The Sumerians

We spent a long time discovering ancient Sumer, and found it really fascinating.  Sumer was not a place I ever learned about as a kid, and my unfamiliarity with it and the comparative lack of resources made it harder to investigate.   Ancient Sumer is evidently a required subject now in grade school, as evidenced by the deluge of 32- and 64- page juvenile nonfiction books on the topic in our library card catalog.  These are usually our least favorite resources, unfortunately.  They rarely cover a topic with any meaningful depth, and don't satisfy Jasper's love for narrative history. We did not find other kinds of resources to be even remotely as numerous.  But the importance of Sumeria is hard to exaggerate.  They had the first large cities. They created what so far is believed to be the oldest system of writing, and used it to record our first literature:  epics, hymns, lullabies.  They invented the wheel, probably first using it as a potter's wheel.  They may have had the first official laws, the first schools, the first systems of irrigation, and the first plows.  They are definitely worth knowing about.

The only historical novel of ancient Sumer even mildly suitable for children that I was able to find was The Golden Bull by Marjorie Cowley.  It's a pretty good one. It follows the adventures of a brother and sister who are forced to leave their farm and their parents to make their way in the city of Ur.   (No one in their right mind would refer to Hubert Invents the Wheel as a historical novel, but it is set in ancient Sumer and at least my kid found it wildly entertaining.  That's the only other children's fiction of any length that I could find about Sumer.)  We decided to plunge into the actual literature of ancient Sumer itself.  We started with a recent translation of the  Epic of Gilgamesh.  It is definitely worth it to hear the story in its entirety, unabridged, but some parts might make you want to censor it a bit, depending on the age of your kids!  Another retelling of this myth that we loved was Gilgamesh the Hero by Geraldine McCaughrean.   This is an abridged version, but has excellent illustrations and covers all the major points. Jasper especially loved Lugalbanda: The Boy Who Got Caught Up in a War by Kathy Henderson, an even older myth about the father of Gilgamesh.  He also enjoyed Ludmila Zemen's Gilgamesh Trilogy, Gilgamesh the King, The Revenge of Ishtar, and The Last Quest of Gilgamesh .  The gorgeous illustrations do justice to this incredible epic which still astonishes after so many centuries.  We also read Stories from Ancient Iraq by Fran Hazelton, which is a retelling of more ancient Sumerian myths in modern English that endeavors to keep good faith with the originals.  These stories are not intended for children, so it's a good idea to read through them first to decide if they are age appropriate. I found most of them to be fine.  We had to go to interlibrary loan for this one- our copy came from Boston.

I found a grand total of two video documentaries about ancient Sumer.  Fortunately, both are excellent.  Schlessinger Media's "Ancient Civilizations for Children:  Ancient Mesopotamia" is a kid-friendly introduction to the subject narrated by archaeologist "Arizona Smith".  All the videos in this series that we have seen so far have been very well done.  Legacy: The Origins of Civilization is historian Michael Wood's highly rated series on ancient civilizations, and the episode on Sumer is marvelous.  The footage was fortuitously shot just prior to the Gulf War.  We were astonished to see the remains of mankind's first civilization just sitting there in the desert.  Shards of ancient pottery were scattered over the ground. I cringed to think how long it may take before these ancient sites can be properly protected and researched again.