Editing Sumer (section)

==Archeological discovery==
The Sumerians were entirely unknown during the early period of modern archeology. [[Jules Oppert]] was the first scholar to publish the word Sumer in a lecture on 17 January 1869. The first major excavations of Sumerian cities were in 1877 at [[Girsu]] by the French archeologist [[Ernest de Sarzec]], in 1889 at [[Nippur]] by [[John Punnett Peters]] from the [[University of Pennsylvania]] between 1889 and 1900, and in [[Shuruppak]] by German archeologist [[Robert Koldewey]] in 1902–1903. Major publications of these finds were "''Decouvertes en Chaldée par Ernest de Sarzec''" by [[Léon Heuzey]] in 1884, "''Les Inscriptions de Sumer et d'Akkad''" by [[François Thureau-Dangin]] in 1905, and "''Grundzüge der sumerischen Grammatik''" on Sumerian grammar by [[Arno Poebel]] in 1923.<ref>Kramer (1963), The Sumerians, pp. 20–26.</ref>