Download WHI.3 Mesopotamia Notes

Mesopotamian
Civilizations
Geography
 Mesopotamia
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means the “land
between the rivers”
Tigris and Euphrates
Rivers (flow into the
Persian Gulf)
aka “Fertile
Crescent”
Annual flooding of
the rivers provided
fertile soil for
farming
modern-day Turkey
and Iraq
Euphrates River
Tigris River
Fertile Crescent
Sumerians 3500-3000 BCE
 First great Mesopotamian
civilization- lower river
valley
 Advanced social, political
and economic lifecity-states ruled by
hereditary kings, religious
temples
 Sumerians solved the
problem of flooding in the
Fertile Crescent – by
building dams and
reservoirs along the Tigris
and Euphrates rivers
Sumerian Hierarchy
(Social order)
rulers,
priests
peasant
farmers
slaves
merchants,
artists,
scribes
Sumerian Writing
 Sumerian inventions include plow, irrigation
and, most important, writing
 Pictograms – earliest written symbols
 Sumerian writing- Cuneiform – wedge shaped
symbols with spoken sounds, written on wet
clay tablets and later baked
Cuneiform
Sumerian Literature
 Sumerians wrote stories
and kept records
 Originally written on 12
clay tablets, the world’s
oldest story is:
•The Epic of Gilgamesh
• Tells of King Gilgamesh who sought
eternal life and who endured many
grim adventures before being
defeated by the gods.
Gilgamesh
Babylonian
Empire
approximately 18001600 BCE
 Great Mesopotamian civilization
 Around 1800 BCE, King Hammurabi
conquered and united the Mesopotamian
city-states into one kingdom
 Centralized government- ruled with hereditary
(family) rulers, based on religious authority
Code of
Hammurabi
 First written law codes
 Hammurabi’s laws Included:
• 282 laws
• Punishments based on social classes
• Retribution (”justice”, revenge) –
“eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth”
 Each crime had a specific punishment
Polytheistic Religion
 Religion was a major part of life in all early
civilizations.
 Polytheism was practiced by most early
civilizations, including Sumerian and
Babylonian societies
 Polytheism- belief in more than one deity
(god or goddess)
 Ziggurats were religious temples at the city’s
center
Ziggurat