HISTORY · OPEN COLLECTION

Sumer

Water management, communal buildings and the exchange networks of the Ubaid period preceded the growth of Uruk. Cities brought workshops, administration and early writing together; later Mesopotamian societies adapted that inheritance.

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Before you begin · Sumer

Before the Sumerian cities

The story of Uruk begins in villages that learned to live among rivers, marshes and farmlands.

From ca. 6200 BCE
Ubaid Villages
Irrigated agriculture, fishing and painted pottery accompany the occupation of the southern plain.
IV millennium BCE
Uruk Expansion
The concentration of inhabitants, workshops and monumental adobe buildings increase.
Ca. 3200–2900 BCE
Register and govern
The first written records precede the world of city-states of the 3rd millennium.

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Prehistoric origins

On the southern plain of Mesopotamia, farmers and fishermen combined different resources: grains from the fields, fish from the waterways, and animals from the wetlands. During the Ubaid period, from the 7th millennium BCE, adobe houses and painted ceramics allow us to recognize communities settled long before the first written tablets.

The earliest cultures

Eridu and other towns grew around buildings that were rebuilt over and over again. Maintaining irrigated crops, storing products, and sourcing materials from other regions required long-lasting agreements. The diffusion of ceramics and seals reveals extensive contacts; It does not prove that all that territory obeyed the same government or that its inhabitants spoke a single language.

How this history is formed

During the 4th millennium BCE, Uruk brought together a population, workshops and large buildings on a new scale. Towards 3200 BCE its administrators recorded goods and rations using signs on clay. Later, cities like Ur and Uruk supported kingdoms of their own: the Sumeria of the museum was a network of cities that shared practices and also competed for resources and power.

From the past to the museum you are about to explore

The containers, seals and tablets along the route show how everyday activities ended up supporting urban institutions.

Interpreting these traces. Ubaid designates an archaeological tradition: it does not automatically identify its inhabitants as Sumerians.

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Explore the earliest cultures

Sumer and the kingdoms of Mesopotamia

Fourth–first millennia BCE · WESTERN ASIA

From the first cities to the kingdoms of Akkad, Babylon and Assyria. Explore its objects, stories, buildings and ways of understanding the world. Each piece preserves its culture, date, provenance and museum: sharing a region and a legacy does not mean being a single civilization.

The room combines a specific visual catalog with an audited thematic dossier. Separates facts, interpretations and cautions; the 3D volumes continue to be replaceable markers until models with provenance and license are incorporated.

Lower Mesopotamia and marshes of the Tigris and Euphrates delta, present-day Iraq

The hydraulic cooperation, communal buildings and networks of the Ubaid period gave Uruk a social infrastructure on which to expand population, workshops and administration.

Ubaid is an extensive archaeological category, not a ready-made Sumerian people; The language and identity of those communities cannot be deduced from a vessel.

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01 · COLLECTION

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Consult the maps and initial context sheets to situate this museum in time and territory; then choose the areas that interest you most.

01 · INITIAL ATLAS · NODES AND ROUTES

Map of Sumer

It locates the Sumerian cities and their exchange routes through the Persian Gulf.

Sumer

Ubaid Villages

Uruk Expansion

Register and govern

Prehistoric origins

The earliest cultures

How this history is formed

From the past to the museum you are about to explore

Sumer and the kingdoms of Mesopotamia

Lower Mesopotamia and marshes of the Tigris and Euphrates delta, present-day Iraq

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