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Chapter 4 Mesopotamia Lesson 2: Mesopotamian Empires
I.
The First Empires
A. The city-states of Sumer often fought each other.
1. By 2400 B.C. the fighting weakened these city-states.
2. The kingdom of Akkad was in northern Mesopotamia.
Akkad's leader, Sargon, and his armies fought the city-states
of Sumer.
3. Sargon defeated them all.
4. He united Akkad and Sumer to form an empire.
5. An empire is a group of different lands under one ruler.
6. The empire of Sargon was the first known empire ever
formed.
7. The empire grew to include all of Mesopotamia. It lasted for
more than 200 years.
8. A people called the Amorites lived in a region west of
Mesopotamia and took over Mesopotamia in the 1800s B.C.
These people built their own cities.
9. The biggest of these cities was Babylon. Hammurabi was a
king of Babylon.
10. He took over many of the Amorite cities and formed the
Babylonian Empire.
B. Code of Hammurabi
1. Hammurabi was a fair ruler.
2. He made a code of laws for his empire.
3. A code is a system or set of laws.
4. The Code of Hammurabi had laws for many different things.
It had laws for crimes, farming, and marriage.
5. The code had a punishment for each crime.
6. The code called for “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a
tooth.” This means that if a man knocked out the teeth of
someone, then the man would have his own teeth knocked
out as punishment.
7. The Code of Hammurabi shaped later law codes, including
those of Greece and Rome.
C. The Assyrian Empire
1. The Assyrians lived in northern Mesopotamia.
2. They built a large, powerful army.
3. Around 900 B.C., this army started to take over
Mesopotamia.
4. The Assyrians destroyed towns. They robbed people and set
crops on fire.
5. The Assyrians forced the people they defeated to pay them
money. This forced payment is called a tribute.
6. The Assyrian army was so strong because they made their
weapons out of iron. Before this, people made weapons out
of tin or copper. Iron is much stronger than tin or copper.
7. Nineveh was the major city of the Assyrian Empire and was
located along the Tigris River.
8. The empire was ruled by a king and was divided into regions
called provinces.
9. The Assyrians used law codes that had harsh punishments.
10. The Assyrians worshiped the same gods as the
Babylonians.
11. The Assyrians built large temples and palaces and wrote
stories.
12. They put these works in a large library in Nineveh. It was
one of the first libraries in the world. The Assyrians did a
large amount of trading, bringing in in wood and metal from
far away.
13. They used these materials to make buildings, tools, and
weapons.
D. The Chaldean Empire
1. The Assyrian Empire lasted for about 300 years.
2. Around 650 B.C. the Assyrians began to argue about who
would be the next ruler. Their arguments turned into fights
and weakened the empire.
3. While the Assyrians were divided, a group of people called
the Chaldeans fought the Assyrians and defeated them.
4. The Chaldeans took over the lands held by the Assyrians
and moved the capital to Babylon.
5. The empire of the Chaldeans is sometimes called the New
Babylonian Empire. King Nabopolassar was the first ruler.
After he died, his son took control. His son was named
Nebuchadnezzar.
E. King Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon
1. King Nebuchadnezzar rebuilt Babylon, making it the largest
and richest city in the world. Large walls surrounded the city.
2. Babylon had many temples and palaces.
3. King Nebuchadnezzar built the Hanging Gardens of
Babylon. These gardens had many levels.
4. The plants were watered by an irrigation system.
5. A major trade route went through Babylon. As a result, many
caravans passed through the city. A caravan is a group of
traveling merchants. The merchants bought goods to
Babylon including cloth, baskets, and jewelry.
6. Babylon grew rich from this trade.
F. Babylonian Scientific Advances
1. Chaldean astronomers studied the stars, planets, and the
moon and made the first sundial to measure time.
2. They also were the first to use a seven-day week.