What is Sumer?
[[File:Ur3.JPG|thumb|240px|Sumerian cities]] '''Sumer''' is the earliest known [[civilization]] in southern [[Mesopotamia]] (in modern-day southern Iraq). They may have been one of the first civilizations in the world, as were [[Ancient Egypt]] and the [[Indus Valley civilization|Indus Valley]].<ref>King, Leonid W. 2015. A history of Sumer and Akkad,also [[Iraq]]. {{ISBN|1522847308}}</ref> Sumer started around [[4th millennium BC|3500 BC]]. The Sumerian civilization grew along the [[Tigris]] and [[Euphrates]]. This land was good for growing food. Sumerian culture is famous for its written [[cuneiform]] script - where letters were formed by pressing a triangle shaped reed into wet-clay tiles. They are also credited with creating the wheel, and dividing a day into 24 hours, and each hour into 60 minutes. The earliest texts come from the cities of [[Uruk]] and [[Jemdet Nasr]] and date back to 3300 BC. Early cuneiform script writing emerged in 3000 BC.<ref>[https://www.ancient.eu/cuneiform/ Mark, Joshua J. ''Cuneiform''. 2018. in Ancient History Encyclopedia]</ref> Sumerian communities were organized into [[city-state]]<nowiki/>s, each ruled by a [[priest]] or [[king]], until [[Akkad]] conquered them in the third millennium BC. One of the most famous Sumerian cities was [[Ur]] (not the same city as Uruk, but near it). == Relations with the Akkadians == During the 3rd millennium BC, a close cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians, who spoke a language isolate, and [[Akkad]]ian-speakers, which included widespread bilingualism.<ref>Deutscher, Guy 2007. ''Syntactic change in Akkadian: the evolution of sentential complementation''. Oxford University Press. pp. 20–21. {{ISBN|978-0-19-953222-3}}</ref> The Sumerian city of [[Eridu]], on the coast of the [[Persian Gulf]], may have been the world's first city.<ref>Leick, Gwendolyn 2003. ''Mesopotamia, the invention of the city''. London: Penguin.</ref> The Sumerians lost their identity with their [[language]] around 2000 BC, because a large group of differen