The ancient Sumerians, the ‘black-headed ones,’ lived in the southern part of what is now Iraq.
Well before 3000B.C., Sumerians were recording their language using simple pictures written on tablets of clay, developing cuneiform
Around the time of Abraham, Gudea of Lagash took the throne, promoting artistic development and leaving a large number of archaeological artefacts
Gudea of Lagash
Sumeria declined, overtaken by the Amorites and finally ruled by Hammurabi, King of Babylonia
The first Babylonian Dynasty (c.1700B.C.) was started by the Semitic Amorite people with the 6th king, Hammurabi, bringing in the first golden age
Hammurabi centralised government and unified the empire, seeking to bring greater justice between men and improve the lives of those in his kingdom and his code containing 282 laws is one of the first ever written laws discovered
The first golden age of Babylon ended with the fall of Babylon to the Hittites around 1595B.C.
It contained 20,000 clay tablets with cuneiform writing. The tablets were arranged on shelves. The tablets were found in horizontal heaps, like cards in a file. Tablets found there contain the earliest references to the city of Jerusalem.
The Ebla tablets recovered from the Ancient city of Ebla in Syria show that the land between Egypt and Mesopotamia was not stuck in nomadic lifestyles as had been previously believed, but had a thriving, agricultural, culturally sophisticated civilisation and very much part of the civilized world at that time (c. 2500B.C.)
