Page 30 - Journeys B1+ (Student Book)
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History The Sumerians
A. Look at these ancient alphabets and discuss
with a partner.
1. Are any letters similar in your alphabet?
2. Which do you think would be the most
difficult to write? Why?
3. Which is your favourite? Why?
A brief history y
A brief histor
of Sumer
of Sumer
The Sumerians lived approximately 5,000
years ago in an area of Mesopotamia, which
corresponds to modern-day western Asia. Many
people say they are the creators of civilisation
as they developed cities. Before this, people
had lived in more isolated farming areas. The
first city was the city of Uruk, which had up to
80,000 people living in it. Sumerian cities had
walls around them, and each had a ziggurat
– a pyramid-like structure – that was used as a
temple. The Ziggurat of Ur was built around 2030
BCE and still stands today.
There were four classes of people living in each
Sumer city: priests, the upper class, the lower
class and slaves. Each family had their own
house: the rich lived in large houses, and poorer
families lived in smaller houses, but these still
usually had three floors. The ground floor was
an open-plan area where animals lived, and
children played. The next two floors were the
living room and bedrooms, as well as an area
to store food. When the weather was good, the
family would cook their meals on the flat roof
and, if the weather was bad, they could cook in
the shelter on the ground floor.
The Sumerian language is the first of which we
have records, and you can find many of these
in the Iraq Museum in Bagdad. It is thought that
isolated - separate, far from each other the written language was mainly used for trade
at first, though it was later used to write laws,
priest - a religious leader literature and poetry.
store - keep It is also thought that a game like draughts, or
roof - the top of a house checkers, was played by the Sumerians, as
trade - the act of buying and selling a 3,000-year-old game was discovered in an
archaeological dig in modern-day Uruk.
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