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Western
River
Civilizations
The “Fertile Crescent”
 Narrow
region
of good
farmland along
the Tigris,
Euphrates, and
Nile Rivers of
the Middle
East
“The Crossroads of Civilization”
Egypt

Cities
Government
Pharaoh (king)
 Was worshipped as a
god (religious role)
 Ruled with absolute
power (political role)
 Had a vizier (chief
advisor) who ran dayto-day government

Religion
Polytheistic
(multiple
deities)
 Ra, the chief god
in the Egyptian
religion, was the
god of the sun

The Book of the Dead

Technical text which
describes the ritual
process of
mummification; may
be one of the earliest
scientific medical
manuals in history
(although it does
contain magic spells!)
Egyptians believed that after
death, one’s soul was judged –
“good” souls went to the Happy
Fields of Food – “bad” souls
were fed to a giant crocodile
Akhenaton
1353 – 1336 BC?
 Born Amenhotep IV
 Wife was Nefertiti
 After his death, he
was reviled and many
likenesses of him
were destroyed
throughout Egypt

Akhenaton believed in a single
god (monotheism) named Aton
Jobs & Social Classes
The Pyramids
The Pyramids were tombs and portals
to the afterlife for Egyptian pharaohs
The Sphinx
Tutankhamun





1333 – 1324 BC
Not really important
as a pharaoh
Importance lies in the
discovery in 1922 of
his unlooted tomb
Died at 19
Murdered?
“King Tut”
Public Works
The Egyptians built a
complex system for
harnessing the annual
flooding of the Nile
River to irrigate their
farmland
 They also undertook
numerous
construction projects
of massive scale

Writing = Hieroglyphics
Ancient
Mesopotamian
Civilizations
Mesopotamia = “between
the rivers”
Mesopotamian city-states
Each city was an
independent country
 Each had its own king
 City-states sometimes
cooperated,
sometimes fought
each other
 Had common culture
and religious beliefs

Hammurabi, King of Babylon
1795 – 1750 BC (?)
 Also built an empire
that controlled all of
Mesopotamia
 Ruled by force of law
– required that all 300
laws be posted for all
citizens to see and
know
 Brought justice

The Code of Hammurabi = the world’s
first standardized set of written laws
Criminal law vs. Civil law
Criminal Law
 Deals with offenses
against others, such
as robbery, assault,
and murder
 Usually lead to
physical punishments

Civil Law
 Deals with private
rights and matters,
such as contracts,
inheritance, taxes,
marriage, and divorce
 Usually lead to
financial punishments

Ishtar & Ba’al
Zoroaster
600 BC?
 Persian prophet
 “Illuminated” by
the one god Ahura
Mazda
 Wrote the holy
texts Zend-Avesta

& The Gathas
Zoroastrianism
One good god – Ahura Mazda
 One evil “tempter of men” – Ahriman
 After Ahura Mazda destroys Ahriman,
there will be a Judgment Day where
all souls will be weighed on the good
and bad committed in their lives
 Would later be a strong influence on
the development of Christianity

Jobs & Social Classes
Kings and priests
were at the top of the
social ladder, followed
by people of means
and property
 At the bottom of the
social scale were
farmers and slaves

Nebuchadnezzar II, King
of Babylon
630 – 562 BC
 Babylonian king of the
Bible
 Depicted as cruel
 Conquered the
Israelites and took
them into slavery in
Babylon

The Hanging Gardens of
Babylon
The Epic of Gilgamesh




Epic poem
Tells of the Sumerian
hero-king Gilgamesh
and his friendship with
the savage man
Enkidu
After Enkidu’s death,
Gilgamesh seeks
immortality
Also tells a story of a
great flood, similar to the
Bible’s Noah story
Ziggurat = a pyramid
temple
Cuneiform = Sumerian writing
system