This part of the hall presents written texts together with examples of decorative and applied art from Sumer and Akkad in the 4th and 3rd millennia BC. The Sumerians created the most ancient civilization in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, one whose influence on the peoples of Western Asia endured until Roman times. The soil of southern Mesopotamia is destructive to cultural monuments and only foundations have survived along with a very few statues and stelas that allow us to appreciate the grandeur of that civilization. Scholars did, however, find themselves in possession of tens of thousands of texts, unique examples of ancient writing. The cuneiform works include literary sources, among them “the story of the flood”, lists of rulers, fragments of laws, but the overwhelming majority of these texts deal with economic matters – lists tallying workforces and accounts. The Sumerians had the world’s earliest written history – the clay tablets tell us facts that are difficult to reconstruct even with the most thorough research and archaeological excavations.
