Houghton Mifflin Social Studies
Chapter 6, Lesson 2, The Contributions of the Sumerians (pp. 156-161)
I. The First Kings
B. Eventually, the leaders became full-time kings as the people believed
they were chosen by their city's gods.
C. Kings took on some of priests' duties.
II. The Sumerian Religion
B. All Sumerians served the gods in different ways.
III. The Beginnings of Writing
B. The were pictographs, or pictures that represent words or ideas.
C. Later the pictographs were made to represent sounds, which could be combined to show words.
D. By 2500 B.C., cuneiform was simplified and used this way for 2000 years.
E. Around 900 B.C. the Phoenicians invented a new writing system with
only 22 symbols--the alphabet.
Lesson at a Glance Outline
A. The first kings were military leaders chosen to rule during time of war.
A. The Sumerians believed their many gods controlled everything.
A. The first Sumerian written symbols were for keeping track of trade.
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