Samuel Noah Kramer (September 28, 1897 – November 26, 1990) was one of the world's leading

Assyriologists Assyriology (from Greek , ''Assyriā''; and , ''-logia'') is the archaeological, anthropological, and linguistic study of Assyria and the rest of ancient Mesopotamia (a region that encompassed what is now modern Iraq, northeastern Syria, sout ...

, an expert in

Sumerian history The history of Sumer spans the 5th to 3rd millennia BCE in southern Mesopotamia, and is taken to include the prehistoric Ubaid and Uruk periods. Sumer was the region's earliest known civilization and ended with the downfall of the Third Dynasty o ...

and

Sumerian language Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer. It is one of the oldest attested languages, dating back to at least 3000 BC. It is accepted to be a local language isolate and to have been spoken in ancient Mesopotamia, in the area that is modern-day ...

. After high school, he attended Temple University, before Dropsie and Penn, both in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...

. Among scholars, his work is considered transformative for the field of Sumerian history. His popular book ''History Begins at Sumer'' made Sumerian literature accessible to the general public.

Biography

Kramer was born on September 28, 1897, in Zhashkiv near

Uman Uman ( uk, Умань, ; pl, Humań; yi, אומאַן) is a city located in Cherkasy Oblast in central Ukraine, to the east of Vinnytsia. Located in the historical region of the eastern Podolia, the city rests on the banks of the Umanka River ...

in the Kiev Governorate,

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War ...

(modern day

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inva ...

), the son of Benjamin and Yetta Kramer. His family was Jewish. In 1905, as a result of the

anti-Semitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...

pogrom A pogrom () is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russian ...

s under Czar Nicholas II of

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

, his family

emigrated Emigration is the act of leaving a resident country or place of residence with the intent to settle elsewhere (to permanently leave a country). Conversely, immigration describes the movement of people into one country from another (to permanentl ...

, where his father established a Hebrew school. After graduating from South Philadelphia High School, obtaining an Academic Diploma, Kramer tried a variety of occupations, including teaching in his father's school, becoming a writer and becoming a businessman. Concerning the time when he began to approach the age of thirty, still without a career, he later stated in his

autobiography An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English peri ...

, ''In the World of Sumer'': "Finally it came to me that I might well go back to my beginnings and try to utilize the Hebrew learning on which I had spent so much of my youth, and relate it in some way to an academic future". Lament for ur (cropped)

He enrolled at

Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning or Dropsie University, at 2321–2335 N Broad St., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was America's first degree-granting institution for post-doctoral Jewish studies. Funded by the will of Moses Aaron D ...

in Philadelphia, and became passionately interested in

Egyptology Egyptology (from ''Egypt'' and Greek , '' -logia''; ar, علم المصريات) is the study of ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native relig ...

. He then transferred to the Oriental Studies Department of the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...

, working with the "brilliant young

Ephraim Avigdor Speiser Ephraim Avigdor Speiser (January 24, 1902 – June 15, 1965) was a Polish-born American Assyriologist. He discovered the ancient site of Tepe Gawra in 1927 and supervised its excavation between 1931 and 1938. Speiser was married to Sue Gimbel ...

, who was to become one of the world's leading figures in Near Eastern Studies". Speiser was trying to decipher

cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge- ...

tablets of the Late Bronze Age dating from about 1300 BC; it was now that Kramer began his lifelong work in understanding the cuneiform writing system. Kramer earned his PhD in 1929, and was famous for assembling tablets recounting single stories that had become distributed among different institutions around the world. He retired from formal academic life in 1968, but remained very active throughout his post-retirement years. In his autobiography published in 1986, he sums up his accomplishments: "First, and most important, is the role I played in the recovery, restoration, and resurrection of Sumerian literature, or at least of a representative cross section ... Through my efforts several thousand Sumerian literary tablets and fragments have been made available to cuneiformists, a basic reservoir of unadulterated data that will endure for many decades to come. Second, I endeavored ... to make available reasonably reliable translations of many of these documents to the academic community, and especially to the anthropologist, historian, and humanist. Third, I have helped to spread the name of Sumer to the world at large, and to make people aware of the crucial role the Sumerians played in the ascent of civilized man". Kramer died of throat cancer at age 93 on November 26, 1990, in Philadelphia.New York Times Obituary
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Selected writings

* Kramer, Samuel Noah. ''Sumerian Mythology: Study of Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium B.C''. 1944, rev. 1961. * Kramer, Samuel Noah. ''History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Man's Recorded History''. 1956/1e (25 firsts), 1959/2e (27 firsts) 1981/3e. University of Pennsylvania Press. . * Kramer, Samuel Noah. ''The Sumerians: Their History, Culture and Character''. Chicago, IL:

University of Chicago Press The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including '' The Chicago Manual of Style' ...

, 1963. . * Kramer, Samuel Noah. ''Cradle of civilization''. 1967. (the history, politics, religion and cultural achievements of ancient Sumer, Babylonia and Assyria) * Kramer, Samuel Noah and Diane Wolkstein. ''Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth''. New York: Harper & Row, 1983. . * Kramer, Samuel Noah. ''In the World of Sumer, An Autobiography''. Wayne State University Press, 1988. .

References

Notes

Bibliography

External links