Before Greece, before Rome, before Egypt, there was Sumer. And in the desert south of Iraq, the ruins of the world's first cities still rise from the dust.
The First Cities
In the alluvial plain of southern Iraq, between the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Sumerians built the world's first cities. Uruk, Ur, Eridu, Lagash, Nippur. Names that sound like the beginning of a story, because they are the beginning of the story. Between the fifth and fourth millennia BCE these cities emerged from the plain like something growing. They had temples, palaces, markets, schools, courts, and jails. They had writing. They had law. They had beer. Everything that follows, every civilization, every empire, every literate society on earth, began here.
The Sumerians are the earliest known civilization. Their world is attested in cuneiform texts from Uruk and Jemdet Nasr, dating to between 3350 and 2500 BCE. The King List, a document that traces the lineage of rulers from the antediluvian age to the historical period, begins with Eridu: "After the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridu." Eridu was the first city. Not the largest, not the most powerful. The first. The place where urban life itself began.
The Temple of Enki
Eridu was home to the largest temple dedicated to Enki, the god of water and wisdom. The temple was called E-Abzu, as Enki was believed to live in the Abzu, an aquifer from which all life was thought to stem. The temple was repeatedly rebuilt on the same site over two millennia, each iteration larger than the last. These reconstructions created a raised platform on which new temples were constructed, the earliest form of ziggurat. Reconstructions stopped around 3200 BCE. A millennium later, under the Ur III dynasty, a ziggurat was erected on the ruins.
The first major excavations at Eridu were conducted between 1946 and 1949 by Iraqi archaeologist Fuad Safar and British archaeologist Seton Lloyd. They uncovered an unfinished ziggurat and beneath it remains from the Uruk period (4500 to 3200 BCE) and the Ubaid period (5300 to 3800 BCE). The site consists of multiple mounds. Mound 1 is an eighty-two-foot-high tell covering approximately 1,900 by 1,770 feet. In 2022 the University of Strasbourg resumed work at Abu Shahrayn, Eridu's modern name, reconsidering the E-Abzu monumental complex.
The Ziggurat of Ur
Forty minutes from the marshes, the great Ziggurat of Ur rises from the desert like a mountain made by hand. Built by King Ur-Nammu around 2040 BCE and completed around 2000 BCE, it was dedicated to Nanna, the moon god, patron deity of Ur. The ziggurat's Sumerian name was E-temen-ni-gΓΉru, "house whose foundation creates terror." Its dimensions: 64 metres long, 45 metres wide, rising approximately 30 metres in its original form (only the foundations of the Sumerian ziggurat have survived). The base area was 2,880 square metres.
The ziggurat had crumbled to ruins by the sixth century BCE, when it was restored by the Neo-Babylonian King Nabonidus, who raised it to seven levels rather than the original three. Under Saddam Hussein in the 1980s the facade and monumental staircase were partially reconstructed. Over four hundred Gulf War bullet holes remain in the structure. A latest emergency campaign, launched in May 2026, is a $382,000 effort by Iraq's State Board of Antiquities and Heritage targeting severe erosion along the northern base, driven by desertification, extreme heat, and sandstorms. By July 2026 conservators had restored the first level, rebuilt and stabilized the three monumental access staircases, and repaired severe cracking on the second tier using custom-made mud bricks.
What the Sumerians Gave Us
The list is almost too long to hold in the mind. Cuneiform writing: sharpened reeds scratching wedge-shaped symbols into wet clay, borrowed by subsequent civilizations for two thousand years. The wheel: first as a potter's wheel, then adapted for carts and chariots. The sexagesimal system: the reason we have sixty minutes in an hour, sixty seconds in a minute, and 360 degrees in a circle. Irrigation systems that turned desert into farmland. The plow. Sailboats. The corbeled arch. Bronze working. Formal schools, the first institutions of organized education. The first beer recipe, inscribed on a clay tablet. The first love poem. The first legal codes. The first astronomers, mapping stars into constellations that survived into the Greek zodiac.
The Sumerians did not merely begin civilization. They invented the tools that make civilization possible. Every time you check the time, read a book, sit in a classroom, or raise a glass, you are using something the Sumerians invented.
Ur, the Royal Tombs
At Ur, Leonard Woolley excavated the Royal Tombs in the 1920s and 1930s, uncovering gold jewelry, lyres, and the remains of a civilization that buried its dead with treasures. The golden lyre of Ur, its bull's head fashioned from gold and lapis lazuli, is one of the most famous artifacts of the ancient world. The tombs date to approximately 2600 to 2450 BCE and contain the remains of kings, queens, and attendants who were sacrificed to accompany their rulers into the afterlife. The Royal Tombs area is currently fenced off for preservation.
The site is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "The Ahwar of Southern Iraq," which also includes the Marshes, Eridu, and Uruk. Entry fee: IQD 25,000 for foreigners, IQD 3,000 for Iraqis. Climbing the monumental staircase is now forbidden for preservation reasons.
Practical Notes
- Access: The Ziggurat of Ur is located near Nasiriyah in Dhi Qar Province, approximately 300 km southeast of Baghdad. Eridu is approximately 20 km southeast of Ur. The Deep Sumer and Anbar and Mesopotamian Marshes tours visit Ur as part of the southern Iraq itinerary.
- Best time: Early morning or late afternoon. The desert light at sunrise and sunset is extraordinary. Avoid midday in summer.
- Carry: Water, sunscreen, a hat. The site is exposed with no shade.
- Combine with: The Marshes of Chibayish are approximately 40 minutes from Ur. The Mesopotamian Marshes itinerary pairs both in a single expedition.
