Question: What is Sumerian writing considered to be in the development of man's ability to create literature?
Answer: milestone

Question: What followed cuneiform in writing?
Answer: Ideograms

Question: How many texts in the Sumerian language have survived to modern day?
Answer: hundreds of thousands

Question: What was the Sumerian language used for long have their civilization had diminished? 
Answer: religion and law in Mesopotamia

Question: Akkadian's language can be traced to the Semitic branch of what languages?
Answer: Afroasiatic

Question: Why is the Sumerian language usually thought of as a language isolate in linguistics?
Answer: belongs to no known language family

Question: In Sumerian, what are morphemes added together to create?
Answer: words

Question: What has been the result of attempts to connect Sumerian to other language groups?
Answer: failed

Question: What are morphemes?
Answer: "units of meaning"

Question: How many cosmogenic myths does the religion of the Sumerians appear to be founded upon?
Answer: two

Question: What does one myth see creation as being the result of?
Answer: a series of hieros gami

Question: In the Enuma Elish, what is creation seen as the union of?
Answer: fresh and salt water

Question: What were the titles given to the gate keeps of the E-Abzu temple of Enki?
Answer: the muddy ones

Question: Who was the Lady Sacred Mountain?
Answer: Ninhursag

Question: What did the Sumerian deities form?
Answer: a core pantheon

Question: Why did the gods create human beings from clay?
Answer: for the purpose of serving them

Question: What could Sumerian gods be associated with?
Answer: different cities

Question: What did the religious importance of city gods wax and wan with?
Answer: those cities' political power

Question: How could a citizen avoid their labor duty to their local temple?
Answer: a payment of silver

Question: What were Sumerian temples known as?
Answer: Ziggurats

Question: What was the central pond in the forecourt of a Ziggurat for?
Answer: purification

Question: Who were the rooms on either side of the aisles in the temple for?
Answer: the priests

Question: What was the mudbrick table in the temple for?
Answer: animal and vegetable sacrifices

Question: Where did the Sumerians usually locate their granaries and storehouses?
Answer: near the temples

Question: What type of afterlife could Sumerians look forward to?
Answer: confined to a gloomy world

Question: Where were dead Sumerians buried?
Answer: outside the city walls in graveyards

Question: What realm was guarded by gateways containing various monsters?
Answer: Ereshkigal

Question: Who was Queen Puabi accompanied in death by?
Answer: her servants

Question: What type of instrument are the Sumerians thought to have invented to use at royal funerals?
Answer: oboe-like

Question: When do the pictograms suggest Sumerians had domesticated livestock?
Answer: Uruk period

Question: What might be found by the side of a Sumerian house?
Answer: enclosed garden planted with trees and other plants

Question: What animal did Sumerians use primary to facilitate transportation?
Answer: donkeys

Question: What was the primary purpose of oxen for Sumerians? 
Answer: beasts of burden

Question: Where were plants also grown besides the garden?
Answer: pots or vases

Question: What was Sumerians one of the first societies known to consume?
Answer: beer

Question: What was the key ingredient in early Sumerian brews?
Answer: Cereals

Question: What kinds of beer did the Sumerians brew?
Answer: wheat, barley, and mixed grain

Question: How important was beer brewing to Sumerians?
Answer: very important

Question: What did Enkidu become and do after consuming seven jugs of beer?
Answer: expansive and sang with joy

Question: Why did the Sumerian farmers make their oxen stomp the ground?
Answer: kill weeds

Question: How do archaeologists know about Sumerian agricultural practices? 
Answer: from the "Sumerian Farmer's Almanac"

Question: How many times did Sumerian farmers plow, harrow and rake the ground?
Answer: three times

Question: When would farmers flood their fields?
Answer: after the Spring Equinox and the Akitu

Question: The the Ur III period, what crop had Sumerians switched to from wheat for their primary crop?
Answer: salt-tolerant barley

Question: What does Archibald Sayce think early Sumerian pictograms suggest about the availability of stone?
Answer: was scarce

Question: How did the Sumerians fashion the stone they cut?
Answer: into blocks and seals

Question: What was the ordinary building material of Sumerians?
Answer: Brick

Question: What were the foundation stones of Sumerian houses consecrated by?
Answer: objects that were deposited under them

Question: What kind of appearance did Sumerian houses have?
Answer: tower-like

Question: What is the most impressive and famous style of Sumerian buildings?
Answer: the ziggurats

Question: Sumerians also built houses from reeds not very different from ones built by inhabitants in Iraq as recently as when?
Answer: 400 CE

Question: How did the Sumerians build their strong domes?
Answer: by constructing and linking several arches

Question: What development by the Sumerians allowed them to make use of domes?
Answer: the arch

Question: Where were the use of advanced materials and techniques on display in Sumer?
Answer: Sumerian temples and palaces

Question: What did the Sumerians a complex system of around 4000 BC?
Answer: metrology

Question: From the Sumerian metrology sprang forth the creation of what disciplines? 
Answer: arithmetic, geometry, and algebra

Question: Where did the Sumerians put their multiplication tables?
Answer: on clay tablets

Question: When was the abacus first seen between?
Answer: 2700 – 2300 BC

Question: What were the Sumerians the first to do when it came to mathematics?
Answer: use a place value numeral system

Question: What were the main types of loans in Sumerian society?
Answer: Commercial credit and agricultural consumer

Question: How man shekel per mina was the interest rate for loans?
Answer: one

Question: What was trade credit backed by when extended by temples?
Answer: silver

Question: For how long was the interest rate of Sumerian loans consistent?
Answer: about two thousand years

Question: What typically arose as a result of unpaid obligations?
Answer: Rural loans

Question: What type of debt did "clean slate" decrees cancel?
Answer: rural

Question: When did rulers typically proclaim "clean slate" decrees?
Answer: the first full year of their reign

Question: Why were the clean slate decrees useful to the rulers of Sumer?
Answer: to prevent debts mounting to a degree that they threatened fighting force

Question: What would happen if peasants couldn't repay their debts?
Answer: lost the subsistence land or became bondservants

Question: Who made the first known clean slate decrees?
Answer: Enmetena and Urukagina

Question: What contributed to developing military technology for Sumer?
Answer: almost constant wars

Question: How many years were the Sumerian city-states at war?
Answer: 2000 years

Question: Who was the first war between in 2525 BC?
Answer: Lagash and Umma

Question: What did the king of Lagash's army mostly consist of?
Answer: infantry

Question: What shape were the shields of the infantry of Lagash?
Answer: rectangular

Question: When did evidence of wheeled vehicles appear throughout the world?
Answer: mid 4th millennium BC

Question: What form did wheels initially take?
Answer: potter's wheel

Question: The writing system of the Sumerian's is the second oldest to have what done to it?
Answer: been deciphered

Question: What did the Sumerians map stars into?
Answer: sets of constellations

Question: How many planets were the Sumerians aware of?
Answer: five

Question: Sumerians used number systems which included what alternating bases?
Answer: base 10 and base 6