title: Independent politician

text: In the Bundestag parliament nearly all deputies belong to a political party. The voting system of personalized proportional representation (since 1949) allows any individual holding the passive right to vote to stand for a direct mandate in the electoral districts—299 of the seats in parliament are distributed by districts according to a plurality voting system. Such a candidate has to present 200 signatures in favor of their candidacy, the same as a candidate of a party that had no parliamentary presentation previously. The first Bundestag election in 1949 saw three independents elected; since then, no party-independent candidate has won a seat. At state level, the situation is more or less the same: only party members have a real chance to be elected to a Landtag legislature, and state ministers without party membership are just as rare as at the federal level. However, in local elections it may occur that an independent politician is elected deputy to districts', cities' and municipalities' assemblies, as well as member of a city council or even mayor, especially in Northern Germany. In recent years, independents have formed Free Voters associations which have had success in local governments. Two such associations have managed to enter state parliaments: the Free Voters of Bavaria in 2008 and the Brandenburg United Civic Movements/Free Voters in 2019.


title: Independent politician

text: An independent member of parliament, who also is not a member of a voters' association, holds the status of "fraktionsloser Abgeordneter", i.e., not affiliated to any parliamentary group. A representative who either leaves their party (and their parliamentary group) or is expelled from it and does not join another becomes "fraktionslos". In 1989 the Bundestag MP Thomas Wüppesahl, who had left the Green Party in 1987 and was excluded from the Green parliamentary group the next year, obtained more rights as a "fraktionsloser Abgeordneter", for example more talking time and representation in a subcommittee, when the Federal Constitutional Court decided partially in their favor.


title: Independent politician

text: After the German unification of 1871, the first Reich Chancellors (heads of government) "de jure" served as executive officers of the German Imperial states as non-partisans, usually recruited from the traditional bureaucratic, aristocratic and/or military elites. In the fierce political conflicts during the Weimar period after World War I, several chancellors and Reich Ministers also had no party affiliation: these chancellors were Wilhelm Cuno (1922–1923), Hans Luther (1925–1926), the former Centre politician Franz von Papen (1932), and Kurt von Schleicher (1932–1933). The last two cabinets appointed by Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, a non-partisan (though strongly Conservative) himself, were regarded as apolitical cabinets of experts with regard to the rise of the Nazi Party; many of the ministers were not party members.


title: Independent politician

text: Since World War II, only two ministers of (West) German cabinets have not been party members, though "on the ticket" of the major party in the coalition, the Social Democrats: Education Minister Hans Leussink (1969–1972), and Minister of Economy Werner Müller (1998–2002). Minister of Justice Klaus Kinkel only shortly after his appointment joined the Free Democrats in 1991. A special case is the former Federal Minister and Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, whose affiliation with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has not been conclusively established: although he served as Minister of Economics from 1949 to 1963 and as Federal Chancellor from 1963 to 1966, and was even elected CDU party chairman in 1966, it seems that he never signed a membership form or paid contributions. Researches by "Der Stern" magazine have revealed a record at the CDU party archives created only in 1968, with the faked date of entry of early March 1949.


title: Independent politician

text: In Ireland, proportional representation, the comparative looseness of formal parties, and strong local sentiment have meant that independents have formed a significant part of the parliamentary landscape since the foundation of the state: in the early elections to Dáil Éireann (parliament), independents accounted for 7% of seats in 1922, 8.5% in 1923, 10.5% in 1927, and 9% in 1932, though with the development of relatively more structured parties their numbers declined thereafter. These were similar proportions to the number of independents elected to other interwar European democracies such as France (see above).


title: Independent politician

text: It was not until the 2010s that independents would see a similar electoral success, with record scores for independents surpassing the previous interwar highs.


title: Independent politician

text: After the Irish general election in 2016, there were 19 independent TDs (parliamentary deputies) in the Dáil (the lower house of the Irish parliament), representing 12% of the total. Two technical groups were formed by independent deputies to coordinate their activities: the Independents4Change, with four deputies, opposed the government, while the Independent Alliance formed part of the minority government's working majority. A number of other individual independents similarly supported the government, and received cabinet positions.


title: Independent politician

text: There are fourteen independent senators in the 25th Seanad (the upper house of the Irish parliament), representing 23% of the total. Three of these are elected by the graduates of the National University of Ireland and two from Dublin University. There are also five independent senators who were nominated by the Taoiseach and four elected by the technical panels.


title: Independent politician

text: The Prime Ministers Carlo Azeglio Ciampi (1993–1994), Lamberto Dini (1995–1996), Giuliano Amato (2000–2001), Mario Monti (2011–2013), Giuseppe Conte (2018–2021) and Mario Draghi (2021–2022) were independent when they were in office. Ciampi was also the President of Italy between 1999 and 2006. President Sergio Mattarella, despite being a former member of the Christian Democracy and of the Democratic Party, was elected president in 2015 as an independent (he was member of the Constitutional Court at the moment of his election).


title: Independent politician

text: Atifete Jahjaga was elected the first female and Independent President of Kosovo. She was also the first female and independent elected leader in the whole of the Balkans.


title: Independent politician

text: The Polish Sejm is elected by party-list ordination, which does not allow lone candidates to run, although since 2001 there has been a possibility to create non-partisan "Voters' Electoral Committee" (pol. "KWW", "komitet wyborczy wyborców"); they are by almost any means party lists, but no officially registered party is behind them. They can be unregistered parties, e.g. Kukiz'15, or non-partisan movements, although the latter never reached the 5% threshold. National minorities candidates also form Voters' Electoral Committees (like German Minority Electoral Committee, represented in Sejm since 1991), but they do not have to reach the nationwide threshold. However, during a Sejm term many members switch parties or become independents.


title: Independent politician

text: Tickets such as Civic Platform during the 2001 election were formally non-partisan, Civic Platform was widely viewed as a de facto political party, as it is now.


title: Independent politician

text: The situation in the Senate is different, as the voting system allows independents to run as single candidates and some are elected in their own right. In the last parliamentary election (2015) four independents won seats in the Senate.


title: Independent politician

text: Three presidents since 1990 have technically been independents. Lech Wałęsa was not an endorsed candidate of any party, but the chairman of the Solidarity and he was elected without full support of this union (Solidarity votes split between him and Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki). Aleksander Kwaśniewski was a leader of the Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland, but formally resigned from the party after he was elected, as did Lech Kaczyński, who was the first leader of Law and Justice, Bronisław Komorowski (PO) and Andrzej Duda (PiS). The resignation is required because the Constitution says that the president shall hold no other offices nor discharge any public functions. The aforementioned presidents often participated in their party's campaigns (e.g. Andrzej Duda in the Law and Justice campaign three months after his resignation from the party).


title: Independent politician

text: Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, the current president of Portugal since 6 March 2016, was elected on 24 January 2016 while being a leading member of the Social Democratic Party, but suspended his political affiliation on the day of his swearing-in.


title: Independent politician

text: All of Russia's presidents have been independents. Former president Dmitry Medvedev declined an offer to join United Russia, saying that he believes the President should be an independent so that he serves the interests of the country rather than his political party.


title: Independent politician

text: Vladimir Putin, the current president of Russia, was the head of the United Russia party until 26 May 2012, but even then was not its member, thus formally was and still is independent.


title: Independent politician

text: The Swedish election system is based on parties nominating candidate MPs for their party ballots, and each party has to receive 4% or more of the national vote (or 12% in one region, which has never happened independently of also reaching the different 4% threshold). This makes running as an independent MP impossible. Once elected, the seat is personal; MPs may resign their party membership, or be stripped of it, while retaining their Riksdag seats to become independent to become what is commonly referred to as a "politisk vilde" ("political savage") symbol: (-).


title: Independent politician

text: In the Government (executive cabinet), there is no requirement for ministers to be MPs, or even have a political affiliation (though this has overwhelmingly been the case in modern times). This means that even the Prime Minister could technically be an independent if chosen by the Riksdag.


title: Independent politician

text: The Registration of Political Parties Act 1998 laid down the first specific rules in the United Kingdom relating to the use of the term 'independent' by election candidates. That Act was repealed with most of its contents covered by Part II of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. Candidates standing for United Kingdom local elections and United Kingdom parliamentary elections, including the devolved parliaments and assemblies, can use the name of a registered political party, or the term 'Independent' (or its Welsh language equivalent "annibynol") or no ballot paper description at all (this latter choice was used, for example, by David Icke at the 2008 Haltemprice and Howden by-election).


title: Independent politician

text: Some groups in the United Kingdom who are not affiliated to any national or regional party have registered locality-based political parties. Some English examples are the Independent Kidderminster Hospital and Health Concern, the Epsom and Ewell Residents Association, the Devizes Guardians, the Derwentside Independents, and the East Yorkshire Independents.


title: Independent politician

text: Before the twentieth century it was fairly common for independents to be elected to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, but there have been very few since 1945. S. O. Davies, a veteran Labour MP, held his Merthyr Tydfil seat in the 1970 general election, standing as an independent, after the Labour Party had deselected him.


title: Independent politician

text: Journalist Martin Bell was elected at Tatton in the general election of 1997, having stood on an anti-corruption platform, defeating incumbent Neil Hamilton. He was the first independent to be newly elected to the Commons since 1951. He stood unsuccessfully in a different constituency in 2001.


title: Independent politician

text: At the 2001 general election, Dr Richard Taylor of the Independent Kidderminster Hospital and Health Concern party was elected for the constituency of Wyre Forest. Taylor was re-elected for Wyre Forest at the 2005 general election, becoming the only independent in recent times to have been elected for a second term.


title: Independent politician

text: Two independent (or local party) members of parliament were elected in the 2005 election, although both were defeated five years later. In the same election, Peter Law was elected as an independent at Blaenau Gwent. Law died on 25 April 2006: the resulting by-election elected Dai Davies of the local party Blaenau Gwent People's Voice. The by-election was unusual as it was the first time in over eighty years that an independent had held a seat previously occupied by another independent.


title: Independent politician

text: Only one independent was elected to the Commons in the 2010, 2015 and 2017 elections: Sylvia Hermon, the member for North Down, a Unionist who left the Ulster Unionist Party because of its links with the Conservatives.


title: Independent politician

text: There have also been several instances of politicians being elected to the Commons as representatives of a political party, then resigning the party's whip, or having it withdrawn. Examples in this in the 2010–2015 parliament included Mike Hancock (formerly a Liberal Democrat), Eric Joyce (formerly Labour) and Nadine Dorries, a Conservative who had the whip withdrawn for part of the parliament and thus sat as an independent during that time.


title: Independent politician

text: Independent candidates often stand in British parliamentary elections, often with platforms about specific local issues, but usually without success. An example from the 2001 general election was Aston Villa supporter Ian Robinson, who stood as an independent in the Sutton Coldfield constituency in protest at the way chairman Doug Ellis ran the football club. Another example an independent candidate, in the Salisbury constituency, is Arthur Uther Pendragon, a local activist and self-declared reincarnation of King Arthur.


title: Independent politician

text: Other independent candidates are associated with a political party and may be former members of it, but cannot stand under its label. For instance, for several months after being expelled from the Labour Party but before the Respect Coalition was founded, George Galloway MP described himself as "Independent Labour".


title: Independent politician

text: On 23 March 2005 the Independent Network was set up to support independent candidates in the forthcoming General Election. The Independent Network still supports Independent candidates in local, regional, national and European elections. It has an organic set of principles which are known as the Bell Principles and are very closely related to Lord Nolan's Standards of Public Life. The Independent Network does not impose any ideology or political influence on their candidates.


title: Independent politician

text: In March 2009, the multi-millionaire Paul Judge established the Jury Team, an umbrella organisation dedicated to increasing the number of independent candidates standing in Britain, in both national and European elections.


title: Independent politician

text: Part II of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 allows individuals who wish to stand as a candidate to all parliaments and assemblies in the UK, including the House of Commons, the right to use one of three ballot paper descriptions. Those descriptions are the name of a registered political party; the word "independent"; or no description at all.


title: Independent politician

text: Unless a candidate stands as "independent" or as a "No Description" candidate leaving the ballot paper description box blank, their candidature must be confirmed by a signed certificate from the relevant officer from a registered political party, as set out in Section 52 of the Electoral Administration Act 2006.


title: Independent politician

text: The House of Lords includes many peers independent from political parties. Some are simply not affiliated with any grouping, whilst another, larger, grouping is given the official designation of crossbenchers. Additionally the Lords Spiritual (bishops of the Church of England) do not have party affiliations.


title: Independent politician

text: In the 2003 Scottish Parliamentary elections, three MSPs were elected as Independents: Dennis Canavan (Falkirk West), Dr Jean Turner (Strathkelvin and Bearsden) and Margo MacDonald (Lothians). In 2004 Campbell Martin (West of Scotland region) left the Scottish National Party to become an independent and in 2005 Brian Monteith (Mid Scotland and Fife) left the Conservative Party to become an independent. At the 2007 Scottish Parliamentary elections Margo MacDonald was again returned as an independent MSP and was elected as an independent for the third time four years later. She died in 2014 while still serving as member of the Parliament. As she was elected as an independent regional MSP, there could be no by-election and her seat remained vacant until the 2016 election.


title: Independent politician

text: Peter Law was expelled from the Labour Party after standing against an official Labour candidate in Blaenau Gwent at the 2005 UK general election and became an independent in the National Assembly and UK Parliament. In 2006 Peter Law died from a brain tumour and his wife, Trish Law, campaigned and took the seat as an independent candidate at the subsequent by-election and held onto the seat again in the 2007 Welsh Assembly elections.


title: Independent politician

text: In 2016, Nathan Gill as the then leader of UKIP Wales defected from the group to sit as an independent after a falling out with Neil Hamilton, who was elected UKIP Assembly group leader. Dafydd Elis-Thomas left the Plaid Cymru group later in 2016 after multiple fallings out with Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood. Elis-Thomas said his reason for leaving Plaid Cymru was that it not serious about working with the Welsh Labour Government. Neil McEvoy was expelled from Plaid Cymru on 16 January 2018 and sat as an independent AM until 2021. Nathan Gill stood down on 27 December 2017 and was replaced by Mandy Jones. Mandy Jones left the UKIP group on 9 January 2018 over a fallout over her staff.


title: Independent politician

text: The introduction of directly elected mayors in several parts of England has witnessed the election of independents to run councils in Stoke-on-Trent, Middlesbrough, Bedford, Hartlepool and Mansfield. The first Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, was first elected as an independent, having run against the official Labour candidate Frank Dobson. He was subsequently re-admitted to the Labour Party in December 2003 before his first re-election campaign.


title: Independent politician

text: Independent candidates frequently stand and are elected to local councils. There is a special Independent group of the Local Government Association to cater for them. A number of local authorities have been entirely or almost entirely composed of independent members, such as the City of London Corporation, the Isles of Scilly Council, Orkney Islands Council, Shetland Islands Council and Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (Western Isles Council) in the Outer Hebrides.


title: Independent politician

text: Roughly a quarter of the police and crime commissioners elected in England and Wales in the 2012 election were independents.


title: Independent politician

text: Independents are a recurrent feature of the federal Parliament of Australia, and they are more commonly elected to state parliaments. There have been up to five independents in every federal parliament since 1990, and independents have won twenty-eight times during national elections in that time. A large proportion of independents are former members of one of Australia's four main parties, the Australian Labor Party, the Liberal Party of Australia, the Australian Greens, or the National Party of Australia. In 2013 a political party named the Australian Independents was registered with the Australian Electoral Commission.


title: Independent politician

text: At the dissolution of parliament before the 2019 federal election, four independents sat in the Australian House of Representatives: Andrew Wilkie (Member for Denison), Cathy McGowan (Member for Indi), Kerryn Phelps (Member for Wentworth), and Julia Banks (Member for Chisholm). Of these, Wilkie had previously been a Greens candidate, McGowan had been a Liberal staffer, and Banks was elected as a Liberal MP before resigning from the party in November 2018. At the 2019 election, Wilkie was re-elected as the Member for Clark, while McGowan retired, and both Phelps and Banks lost their seats. However, two new independents entered parliament: Zali Steggall (Member for Warringah) and Helen Haines (Member for Indi).


title: Independent politician

text: After the 2022 federal election, a record ten independents were elected to the House of Representatives, including re-elected members Andrew Wilkie (Clark), Zali Steggall (Warringah), and Helen Haines (Indi). Seven new independents were elected to the House of Representatives: Dai Le (Fowler), Zoe Daniel (Goldstein), Monique Ryan (Kooyong), Allegra Spender (Wentworth), Kate Chaney (Curtin), Kylea Tink (North Sydney), and Sophie Scamps (Mackellar).


title: Independent politician

text: Independent senators are quite rare. In modern politics, Independent Brian Harradine served from 1975 to 2005 with considerable influence at times. Nick Xenophon was the only elected independent senator after his election to the Senate at the 2007 federal election and was re-elected for another six-year term at the 2013 federal election. He resigned from the Australian Senate in 2017 to contest a seat in the House of Assembly of South Australia. DLP Senator John Madigan became an independent senator in September 2014, but lost his seat in the 2016 election. PUP Senators Jacqui Lambie and Glenn Lazarus became Independent senators in November 2014 and March 2015 respectively. Lambie was re-elected in 2019 with the support of the Jacqui Lambie Network. At the 2022 Australian federal election, independent senator for the ACT David Pocock was elected, becoming the first independent senator from a territory.


title: Independent politician

text: Originally, there were no recognised parties in the New Zealand parliament, although loose groupings did exist informally (initially between supporters of central government versus provincial governments, and later between liberals and conservatives). The foundation of formal political parties, starting at the end of the 19th century, considerably diminished the number of unaffiliated politicians, although a smaller number of independent candidates continued to be elected up until the 1940s. Since then, however, there have been relatively few independent politicians in Parliament. No independent candidate has won or held a seat in a general election since 1943, although two independent candidates have been successful in by-elections (in all cases after having held the seats in question as partisan candidates up until that point). Other politicians have become independents in the course of a parliamentary term, but not been voted into office as such.


title: Independent politician

text: The last person to be directly elected to Parliament as an independent in New Zealand was Winston Peters, who won the in electorate as an independent after having previously held it a member of the National Party. By the time of the next general election, he had formed his own party (New Zealand First), and thus was no longer standing as an independent. Since that time, the only independents in Parliament have been people who quit or were expelled from their original party but retained their seats without going through a by-election. Some have gone on to found or co-found their own parties, with varying levels of success—examples include Peter Dunne, Taito Phillip Field, Gordon Copeland, Tau Henare, and Alamein Kopu. Others have joined parties which were then outside Parliament, such as Frank Grover and Tuariki Delamere.


title: Independent politician

text: There were two independent MPs in the 49th New Zealand Parliament: Chris Carter and Hone Harawira. Carter became an independent after his criticisms of the Labour Party's leadership resulted in his being expelled from the Labour caucus, while Harawira resigned from the Māori Party and, after a short period as an independent, also resigned as an MP in order to force the when he was re-elected as representative of his new political party, Mana and retained the seat in the 2011 General Election. There were also two other parties which had only a single MP: United Future with Peter Dunne and ACT with David Seymour. Neither Dunne nor Seymour was classed as an independent—Dunne's presence in Parliament was due to personal votes in his home electorate, and Seymour's presence was as the sole elected MP of ACT because of a collapse in their support in the . In the 50th New Zealand Parliament there was one independent MP: Brendan Horan, a former New Zealand First MP who was expelled from his party because of allegations of misappropriation of family assets.


title: Independent politician

text: Peter Dunne effectively became an Independent MP for a short period after his United Future political party was deregistered on 25 June 2013 by the Electoral Commission, as the party no longer had the required minimum of 500 members. The party was subsequently re-registered two months later.


title: Independent politician

text: In Niue, there have been no political parties since 2003, when the Niue People's Party disbanded, and all politicians are "de facto" independents. The government depends on an informal coalition.


title: Sumer

text: Sumer () is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. It is one of the cradles of civilization in the world, along with ancient Egypt, Elam, the Caral-Supe civilization, Mesoamerica, the Indus Valley civilisation, and ancient China. Living along the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Sumerian farmers grew an abundance of grain and other crops, the surplus from which enabled them to form urban settlements. Proto-writing dates back before 3000 BC. The earliest texts come from the cities of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr, and date to between c. 3500 and c. 3000 BC.


title: Sumer

text: The term "Sumer" (Sumerian: or , Akkadian: ) is the name given to the language spoken by the "Sumerians", the ancient non-Semitic-speaking inhabitants of southern Mesopotamia, by their successors the East Semitic-speaking Akkadians. The Sumerians referred to their land as , the 'Country of the noble lords' (, , lit. 'country' + 'lords' + 'noble') as seen in their inscriptions.


title: Sumer

text: The origin of the Sumerians is not known, but the people of Sumer referred to themselves as "Black Headed Ones" or "Black-Headed People" ( , , lit. 'head' + 'black', or , phonetically , lit. 'head' + 'black' + 'carry'). For example, the Sumerian king Shulgi described himself as "the king of the four quarters, the pastor of the black-headed people". The Akkadians also called the Sumerians 'black-headed people', or , in the Semitic Akkadian language.


title: Sumer

text: The Akkadian word may represent the geographical name in dialect, but the phonological development leading to the Akkadian term is uncertain. Hebrew , Egyptian , and Hittite , all referring to southern Mesopotamia, could be western variants of "Sumer".


title: Sumer

text: Most historians have suggested that Sumer was first permanently settled between c. 5500 and 4000 BC by a West Asian people who spoke the Sumerian language (pointing to the names of cities, rivers, basic occupations, etc., as evidence), a non-Semitic and non-Indo-European agglutinative language isolate. In contrast to its Semitic neighbours, it was not an inflected language.


title: Sumer

text: Others have suggested that the Sumerians were a North African people who migrated from the Green Sahara into the Middle East and were responsible for the spread of farming in the Middle East. However, with evidence strongly suggesting the first farmers originated from the Fertile Crescent, this suggestion is often discarded. Although not specifically discussing Sumerians, Lazaridis et al. 2016 have suggested a partial North African origin for some pre-Semitic cultures of the Middle East, particularly Natufians, after testing the genomes of Natufian and Pre-Pottery Neolithic culture-bearers. Alternatively, a recent (2013) genetic analysis of four ancient Mesopotamian skeletal DNA samples suggests an association of the Sumerians with Indus Valley Civilization, possibly as a result of ancient Indus-Mesopotamia relations. According to some data, the Sumerians are associated with the Hurrians and Urartians, and the Caucasus is considered their homeland.


title: Sumer

text: A prehistoric people who lived in the region before the Sumerians have been termed the "Proto-Euphrateans" or "Ubaidians", and are theorized to have evolved from the Samarra culture of northern Mesopotamia. The Ubaidians, though never mentioned by the Sumerians themselves, are assumed by modern-day scholars to have been the first civilizing force in Sumer. They drained the marshes for agriculture, developed trade, and established industries, including weaving, leatherwork, metalwork, masonry, and pottery.


title: Sumer

text: Some scholars contest the idea of a Proto-Euphratean language or one substrate language; they think the Sumerian language may originally have been that of the hunting and fishing peoples who lived in the marshland and the Eastern Arabia littoral region and were part of the Arabian bifacial culture. Reliable historical records begin much later; there are none in Sumer of any kind that have been dated before Enmebaragesi (Early Dynastic I). Juris Zarins believes the Sumerians lived along the coast of Eastern Arabia, today's Persian Gulf region, before it was flooded at the end of the Ice Age.


title: Sumer

text: Sumerian civilization took form in the Uruk period (4th millennium BC), continuing into the Jemdet Nasr and Early Dynastic periods.


title: Sumer

text: The Sumerians progressively lost control to Semitic states from the northwest. Sumer was conquered by the Semitic-speaking kings of the Akkadian Empire around 2270 BC (short chronology), but Sumerian continued as a sacred language. Native Sumerian rule re-emerged for about a century in the Third Dynasty of Ur at approximately 2100–2000 BC, but the Akkadian language also remained in use for some time.


title: Sumer

text: The Sumerian city of Eridu, on the coast of the Persian Gulf, is considered to have been one of the oldest cities, where three separate cultures may have fused: that of peasant Ubaidian farmers, living in mud-brick huts and practicing irrigation; that of mobile nomadic Semitic pastoralists living in black tents and following herds of sheep and goats; and that of fisher folk, living in reed huts in the marshlands, who may have been the ancestors of the Sumerians.


title: Sumer

text: In the late 4th millennium BC, Sumer was divided into many independent city-states, which were divided by canals and boundary stones. Each was centered on a temple dedicated to the particular patron god or goddess of the city and ruled over by a priestly governor (ensi) or by a king (lugal) who was intimately tied to the city's religious rites.


title: Sumer

text: Apart from Mari, which lies full 330 kilometres (205 miles) north-west of Agade, but which is credited in the king list as having "exercised kingship" in the Early Dynastic II period, and Nagar, an outpost, these cities are all in the Euphrates-Tigris alluvial plain, south of Baghdad in what are now the Bābil, Diyala, Wāsit, Dhi Qar, Basra, Al-Muthannā and Al-Qādisiyyah governorates of Iraq.


title: Sumer

text: The Sumerian city-states rose to power during the prehistoric Ubaid and Uruk periods. Sumerian written history reaches back to the 27th century BC and before, but the historical record remains obscure until the Early Dynastic III period, c. 23rd century BC, when a now deciphered syllabary writing system was developed, which has allowed archaeologists to read contemporary records and inscriptions. The Akkadian Empire was the first state that successfully united larger parts of Mesopotamia in the 23rd century BC. After the Gutian period, the Ur III kingdom similarly united parts of northern and southern Mesopotamia. It ended in the face of Amorite incursions at the beginning of the second millennium BC. The Amorite "dynasty of Isin" persisted until c. 1700 BC, when Mesopotamia was united under Babylonian rule.


title: Sumer

text: The Ubaid period is marked by a distinctive style of fine quality painted pottery which spread throughout Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. The oldest evidence for occupation comes from Tell el-'Oueili, but, given that environmental conditions in southern Mesopotamia were favourable to human occupation well before the Ubaid period, it is likely that older sites exist but have not yet been found. It appears that this culture was derived from the Samarran culture from northern Mesopotamia. It is not known whether or not these were the actual Sumerians who are identified with the later Uruk culture. The story of the passing of the gifts of civilization ("me") to Inanna, goddess of Uruk and of love and war, by Enki, god of wisdom and chief god of Eridu, may reflect the transition from Eridu to Uruk.


title: Sumer

text: The archaeological transition from the Ubaid period to the Uruk period is marked by a gradual shift from painted pottery domestically produced on a slow wheel to a great variety of unpainted pottery mass-produced by specialists on fast wheels. The Uruk period is a continuation and an outgrowth of Ubaid with pottery being the main visible change.


title: Sumer

text: By the time of the Uruk period (c. 4100–2900 BC calibrated), the volume of trade goods transported along the canals and rivers of southern Mesopotamia facilitated the rise of many large, stratified, temple-centered cities (with populations of over 10,000 people) where centralized administrations employed specialized workers. It is fairly certain that it was during the Uruk period that Sumerian cities began to make use of slave labour captured from the hill country, and there is ample evidence for captured slaves as workers in the earliest texts. Artifacts, and even colonies of this Uruk civilization have been found over a wide area—from the Taurus Mountains in Turkey, to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, and as far east as western Iran.


title: Sumer

text: The Uruk period civilization, exported by Sumerian traders and colonists (like that found at Tell Brak), had an effect on all surrounding peoples, who gradually evolved their own comparable, competing economies and cultures. The cities of Sumer could not maintain remote, long-distance colonies by military force.


title: Sumer

text: Sumerian cities during the Uruk period were probably theocratic and were most likely headed by a priest-king ("ensi"), assisted by a council of elders, including both men and women. It is quite possible that the later Sumerian pantheon was modeled upon this political structure. There was little evidence of organized warfare or professional soldiers during the Uruk period, and towns were generally unwalled. During this period Uruk became the most urbanized city in the world, surpassing for the first time 50,000 inhabitants.


title: Sumer

text: The ancient Sumerian king list includes the early dynasties of several prominent cities from this period. The first set of names on the list is of kings said to have reigned before a major flood occurred. These early names may be fictional, and include some legendary and mythological figures, such as Alulim and Dumizid.


title: Sumer

text: The end of the Uruk period coincided with the Piora oscillation, a dry period from c. 3200–2900 BC that marked the end of a long wetter, warmer climate period from about 9,000 to 5,000 years ago, called the Holocene climatic optimum.


title: Sumer

text: The dynastic period begins c. 2900 BC and was associated with a shift from the temple establishment headed by council of elders led by a priestly "En" (a male figure when it was a temple for a goddess, or a female figure when headed by a male god) towards a more secular Lugal (Lu = man, Gal = great) and includes such legendary patriarchal figures as Dumuzid, Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh—who reigned shortly before the historic record opens c. 2900 BC, when the now deciphered syllabic writing started to develop from the early pictograms. The center of Sumerian culture remained in southern Mesopotamia, even though rulers soon began expanding into neighboring areas, and neighboring Semitic groups adopted much of Sumerian culture for their own.


title: Sumer

text: The earliest dynastic king on the Sumerian king list whose name is known from any other legendary source is Etana, 13th king of the first dynasty of Kish. The earliest king authenticated through archaeological evidence is Enmebaragesi of Kish (Early Dynastic I), whose name is also mentioned in the "Epic of Gilgamesh"—leading to the suggestion that Gilgamesh himself might have been a historical king of Uruk. As the "Epic of Gilgamesh" shows, this period was associated with increased war. Cities became walled, and increased in size as undefended villages in southern Mesopotamia disappeared. (Both Enmerkar and Gilgamesh are credited with having built the walls of Uruk.)


title: Sumer

text: The dynasty of Lagash (c. 2500–2270 BC), though omitted from the king list, is well attested through several important monuments and many archaeological finds.


title: Sumer

text: Although short-lived, one of the first empires known to history was that of Eannatum of Lagash, who annexed practically all of Sumer, including Kish, Uruk, Ur, and Larsa, and reduced to tribute the city-state of Umma, arch-rival of Lagash. In addition, his realm extended to parts of Elam and along the Persian Gulf. He seems to have used terror as a matter of policy. Eannatum's Stele of the Vultures depicts vultures pecking at the severed heads and other body parts of his enemies. His empire collapsed shortly after his death.


title: Sumer

text: Later, Lugal-Zage-Si, the priest-king of Umma, overthrew the primacy of the Lagash dynasty in the area, then conquered Uruk, making it his capital, and claimed an empire extending from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. He was the last ethnically Sumerian king before Sargon of Akkad.


title: Sumer

text: The Akkadian Empire dates to c. 2234–2154 BC (middle chronology). The Eastern Semitic Akkadian language is first attested in proper names of the kings of Kish c. 2800 BC, preserved in later king lists. There are texts written entirely in Old Akkadian dating from c. 2500 BC. Use of Old Akkadian was at its peak during the rule of Sargon the Great (c. 2334–2279 BC), but even then most administrative tablets continued to be written in Sumerian, the language used by the scribes. Gelb and Westenholz differentiate three stages of Old Akkadian: that of the pre-Sargonic era, that of the Akkadian empire, and that of the Ur III period that followed it. Akkadian and Sumerian coexisted as vernacular languages for about one thousand years, but by around 1800 BC, Sumerian was becoming more of a literary language familiar mainly only to scholars and scribes. Thorkild Jacobsen has argued that there is little break in historical continuity between the pre- and post-Sargon periods, and that too much emphasis has been placed on the perception of a "Semitic vs. Sumerian" conflict. However, it is certain that Akkadian was also briefly imposed on neighboring parts of Elam that were previously conquered, by Sargon.


title: Sumer

text: Following the downfall of the Akkadian Empire at the hands of Gutians, another native Sumerian ruler, Gudea of Lagash, rose to local prominence and continued the practices of the Sargonic kings' claims to divinity.


title: Sumer

text: The previous Lagash dynasty, Gudea and his descendants also promoted artistic development and left a large number of archaeological artifacts.


title: Sumer

text: Later, the Third Dynasty of Ur under Ur-Nammu and Shulgi (c. 2112–2004 BC, middle chronology), whose power extended as far as southern Assyria, has been erroneously called a "Sumerian renaissance" in the past. Already, however, the region was becoming more Semitic than Sumerian, with the resurgence of the Akkadian-speaking Semites in Assyria and elsewhere, and the influx of waves of Semitic Martu (Amorites), who were to found several competing local powers in the south, including Isin, Larsa, Eshnunna and later, Babylonia. The last of these eventually came to briefly dominate the south of Mesopotamia as the Babylonian Empire, just as the Old Assyrian Empire had already done in the north from the late 21st century BC. The Sumerian language continued as a sacerdotal language taught in schools in Babylonia and Assyria, much as Latin was used in the Medieval period, for as long as cuneiform was used.


title: Sumer

text: This period is generally taken to coincide with a major shift in population from southern Mesopotamia toward the north. Ecologically, the agricultural productivity of the Sumerian lands was being compromised as a result of rising salinity. Soil salinity in this region had been long recognized as a major problem. Poorly drained irrigated soils, in an arid climate with high levels of evaporation, led to the buildup of dissolved salts in the soil, eventually reducing agricultural yields severely. During the Akkadian and Ur III phases, there was a shift from the cultivation of wheat to the more salt-tolerant barley, but this was insufficient, and during the period from 2100 BC to 1700 BC, it is estimated that the population in this area declined by nearly three-fifths. This greatly upset the balance of power within the region, weakening the areas where Sumerian was spoken, and comparatively strengthening those where Akkadian was the major language. Henceforth, Sumerian would remain only a literary and liturgical language, similar to the position occupied by Latin in medieval Europe.


title: Sumer

text: Following an Elamite invasion and sack of Ur during the rule of Ibbi-Sin (c. 2028–2004 BC), Sumer came under Amorite rule (taken to introduce the Middle Bronze Age). The independent Amorite states of the 20th to 18th centuries are summarized as the "Dynasty of Isin" in the Sumerian king list, ending with the rise of Babylonia under Hammurabi c. 1800 BC.


title: Sumer

text: Later rulers who dominated Assyria and Babylonia occasionally assumed the old Sargonic title "King of Sumer and Akkad", such as Tukulti-Ninurta I of Assyria after c. 1225 BC.


title: Sumer

text: Uruk, one of Sumer's largest cities, has been estimated to have had a population of 50,000–80,000 at its height; given the other cities in Sumer, and the large agricultural population, a rough estimate for Sumer's population might be 0.8 million to 1.5 million. The world population at this time has been estimated at 27 million.


title: Sumer

text: The Sumerians spoke a language isolate, but a number of linguists have claimed to be able to detect a substrate language of unknown classification beneath Sumerian because names of some of Sumer's major cities are not Sumerian, revealing influences of earlier inhabitants. However, the archaeological record shows clear uninterrupted cultural continuity from the time of the early Ubaid period (5300–4700 BC C-14) settlements in southern Mesopotamia. The Sumerian people who settled here farmed the lands in this region that were made fertile by silt deposited by the Tigris and the Euphrates.


title: Sumer

text: Some archaeologists have speculated that the original speakers of ancient Sumerian may have been farmers, who moved down from the north of Mesopotamia after perfecting irrigation agriculture there. The Ubaid period pottery of southern Mesopotamia has been connected via Choga Mami transitional ware to the pottery of the Samarra period culture (c. 5700–4900 BC C-14) in the north, who were the first to practice a primitive form of irrigation agriculture along the middle Tigris River and its tributaries. The connection is most clearly seen at Tell el-'Oueili near Larsa, excavated by the French in the 1980s, where eight levels yielded pre-Ubaid pottery resembling Samarran ware. According to this theory, farming peoples spread down into southern Mesopotamia because they had developed a temple-centered social organization for mobilizing labor and technology for water control, enabling them to survive and prosper in a difficult environment.


title: Sumer

text: Others have suggested a continuity of Sumerians, from the indigenous hunter-fisherfolk traditions, associated with the bifacial assemblages found on the Arabian littoral. Juris Zarins believes the Sumerians may have been the people living in the Persian Gulf region before it flooded at the end of the last Ice Age.


title: Sumer

text: There is considerable evidence concerning Sumerian music. Lyres and flutes were played, among the best-known examples being the Lyres of Ur.


title: Sumer

text: Inscriptions describing the reforms of king Urukagina of Lagash (c. 2350 BC) say that he abolished the former custom of polyandry in his country, prescribing that a woman who took multiple husbands be stoned with rocks upon which her crime had been written.


title: Sumer

text: Sumerian culture was male-dominated and stratified. The Code of Ur-Nammu, the oldest such codification yet discovered, dating to the Ur III, reveals a glimpse at societal structure in late Sumerian law. Beneath the "lu-gal" ("great man" or king), all members of society belonged to one of two basic strata: The ""lu"" or free person, and the slave (male, "arad"; female "geme"). The son of a "lu" was called a "dumu-nita" until he married. A woman ("munus") went from being a daughter ("dumu-mi"), to a wife ("dam"), then if she outlived her husband, a widow ("numasu") and she could then remarry another man who was from the same tribe.


title: Sumer

text: Marriages were usually arranged by the parents of the bride and groom; engagements were usually completed through the approval of contracts recorded on clay tablets. These marriages became legal as soon as the groom delivered a bridal gift to his bride's father. One Sumerian proverb describes the ideal, happy marriage through the mouth of a husband who boasts that his wife has borne him eight sons and is still eager to have sex.


title: Sumer

text: The Sumerians generally seem to have discouraged premarital sex. Neither Sumerian nor Akkadian had a word exactly corresponding to the English word 'virginity', and the concept was expressed descriptively, for example as "a/é-nu-gi-a" (Sum.)/"la naqbat" (Akk.) 'un-deflowered', or "giš nunzua", 'never having known a penis'. It is unclear whether terms such as "šišitu" in Akkadian medical texts indicate the hymen, but it appears that the intactness of the hymen was much less relevant to assessing a woman's virginity than in later cultures of the Near East, and most assessments of virginity depended on the woman's own account.


title: Sumer

text: From the earliest records, the Sumerians had very relaxed attitudes toward sex and their sexual mores were determined not by whether a sexual act was deemed immoral, but rather by whether or not it made a person ritually unclean. The Sumerians widely believed that masturbation enhanced sexual potency, both for men and for women, and they frequently engaged in it, both alone and with their partners. The Sumerians did not regard anal sex as taboo either. "Entu" priestesses were forbidden from producing offspring and frequently engaged in anal sex as a method of birth control.


title: Sumer

text: The most important archaeological discoveries in Sumer are a large number of clay tablets written in cuneiform script. Sumerian writing is considered to be a great milestone in the development of humanity's ability to not only create historical records but also in creating pieces of literature, both in the form of poetic epics and stories as well as prayers and laws.


title: Sumer

text: Although the writing system was first hieroglyphic using ideograms, logosyllabic cuneiform soon followed.


title: Sumer

text: Triangular or wedge-shaped reeds were used to write on moist clay. A large body of hundreds of thousands of texts in the Sumerian language have survived, including personal and business letters, receipts, lexical lists, laws, hymns, prayers, stories, and daily records. Full libraries of clay tablets have been found. Monumental inscriptions and texts on different objects, like statues or bricks, are also very common. Many texts survive in multiple copies because they were repeatedly transcribed by scribes in training. Sumerian continued to be the language of religion and law in Mesopotamia long after Semitic speakers had become dominant.


title: Sumer

text: A prime example of cuneiform writing would be a lengthy poem that was discovered in the ruins of Uruk. The "Epic of Gilgamesh" was written in the standard Sumerian cuneiform. It tells of a king from the early Dynastic II period named Gilgamesh or "Bilgamesh" in Sumerian. The story relates the fictional adventures of Gilgamesh and his companion, Enkidu. It was laid out on several clay tablets and is thought to be the earliest known surviving example of fictional literature.


title: Sumer

text: The Sumerian language is generally regarded as a language isolate in linguistics because it belongs to no known language family; Akkadian, by contrast, belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. There have been many failed attempts to connect Sumerian to other language families. It is an agglutinative language; in other words, morphemes ("units of meaning") are added together to create words, unlike analytic languages where morphemes are purely added together to create sentences. Some authors have proposed that there may be evidence of a substratum or adstratum language for geographic features and various crafts and agricultural activities, called variously Proto-Euphratean or Proto Tigrean, but this is disputed by others.


title: Sumer

text: Understanding Sumerian texts today can be problematic. Most difficult are the earliest texts, which in many cases do not give the full grammatical structure of the language and seem to have been used as an "aide-mémoire" for knowledgeable scribes.


title: Sumer

text: Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as a spoken language somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC, but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary, and scientific language in Babylonia and Assyria until the 1st century AD.


title: Sumer

text: The Sumerians credited their divinities for all matters pertaining to them and exhibited humility in the face of cosmic forces, such as death and divine wrath.


title: Sumer

text: Sumerian religion seems to have been founded upon two separate cosmogenic myths. The first saw creation as the result of a series of "hieroi gamoi" or sacred marriages, involving the reconciliation of opposites, postulated as a coming together of male and female divine beings, the gods.


title: Sumer

text: This pattern continued to influence regional Mesopotamian myths. Thus, in the later Akkadian Enuma Elish, creation was seen as the union of fresh and salt water, between male Abzu, and female Tiamat. The products of that union, Lahm and Lahmu, "the muddy ones", were titles given to the gate keepers of the E-Abzu temple of Enki in Eridu, the first Sumerian city.


title: Sumer

text: Mirroring the way that muddy islands emerge from the confluence of fresh and salty water at the mouth of the Euphrates, where the river deposits its load of silt, a second hieros gamos supposedly resulted in the creation of Anshar and Kishar, the "sky-pivot" (or axle), and the "earth pivot", parents in turn of Anu (the sky) and Ki (the earth).


title: Sumer

text: Another important Sumerian hieros gamos was that between Ki, here known as Ninhursag or "Lady of the Mountains", and Enki of Eridu, the god of fresh water which brought forth greenery and pasture.


title: Sumer

text: At an early stage, following the dawn of recorded history, Nippur, in central Mesopotamia, replaced Eridu in the south as the primary temple city, whose priests exercised political hegemony on the other city-states. Nippur retained this status throughout the Sumerian period.


title: Sumer

text: Sumerians believed in an anthropomorphic polytheism, or the belief in many gods in human form. There was no common set of gods; each city-state had its own patrons, temples, and priest-kings. Nonetheless, these were not exclusive; the gods of one city were often acknowledged elsewhere. Sumerian speakers were among the earliest people to record their beliefs in writing, and were a major inspiration in later Mesopotamian mythology, religion, and astrology.


title: Sumer

text: These deities formed the main pantheon, and in addition to this there were hundreds of other minor gods. Sumerian gods were often associated with different cities, and their religious importance often waxed and waned with those cities' political power. The gods were said to have created human beings from clay for the purpose of serving them. The temples organized the mass labour projects needed for irrigation agriculture. Citizens had a labor duty to the temple, though they could avoid it by a payment of silver.


title: Sumer

text: Sumerians believed that the universe consisted of a flat disk enclosed by a dome. The Sumerian afterlife involved a descent into a gloomy netherworld to spend eternity in a wretched existence as a Gidim (ghost).


title: Sumer

text: Their known world extended from "The Upper Sea" or Mediterranean coastline, to "The Lower Sea", the Persian Gulf and the land of Meluhha (probably the Indus Valley) and Magan (Oman), famed for its copper ores.


title: Sumer

text: Ziggurats (Sumerian temples) each had an individual name and consisted of a forecourt, with a central pond for purification. The temple itself had a central nave with aisles along either side. Flanking the aisles would be rooms for the priests. At one end would stand the podium and a mudbrick table for animal and vegetable sacrifices. Granaries and storehouses were usually located near the temples. After a time the Sumerians began to place the temples on top of multi-layered square constructions built as a series of rising terraces, giving rise to the Ziggurat style.


title: Sumer

text: It was believed that when people died, they would be confined to a gloomy world of Ereshkigal, whose realm was guarded by gateways with various monsters designed to prevent people entering or leaving. The dead were buried outside the city walls in graveyards where a small mound covered the corpse, along with offerings to monsters and a small amount of food. Those who could afford it sought burial at Dilmun. Human sacrifice was found in the death pits at the Ur royal cemetery where Queen Puabi was accompanied in death by her servants.


title: Sumer

text: The Sumerians adopted an agricultural lifestyle perhaps as early as c. 5000–4500 BC. The region demonstrated a number of core agricultural techniques, including organized irrigation, large-scale intensive cultivation of land, monocropping involving the use of plough agriculture, and the use of an agricultural specialized labour force under bureaucratic control. The necessity to manage temple accounts with this organization led to the development of writing (c. 3500 BC).


title: Sumer

text: In the early Sumerian Uruk period, the primitive pictograms suggest that sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs were domesticated. They used oxen as their primary beasts of burden and donkeys or equids as their primary transport animal and "woollen clothing as well as rugs were made from the wool or hair of the animals. ... By the side of the house was an enclosed garden planted with trees and other plants; wheat and probably other cereals were sown in the fields, and the "shaduf" was already employed for the purpose of irrigation. Plants were also grown in pots or vases."


title: Sumer

text: The Sumerians were one of the first known beer-drinking societies. Cereals were plentiful and were the key ingredient in their early brew. They brewed multiple kinds of beer consisting of wheat, barley, and mixed grain beers. Beer brewing was very important to the Sumerians. It was referenced in the Epic of Gilgamesh when Enkidu was introduced to the food and beer of Gilgamesh's people: "Drink the beer, as is the custom of the land... He drank the beer-seven jugs! and became expansive and sang with joy!"


title: Sumer

text: The Sumerians practiced similar irrigation techniques as those used in Egypt. American anthropologist Robert McCormick Adams says that irrigation development was associated with urbanization, and that 89% of the population lived in the cities.


title: Sumer

text: They grew barley, chickpeas, lentils, wheat, dates, onions, garlic, lettuce, leeks and mustard. Sumerians caught many fish and hunted fowl and gazelle.


title: Sumer

text: Sumerian agriculture depended heavily on irrigation. The irrigation was accomplished by the use of "shaduf", canals, channels, dykes, weirs, and reservoirs. The frequent violent floods of the Tigris, and less so, of the Euphrates, meant that canals required frequent repair and continual removal of silt, and survey markers and boundary stones needed to be continually replaced. The government required individuals to work on the canals in a corvée, although the rich were able to exempt themselves.


title: Sumer

text: As is known from the ""Sumerian Farmer's Almanac"", after the flood season and after the Spring equinox and the "Akitu" or New Year Festival, using the canals, farmers would flood their fields and then drain the water. Next they made oxen stomp the ground and kill weeds. They then dragged the fields with pickaxes. After drying, they plowed, harrowed, and raked the ground three times, and pulverized it with a mattock, before planting seed. Unfortunately, the high evaporation rate resulted in a gradual increase in the salinity of the fields. By the Ur III period, farmers had switched from wheat to the more salt-tolerant barley as their principal crop.


title: Sumer

text: Sumerians harvested during the spring in three-person teams consisting of a reaper, a binder, and a sheaf handler. The farmers would use threshing wagons, driven by oxen, to separate the cereal heads from the stalks and then use threshing sleds to disengage the grain. They then winnowed the grain/chaff mixture.


title: Sumer

text: The Sumerians were great creators, nothing proving this more than their art. Sumerian artifacts show great detail and ornamentation, with fine semi-precious stones imported from other lands, such as lapis lazuli, marble, and diorite, and precious metals like hammered gold, incorporated into the design. Since stone was rare it was reserved for sculpture. The most widespread material in Sumer was clay, as a result many Sumerian objects are made of clay. Metals such as gold, silver, copper, and bronze, along with shells and gemstones, were used for the finest sculpture and inlays. Small stones of all kinds, including more precious stones such as lapis lazuli, alabaster, and serpentine, were used for cylinder seals.


title: Sumer

text: Some of the most famous masterpieces are the Lyres of Ur, which are considered to be the world's oldest surviving stringed instruments. They have been discovered by Leonard Woolley when the Royal Cemetery of Ur has been excavated between from 1922 and 1934.


title: Sumer

text: The Tigris-Euphrates plain lacked minerals and trees. Sumerian structures were made of plano-convex mudbrick, not fixed with mortar or cement. Mud-brick buildings eventually deteriorate, so they were periodically destroyed, leveled, and rebuilt on the same spot. This constant rebuilding gradually raised the level of cities, which thus came to be elevated above the surrounding plain. The resultant hills, known as tells, are found throughout the ancient Near East.


title: Sumer

text: According to Archibald Sayce, the primitive pictograms of the early Sumerian (i.e. Uruk) era suggest that "Stone was scarce, but was already cut into blocks and seals. Brick was the ordinary building material, and with it cities, forts, temples and houses were constructed. The city was provided with towers and stood on an artificial platform; the house also had a tower-like appearance. It was provided with a door which turned on a hinge, and could be opened with a sort of key; the city gate was on a larger scale, and seems to have been double. The foundation stones—or rather bricks—of a house were consecrated by certain objects that were deposited under them."


title: Sumer

text: The most impressive and famous of Sumerian buildings are the ziggurats, large layered platforms that supported temples. Sumerian cylinder seals also depict houses built from reeds not unlike those built by the Marsh Arabs of Southern Iraq until as recently as 400 CE. The Sumerians also developed the arch, which enabled them to develop a strong type of dome. They built this by constructing and linking several arches. Sumerian temples and palaces made use of more advanced materials and techniques, such as buttresses, recesses, half columns, and clay nails.


title: Sumer

text: The Sumerians developed a complex system of metrology c. 4000 BC. This advanced metrology resulted in the creation of arithmetic, geometry, and algebra. From c. 2600 BC onwards, the Sumerians wrote multiplication tables on clay tablets and dealt with geometrical exercises and division problems. The earliest traces of the Babylonian numerals also date back to this period. The period c. 2700–2300 BC saw the first appearance of the abacus, and a table of successive columns which delimited the successive orders of magnitude of their sexagesimal number system. The Sumerians were the first to use a place value numeral system. There is also anecdotal evidence the Sumerians may have used a type of slide rule in astronomical calculations. They were the first to find the area of a triangle and the volume of a cube.


title: Sumer

text: Discoveries of obsidian from far-away locations in Anatolia and lapis lazuli from Badakhshan in northeastern Afghanistan, beads from Dilmun (modern Bahrain), and several seals inscribed with the Indus Valley script suggest a remarkably wide-ranging network of ancient trade centered on the Persian Gulf. For example, Imports to Ur came from many parts of the world. In particular, the metals of all types had to be imported.


title: Sumer

text: The "Epic of Gilgamesh" refers to trade with far lands for goods, such as wood, that were scarce in Mesopotamia. In particular, cedar from Lebanon was prized. The finding of resin in the tomb of Queen Puabi at Ur, indicates it was traded from as far away as Mozambique.


title: Sumer

text: The Sumerians used slaves, although they were not a major part of the economy. Slave women worked as weavers, pressers, millers, and porters.


title: Sumer

text: Sumerian potters decorated pots with cedar oil paints. The potters used a bow drill to produce the fire needed for baking the pottery. Sumerian masons and jewelers knew and made use of alabaster (calcite), ivory, iron, gold, silver, carnelian, and lapis lazuli.


title: Sumer

text: Evidence for imports from the Indus to Ur can be found from around 2350 BC. Various objects made with shell species that are characteristic of the Indus coast, particularly "Turbinella pyrum" and "Pleuroploca trapezium", have been found in the archaeological sites of Mesopotamia dating from around 2500–2000 BC. Carnelian beads from the Indus were found in the Sumerian tombs of Ur, the Royal Cemetery at Ur, dating to 2600–2450. In particular, carnelian beads with an etched design in white were probably imported from the Indus Valley, and made according to a technique of acid-etching developed by the Harappans. Lapis lazuli was imported in great quantity by Egypt, and already used in many tombs of the Naqada II period (c. 3200 BC). Lapis lazuli probably originated in northern Afghanistan, as no other sources are known, and had to be transported across the Iranian plateau to Mesopotamia, and then Egypt.


title: Sumer

text: Several Indus seals with Harappan script have also been found in Mesopotamia, particularly in Ur, Babylon and Kish.


title: Sumer

text: Gudea, the ruler of the Neo-Summerian Empire at Lagash, is recorded as having imported "translucent carnelian" from Meluhha, generally thought to be the Indus Valley area. Various inscriptions also mention the presence of Meluhha traders and interpreters in Mesopotamia. About twenty seals have been found from the Akkadian and Ur III sites, that have connections with Harappa and often use Harappan symbols or writing.


title: Sumer

text: The Indus Valley Civilization only flourished in its most developed form between 2400 and 1800 BC, but at the time of these exchanges, it was a much larger entity than the Mesopotamian civilization, covering an area of 1.2 million square meters with thousands of settlements, compared to an area of only about 65.000 square meters for the occupied area of Mesopotamia, while the largest cities were comparable in size at about 30–40,000 inhabitants.


title: Sumer

text: Large institutions kept their accounts in barley and silver, often with a fixed rate between them. The obligations, loans and prices in general were usually denominated in one of them. Many transactions involved debt, for example goods consigned to merchants by temple and beer advanced by "ale women".


title: Sumer

text: Commercial credit and agricultural consumer loans were the main types of loans. The trade credit was usually extended by temples in order to finance trade expeditions and was nominated in silver. The interest rate was set at 1/60 a month (one shekel per mina) some time before 2000 BC and it remained at that level for about two thousand years.


title: Sumer

text: Rural loans commonly arose as a result of unpaid obligations due to an institution (such as a temple), in this case the arrears were considered to be lent to the debtor. They were denominated in barley or other crops and the interest rate was typically much higher than for commercial loans and could amount to 1/3 to 1/2 of the loan principal.


title: Sumer

text: Periodically, rulers signed "clean slate" decrees that cancelled all the rural (but not commercial) debt and allowed bondservants to return to their homes. Customarily, rulers did it at the beginning of the first full year of their reign, but they could also be proclaimed at times of military conflict or crop failure. The first known ones were made by Enmetena and Urukagina of Lagash in 2400–2350 BC. According to Hudson, the purpose of these decrees was to prevent debts mounting to a degree that they threatened the fighting force, which could happen if peasants lost their subsistence land or became bondservants due to inability to repay their debt.


title: Sumer

text: The almost constant wars among the Sumerian city-states for 2000 years helped to develop the military technology and techniques of Sumer to a high level. The first war recorded in any detail was between Lagash and Umma in c. 2450 BC on a stele called the Stele of the Vultures. It shows the king of Lagash leading a Sumerian army consisting mostly of infantry. The infantry carried spears, wore copper helmets, and carried rectangular shields. The spearmen are shown arranged in what resembles the phalanx formation, which requires training and discipline; this implies that the Sumerians may have used professional soldiers.


title: Sumer

text: The Sumerian military used carts harnessed to onagers. These early chariots functioned less effectively in combat than did later designs, and some have suggested that these chariots served primarily as transports, though the crew carried battle-axes and lances. The Sumerian chariot comprised a four or two-wheeled device manned by a crew of two and harnessed to four onagers. The cart was composed of a woven basket and the wheels had a solid three-piece design.


title: Sumer

text: Sumerian cities were surrounded by defensive walls. The Sumerians engaged in siege warfare between their cities, but the mudbrick walls were able to deter some foes.


title: Sumer

text: Examples of Sumerian technology include: the wheel, cuneiform script, arithmetic and geometry, irrigation systems, Sumerian boats, lunisolar calendar, bronze, leather, saws, chisels, hammers, braces, bits, nails, pins, rings, hoes, axes, knives, lancepoints, arrowheads, swords, glue, daggers, waterskins, bags, harnesses, armor, quivers, war chariots, scabbards, boots, sandals, harpoons and beer.


title: Sumer

text: Evidence of wheeled vehicles appeared in the mid-4th millennium BC, near-simultaneously in Mesopotamia, the Northern Caucasus (Maykop culture) and Central Europe. The wheel initially took the form of the potter's wheel. The new concept led to wheeled vehicles and mill wheels. The Sumerians' cuneiform script is the oldest (or second oldest after the Egyptian hieroglyphs) which has been deciphered (the status of even older inscriptions such as the Jiahu symbols and Tartaria tablets is controversial). The Sumerians were among the first astronomers, mapping the stars into sets of constellations, many of which survived in the zodiac and were also recognized by the ancient Greeks. They were also aware of the five planets that are easily visible to the naked eye.


title: Sumer

text: They invented and developed arithmetic by using several different number systems including a mixed radix system with an alternating base 10 and base 6. This sexagesimal system became the standard number system in Sumer and Babylonia. They may have invented military formations and introduced the basic divisions between infantry, cavalry, and archers. They developed the first known codified legal and administrative systems, complete with courts, jails, and government records. The first true city-states arose in Sumer, roughly contemporaneously with similar entities in what are now Syria and Lebanon. Several centuries after the invention of cuneiform, the use of writing expanded beyond debt/payment certificates and inventory lists to be applied for the first time, about 2600 BC, to messages and mail delivery, history, legend, mathematics, astronomical records, and other pursuits. Conjointly with the spread of writing, the first formal schools were established, usually under the auspices of a city-state's primary temple.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: Martin Shkreli (; born March 17, 1983) is an American former hedge fund manager. Shkreli is the co-founder of the hedge funds Elea Capital, MSMB Capital Management, and MSMB Healthcare; the co-founder and former chief executive officer (CEO) of the pharmaceutical firms Retrophin and Turing Pharmaceuticals (now Vyera Pharmaceuticals); and the former CEO of start-up software company Gödel Systems, which he founded in August 2016.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: In September 2015, Shkreli was widely criticized when Turing obtained the manufacturing license for the antiparasitic drug Daraprim and raised its price by 5,455% (from to $750 per pill). In 2017, Shkreli was charged and convicted in federal court on two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiring to commit securities fraud, unrelated to the Daraprim controversy. He was sentenced to seven years in federal prison and up to $7.4 million in fines. In the civil case he was fined a further $64.6 million to be given to victims nationwide.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: Prior to May 2022, Shkreli was held at the low-security federal prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, with an expected release date in September 2022. On May 18, 2022, it was announced that Shkreli had been released early.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: Shkreli was born in Coney Island Hospital in the New York City borough of Brooklyn on March 17, 1983, to Albanian immigrant parents. His parents were Roman Catholic, and he said his religion has been "a guiding post" for him, although he does not believe in God. His parents immigrated to the United States and worked as janitors. He, his two sisters, and his brother grew up in a working-class community in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. By most accounts, Shkreli was raised Catholic and attended Sunday school as a child.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: Shkreli attended Hunter College High School. Sources differ on whether Shkreli graduated from Hunter or whether he was expelled before his senior year and received the credits necessary for his high school diploma through City-As-School High School. He ended up in a program that placed him in an internship at Wall Street hedge fund Cramer, Berkowitz and Company when he was 17. Shkreli received a bachelor's degree in business administration from Baruch College in 2004.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: Shkreli told "Vanity Fair" that he developed an interest in chemistry when a family member suffered from treatment-resistant depression.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: During Shkreli's time at Cramer, Berkowitz and Company, he recommended short-selling the stock of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, a biotech company testing a weight-loss drug. When its price dropped in accordance with Shkreli's prediction, Cramer's hedge fund profited. Shkreli's prediction drew the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which investigated Shkreli's knowledge about the stock but was unable to prove wrongdoing on his part.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: After four years as an associate at Cramer Berkowitz, Shkreli worked as a financial analyst for Intrepid Capital Management and UBS Wealth Management. He then started his first hedge fund, Elea Capital Management, in 2006. In 2007, Lehman Brothers sued Elea in New York state court for failing to cover a 'put option transaction' in which Shkreli bet the wrong way on a broad market decline. When stocks rose, Shkreli did not have the money to cover his losses. In October 2007, Lehman Brothers won a $2.3 million default judgment against Shkreli and Elea, but Lehman collapsed before it could collect on the ruling.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: In September 2009, Shkreli started MSMB Capital Management, which took its name from the initials of the two founding portfolio managers, Shkreli and his childhood friend, Marek Biestek. Shkreli and Biestek shorted biotech companies, then described flaws in the companies on stock trading chat rooms.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: On February 1, 2011, in a naked short sale on an account it held with Merrill Lynch, MSMB Capital sold short 32 million shares of Orexigen Therapeutics stock at about $2.50 per share the day after its price plunged from $9.09, when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declined to approve the drug naltrexone/bupropion (Contrave). The stock price rebounded; MSMB could not cover the position, although it had told Merrill Lynch that it could. Merrill Lynch lost $7 million on the trade and MSMB Capital was virtually wiped out. Retrophin's 2015 SEC Complaint contended Shkreli had created MSMB Healthcare and Retrophin "so that he could continue trading after MSMB Capital became insolvent and to create an asset that he might be able to use to placate his MSMB Capital investors."


title: Martin Shkreli

text: In 2011, Shkreli filed requests with the FDA to reject a new cancer diagnostic device from Navidea Biopharmaceuticals and an inhalable insulin therapy from MannKind Corporation while publicly short-selling both companies' stocks, the values of which dropped after Skhreli's interventions. The companies had difficulty launching the products as a result, although the FDA ultimately approved both.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: In 2011, MSMB made an unsolicited cash bid for AMAG Pharmaceuticals at a price of . Matthew Herper of "Forbes" wrote that the attempted hostile takeover was "done for the specific purpose of firing the company's management and stopping a proposed merger with Allos Therapeutics. When the merger plans stopped, so did Shkreli."


title: Martin Shkreli

text: Shkreli founded Retrophin (a portmanteau of "Recombinant dystrophin") in 2011 under the MSMB umbrella and ran it as a portfolio company with an emphasis on biotechnology, to create treatments for rare diseases.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: Retrophin's board decided to replace Shkreli in September 2014, and he resigned from the company the following month. He was replaced by Stephen Aselage. During Shkreli's tenure as CEO, the company's employees used alias Twitter accounts to make gangster rap jokes and encourage short selling of other biotech stocks.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: After Shkreli's departure, Retrophin filed a lawsuit against him in August 2015, claiming that he had breached his duty of loyalty to the biopharmaceutical company in a long-running dispute over his use of company funds and "committed stock-trading irregularities and other violations of securities rules." The lawsuit alleged that Shkreli had threatened and harassed a former MSMB employee and his family.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: Shkreli and some of his business associates have been under criminal investigation by the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York since January 2015. Shkreli invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in order to avoid testifying during civil depositions.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: In November 2020, Eric Dube, Retrophin's new chief executive, announced the company would be rebranded as Travere Therapeutics Inc. in an effort to further distance the company from Shkreli, and said the company is no longer working on treatments for the disease from which the company takes its name.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: Columnist Adam Feuerstein said Shkreli was intelligent but too immature and unfocused for the job of CEO. In July 2017, at Shkreli's criminal trial, Stephen Aselage, who was hired by Shkreli in October 2012, testified "He's a brilliant intellect, visionary."


title: Martin Shkreli

text: In May 2014, Shkreli had difficulty accessing public markets for capital, but received a $4 million series A funding round and a PIPE deal valued at $10 million underwritten by Roth Capital Partners. After obtaining the financing, Shkreli was able to acquire rights to market tiopronin (brand name Thiola), a drug used to treat the rare disease cystinuria, and another drug Chenodal, and subsequently raised the price of each drug substantially, with Thiola being marked up about 20 fold, from $1.50 to $30 per pill (patients must take 10 to 15 pills a day), and Chenodal about fivefold. Retrophin did not lower the price of these drugs after Shkreli's departure.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: In 2016, Imprimis Pharmaceuticals introduced a lower cost version of Thiola marketed as a compounded drug.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: Shkreli founded Turing Pharmaceuticals in February 2015, after his departure from Retrophin. He launched Turing with three drugs in development acquired from Retrophin: An intranasal version of ketamine for depression, an intranasal version of oxytocin, and Vecamyl for hypertension. Shkreli set a business strategy for Turing: To obtain licenses on out-of-patent medicines, and reevaluate the pricing of each in pursuit of windfall profits for the new company, without the need to develop and bring its own drugs to market. As markets for out-of-patent drugs are often small, and obtaining regulatory approval to manufacture a generic version is expensive, Turing calculated that with closed distribution for the product and no competition, it could set high prices.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: On August 10, 2015, in accordance with Shkreli's business plan, Turing acquired Daraprim (pyrimethamine), a medication approved by the FDA in 1953, from Impax Laboratories for . The drug's most prominent use as of late 2015 was as an anti-malarial and an antiparasitic, in conjunction with leucovorin and sulfadiazine, to treat patients with both AIDS-related and AIDS-unrelated toxoplasmosis.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: The patent for Daraprim had expired, but no generic version was available. The Turing–Impax deal included the condition that Impax remove the drug from regular wholesalers and pharmacies, and so in June 2015, two months before the sale to Turing was announced, Impax switched to tightly controlled distribution. In keeping with its strategy for pricing in the face of limited competition, Turing maintained the closed distribution. The "New York Times" said that the deal "made sense only if Turing planned to raise the price of the drug substantially."


title: Martin Shkreli

text: On September 17, 2015, Dave Muoio of "Healio", an in-depth clinical information website for health care specialists, reported on a letter from the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association to executives at Turing, questioning a new pricing for Daraprim. The price of a dose of the drug in the U.S. market increased by a factor of 56 (from to per pill) overnight.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: The price increase was initially criticized, jointly, by the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association, by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and soon thereafter by presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: A subsequent organized effort called on Turing to return pricing to pre-September levels and to address several matters relating to the needs of patients, an effort that garnered endorsements from more than 160 medical‑specialty and patient‑related organizations (, 164 organizations from 31 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico).


title: Martin Shkreli

text: In response to the controversy, the record label Collect Records publicly ended its business relationship with Shkreli, who had invested in the company.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: In a September 2015 interview with "Bloomberg Markets", Shkreli said that despite the price increase, patient co-pays would actually be lower, that many patients would get the drug at no cost, that Turing had expanded its free drug program, and that it sold half of its drugs for one dollar. He defended the price hike by saying, "If there was a company that was selling an Aston Martin at the price of a bicycle, and we buy that company and we ask to charge Toyota prices, I don't think that that should be a crime."


title: Martin Shkreli

text: A few days later, Shkreli announced that he planned to lower the price by an unspecified amount, "in response to the anger that was felt by people." But in late November, Turing reversed course and said it would not lower the price after all.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: Following a request by Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Elijah Cummings for details of Turing Pharmaceuticals' finances and price-setting practices in September 2015, the company hired four lobbyists from Buchanan, Ingersoll & Rooney with backgrounds in health care legislation and pharmaceutical pricing. In addition to lobbyists, Shkreli hired a crisis public relations firm to help explain the pricing decision.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: On October 22, 2015, Mark L. Baum, CEO of Imprimis Pharmaceuticals, announced that his company would provide a combination product containing pyrimethamine (the active ingredient in Daraprim) and leucovorin at "$1-a-pill" as a cheaper and more efficient alternative to Daraprim. This product was intended to be used alongside sulfadiazine in the standard protocol to treat toxoplasmosis typically seen in AIDS patients.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: Baum said, "This is not the first time a sole supply generic drug – especially one that has been approved for use as long as Daraprim – has had its price increased suddenly and to a level that may make it unaffordable." He announced the availability of the compounded replacement for Daraprim as a part of a larger corporate program, "Imprimis Cares." to make "novel and customizable medicines available to physicians and patients at accessible prices." Imprimis began selling its compounded, orally taken formulations of pyrimethamine and leucovorin at for a 100 count bottle, essentially a dollar a dose.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: On November 23, 2015, Turing announced that the company would not reduce the list price of Daraprim, but said it planned instead to negotiate volume discounts of up to 50% for hospitals. Turing issued a statement that it was not as important to cut the list price as to reduce the cost to hospitals, where most patients get their initial treatment. The company pledged that no patient needing Daraprim would ever be denied access.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: Infectious disease specialists and patient advocates, including Tim Horn of the Treatment Action Group and Carlos del Rio of the HIV Medicine Association, said Turing's actions were insufficient, given that patients initially treated for days at a hospital typically have to continue the treatment for weeks or months after leaving.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: After Shkreli was imprisoned, Turing changed its name to Vyera in 2017 to avoid negative publicity, and is presently named Phoenixus. In March 2019, "The Wall Street Journal" reported that Shkreli "steers his old company from prison." Using a contraband cellphone from his prison ward in Fort Dix, New Jersey, Shkreli was effectively directing the renamed firm, and was reported to have terminated the employment of executive Kevin P. Mulleady. After this news was reported in various news outlets, Shkreli was moved to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn in advance of a subsequent move to a federal prison in Pennsylvania. He was also facing a Bureau of Prisons investigation into his breaking federal prison rules, since federal inmates are prohibited both from running a business from prison and from possessing cell phones.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: In January 2020 the FTC filed a case against Vyera "alleging an elaborate anticompetitive scheme to preserve a monopoly for the life-saving drug, Daraprim". A settlement was reached in December 2021. According to AP News, the settlement "requires Vyera and Phoenixus to provide up to $40 million in relief over 10 years to consumers who allegedly were fleeced by their actions and requires them to make Daraprim available to any potential generic competitor at the cost of producing the drug." According to Law360, Kevin Mulleady "agreed to a seven-year ban on working for or holding more than an 8% share in most pharmaceutical companies."


title: Martin Shkreli

text: In November 2015, an investor group led by Shkreli acquired a majority stake in KaloBios Pharmaceuticals (), a biopharmaceutical company based in South San Francisco, CA. Shkreli was named CEO of the company and also planned to continue in the role of CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals. After his December 2015 arrest, KaloBios Pharmaceuticals terminated him as CEO. On December 29, 2015, KaloBios filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This followed NASDAQ delisting its shares, and the resignation of two directors.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: Shkreli founded Gödel Systems in August 2016 as "a professional software company that aims to be the leading information provider of data, workflow, and communications solutions for financial, law, and scientific professionals." By February 2017, Gödel Systems was looking to raise $1 million through a debt offering, and had raised $50,000 out of the $1 million in debt it began issuing in mid-January 2017, according to regulatory filings. Ralph Holzmann, a former senior engineer at Twitter, is the firm's chief technology officer.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: Following his release from prison, in 2022 a planned software platform named Druglike controlled by Shkreli was announced with a stated aim of supporting the development of new pharmaceutical drugs. An apparently related cryptocurrency project, the Martin Shkreli Inu coin, had been launched but in August lost 90% of its value (recovering shortly afterwards to a 55% loss) after a wallet belonging to Shkreli sold its holdings . An account believed to belong to Shkreli claimed, in explanation, to have been hacked.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: Shkreli was subpoenaed to appear before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of the U.S. House of Representatives to answer questions about the Daraprim price increase. Shkreli's efforts to quash the subpoena were unsuccessful.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: On February 4, 2016, Shkreli appeared before the House committee, along with Nancy Retzlaff, the Chief Commercial Officer of Turing, and Howard B. Schiller, the interim CEO of Valeant.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: Accompanied by his attorney Benjamin Brafman, Shkreli invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination in response to every question from committee members except for two: one from Rep. Trey Gowdy to confirm the pronunciation of his last name, and another from Rep. Elijah Cummings to affirm he was listening. Shkreli also refused to answer even seemingly trivial questions outside the subject matter of the hearing, including those pertaining to his purchase of a Wu Tang Clan album. Following Rep. Elijah Cummings’s rebuke of Shkreli, Chairman Jason Chaffetz dismissed Shkreli from the hearing.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: On December 17, 2015, Shkreli was arrested by the FBI after a federal indictment in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York was filed, charging him with securities fraud. The charges were filed after an investigation into his tenure at MSMB Capital Management and Retrophin. U.S. Attorney Robert Capers said, "Shkreli essentially ran his company like a Ponzi scheme where he used each subsequent company to pay off defrauded investors from the prior company."


title: Martin Shkreli

text: Federal prosecutors said that Shkreli and co-defendant, Evan Greebel, "engaged in multiple schemes to ensnare investors through a web of lies and deceit." In an interview with "The Wall Street Journal", Shkreli said that he was targeted by law enforcement for his price hikes of the drug Daraprim and his flamboyant personality.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: In early 2016, Shkreli retained criminal defense attorney Benjamin Brafman to defend him. Due to Shkreli's notoriety and overwhelmingly negative public opinion, it was difficult to select an unbiased jury. At his 2017 trial, Shkreli said that none of his investors actually lost money (some actually turned a profit) and thus his actions did not constitute a crime. Shkreli's frequent criticisms of the federal prosecutors in New York's Eastern District, whom he called "junior varsity" compared to their counterparts in the Southern District across the East River, both on his Facebook streaming video feed and in the hallways of the courthouse, led those prosecutors to request that judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto issue a gag order to prevent what they called a "campaign of disruption". Brafman said in response that his client was responding to baiting from the media and was also suffering from extreme anxiety because of his situation. Matsumoto ordered Shkreli not to speak with reporters, either in the courthouse or its immediate vicinity.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: On August 4, 2017, the trial jury found Shkreli guilty on two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and not guilty on five other counts. Shkreli said he was delighted with the outcome and described his prosecution as "a witch hunt of epic proportions".


title: Martin Shkreli

text: On September 13, 2017, his bail was revoked following a Facebook post offering $5,000 for a strand of Hillary Clinton's hair which the judge perceived as solicitation to assault, which is not protected under the First Amendment. Shkreli's post was preceded by others that suggested he might have plans to clone Hillary Clinton. Shkreli said that his post was satire, and his lawyer described it as tasteless but not a threat. Shkreli edited the post to add a disclaimer that it was satire, and later said he did this minutes after publication. Shkreli apologized for the post. He was sent to the Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn while awaiting sentencing.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: On March 9, 2018, Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in federal prison. Shkreli appealed the conviction, but in 2019, an appeals court unanimously upheld the jury verdict. The original judgment remained in effect: Shkreli was required to continue to serve his 7-year sentence and forfeit more than $7.3 million in assets. The panel of judges issued the ruling just three weeks after hearing arguments in the appeal, rather than the normal period of months. The ruling was also unusually short, spanning only seven pages.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: On March 5, 2018, Shkreli was ordered to forfeit nearly $7.4 million in assets. The court ordered that if Shkreli had insufficient cash to fulfill the forfeiture order, his assets, including a piece of art by Pablo Picasso, would be sold to do so. Shkreli purchased the 31-track Wu-Tang Clan album "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" at an auction in 2015 for around $2 million, as well as the then-unreleased Lil Wayne album" Tha Carter V". In April 2018, he was ordered to pay $388,000 in restitution.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: In July 2021, the United States government auctioned off the Wu-Tang Clan album bought by Shkreli for an undisclosed amount to an undisclosed buyer. Jacquelyn M. Kasulis, the acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said "Shkreli has been held accountable and paid the price for lying and stealing from investors to enrich himself", and "With today's sale of this one-of-a-kind album, his payment of the forfeiture is now complete."


title: Martin Shkreli

text: During his sentencing, Judge Kiyo Matsumoto said Shkreli seemed "genuinely remorseful", regarding his "egregious multitude of lies", but said he had "repeatedly minimized" his misconduct. Shkreli, who reportedly cried as he gave his statement to the court, stated "I was never motivated by money."


title: Martin Shkreli

text: Shkreli was federal inmate number 87850-053 and was first held at the Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn, prior to being transferred to federal prison. On March 27, 2018, it was reported that Judge Kiyo Matsumoto agreed to recommend Shkreli serve his prison sentence at the minimum security federal camp at USP Canaan, which he had previously requested. On April 18, 2018, Shkreli was transferred from Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn, to FCI Fort Dix after his request to serve at USP Canaan was denied. As of July 2020, Shkreli was serving his sentence at FCC Allenwood.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: On September 6, 2019, several media outlets reported that Shkreli had leveled a lawsuit in a Brooklyn court claiming he had been fraudulently persuaded by a former investor in his Elea Capital fund to sign a promissory note that "left him owing $420,000 to the man’s father." Also in 2019, he was transferred to solitary confinement for a time, after prison authorities discovered he was using a contraband smartphone to conduct business from prison.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: Shkreli made a request for compassionate release on April 22, 2020. In his request, he said he should be allowed to live at his then fiancée's apartment in New York City. Her name was redacted from the copies released to the press but she later identified herself as former Bloomberg reporter Christie Smythe. His request also stated his firm needed him to develop a remedy for COVID-19. In denying the request, Judge Matsumoto characterized Shkreli's request as an instance of "delusional self-aggrandizing behavior."


title: Martin Shkreli

text: On May 18, 2022, Shkreli was released from prison. This decision was made after he completed "all programmes that allowed for his prison sentence to be shortened", according to Shkreli's lawyer, Benjamin Brafman. He was moved to a halfway house where he would reside until September 2022.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: In December 2016, the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance issued a tax warrant for $1.26 million for unpaid taxes owed by Shkreli. After Shkreli made partial payments, the state recouped another $134,500 from Shkreli by seizing and auctioning off an Enigma machine for $65,000, a manuscript signed by Isaac Newton, a letter from Charles Darwin, and another letter written by English mathematician and writer Ada Lovelace.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: On April 23, 2018, it was reported that in court filings New York's attorney general had asked Judge Matsumoto for priority on more than $480,000 in court-ordered forfeitures, to recover additional unpaid taxes and penalties owed to the state, over the federal government's claims for Shkreli's forfeited assets. Prior to Shkreli's conviction, the state of New York had been aggressively attempting to collect the tax debts from Shkreli and had already seized and auctioned off several items including the rare Nazi Enigma code machine.


title: Martin Shkreli

text: At the same time, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that Shkreli had agreed to an order that would bar him from the securities industry in order to settle a pending SEC administrative action against him; however, Shkreli is eligible to apply for readmission to the industry subject to applicable laws and regulations governing the process.