The 

Sumerian language was spoken in southern Mesopotamia before the 2nd

millennium BCE and was the first language to be written in the cuneiform script. It is
an isolate language meaning we know of no other languages that relate to it ancestrally.
Although there are some theories that Sumerian is a member of the Uralic languages
like Hungarian and Finnish, or other language families, this is a minority view with
insufficient evidence to make a definite claim. The language was spoken in a region
where Semitic languages were also spoken, particularly Akkadian, and it eventually fell
out of use in favor of those languages by the turn of the 2nd millennium BCE. However,
a literary form of the language continued to be written for another 2000 years, and it
also had notable influences on other languages of the region with respect to their
lexicon, grammar, and writing.

Historical Development of the Language

Little is known about when Sumerian-speaking people arrived in southern
Mesopotamia, assuming they did not originate there. Either way, from a very early
period a multilingual environment existed in southern Mesopotamia, which included
languages like Sumerian, an early form of Akkadian, other Semitic languages, and
Hurrian. Some scholars have posited the possibility of an otherwise unknown substrate,
or influencing language of the area, due to the presence of words of unknown origin in
Sumerian writings. It has been demonstrated, however, that these words either
originated in other known languages, are compounds in Sumerian, or words common
to many languages of no clear origin.

THE FIRST INSTANCE OF THE LANGUAGE IN

WRITING IS FROM A GROUP OF TEXTS DATING
TO THE URUK IV PERIOD (C. 3200 BCE).
The first instance of the language in writing is from a group of texts dating to the Uruk
IV period (c. 3200 BCE). Most of these are administrative texts, but some are wordlists
used for scribal education. It has been challenged that these texts are indeed Sumerian,
due to the fact that ideograms abound, which can be read in any language. For instance,
three strokes along with a depiction of an ox could be read as “three oxen” in English,
“drei Ochsen” in German, “tres bueyes” in Spanish, etc. The meaning of the writing
would not change. However, the presence of phonetic complements as well as phonetic
spellings that cue the reader to an actual pronunciation makes it almost certain that the
language was indeed Sumerian. Around 400 years later, the next group of texts we have
come from Ur c. 2800 BCE. Again, these are mostly administrative texts together with a
number of wordlists for scribal education.

Our knowledge of Sumerian literature, in fact the earliest known literature, comes alive
during the Early Dynastic Period III (EDIII) c . 2500 BCE, especially at the sites of Fara
(ancient Shuruppak) and Abu Salabikh. Here we gain the first instances of such works
as the Kesh Temple Hymn, the Instructions of Shuruppak, and Lugalbanda and Ninsun
(the parents of Gilgamesh), which broke through the boundaries of the practical realm
of economy and administration, and delved into the sphere of mythology and
cosmology . Even though these texts are difficult to read, we can ascertain literary
themes like the formation of the world, divine temple building, and other divine
activities, sometimes of an adult nature. In these texts, we also encounter a large
number of names of scribes and functions which are Akkadian in origin, suggesting
that the two languages were very intermixed, as stated above. This was the time of the
Sumerian's greatest worldly influence, as evidenced by texts outside the Mesopotamian
realm from Mari, Ebla, Tell Beydar, and Tell Brak which utilized the cuneiform script
for Sumerian as well as their local Semitic languages.

We do not have a lot of evidence for Sumerian writing during the Sargonic period (c.
2300 – c. 2100 BCE). Scribes were centrally trained in Agade and then sent out to help
conduct the affairs of every part of the realm, but they used Akkadian as their language,
giving Sumerian a backseat. Even so, there were still local towns using Sumerian
writing to run the local administration.

There was somewhat of a resurgence of Sumerian writing during the Ur III period (c.
2100 – c. 2000 BCE) as the first kings of this period, Ur-Namma and Shulgi used
Sumerian cuneiform in their administrations. However, at this stage the written
language would not have reflected any spoken vernacular. In the realm of literature,
Shulgi replaced the earlier ED III mythological tradition with a new scribal curriculum
introducing such genres as royal and divine hymns and songs. This was also the period
where such famous works like The Curse of Agade and the Law  Code of Ur-Namma  were
first composed. Contemporary with Ur-Namma was Gudea, the king of Lagash/Girsu
who is famous for being the focal point of texts on cylinders and statues. In one account,
the city god Ningirsu came to him in a dream and commanded him to build the Eninnu
(lit. “50 House”) temple at Girsu, which he of course dutifully did.
Map of Sumer
P L Kessler (Copyright)

By the Old Babylonian Period (c. 2000 BCE), most scholars are in agreement that people
had stopped speaking Sumerian entirely (if not earlier). However, even though the
language ceased to be a spoken one, it was revitalized by Old Babylonian scribes as a
literary one. In fact, most of the Sumerian literature that comes down to us is from this
period. As such, there is much debate over how in tune to reality the Old Babylonian
versions were to the previously living language. Many of these texts come from
southern Babylonian sites like Ur and Nippur but only before and during the reign of
Samsu-iluna under whom a rebellion led to the abandonment of Nippur. In
northern Babylonia, the tradition was not interrupted until the invasion of Mursili I (c.
1595 BCE). Some famous texts either initially written in this period or copied from an
earlier period include the Sumerian King List, Lamentation of Ur, Inanna's Descent into
the Underworld, and the hero myths of Enmerkar, Lugalbanda, and Gilgamesh.

Writing
Sumerian is written in the cuneiform script. In fact, it is the first language we know to
be written using cuneiform and most likely cuneiform was developed for use by this
language. The script was originally written using ideograms, symbols which express an
idea rather than a word or sound, and thus can technically be understood in any
language. As the script developed though, Sumerian scribes attributed syllabic values to
the signs based on how the word sounded in the language. For instance, a picture of a
mouth would represent the word 'ka' and so the sign could now represent the syllable
'ka' in any word containing that syllable.

The writing system of Sumerian has the principles of polyphony and homophony.
Polyphony means that some signs have multiple syllabic values, for instance the DU
sign could be read either 'du', 'ra2', 'ša4', etc., each having different but often related
meanings. Homophony means that there are multiple signs having the same syllabic
value. You may have noticed the use of subscripts (2) in the sign values. This is because
syllables like 'ra' had multiple sign renderings like RA , the aforementioned DU, and
others. Incredibly, some syllables had more than 10 different signs representing them.

This principle of homophony and the fact that one syllable in Sumerian often comprises
the entire word have led some scholars to believe that Sumerian contained a tonal
system. How can there be so many homophones without there being some other feature
to distinguish them? Countering this notion, other scholars have noted that these single
syllables often differ by their final consonant, which falls out of pronunciation at the
end of the word e.g. the sign for ox 'gu4' has another value 'gud', the 'd' falling out when
the word is final. Another suggestion is the potential existence of consonant clusters,
which the writing system had no means of representing.

Dialects?
There was an interesting system of sign value variation which occurred only during the
ED III period. This is commonly referred to as UGN or UD.GAL.NUN as the signs spell
out. This manner of writing is characterized by atypical readings for certain signs. For
example, the signs UD.GAL.NUN had the anomalous reading of diŋir.en.lil2 which
would reference the god (diŋir) Enlil, which had nothing to do with the typical sign
reading. There are a number of instances of these irregular readings but it seems to fall
out of practice after this period.

Eme-sal is commonly referred to as a dialect of Sumerian as opposed to eme-gir15 or the

“main dialect” of Sumerian. The writing of eme-sal is limited to ritual texts, particularly
the lamentation texts for gala-priests, and the words spoken by certain goddesses,
although in other places these goddesses speak eme-gir15. Because the sign SAL can
have a reading as munus meaning “woman”, scholars have posited that eme-sal is a
genderlect or special dialect for speech by women. However, the sign SAL also has the
reading sal which means “thin” or “soft” and could simply refer to a special variant for
the goddesses or ritual-performing priests as stated before. Another suggestion put
forth is that the gala-priests were eunuchs, but there is no evidence for castration in
ancient southern Mesopotamian culture.

The Legacy of Sumerian

As stated above, the Sumerian language enjoyed a resurrection during the Old
Babylonian period as a literary and liturgical language. The scribes in this period
considered the language as essential for maintaining the traditions of a very old period,
and wanted to recapture an archaic time of magic and legend. After this period ending
c. 1595 BCE, the scribal usage of Sumerian decreased significantly. The repertoire of
texts was reduced, particularly the royal/divine hymns of the Ur III period, and even
the ones that continued were written only in bilingual renditions with Akkadian and
other languages. However, Sumerian was still being studied in scribal schools and even
chanted in liturgy through the Persian and Hellenistic periods. There even exist
student exercise tablets with cuneiform on one side and Greek on the other. The last
known cuneiform tablet was an astronomical work dating to 75 CE from Babylon, but it
is possible that the script finally fell out of use later than this.

Today, Sumerian is taught at only a select number of universities around the world. In
total, probably not more than a few hundred people have a working knowledge of the
language and there is still much debate over even the basics of the grammar. Even top
scholars in the field are uncertain of the meanings of certain passages. Sumerian offers a
challenging yet fascinating puzzle on the lives and literature of those who first
accomplished the task of immortalizing their words in writing. It is a truly intriguing
language reflecting the intriguing people who wrote it down.