Edward Trimnell's Online Guide to the Middle East
The Fertile Crescent and the Sumerians
If you have been watching the news since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, then you have probably heard of the two main rivers that run through Iraq--the Tigris and the Euphrates. These rivers were essential to the early peoples of the Middle East.
Each spring, the rivers overflowed their banks, depositing a fertile layer of silt that made ideal soil for farming.
The tributaries of the Tigris and Euphrates---and subsequent man-made irrigation channels---gave life to a region known as the Fertile Crescent. The Fertile Crescent extended north to the modern-day border between Iraq and Turkey, east to the Zagros mountain range of western Iran, and south to the northern edge of the Arabian Peninsula. To the southwest, the Fertile Crescent encompassed most of Israel.
Civilization began in the Fertile Crescent. Around 3,000 B.C., a group of people known as the Sumerians founded a civilization in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) near the point where the Tigris and the Euphrates meet.
Their civilization---Sumer--was centered in three major cities: Ur, Uruk, and Kish.
Sumer was a theocratic society in which kings shared power with priests and priestesses. Kings ruled by divine right. A Sumerian king might be petitioned with the formal address “son of Anu”---Anu being the Sumerian god of the sky. The Sumerians took religion seriously; near each city they erected massive stepped towers (ziggurats) in homage to the god that was believed to dominate the area.
Sumerian society was rigidly stratified. Everyone was a noble, a commoner, or a slave. While trade and crafts existed in Sumer, most people were engaged in food production; about 90% of Sumerians were farmers. Some owned their own land, but many others worked land belonging to nobles in exchange for the private usage of small plots. In this early form of feudalism, nobles had some control over the lives of these “attached” commoners, and sharecropping commoners had fewer rights than commoners who owned their own land. Land-owning “independent” commoners had an extensive set of rights, including clearly defined property rights. As long as they kept their places and did not challenge the noble class, not even the king could strip them of their land.
There were a number of circumstances by which a person might end up as a slave in ancient Sumer. Many slaves were prisoners of war; others were criminals. Extreme financial problems could also lead to slavery. Some people sold themselves into slavery when faced with insurmountable debts. The majority of slaves were owned by court officials, who employed them in public works constructions—including building more ziggurats to placate the local deities.