Sumerians dug a network of canals braching off the rivers to water barley, linseed, and other crops. They also kept pigs, oxen, and sheep. They traded surplus food for tools, metals, and vessels, with peoples as far away as present-day Afganistan and Pakistan.

Soon, major city-states emerged in the region. Major city-states came to control surrounding farm-lands. The leading city-state was Ur, the birthplace of Abraham. City-states contained temples. Temple priests' power grew beyond the walls of temples. They acted as rulers. Some built great structures, called ziggurats, which were temple towers.

From around 2330 B.C. Sargon, king of Akkad, north of Sumer, built an empire from Syria to the Persian Gulf, which united all the Sumerian cities under his control.

Sumerians invented their own form of writing. They scratched pictures that represented words or sounds onto clay tablets with reed pens. The main motivator for writing was probably to have a means of recording business transactions. The pens produced a wedge shape, and the script came to be known as cuneiform, after cuneus, meaning "wedge" in Latin. Over time, pictures were simplified, and drawn sideways. Only 200-300 of them were in regular use. They were written down in a straight line, and not in a column, and were read from left to right. Cuneiform was complex, so usually, only specially trained scribes were able to write on tablets.

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