what race were sumerians what race were sumerians

Akkadian and Sumerian coexisted as vernacular languages for about one thousand years, but by around 1800 BC, Sumerian was becoming more of a literary language familiar mainly only to scholars and scribes. Who Can Benefit From Diaphragmatic Breathing? The Sumerians' cuneiform script is the oldest (or second oldest after the Egyptian hieroglyphs) which has been deciphered (the status of even older inscriptions such as the Jiahu symbols and Tartaria tablets is controversial). Who were the ancient Babylonians (Sumerians)? - Lines & Precepts The most widespread material in Sumer was clay, as a result many Sumerian objects are made of clay. [70], Early writing tablet for recording the allocation of beer; 31003000 BC; height: 9.4cm; width: 6.87cm; from Iraq; British Museum (London), Cuneiform tablet about administrative account with entries concerning malt and barley groats; 31002900 BC; clay; 6.8 x 4.5 x 1.6cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City), Bill of sale of a field and house, from Shuruppak; c. 2600 BC; height: 8.5cm, width: 8.5cm, depth: 2cm; Louvre, Stele of the Vultures; c. 2450 BC; limestone; found in 1881 by douard de Sarzec in Girsu (now Tell Telloh, Iraq); Louvre, The Sumerians credited their divinities for all matters pertaining to them and exhibited humility in the face of cosmic forces, such as death and divine wrath. During this period Uruk became the most urbanized city in the world, surpassing for the first time 50,000 inhabitants. Sumerian In this way the Sumerians were appreciated and valued in new ways, especially through museum displays in London, Philadelphia and Chicago where a substantial number of the excavated objects had been sent as a result of the division of finds. [citation needed], Marriages were usually arranged by the parents of the bride and groom;[59]:78 engagements were usually completed through the approval of contracts recorded on clay tablets. Our accumulated body of knowledge, most notably, suggests that these writings are scientifically grounded and authentic and their content is clear. They have been understood as a distinct people, speaking a common language, who occupied the alluvial plains of southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) between approximately 3500 and 2000 BCE. The Sumerian city-states rose to power during the prehistoric Ubaid and Uruk periods. Following the downfall of the Akkadian Empire at the hands of Gutians, another native Sumerian ruler, Gudea of Lagash, rose to local prominence and continued the practices of the Sargonic kings' claims to divinity. [16], Others have suggested that the Sumerians were a North African people who migrated from the Green Sahara into the Middle East and were responsible for the spread of farming in the Middle East. Winter, Irene J. A woman (munus) went from being a daughter (dumu-mi), to a wife (dam), then if she outlived her husband, a widow (numasu) and she could then remarry another man who was from the same tribe. 2001. [91] Various objects made with shell species that are characteristic of the Indus coast, particularly Turbinella pyrum and Pleuroploca trapezium, have been found in the archaeological sites of Mesopotamia dating from around 25002000 BC. The black headed people that built the first Sumerian mythology claims that, in the beginning, human-like gods ruled over Earth. In addition, his realm extended to parts of Elam and along the Persian Gulf. WebAncient Mesopotamia proved that fertile land and the knowledge to cultivate it was a fortuitous recipe for wealth and civilization. [92] Carnelian beads from the Indus were found in the Sumerian tombs of Ur, the Royal Cemetery at Ur, dating to 26002450. What was the race of Sumerians? Sumerians It is an agglutinative language; in other words, morphemes ("units of meaning") are added together to create words, unlike analytic languages where morphemes are purely added together to create sentences. Most historians have suggested that Sumer was first permanently settled between c. 5500 and 4000 BC by a West Asianpeople who Mud-brick buildings eventually deteriorate, so they were periodically destroyed, leveled, and rebuilt on the same spot. 'head' + 'black', or , sag-gg-ga phonetically /sa i a/, lit. The ancient Sumerian king list includes the early dynasties of several prominent cities from this period. Daggers with metal blades and wooden handles were worn, and copper was hammered into plates, while necklaces or collars were made of gold. From the mid-third millennium BCE, Sumerian royal inscriptions refer to a homeland (kalam), sometimes in parallel with ki-en-gi (Akkadian Sumer), which seems to refer in a general sense to southern Mesopotamia. Sumerian masons and jewelers knew and made use of alabaster (calcite), ivory, iron, gold, silver, carnelian, and lapis lazuli. Since stone was rare it was reserved for sculpture. The government required individuals to work on the canals in a corve, although the rich were able to exempt themselves. To the south of the region of World's most ancient race traced in DNA study. The San people of southern Africa, who have lived as hunter-gatherers for thousands of years, are likely to be the oldest population of humans on [28], Some scholars contest the idea of a Proto-Euphratean language or one substrate language; they think the Sumerian language may originally have been that of the hunting and fishing peoples who lived in the marshland and the Eastern Arabia littoral region and were part of the Arabian bifacial culture. Not only was Mesopotamia one of the first places to develop agriculture, it was also at the crossroads of the Egyptian and the Indus Valley civilizations. Their religious system was a complex one comprised of hundreds of gods. [44], The end of the Uruk period coincided with the Piora oscillation, a dry period from c. 32002900 BC that marked the end of a long wetter, warmer climate period from about 9,000 to 5,000 years ago, called the Holocene climatic optimum.[45]. Customarily, rulers did it at the beginning of the first full year of their reign, but they could also be proclaimed at times of military conflict or crop failure. The world population at this time has been estimated at 27 million.[54]. Proto-writing dates back before 3000 BC. The Sumerians engaged in siege warfare between their cities, but the mudbrick walls were able to deter some foes. The adventure-filled tale centers on a Sumerian king named Gilgamesh who is . What was the race of the Sumerians? Were they African It was laid out on several clay tablets and is thought to be the earliest known surviving example of fictional literature. Left: Sculpture of the head of Sumerian ruler. They have been understood as a distinct people, speaking a common language, who occupied the alluvial plains of southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) between approximately 3500 and 2000 BCE. What did slaves in Mesopotamia wear? [68], Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as a spoken language somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC,[69] but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary, and scientific language in Babylonia and Assyria until the 1st century AD. By the late nineteenth century, culture and civilization were being thought of as biologically determined by race. Juris Zarins believes the Sumerians lived along the coast of Eastern Arabia, today's Persian Gulf region, before it was flooded at the end of the Ice Age. [22] Although not specifically discussing Sumerians, Lazaridis et al. The credit for this must go to the Reverend Edward Hincks (1792-1866). [1][2][3][4] For example, the Sumerian king Shulgi described himself as "the king of the four quarters, the pastor of the black-headed people". [citation needed], In the early Sumerian period, the primitive pictograms suggest[56] that, There is considerable evidence concerning Sumerian music. The necessity to manage temple accounts with this organization led to the development of writing (c. 3500 BC). It ended in the face of Amorite incursions at the beginning of the second millennium BC. The Sumerians and Mesopotamia (article) | Khan Academy The wheel initially took the form of the potter's wheel. At a basic level, the Sumerians can be defined by their language, which is recognisable in cuneiform texts dating from around 2800 BCE to the early centuries CE. This page was last edited on 28 February 2023, at 06:54. The connection is most clearly seen at Tell el-'Oueili near Larsa, excavated by the French in the 1980s, where eight levels yielded pre-Ubaid pottery resembling Samarran ware. They built this by constructing and linking several arches. According to Hudson, the purpose of these decrees was to prevent debts mounting to a degree that they threatened the fighting force, which could happen if peasants lost their subsistence land or became bondservants due to inability to repay their debt. The story of the passing of the gifts of civilization (me) to Inanna, goddess of Uruk and of love and war, by Enki, god of wisdom and chief god of Eridu, may reflect the transition from Eridu to Uruk. They had a similar government and culture as the This period is generally taken to coincide with a major shift in population from southern Mesopotamia toward the north. [49] However, it is certain that Akkadian was also briefly imposed on neighboring parts of Elam that were previously conquered, by Sargon. 'country' + 'lords' + 'noble') as seen in their inscriptions. The Sumerian chariot comprised a four or two-wheeled device manned by a crew of two and harnessed to four onagers. SeventeenthDynasty, (15001100 BCE)Kidinuid dynastyIgehalkid dynastyUntash-Napirisha, Twenty-first Dynasty of EgyptSmendes Amenemnisu Psusennes I Amenemope Osorkon the Elder Siamun Psusennes II, Twenty-third Dynasty of EgyptHarsiese A Takelot II Pedubast I Shoshenq VI Osorkon III Takelot III Rudamun Menkheperre Ini Triangular or wedge-shaped reeds were used to write on moist clay. Sumer - Wikipedia [50] Already, however, the region was becoming more Semitic than Sumerian, with the resurgence of the Akkadian-speaking Semites in Assyria and elsewhere, and the influx of waves of Semitic Martu (Amorites), who were to found several competing local powers in the south, including Isin, Larsa, Eshnunna and later, Babylonia. in, "The origin of the Sumerians is unknown; they described themselves as the 'black-headed people'", "I am the king of the four quarters, I am a shepherd, the pastor of the "black-headed people"" in, "Craniometric analyses have suggested an affinity between the Natufians and populations of north or sub-Saharan Africa, a result that finds some support from Y chromosome analysis which shows that the Natufians and successor Levantine Neolithic populations carried haplogroup E, of likely ultimate African origin, which has not been detected in other ancient males from West Eurasia. There is a consensus among Egyptologists that the Great Pyramids were not built by slaves. The original pyramidal structure, the "Anu Ziggurat" dates to around 4000 BC, and the White Temple was built on top of it c. 3500 BC. WebThe Sumerians are said to have originated in the Middle East and their descendants are the modern Assyrians, Mandaeans, Iraqi Arabs and the Marsh Arabs. 77 The mortals were indeed the Sumerians, a non-Semitic racial type that conquered southern Babylonia, and the deities were Semitic, [29][30][31][32] The Ubaidians, though never mentioned by the Sumerians themselves, are assumed by modern-day scholars to have been the first civilizing force in Sumer. The interest rate was set at 1/60 a month (one shekel per mina) some time before 2000 BC and it remained at that level for about two thousand years. Citizens had a labor duty to the temple, though they could avoid it by a payment of silver. They then dragged the fields with pickaxes. The Sumerians had three main types of boats: Evidence of wheeled vehicles appeared in the mid-4th millennium BC, near-simultaneously in Mesopotamia, the Northern Caucasus (Maykop culture) and Central Europe. 'head' + 'black' + 'carry'). Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. Some female slaves were used as concubines by the master. WebWhat race were the ancient Sumerians? Another important Sumerian hieros gamos was that between Ki, here known as Ninhursag or "Lady of the Mountains", and Enki of Eridu, the god of fresh water which brought forth greenery and pasture. But is this picture correct? Sumerians were called Black headed, because they most likely had black heads. Sumer, or the land of civilized kings, flourished in Mesopotamia, now modern-day Iraq, around 4500 BC. Ecologically, the agricultural productivity of the Sumerian lands was being compromised as a result of rising salinity. Ancient Mesopotamian units of measurement, "The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary: sagiga[humankind]", "Ancient Mesopotamia. What race were Sumerians? - Staveleyfa.com [64][63][60], Prostitution existed but it is not clear if sacred prostitution did. [citation needed], Others have suggested a continuity of Sumerians, from the indigenous hunter-fisherfolk traditions, associated with the bifacial assemblages found on the Arabian littoral. Ancient Mesopotamia Through 7 Key Artifacts. 11., 1939), Jacobsen, Thorkild (1976), "The Harps that Once; Sumerian Poetry in Translation" and "Treasures of Darkness: a history of Mesopotamian Religion", George, Andrew (Translator) (2003), "The Epic of Gilgamesh" (Penguin Classics). Proto-cuneiform tablet accounting for the distribution of fields, from Jemdet Nasr, Iraq, about 3100-2900 BC. Several centuries after the invention of cuneiform, the use of writing expanded beyond debt/payment certificates and inventory lists to be applied for the first time, about 2600 BC, to messages and mail delivery, history, legend, mathematics, astronomical records, and other pursuits. What was the race of Sumerians? The Mysterious Origins of the Worlds First City-Builders The Sumerians adopted an agricultural lifestyle perhaps as early as c. 50004500 BC. Eye idols from Tell Brak, Syria, about 3600 BC. [77] Human sacrifice was found in the death pits at the Ur royal cemetery where Queen Puabi was accompanied in death by her servants. They were often referred to as Cafsa or Capsians; a group of people not devoid of negroid characteristics according to J Desanges. During the great drought, two waves of marauding nomads descended upon the region, sacking the capital city of Ur. Most historians have suggested that Sumer was first permanently settled between c. 5500 and 4000 BC by a West Asian people who spoke [60], The Sumerians generally seem to have discouraged premarital sex. They were already light-skinned. Cylinder seal and impression in which appears a ritual scene before a temple faade; 35003100 BC; bituminous limestone; height: 4.5cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City), Ram in a Thicket; 26002400 BC; gold, copper, shell, lapis lazuli and limestone; height: 45.7cm; from the Royal Cemetery at Ur (Dhi Qar Governorate, Iraq); British Museum (London), Standard of Ur; 26002400 BC; shell, red limestone and lapis lazuli on wood; length: 49.5cm; from the Royal Cemetery at Ur; British Museum, Bull's head ornament from a lyre; 26002350 BC; bronze inlaid with shell and lapis lazuli; height: 13.3cm, width: 10.5cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Non-dynastic usurpers17351701 BCE) The irrigation was accomplished by the use of shaduf, canals, channels, dykes, weirs, and reservoirs. [63] The Sumerians widely believed that masturbation enhanced sexual potency, both for men and for women,[63] and they frequently engaged in it, both alone and with their partners. Explanations based on hypothetical migrations have fallen out of favour as evidence for significant cultural continuity in prehistory has been identified, including the development of recording technologies that led to practices of book-keeping and the origins of writing. The spearmen are shown arranged in what resembles the phalanx formation, which requires training and discipline; this implies that the Sumerians may have used professional soldiers.[108]. Soil salinity in this region had been long recognized as a major problem. Later rulers who dominated Assyria and Babylonia occasionally assumed the old Sargonic title "King of Sumer and Akkad", such as Tukulti-Ninurta I of Assyria after c. 1225 BC. [93] Various inscriptions also mention the presence of Meluhha traders and interpreters in Mesopotamia. According to the ancient texts, each Sumerian city was guarded by its own god; and while humans and gods used to live together, the humans were servants to the gods. Granaries and storehouses were usually located near the temples. The earliest king authenticated through archaeological evidence is Enmebaragesi of Kish (Early Dynastic I), whose name is also mentioned in the Epic of Gilgameshleading to the suggestion that Gilgamesh himself might have been a historical king of Uruk. What race were Sumerians? - TimesMojo [35], The Sumerian city of Eridu, on the coast of the Persian Gulf, is considered to have been one of the oldest cities, where three separate cultures may have fused: that of peasant Ubaidian farmers, living in mud-brick huts and practicing irrigation; that of mobile nomadic Semitic pastoralists living in black tents and following herds of sheep and goats; and that of fisher folk, living in reed huts in the marshlands, who may have been the ancestors of the Sumerians.[35]. The Sumerian language is generally regarded as a language isolate in linguistics because it belongs to no known language family; Akkadian, by contrast, belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. Each was centered on a temple dedicated to the particular patron god or goddess of the city and ruled over by a priestly governor (ensi) or by a king (lugal) who was intimately tied to the city's religious rites. The Sumerian people who settled here farmed the lands in this region that were made fertile by silt deposited by the Tigris and the Euphrates. They developed the first known codified legal and administrative systems, complete with courts, jails, and government records. The city was provided with towers and stood on an artificial platform; the house also had a tower-like appearance. Sumerian cities during the Uruk period were probably theocratic and were most likely headed by a priest-king (ensi), assisted by a council of elders, including both men and women. They were the first to find the area of a triangle and the volume of a cube.[87]. Beneath the lu-gal ("great man" or king), all members of society belonged to one of two basic strata: The "lu" or free person, and the slave (male, arad; female geme). By unpacking this more recent history, it is possible to consider what we think we know about the Sumerians and how we know it. Yet these texts had been written at a time when mothers were no longer talking to their children in Sumerian. ", "Tablets were used for writing purposes. Sumerian speakers were among the earliest people to record their beliefs in writing, and were a major inspiration in later Mesopotamian mythology, religion, and astrology. ", "Knives, drills, wedges and an instrument that looks like a saw were all known. Cuneiform characters were imprinted on a wet clay tablet with a stylus often made of reed (reed pen). The Sumerians were Black Rawlinson was convinced that there was a relationship between the Sumerians and Africans. As a result he used two African languages: one Semitic and the other Cushitic to decipher the cuneiform writing. Rawlinson was sure that the ancient Nubians and Puntites founded Mesopotamian civilization.(1) The last of these eventually came to briefly dominate the south of Mesopotamia as the Babylonian Empire, just as the Old Assyrian Empire had already done in the north from the late 21st century BC. During the great drought, two waves of marauding nomads descended upon the region, sacking the capital city of Ur. Other ancient people made pottery by hand, but the Sumerians were the first to develop the turning wheel, a device which allowed them to mass-produce it, according to Reed Goodman, a doctoral candidate in the art and archaeology of the Mediterranean at the University of Pennsylvania. There was no common set of gods; each city-state had its own patrons, temples, and priest-kings. Large-scale excavations led by British and American archaeologists were made possible by the colonial administration and discoveries at sites like Ur and in the region of the Diyala River were fundamental in shaping how the Sumerians were imagined. Whatever the assertions of cosmography here, when modern-day archaeologists carve out areas of exploration based on physical-remains and other data, there is an emphasis on three, Leick, Gwendolyn (2003), Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City' (Penguin). Ki. The Nodites, a race that started about 200,000 years ago, had black hair. [6][7][8] The Sumerians referred to their land as Kengir, the 'Country of the noble lords' (, k-en-gi(-r), lit. Sumer, site of the earliest known civilization, located in the southernmost part of Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in the area that later became Babylonia and is now southern Iraq, from around Baghdad to the Persian Gulf. While spears, bows, arrows, and daggers (but not swords) were employed in war. These Saharan people were round-headed ancient Mediterranean type. [citation needed]. Nonetheless, these were not exclusive; the gods of one city were often acknowledged elsewhere. According to Archibald Sayce, the primitive pictograms of the early Sumerian (i.e. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. In the late 4th millennium BC, Sumer was divided into many independent city-states, which were divided by canals and boundary stones. The first true city-states arose in Sumer, roughly contemporaneously with similar entities in what are now Syria and Lebanon. However, no affinity of Natufians to sub-Saharan Africans is evident in our genome-wide analysis, as present-day sub-Saharan Africans do not share more alleles with Natufians than with other ancient Eurasians" in, Margarethe Uepermann (2007), "Structuring the Late Stone Age of Southeastern Arabia" (, Leick, Gwendolyn (2003), "Mesopotamia, the Invention of the City" (Penguin), "The stepped design of the Pyramid of Zoser at Saqqara, the oldest known pyramid along the Nile, suggests that it was borrowed from the Mesopotamian ziggurat concept." Plants were also grown in pots or vases. Apart from Mari, which lies full 330 kilometres (205 miles) north-west of Agade, but which is credited in the king list as having "exercised kingship" in the Early Dynastic II period, and Nagar, an outpost, these cities are all in the Euphrates-Tigris alluvial plain, south of Baghdad in what are now the Bbil, Diyala, Wsit, Dhi Qar, Basra, Al-Muthann and Al-Qdisiyyah governorates of Iraq. The decipherment of cuneiform in the mid nineteenth century revealed that a majority of the known inscriptions recorded a Semitic language that would come to be termed Akkadian. The origins of human beings according to ancient Sumerian texts. Most difficult are the earliest texts, which in many cases do not give the full grammatical structure of the language and seem to have been used as an "aide-mmoire" for knowledgeable scribes. The Amorite "dynasty of Isin" persisted until c. 1700 BC, when Mesopotamia was united under Babylonian rule. Sumerian structures were made of plano-convex mudbrick, not fixed with mortar or cement. Flanking the aisles would be rooms for the priests. [107] The first war recorded in any detail was between Lagash and Umma in c. 2450 BC on a stele called the Stele of the Vultures. [22][23] Alternatively, a recent (2013) genetic analysis of four ancient Mesopotamian skeletal DNA samples suggests an association of the Sumerians with Indus Valley Civilization, possibly as a result of ancient Indus-Mesopotamia relations. Your email address will not be published. (1985). It tells of a king from the early Dynastic II period named Gilgamesh or "Bilgamesh" in Sumerian. Edward Hincks (1792-1866), oil on canvas, copyright Griffith Institute, University of Oxford. Ki This pattern continued to influence regional Mesopotamian myths. Read More, American Society of Overseas ResearchThe James F. Strange Center209 Commerce StreetAlexandria, VA 22314, 2023 ASOR All rights reserved.Images licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, Contact UsMembershipGiveFriends of ASORASOR Cultural Heritage InitiativesTerms of Use. When they came to the Earth, there was much work to be done and these gods toiled the soil, digging to make it habitable and mining its minerals. , Studied history and geography for years. The new concept led to wheeled vehicles and mill wheels. This led them to live in larger communitiesthe first cities. By 3000 B.C.E., most Sumerians lived in walled city-states. During the third millennium BCE, the Sumerian civilization of Mesopotamia was culturally defined by the development of the art of weaving. [106] They were denominated in barley or other crops and the interest rate was typically much higher than for commercial loans and could amount to 1/3 to 1/2 of the loan principal. WebAre Sumerians and Akkadians the same? They then winnowed the grain/chaff mixture. There are texts written entirely in Old Akkadian dating from c. 2500 BC. WebWhat race were the ancient Sumerians? What was the race of Sumerians? Sage-Answer They drained the marshes for agriculture, developed trade, and established industries, including weaving, leatherwork, metalwork, masonry, and pottery. Many transactions involved debt, for example goods consigned to merchants by temple and beer advanced by "ale women". The frequent violent floods of the Tigris, and less so, of the Euphrates, meant that canals required frequent repair and continual removal of silt, and survey markers and boundary stones needed to be continually replaced. The ancient name of this language was controversial until 1889 when a bilingual cuneiform text noted that the term emegi was equivalent to Akkadian lian umeri the Sumerian language. Their descendants are the African Diaspora of North and South America The story relates the fictional adventures of Gilgamesh and his companion, Enkidu. Some of the vases had pointed feet, and stood on stands with crossed legs; others were flat-bottomed, and were set on square or rectangular frames of wood. They have been discovered by Leonard Woolley when the Royal Cemetery of Ur has been excavated between from 1922 and 1934. This is consistent with Andonite genetic heritage, which gave rise 500,000 years ago to the six Sangik races. The Uruk period is a continuation and an outgrowth of Ubaid with pottery being the main visible change. The dynastic period begins c. 2900 BC and was associated with a shift from the temple establishment headed by council of elders led by a priestly "En" (a male figure when it was a temple for a goddess, or a female figure when headed by a male god)[46] towards a more secular Lugal (Lu = man, Gal = great) and includes such legendary patriarchal figures as Dumuzid, Lugalbanda and Gilgameshwho reigned shortly before the historic record opens c. 2900 BC, when the now deciphered syllabic writing started to develop from the early pictograms. First, transport: the wheel began to be used on carts and battle chariots. They wrapped around the body and tied with a belt at the waist to hold the skirts up. Juris Zarins believes the Sumerians may have been the people living in the Persian Gulf region before it flooded at the end of the last Ice Age. Perhaps it is time to abandon them as a coherent ethnic and linguistic entity a people we would like to believe existed, but possibly never did. The Sumerian military used carts harnessed to onagers. At an early stage, following the dawn of recorded history, Nippur, in central Mesopotamia, replaced Eridu in the south as the primary temple city, whose priests exercised political hegemony on the other city-states. Henceforth, Sumerian would remain only a literary and liturgical language, similar to the position occupied by Latin in medieval Europe. Ancient Mesopotamia in, Jacobsen, Thorkild (Ed) (1939),"The Sumerian King List" (Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago; Assyriological Studies, No. The wheel was invented in the 4th century BC in Lower Mesopotamia(modern-day Iraq), where the Sumerian people inserted rotating axles into solid discs of wood. Print. The Akkadians adopted The son of a lu was called a dumu-nita until he married. The Akkadian Empire was the first state that successfully united larger parts of Mesopotamia in the 23rd century BC. What ethnicity was Sumerians? On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title.