Q 01/05

Sumer, the earliest known civilization, lay in the south of which modern country?

A) Egypt

B) Iraq

C) Iran

D) Syria

Answer · why

B) Iraq

Iraq: Sumer was so thoroughly forgotten that even its name was lost until scholars in the 1800s pieced it back together from excavated inscriptions.

Q 02/05

Sumerian farmers lived along the valleys of which two rivers?

A) Nile and Jordan

B) Danube and Rhine

C) Indus and Ganges

D) Tigris and Euphrates

Answer · why

D) Tigris and Euphrates

Tigris and Euphrates: the Greeks named the land Mesopotamia, 'between rivers', and canals cut from the two streams turned a dry plain into farmland ri...

Q 03/05

What was the Sumerian writing system called?

A) Hieroglyphics

B) Linear B

C) Ogham

D) Cuneiform

Answer · why

D) Cuneiform

Cuneiform means 'wedge-shaped', from Latin cuneus, after the marks a cut reed stylus left; the script began as little pictures and was later borrowed ...

Q 04/05

What material did Sumerian scribes write on?

A) Papyrus

B) Animal skins

C) Wax tablets

D) Moist clay

Answer · why

D) Moist clay

Moist clay: a fire that would destroy paper only bakes a tablet harder, which is why burned cities left whole archives for archaeologists to read.

Q 05/05

Which poem about a king's search for immortality is often called the oldest surviving great work of literature?

A) The Epic of Gilgamesh

B) The Enuma Elish

C) The Book of the Dead

D) The Rigveda

Answer · why

A) The Epic of Gilgamesh

The Epic of Gilgamesh was pieced together from tablets dug up at Nineveh in the mid-1800s; its hero never wins eternal life, because a serpent eats th...