History Project Work - XI

Ancient History in depth: Mesopotamia

Name ; [REDACTED]
Section; [REDACTED]
Roll No; [REDACTED]
━ Objective

This project aims to provide an in-depth examination of the ancient history of

Mesopotamia, including its cultural, social, and political developments

The relevance of studying Mesopotamia is that it was the birthplace of some of the
world's first great civilizations, including the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, and
Assyrians. The region's history and culture have had a profound influence on the
development of Western civilization.

The overall objective of the project is to better my understanding of the topic as a whole,
which is “Ancient History in Depth: Mesopotamia”.

━ Hypothesis

The cultural and political developments in Mesopotamia may have been heavily
influenced by its geography and resources, specifically the Tigris and Euphrates rivers
and the fertile land surrounding them. Let’s review all the information gathered and later
come to a conclusion on the matter.
━ Content

1. Timelines

1800-1700 B.C.
- In 1792 B.C. Hammurabi became leader of Babylon, he established the code of
Hammurabi and Babylon soon took over much of Mesopotamia

[1.1] Code of Hammurabi

- In 1750 B.C. Hammurabi dies and Babylon falls apart. [1.2] Hammurabi

2050 B.C. [1.3] Code

- The code of Ur-Nammu was written during this time. [1.3] Of Ur-Nammu

2100 B.C.
- At this time domesticated horses were introduced to Mesopotamia.
- First Ziggurats were being built in Ur, Eridu, Uruk and Nippur. [1.4]

2800 B.C.
- Round this time they’d has rulers like
Gilgamesh. [1.5]
[1.4] Ziggurats
3200 B.C.
- Records were starting to be kept by
Writing things in clay tablets. [1.5] Gilgamesh

[1.6] Cuneiform

3500 B.C.
- 3500 B.C. The Beginning | Mesopotamia is located in the
Fertile Crescent between the | Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
They quickly figured out ways to stay in a place for long periods
of time by growing crops and livestock so they didn't have to look
for food. The first city- states are being developed in Southern
Mesopotamia and writing begins developing.
 2. Maps
Babylonian & Assyrian Empire Sumer & Akkedian Empire

New Babylonian Empire

 3. More Coherent Timeline

4500–4000 B.C. Ubaid Period

4000–3000 B.C. Uruk Period
3200–3000 B.C. Jemdet Nasr
3000–2350 B.C. Early Dynastic Period
2350–2200 B.C. Akkadian
2100–2000 B.C. Neo-Sumerian
2000–1600 B.C. Old Babylonian and Old Assyrian Periods
1600–1000 B.C. Middle Assyrian
1000–605 B.C. Neo-Assyrian
625–539 B.C. Neo-Babylonian

━ Material

➔ Introduction

Ancient Mesopotamia, ‘The Cradle of Civilization’, was located in a piece of The Fertile
Crescent, in what is now southern Iraq. It covered an area about 300 miles long and
about 150 miles wide.

The word ‘Mesopotamia’ is in origin a Greek name (mesos ‘middle’ and ‘potamos’ -
‘river’ so ‘land between the rivers’). Home to the first seeking* to develop the basics of
technology and culture.

The first of its cities developed around 3500 B.C. Major civilizations include Sumeria,
Babylonia, Assyria.

Stationed between Rivers Tigris and Euphrates. And so land is fertile almost year round,
though that isn’t only as of the rivers but through rains and streams too. Southern
Mesopotamia is made up of marshy flat barren plains and the Northern side of
Mesopotamia is made up of hills and plains.

➔ Politically and Economically

Mesopotamians believed their kings and queens descended from the city gods but they
never believed they were actually gods. Kings often named themselves Kings of the
Universe or Great King. King Hammurabi was the one to create a set of rules, a list of
crimes, and punishments for if/when they’re committed and a general tracking of citizen
conduct.

The poor had mostly depended on crops because they had little money while rich
people had slaves and much easier ways of obtaining food. Farming was one of the
main ways to get food and other needs. Barter systems were in use around then.

➔ Sumer (3500-2006 B.C.)

Sumer was the first civilization to come to emerge. It’d converted villages into walled
communities. Cities became city-states ruled by strong leaders. Developed a system of
writing, metal working and had early uses of the wheel. Their Greatest Leader - Sargon
the Great.

➔ Invention of the Wheel

The wheel is probably the most important mechanical invention of all time. Nearly every
machine built since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution involves a single, basic
principle embodied in one of mankind's truly significant inventions. It's hard to imagine
any mechanised system that would be possible without the wheel or the idea of a
symmetrical component moving in a circular motion on an axis. From tiny watch gears
to automobiles, jet engines and computer disk drives, the principle is the same.

Based on diagrams on ancient clay tablets, the earliest known use of this essential
invention was a potter's wheel that was used at Ur in Mesopotamia (part of modern day
Iraq} as early as 3500 BC. The first use of the wheel for transportation was probably on
Mesopotamian chariots in 3200 BC. It is interesting to note that wheels may have had
industrial or manufacturing applications before they were used on vehicles.

The Sumerians improved upon the wheel by using it as transportation on their chariots.
Later, ancient Egyptians also used wheeled chariots. The spoked wheel was a huge
advancement in the development of the wheel. It is still used today.

The wheel is at least part of the concept in most modern inventions. There are many
modern inventions that came into fruition with help from the ingenious wheel. Without
the wheel, there would be no automobiles, no aeroplanes, no space launches, and no
turbine engines.
 ➔ Babylonia (1792-539 B.C.)

Inherited the culture of Sumer and became a great cultural and religious centre. Had
developed a strong central government and become the greatest city in the world at the
time. Had been the source of revolutionary innovations the sixty minute hour, lunar
calendar, advanced multiplications, etc. It was home to great leader; Hammurabi.

➔ Assyria 1115-612 B.C.

Conquered Babylon with chariots, battering rams and armoured horses and forced the
conquered into slave labour. Built cities with ornate palaces and temples, developed a
sewage system.Opened trade links with other kingdoms. And its many great rulers over
the years had been Tiglath-pileser Ill, Senacherib and Ashurbanipal II.

➔ Government

Mesopotamia did not have protection from natural boundaries. This led to constant
migrations of Indo-European people from the area between the Black and Caspian
seas. This lead to a constant migration and 'Cultural Diffusion’, or the process where an
existing culture adopts the traits of another and the two eventually merge into a new
culture. As a result, a strong central government failed to develop in Mesopotamia. The
dominant political unit was the 'City-State’, a small area surrounding a large, complex
city.

➔ Religiously

Believed the world was a flat disc surrounded by space and that above it was the
heavens. They were polytheistic in their belief. Ziggurats were built to connect heaven
to earth. Religious events held at temples (learning). Every city had their own god or
goddess who owned everything and everyone. They believed four gods created and
controlled the universe. Those being the God of Heaven, God of Air, God of Water and
Goddess of Earth.

For thousands of years, Nippur was the religious centre of Mesopotamia. According to
Sumerian religion, it was at Nippur where Enlil, the supreme god of the Sumerian
pantheon, created mankind. Although never a capital city, Nippur had great political
importance because royal rule over Mesopotamia was not considered legitimate without
recognition in its temples. Thus, Nippur was the focus of pilgrimage and building
programs by dozens of kings including Hammurabi of Babylon and Ashurbanipal of
Assyria.
 ➔ Languages

Mesopotamians had one of the first recorded languages. Invented to keep track of
farming and trade. The form of writing, called Pictograms that was used by the
Mesopotamians was very simple. One mark indicated a number, the other indicated
what was being counted. The writing was done by marking wet clay with a reed.
Efficient and easy as this was, it became much more difficult with higher numbers.

Gradually this system became out-dated and indograms came into use. Indograms
solved the problem but were very difficult and hard to learn because a different symbol
was used for each word. The next step became phonetic writing. Phonetic writing is the
type of writing that we, and most other countries use. With all three forms of writing one
problem remained; it took many years of study to learn how 0 food and write .Those
who did earned the title of "Scribe".

The Mesopotanian economy was based on farming. Irrigated fields provided the
mesopotamians with everything they needed to live. In Sumer you couldn't own your
own land. The land was rented from the temple which controlled the land on behalf of
the gods. All profits were considered to belong to the gods.

➔ Leaders

Sargon (2350-2330 BC) Hammurabi (1792-1750)

— First in his dynasty — Obtains monopoly over Mesopotamia by clever politics
— Usurper — important cultural revival because of the large number
— Moved capital to Akkad of texts known
— Succeeded by his two sons

➔ Religion

Ziggurats!

= Temples were originally built on platforms. Usually temples were based on platforms.
Eventually it was decided to build even higher temples on stepped platforms.
= These stepped towers were called ziggurats. By 2000 B.C. mud-brick ziggurats were
being constructed in many Sumerian cities. Later, ziggurats were constructed in
Babylonian and Assyrian cities.
= The temple, as the centre of worship, was also the centre of every city.
= Around the year 2000 B.C., temple towers began to be built to link heaven and earth.
The towers, called ziggurats, were very large, pyramid-shaped structures on top of
which the temple was built. The ziggurats were built of mud.

The Mesopotamians believed that these pyramid temples connected heaven and earth.
In fact, the ziggurats in Babylon were known as Etemenanki or "House of the Platform
between Heaven & Earth". The ziggurats were often decorated with pillars and other
ornamentation.

At first, religious events were held at the temple. Later, as a priesthood developed, the
temple became the centre of both religion and learning for the entire community. No one
really knows for certain why ziggurats were built or how they were used. They are part
of temple complexes, so they were probably connected with religion.

➔ Gods and Goddesses

= The principal Mesopotamian Gods were identified with the forces of nature, such as
Anu [Sky God], Sin [Moon God]. Enki (Water God), and Enlil (Wind God). See Sumerian
Gods and Goddesses.
= The goddess Ishtar, goddess of love and war, was portrayed as the lover of the
shepherd Dumuzi. Once, Ishtar descended to the underworld to challenge her sister
Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Underworld. Ishtar was abused there but released in
exchange for another god. While in the underworld, the world's fertility was disrupted.
Upon her return, she found that her lover Dumuzi had not been mourning and so she
sentenced him to the underworld.
= His sister procured his release during the year in Cae for her presence In the
underworld. While the connection with the cycle of the seasons is obvious, it is also
clear that the story of Ishtar and’ Dumuzi was enacted by monarchs to ensure the
fertility of the land.
= The universe basically is seen as a stratification of two or three layers. Usually it
consists of "heaven' (Sumerian an, Akkadian am) and ‘earth’ (Sumerian ki, Akkadian
Erṣetum) or in other traditions as a tri-partition, either: ‘heaven’, 'earth’ and ‘netherworld
or ‘heaven’, 'sky/atmosphere’ and 'earth’.
= The symbol for "heaven' has evolved from a pictographic representation of a star.
Heaven is thus the upper level of the universe, all that is ‘high' or ‘elevated', and
apparently associated with the celestial sphere.

The Abzu / Apsu,

Apsu is the name for Fresh Water. Lakes, springs, rivers, wells, and other sources of
fresh water were thought to draw their water from the Apzu. In Sumerian and Akkadian
mythology, it is referred to as the primaeval sea below the void space of the underworld
and the earth above.
Tiamat
Tiamat was a primordial goddess in ancient Mesopotamian mythology. She was viewed
as the mother of the many gods of the Mesopotamian pantheon. Tiamat was believed to
symbolise saltwater, the oceans, and the seas. Tiamat created the gods with her
consort Apsu.

And other many such Gods and Goddesses. For example, Anu was the father of the
gods and the god of the sky; Enlil was the god of the air; Utu was the sun god and the
lord of truth and justice; Nanna was the moon god; Inanna was the goddess of love and
war; Ninhursag was the goddess of earth; and Enki was the god of fresh water as well
as the lord of wisdom and magic.

While they served and revered the great gods, most people felt little connection with
these distant beings. Ordinary people depended on a relationship with their own
personal god - a kind of guardian angel - who protected individuals and interceded for
them with the great deities.

➔ Agricultural Revolution

Started around 8000-7000 B.C., with people cultivating plants and domesticating
animals, they were able to stay in one place and form permanent villages. Eventually,
those small settlements grew into early cities, where a lot of the characteristics of
civilization—such as concentrations of population, monumental architecture,
communication, division of labour, and different social and economic
classes—developed. The Main Places that harboured this were; Nile, in Africa. Tigris
and Euphrate, Mesopotamia and Jericho.
 ➔ Irrigation

= The irrigation system is attested already in very ancient times, the earliest around
6000 BCE. Through a system of dikes, dams and canals the precipitation in the
mountainous region in the north is used in the south.
= This required a high level of organisation of the society and collective efforts for the
construction, maintenance, supervision and adjustments of the irrigation network.
= Over-irrigation and limited drainage gradually brackished the fields, often causing
ecological crises.
= Together with the change of river flow, it stimulates throughout the Mesopotamian
history the foundation of new settlements and cities.Our knowledge about the history of
irrigation networks is limited by the difficulty of dating most of the water works.

➔ Climate

= The climate is exceedingly hot, but also very humid and floods were often
unpredictable.
= Mesopotamians were at the mercy of their hostile environment, and believed
themselves to be at the mercy of angry and irrational gods.
= The civilization which produced one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the
hanging gardens of Babylon, also compiled the Epic of Gilgamesh, a pessimistic
portrayal of the futile search for immortality and human meaning.
= City states rose and fell, empires rose and fell, yet the human spirit of the
Mesopotamians endured.

➔ Interior

Very little furniture survives from ancient Mesopotamia, principally because climatic
conditions are not conducive to the preservation of wood.

= Furniture mounts of bronze and ivory has been excavated in the royal tombs at the
city of UR, in ancient sumer.
= In mud brick houses of the sumerians, duration probably was confined to a wide black
or dark skirting painted in diluted with a band of some together colour above.
= In the most elaborate assyrian palace the main decorative features were panels of
alabaster and limestone carved in relief.
= Carved stone slabs were used as flooring, with typical mesopotamian rosette and
palmetto (stylized palm and leaf) border.

➔ The State and Urban Revolution

In the city-state (or state), kin and tribal loyalties are, by definition, subordinated and
replaced by political ties. What makes a city-state different from an agricultural town is
the synergy created by its people interacting with each other on the basis of political
relationships rather than traditional blood ties.

➔ The Beginnings of Writing

- Farmers needed to keep records.

The Sumerians were very good farmers. They raised animals such as goats and cows
(Livestock). Because they needed to keep records of their livestock, food, and other
things, officials began using tokens.

- Tokens were used for trade.

Clay tokens came in different shapes and sizes. These represented different objects.
For example, a cone shape could have represented a bag of wheat. These tokens were
placed inside clay balls that were sealed. If you were sending five goats to someone,
then you would put five tokens in the clay ball. When the goat arrived, the person would
open the clay ball and count the tokens to make sure the correct number of goats had
arrived. The number of tokens began to be pressed on the outside of the clay balls.
Many experts believe that this is how writing on clay tablets began.

- The Developing of a System of Writing.

The earliest form of writing dates back to 3300 B.C. People back then would draw
"word- pictures" on clay tablets using a pointed instrument called a stylus. These
"word-pictures" then developed into wedge-shaped signs. This type of script was called
cuneiform (from the Latin word cuneus which means wedge).

- Who used cuneiform?

Not everyone learned to read and write. The ones that were picked by the gods were
called scribes. Boys that were chosen to become scribes (professional writers) began to
study at the age of 8. They finished when they were 20 years old. The scribes wrote on
clay tablets and used a triangular shaped thing called a stylus to make marks in the
clay. The marks represented the tens of thousands of words in their language.
 ➔ Origins of Writing

Tokens are small geometric clay objects (cylinders, cones, spheres, etc.) found all over
the Near East from about 8000 B.C. until the development of writing. The earliest tokens
were simple shapes and were comparatively unadorned; they stood for basic
agricultural commodities such as grain and sheep. A specific shape of token always
represented a specific quantity of a particular item. For example, "the cone ... stood for
a small measure of grain, the sphere represented a large measure of grain, the ovoid
stood for a jar of oil." (Before Writing 161). Two jars of oil would be represented by two
ovoids, three jars by three ovoids, and so on. Thus, the tokens presented an abstraction
of the things being counted, but also a system of great specificity and precision.

➔ Development of Cuneiform

The Sumerian writing system during the early periods was constantly in flux. The
original direction of writing was from top to bottom, but for reasons unknown, it changed
to left-to-right very early on (perhaps around 3000 BCE). This also affected the
orientation of the. signs by rotating all of them 90° counterclockwise. Another change in
this early system L involved the "style" of the signs. The early signs were more "linear"
in that the strokes making up the signs were lines and curves. But starting after 3000
BC, these strokes started to evolve into wedges, thus changing the visual style of the
signs from linear to “cuneiform”.
━ Analysis and Conclusion [Surrounding Hypothesis]

Being between the two rivers Tigris and Euphrates really did quite a lot for the state of
mesopotamia's revolution and expansion as a whole through many means, to give a few
examples, it'd been very populated due to it's highly sought living conditions, which had
made the place centre of most if not all transgressions around that area during those
time periods as people, leaders and such had come and went, all bringing their talents
along the way. The region's irrigation being a main part in making it a capital of trade.
It's gotten opulence as of many such reasons but while the presence of those rivers had
a lot to do with why mesopotamia developed complex societies and innovations such as
writing, elaborate architecture and government bureaucracies, it was also thanks to the
minds of the people there, their lifestyles, thoughts and evolution that led to
mesopotamia's prosperity. Overall, being in close proximity to the rivers did very well
affect mesopotamian culture and it wouldn’t be the same without. Take their god’s,
weather and tradition for example.

━ Bibliography

History, General References

World History Encyclopedia
Arizona Geographic Alliance
The Ancient Institute (wordpress.com)
AN Mesopotamia civilization (slideshare.net)
History.com Article - How Mesopotamia Became The Cradle of Civilization
ThoughtCo. Article - Timeline and Advances of the Mesopotamian Society