Download CHAPTER 3 MESOPOTAMIA

Chapter 3
Mesopotamia
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
Use pgs. 52-83, your notes and any other materials to help you with these vocabulary terms.
-Fertile Crescent
-silt
-irrigation
-surplus
-division of labor
-rural
-city-state
-Gilgamesh
-Sargon
-polytheism
-priests
-social hierarchy
-cunieform
-pictographs
-scribe
-architecture
-ziggurat
-monarch
-Hammurabi’s Code
-Nebuchdanezzar
-canals
-urban
-empire
-epics
-chariot
-alphabet
Possible vocabulary strategies:
1. Write the word and the definition.
1. pictographs: picture symbols
2. Use some of the vocabulary terms in a sentence to describe some activities that occurred during early
times. .
2. Very early Sumerian writing was made up of some pictographs that closely resembled the objects they
represented.
Concepts
1. Describe the Fertile Crescent and explain the benefits of the two rivers to the civilization
(agriculture:crops, etc), and the drawbacks of them.
2. Describe Sumerian society. How was it set up? Who had the most power and who had the least? What
role did religion play in their lives?
3. Discuss the importance of the development of writing in Mesopotamia and how it helped those people evolve
and become more organized.
4. Talk about the various inventions that came about in Mesopotamia and how those affect us today.
5. Talk about the various invasions of Mesopotamia (the Hittites and Kassites, Assyrians, Chaldeans) and how
these affected they way that civilization survived and the way they lived.