Ancient Sumer

This teachers’ pack has been created to encourage and enable teachers of children at Key
Stage 2 to choose Ancient Sumer for their World History Study.
Ancient Sumer was the first recorded civilisation in world history. It flourished in what is
now southern Iraq from 3800 to 2000 BCE. As the cradle of world civilisation its influence is
still felt today.
With the materials in this teachers’ pack—particularly the five prepared lessons—even a
newcomer to the subject of Ancient Sumer can start teaching it and the children will enjoy
learning it. The materials can be downloaded in full from [Link]/teachers/
[Link]

CONTENTS
Introduction............................................................................................ 1
Who were the Sumerians and what did they do for us?....................... 1
List of prepared lessons.......................................................................... 2
Suggested further lessons...................................................................... 2
Cross-curricular links............................................................................. 2
Web links................................................................................................. 3
Bibliography ........................................................................................... 3
ICT requirements.................................................................................... 4
Feedback.................................................................................................. 4
A message from Ancient Sumer............................................................. 4
Map.......................................................................................................... 5
The Enheduanna Society........................................................................ 6

This teachers’ pack was produced as part of the Discover Mespotamia through Storytelling
project 2009-2012, funded mainly by the Heritage Lottery Fund. It was devised by Simon
Clemenson, a class-room teacher at Elmgrove School in Harrow who studied
the Sumerian and Akkadian languages and cuneiform script at Birkbeck College
in the University of London. It was edited by Fran
Hazelton. The design and layout are by InterOffice
Communications. It is published by the Enheduanna
Society, an education charity with a special interest
in Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq).
 Ancient Sumer
Teachers’ Pack

Introduction The Sumerians left an extensive ‘King List’ listing

all the kings of Sumer in chronological order. The
This pack is intended to help teachers plan a
accuracy of the dates in the ‘King List’ leaves much to
sequence of lessons on Ancient Sumer. As a means to
be desired and some kings were recorded as living for
getting started, five lesson plans are included, with
28,000 years! However, the ‘King List’ shows that the
accompanying resources and Smart Notebook (SNB)
Sumerians had a strong sense of their own identity
files. The lessons can be downloaded from www.
and history. They were city people and their kings
[Link]/teachers/[Link]
ruled over city states.
These five lesson plans give a taster of the sorts of
lessons that can be developed about Ancient Sumer Eridu: a starting point
and the Sumerians. Suggestions are given for further The earliest Sumerian ‘city’ that we know of is a place
lessons and on how to make links with other subjects called Eridu. Many cities were built in Sumer, all of
in the National Curriculum. We hope that whatever them containing important temples. Eridu was the
extra research you may choose to undertake you will mythological home of Enki, the god of fresh water
find both enjoyable and inspiring. and one of the most important of all the Sumerian
gods. Other cities included Kish, Uruk, Lagash,
Who were the Sumerians and what did Sippar, Nippur and Ur.
they do for us? The city of Ur was excavated by the British
With a language unrelated to others of their time, archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley between 1922 and
the Sumerians are an enigma. It is not known where 1934. He discovered the “Death Pit” of Ur and many
they came from. Some believe they always lived in items that can be seen at the British Museum in its
the south of the area later known as Mesopotamia. extensive collection of material culture left by the
Others believe they came across the sea. The bound- Sumerians. These include:
aries of Mesopotamia are roughly those of modern- • The Standard of
day Iraq and part of eastern Syria. Ur
Regardless of their origins, the Sumerians were • The Ram in
the first, and arguably the most influential, of all a Thicket
the ancient civilisations. Their knowledge has been (illustrated)
passed down millennia. It is from their system
of counting that we have 24 hours in a day and 60 • The Queen’s Lyre
minutes in the hour. • Gold headdresses
They also developed the earliest system of writing, • The Royal Game
cuneiform script. This began as a pictographic system of Ur
in which each cuneiform sign represented a word.
When cuneiform signs were then used to represent The frequent wars
the sounds of a syllables, it became possible to write between Sumerian
the Sumerian language more fluently. This was done city states were
on tablets of damp clay that hardened and can still be halted by Akkad­
read today. Most cuneiform tablets are administra­ ians who spoke a semitic language akin to later
tive, but we also have works of literature, poetry, Hebrew and Arabic. Men with Akkadian names
recipes and letters. Perhaps the most important became kings in the region now referred to as Sumer
examples of Sumerian literature are hymns to and Akkad. The most important of these kings was
the goddess Inana and narrative poems about the Sargon the Great, who established the Sargonic
mythical hero-king Gilgamesh. dynasty.

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Ur III: the revival Prepared lessons
The Sargonic dynasty of Akkad collapsed when the • Lesson 1—Archaeology
region of Sumer and Akkad was invaded by people Comprises lesson plan, SNB file, worksheet
known as Gutians. After the dominance of Akkad [Link]/teachers/[Link]
waned, Sumerian culture flourished anew. Two
important leaders of city-states in this Neo-Sumerian • Lesson 2—History
period were Ur-Nammu of Ur and Gudea of Lagash. Comprises lesson plan, SNB file, 2 worksheets
[Link]/teachers/[Link]
• Ur-Nammu: 2047-2030 BCE • Lesson 3—Food
Perhaps the most influential of the rulers of the third Comprises lesson plan, SNB file, worksheet
‘dynasty’ was a man called Ur-Nammu. He built a [Link]/teachers/[Link]
number of the Sumerian stepped pyramids called
ziggurats. The most impressive ziggurat he built • Lesson 4—Cuneiform writing
was the ‘Great Ziggurat of Ur’. As far as conquests Comprises lesson plan, SNB file
go, Ur-Nammu defeated the other great city of the [Link]/teachers/[Link]
region, Uruk, as well as the city of Lagash. His name • Lesson 5—Mythology
appears in many cuneiform inscribed dedications Comprises lesson plan, SNB file, worksheet
(see page 4). He is credited with creating the earliest [Link]/teachers/[Link]
list of laws long before the famous law code credited
to Hummurabi, the king of Babylon (1792-1750 BCE)
Suggested further lessons
• Sumerian Ziggurats
• Gilgamesh
• Ur under Ur-Nammu
• The legacy of Sumer

Cross-curricular links
Art: Using clay children can make their own votive
statues, similar to those found at the site of Eshnunna.
Literacy: The amount of Sumerian literature we have
access to is huge. The books Lugalbanda and Ishtar and
Tammuz are excellent examples of traditional stories
that can be studied in class. Fran Hazelton’s Stories
from Ancient Iraq contains many stories written
originally in Sumerian. They particularly lend
themselves well to verbal storytelling.
Maths: Children could use the cuneiform system of
King Gudea of Lagash numbers to write their own sums. This could help
children to understand why we use place value.
• Gudea: 2144-2124 BCE
A total of twenty-six statues survive of this ruler, RE: There are many biblical links, for example the
and they are all quite distinct from those of other Tower of Babel was a ziggurat. Sumer was mentioned
Sumerians. The earliest of these statues were made of in the Old Testament as the land of ‘Shinar’. There
limestone and alabaster, the later ones from a black is a Sumerian version of the Flood story in which
stone called diorite. Diorite was to become the stone the Noah character is named Ziasudra. In the two
of choice for other Mesopotamian rulers. Wide-eyed Akkadian versions the man who builds the boat is
and baby-faced Gudea appears to have been quite Atrahasis or Utnapishtim.
a humble man, choosing not to call himself a king, Geography: This speaks for itself. With the Euphrates
but the ‘ensi’ (sometimes translated as ‘governor’) of and the Tigris, Mesopotamia is an excellent example
Lagash. Part of a large statue to Gudea can be seen at for looking at rivers and the importance of water in
the British Museum. everyday life.

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Web links Pocket Timeline of Ancient Mesopotamia; Katharine
Wiltshire; British Museum Press: An excellent brief
[Link] An excellent, well-designed introduction to the area’s history with an excellent
site run by the British Museum for teachers colourful fold-out timeline perfect for school use.
[Link] Website showing an extensive The Hero King Gilgamesh; Irvine Finkel; NTC. A great
collection of objects from the British Museum book retelling the Gilgamesh epic for children.
[Link]/edition2/[Link] An excel­ The Oldest Cuisine in the World; Jean Bottero;
lent resource for Lesson 4 University of Chicago Press. A book that looks at
[Link] Zipang are the Enheduanna cooking in ancient Mesopotamia.
Society’s Mesopotamian Storytellers.

Bibliography
Ancient Near Eastern Art; Dominique Collon; British
Museum Press. Extensive, and full of plenty of
photographs of art from Mesopotamia.
Avoid Being a Sumerian Slave! Rupert Matthews; Book
House. Superb children’s book humorously told.
Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia; Michael Roaf;
Andromeda, Oxford. Full of colourful maps and
photographs of ancient art from the region.
History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-nine Firsts in Recorded
History; Samuel Noah Kramer; University of
Pennsylvania Press: An extremely interesting book
that shows all the important things Sumer has
provided for the modern world. The book shows the
importance of their legacy.
Ishtar and Tammuz: A Babylonian Myth of the Seasons;
Christopher Moore; Frances Lincoln. Colourful book
retelling a Mesopotamian myth.
Lugalbanda: The Boy Who Got Caught Up in a War; Kathy
Henderson; Walker Books Limited. A superb book
suitable for independent reading in KS2. Beautifully
told and illustrated.
Mesopotamia; Julian Reade; British Museum Press. A
general introduction to the history of the area. Gilgamesh
Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood,
Gilgamesh, and Others; Stephanie Dalley; Oxford
World’s Classics. The Flood and Gilgamesh are the most
important contributions from Sumer.

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ICT requirements A message from Ancient Sumer
• The materials in this teachers’ pack have been
designed to run on Windows computers and might
not run on Apple computers.
• Each lesson in can be downloaded from www.
[Link]/teachers/[Link] as a single
ZIP folder containing several files. With recent
versions of Windows, ZIP files can be opened and
the contents extracted using Windows Explorer.
Older versions of Windows may require ZipGenius
in order to extract files; there is a link on the above
URL from where you can download a free copy of
ZipGenius. Other free applications to unzip files
are available.
• The number and type of files varies from lesson to
lesson.
Every lesson includes:
• A PDF lesson plan for which Adobe Reader is
required; to download a free copy use the link at
[Link]/teachers/[Link]
• A Smart Notebook (SNB) file, for which SMART
software is required; there is a link to the
download site (licence required after 30-day free Simon Clemenson’s tattoo is a Sumerian inscription
trial) at [Link]/teachers/teachers. written in early cuneiform signs. It translates as:
htm For the goddess Inanna, his lady, Ur-
Some lessons also include: Nammu the mighty man, the king of Ur,
the king of Sumer and Akkad, built her
• PDF worksheets temple.
• Links to online web pages, for which Internet Ur-Nammu was the governor of Ur who founded the
access is required Ur III dynasty. During his reign there was prosperity
and political stability in Sumer and Akkad. He issued
Feedback a law code, standardised weights and measures, and
built a ziggurat in Ur which is still standing.
We hope you find this teachers’ pack useful in your
teaching. Please go back to the Zipang website when
you have used it and give us your feedback at www.
[Link]/teachers/[Link] or, if you
prefer, send an email to TeacherFeedback@zipang.
[Link]

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Zagros Mountains
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Akkad

Sippar

Kish
Babylon Nippur

Lagash

Uruk
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Ur
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Eridu

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Map of Ancient Mesopotamia

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 Box 36855
1A Tagore House
Glenloch Road
London NW3 4BU
020 7278 3624
esoc@[Link]
[Link]
Charity registration number 1097515
Founding patron—Dr Jeremy Black
Patrons—Professor Zainab Bahrani, Dr Harriet Crawford
Dr Graham Cunningham, Dr Stephanie Dalley
Dr Irving Finkel, Dr Lamia al-Gailani Werr
Professor Andrew George, Amal al-Jubouri
Dr Alasdair Livingstone, Professor Ingrid Lunt
Dr Mohamed Makiya, Professor Roger Matthews
Dr Betty De Shong Meador, Dr Karen Radner
Professor Farouk al‑Rawi, Dr Frances Reynolds
Dr Eleanor Robson, Michael Rosen, Rafiq Sabeer
Jenny Uglow, James Ware
Marina Warner, Michael Wood
Trustees—Mohamad Tawfiq Ali
Simon Clemenson, Fran Hazelton
Debby Klein, Jane Steedman

Popularising the literature

of ancient Iraq through
the art of oral storytelling