Shulgi: Did you mean...?

Mesopotamian education was invented by the Sumerians following the creation of writing c. 3500 BCE. The earliest schools were attached to temples but later established in separate buildings in which the scribes of ancient Mesopotamia learned...

The Matter of Aratta is the modern-day title for a collection of four poems – Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, Enmerkar and En-suhgir-ana, Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave, and Lugalbanda and the Anzud Bird – concerning the rivalry between...

Festivals in ancient Mesopotamia honored the patron deity of a city-state or the primary god of the city that controlled a region or empire. The earliest, the Akitu festival, was first observed in Sumer in the Early Dynastic Period (2900-2334...

Ancient Mesopotamian art and architectural works are among the oldest in the world, dating back over 7,000 years. The works first appear in northern Mesopotamia prior to the Ubaid Period (c. 5000-4100 BCE) and then developed in the south...

Eridu (present day Abu Shahrein, Iraq) was considered the first city in the world by the ancient Sumerians and is among the most ancient of the ruins from Mesopotamia. Founded in c. 5400 BCE, Eridu was thought to have been created by the...

Susa was one of the oldest cities in the world and part of the site is still inhabited as Shush, Khuzestan Province, Iran. Excavations have uncovered evidence of continual habitation dating back to 4395 BCE but that early community grew from...

The Gutians were a West Asiatic people who are thought to have lived around the Zagros Mountains in a region referred to as Gutium. They had no written language and all that is known of them comes from their enemies, including the Akkadians...

The dates of the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, have been a concern of, primarily, Western scholars for well over 100 years now owing to the particularly Western need for precise dating of historical persons and events. The problem with precise...

Enlil in the E-Kur (c. 2000 BCE) is a Sumerian hymn praising the sky god Enlil, his temple/ziggurat at Nippur, and his consort Ninlil, depicting all three in glowing terms and Enlil as a creator-god. The piece is highly regarded as an important...

A Praise Poem of Lipit-Estar is a Sumerian praise song honoring Lipit-Estar (also known as Lipit-Ishtar, r. c. 1870 to c. 1860 BCE), the fifth king of the First Dynasty of Isin, best known for his legal code written between the time of the...