Ancient Mesopotamia

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Ancient Mesopotamia

• Grade 7 Project
• By Chaya Blue
• November 15, 2011

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What is Mesopotamia?

• Mesopotamia means Land between the two rivers.
  in Greek. When it says Mesopotamian
  civilization, it really means the four
  civilizations that existed on Mesopotamian plain
  Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, and Chaldea.-pg 67 of my
  Text book

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Geography

• The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers begin in the
  mountains of Turkey. Water rushed down to the
  hills below, picking up fertile silt and carrying
  it to the valley floor.- pg 66 of my Text book

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Geography (cont.)

• Except for Springtime floods, Mesopotamia was a
  dry land. After the flood waters flowed away, the
  people were left with sun-baked lands. The
  biggest challenge for the farmers was to find
  away to control the water to flow so that it
  wont flood nor bake. Only this way could they
  make sure their crops would survive. They found a
  way to irrigate the land. At first the people dug
  away parts of the river banks so that the water
  would flood onto their land. They built dams to
  make pools and dipped water out of them with
  buckets tied to poles. They built dikes ( a low
  earthen wall) to direct the flow of water. pg
  70 of my Text book

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Geography (cont.)

• The early farmers of Mesopotamia found the hot,
  dry climate on the region both a blessing and a
  curse. It provided the heat that many need to
  thrive but not the rain fall. In spring, fields
  flooded after the snow melted in the mountains.
  When the water was gone in late summer, fields
  baked in the hot sun.-pg 68 of my text book

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Geography (cont.)

• The people of Mesopotamia invented many tools and
  techniques to make tier farming work easier and
  more productive. They harnessed animals to pull
  ploughs. They placed a shoulder yoke on the oxen
  to make them easier to guide. They altered the
  plough so that it would turn the soil and crop
  into freshly ploughed rows. pg 81 of my text book

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Geography (cont.)

• Uruk stayed an important city for thousands of
  years. The people who lived there are known as
  Sumerians, and it was with them that Mesopotamia
  civilization really took off.- pg 17 of the
  Encyclopedia of the Ancient World (E.A.W.)

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Daily Life

• The Sumerians prayed to hundreds of different
  gods and goddesses. But each city had its own
  special ones and the temple was known as gods
  home to the people. Priests lived in the temple
  performing ceremonies, reciting hymns, and
  prayers. Temples were also great employers.
  Dozens of cooks, craft men, and cleaners worked
  there looking after the priests.-pg 21 of E.A.W.

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Daily Life (cont.)

• The Sumerians believe their land belonged to gods
  not to them. So farmers produce was donated to
  the temple and the priests were put in-charge of
  collecting, storing, and distributing it to
  everyone. To organize this huge task small army
  of scribes and officials was on hand.-pg 21 of
  E.A.W.

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Economy and trade

• The Mesopotamian woman enjoyed several freedoms
  they could own property and slaves, run
  businesses and take part in trading. The
  communities thrived partly because of all the
  hard work of the slaves. Some people were made
  slaves after being trapped in battle. Others sold
  themselves or their children into slavery to
  cover their depts.-pg 72 of my Text book

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Daily Life (cont.)

• the Assyrian kings were great warriors, and led
  their armies onto the battle field. But they also
  knew now to enjoy themselves. Several of the
  kings had zoos of exotic animals. They also
  hunted animals to prove their skills and
  bravery.- pg 37 of E.A.W.

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Economy and trade (cont.)

• Because there was plenty of food in Mesopotamia,
  some people could make a living by creating goods
  or selling their services in exchange for surplus
  food. People began to develop skills in leather
  work, carpentry, pottery, metalwork, and weaving.
  They learned to make gold rings, statuettes with
  lapis lazuli and shell containers. By trading
  these goods, people make a good living and the
  economy thrived.-pg 72 of me Text book

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Economy and trade (cont.)

• Caravans and long ships powered by square sails
  and oars carried building stone from Africa,
  copper from Cyprus, gold from Egypt, and cedar
  from Lebanon. In trade, the Sumerian offered
  wool, cloth, jewelry, oil, and grains.- page 72
  of my Text book

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Economy and Trade (cont.)

• Babylon thrived as a trading centre because it
  lays in the middle of the main trade routes.
  Babylonians caravans traveled to Persia and Asia
  minor. Their ships traded along the rivers and
  along the coasts of Arabia and India.-pg 72 of my
  Test book

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Economy and Trade (cont.)

• Trade with nearby lands brought more than goods.
  People also learned about one another's
  languages, religion, and inventions. For example,
  new ways of making pottery and tools for farming,
  spread quickly through Mediterranean area after
  they appeared in Mesopotamia. This trade in
  ideas helped the Mesopotamian society.-pg 72 of
  my text book

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Economy and trade (cont.)

• The Babylonians were one of the first peoples to
  exchange money for goods. The shekel was a
  silver, copper, or gold coins that weighed the
  same as 180 grains of barley. A mina was worth 60
  shekels, an a talent was worth 60 minas.- pg 73
  of my text book

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Economy and trade (cont.)

• The Sumerians used a barter system to buy and
  sell goods. Goods were exchanged for their value
  in sacks of grain. Scribes, people who sell their
  writing skills for a living, kept records and
  accounts on clay tablets. Mesopotamias vast net
  work or irrigation canals made it easy for
  traders to travel.-pg 73 of my text book

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Economy and trade (cont.)

• Trade and other peaceful contact enriched the
  civilization of Mesopotamia. But other contact
  led to warfare. When civilization traded
  regularly with its neighbors, it usually
  flourished. But if it had many strong enemies it
  was usually doomed.-pg 76 of my text book

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Economy and trade (cont.)

• The Mesopotamians were the first people to
  develop written language. Writing was mostly used
  for trade. Education, laws, history, and
  literature all became possible after humans could
  record their ideas. The Sumerians developed a
  form of writing called Cunieform.-pg 82 of my
  text book

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Art and Architecture (cont.)

• The Sumerians were wonderful craftsmen. They made
  jewelry of precious gold and lapis, fancy chairs,
  and unglazed vases they kept water cool. They
  were not very good at huge stone sculptures
  because their artists did not have stone to work
  with. But they made beautiful things with
  materials on hand. One of the things they did
  very well was to create colorful mosaics in
  intricate and beautiful patterns using little
  pieces of painted clay. Archeologists have found
  remains of mosaics, helmets, harps, jewelry,
  pottery and decorated tablets.- from
  http//mesopotamia.mrdonn.org/art.html

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Art and Architecture (cont.)

• They made such beautiful pottery that it became a
  form of wealth. The pottery was exchanged for
  food, clothing, and jewelry. they had many
  musical instruments, including the harp, reed
  pipes, drums, and the lyre.- from

http//mesopotamia.mrdonn.org/art.html
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Art and Architecture (cont.)

• Sumerian architecture is probably the oldest
  serious architecture in the world. People living
  in the area between the Tigris and the Euphrates
  rivers, began to build really big, substantial
  buildings about 3500 BC. Because there's
  practically no building stone in this area, but
  there's lots of clay, Sumerian architects built
  their buildings out of mud-brick or fired brick.
  This was so early that the architects didn't know
  how to make a big building stay up if it was
  hollow inside, so the first big buildings are
  solid rather than really useful as buildings.
  They're more like artificial hills. This is the
  same as the Egyptian pyramids, which were built
  just a little later and are also pretty much
  solid inside. Mostly what they built was huge
  staircases of mud-brick which are
  called ziggurats. Each little city-state would
  build its own ziggurat, partly to please the gods
  and partly to show how powerful the town was. On
  top of each ziggurat, there was a small temple
  to Ishtar or Anu or another Mesopotamian god.-
  from http//www.historyforkids.org/learn/westasia/
  architecture/sumerian.htm

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Art and Architecture (cont.)

• The Sumerians also built town walls around their
  towns, which were also built mainly out of
  mud-brick, and which could also be solid. (In
  fact fortification walls pretty much have to be
  solid!). The Sumerians in each city-state built
  palaces for their kings, too. These palaces
  weren't just to live in they were also
  storehouses for wheat and barley and cloth and
  all kinds of things that the kings collected
  as taxes. And of course not only the king but
  also his whole family and many slaves lived in
  these palaces. The palaces were also made out of
  mud-brick. Mud-brick buildings like these would
  look pretty boring if they just had straight
  walls, all brown. So the builders made them look
  more interesting by creating areas of dark and
  light on their walls - the walls went in and out
  at regular intervals, making a sort of pattern of
  shadows.- from

http//www.historyforkids.org/learn/westa
sia/architecture/sumerian.htm
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Government

• With the development of writing, the
  Mesopotamians began to write down laws. The
  best-known set of laws to the ancient
  Mesopotamians is the code of Hammurabi. Hammurabi
  was a king of Babylon. He brought prosperity and
  peace to the city-states he ruled throughout
  Mesopotamia. He claimed the gods had told him to
  write down laws to make sure the the strong may
  not oppress the weak. Hammurabis code was an
  important step toward creating a society in which
  everybodys rights are recognized. The code lists
  282 laws. They cover all aspects of peoples daily
  life, including family, labor, buying and selling
  land, possessions, and trade. Each law has a
  punishment.-from my text book.

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Government (cont.)

• Early Sumerian towns had been governed by elected
  officials. But, as towns grew into cities, the
  small local organizations that had looked after
  daily life grew into huge governments, with
  hundreds of officials. These began to be
  appointed directly by powerful men, without
  consulting anyone.-pg 20 of E.A.W

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Government (cont.)

• City-states squabbled with each other over
  valuable farmland, and petty disputes sometimes
  grew into full-blown wars. So walls for
  protection, and a warlord, or lugal, was chosen
  to lead the fighting. As wars grew more frequent,
  lugals stayed in power for longer. Eventually,
  they were recognized as kings and when they died
  there sons took over.- pg 20 of E.A.W.