Mesopotamia

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The Ancient Middle East
Susan M. PojerHorace Greeley HS Chappaqua,
NY Additions by D. Brady
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The Fertile Crescent

• The word 'Mesopotamia' is in origin a Greek name
  (mesos middle' and 'potamos' - 'river' so land
  between the rivers'). 'Mesopotamia' translated
  from Old Persian Miyanrudan means "the fertile
  cresent".

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The Land Between Two Rivers

• Some of the best farmland of the Fertile Crescent
  is in a narrow strip of land between the Tigris
  and Euphrates Rivers. The Greeks later called
  this region Mesopotamia, which means "between the
  rivers." Many different civilizations developed
  in this small region. First came the Sumerians,
  who were replaced in turn by the Assyrians and
  the Babylonians.

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Indo-European Migrations 4m-2m BCE
The Middle East The Crossroads of Three
Continents
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The Ancient Fertile Crescent Area
The Middle East The Cradle of Civilization
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Mesopotamia does not refer to any particular
civilization. Over the course of several
millennia, many civilizations developed,
collapsed, and were replaced in this region
including the Sumerians -- Akkadians --
Babylonians and Assyrians.
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Sumerians
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The Sumerians

• The people who established the world's first
  civilization around 3500 B.C. in southern
  Mesopotamia were known as the Sumerians.
• The Sumerians learned to control the Tigris and
  Euphrates Rivers by constructing levees and
  irrigation canals. As a result, a stable food
  supply existed, and the Sumerian villages evolved
  into self-governing city-states.
• At the center of each city-state was a temple
  surrounded by courts and public buildings.
  Radiating from the all-important city center were
  the two-story houses of the priests and
  merchants, or the upper class the one-story
  homes of government officials, shopkeepers, and
  craftspeople and the lower class homes of
  farmers, unskilled workers, and fishermen. The
  city-state also included the fertile farming land
  outside the city wall.

• Since there wasn't any building stone
• and very little timber in Sumer, the people
  constructed their homes, public buildings, and
  city walls out of sun-dried mud brick.
• The Sumerians took great pride in their
  city-states. Many times city-states would war
  with each other because boundary disputes
  existed. Sometimes a city-state would attack a
  neighboring city-state just to prove its strength.

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Sumerian Religion - Polytheistic
Enki
Innana
Anthropomorphic Gods
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Mesopotamian Trade
The Cuneiform World
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Cuneiform Wedge-Shaped Writing
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Cuneiform

• As the Sumerian city-states' wealth increased,
  government officials realized that an efficient
  method of keeping records had to be developed.
  Evolved from simple pictographic writing,
  Sumerian cuneiform emerged as the world's first
  writing system. The term cuneiform means
  "wedge-shaped." It was made up of hundreds of
  word signs that were "wedge-shaped" due to the
  shape of the reed pen, or stylus, that was used.
  The Sumerians wrote on clay tablets that would
  either be dried in the sun or fired in kilns to
  make the writing permanent.

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Cuneiform Writing
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Deciphering Cuneiform
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Sumerian Scribes
Tablet House
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Sumerian Cylinder Seals
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Gilgamesh

• Gilgamesh is an ancient poem written in
  Mesopotamia more than four thousand years ago.
  The poem tells of a great flood that covers the
  earth many years earlier, making it similar to
  the story of Noah in the Old Testament of the
  Jewish and Christian holy books.
• Modern science has discovered that there was a
  marked increase in the sea levels about 6,000
  years ago as the last ice age ended. The melting
  ice drained to the oceans causing the sea level
  to rise more than ten feet in one century.

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Gilgamesh
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Gilgamesh Epic TabletFlood Story
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The Ziggurat

• Originally the temples at the center of each
  city-state were built on a platform. As time
  passed, these platform temples evolved into
  temple-towers called ziggurats. The ziggurat was
  the first major building structure of the
  Sumerians. Constructed of sun-baked mud bricks,
  the ziggurats were usually colorfully decorated
  with glazed fired bricks.
• The ziggurat housed each city-state's patron god
  or goddess. Only priests were permitted inside
  the ziggurat as a result, they were very
  powerful members of Sumerian society.

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Ziggurat at Ur

• Temple
• Mountain of the Gods

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The Royal Standard of Ur
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Mesopotamian Harp
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Board Game From Ur
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Sophisticated Metallurgy Skillsat Ur
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Sargon of AkkadThe Worlds First Empire
Akkadians
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The Babylonian Empires
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Hammurabi

• Hammurabi was the king of the city-state of
  Babylon. About 1800BC, Hammurabi conquered the
  nearby city-states and created the kingdom of
  Babylonia. He recorded a system of laws called
  the Code of Hammurabi. The 282 laws were engraved
  in stone and placed in a public location for
  everyone to see. Hammurabi required that people
  be responsible for their actions. Some of
  Hammurabis laws were based on the principle An
  eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. This means
  that whoever commits an injury should be punished
  in the same manner as that injury. If someone put
  out another persons eye, their eye would be put
  out in return. Hammurabis Code may seem cruel
  today, but it was an early attempt at law.

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Hammurabis r. 1792-1750 B. C. E. Code
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Hammurabi, the Judge
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Babylonian Math
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Babylonian Numbers