Sumer, Sumeria and
Samaria Untangled
Facts about Ancient Sumer
by James W. Bell © 2002-3
Grammatically speaking,‘Sumeria’ is a modern day back formation from the words 'Sumer' and ‘Sumerian.’ A Sumerian was a native of the land of Sumer. 'Sumer,' which would have been more correctly translated as 'Shumer,' is the Biblical 'Shinar' mentioned in Genesis.
Like many ancient civilizations, ancient Sumer was a group of disparate city states, located mostly along a river ... the lower Euphrates in the plain of southern Mesopotamia, now Southern Iraq. As ancient Greece included the core city states of Athens, Sparta and far-off cities such as Miletus in Ionia, so ancient Sumeria included the core city states of Uruk and Ur and the far-off cities of Sippar in Akkad, Eshnunna in Warum, Susa in Elam and the Isle of Dilmun.
Archaeology dates the origin of the Sumerian civilization to ca 4000 BCE. This civilization invented writing (c. 3200 BCE) and ultimately culminated in the Semitic empire of Sargon the Great (c 2340 BCE). Sumer and the Sumerian language declined after 2000 BCE and the area was later absorbed successively by the empires of Babylonia, Assyria and Persia.
Samaria, on the other hand, was an area in ancient Palestine, a land of hills and valleys between Judea and Galilee. Most of Samaria is now part of the West Bank under the control of the Palestinian Authority.
In Biblical history, Omri, king of Israel (885-874 BCE), found a long hill near the city of Shechem (today’s Nablus) with steep sides and a flat top that he liked. He bought the hill from its owner, Shemer, for two talents of silver and, in 880 BCE, built a city on it which he named Samaria after the property's former owner. This city of Samaria, only 35 miles from Jerusalem, was made the new capital of the kingdom of Israel. When Israel fell to the Assyrians in 721 BCE, the city of Samaria was depopulated.
In the time of Jesus, western Palestine was divided into three provinces, Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, the central province being named after the ancient city of Samaria. When the Jews returned from Babylonian captivity bringing the Torah with them, they found the Jews who had remained behind in Samaria refused to admit the books added and continued to accept only the first five books, the Pentateuch or the Books of Moses. This led to a deep theological split between Judeans and Samaritans.
In the Talmud, Samaria is called the ‘Land of the Cuthim’ and is not regarded as a part of the Holy Land. What makes the Biblical story of the ‘The Good Samaritan’ (Luke 10: 30-37) so exceptional, is that a Samaritan, an inhabitant of the province of Samaria, despised by the Jews of Judea, would nevertheless show such compassion for one of his neighbors.
Though they sound similar, Sumeria and Samaria are quite different, located more than a thousand miles apart in distance and more than a thousand years apart in time.
The End
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