I work at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, where I am a lecturer in Ancient Near Eastern Studies.

I study the ancient civilisation of the Sumerians.

They spoke a language called Sumerian, and lived in an area called Sumer.

They also spoke many other languages, and many other groups of people who lived in the same area also spoke their language.

There were many languages in the ancient world, but at that time and in that place, there was only one language of state, and this was Sumerian.

The area of Sumer is nowadays southern Iraq, particularly the areas around Nasiriyah and Basra, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf.

The Sumerians are best known for inventing writing, which they did around 3400-3200 BC.

The writing they used was called cuneiform, a script that was formed by making triangular shapes onto clay with an instrument that had a corner on it, a kind of pen.

They wrote like this.

They are also well known for inventing mathematics, for living in cities, and for inventing the practice of law and law codes.

The writing we use today is quite different to the writing that the Sumerians used, but we do use their mathematics in some special cases.

The Sumerians counted using the number 60, just as we count using the number 10.

That is why we still have 60 seconds in a minute, and 60 minutes in an hour, and 360 degrees in a circle.

The Sumerians lived in cities, and these cities were divided into different areas according to whether they were used for religion, business, storage, or government.

They had different forms of government at different periods of their history, but most of the time they had a king, who was responsible for everyone being happy and well fed, and a royal family that lived in a palace.

From the later period of Sumerian history, we have thousands and thousands of economic documents that tell us about many aspects of daily business life in ancient Sumer.

Most of these documents come from royal institutions, so the impression we get is that this was a state, a totalitarian state if you like, where the royal family controlled every aspect of life.

But in fact, there was probably a lot of private business going on outside the palaces.

The most unusual thing about the Sumerians is that they are just like us.

They had the same needs and worries as we do, they needed a place to live, they needed to love, they needed food, and they knew that they had to die.

These fears and preoccupations are expressed in their literature which survives until today.

The most famous story is that of the hero Gilgamesh.

This is the ultimate story of a hero who has to come to terms with the fact that he is not immortal and that he is going to die.

A basic model for all literature ever since.