Early iVlesopotamian ethnic and linguistic group comprising a series of autonomous city-states, which emerged in about 3400 bc. It was probably the first ‘civilization’ in the world, perhaps appearing as a result of the stimulation of the organizational demands of irrigation agriculture. Among the principal Sumerian cities were Ur, Eridu, Lagash and Uruk, some of whose rulers are known from king lists compiled in the second millennium BC. Sumerian, the spoken language of the people of Sumer, is unrelated to any other known linguistic group; it was recorded in the CUNEIFORM script, archaic versions of which already appear to bc in the Sumerian language in the later fourth millennium bc (i. e. the Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods). The presence of Sumerian cylinder seals at late Predynastic sites in Egypt has raised the possibility that early cuneiform may have inspired the development of HIEROGLYPHS in Egypt, but there is still considerable debate concerning the connections, if any, between these two ancient scripts. Around 2300 bc Sumer was incorporated into the AKKADIAN empire.
S. N. Kramer, The Sumerians (Chicago, 1963).
II. CR-AWTORD, Sumer and the Sumerians
(Cambridge, 1991).
Sun see aten; atum; ra and. shadow
Symplegma (Greek: ‘intertwined’)
Greek term used to describe a type of sculptural group depicting a group of intertwined figures engaged in sexual intercourse, usually executed in painted terracotta. Votive sculptures of this type were sometimes deposited in shrines and temples, especially in the Ptolemaic period (332—30 Bc). The largest surviving symplegma, now' in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum, New' York, is a terracotta Ptolemaic sculpture portraying a nude woman receiving the sexual attentions of four male figures (each wearing the distinctive. sidelock of a if-OT-priest), while two attendants hold a representation of a bound oryx. In this instance it has been suggested that orgiastic scenes w'ere probably associated with the pro-creative powders of the god asiRis, while the bound oryx perhaps symbolized the containment of evil.
R. S. Bianci II ct ah, Cleopatra's Egypt: age oj'ilie Ptolemies (Mainz, 1988), no, 130.
—, ‘Symplegma’, Ancient Egyptian art in the Brooklyn Museum, ed. R. .A. Fazzini et al. (New York and London, 1989), no. 82.
World History
