For nearly 5000 years. the scorching sands of the lraqi desert
have held relics of the oldest known civilisation -
the Sumerian.
Our world owes the Sumerians everything.
They invented writing and the wheel.
They divided time into minutes and seconds.
They tamed nature and built gigantic cities.
They loved culture and the arts.
Their caravans crossed the desert. opening up the first trade routes.
Their stories inspired our founding myths.
and their memory lives on in the Old Testament.
They wrote the history of the birth pangs of mankind.
Yet. 4000 years ago. this brilliant civilisation died out.
For a long time. its very existence remained a mystery.
But today. the desert sands are at last yielding
some of the secrets of this fascinating civilisation.
ln southern lraq. a crushing silence hangs over the dunes.
The temperature is around the 50-degree mark.
The climate has not changed for thousands of years.
Yet men and women once lived here.
Sandwiched between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf
is the region that the Greek historian Polybius called Mesopotamia -
"the country between two rivers" .
lt was irrigated by the Euphrates and the Tigris.
ln the mid-1 9th century.
all we knew of ancient Mesopotamia was what we read in the Bible.
French and British archaeologists competed to discover more.
and their finds were amazing.
They uncovered an unsuspected buried past.
Mesopotamia had once been the cradle of a civilisation.
But what was so special about these finds?
And why did a civilisation develop in that part of the world at all?
(Speaks French ) The discovery just 1 50 years ago of the Syro-Mesopotamian civilisation
was exceptional because we gradually realised
that it was an extremely diversified. extremely developed civilisation.
lt had known many different ways of life.
had gone through many social experiments
in a world we were not aware of.
We believed everything began with Greek civilisation
but we saw there had been something else before
that influenced the development of classical civilisation.
The history of the Syro-Mesopotamian civilisation
matches the Syro-Mesopotamian geographical region.
the area irrigated by the Tigris and the Euphrates.
But water was not only important for survival. farming and people.
it was also important for transport.
lt was an area where waterways became shipping routes.
And in a country like Mesopotamia.
which had agriculture but was short of wood. stone
and of metal-bearing ore when bronze or copper were needed.
in a country like this one.
the river became the preferred shipping route
between two complementary economic spheres.
Our journey begins in the mountains of Armenia.
where the Tigris and the Euphrates both rise.
Fed by melting snow from the high plateaus.
the rivers tumble down the mountain slopes.
tearing away tonnes of silt as they go.
They run parallel for over 2000 kilometres
then merge to form the Shatt al-Arab waterway.
The rivers are calmer in the wide desert plains to the south.
They deposit fertile soil all the way to the Persian Gulf.
But the Tigris and the Euphrates could also be a terrible enemy.
The spring floods would sweep away everything in their path.
How were people able to settle a land
that was so vulnerable to the whims of nature?
That question takes us to Baghdad.
the lraqi capital on the banks of the Tigris.
ln the narrow streets of the Old City.
the visitor is steeped in the scents of the Orient.
Dense crowds and a cheerful tumult are all around.
ln the colourful bazaars. lraqis display their ancient talent for commerce.
The heritage of the Sumerian civilisation is everywhere.
The markets have sold the same varieties of fruit and vegetables
for thousands of years.
ln the cool of the arcades. you can buy pomegranates from northern lraq
and the yoghurt that the Mesopotamians were specially fond of.
On street corners. there are earthenware pots of drinking water.
The water beads on the surface of the jar
and. in evaporating. keeps the water within cool -
a Sumerian invention 5000 years old.
But who were the Sumerians?
Where did they come from?
On the fertile plateaus of Anatolia.
several thousand kilometres from Mesopotamia.
archaeologists have solved one part of the Sumerian puzzle.
They discovered what made it possible for the population to expand
and found a civilisation.
lt was einkorn wheat. which grows wild throughout eastern Turkey.
People have lived in this fertile region at the crossroads of great migration routes
since time immemorial.
Tribes of hunter-gatherers found everything here
that they needed for their survival.
The Kurds keep up the age-old traditions.
Every day. the women cook sac ekmegi, a wheat pancake
that forms the whole family's staple diet.
ln 1 958. archaeologists discovered the 9000-year-old ruins
of the village of Çayönu.
3500 years before Sumer. people settled on this fertile land.
They didn't yet make ceramics. but they were builders.
Their houses had mud-brick walls on dry-stone foundations.
One day. the people of Çayönu made a discovery
that would change the world.
When this discovery was made around 1 5.000 BC
in the hilly region where the Euphrates flows into Syria.
when the very unusual situation arose
of wheat growing wild all over the hills.
allowing people to settle down in one place.
it was something entirely new.
When they discovered that wheat produced seeds
that they could use.
and above all that they could store.
the storage of food became very important.
lt meant that instead of having to look for food
within three days of killing an animal.
people could store food for several weeks or months.
From then on. people s lives changed.
Realising they had this crop. they remained where it was.
Wheat could only be harvested at a certain time of the year
but it couldn t be transported
so after the harvest it had to be stored
and protected from anyone who might want to take it.
So the settlement of that region at that time
happened for a definite reason.
to store food that could only be harvested at a given time.
The human mind played a fundamental part in this.
We may call it "an accidental discovery"
but l think the human mind is constantly observing. discovering.
trying to understand recurrent phenomena.
until it can go beyond its limits on its own
and do something new.
That s how agriculture was born.
As they set about mastering their environment.
these first farmers were full of invention.
They developed their tools. they bettered their daily lives...
and they left behind a legacy of immense importance - writing.
Cereals were the main source of wealth for the Sumerian civilisation.
This alabaster vase. more than a metre high.
depicts the Sumerians' gratitude towards nature.
lt also expresses their religious fervour.
The vegetable and animal worlds are represented
as ears of wheat and herds of sheep.
A procession of men bearing offerings approaches the sanctuary of lnanna.
the goddess of heaven and earth.
The pilgrims are welcomed by the high priest in his robes.
Thanks to these successes in agriculture. the population grew.
The first groups began to colonise land along the rivers
all the way to the great plain of Mesopotamia.
The main preoccupation of the farmers
was finding ways to boost their production of crops.
This clay tablet shows a device for more economical sowing.
The seeds are deposited via a funnel
that ensures regular. even distribution in the furrows.
The Sumerians' secret lay in taming their unpredictable sources of water.
For in Mesopotamia. the balance between man and nature
could easily tip against man.
To take control of their water. the Sumerians invented the wheel.
and they dug hundreds of kilometres of irrigation canals. reservoirs and dams.
lrrigation was the mainstay of the Sumerian civilisation.
By subduing the turbulent waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates.
they turned the power of nature to their own use.
The farmers reaped the benefits.
with bountiful crops from hundreds of thousands of hectares of fertilised land.
ln some areas. wheat. millet and barley were harvested twice a year.
ln the oases along the irrigation canals.
millions of palm trees grew as far as the eye could see.
lt's the same when the Tigris and the Euphrates merge
to form a single body of water. the Shatt al-Arab waterway.
On each side of the Shatt al-Arab. an agricultural province prospers
thanks to the bountiful water from the two great rivers.
Only barges can reach the heart of this maze of tall reeds.
The Sumerians built fishing villages here.
The people still live as their ancestors did.
They still build reed huts just like the ones seen in ancient bas-reliefs.
The huts stand on a foundation of layers of soil. interlaced with braided reeds.
The floor. roof and walls are made of interwoven stalks.
The supporting columns and beams - very strong -
are made of tightly packed reed bundles.
5000 years ago.
40.000 fishermen and farmers - an entire people -
lived in the marshland around the port city of Ur.
ln their frail reed boats.
they had made a huge area habitable. one metre at a time.
The first archaeologists to see the ruins of Ur
must have been speechless.
Before them lay narrow streets. squares.
and the remains of houses. granaries and temples.
5000 years ago. when Western Europe was still in the Stone Age.
this was a city of 34.000 people.
When they built cities like Ur.
the Mesopotamians were shaping the world in their own image.
The transformation of the world and the environment
by the people of Mesopotamia
is a fundamental phenomenon.
Not only did they build villages.
they also used the land for farming.
Later. when they built cities.
they didn t simply let them expand.
they also developed the region.
And they developed a way of life that dominated nature.
which is absolutely amazing.
They dominated their natural world to make it serve their own survival.
Made to last with fired bricks covered in tar.
the Ziggurat of Ur is impressive.
lt's estimated that it took 1 500 men five years just to build its base.
Farmers up to 20 kilometres away could see the house of their god.
Drawings by the British archaeologist Leonard Woolley in the early 20th century
help us imagine what Ur looked like 4000 years ago.
This immense city was surrounded by 4000 hectares of cereal fields.
Traders from the Persian Gulf sailed into its harbour
and exported food to the Arabian peninsula.
several thousand kilometres away.
The daily life of the city centred on the temple.
where the people prayed. and political and economic decisions were taken.
Behind an 8-metre-high city wall. the houses were haphazardly piled up.
The streets were narrow. winding and unsewered.
Garbage was burnt outside the house. when it wasn't simply left on the road.
Three-storey buildings jostled with single-storey ones
and none of the houses was aligned with its neighbours.
Their facades had no openings. just low doors and a few air vents
in order to keep the interior cool and to keep the dust clouds out.
For a long time. little was known of life in Ur.
Leonard Woolley had spent years excavating the ruins
when. in 1 926. he discovered what was dubbed "the death pit" .
lt was the tomb of Queen Puabi -
and of more than 20 servants and soldiers
who were sacrificed and buried with her in order to serve her in the afterlife.
Among the skeletons covered in gold and silver. Woolley found this...
the so-called 'Standard of Ur'.
lts mother-of-pearl figures show Sumerian fishermen. slaves and soldiers
walking for eternity against a sky of lapis lazuli.
Like stills from a movie.
its amazingly detailed panels show war chariots crushing the enemy...
or the frozen smile of a scribe having a drink with friends.
ln the arid desert that now surrounds the site.
the traces of the past are still visible.
When they found the ruins of Sumerian dams on this barren land.
several kilometres from the rivers.
1 9th-century archaeologists faced an enigma.
How had people lived in this desert. so far from the source of water?
The desert city of Nippur. 250 kilometres south of Baghdad.
The ruins of a temple rise above the dunes.
lt was during excavations of this site
that archaeologists found the key to the enigma.
This clay tablet is a map of Nippur.
lt shows the exact locations of the temple and the city wall.
The Euphrates ran to the west of the wall.
lt had been diverted to supply the city with water.
The cities had therefore been built beside the water.
But changes in landform and the sheer force of the floodwaters
changed the course of the rivers.
Satellite images help us reconstruct the map of this part of the world
as it was 5000 years ago.
Nippur. Uruk. Girsu and Ur.
the main cities of the Sumerian civilisation.
evolved in a vastly different landscape.
At that time. the Tigris and the Euphrates ran through much of Mesopotamia
as a single river.
They separated only downstream from Nippur.
Sunrise over ancient Ur.
lt is midsummer and the day will be scorchingly hot.
Slowly. the city comes to life.
People slept on their rooftops.
which were much cooler at night than the small rooms of their houses.
Ancient texts listing real estate sales
show that the houses' floor space was less than 70 square metres.
ln the early morning. people come onto the streets.
Merchants try to entice the passers-by.
They try to do business while the day is still cool.
( MlDDLE-EASTERN MUSlC )
ln the courtyards of some houses. men relax and drink beer through straws.
Several ancient texts refer to the Sumerian temperament.
The Sumerians' exposure to the hazards of nature
made them conscious of the brevity and fragility of life.
ln the streets. men often wear kaunakes.
wrap-around sheepskin skirts that go from the waist to the knees or ankles.
depending on the season and fashion.
The wives of dignitaries wear colourful. lighter garments.
Both men and women wear jewellery - earrings. bracelets and necklaces.
Archaeologists have discovered
that forgers operating in the walled city could replicate gold and turquoise.
People who couldn't afford real jewellery could buy and wear fancy fakes.
This neighbourhood was home to merchants. shopkeepers and traders.
The homes of the scribes. masons and carpenters. and the slaves' houses.
were all within a short distance of the temple.
The treasures discovered in Ur are enormously important for archaeologists.
They reveal Sumerian customs
and they demonstrate the quality of the craftsmen's work.
Sumerian goldsmiths had mastered the techniques
of chiselling and soldering gold.
The bull's head on this harp has eyes of lapis lazuli turned towards eternity.
The harp itself is decorated with shells and precious stones.
For their last journey with their queen.
the servants wore a spectacular diadem of gold bands and precious stones.
A braiding of beech leaves covered the brow.
and above the head rose three golden flowers.
The gold. used also in cups and ceremonial weapons.
as well as the lapis lazuli and turquoise. all came from the East.
The mother-of-pearl and the shells came from Bahrain.
The raw material used to make this billygoat
shows how prosperous Ur was and how thriving its trade.
Archaeologists have traced the origins of some of its materials.
To get the lapis lazuli. the Sumerians sent their caravans
3000 kilometres to the Badakhstan mountains.
in what is now northern Pakistan.
Peshawar. the merchant city in northern Pakistan.
This rough lapis lazuli has been shipped from Afghanistan.
Splashing water on the stones brings out the intense blue
that fascinated the Sumerians.
Archaeologists have established
that the lapis lazuli trade began with the Sumerian civilisation.
3500 years before Christ.
3000 years before the Silk Road.
the Sumerians had opened up the trade routes that crisscrossed the East.
With the development of trade.
the Sumerians invented the concept of the contract.
Cylindrical stone seals were carved and finely engraved
with a negative bas-relief.
When a contract was entered into. or goods needed to be identified.
the cylinder was rolled in clay.
The mark it left on the clay sealed the transaction.
That was also how the Sumerians. who held contracts in great esteem.
began to make laws.
Very few legal texts from the Sumerian period have been found.
But in the early 20th century. in the Persian city of Susa.
archaeologists discovered the Stone of Hammurabi. king of Babylon.
lt had been seized as a trophy by the Elamites.
who went on a rampage through Mesopotamia in the 1 2th century BC.
Hammurabi had the legal code that bears his name drawn up in 1 694 BC.
lt enshrined all of Sumeria's laws.
and all 282 articles were carved on the stone.
They mostly relate to aspects of everyday life -
to commercial transactions. marriages and inheritances.
As a judge. the king ordered investigations.
protected the people from abuse by officials
and oversaw great public works.
The Code of Hammurabi proves
that the Sumerians were precursors in many areas.
On the back of the stone. article 1 96 warns " An eye for an eye" .
a principle repeated in the Law of Moses.
To build their garden of Eden.
the Sumerians roamed the world in search of commodities they lacked.
For example. there was no wood in the Mesopotamian desert.
To get this rare commodity. which they used exclusively as a building material.
the Sumerians ventured to Syria. Turkey and the mountains of Lebanon.
Today. cedar forests are few and far between.
After the Sumerians. all the ancient civilisations used cedar
and gradually they cut down almost all the cedar trees.
Legend has it that some cedars are over 4000 years old
and grew in civilisations now vanished.
They could testify to the efforts of the Sumerians.
Bas-reliefs found in temples
show Sumerian loggers felling 1 00-year-old cedars
and loading them on to their ships before sailing down the Euphrates.
These expeditions lasted several months
and show the enormous achievement of a people living in a hostile environment.
Some discoveries made by the Sumerians 5000 years ago
are still used by lraqis today.
Tar. for instance. is used for waterproofing boat hulls
and sealing the roofs of houses.
This is Hit. a small town on the banks of the Euphrates.
600 kilometres from the Sumerian cities.
Tar and sulphur erupt from the earth here.
Tar floats. and archaeologists believe
the Sumerians could have collected tar from the riverbanks
as it floated down the Euphrates.
The people of Hit still collect tar
by methods that haven't changed for thousands of years.
Before taking the tar out of the water. you have to coat your hands in sand.
The Sumerians too used tar for waterproofing boats.
but they mainly used it for sealing bricks
and for waterproofing the foundations of public buildings.
This precaution reflected a major event in their lives - floods.
George Smith. a 1 9th-century Londoner
who studied Sumerian tablets in the British Museum.
deciphered some legends about devastating floods.
WOMAN: The wickedness of men so displeased En-Lil. the supreme god.
that he decided to swallow man up in a huge flood.
Enki, protector of men. pleaded with him. but in vain.
So Enki decided to preserve a remnant.
He asked Ziusudra to build an ark
and to take animals in pairs on board with him.
After six days and nights of storm. the world was submerged.
On the seventh day. the storm abated.
Ziusudra released a dove that. finding no resting place. returned to him.
On the eighth day. he released a raven that never returned.
Mankind was saved.
We discovered the Mesopotamian myths
only a little over 1 00 years ago.
particularly in texts from the library of Nineveh.
in particular. the Deluge.
ln fact. all of Western civilisation. all of Western Christianity.
is steeped in Biblical texts
and in those texts are myths
that come directly from the Mesopotamian world.
And the whole history of Western Christianity
is dominated by these myths.
understood or not. often re-interpreted
perhaps not always understood for the deep meaning they held
for the people of Mesopotamia.
But our civilisation is suffused by these myths.
The gods instilled fear and respect.
They symbolised the Sumerians' mistrust of nature.
Each divinity in their pantheon played a role.
Each one ruled over a city.
En-Lil. god of wind. ruled over air and earth in the city of Nippur.
Enki. god of water and the world. was worshipped in Eridu.
Udu. god of justice and truth. was worshipped in Larsa.
lnanna. known to the Babylonians as the fertility goddess lshtar.
was worshipped in Uruk.
She inspired both love and war.
To the Greeks. she was Aphrodite. and to the Romans. Venus.
The smooth curves of this alabaster statue
reflect the skill of the Sumerian artists.
Their art and their religious devotion are highlighted by the statues' finish
and their expressive faces.
The Mesopotamians religious feelings are not easy to grasp.
We find temples. texts full of myths and rituals.
namely. what had to be done during religious ceremonies.
But their deeper feelings are not well understood or explained.
ln Mesopotamian culture
there is a general concept of divine power.
There are forces which men have to serve
and with which they must come to terms.
Make a compact with them.
Their religion was a religion of man serving God.
What did it mean?
lt ensured that life ran smoothly.
that there would be food and drink for the day s meals.
that one would have fine clothes befitting one s status.
and wear necklaces or not. depending on the occasion.
From time to time. they paraded their gods through the town
and returned them to the temple.
From the facts we know. that s what the Mesopotamian religion was like.
Prayer was part of daily life for the Sumerians.
The upkeep and ceremonies of the temple
required a large body of priests and other staff.
and every day the faithful brought their offerings.
The archives of the city of Uruk
describe the daily meal of its four main gods as follows:
250 loaves of bread. 1 000 tarts. 50 sheep.
eight lambs. two oxen and one calf -
celestial food that was offered to the gods
and later fed the temple's 1 200 priests and staff.
The scribes recorded the hopes of the Sumerians.
ln exchange for their devotion. their virtue.
and their respect for the established order.
the Sumerians hoped for eternal life in the next world.
The never-ending struggle to tame nature
made them conscious of the fragility of life
and inspired their most beautiful myths.
Gilgamesh. the fifth king of Uruk in the third millennium BC.
was a historical figure.
He was the Sumerians' hero.
and the stories of his adventures were famous throughout Mesopotamia.
They sum up the history of the Sumerian civilisation.
Gilgamesh was a just king and a great builder
who also challenged the gods.
He tamed savages. and he went to the distant forest of fragrant cedar
to confront the fire-eating monster Humbaba.
During their fight. Gilgamesh cut off the monster's head.
He returned to Uruk in triumph.
To punish him. the goddess lnanna sent the celestial bull to destroy the city.
The bull dried up the meadows and rivers. and opened deep crevices
into which people fell to their deaths.
The Sumerians' vision was prophetic.
After ruling Mesopotamia for 3000 years.
their civilisation. attacked from all sides. collapsed.
The pomp of their cities was over. and so was their influence.
The irrigation canals gradually dried up.
the walls of the houses collapsed. the temples themselves collapsed
under the combined assault of the sun. the rain and the wind.
The clay of the bricks turned to dust.
leaving only a shapeless mass above the dunes.
the last vestiges of a civilisation's grandeur.
How can we explain the complete disappearance
of such a brilliant civilisation?
Or the decadence of a people who left behind only ruins
and the remains of looted temples?
Can we speak of "a decline "?
To a certain extent. yes. but a better word might be sclerosis.
All these great discoveries made in the fourth millennium BC.
all their philosophy displayed in religious representations
or within the framework of religion...
all that changed. and in the long term.
they realised there was less and less freedom
to express a number of things.
For instance. Mesopotamian art was infinitely more diverse.
more flourishing. in the third millennium BC
than it was in the first.
What happened around 1 200 BC? They discovered iron.
lron was an asset. lt was better than copper
and easier to work. even if at a higher temperature.
lt had many applications. so it was an improvement.
But Mesopotamia had little iron ore.
The question of a source arose. as they had to go much further.
Therefore. the regions which had iron ore
began to play a much bigger part than Mesopotamia.
For almost a century. in the tablets archived in the temples.
scribes patiently recorded the decline of crop yields.
From 2350 BC. wheat production fell by 40% .
Only barley production remained stable.
How could a people who had developed such advanced techniques
be powerless to keep their resources from dwindling?
For decades. archaeologists pored over texts for an answer.
But the answer lay in the field.
The irrigation system made the Sumerians powerful.
but it also contributed to their destruction.
As 3000 years of irrigation water evaporated.
the salt buried deep in the land rose to the surface.
ln the end. a white cover of salt. hardened by the sun.
made the soil sterile. and the wheat could no longer grow.
The local people are still plagued by this problem today.
ln some areas. the earth is cracked. lt resembles uncultivated desert.
This is what the great fields around the cities looked like.
Faced with climate change and desertification.
Sumerian farmers could find no solution.
But can one speak of the decline of a civilisation?
To talk of a decline is not correct.
lt was a power that developed.
a civilisation that reached its peak after producing wonderful things.
These things and its philosophy never perished.
Their thought was transmitted.
The Greeks and Persians. who were very well educated.
like the Mesopotamians. well. l mean. certain elites.
transmitted their science and their knowledge.
They passed through Anatolia towards the Greek world
and through the Greeks. to the whole Mediterranean.
lt inherited the achievements of the Mesopotamian civilisation
without realising their source was the Mesopotamian civilisation.
The weakened Sumerian cities were unable to face the economic competition
from the large cities to the north of Mesopotamia.
Other civilisations. inspired by the Sumerian example.
planted their standards on the conquered land.
By 2004 BC. Sumer was finished.
The Assyrians dominated Mesopotamia.
The epic of Babylon could now begin.
Beneath the pitiless sun.
the Sumerians' wealth returned to the dust.
lt's their story that the Bible tells.
Like the builders of the Tower of Babel.
the men and women of Sumer were scattered upon the face of all the earth.
The water the Sumerians feared brought on their destruction.
Having controlled the floods of the Tigris and the Euphrates.
having drawn their life-force from their waters.
the Sumerians were swept away by history. and disappeared.
They left mankind the legacy of their wealth.
traces of their creative genius
and a sense of the extraordinary fragility of civilisations.
Subtitles SBS Australia 2007