Sumerian Tablets: 1887 to Present Day - How many are there and what is their importance?

I find there may be close to a million tablets, fragments, and monuments!
Still, excavations are bringing in artifacts from the digs, so who knows?

The book "Sumerian Mythology",by Samuel Noah Kramer; found Here .gives the reader some insight into the history of excavations in Iraq, and covers the discovery of ancient Sumerian existance .through the tablets, scrolls and cylinders, to name a few finds left behind by a once powerful and organised society, forgotten for a millenium.

Numbers? How many tablets, et al, are there?

Since the 19th century, the finds have been abundant and extraordinary.
Check out these excerpts:

1877, however, began the first successful excavation at a Sumerian site. In that year, the
French under De Sarzec began to excavate at Telloh the ancient Sumerian city of
Lagash, an excavation which has been conducted by French archaeologists intermittently
and with long interruptions almost to the present day. It was at this site that the first
important Sumerian monuments were excavated, the objects and inscriptions of the
ishakkus or princes of Lagash. Here more than one hundred thousand tablets and
fragments were dug up, dating from the pre-Sargonid and Ur III periods."

...scores of thousands of tablets have been dug up clandestinely by the native Arabs in the mounds of Sumer,
especially in the ancient sites of Larsa, Sippar, and Umma. It is therefore difficult to estimate
the number of Sumerian tablets and fragments now in the possession of the museums and
private collections; a quarter of a million is probably a conservative guess.

And it is important to note that, in spite of the vast quantity of Sumerian inscriptional material excavated to date, only some three thousand tablets[xr. b] and fragments, no more than one percent, are inscribed with
Sumerian literary compositions.

In Legash:

The first forty thousand tablets were discovered by the Arab workers while De Sarzec, the
excavator, happened to be away from the mound. They succeeded in getting them all into
the hands of dealers, and as a result, there is no important collection in Europe or America
which does not have some Lagash tablets. In the Museum of the Ancient Orient, the tablets
excavated at Lagash in the course of the years are stacked high in drawer after drawer; it is
difficult to estimate their number but it may be close to 100,000.

Correction:

The number of Sumerian literary tablets and fragments are now known to be approximately
five thousand, rather than three thousand.

Finally in Erech, where the Germans conducted excavations from 1928 until
the outbreak of the war, a large group of pictographic tablets antedating even those found
at Jemdet Nasr has been uncovered.

Recap:
1) Starting in 1887, more than 100,000 tablets and fragments were dug up by the French.

2) Scores of 1000's of tablets were "dug up" by clans of native Arabs. 250,000 is a conservative guess.

3) ONLY 1% or 3000 of the excavated tablets et al, were Sumerian literary compositions.

4) 40,000 were sold to dealers while excavator De Sarzec was gone.
100,000 were found at Legash alone

5) 2000 literary tablets added to correct the count of 3000 when it should be 5000.

6) 1902-03 Germans excavated, joined by University of Chicago, French, Anglo-American
auspices, British Museum, University Museum, the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago,
native Arabs (Clans), University of Pennsylvania, to name a few, found

7) A large group of pictographic tablets found 1928-start of WWII By the Germans.

I wonder if Germany got some technology from their find making possible the engineered Vril Craft, or other undisclosed scientific advances from the excavations.
Could the foo fighters be German's reverse engineering a find or an actual schematic to build an intergalactic space Craft?

It is plausible. What do you think?

More from Samuel Noah Kramer
AboveTopSecret Thread

Has anyone else thought the reason the military is in Iraq may not be just for the oil? Isn't it within the realm of possibility that there are a lot of things being unearthed in Iraq right now. Is the gov't looking for clues having to do with technology they don't understand but the Sumerians did? And as we all know Sumeria is modern day Iraq.

It is pity that we don't study Sumerian civilization at school. Most of people think that the most ancient civilization is Egypt. Maybe someone don't want us to investigate Sumerian knowledge?

reply to post by AssassinsCreed


Because it would call them (written in the tablets) when starting to consciously consider their influences.. And current rulling empire may not want specific bloodlines around this sphere.

Glad to see someone reference Kramer, and not Sitchin, for a change!

The majority of the tablets dealt with mundane topics such as accounting and trade. The Sumerians were the masters of trade, which probably was the impetus for their developing such extensive writing and numeracy skills.

It's sad to think that so many tablets uncovered by locals are being sold to private collectors, without having a chance to be seen or deciphered by archeologists. Their could be tales of importance equal to the Enuma Elish that will never be known due to greedy looters.

Sumerians didn't actually invent writing, it was introduced to them by the Ubaidian culture, who also kept numerical records.

As far as how important these tablets are? Virtually everything academia knows about the Sumerians came from a clay tablet (although some of those were from the Assyrians or Babylonians, who re-wrote many Sumerian tales).

I think there is a conspiracy to hide certain archeological finds especially the Mesopotamian ones but lots of others as well
The Sumerian culture gave us the foundations of our Bible and Torah so they are very important doucuments.I consider them first source documents and therefore a truer picture of what early people thought of their gods .They tell all kinds of things about the civilization that invented them. I'm dying for more translations myself such a fascinating culture and mythology

I am coming toa conclusion that goes against something I have heretofore taken for granted, that is that the ETs that came long ago left or died long ago. it seems I am wrong

I think the reason that so many finds have disappeared been stolen or are otherwise off limits is because some of these ETs are still here after all this time and know where the most important artifacts are,in short it is they that want these things. They have stored this knowledge for future use and apparently the future is now

Just my opinion,