For nearly 5,000 years, the burning sands of the Iraqi desert preserved the traces of the founders of the oldest known civilization, the Sumerians. Our world owes them everything. The Sumerians invented writing and the wheel. They divided time into seconds and minutes. They tamed nature and built gigantic cities.
They fostered culture and the arts. Their caravans crossed the deserts, tracing the first trade routes. Their stories inspired our founding myths.
The Bible has preserved part of their memory. They wrote the history of a humanity in its infancy. And yet, 4,000 years ago, this brilliant civilization died out. For a long time, their existence remained a mystery.
Today, the desert sands are finally revealing to archaeologists the secrets of this fascinating civilization. A river came out to water the garden. And from there it flowed into four branches.
The name of the first is Pisan. The name of the second river is Gihon. The name of the third is the Tigris, which flows to the west of Syria.
And the fourth is the Euphrates. So the eternal God took man and put him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. Southern Iraq.
Silence covers the sun-drenched dunes. The thermometer reads nearly 50 degrees. The climate here has hardly changed in millennia. Yet this is where people have lived. Between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, the region that historian Polybius called Mesopotamia, the land between two rivers irrigated by the Euphrates and Tigris, covered the territory of present-day Iraq.
In the middle of the 19th century, all we knew about the ancient East was what the Bible had to say. The French and British competed in the race for discoveries. And the discoveries were astonishing. An unsuspected past was emerging from the bowels of the earth.
Mesopotamia had been the cradle of a civilization. But why were these finds so exceptional? And why did civilization develop in this part of the world? What's exceptional about the discovery of the Syro-Mesopotamian civilization, which has only been going on for a century and a half, we must realize, is that we gradually came to realize that this was an extremely diversified, highly developed world, which has basically already experimented with many ways of life, many social experiences in a universe with which we were unfamiliar.
We were under the impression that everything began with Greek civilization and then we realized that there had been something before and that this before had had an influence on the future of civilization in the classical era. The history of Syro-Mesopotamian civilization corresponds to the Syro-Mesopotamian geographical area. In other words, the area drained by the two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. But there's more. It's not just water for life, water for culture, water for people.
It's also water for transport. And these are areas where the axes have become transportation routes. And in a country like Mesopotamia, where there's agricultural production, but where there are fundamental shortcomings.
There's a lack of wood, a lack of stone, a lack of metal ores when bronze and copper are needed. In a country like that, the river is going to become the preferred means of transport between two different and complementary economic areas. Our journey begins in the mountains of Armenia.
This is where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers are born. Fed by melting snow from the high plateaus, their impetuous currents tumble down the steep slopes, tearing tons of silt from the mountains. Their courses meander parallel for over 2,000 kilometers before coming together to form the Arab Chapel. Further down in the great desert plains, the waters subside, depositing fresh fertile soil along their course to the Persian Gulf.
Allies of mankind, the Euphrates and Tigris can also prove merciless enemies. In spring, devastating floods sweep away everything in their path. How did mankind manage to settle on this land subject to the whims of nature? Our investigation takes us to Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, on the banks of the Tigris. In the narrow streets of the city, visitors soak up the vapors of the Orient.
The compact crowds swallow them up in a joyous tumult. In the colorful souk, the Iraqis express their age-old talent for commerce. Here, the traces of the heritage bequeathed by the Sumerians are gone.
In the stalls, fruit and vegetables have remained unchanged for millennia. In the soft coolness of the shaded galleries, the traveler finds the pomegranate of northern Iraq and the yogurt that the Mesopotamians were so fond of. At every street corner you'll find earthenware jars filled with drinking water.
The pearly water on the surface of the jar evaporates, preserving the liquid from the heat. A 5,000-year-old Sumerian invention. But who were these Sumerians?
And where did they come from? It was on the fertile plateaus of Anatolia, several thousand kilometers from Mesopotamia, that archaeologists solved part of the Sumerian enigma. Here, they have discovered the vital source that enabled the expansion of populations and the founding of a civil society. civilization. Spelt, the wild wheat, grows naturally throughout eastern Turkey.
This particularly rich region of the great has been inhabited since the dawn of time. Tribes living by hunting and gathering found here all the food they needed to survive. Kurdish populations perpetuate these age-old traditions. Every day the women prepare Sashayek Megi, a wheat cake that is the main dish for the whole family.
Archaeologists unearthed the ruins of an ancient village, the ruins of a 9,000-year-old village. 3,500 years before Sumer, men had settled on these fertile soils. Although they didn't yet produce ceramics, the inhabitants of these bare clots were builders.
They built dwellings with earthen walls resting on dry stone foundations. One day, 9,000 years ago... The inhabitants of bare clots made a discovery that would change the face of the world. When around 15,000 BC the hills of the Euphrates River at its entrance into Syria were covered with this wild grass that enabled people to settle down, this was obviously an extremely new element.
When they discovered that this grass produced a seed that could be used and which above all had the enormous advantage of being able to be preserved, the preservation of the food product played an essential role because it meant that instead of... Instead of having to find food three days after slaughtering an animal, you could say that you had several weeks or months supply ahead of you. From that point on, conditions change, and when man realizes that he has this product, he will stay close to it. Of course, this product can only be harvested at a very specific time of year. but it cannot be transported.
Once you've harvested it, you have to keep it. It's a stock. You have to protect it. You have to prevent others from taking it.
So sedentarization takes place at a given moment in this region for a very precise reason. In other words, to preserve a food stock that can be harvested at a certain time. And here, of course, the human mind plays a fundamental role. We can talk about accidental discoveries. I believe that the human mind constantly plays on observations, on exceptional discoveries, once, twice, repeated, on a search for an explanation of this phenomenon, until it is capable on its own of going beyond and achieving something new.
And that's how agriculture was born. by himself, to go beyond and to realize something new. And that's how agriculture was born.
Cereals were the main source of wealth for Sumerian civilization. This alabaster vase over a meter high bears witness to the Sumerians' gratitude to nature. It also expresses their religious fervor.
The sculptor has depicted the plant and animal world in the form of ears of wheat and flocks of sheep. Humans bearing offerings make their way to the sanctuary of Inanna, goddess of heaven and earth. There, the high priest welcomes them in his finest attire. Thanks to this mastery of agriculture, the population grew and the first groups began to colonize the territories along the rivers, all the way to the great Mesopotamian plain. Improving yields was the farmers' main concern.
This tablet shows a cart used to save seed. Thanks to a funnel, the seeds were poured evenly and regularly into the furrows dug in the ground. And the Sumerian secret lies in their art of taming fickle waters. Five thousand years ago, a fragile balance between man and nature was established in these lands.
To achieve this feat, the Sumerians invented the wheel. and dug hundreds of kilometers of drainage canals, reservoirs and dams. Irrigation became the cornerstone of their civilization.
By harnessing the unpredictable flows of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the Sumerians harnessed the power of an implacable nature. As a reward for their efforts, the land, fertilized over hundreds of thousands of hectares, produced miraculous harvests. In some regions, wheat, millet and barley were harvested twice a year.
Along the irrigation canals, oases of millions of palm trees stretched as far as the eye could see. The same landscapes can be found in the region where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers merge to form a single river, the Châtel-Arabe, an agricultural province that thrives on the bounty of Iraqi rivers. Only boats can penetrate this labyrinth of immense rosens. This is where the Sumerians set up their fishing village. The way of life of the inhabitants and the method they use to build their huts have not changed as the sword bass reliefs attest.
The hut rests on soil stabilized by interweaving layers of earth and woven reeds. The floor, roofs and walls are made of interwoven rods. Tightly packed boots serve as pillars, supports and beams. 5,000 years ago, the marshes in front of Ur's harbour were home to over 4,000 inhabitants. Fishermen and farmers.
The whole people lived here. Conquering an immense territory, metre by metre, on frail reed skiffs. They said to each other, come on, let's make bricks and bake them in the fire. And brick became stone and bitumen became cement. Then they said, let's go and build a city and a tower whose top touches the sky.
Before the remains of the city of Ur, early archaeologists must have been speechless. Before their eyes, the remains of houses, granaries and temples. 5,000 years BC, this urban complex was home to 34,000 people.
At the same time, people in the West were still living in the Stone Age. In building these cities, the Mesopotamians shaped the world in their own image. The transformation of the world, of the environment by the inhabitants of Mesopotamia is a fundamental phenomenon.
They didn't just create villages, they also established farming areas. Or later, in the age of cities, they didn't just let cities grow, they developed the region. And the lifestyle they developed was one of domination over nature.
And that's something quite astonishing, something we don't always think about. They dominated nature to use it for their own survival. Built to last using kiln-fired bricks coated with bitumen, Erz-Ziggurat is impressive. Today, it is estimated that the construction of its base alone required the work of 1,500 men over a period of five years.
Twenty kilometers away, farmers could see the residence of the god, their master. Drawings of the ruins made in the early 20th century by English archaeologist Léonard Roulet allow us to imagine the city of Ur 4,000 years ago. This immensely rich city was set amidst 4,000 hectares of cereal fields.
Its port received merchants from the Persian Gulf and exported goods several thousand kilometers away to the Arabian Peninsula. All the city's activity crystallized around the temple, a place of prayer where all political and economic decisions were taken. Behind an eight meter high wall, the houses piled up in a motley assortment.
In the narrow winding streets, sewers were non-existent. Garbage burned at the foot of facades when it wasn't simply spread out on the pavement. Three-story buildings rubbed shoulders with single-story buildings. No dwelling was aligned with its neighbor.
Apart from low doors and a few ventilation holes, the facades had virtually no openings. In this way, the inhabitants of Urs protected themselves from the heat and the clouds of dust. Life within the walls of Urz has long remained a mystery. The site's inventor, Léonard Roulet, spent years excavating the ruins.
In 1926, he entered the Puy de la Mour, the tomb of Queen Puabi, and 50 servants, soldiers and handmaidens sacrificed to serve her in the afterlife. The dim candlelight illuminated skeletons covered in gold and silver. In the treasure trove, the archaeologist...
The strategist discovered a piece of furniture, the Urss Standard, whose two finely worked sides depict the life of the Sumerians. The pearly figures, fishermen, slaves and soldiers parade for eternity against a lapis lazuli sky. In a snapshot of incredible precision we see battle tanks pulled by mules crushing the enemy. The frozen smile of a scribe taking a drink from a cup with wings.
In the now arid desert that surrounds the site, traces of the past are still clearly visible. What a surprise to discover in the middle of this desolate land, several kilometers from the rivers, the remains of Sumerian dams. 19th century archaeologists were confronted with this enigma.
How could life have established itself in desert areas so far from waterways? The city of Nippur, 250 kilometers south of Baghdad, in the middle of the desert. The remains of the temple emerge from the dunes. And during excavations of the city, archaeologists found the key to the enigma.
On this clay tablet, which shows the layout of the city of Nippur, we can see the exact location of the temple and enclosure that protected the city. To the west of the wall flowed the frat, part of whose course had been diverted to supply the city. Large cities were therefore built on the water's edge. But the morphological evolution of the land and the violence of floods have altered the course of rivers. Thanks to satellite photos of Iraq's relief, we can now reconstruct the map of this part of the world 5,000 years ago.
Nippur, Uruk, Ur, and Gursu, the main city of Sumerian civilization, were established in a totally different landscape. At that time, the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was located further north. As they crossed Mesopotamia, the two rivers became one.
The first rays of sunlight brush against the city of Ur. It's summer and the heat will once again be overwhelming. The city is slowly waking up. The inhabitants have slept on the terraces, which are much cooler than the small rooms in their homes. The texts summarizing the real estate purchases revealed that the surface area of the houses did not exceed 70 square meters.
Very early on a motley crowd invades the alleyways. People jostle each other, greeting each other brightly. Merchants call out to passers-by. The city's commercial activity is intense.
In the courtyards of some of the houses, men relax with straw beer. Several writings bear witness to the temperament of the Sumerians. The extraordinary precariousness of their situation, subject to the vagaries of nature, made them aware of the ephemeral and fragile nature of existence.
In the streets the inhabitants of Orr wear coniches, a sheepskin tunic. Depending on the season or fashion, the bottom of the garment is rolled up over the thighs or down to the knees or ankles. Notables' wives wear lighter, shimmering colored sheets.
Both men and women wore jewelry, earrings, bracelets and necklaces. Archaeological digs have revealed the presence within the city walls of counterfeiters imitating gold and turquoise to perfection. The less fortunate inhabitants were thus able to adorn themselves with costume jewelry. All these people were merchants, shopkeepers and traders. On the outskirts of the temple were the houses of scribes, masons and carpenters, and the slums of the slaves.
For archaeologists, the treasure unearthed in Ur is of inestimable scientific value. It tells us about Sumerian customs and testifies to the quality of the city's craftsmen. Sumerian goldsmiths mastered the techniques of chasing and soldering gold. This harp, with its bull's head gazing into eternity through lapis lazuli eyes, was adorned with a mosaic of shells and precious stones.
For their last journey in the company of their sovereign, the maids wore a spectacular diadem of gold ribbons and colored stones. A braid of beech leaves covered their foreheads. Attached to the back of the head, an ornament of three golden flowers rose above the face.
The gold used for crockery and weapons for parades, silver, lapis lazuli or turquoise, came from eastern regions. Mother of pearl and shells came from the Bahrain islands. The raw materials used to fashion this upright buckle reveal Ur's astonishing prosperity. They reflect the vitality of their trade.
Archaeologists have tracked down some of these materials. To obtain Lapis Lazuli, the Sumerians organized caravans that traveled over 3,000 kilometers to reach the mountains of Badakhstan in northern Pakistan. Peshawar, a trading city in northern Pakistan. Shipments of lapis lazuli arrive from Afghanistan.
The stone under the water glows a deep blue. This intense color fascinated the Sumerians. Archaeologists have established that the Lapis Lazuli trade originated with the Sumerian civilization 3,500 years B.C.
3,000 years before the opening of the Silk Road, the Sumerians mapped out trade routes that crisscrossed the Orient. The development of trade led the Sumerians to invent the concept of the contract. Cylindrical buckets were carved in stone and finely engraved with a negative bas-relief. When a contract was signed, the bucket was rolled in clay to identify the goods.
This imprint sealed the transaction. It was thus that the people of Sumer, for whom these contracts were of great importance, began to enact laws. Few legislative texts from this period have survived. However, at the beginning of the 20th century, archaeologists discovered the stone of Hammurabi, King of Babylon, in the Persian city of Susa. The Elamites, who had ravaged Mesopotamia in the 12th century BC, had taken it as a trophy.
In 1694 BC, Hammurabi had the code that bears his name drawn up, a compendium of all Sumerian laws. Most of the 282 articles engraved in stone deal with everyday problems such as commercial transactions, marriage and inheritance. As a judge, the king diligently investigated and protected individuals from the abuses of civil servants and oversaw major public works. The Hammurabi Code proves that the Sumerians were forerunners in many fields. On the back of the stone, Article 196 of the Code warns, If a man gouges another man's eye, then his eye must be gouged out.
A famous adage that inspired the Bible. To build their Garden of Eden, the Sumerians scoured the world in search of commodities they didn't possess. Wood, for example, absent from the deserts of Mesopotamia. To obtain this rare material reserved for construction, Sumerians ventured into Syria, Turkey and as far as the mountains of Lebanon.
Today, cedar forests are rare and sparse. After the Sumerians, all the civilizations of antiquity used this wood, inexorably destroying this plant heritage. Legend has it that some cedars are over 4,000 years old, and that they were contemporaries of civilizations that have since disappeared.
They could therefore bear witness to the efforts made by the Sumerians in their time. The bas-reliefs found in the temples bear witness to this quest. Sumerian lumberjacks cut down centuries-old cedars before loading them into boats that sailed down the Euphrates.
These expeditions lasted months. They show the enormous work accomplished by a people settled in an austere environment. Some of the discoveries made by the Sumerians 5,000 years ago are still used today by their Iraqi descendants. Such is the case with bitumen, a natural mineral rich in carbon that is still used to waterproof the hulls of ships and the roofs of houses. We are in Hitt, a small town on the banks of the Euphrates, 600 kilometers from the Sumerian cities.
Here, bitumen gushes from the bowels of the earth accompanied by sulfur fumes. As it floats on water, archaeologists imagine that the substance must have traveled down the Euphrates and been collected by the Sumerians on the banks of the river. In Hitt, the part of the Sumerian city is a place of worship. Population still harvests Baichaman, and the methods used have remained unchanged for millennia.
Before plunging one's hands into the blackish material floating on the water, one has to coat them with sand. The Sumerians also used Baichaman to waterproof their boats. But it was mainly used in construction, not only to fix bricks together, but also to waterproof the foundations of public buildings. This practice tells us something about a major event in their lives, flooding. Thanks to the work of the English Orientalist George Smith, some stories of devastating floods have come down to us.
Enlil, the supreme god, was displeased with human misbehavior and decided to engulf them in a mighty flood, despite the pleas of Enki, god protector of mankind. to protect humanity. Enki decided to preserve a trace of mankind in the person of Ziusudra, whom he asked to build an ark on which to embark pairs of animals.
After six days and six nights of storms, the world was submerged. At dawn on the seventh day, the storm receded. Ziusudra released a dove which, unable to land, returned to him. On the eighth day, he released a raven, which never returned.
Humanity was saved. The Mesopotamian myths have only been rediscovered for a little over a century in texts that have been found, particularly in the Nineveh library. which is the deluge without reality.
The whole of Western civilization, the whole of Western Christianity is imbued with the biblical text. And in the biblical text, there are myths that come directly from the Mesopotamian world. And the entire history of Western Christianity is dominated by these myths. Understood or not understood, often reinterpreted, perhaps not felt in the deepest sense that the inhabitants of Mesopotamia attributed to them. But the myths are there and they've left their mark on us.
But these myths are there and they have completely imprisoned us. Gods inspired fear and respect. They symbolized the Sumerians' age-old distrust of nature. Each deity in their pantheon had its own role.
Each reigned over a city. Enlil, Lord of Breath, reigns over air and earth. His city is Nippur. Enki, God of Water and the World, is worshipped in Eridu.
Thu, God of Justice and Truth, presides over the destiny of Larsa. Inanna, the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, is honoured in Uruk. She inspires love and war. She became the Aphrodite of the Greeks and the Venus of the Roma.
The fluid curves of these alabaster statuettes reveal the dexterity of Sumerian artists. The finesse and expressiveness of their faces reveal their art and religious fervor. The religious feeling of the Mesopotamians is something very difficult to grasp.
We find temples in excavations, but we have myths in texts, we have rituals. In other words, what must be performed during such and such a ceremony, but the deeper meaning is poorly understood and poorly expressed. In the Mesopotamian universe, there is a very general concept of divine power.
There are forces and man is at the service of these forces and he has to deal with them, he has to compose. This religion is a religion of man in the service of God. De l'homme au service du Dieu.
What does this service mean? It's about ensuring his day-to-day existence, giving him food and drink during the meals of each day, dressing him in beautiful garments, obviously including his statue, putting on necklaces, taking them... off, changing according to the day.
From time to time, the god is taken out for great festivals, taken around the city, spent elsewhere, and then returned to his temple. If we look at the facts, as we know, the Mesopotamian religion is pretty much like that. Prayer was part of the daily life of the people of Sumer. The upkeep and running of the temples required a large staff. Every day the faithful brought their offerings.
The Uruk archives describe the daily menu of the city's four main gods. 250 loaves of bread, a 1,000 tarts, 50 sheep, 8 lambs, 2 oxen and a calf. Heavenly food which, after being presented to the deities, fed the priests and temple staff.
1,200 people in all. The scribes have passed on to us the hopes of the people of Sumer. In exchange for their fervor, the virtues they nurtured, their dignity and respect for the established order, the Sumerians aspired to eternal life in the afterlife.
The incessant struggle to tame nature reminded them of the fragility of earthly existence and inspired their most beautiful legends. Gilgamesh, a real historical figure. Fifth king of Uruk in the third millennium. He is the hero of the Sumerians. Tales of his fabulous exploits were known throughout Mesopotamia.
He sums up the history of Sumerian civilization. A just king and a builder, Gilgamesh defied the gods. He tamed savage peoples and headed for the remote, fragrant cedar forest to confront Humbaba.
a terrible, fire-breathing monster. In hand-to-hand combat, he cut off the monster's head and returned to Uruk victorious. To punish him, the goddess Inanna sent the celestial bull to ravage the city. The beast dried up the meadows and rivers and opened cracks in which the inhabitants disappeared.
And the Eternals scattered them far and wide over the face of the whole earth, and they ceased to build the city. The Sumerians' vision was prophetic. After 3,000 years of rule over Mesopotamia, their civilization, under attack from all sides, would collapse without a hitch.
The splendor of the cities and their influence on the surrounding countryside were over. Irrigation canals gradually dried up, house walls crumbled, and the temples themselves succumbed to the combined assaults of sun, rain, and wind. The clay of the bricks returned to the earth, leaving nothing above the dunes but shapeless masses, the last vestiges of the grandeur of an entire people. How can we explain the disappearance of such a brilliant civilization?
How can we understand the decadence of a people who left behind only ruins and the remains of temples soon sacked by looters? Can we speak of a decline? To a certain extent, yes, but perhaps more like a sclerosis.
All the great discoveries made by the people of the fourth millennium, du quatrième millénaire. All the thought that goes into religious manifestations, or let's say in the context of religion, all these things are evolving and seen on a long scale. We realize that there's more or less and less freedom to express a certain number of things. Take for example...
... Mesopotamian art is infinitely more diverse and flourishing in the third millennium than in the first millennium. What happens around 12? Around 12, iron is discovered.
Iron is an asset, something more efficient than copper. In some ways easier to work with even if it requires a higher temperature and has even more applications. So it's an improvement but the Mesopotamian environment is not rich in iron and the problem of sources is going to arise because you have to go much further. As a result regions with iron ore were going to play a much stronger role than Mesopotamia. for almost a century scribes patiently recorded the decline in harvests the tablets archived in the temples are formal from twenty three fifty b c onwards wheat production fell by forty per cent only barley The texts for an answer that was to be found in the field.
The element that had been the source of Sumerian power, the irrigation system, also contributed to their downfall. The water, which had regularly invaded the fields for 3,000 years, evaporated, bringing salt up from the depths of the earth. Soon, a whitish layer, hardened by the sun, sterilized the soil, making it impossible for wheat to grow.
A problem still faced by the inhabitants of these regions. Some soils cracked by the sun's rays look like uncultivated desert. This is what the vast fields surrounding the big cities used to look like. Due to global warming and desertification, Sumerian farmers never found a solution to their problems.
But can we really speak of a decline in civilization? To speak of a decline is not correct. It's a power that's developed and a civilization that's reached the end of its tether, producing superb products, and these products, this thought, will not perish.
It's a thought that will be... passed on, the Greeks, the Persians, who were themselves highly cultured people, like the people of Mesopotamia at the time, in fact, certain categories, certain zeniths. passed on their sciences, their knowledge, and this was to be done in particular via Anatolia towards the Greek world, and through the Greek world it will find its way into the Mediterranean.
And the whole Mediterranean basin inherited Mesopotamian civilization, but without being able to make an absolute reference to the very forms of this Mesopotamian civilization. Weakened, the cities of Sumer were unable to compete economically with the great cities of northern Mesopotamia. Already, other civilizations inspired by the Sumerian example were planting their banners in the conquered lands. In 2004 BC, Sumer had come to an end. The Assyrians dominated Mesopotamia.
The Babylonian epic could begin. Under the implacable sun, the wealth of the Sumerians returned to the dust. The Bible tells us their story.
Like the builders of the Tower of Babel, the men and women of Sumer scattered around the earth. The water they so feared had precipitated their downfall, having captured the Tigris and Euphrates, stemmed their fury and fed off their vitality. The Sumerians plunged into nothingness, swept away by history, bequeathing to humanity the memory of their wealth, the imprint of their creative genius, and a sense of the extraordinary fragility of civilizations.