Download Mesopotamia Unit Studnet Notes for PPP _2 _Autosaved_

Name: __________________________
Period: ______________- KINGS
Slide: Mesopotamian Deities-the Gods and Goddesses
In ancient Mesopotamia, ______________ and
________________were part of both
__________ and ________________ worlds.
No large-scale ______________of gods and
goddesses have survived.
Scholars suspect that the large temple statues
of ________________were fashioned out of
material like ________________ which could
not have survived to the modern times.
Consequently, most images of the divine are
small-scale and found on a range of
______________ and _______________ items.
They are found on figurines and
_____________, jewelry and ______________,
and on a variety of __________________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_____________ important
to _________________important, just like
human society.
Slide: Devine Kings
A small handful of Mesopotamian kings claimed
that they were ______________ by the gods to
rule on ____________and have certain
_______________ powers.
As the kings got their orders from the gods, no
one was to ______________ their authority.
They were said to be ____________ (made like
a god on Earth), either by _________________
or by their ________________. The deification
of kings in Mesopotamia was a ___________
and somewhat controversial occurrence.
Slide: Kingship
It’s nice to know who’s boss.
For most of Mesopotamian history, the highest
political office in the land was that of
____________.
It didn’t involve any sort of ______________ or
_____________________ promises.
The Mesopotamians believed that
______________________ “came down from
heaven” and was an office “installed by the
gods” during the very _______________of the
universe.
Kings in Mesopotamia were links between the
______________ and ________________,
shepherds of their people, and
___________________ aggressors against their
enemies.
Kings stood above both ________________ and
_______________________.
Many kings literally depicted themselves as
____________________ of nature and
barbarians.
Slide: Officials and the King’s Court
The king couldn’t rule _____________. He
would have needed a staff of supporters.
While much of Mesopotamian
___________________ and _________ reduces
the government to merely the king (probably at
the king’s orders), there were in fact a large
number of ______________ 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
___________________ and ____________on
the king and his family.
Musicians seem to have been particularly
________________________ in court life.
Kings campaigned into foreign lands to
______________ and _____________ enemy
cities.
King Sennacherib, for example, routinely
boasted to the gods and people that, “His [the
enemy king’s] cities I __________________ and
_________________. I turned them into ruins.”
Slide: Royal Tombs of Ur
Slide: The Religious Roles of Kings
To be a king meant one was a ______________
of the people, but he was still bound by duty to
__________________ the gods.
Kings were obligated to perform
________________ functions on a regular basis.
The purpose of such rituals was to
_________________ the very order of the
_____________ and its ________________.
As the highest of humans, the king was the only
__________________person who could be
heard by the _________________ deities.
One of the most timeless routines of the kings
was to ______________, renovate, or
_____________ temples.
IT WAS A ROYAL DUTY AND RESPONISBILITY!!
Slide: Duties of the Kings- Military
It may seem all messed up that a ___________,
soldier king could also be _______________and
______________. When they weren’t
showcasing their religious virtues,
Mesopotamian kings represented themselves as
_____________ heroes.
Throughout its history, kings were shown with
_________________ and __________, enemies
trampled underfoot, and large, organized
groups of military specialists and soldiers.
If your employer died, would you let people
bury you next to them? Well it happened in
Mesopotamia.
The Royal Tombs of the city of Ur, which dates
to ca. 2600 BCE. The occupants of the tombs
were _______________ and _______________,
high-ranking persons.
Many burials contained ________________ of
the deceased royalty who were laid alongside
their royal person a possible indication of
__________________ _________________.
One such servant, a woman, was found in
______________ (she was still in the position
she had been originally placed at the time of
burial) wearing her original jewelry. This
woman’s _____________________ was only
slightly less ornate than that of her queen,
Queen Puabi.
The tombs contained an huge amount of rich,
beautiful and luxury items made from
___________________, lapis lazuli, carnelian,
______________, and __________________.
Slide: Legendary Kings
Nowadays, people recognize a big difference
between ______________ and
__________________beings. For the ancient
Mesopotamians, a being could be part godlike
and part human.
For the Mesopotamians, the primary difference
between gods and man was
_________________.
If a being had a percentage of ______________,
he or she was still ________________ as long as
he or she were even the smallest part human.
The legendary king ______________ was said to
be two-thirds divine and one-third human, since
he was born out of the union of a goddess and a
human man.
As the Epic of Gilgamesh laments, “when the
gods created __________________, they
reserved immortality for themselves.”
Nonetheless, Gilgamesh’s semi-divine status
gives him some power over _____________ and
__________________________.
Name: ________________________________
Period: ___________________ LAWS
Slide: Law
The king’s word was _____________.
The god ____________________, the sun god,
was associated with law and with giving the
kings _______________/_________________.
The royal literature of Mesopotamia says that
the gods gave __________________ and
____________upon the people and that law
was only realized under the ___________ of a
king.
Each king claimed that he was the one who
realized ___________________ in the land and
settled the __________________of the people.
Justice itself was defined in three ways.
First, justice was the _________________ of the
socially weak, for example, widows and
orphans.
Next, justice was the ______________________
of criminals and traitors.
Finally, justice was the giving of wise
_______________ by the king.
Slide: Stele of Hammurabi
King Hammurabi’s Law _______________ is the
most famous source on Mesopotamian Law.
Probably made around 1750 BCE, the 7 1/2 foot
basalt ________________ features an image at
the top and a long ______________ on the
body.
The image at the top of the stele shows the god
_________________ (God of Justice)and King
Hammurabi, standing on the left.
The seated Shamash is handing Hammurabi two
___________________ items, a _____________
and a __________, conferring ______________
to the king.
The inscription begins with an account of
____________________describing how the
gods created the city _______________ and
how they came to install _________________
as its king.
The text next lists _____________legal clauses,
most of which appear in the form “If… then…,”
Slide: Stele of Hammurabi Pt2
The laws pertain to matters ranging from
____________________, to fair wages, to
family and ________________ law, but the
code is most famous because it contains one of
the earliest examples of Lex _______________,
the Principle of___________________
________________________.
This principle is best known as Hammurabi
explains it in the code: “An eye for an eye, a
tooth for a tooth.”
Example: “If a man kills another man, then he
will be killed.”
The same form of law later appears in the
Biblical laws of the Old ___________________.
“Let any _____________________ man who
has a lawsuit come before me, the king of
justice, ……let my stele reveal the
________________ for him; may be examine
his case, may be ________________ his heart,
and may be _________________ me.”
Slide: Legal Records
Hammurabi's __________ relied heavily on the
legal texts of _______________kings.
Sumerian King Ur-Namma, who founded
___________________ at Ur around 2100 BCE,
also wrote a law code.
Even though it was probably ______________
on a monument like Hammurabi's stele, the
monument has never been found.
But we know about Ur-Namma’s laws from the
_________________assignments of school
children: as part of their training, children
repetitively _______________ inscriptions from
monuments. The_________________ has been
reconstructed from their assignments.
The Mesopotamians also left thousands upon
thousands of records of their
________________ legal affairs.
tablets document their marriages,
__________________, adoptions, wills, debts,
loans, trials, and even problems related to
caring for the ___________________.
Slide: Xenophobia
As nice as it might have been to be a
Mesopotamian, to NOT be a Mesopotamian in
Mesopotamia was not a nice thing.
Foreigners and foreign lands represented utter
____________ to the Mesopotamians and were
___________________ to their way of life and
perception of the universe. (Xenophobia)
Foreigners who refused to ______________ to
Mesopotamian rule or culture were targeted for
_________________ and _________________.
The Mesopotamian “xenophobia” (fear or
dislike of foreigners) was depicted throughout
____________ and ___________________ art.
Kings would depict themselves
__________________ incompliant foreigners—
for example, by scenes of impaling, mass
murder and utter destruction of others.
It was a kings “duty” to protect his people and
their ____________________- with any means
needed.