ESP Biography

Sumerian, the world's first written language, flourished in southern Mesopotamia during the third millennium BCE. Its cuneiform documents encode the voices of kings, merchants, and scribes who lived more than four thousand years ago. After reviewing the basics of writing and grammar, we will read royal dedicatory inscriptions from the third dynasty of Ur (~2100-2000 BCE), the last Sumerian city-state to rule Mesopotamia. Knowledge of a foreign language (especially an inflecting one, e.g. Latin, Greek, German, Russian) is recommended but not required.