m a civilization and historical region in southern

Mesopotamia, modern Iraq

m known as the Cradle of Civilization
m began with the first settlement of Eridu in the Ubaid
period through the Uruk period and the Dynasty
periods until the rise of Babylonia
m the birthplace of writing, the wheel, agriculture, the
arch and irrigation
m he first settlement in southern Mesopotamia was
Eridu.
m he Sumerians claimed that their civilization had
been brought to the city of Eridu by their God Enki or
by his advisor Adapa U-an.
m he first people at Eridu brought with them the
Samarran culture from northern Mesopotamia and are
identified with the Ubaid period.
m After a flood occurred in Sumer, kingship is said to
have resumed at Kish.
m Kish is occupied beginning in the Jemdet Nasr period
m he Sumerian king list states that it was the first city to
have kings following the deluge, beginning with
Jushur.
m he 12th king of Kish, Etana, is noted as "the
shepherd, who ascended to heaven and consolidated
all the foreign countries".
m Among the 11 kings, a number of Semitic Akkadian
names are recorded, suggesting that these people
made up a sizable proportion of the population of this
northern city.
m he 21st king of Kish on the list, Enmebaragesi, said to
have captured the weapons of Elam. He and his son
Aga of Kish are portrayed as contemporary rivals of
Dumuzid, the Fisherman and Gilgamesh, early rulers
of Uruk. From this time, for a period Uruk seems to
have had some kind of hegemony in Sumer. his
illustrates a weakness of the Sumerian kinglist.
m Uruk played a leading role in the early urbanization of
Sumer.
m founded by Enmerkar, who brought the official
kingship with him, according to the Sumerian king
list.
m he epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, constructs
the Eanna temple for the goddess Inanna in the Eanna
District of Uruk.
m In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh builds the city
wall around Uruk and is king of the city.
m he most famous monarch of this dynasty was
Dumuzid's successor Gilgamesh, hero of the Epic of
Gilgamesh, where he is called Lugalbanda's son.
m Mesh-Ane-pada is the first king of Ur listed on the
king list, and he defeated Lugalkildu of Uruk. He also
seems to have subjected Kish, thereafter assuming the
title "King of Kish" for himself.
m Eventually, the kings of Ur became the effective rulers
of Sumer, in the first dynasty of Ur.
m he first dynasty was ended by an attack of Sargon of
Akkad around 2340 BC.
m he first empires known to history was that of
Eannatum of Lagash, who annexed practically all of
Sumer, including Kish, Uruk, Ur, and Larsa, and
reduced to tribute the city-state of Umma, arch-rival
of Lagash.
m Later, Lugal-Zage-Si, the priest-king of Umma,
overthrew the primacy of the Lagash dynasty in the
area, then conquered Uruk, making it his capital, and
claimed an empire extending from the Persian Gulf to
the Mediterranean. He was the last ethnically
Sumerian king before the arrival of the Semitic king,
Sargon of Akkad.
m he name "Ebla" means "White Rock", and refers to
the limestone outcrop on which the city was built.
m Ebla's most powerful king was listed as Ebrium, or
Ibrium, who concluded the so-called "reaty with
Ashur", which offered the Assyrian king udia the use
of trading post officially controlled by Ebla.
m he fifth and last king of Ebla during this period was
Ebrium's son, Ibbi-Sipish, the first to succeed in a
dynastic line.
m he reign of Ibbi-Sipish was considered a time of
inordinate prosperity, in part because the king was
given to frequent travel abroad. It was recorded both in
Ebla and Aleppo that he concluded specific treaties
with neighboring Armi, as Aleppo was called at the
time.
m Ebla was a major commercial center.
m Its major commercial rival was Mari.
m he city's main articles of trade were probably timber
from the nearby mountains and textiles.
m he artistic style at Ebla may have influenced the
quality work of the following Akkadian empire.
m he 1st Dynasty was founded by a king named Meni,
or, in Greek, Menes, whom Manetho describes as
Demigods of Manes.
m he first historical dynasty is brought into being by
the king or pharaoh.
m he unifying of Upper and Lower Egypt into a single
kingdom is the event pointed to by the ancient
Egyptians themselves as the beginning of their
civilization.
m Horus Narmer was the one who conquered the Nile
delta and united Upper and Lower Egypt.
A stone vessel found at Saqqara lists the Nebti-names of
the 4 last kings of the 1st Dynasty.
m Horuses Den, Anedjib, Semerkhet and Qa'a are the last
four kings of Manetho's 1st dynasty.
m Den fought one battle against the "east". His reign is also
marked by reforms in the administration and by the
addition of a second title, the Nebti-name, to the royal
titulary.
m According to Manetho, a very great calamity befell Egypt
during the reign of Semerkhet, the penultimate king of the
1st Dynasty. His reign may have been illegitimate.
m Qa'a was the last king whose successors abandoned
absolutism. hese change prompted Manetho to consider
Qa'a as the last king of the 1st Dynasty.
m he strongest period of the dynasty is usually defined
to be the reign of King Den, the 5th king.
m o the kingship, 3 new titles were added: "wo ladies",
"Golden Horus", "nesw-bit".
m Papyrus was invented.
m the science that studies all the celestial bodies in the
universe.
m includes the study of planets and their satellites,
comets and meteors, stars and interstellar matter, star
systems known as galaxies, and clusters of galaxies.
m developed from simple observations about the
movement of the Sun and Moon.
m Ancient astronomers had a very practical reason for
studying the skies.
m housands of years ago, changes in the heavens were
the only available clocks and calendars.
m he stars could also be used for navigation.
m he Egyptians adopted a calendar with a year that was
365 days long.
m Egyptians used the rising of the star Sirius to mark the
time when the Nile River could be expected to flood.
m he Maya of Central America kept a continuous record
of days from day zero.heir year consisted of 18
months, each 20 days long, plus one 5-day month to
total 365 days.
m In the British Isles, ancient people used stone circles to
keep track of the motions of the Sun and Moon.
m Ancient astronomers also observed five bright planets:
Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). hese
bodies, together with the Sun and Moon, move relative
to the stars within a narrow band called the zodiac.
m In ancient times, people imagined the planetary
motions were connected with their own fortunes; this
belief, called astrology.
m Ancient Chinese, Egyptians, Greeks, and others gave
names to patterns of stars. We call these patterns
constellations.
m from the Late Latin word Alphabetum, which in turn
originated in the Ancient Greek, Alphabetos, from
alpha and beta
m here are dozens of alphabets in use today, the most
common being Latin, deriving from the first true
alphabet, Greek.
m started in ancient Egypt
m By 2700 BC, Egyptian writing had a set of some 24
hieroglyphs which are called uniliterals.
m In the Middle Bronze Age, an "alphabetic" system, the
Proto-Sinaitic script developed in the Sinai peninsula
during the 19th century BC, by Canaanite workers in
the Egyptian turquoise mines.
m his script had no characters representing vowels. An
alphabetic cuneiform script with 30 signs including 3
which indicate the following vowel was invented in
Ugarit before the 15th century BC.
m he Proto-Sinatic or Proto-Canaanite script developed
into the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, which was refined
into the Phoenician alphabet.
m he Phoenician script was probably the first phonemic
script and it contained only about two dozen distinct
letters.
m he script was spread by the Phoenicians, across the
Mediterranean.
m In Greece, the script was modified to add the vowels,
giving rise to the ancestor of all alphabets in the West.
m Another notable script is Elder Futhark, which was
believed to have evolved out of one of the Old Italic
alphabets.
m Elder Futhark gave rise to a variety of alphabets known
collectively as the Runic alphabets.
m he Glagolitic alphabet was the initial script of the
liturgical language, the basis of the Cyrillic alphabet.
m he Cyrillic alphabet is one of the most widely used
modern alphabets.
m he letters were influenced by the Greek alphabet and
the Hebrew alphabet.
m Most alphabetic scripts of India and Eastern Asia were
descended from the Brahmi script, which believed to be a
descendant of Aramaic.
m In Korea, the Hangul alphabet was created by Sejong the
Great.
m Mongolian Phagspa script aided the creation of a phonetic
script suited to the spoken Korean language.
m Mongolian Phagspa script was in turn derived from the
Brahmi script.
m European alphabets, especially Latin and Cyrillic, have
been adapted for many languages of Asia. Arabic is also
widely used, sometimes as an abjad and sometimes as a
complete alphabet.
m the first true empire in world history.
m King Sargon was the first ruler to unite the people of
Southern Mesopotamia.
m He established a strong, centralized state.
m he Akkadian language became the Õ

 for
commerce and diplomacy throughout Mesopotamia.
m Sargon has often been cited as the first ruler of a
combined empire of Akkad and Sumer.
m Sargon died at a very old age after putting the grounds
of the military traditions of Mesopotamia.
m After the first kings of the dynasty had borne the title
of king of Kish, Naram-Sin assumed the title "king of
the four quarters of the earth." He also assumed the
title of "god of Akkad.Dz
m he king saw himself in the role played by the local
divinity as protector of the city and guarantor of its
well-being.
m he empire was bound together by roads, along which
there was a regular postal service.
m Clay seals that took the place of stamps bear the names of
Sargon and his son.
m he war with the Armeni people of Ararat contributed to
the collapse of the Akkadian kingdom.
m he Akkadian Empire was already starting to crumble
during the reign of Shar-kali-sharri, the son of Naram-Sin,
the empire collapsed outright from the invasion of
barbarians of the Zagros Mountains known as "Gutians.Dz
m Some speculate that a bad harvest, climactic change or
even a giant meteor contributed to the decline.
m http://www.homsonline.com/EN/Citeis/Ebla.htm
m http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer
m http://www.ancient-egypt.org/index.html
m http://www.angelfire.com/nt/Gilgamesh/akkadian.ht
ml