Inside it soaring high to the intense azure sky

stood the ziggurat, a huge tired tower

like stacks of boxes arranged

in a series, larger to smaller,

set up one upon the other

and planted with luxuriant gardens.

Its walls were embedded with millions

of fragments of multi-colored pottery.

A white-washed shrine sat on a summit platform

where fragrant incense burned perpetually.

Ziggurats perhaps stood for the mountains

from which Sumerian peoples had come.

They were the homes of each city's deity

representing the heaven-to-earthly bond.

Dedicated to the forces of Nature,

the ziggurat was not merely a temple,

but the living pulse of the city.

University.  Town Hall.  Cathedral.

Sumerian sciences were developed

to meet severely practical needs,

most involving measurement

like calculating  maximum crop yields.

Astronomy came into being

by observing the night sky's stars

to measure seasons and predict the floods

of the double rivers'  rising waters

to fix the time of religious festivals,

the plantings and the reapings.

Sumerian cosmology comprised

both science and religion.

Math was used to measure boundaries

of land that had been flooded.

They became hydraulic engineers

to control and manage the waters.

Architects made plans and drawings

for buildings' dimensions and capacity.

Merchants measured weight and bulk

in the! exchange of their commodities.

They used multiplication, proportion,

square and cube roots and division.

Our clocks and watches still measure time

by their sexigesimal system.

Physicians extracted healing substances

from animals, plants and minerals.

A handbook of pharmacopoeia

listed remedies, salves and simples.

Their schools evolved from training

scribes and temple officials

to something more closely resembling

our universities and colleges.

Scholarly knowledge and science

were contained in exercises and texts

along with lists of birds and minerals,

animals, plants and insects,

Sumerian words and phrases,

mathematical tables and problems,

grammatical texts and groups

of Sumerian epic poems.

Their society was cooperative

and democratic in principle.

The members of the community,

rich and poor, all were considered equal.

The nigenna-land, or commons,

was worked "by all for all."

The high and low toiled every year

in the fields and canals of the gods.

City governments weren't all absolute.

There appear to have been two Houses,

an Upper, or Senate, of city elders,

and a Lower of men who bore arms.

Urukagina, a Sumerian governor,

the earliest known reformer,

restrained tax-gathering priests

and kept the rich from oppressing the poor.

He established amargi, or freedom,

in his dual kingdom of Lagash and Ur,