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

Its city-states sat on the alluvial plain south of what is now Baghdad, in provinces such as Dhi Qar and Al-Muthanna.

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

Grain surpluses from the river valleys are what let the Sumerians build the world's first urban settlements.

Q 03/05

What was the Sumerian writing system called?

A) Hieroglyphics

B) Linear B

C) Ogham

D) Cuneiform

Answer · why

D) Cuneiform

Hundreds of thousands of texts survive, from receipts to hymns, partly because scribes in training copied them again and again.

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

Because clay tablets survive fire and burial far better than paper, whole libraries of Sumerian texts have been recovered.

Q 05/05

Which poem, discovered in the ruins of Uruk, is considered the earliest surviving example of fictional 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

Its hero, called Bilgamesh in Sumerian, is a king of Uruk who may have been a real ruler of the Early Dynastic period.