Footnotes

6. What the Sumerians original home was is unknown. Sumerian legends which explain the beginnings of civilization in Mesopotamia seem to imply an influx of people from the sea, which people it is assumed are the Sumerians themselves. Also, reputed by themselves to be their oldest city is that named Eridu (the closest to the Gulf but not the Caspian - see maps 2 & 3) would seems to support an implication from across the waters: Wooley, C. Leonard, The Sumerians, The Norton Library, 1965, pp 7-8.

6a. ibid. at pp 6-7

6b. ibid. etymology: the source and development of words.  

7. Clive, Irving, Crossroads of Civilization. Also see Wells, Peter S., Farms, Villages and Cities: Commerce and Urban Origins in Late Prehistoric Europe and Crawford, Harriet, Sumer and the Sumerians, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991 and  Burney, Charles, The Ancient Near East, 1994.

8. For a pictorial reference and position of the cities see map 2.

9. Kramer, Samuel Noah, The Sumerians -- Their History, Culture and Character. Also see Wooley, C. Leonard, Excavations at Ur, 1954. This is one of the earlier works on the subject, and as such is not as complete as the others although it is of historical interest.

10. Saggs, H.W.F., Civilization before Greece and Rome.

11. With exception of the initial paragraph to this section, this area of the article is the sole contribution of Sanders, John C. & Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, from his Linguistics Lectures, Lecture 20. These resources can be found on-line at http://www.ling.upenn.edu Note that the information centres on linguistics and the history of reading and writing.

12. Jacobsen, Thorkild, The Treasures of Darkness, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1976. Jacobsen explores Mesopotamian religious development from early Sumerian times through the Babylonian Enuma Elish. Most of the book centres on the Sumerians. The Enuma Elish, also known as the Epic of Creation is written on seven tablets and is preserved in its later Babylonian version. It evidences signs of a Sumerian cosmogony where the planets are 'celestial gods'. Also see Sitchin, Z. When Time Began: The First New Age, Avon, 1993, pp 3-8.

13. Hooke, S. H. Middle Eastern Mythology, Penguin Books, New York, 1963. This work covers Sumerian, Babylonian, Canaanite/Ugaritic, Hittite, and Hebrew mythological material in brief and with comparisons.

14. Black, Jeremy and Green, Anthony, Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1992. However, not that it is not clear whether information in an entry is applicable to the Sumerian, Akkadian, or both versions of a particular deity or hero.

15. ibid. Also read Jacobsen, Thorkild, The Treasures of Darkness, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1976. (see footnote 12 in regard to this). cf Kramer, Samuel Noah The Sumerians The University of Chicago Press, Chicago,1963. Also see Kramer, Samuel Noah, Sumerian Mythology, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1961. This slim volume contains much of the mythological material that wound up in The Sumerians but concentrated in one spot and without much cultural or historical detail. Many of the myths are more developed here, some of which are only glossed over in The Sumerians, however in some cases The Sumerians holds the more complete or updated myth.

16. ibid. The Enuma Elish.

17. Stephenson, Neal, Snowcrash, Bantam Books, New York, 1992. A kind of Cyberpunk meets "Inanna, Enki, and the Me". Also see Kramer, Samuel Noah, and Maier, John, Myths of Enki, the Crafty God, Oxford University Press, New York,1989. Ed. note: The most recent work that I've been able to find by Kramer. They translate and analyze all of the available myths which include Enki. I've only seen it available in hardcover and I haven't seen it in a bookstore yet.

18. ibid and The New American Bible, Catholic Book Publishing Co., New York, 1970.

19. Jacobsen, Thorkild, The Treasures of Darkness, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1976.

20. Algaze, Guillermo, "The Uruk Expansion", Current Anthropology, Dec. 1989.

21. ibid.

22. A generally accepted proposition or principle (sometimes a 'truth' but not always), that becomes universally accepted.

23. E.g. Babylonian, Canaanite/Ugaritic, Hittite, Hebrew.

24. cf Pritchard J. B., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, Princeton, 1969.

25. Ed. note: Some writers disagree with this view, cf Sitchin, Z. When Time Began: The First New Age, Avon, 1993, pp 364-368. Zitchin asserts that in fact women were very active in society. The balance here would be to view it in comparison to the Babylonian era which superseded it. In comparison to Babylonian times, the role of women and their status was much higher in Sumer. See also further on below in this article.

26. Ziggurat is the name for a type of rectangular temple tower or tiered mound erected by such ancient peoples as Sumerians, Akkadians and Babylonians in Mesopotamia.

27. Pritchard J. B., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, Princeton, 1955. For other connections made between the religions also see further below in this article.

28. Crawford, Harriet, Sumer and the Sumerians, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991 pp 21-24. Ed. Note: Ishtar is the Babylonian name for the Sumerian goddess Ianna.

29. ibid.

30. Based on: Barton, George. A "Inscription of Entemena #7" in: The Royal Inscriptions of Sumer and Akkad (New Haven, CT; Yale Univ., 1929) pp. 61, 63 and 65. Reprinted in Nagle, D. Brendan and Burstein, Stanley M. The Ancient World: Readings in Social and Cultural History (Englewood Cliffs, NJ; Prentice Hall, 1995) pp. 30-31.

31. Kramer, Samuel Noah, History Begins at Sumer, 1981. Pagels, Elaine, Adam, Eve and the Serpent. This is similar to the doctrines of the main monotheistic world religions today. Also, an early form of recognition of blasphemy? There are also many links between the Abraham of the Jews and Sumerians: Shanks, Edward, Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple.

32. ibid.

33. ibid. Kramer deals with many of the 'firsts' that apparently came out of the Sumerian civilization.

34. Sitchin, Z. When Time Began: The First New Age, Avon, 1993, pp 363-364.

35. Saggs, H.W.F., Civilization before Greece and Rome.

36. Sitchin, Z. When Time Began: The First New Age, Avon, 1993, pp 363-364.

37. ibid pg 366. The title means 'Great Man' which represented "king". Her name was Ku-Baba; she is recorded in the Sumerian King Lists. The title alone could suggest that she was seen on an 'equal' status with men. A female being bestowed with a masculine title. However, arguably, she was the only one of her kind that has been discovered so far.

38. ibid pg 367.

39. ibid. However, it must be noted that there are certain Sumerian myths which seem to propagate the woman being a virgin bonded to or indwelled in a divine husband as God the Father which suggests a patriarchal societal belief system - about the power of man and the woman being pure and the immaculate conception theme. One myth is as follows: Inanna gets the powers from her father's father by a drinking encounter, a bonding experience. She is guileless here, just an innocent young woman who believes what she hears, believes in her senses. She just takes what she is freely offered, and when her father's father recants, she says, "but but.. you can't do this... you promised me..." She stands him up to that promise. She gets help from her more mature handmaiden ... and she wins. And her father's father relents, in the face of her earnestness. Is speaking of the virgin woman a way of idealizing woman/mother - and by worshiping her -it reduces the man's fear of her, because as a woman, she is the giver and taker of life and death both symbolically and literally. That woman is deified as the Virgin female. Which is also reflected in Innana's death in the underworld. Once she marries Dumuzi, then she goes underground, and gives birth. Why is it that the woman gives birth to sons and not daughters? The birth of the opposite gender is a symbolic message about giving birth to the other of the self. And when she goes underground, she has to face that other of the self: also see Lamott, Anne, Bird by Bird and Wolkstein, Diane and Kramer, Samuel Noah, Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth, Harper & Row, NY, 1983. Ed Note: The footnote above is a woman's interpretation of this myth as was asked for by Ali Yildirim in an e-mail to Elizabeth Burke of Sheffield University, Lecturer of Psychoanalytic Studies.

39a. E.g. the Babylonians: Saggs, H.W.F, Babylonians, 1999 and Crawford, Harriet, Sumer and the Sumerians, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991 and read Sitchin, Z. When Time Began: The First New Age, Avon, 1993, pp 363-364.

40. Crawford, Harriet, Sumer and the Sumerians, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991. 

40a. Some people associate Uruk with the city commonly spelled Ereck in the Book of Genesis 10:10.

41. Again signs that Sumerians affected civilization as a whole.

42. Kramer, Samuel Noah, History Begins at Sumer, 1981. Kramer deals with many of the 'firsts' that apparently came out of the Sumerian civilization. See also footnotes 31-33 and the relevant areas in this article: i.e. the 'firsts' to do with religion.

43. The Epic of Gilgamesh. The only nearly complete version of the story called The Epic of Gilgamesh comes to us from the collection of the 7th century BCE Assyrian king named Ashurbanipal. The original from which the Assyrian version was copied was composed in Old Babylonian times but was based in legends and stories from older Sumerian sources about a real King of the city of Uruk on the Euphrates River. This epic is the most important literary product of Ancient Mesopotamia. Translations tend to equate each of the eleven tablets with a separate chapter of the story.

44. The god of wisdom and water who had organized the earth in accordance with a general plan laid down by Enlil.

45. The first telling of the Noah and The Ark story.

46. Clough, Shepard B., The Rise and Fall of Civilization.