MESOPOTAMIA

Mesopotamia is the ancient Greek name for the land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. Agriculture was born on the very fertile soil and other features of the modern world came from there.

Mesopotamia span across most of today’s Iran, northern Syria and south-east Turkey. It saw the beginning of agriculture, literacy, urban communities and complex bureaucracy.

The ‘Fertile Crescent’ is between mountain ranges in the north and north-east in Mesopotamia. It was the birthplace of agriculture between 10,000 and 6,000 BC. Sheep, goats, cattle, pigs domesticated, wheat and barley grown there. It encouraged people to settle down and early villages were discovered in northern Mesopotamia.

The benefits of agriculture was introduced in the south. After an extensive network of canals and ditches the arid region using the annual flooding of rivers. The irrigation was developed between 6,000 and 5,000 BC. The amount of food produced was spectacular and people kept moving in, especially bureaucrats and craftsmen.

BABYLON

It also increased trade. Mesopotamia became the home of three major civilisations: Sumerian and Babylonian in the south and Assyrian in the north. Many famous, ancient cities were built like Babylon, Ur, Ashur, Nineveh and Nimrud.

UR

Archaeologists have discovered monumental palaces, temples, ziggurats (temple towers) and defensive walls. Incredible works of arts include the carved stone slabs which decorated the royal palaces of the Neo-Assyrian kings, showing scenes of foreign conquest, hunting and magnificent banquets.

CLAY TABLETS

According to historical findings, Mesopotamia invented the earliest form of writing. The first written tablets dating from just before 3000 BC. It is in pictographs with simple drawings of the object, sheep or jar. It then developed into a more schematically using the wedge-shaped end of a reed stylus, forming cuneiform script. It then developed into signs which read language as well as objects. Now, the first attempt to write was born.

Sumerian was the first written language and so far, the oldest. It was replaced by Akkadian as a spoken language around 2000 BC. Both languages continued to be written for another two thousand years.

Clay tablets are very hardy when baked and therefore thousands of cuneiform tablets were found. They gave us great information of the live in Mesopotamia about accounts, contracts, letters and school exercises, lists of kings and treaties and literary works, Epic of Gilgamesh. It mentioned a flood story like mentioned in the Bible.

The school curriculum included many compositions, and trainees had to copy.

The Law Code of King Hammurabi of Babylon (1792-1750 BC) were inscribed on stone because it was most important to be kept, of course. He proclaimed Justice had been made for the strong not to oppress the weak.

Other greatest achievements were made in the Mesopotamia culture, advances in astronomy and mathematics which is the most surprising and unbelievable fact for that time.

The ancient Greeks, who ruled over the region in the later part of the 1^st millennium BC, passed the knowledge on to the West.

HOW DID CITIES START?

  

CITIES IN MESOPOTAMIA IN THE 3RD CENTURY 

Cities were built as early as 10-12,000 years ago. People stopped hunting/gathering and settled more in one place. To begin with there were small farms and villages but they were not cities.

The world first great civilization arose in the Middle East, in Mesopotamia and Indus Valley.

Cities started to be built when craftsmen, traders, priests, soldiers and officials came together and were building houses. For cities to survive and prosper farmers had to produce more food and sell them on the market places.

Early large settlements appeared like the town of Jericho was inhabited before 8000 BC. A recently archaeological find in Turkey, a town called Catal Huyuk (pronounced Chatal Hoo-yook) apparently, it flourished from about 6500 to 5500 BC. Unfortunately, the knowledge is limited because there are no written records. A kind of writing started in southern Iraq about 3000 BC at a place called Sumer.

                      

 EMPIRE OF THE THIRD DYNASTY OF UR

The good farmland was in the northern territory of Iraq. Sumer did have rich soil but had to be drained because it was marshland. A highly organized effort must have been made to carefully irrigate the land. It is assumed that the whole population took part and afterwards to maintain it. When it started to be productive and prosperous Sumer was divided into independent-city-states. Walled cities like Ur, Uruk, Kish, Lagash and Nippur had its capital with villages and countryside.

Although rich on food Sumer was had no timber or stones. This meant that large amount of stone were not possible to transport. They used mud bricks which were either baked in the sun or in oven. They managed to build all these big cities with it. However, being a perishable material it did not survive of thousands of years. Surprisingly, some survived at all to give us an idea of the magnificent cities.

There were tall pyramids call ziggurats with steps leading up to the shrine of a god. Each city had its own god. It was built around the temple.

Priests had a good deal of power. Furthermore, the earliest monarchies were established in Sumer and the first known code of law was made in Ur. King Ur-Nammu reign c.2100BC.

RECONSTRUCTED  FACADE  OF THE  NEO-SUMARIAN  GREAT  ZIGGURAT  OF UR  --  NEAR  NASIRIYAH, IRAQ

In Sumer there was also the first wheeled wagon, the potter's wheel and most importantly writing was developed there. At first it was only simple lists and picture writing. Later on they developed a wedge-shaped writing on a wet clay tablet which when dried out was a perfect record. It kept a perfect literature about myth and legends of the Sumarians.

Civilization appeared a few hundred years in Sumer before ancient Egypt.

Another but mysterious civilization was in the Indus Valley (today's Pakistan) around 2500BC. There is only the city-sites of Mhoenjo-Daro and Harappa known of that great civilization. So far there was no possibility of decipher the picture writing of a few examples. It is not know who these people were. Their remarkable cities had straight criss-cross roads at a right-angle. Therefore, it is assumed that these cities must have been built before they were inhabited. Their civilization collapsed about 1700 BC but to these days the reason is no known.

Eventually, Sumer also vanished because they were warring amongst each other which enabled outsiders to conquer. They fought off many a time the invaders. Their golden days were under the third dynasty of Ur. It was established under the Ur-Nammu.

After the defeat by the Amorites about 1900 BC the Sumarians merged with the history of the Babylonia.

PRIESTES   UR-NAMMY - SEATED