642 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1959 
We have long, elaborate legal treatises on clay tablets, which 
regulate the mutual rights and duties of a landowner and of a 
gardener who undertakes to plant date palms on the land of the 
former. The tools of farming—the spade, the hoe, the plow, and 
irrigation machinery—are mentioned first in Sumerian texts. One 
tablet records 4,638 worn copper sickles and 60 old hoes sent from 
the hardware house to the smithy to be sharpened. 
The world’s first farm bulletin, written in Sumerian, was found 
in 1950 among the ruins of the city of Nippur. This bulletin in- 
structs the farmer about the differ- 
ent kinds of furrows, tells him to 
“keep an eye on the man who puts 
in the seed, have him put the seeds 
in two fingers deep uniformly” 
with the seeder, a plow which car- 
ried the seeds and planted them 
through a funnel-like attachment. ; ; 
The tablet discusses the additional Se ae Pence oi@na eres 
value of three irrigations against 
the necessary two, and advises the farmer to say a prayer, too, lest 
mice and vermin destroy the crops. For a long time the rational 
advice was followed, the prayers were said, and the land of Meso- 
potamia was the most blessed spot on earth. 
ARCHITECTURE 
The marshlands of Mesopotamia offered only the poorest raw 
materials to the building trade of the first groups of human beings 
who settled there, certainly longer than 5,000 years ago. From mud 
and reeds the Sumerian builders created monumental architecture 
that must have been not only strikingly beautiful, but sophisticated 
as well—suited to a people who shaved, bathed, and used silver 
manicure sets long before Abraham’s days. 
The clay of the marshes can be fired into bricks, and brick was 
used by the Sumerians when large buildings were to be erected. 
Stone, which had to be imported, was used only for special purposes 
such as door sockets. The vast ruins of the Mesopotamian mounds 
contain mostly bricks. Square bricks, more seldom oblong bricks, 
formed foundations, walls, even the pavement of the streets. In later 
buildings, the planoconvex brick appears, flat on one side, convex on 
the other. In the early strata, large bricks of real cement were 
excavated. But the art of mixing cement seems to have gone out 
with the kings of Ur. Cement for plastering is used in the Royal 
Tombs of Ur, but after that the art was forgotten. 
It is certain that the ancient Sumerians also utilized the giant 
reeds for building. The reed decays in a few decades, but Sumerian 
