Where did human society begin?

2. Where did human society begin? • Mesopotamia • “The Cradle of Civilization”

3. People of Mesopotamia

4. People of Mesopotamia • The term Mesopotamia refers not only to a geographical area, but also to a period of history that lasted for more than 3000 years. • Mesopotamia was a “melting pot” of cultures, social structures, religious traditions, and at times, polities or political groups. • There was uniformity of things Mesopotamian • the long-time use of the same writing system, the duration of the same city features, royal ideas, mythology and literature, and so forth. • “Mesopotamian” was a person who participated in Mesopotamian religions, traditions, social organizations, languages, and culture.

5. Fertile Crescent (shown in green)

6. The Fertile Crescent • How does your environment impact your life? All human societies are shaped in some way by the environment around them. • The term Mesopotamia itself refers most often to a geographical area, that of the “Land Between the Rivers:” an area which covers modern Iraq and the north and northeastern part of modern Syria. • This region is part of the Fertile Crescent, a term describing the arc of fertile land stretching from the top of the Persian Gulf all the way to the Nile River of Egypt. • Although we use these terms today, remember, the actual Mesopotamians didn’t.

7. Tigris and Euphrates A view of the Euphrates

8. Tigris and Euphrates • Just like highways in America make towns pop up around off-ramps, two major rivers made Mesopotamia a booming area. • The Tigris and Euphrates rivers provided good land for crops and easy transportation. The rivers started in the north of Mesopotamia in modern Turkey, flowing southward to the Persian Gulf. • The rivers were vital for transporting goods and people and remained so even after the domestication of the camel.

9. Canals and Irrigation

10. Canals and Irrigation • The term Fertile Crescent makes one think this entire area was a lush garden, but don’t forget that this was also a desert region with widely different environments. • Southern Mesopotamia did not receive enough precipitation for rain-fed agriculture and farming. The southern areas depended completely upon successful irrigation. • Irrigation allowed southern Mesopotamia to become the agricultural center of the ancient Near East; some scholars have even called it a “bread-basket.” • Using the rivers to the fullest, the southern Mesopotamians carved massive canals into the landscape to channel river waters into their huge farmlands.

11. Farming the Desert Hoisting water out of the river into a canal

12. Farming the Desert • Those who live near water, cringe when they hear the “F” word— FLOODING. Even though this canal system allowed for the development of Mesopotamian civilization, it was not without big problems. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers could be violent and unpredictable , causing surprise and disastrous floods. • Another problem was salinization, or the gradual deposit of salt onto fields. Over time, fields became too saline and many types of crops would not be able to absorb moisture, failing to grow. • Fields had to be left fallow if they were to recover. • The result of these disasters could be devastating to communities and probably contributed to the generally pessimistic outlook that the Mesopotamians had.

13. International Trade A Necklace from Ur, made of gold, lapis lazuli, and carnelian, imports to Mesopotamia Relief from Khorsabad showing Assyrian workers as they move valuable,imported timber along a waterway

14. International Trade • The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers served as lifelines for Mesopotamia. They were vital for getting goods in and out of the area. • The most notable products of Mesopotamian economy were wool and grains. • Wool was made into cloth, which was often dyed and used as clothing and a selection of both practical and luxury items. • Grain was used for feeding animals and people, for whom it was made into breads and beer. • Both textiles and grains were exported out of Mesopotamia to neighboring societies in exchange for the materials that Mesopotamia lacked: large, monumental stones, precious metals, and large, sturdy timber. • Precious stones and metals had to be imported to the ancient Mesopotamians. • They were considered symbols of royal power and wealth.

15. Cities

16. Cities • Mesopotamian cities may not have had subways, but they had canal ways that kept them thriving. • In ancient Mesopotamia, cities were places of economy, religion, and points of political life. • Cities had many farms located near, or even, inside the city walls. • They also housed craft specialists and manufacturers.

17. Mud-Bricks Modern mud-brick making-- exactly as it was done in Mesopotamia

18. Mud Bricks • Not only was there water, water everywhere near Mesopotamian cities, but there was mud in abundance. • All Mesopotamian cities owe their existence to the mud-brick. • The marshy banks of the rivers in Mesopotamia provided clay, which was used throughout Mesopotamian history to make mud-bricks. • The bricks could be baked or unbaked, depending on their purpose.

19. Walls and Gates The Gate at Nineveh Depiction of the walls and gate of Babylon

20. Walls and Gates • With loads of bricks laying around, Mesopotamian builders and planners could get creative. • Most cities had massive, mud-brick walls with towers. • The walls did not necessarily define the boundary of the city, they served a military and protective purpose. • It has long been pointed out that these walls symbolized the constant warfare among Mesopotamian cities and foreign enemies. • As places of high traffic, gates were also places of economic activity and sometimes markets. • Instead of meeting friends at a particular building one might meet at a wall or gate. • The walls were gigantic, conspicuous symbols of the king’s authority over the city, and they could be seen on the horizon from miles away.

21. Ziggurats The ziggurat at Ur

22. Ziggurats • Walls and gates weren’t the only massive architectural structures in town. In early Mesopotamia, monumental buildings dominated the inner part of cities: temples sprawled the city centers while ziggurats governed city skylines. • Ziggurats were step-shaped structures built of mud-brick, which would have been painted or glazed with bright colors. • They were usually located in the center of the gods’ temples, and were perhaps meant to symbolize mountains, the birthplace of gods. • Ziggurats were solid in the center and did not contain interior rooms. • What the Mesopotamians did atop ziggurats remains unclear, but they were certainly used for sacred rituals of some kind.

23. Palaces

24. Palaces • Palaces served as private spaces for the royal family, but were also housed archives, storerooms, and craft workshops. • One of the most famous and better-preserved Mesopotamian palaces comes from the city of Mari. • It was a wonder of the world, decorated with murals, statues, and even palm trees. • The palace had almost 300 rooms, including kitchens, workshops, storerooms, offices, archive rooms, private residential quarters, a throne room, and more. • These rooms were oriented around two great courtyards, the larger of which served an audience hall for the king where he could receive, entertain, and impress his guests. • The palace was in fact so impressive that rival kings ordered their messengers to bring them reports about its splendor.

25. Uruk Colored clay cone mosaic used to decorate the temples The remains of the city, with a ziggurat still towering above the temple complex

26. Uruk • Important in mythology and real life. the city of Uruk is one of the first cities in Mesopotamia. It was a huge city with two main areas or precincts. • Uruk’s size is still recognizable today even though it’s in ruins and hidden by the desert. • One precinct was called Eanna, where there was a temple complex for the goddess Ishtar (who was the chief goddess of Uruk) and a ziggurat. • These buildings were beautifully decorated with painted clay cone mosaics. • The other precinct, Anu, also contained large buildings and was named for the god An. • Also, notice that the name Uruk sounds almost like the modern-day name Iraq which makes some believe that the term “Iraq” may have come from “Uruk”.

27. Nineveh The gates of Nineveh, reconstructed

28. Ninevah • Nineveh (modern Kuyunjik) is undoubtedly one of the most famous ancient Mesopotamian cities. It was famous in the ancient world as well as today. • It even appears in the Old Testament of the Bible. • Assurbanipal, the grandson of the great King Sennacherib, built the famous North Palace at Nineveh, which was decorated with a stone relief of a lion hunt – a symbol of kingly power and mastery over nature. • Nineveh’s dominance and power was forever destroyed when the Medes and Babylonians conspired to end Assyrian domination of northern Mesopotamia in the late 600’s BCE. • The impressive palace reliefs and reconstructed remains of the city’s walls still stand today.

29. Writing: Cuneiform Clay tokens Archaic style of cuneiform

30. Writing Cuneiform • Thanks to the Mesopotamians, writing was born. • One of the most important revolutions to occur in ancient Mesopotamia, and in human history in general, is the invention of writing. • Writing systems are means by which a language is expressed. • The Mesopotamian writing system, cuneiform, expressed language through signs from the Sumerian and Akkadin language. • We have examples of the language in the form of coins, tokens and tablets made of clay.

31. Writing Cuneiform

32. Writing Cuneiform • Cuneiform looks like a kind of stick figure writing system. • It was a writing system designed for clay; throughout the 3000 years of its use, cuneiform was written on clay tablets with the use of a reed stylus. • The earliest signs in cuneiform were pictographic; that is, they looked like the object that they represented. • They were in essence a form of stick figure artwork. • Over time, the signs became more abstract and stylized, and at some point rotated 90 degrees on their sides. • By the first millennium BCE, the signs are so abstract that they no longer resemble objects or pictures.

33. Early accounting texts

34. Early Accounting Texts • Just as today, buying and selling items in Mesopotamia required paperwork. • The Mesopotamians invented writing to address that field of the economy: accounting. • Around 3300 BCE, people and institutions (such as governments and schools) required ways to store and share information. • The first use of writing was for making receipts, records of deliveries/accounts, shipments, donations, and so forth. • The numerical system that was used on these accounting texts was so complicated that modern mathematicians and scholars still struggle to understand it completely.

35. Literature The “Flood Tablet” of the Epic of Gilgamesh The Babylonian Map of the World

36. Literature • Within a few hundred years of its invention, scribes began to develop other uses for writing, such as writing literature. • Some of the earliest works in literature, such as stories about the legendary king Gilgamesh. • The Flood Story • Stories could be saved and added to by each generation • The transmission of literature and knowledge no longer depended on oral traditions. • The “Babylonian map of the world” is probably the earliest known map in history. • The scholarly text on the tablet explains that the map is supposed to be of the entire universe, with the city of Babylon as the physical and cultural center of the world.

37. Writing in Royal Inscriptions Cone inscription of king Lipit-Eshtar Writing on stone: strictly a royal prerogative Click here to play clip

38. Writing in Royal Inscriptions • Kings understood the power writing had. • It is likely that most Mesopotamian kings could not read or write themselves, but they nonetheless commissioned writing for royal inscriptions. • The kings treated writing as a marker of intellect, a means for expressing royal ideology, and even a venue through which they could communicate with the gods. • Writing on stone was strictly a royal prerogative in Mesopotamia, and many kings had stones inscribed for building dedications, such as Ur-Namma’s stone figurine and stone tablet. • These objects were placed in the exposed foundations of temples that were being reconstructed. Since the writing would have been hidden, to human eyes, it is clear that the memorial inscriptions were meant for the gods to read.

39. Literacy Assyrian scribe with a stylus and tablet A bilingual glossary, showing Sumerian and Akkadia

40. Literacy • Most people in ancient Mesopotamia were illiterate and scribal training was reserved exclusively for a small elite. • The scribes were educated in writing. • “School” began for the scribes when they were children. • An instructor would make tablets with several vertical columns and inscribe the first column with a series of cuneiform signs or phrases, the level of difficulty depending on the student’s degree of development and understanding. • The students would then copy the instructor’s signs in the remaining, blank columns. • After on completion of this exercise, the instructor scraped off the top layer of clay, thus creating a blank slate, and the student copied the signs again presumably until they were memorized. • When a student finished his cuneiform training, he could either work for everyday people in the marketplace or for the royalty.

41. School Click here to play clip

42. Homework School texts, the top of which contains musical notations A scribe-in-training practices copying basic signs in columns

43. Mesopotamian Deities--the Gods and Goddesses Figurine of the goddess Baba Tablet recording a Hymn to the god Marduk A seal impression showing battling gods. Divinities are indicated by their horned headdresses Head of a god, with beard and horned headdress

44. Mesopotamian Deities--the Gods and Goddesses • In ancient Mesopotamia, gods and goddesses were part of both public and private worlds. • no large-scale images of gods and goddesses have survived. • Scholars suspect that the large temple statues of divinities were fashioned out of material like wood, which could not have survived to the modern times. • Consequently, most images of the divine are small-scale and found on a range of personal and household items. • They are found on figurines and statuettes, jewelry and amulets, and on a variety of ritual items. • They are also found on seals—a seal is a device engraved with a picture that is used to create an impression on wet clay. • Mesopotamian mythology shows that the gods were organized from most important to least important, just like human society.

45. Divine Kings Close-up of King Naram-Sin Click here to play clip

46. Divine Kings • A small handful of Mesopotamian kings claimed that they were appointed by the gods to rule on earth and have certain divine powers. • As the kings got their orders from higher ups, no one was to question their authority. • They were said to be deified, either by themselves or by their followers. The deification of kings in Mesopotamia was a rare and somewhat controversial occurrence; it almost exclusively occurs in the context of state formation.

47. Kingship King Assurbanipal’s hunting scenes from his palace at Nineveh

48. Kingship • It’s nice to know who’s boss. • For most of Mesopotamian history, the highest political office in the land was that of king. • It didn’t involve any sort of election or campaign promises. • The Mesopotamians believed that kingship “came down from heaven” and was an office “installed by the gods” during the very creation of the universe. • Kings in Mesopotamia were links between the gods and humanity, shepherds of their people, and military aggressors against their enemies. • Kings stood above both nature and humanity. • Many kings literally depicted themselves as conquerors of nature and barbarians.

49. Officials and the King’s Court Two officials who worked for Sargon II, depicted in the palace at Khorsabad

50. Officials and the King’s Court • The king couldn’t rule solo. He would have needed a staff of supporters. • While much of Mesopotamian literature and art reduces the government to merely the king (probably at the king’s orders), there were in fact a large number of elites and official personnel who helped run the office of kingship and the central government. • In addition, the king’s palace would also have contained a range of personnel responsible for entertainment and waiting on the king and his family. • Musicians, for example, as shown on this Old Babylonian plaque, seem to have been particularly abundant in court life.