Our exciting exploration of ancient Mesopotamia began today. Like all good explorers we spent the day researching/prepping ourselves ready to start our time travelling journey next week. We read books, perused videos and pored over ancient maps so that we know exactly what we might expect to find when we get there.
Theo brought to our attention the similarities between Christian bible stories and the myths and legends of Sumeria. He was interested in the great flood story from Sumeria in which an ark is built to save humanity and all the animals from the flood. This story appeared in his Galore Park book so I decided to throw him a few more lines of investigation. He looked at the garden of Eden and was quickly able to find out that the word Eden is in fact derived from the Sumarian word edin which means fertile or uncultivated plain. From this information he sumised that Sumerian legends and stories predate the bible which simply borrowed tales from ancient cunifrom tablets. The influence of Sumerian stories upon the bible is incredibly interesting and we will be investigating this much further.
We thought about agriculture and the effect that rapidly expanding civilisations might have on the land. I asked what the ultimate effect might be of feeding more and more people from the same farmland and whether it could be sustained. Theo decided that something bad would eventually happen - we will think about this on our journey.
We discovered that the Sumerians invented so many amazing things including the wheel, bronze, writing, school, laws and sexagesimal (the numerical system based on 60 - we still use it to measure time and angles). They are responsible for a wealth of other staggeringly important invensions which we will find out about as we travel deeper into the time period.
We looked at the great city of 'Ur' with its towering ziggurat built to worship the moon god and we looked at the cities of Nippur, Uruk and Kish. There is so much to learn, so much to see in these cities.
We touched on the epic story of Gilgamesh and thought about the importance of myth and legend to ancient people. We will find a version of this story accessible for children soon.
Finally, we examined images of cuneiform on old clay tablets. We thought about the marks and how they translate to words. We made a stylus from an old chopstick by carving the end with a knife and wished that we could find an actual reed to try this with. I talked to the boys about clay and its abundance in Sumeria, a place lacking in any major natural resource. We live in an area which is also abundant in clay, something we will put to good use soon. I gave the boys a lump of clay each and they experimented with making marks as they would have done thousands of years ago on the banks of the Euphraites or Tigres. Tristan was covered in wet clay by the end of the session and all we giggled as we thought that this probably happened frequently with little Sumerian children too.
We are leaving our text book behind and heading on a long journey of discovery in to ancient Sumeria. We are going to examine what life would be like for a family in this period of time in the place heralded as the cradle of civilisation. The boys will find out what their counterparts would have worn, eaten, seen, worshipped, played with, learnt, smelt and feared. They will learn to write a little cuneiform, they will make, play and do. It is an exciting adventure that awaits us and I hope that you will come along with us to see how we get on. Our journey will end as we fast forward through time to have a look at modern day Iraq.
As a parting thought, doesn't it seem a little odd that the history of Sumeria is omitted from the mainstream education system as it is the oldest recorded civilisation?
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