Download to file: Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia
The Cradle of Civilization
Ms. C. Lynn
MAVAD
Map of Mesopotamia
Organized Government
A ruler and his bureaucracy was responsible
for :
• Maintaining city walls
• Maintaining irrigation systems
• Leading the army (protection and conquest)
• Enforcing laws
• Taxation
• Keeping records (harvests, floods, ceremonies, etc)
Social System in Babylonia
Divine
King
Priests, nobility
Scribes
Merchants and Artisans
Peasant Farmers
slaves
Religion
• Polytheistic
• Gods and goddesses
control every aspect of life
– even nature!
• River gods were
responsible for judging the
guilt or innocence of
people accused of crimes!
• Made sacrifices to keep
gods happy
• Believed in afterlife
• Ziggurat: “stairway to the
gods”
Irrigation
• Irrigation of fields was key
to Mesopotamian
civilization as it provided
enough food for large
cities of 50-90,000.
• Irrigation would also be
their downfall as
continued irrigation
destroyed the soil and
populations went hungry.
Art
Cuneiform
• Writing is an essential feature of civilization
A scribe is a person
who could read and
write
“ the house where one goes in and never comes out again,
The road that, if one takes it, one never comes back, …
The place where they live on dust, their food is mud;
… and they see no light, living in blackness:
On the door and door-bolt, deeply settled dust.”
- The Epic of Gilgamesh
Respond to the above quotation about the Mesopotamian idea
of the afterlife.
Why might Mesopotamians have seen the afterlife in this way?
Can you find any indication that geography influenced their idea
of the afterlife? Explain.