Clues in Clay and Stone: A Sumer Exhibit

Read a museum's case labels to learn how Sumerian city-states lived, counted, traded and ruled.

Answer Key

The welcome panel

The museum hall is made up for this worksheet, but the objects are real kinds of Sumerian finds and the facts about them are real. Read the welcome panel. Then answer the questions.

Welcome: Sumer, a Land of City-States

1From about 3500 to 2000 BCE, the southern part of Mesopotamia, called Sumer, was home to some of the world's first cities. Sumer is a flat, hot plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in what is now southern Iraq. Little rain falls there, but the rivers carry water and rich silt. Farmers dug canals to lead river water to their fields of barley, and the extra grain fed people who worked as potters, weavers, metalworkers, merchants, scribes and priests.

2For most of this time, Sumer was not one country. It was divided into a dozen or more city-states, such as Uruk, Ur, Kish and Lagash. Each was a walled city with the villages and fields around it, its own ruler and its own patron god, honored in a great temple. The city-states shared a language and many beliefs, but they often fought over canal water and farmland along their borders.

3The plain had clay, reeds and mud in plenty, but almost no timber, building stone or metal ore. Sumerians traded barley, cloth and other goods for these, sometimes with lands hundreds of miles away. Merchants moved goods by boat along the rivers and canals and by donkey over land. Many of the goods they brought home were used to build and decorate temples and palaces, or to make tools and weapons.

4The objects in this hall are copies of finds from Sumer. Each one is a clue to how Sumerians met a need of daily life in their cities. As you walk from case to case, ask yourself: what need did this object meet?

Based on paragraph 2, which event would most likely lead to a war between two Sumerian city-states?

A. One city digs a canal that drains water from its neighbor's fields.
B. Merchants from the two cities trade barley for cloth.
C. One city builds a temple taller than its neighbor's temple.
D. The two cities honor different patron gods in their temples.

Circle the sentence from paragraph 1 that explains how irrigation made it possible for some people to work at jobs other than farming.

Sumer is a flat, hot plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in what is now southern Iraq.Little rain falls there, but the rivers carry water and rich silt.Farmers dug canals to lead river water to their fields of barley, and the extra grain fed people who worked as potters, weavers, metalworkers, merchants, scribes and priests.

Walk the cases

Read the case list and the labels. Then answer the questions.

Objects in the Hall (dates are approximate)
Case	Object	Date	Found at
A	Clay tokens and clay ball	about 3500 BCE	Southern Mesopotamia
B	The Uruk Vase	about 3000 BCE	Uruk
C	Cylinder seal	about 2600 BCE	Ur
D	Solid plank wheel	about 2500 BCE	Graves at Kish and Ur
E	King List prism	about 1800 BCE	Southern Mesopotamia

Case A. Clay tokens and a hollow clay ball. Before writing, officials kept count with small clay shapes called tokens. Scholars think each shape stood for a certain amount of a good; a cone, for example, may have meant a small measure of grain. To keep a record safe, tokens were sealed inside a hollow clay ball so that no one could add or remove any. Officials often pressed the tokens into the soft outside of the ball first, so the count could be read without breaking it open. Many scholars think marks like these led to the first writing on flat clay tablets.

Case B. The Uruk Vase. This stone vase is about 3 feet tall. Its carvings are arranged in bands. Read from the bottom up: wavy lines of water; rows of grain plants; a line of sheep; men carrying baskets and jars full of food; and at the top, a figure bringing these gifts to a temple, probably the temple of Inanna, the goddess of Uruk.

Case C. A cylinder seal and its print. This small cylinder of blue lapis lazuli is carved with a scene. Rolled across wet clay, it leaves a picture that no other seal makes. Officials and merchants rolled their seals on the clay that closed jars, baskets and storeroom doors, and on tablets, to show who owned or approved the goods. Lapis lazuli came from mountains far to the east, in what is now Afghanistan.

Case D. A solid plank wheel. This copy shows a wheel made of three wooden planks held together, with a hole in the middle for the axle. Wheels like it were found with wagons and carts in graves at Kish and Ur. Oxen or donkeys pulled such wagons.

Case E. The King List prism. This four-sided clay prism was written in cuneiform about 1800 BCE. It lists kings city by city, as if only one city held kingship at a time. Adapted lines from a translation: "After kingship came down from heaven, kingship was in Kish. . . . Kish was defeated; its kingship was taken to Uruk. . . . Gilgamesh ruled for 126 years. . . . Uruk was defeated; its kingship was taken to Ur." Several kings near the start of the list are said to have ruled for hundreds or even thousands of years.

Draw a line from each object to the need it met in a Sumerian city.

Tokens sealed in a clay ball (Case A)C
Cylinder seal (Case C)A
Solid plank wheel (Case D)D
King List prism (Case E)B

A. Showing whose goods were in a jar or storeroom
B. Remembering which cities had ruled
C. Keeping a count no one could secretly change
D. Moving heavy loads over land

What idea does the bottom-to-top order of the bands on the Uruk Vase (Case B) best suggest?

A. Rain fell often enough at Uruk to water fields and pastures.
B. Sheep mattered more to the people of Uruk than grain did.
C. Water fed the crops and flocks whose food was given to the temple.
D. The temple handed out sheep and grain to farmers each year.

Based on Case A, how did the marks pressed on the outside of the clay balls most likely help lead to writing?

A. They showed that marks on clay could record a count by themselves.
B. They let officials break the balls open to read stories inside.
C. They showed that tokens worked like coins to pay for goods.
D. They named the patron god who protected each city's grain.

Use the table of objects. Subtract to find the gap.

The King List prism was written about 1,700 years after the clay tokens and ball in Case A.

Use the welcome panel and the labels. Did Sumerians find each material on their own plain, or get it from far away?

Clay for a tabletLapis lazuli for a sealReeds for a boatCopper ore for toolsBarley for breadLong beams for a temple roof

Found on the plain	Brought from far away
Clay for a tablet Reeds for a boat Barley for bread	Lapis lazuli for a seal Copper ore for tools Long beams for a temple roof

Weigh the evidence

Use Case E, the table and the welcome panel.

The King List says Gilgamesh ruled Uruk for 126 years. Why should a historian use the King List with care?

A. It was written before cuneiform signs were in use.
B. Some reigns it lists are far too long for a human life.
C. It names kings of Ur but leaves out Kish and Uruk.
D. Gilgamesh wrote it himself to praise his own rule.

The King List names one city at a time as holding kingship. How does the welcome panel disagree with this picture?

A. The panel says Uruk was the first and last city to rule.
B. The panel says Kish ruled the whole of Sumer from the start.
C. The panel says Sumer was led by temple priests, not kings.
D. The panel says many city-states had their own rulers at once.

10.

Next year the museum can show only two of the five cases. Which two best show how Sumerians solved the problems of life in their city-states? Make a claim, give evidence from the labels and the welcome panel, and explain your reasoning.

The museum should keep Case A and Case B. Case A shows that officials needed a count that no one could secretly change, so they sealed tokens in clay balls and pressed marks on the outside, and scholars think these marks led to writing on tablets. Case B shows the other big problem: the panel says little rain falls in Sumer, and the Uruk Vase shows water at the bottom feeding crops and sheep, whose food was carried to the temple. Together, these two cases show how irrigation made extra food and how writing grew out of the need to keep track of it.