Sumerian Influence on Assyrian Culture

The premise of the question is reversed: Sumerian culture profoundly influenced the Assyrians, not the other way around. The Sumerians (southern Mesopotamia, c. 4500–1900 BCE) created the world's first urban civilization; the Assyrians (northern Mesopotamia, rising c. 2000 BCE) were their cultural heirs.

Key Areas of Influence

• Writing: Assyrians adopted cuneiform script and the Sumerian logographic system, later adapting it for Akkadian. They preserved thousands of Sumerian literary, lexical, and scholarly texts in their libraries (e.g., Ashurbanipal's at Nineveh).
• Religion: The Assyrian pantheon—Ashur, Ishtar, Ninurta, Nabu—was built on Sumerian deities (Enlil, Inanna, Ninurta, Nabu). Temple architecture (ziggurats), rituals, and festivals followed Sumerian templates.
• Art & Architecture: Assyrian palace reliefs, lamassu guardians, and city planning echo Sumerian precedents from Uruk, Ur, and Lagash.
• Law & Administration: Concepts of kingship, bureaucracy, and legal codes (e.g., "eye for an eye") trace to Sumerian city-states.
• Science & Literature: Mathematics (sexagesimal), astronomy, the Epic of Gilgamesh (Sumerian poems → Akkadian epic), medical texts—all foundational.

Transmission

Contact intensified after c. 2000 BCE as Amorite dynasties bridged north and south. The Old Assyrian trading colonies in Anatolia (Kültepe) already used Sumerian-derived cuneiform. By the Middle Assyrian period, Sumerian was a liturgical and scholarly language—like Latin in medieval Europe.

In short: Assyrian civilization is unimaginable without its Sumerian substrate.