, Lagash, Shuruppak, Kish, and Nippur (which might be thought of as its "national" center). Sumer is not mentioned in the Bible though, as evident from above, several of its cities—in their later states—are.

Further Reading & Resources:

The Sumerians - Fall of the First Cities. Youtube 2hr 28min. N

John Robertson, Iraq: A History. London: Oneworld, 2015.

Paul Collins, The Sumerians. The Ancients (acast.com), July 2022. 52 mins.
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