for a complete syllable (ab, ba, bat, etc.). Yet the script made extensive use of signs that were not phonetic syllables but
conveyed the meanings "god," "city," "country," or "life," "exalted," and the like. The only possible explanation for this
phenomenon was that these signs were remains of an earlier writing method which used pictographs. Akkadian, then, must
have been preceded by another language that used a writing method akin to the Egyptian hieroglyphs.
It was soon obvious that an earlier language, and not lust an earlier form of writing, was involved here. Scholars
found that Akkadian inscriptions and texts made extensive use of loanwords - words borrowed intact from another language (in
the same way that a modern Frenchman would borrow the English word weekend). This was especially true where scientific or
technical terminology was involved, and also in matters dealing with the gods and the heavens.
One of the greatest finds of Akkadian texts was the ruins of a library assembled in Nineveh by Ashurbanipal; Layard and his
colleagues carted away from the site 25,000 tablets, many of which were described by the ancient scribes as copies of "olden
texts." A group of twenty-three tablets ended with the statement: "23rd tablet: language of Shumer not changed." Another text
bore an enigmatic statement by Ashurbanipal himself:
The god of scribes has bestowed on me the gift of the knowledge of his art.
I have been initiated into the secrets of writing.
I can even read the intricate tablets in Shumerian;
I understand the enigmatic words in the stone carvings from the days before the Flood.
The claim by Ashurbanipal that he could read intricate tablets in "Shumerian" and understand the words written on tablets from "the days before the Flood" only increased the mystery. But in January 1869 Jules Oppert suggested to the French Society of Numismatics and Archaeology that recognition be given to the existence of a pre-Akkadian language and people. Pointing out that the early rulers of Mesopotamia proclaimed their legitimacy by taking the title "King of Sumer and Akkad," he suggested that the people be called "Sumerians," and their land, "Sumer."
Except for mispronouncing the name - it should have been Shumer, not Sumer - Oppert was right. Sumer was not a mysterious, distant land, but the early name for southern Mesopotamia, just as the Book of Genesis had clearly stated: The royal cities of Babylon and Akkad and Erech were in "the Land of Shin'ar." (Shinar was the biblical name for Shumer.)
Once the scholars had accepted these conclusions, the flood gates were opened. The Akkadian references to the • "olden texts" became meaningful, and scholars soon realized that tablets with long columns of words were in fact Akkadian-Sumerian lexicons and dictionaries, prepared in Assyria and Babylonia for their own study of the first written language, Sumerian. Without these dictionaries from long ago, we would still be far from being able to read Sumerian. With their aid, a vast literary and cultural treasure opened up. It also became clear that the Sumerian script, originally pictographic and carved in stone in vertical columns, was then turned horizontally and, later on, stylized for wedge writing on soft clay tablets to become the cuneiform writing that was adopted by the Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and other nations of the ancient Near East. The decipherment of the Sumerian language and script, and the realization that the Sumerians and their culture were the fountainhead of the Akkadian - Babylonian-Assyrian achievements, spurred archaeological searches in southern Mesopotamia. All the evidence now indicated that the beginning was there.
The first significant excavation of a Sumerian site was begun in 1877 by French archaeologists; and the finds from this single site were so extensive that others continued to dig there until 1933 without completing the job.
Called by the natives Telloh ("mound"), the site proved to be an early Sumerian city, the very Lagash of whose conquest Sargon of Akkad had boasted. It was indeed a royal city whose rulers bore the same title Sargon had adopted, except that it was in the Sumerian language: EN.SI ("righteous ruler"). Their dynasty had started circa 2900 B.C. and lasted for nearly 650 years. During this time, forty-three ensi's reigned without interruption in Lagash: Their names, genealogies, and lengths of rule were all neatly recorded.
The inscriptions provided much information. Appeals to the gods "to cause the grain sprouts to grow for harvest ... to cause the watered plant to yield grain," attest to the existence of agriculture and irrigation. A cup inscribed in honor of a goddess by "the overseer of the granary" indicated that grains were stored, measured, and traded.
An ensi named Eannatum left an inscription on a clay brick which makes it clear that these Sumerian rulers could assume the throne only with the approval of the gods. He also recorded the conquest of another city, revealing to us the existence of other city-states in Sumer at the beginning of the-third millennium B.C.
Eannatum's successor, Entemena, wrote of building a temple and adorning it with gold and silver, planting gardens, enlarging brick-lined wells. He boasted of building a fortress with watchtowers and facilities for docking ships.
One of the better-known rulers of Lagash was Gudea. He had a large number of statuettes made of himself, all showing him in a votive stance, praying to his gods. This stance was no pretense: Gudea had indeed devoted himself to the adoration of Ningirsu, his principal deity, and to the construction and rebuilding of temples.
His many inscriptions reveal that, in the search for exquisite building materials, he obtained gold from Africa and Anatolia, silver from the Taurus Mountains, cedars from Lebanon, other rare woods from Ararat, copper from the Zagros range, diorite from Egypt, carnelian from Ethiopia, and other materials from lands as yet unidentified by scholars.
When Moses built for the Lord God a "Residence" in the desert, he did so according to very detailed instructions provided by the Lord. When King Solomon built the first Temple in Jerusalem, he did so after the Lord had "given him wisdom." The prophet Ezekiel was shown very detailed plans for the Second Temple "in a Godly vision" by a "person who had the appearance of bronze and who Held in his hand a flaxen string and a measuring rod." Ur-Nammu, ruler of Ur, depicted in an earlier millennium how his god, ordering him to build for him a temple and giving him the pertinent instructions, handed him the measuring rod and rolled string for the job.
Twelve hundred years before Moses, Gudea made the ,same claim. The instructions, he recorded in one very long inscription, were given to him in a vision. "A man that shone like the heaven," by whose side stood "a divine bird," "commanded me to build his temple." This "man," who "from the crown on his head was obviously a god," was later identified as the god Ningirsu. With him was a goddess who "held the tablet of her favorable star of the heavens"; her other hand "held a holy stylus," with which she indicated to Gudea "the favorable planet." A third man, also a god, held in his hand a tablet of precious stone; "the plan of a temple it contained." One of Gudea's statues shows him seated, with this tablet on his knees; on the tablet the divine drawing can clearly be seen.
Wise as he was, Gudea was baffled by these architectural instructions, and he sought the advice of a goddess who could interpret divine messages. She explained to him the meaning of the instructions, the plan's measurements, and the size and shape of the bricks to be used. Gudea then employed a male "diviner, maker of decisions" and a female "searcher of secrets" to locate the site, on the city's outskirts, where the god wished his temple to be built. He then recruited 216,000 people for the construction job.
Gudea's bafflement can readily be understood, for the simple-looking "floor plan" supposedly gave him the necessary information to build a complex ziggurat, rising high by seven stages. Writing in Der Alte Orient in 1900, A-Billerbeck was able to decipher at least part of the divine architectural instructions. The ancient drawing, even on the partly damaged statue, is accompanied at the top by groups of vertical lines whose number diminishes as the space between them increases. The divine architects, it appears, were able to provide, with a single floor plan, accompanied by seven varying scales, the complete instructions for the construction of a seven-stage high-rise temple.