---
product_id: 6847386
title: "History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Recorded History Paperback – April 1, 1988"
brand: "samuel noah kramer"
price: "€ 65.35"
currency: EUR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 8
url: https://www.desertcart.nl/products/6847386-history-begins-at-sumer-thirty-nine-firsts-in-recorded-history
store_origin: NL
region: Netherlands
---

# History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Recorded History Paperback – April 1, 1988

**Brand:** samuel noah kramer
**Price:** € 65.35
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Recorded History Paperback – April 1, 1988 by samuel noah kramer
- **How much does it cost?** € 65.35 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.nl](https://www.desertcart.nl/products/6847386-history-begins-at-sumer-thirty-nine-firsts-in-recorded-history)

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- samuel noah kramer enthusiasts

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- Trusted samuel noah kramer brand quality
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## Description

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## Images

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ It is a must if you are studying it
*by Y***I on May 27, 2025*

Kramer is the king of Sumerian world! If you study this topic - it is a must!

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Perfect.  Exactly as described.
*by D***T on April 30, 2025*

Perfect. Exactly as described.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ What is was like to live in ancient Sumer
*by H***N on March 17, 2009*

I had fun reading Samuel Noah Kramer's book "History Begins at Sumer". This isn't a typical history book. It doesn't go into any detail at all about the different city-states of Sumer, who ruled what lands, where Sumer was, or even mention any dates or events of any widespread significance, etc.What this most unique book is is a collection of 39 essays on daily life taken almost exclusively from information recorded on 4,00 year old cuneiform tablets. There's an essay on a tablet, Kramer describes, where a father tries to convince his son to study hard and become a scribe, how a farmer should tend to his fields, Sumerian proverbs and wisdom, and Sumerian mythology stories. There's even an essay on sexuality. If you can imagine the Sumerians were a little less inhibited than we are about these matters! There are extensive quotations from these tablets, so you surely get the full flavor of the Sumerian experience right from the source.What most people don't realize is that there are now perhaps tens of thousands of tablets with Sumerian language essays and documentations in existence that only in the mid 1800's became translatable. This opened up a vast world of insight into a civilization that was in many ways one of the first to use written language extensively yet had vanished beneath the sands of the Mesopotamian desert in 1500 BC. It also means that unlike civilizations and cultures that came before us, the Sumerian civilization in large part failed to gets its due credit.Surprisingly, there aren't many scholars who can read these tablets and from what I understand thousands of them still sit undeciphered in the British Museum and many more lay buried and many more were recently illegally excavated, heading for antiquities auctions during the current turmoil in Iraq.Kramer was probably one of the worlds foremost scholars on these tablets and he writes beautifully and effortlessly, like you're reading an article in the New Yorker literary magazine.Lastly, although Kramer doesn't come right out and say it, I believe his passion to understand and write about the Sumerian culture is that he is probably Jewish and it appears that many of the Bible stories were taken from the Sumerians, including the flood, Eden, and a "rib" story, and Abraham was born in Ur. The Old Testament was complied somewhere between 1200 BC and 200 BC. The Sumerians wrote the same stories down perhaps over a millennium before that.

## Frequently Bought Together

- History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Recorded History
- Sumerian Mythology
- The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character

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*Product available on Desertcart Netherlands*
*Store origin: NL*
*Last updated: 2026-03-01*