Gudea Ruler of Lagash of Sumer

The first significant excavation of a Sumerian site was begun in 1877 by French archaeologists.

The finds from this single site were so extensive that others continued to dig there until 1933 without completing the job.

Called by the natives Telloh (“mound”), the site proved to be an early Sumerian city, the very Lagash of whose conquest Sargon of Akkad had boasted.

It was a royal city whose rulers bore the same title Sargon had adopted, except that it was in the Sumerian language: EN.SI (“righteous ruler”).

Their dynasty had started circa 2900 BC and lasted for nearly 650 years.

During this time, 43 ensi’s reigned without interruption in Lagash

An ensi named Eannatum wrote:

• that these Sumerian rulers could assume the throne only with the approval of the gods.
• about the conquest of another city, proving that there were other city-states in Sumer at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC.

One of the better-known rulers of Lagash was Gudea.

He had a large number of statuettes made of himself, all showing him in a votive stance, praying to his gods.

Gudea had devoted himself to the adoration of Ningirsu, his principal deity, and to the construction and rebuilding of temples.

In the search for exquisite building materials, he obtained:

• gold from Africa and Anatolia
• silver from the Taurus Mountains
• cedars from Lebanon
• other rare woods from Ararat
• copper from the Zagros range
• diorite from Egypt
• carnelian from Ethiopia
• other materials from lands as yet unidentified by scholars.

When Moses built for the Lord God a “Residence” in the desert, he did so according to very detailed instructions provided by the Lord.

When King Solomon built the first Temple in Jerusalem, he did so after the Lord had “given him wisdom.”

The prophet Ezekiel was shown very detailed plans for the Second Temple “in a Godly vision” by a bronze person who held a flaxen string and a measuring rod.

Ur-Nammu was a ruler of Ur. In an earlier millennium, his god ordered him to build for him a temple. He gave him the pertinent instructions along with the measuring rod and rolled string for the job. (Fig. 9)

1,200 years before Moses, Gudea made the same claim. The instructions, he recorded in one very long inscription, were given to him in a vision.

It was later identified as the god Ningirsu.

With him was 2 gods:

1. A goddess who “held the tablet of her favorable star of the heavens”; her other hand “held a holy stylus,” with which she indicated to Gudea “the favorable planet.”

2. A god who held in his hand a tablet of precious stone; “the plan of a temple it contained.”

One of Gudea’s statues shows him seated, with this tablet on his knees; on the tablet the divine drawing can clearly be seen. (Fig. 10)

Wise as he was, Gudea was baffled by these architectural instructions.

He sought the advice of a goddess who could interpret divine messages. She explained to him:

• the meaning of the instructions
• the plan’s measurements
• the size and shape of the bricks to be used.

Gudea then employed:

• a male “diviner, maker of decisions”
• a female “searcher of secrets” to locate the site, on the city’s outskirts where the god wished his temple to be built.

He then recruited 216,000 people for the construction job.

The simple-looking “floor plan” was for a complex ziggurat, rising high by 7 stages.

Writing in Der Alte Orient in 1900, A. Billerbeck was able to decipher at least part of the divine architectural instructions.

In ancient Sumer, it seems, temple construction spurred the people and their rulers into greater technological, commercial, transportation, architectural, and organizational achievements.

They represented but the tip of the iceberg of the scope and richness of the material achievements of the first great civilization known to Man.

The Sumerians should also be credited with the invention of printing.

Sumerian scribes used ready-made “type” of the various pictographic signs, which they used as we now use rubber stamps to impress the desired sequence of signs in the wet clay.

They also invented the forerunner of our rotary presses—the cylinder seal.

Made of extremely hard stone, it was a small cylinder into which the message or design had been engraved in reverse.

Whenever the seal was rolled on the wet clay, the imprint created a “positive” impression on the clay.

The seal also enabled one to assure the authenticity of documents; a new impression could be made at once to compare it with the old impression on the document.

Many Sumerian and Mesopotamian written records concerned themselves with the daily tasks as:

• recording crops
• measuring fields
• calculating prices.

No high civilization would have been possible without a parallel advanced system of mathematics.

The Sumerian system, called sexagesimal, combined a mundane 10 with a “celestial” 6 to obtain the base figure 60.

This system is in some respects superior to our present one. In any case, it is superior to later Greek and Roman systems.

It enabled the Sumerians to:

• divide into fractions
• multiply into the millions
• calculate roots or raise numbers several powers.

This was not only the first-known mathematical system but also one that gave us the “place” concept.

In the decimal system, 2 can be 2 or 20 or 200, depending on the digit’s place. In Sumerian, 2 mean 2 or 120 (2 X 60), and so on, depending on the “place.”

The vestiges of Sumerian mathematics that we use are:

• the 360-degree circle
• the foot and its 12 inches
• the “dozen” as a unit