The Study Of Sumerian Customs(4000B.C-1700B.C)

Sumerian civilization existed4000BC-1700BC, in south of Iraq. This great civilization was the first civilization in the Middle East, and it has deeply influenced the Middle East, especially Iraq modern civilization. Sumerian cuneiform, painting, sculpture art, costume, religions and culture customs are all important parts of the Sumerian civilization. This thesis studies the Sumerian costumes from many aspects, such as nature, history, culture, society, art and techniques, and also analysis the important impact of Sumerian costume to Iraq dressing style.The whole thesis includes6chapters. The first chapter gives a brief introduction of the research background, target, value and literature review of this study. Based on the sculptures from Iraq Museum, the second chapter analyzes the style, color, material, decoration motif and accessories of Sumerian costumes. The third chapter discusses how the nature environment, history and society influenced the Sumerian costumes. The fourth chapter talks about the relationship between the Sumerian costumes and religion, art and design. The author uses the modern design methods to analyze the aesthetic characteristics of the ancient Sumerian clothing. The fifth chapter discusses the Sumerian technology related to clothing industry, and then analyzes the Sumerians how to make tools and costume machine. Chapter6discusses the relation between Iraqi national costumes and Sumerian costume from the aspect of culture Heritage. The last chapter it’s a conclusion of this research.From the study on documents and sculptures, the dissertation comes to some important conclusions. The Sumerian clothing using very simple styles for long time, such as men were wearing short skirts, women wearing long robes with some kinds of fabric like skin, palm leaves, linen and wool. The dressing colors include white, black, and red. Furthermore the Geometric decorations were often used on clothing fabrics. And Sumerians used some kinds of metals to make accessories, such as copper, gold and other metals. But only Peoples have certain social identities can use this kinds of accessories.The Sumerian clothing was influenced by the natural environment, social history, culture and art and technology production level. The paper has done systemic research on this kind of relations. From the artistic aspect, this thesis innovatively analyzed the Sumerian costume through a method of modern design. And it could be easily found that Sumerian costumes perfectly meet the aesthetic principles of the modern art. Besides that, the paper also discussed the reason of why ancient Sumerians have a preference for powerful and bright things. From the technical aspect, the author analyzed the techniques and tools utilized by Sumerians to make costumes.After the systemic study on Sumerian costumes, the last part of this paper analyzed the relation between ancient Sumerian costume and modern Iraqi dressing style. Geography shows that Iraqi comes from Sumer, and inherits the culture of Sumer. Even there were many dynasties on the Mesopotamia, when Islamic was established in625AD. They think that only Sumer culture was the original culture of Mesopotamia. So Islamic inherited Sumer culture. As one of the world famous religion, Islamic influenced Iraqi culture deeply.