Unit 7 ancient Mesopotamia

1. Unit 7 ancient Mesopotamia The land between the rivers by: Alexander and Marcos

2. Vocabulary • Fertile crescent-A large arc of rich, or fertile farmland. • Silt-A mixture of rich soil and tiny rocks. • Irrigation-A way of supplying water to an area of land. • Canals-Human-made waterways. • Surplus-More than needed. • Division of labor-The type of agreement in which each work specializes in a particular work or job. • City-state- Consisted of a city and all the countryside around it. • Empire-Land with different territories and people under single rule. • Polytheism-The worship of many gods. • Priest-People who performed religious ceremonies. • Social hierarchy-The division of society by rank or class. • Cuneiform-The worlds first writing system. • Pictographs-Picture symbols. • Scribe-A writer. • Epics-Long poems that tell stories of heroes. • Ziggurat-A pyramid shaped temple tower. • Monarch-The ruler of a kingdom or empire. • Hammurabi code-Was the set of 282 laws that dealt with almost every part of daily life.

3. Geography • Mesopotamia is a Greek word meaning “between the rivers." The two rivers are Tigris and Euphrates which flows through modern Iraq. The rivers provide resources and fertile farmland to grow crops. It gives the most silt when the Tigris and Euphrates started flooding to control the flooding they built canals. • Mesopotamia is made up of different regions each regions has its own geography. The geography of each area and the natural resources found their affected the ways that people lived. • Northern Mesopotamia is made up of hills and plains. The land is very fertile due to the seasonal rain ,rivers, and streams flowing from the mountain. Early settlers farmed the land and used timber, metals, and stones from the mountains nearby. • Southern Mesopotamia has marshy areas and is wide , flat , barren plains. Cities developed along the rivers which flow through the region. Early settlers had to irrigate the land along the banks of the rivers in order for their crops to grow. Since they did not have many natural resources, contact with neighboring lands was very important. • There are eight basic feature that makes up a civilization writing system, infrastructure ,public work projects such as bridges , roads and etc. Government/laws, Art/Architecture , Social classes, organized religion, job specialization, and development of cities

4. Religion • Mesopotamia is a polytheistic religion. Each god dealt with different aspects of nature. • An is the god representing the sky. Nin- Khurang was the goddess of earth. Inna was the goddess of fertility. Soon after Babylonia started to worship the god Marduk. Marduk was the god represent the people believed in afterlife.

5. Leaders/important people • Their were three civilizations that developed in ancient Mesopotamia ancient Sumer, ancient Babylonia, and ancient Assyria each with its own leader and important person. • Ancient Babylonia is a monarchy. Hammurabi was the king of ancient Babylonia. He ruled from 1792 B.C-1750 B.C • Ancient Assyria was under the leadership of Shamshi-Adad. • There is a list of supposed Sumerian kings, however there is no way of knowing whether or not these kings truly existed or were mythical people.

6. Contributions of Civilization • Their was a few achievements that Mesopotamia people made that help them make their civilization become better, the wheel, cylinder seal, cuneiform, Gilgamesh, and Hammurabi law code. • According to archeologist the wheel was probably invented around 8,000 B.C in Asia. The oldest wheel known however, was discovered in Mesopotamia. The wheel is believed to have been made by the Sumerians. • In ancient Mesopotamia ,it was very important to write thing's down. If you did not know how to read or write, you had to hire someone to write things down for you. But, you did not need to know how to read and write to sign a contract. Contracts and other written documents were signed with cylinder seal. • The ancient Sumerian believed in education. Record keeping was important to them. They wanted their sons to learn how to read and write. The written language began as pictograph pictures of things that acted as words. Pictograph worked but they were rather cumbersome. Soon the clever Sumerians started to use wedged-shaped symbols. Today we called this written language of wedged-shaped symbols cuneiform. • Hammurabi was ancient Babylonia king he did something no one in that time period did before. Sumerians created their own writing system called cuneiform. Hammurabi created the first written set of laws. In Hammurabi court no matter if you were poor or rich if he disobeyed the law and was found guilty you would be punish. • Ancient Sumerians were great story tellers. Thousand of years ago They created the story of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh is one of the oldest recorded in the world. Gilgamesh was the first hero he was part god and part human. He had many special powers.

7. Conflicts • Around 4000B.C city-states started to develop in ancient Mesopotamia. With the growth of ancient Mesopotamia conflicts started to develop. • Warfare arose as the result of wealth, control of the Tigris and Euphrates for irrigation and transportation, boundary dispute, and the need too acquire luxury goods such as timber, stones, and metal. • The almost constant occurrence of wars among the city-states of Sumer for thousands of years spurred the development of military technology and technique far beyond that was found elsewhere at the time. • The first war that we have information on occurred between Lagash and Umma in 2525B.C they were two Sumerian cities located eighteen miles apart although it was not the earliest conflict. • For generations the two cities fought over the possession of the fertile region of Guendena. As the result of the violation of an earlier boundary treaty by the Umma, they went to war. As the end result Lagash defeated the king of Umma. • Finally Mesopotamia ended by a variety of reasons. Mesopotamia started to become very advanced so many people started to come to Mesopotamia and it became overpopulated. The second reason was that war tribes were fighting over geographic control. The last reason was that Mesopotamia people started to put ocean water to irrigate their land. The ocean water made the soil become salty and dry. All these factors helped contribute to the fall of one of the greatest empire.