The Sumerians inhabited Sumer, the land that was known in classical times as Babylonia or the lower half of Mesopotamia, and known today as modern Iraq.

The Sumerians were remarkable for their unusual flair for technological invention. They are credited with many "Firsts" in man's recorded history such as the invention of many useful tools, skills, and techniques. But their most important legacy was the invention of writing around 3100 BC, when man entered history.

They were noteworthy not only for their technological resourcefulness but also for their ideas, ideals, and values. They were the first to conceive of freedom, human rights, and the first set of written laws. They recognized and accepted as inevitable mortal limitations, especially helplessness in the face of death and divine wrath. This spurred them to develop to a high degree of sophistication and precision the science of astronomy and astrology in order to predict the future.

The oldest medical pharmacopoeia was collected and recorded by an anonymous Sumerian physician who lived toward the end of the third millennium BC. The physician wrote down more than a dozen of his favorite remedies for colleagues and students. The tablet is remarkable in that it reveals a broad acquaintance of elaborate chemical operations and procedures such as “purification” of substances. The Sumerian physician who wrote the tablet did not mention one god or demon or resort to magic spells or incantations. This is surprising and interesting since the Sumerians, like all ancient peoples, tended to attribute numerous diseases to the unwelcome presence of harmful demons in the sick man's body. (see p. 189 )

The absence of mystical and irrational elements in the tablet, the oldest medical handbook as yet uncovered, has greatly startled scholars and indicates that there were physicians more than 4000 years ago who seem to have practiced medicine along empirico-rational lines, long before the time of Hippocrates.

Reference: Kramer SN. The Sumerians: their history, culture and character. Chicago,

University of Chicago Press, 1963.

Photo Source: Roaf M. Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia. Equinox (Oxford) Ltd., London, 1990.