Download Civilization in Mesopotamia

Civilization in Mesopotamia
The first true cities in human history were those built in the eastern portion
of the Fertile Crescent known as Mesopotamia (MES oh poh TAY mi uh). Several
rivers cut through this ancient land, but two were especially important: the Tigris
and Euphrates. In fact, the word mesopotamia means “between rivers.”
Both these rivers flow to the southeast and deposit their waters in the
Persian Gulf. As the rivers approach the gulf, they broaden in a low-lying delta area
where the rivers spread out in marshes and wetlands.
Around 3500 B.C., in Mesopotamia, cities were built along the primary rivers
where the land was rich for farming, and the river waters could be used to fill
irrigation ditches to make up for a lack of rainfall.
By 3000 B.C., a people known as the Sumerians were living in the southern
Mesopotamian region they called Sumer. Here they established important cities
such as Eredu, Ur, and Erech. (Erech is mentioned in the Bible and is often known as
Uruk. The Bible also lists Ur as “Ur of the Chaldees.”)
These urban centers develop around mud-brick temples where sacrifices and
worship took place. Such cities were often called city-states since those who
controlled the government of these cities also held sway over the people living in
the surrounding farmlands.
While it is not clear how these early city-states were ruled, it appears that
some form of council government--perhaps made up of priests or all make citizens
or even the elders of the city--provided the means for making decisions and
directing political and economic policies.
The most likely type of government in early Mesopotamian city-states was
some form of theocracy or religion-controlled government. Under such a system,
Sumerian cities were ruled by local gods. Each city had its own protector-god and
the citizens of city might refer to themselves as the “people of the god X.” Under
such a system, the local cult of priests and priestesses carried much power.
By 2700 B.C., however, these ancient city-states were under the control of a
new type of leader: a monarch--one who rules as a royal king. With such rulers, the
Sumerian government was less a theocracy and based more on secular, or worldly,
rule.
Monarchs and their families lived in splendid palaces where the king ruled
along with a council of elders. The citizens of a city-state lavished great wealth on
the royal family. When archeologists uncover the tombs of some of these exalted
kings, they find the bodies buried with gold and silver artifacts. Buries along with
kings are their servants who were sacrificed so they could continue serving their
kings in the afterlife.
Daily Life in Mesopotamia
The Mesopotamians of the third and fourth millennia B.C. (a millennium is
1000 years) created an intricate and highly specialized society. Living in complex
city-states bought together many talented and creative people who were always
looking for ways to improve their world.
Through creativity and practical ingenuity, Mesopotamia flourished. For
example, the practical use of the wheel began in Mesopotamia. By 3500 B.C.,
Sumerian potter were using a new invention: a wheel which turned horizontally,
allowing craftsmen to make pots from wet clay.
About 250 years later, Mesopotamians began using carts with solid wooden
wheels, consisting of two sections of planking which formed a disk fastened
together with wood and copper brackets. These were attached to the axle of the
cart by linchpins.
This basic technology--two- and four-wheeled carts--allowed the
Mesopotamians to transport produce to market and carry people where they
needed to go.
Other improvements included the plow. By 4000 B.C., Mesopotamian
farmers attached primitive plows behind teams of oxen to cut furrows across the
fields of Sumerian farms.
Meanwhile, Mesopotamian merchant were busying themselves with
commerce: trading surplus grain for silver and lead from Turkey, lumber from Syria,
copper and building stones from Oman, and semiprecious gems from Afghanistan.
Great Sumerian trading ships--some capable of carrying up to 35 tons of grain and
other produce--were sailing far from home, doing business with the people of the
city of Mohenjo Daro, located in the Indus River valley.
Much of this trade caused disunity and decentralization, however. Rivals for
trade often went to war with one another.
As the Sumerian city-states fought each other for dominance, the cities of
Egypt to the southwest were coming together, creating a unified kingdom.
Despite these political and economic rivalries, the city-states of Mesopotamia
prospered and grew. Prominent among them was the city of Ur. With its great
temple dominating the city’s center, this shining urban oasis could be seen for miles
in the desert, home to 24,000 people.
Sumerian Temples and Homes
As civilization in Mesopotamia developed, so did life in the city-states. By
3000 B.C., most of the people in Sumer lived in one of over a dozen such towns.
These cities were fiercely independent, each featuring its own type of government
ruled by either a king, a class of priests, or some other leader.
The people living in the city-states were divided into three classes, or groups.
The most important class in status consisted of the nobility and the priests. The
nobility were privileged landowners. The next class was made up of the
commoners--those who labored in the fields of the nobility or worked in cities as
artisans, craftsmen, or unskilled workers. The lowest class of Sumerians was made
up of slaves.
Just as a king might occupy the most important position in his city-state, so
did a special type of building in Mesopotamia. Rising high above the streets of a
typical city was a special temple called a ziggurat, from an Assyrian word ziqquratu,
meaning “mountain top.”
Similar to the massive stone pyramids constructed by ancient Egyptians, the
Mesopotamians built multi-leveled complexes of baked mud bricks. The typical
ziggurat had three long staircases leading to the top of the structure--a height of
perhaps 80 feet. These great temples were massive, often measuring 700 feet
around the base.
The ziggurat was important to the Mesopotamians and their religion. The
height of the temple symbolized the human desire to connect with heaven. Each
ziggurat was dedicated to a special god. The stairs were an invitation to their god to
come and visit them.
Unlike the typical Egyptian pyramid which featured smooth, sloping sides,
the ziggurat had several flat terraces which were places of constant activity where
everyone--from slave to king--gathered to worship.
Inside the ziggurat were special rooms and chambers, some serving as living
quarters for temple priests. Other rooms were kept as sacred shrines and storage
rooms.
While ziggurats dominated the skyline of the Sumerian city-states, the people
lived in much smaller homes. The Mesopotamians recognized the right of private
ownership of property and the typical commoner lived in a one-story mud-brick
home. Such houses were often crowded together and lined the city’s narrow streets.
Wealthy citizens might live in larger, two-story houses, complete with
bedrooms, a kitchen, bathrooms, an inside courtyard, and storage rooms.
Underground cellars might also be part of the home, where certain household
goods, including foods, were kept cool. Such homes commonly included a family
chapel for private worship, as well as a family burial plot where the tombs of
deceased family members served as a constant reminder of the family’s past.
Sumerian Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic
As trade in ancient Sumeria expanded in the third millennium B.C., the need for
making accurate records of transactions also developed. In response, the early
Mesopotamians created one of the first systems of arithmetic and writing in the
history of early humans.
Ancient Sumerian mathematicians developed the skills of addition,
subtraction, and multiplication. They used 60 as the base of their number system,
still used to day in our 60-minute hour and 360-degree circle.
Math skills were necessary to do business in Mesopotamia. For example,
suppose a merchant of Ur sells a trader from Egypt 10 head of cattle and 10 jars of
olive oil in exchange for 20 large sacks of wheat and 5 necklaces of semiprecious
gems. How does the merchant record the sale?
Early Mesopotamian records might depict a picture of one head of cattle with
10 small marks next to it to denote a total of 10 cattle. The corresponding number
of marks would be placed next to pictures of jars, sacks, and necklaces.
This was a cumbersome system, however. Such records were made of soft
clay tablets using a sharp reed stick which fit in the hand much like a pencil. Later,
the tablets were baked in a kiln to make the records permanent.
Originally, Mesopotamians “wrote” on their tablets in vertical columns going
from the top-right, down, and to the left. By 3000 B.C., scribes turned their tablets
and wrote horizontally from left to right.
Scribes also began using a different type of writing tool, one with a wedgeshaped tip rather than a pointed one. (Such a tip left cleaner marks on the wet clay.)
This writing, called cuneiform (meaning “wedge-shaped”) developed into a system
of markings rather than pictures.
Around 2500 B.C., scribes developed symbols which could be used to denote
many different things. The wedge symbols were used in combination, their sounds
serving to phonetically create other words.
For example, if a scribe wished to write an abstract concept such as belief, he
might depict the wedges for bee and leaf. With this adaption of the written word,
scribes could more readily show ideas in their writings.
In time, the Sumerian system of symbols developed into 600 different signs.
This would be similar to our having an alphabet of 600 letters rather than 26. The
system remained an awkward one--after all, they were writing on wet clay--but one
which created a written language used not only by the Mesopotamians, but by
others in the ancient Near East as well.
The Rise of Babylon
Although the Mesopotamians developed one of the most civilized cultures in the
ancient world, it didn’t last forever. By 2000 B.C., two forces were pushing the civilization
of the Sumer region out of existence: one force was human; the other ecological. Together
they changed life for many people living in Tigris-Euphrates river valley.
The second force--the ecological one--was one the Mesopotamians did not see
coming. For centuries, the Sumerians of the southern Mesopotamian region irrigated their
fields from the nearby rivers.
While this diversion of water was necessary to produce bountiful harvests of grain
and other crops, the water brought something else the Sumerians did not want--salt.
Some of the irrigation water delivered to Sumerian fields dried in the burning desert
heat, leaving behind salt deposits in the soil. The amount of salt deposited each year was
imperceptible, yet significant.
After centuries of irrigating the same region of farmland, the salt deposits caused
the soil to become less fertile. This process of ever increasing the amount of salt in the soil
is known as salinization.
Even as early as 2350 B.C., the land was becoming noticeably less productive. By
2000 B.C., the Sumer valley had fallen into economic collapse, bringing an end to the
Sumerian era of Mesopotamian history.
Speeding along this process of destruction were a Semitic people called the
Amorites. As Semites, they spoke a different language from the Mesopotamians. This tribe
invaded Sumer, destroying its great cities, the cit of Ur among them.
Soon the Amorites were busy establishing a new kingdom and civilization for
themselves to the north of Sumer, in a region known as Akkad. In this region, the Amorites
built a new capital called Babylon. The people who lived there soon became known as
Babylonians, or, as modern archeologists refer to them, Old Babylonians.
The founder and leader of this new civilization, which eventually developed into the
Old Babylonian Empire, was a ruler known as Hammurabi. He ruled from approximately
1792-1750 B.C.
In his early years, Hammurabi was merely the leader of one of several warring
tribes in southern Mesopotamia. But by 1763, Hammurabi conquered all of the Sumerian
region and within less than a decade was the dominant force in northern Mesopotamia as
well.
In time, Hammurabi began to refer to himself as “King of Akkad and Sumer.” Later,
he exalted his title to a new height—“King of the Four Quarters of the World.”
With the establishment of a new kingdom, the Babylonians created a civilization of
their own. Mathematics developed further. The Babylonians understood the concept of
square roots, cube roots, reciprocals, and exponential functions. In addition, they developed
the idea of the 24-hour day, the 60-minute hour, and the 60-second minute.
Also, they developed their concept of an accurate calendar, dividing their year into
12 months, based on 28-day cycles of the moon.
With the passing of the Sumerian culture and the development of the Old
Babylonian culture, humans in the ancient Near East continued the dramatic process called
civilization.
The Code of Hammurabi
In A.D. 1901, French archeologists uncovered an eight-foot-tall shaft of basalt
stone. Carved on the stone stele, or shaft, were 3600 lines of cuneiform writing.
Known today as the Code of Hammurabi, the carvings list 282 laws created during
the reign of this most important of Babylonian kings.
Hammurabi’s Code represents one of the first organized systems of law in the
history of Western civilization, dating at least three centuries before the Hebrew
leader Moses an the Ten Commandments. Below are a few of the crimes and
punishments included in Hammurabi’s Code. (Note: A seignior is a Babylonian
nobleman.)
1. If a seignior accused another seignior and brought a charge of murder
against him, but has not proved it, his accuser shall be put to death.
2. If a seignior bears false witness in a case, or cannot prove his testimony, if
that case involves life or death, he shall be put to death.
22. If a seignior committed robbery and has been caught, that seignior shall
be put to death.
25. If fire broke out in a seignior’s house and a seignior, who went to
extinguish it, cast his eye on the goods of the owner of the house and has
appropriated the goods of the owner of the house, that seignior shall be
thrown into that fire.
53. If a seignior was too lazy to make the dike of his field strong and did not
make his dike strong and a break has opened up in his dike and he has
accordingly let the water ravage the farmland, the seignior in whose dike the
break was opened shall make good the grain that he let get destroyed.
153. If a seignior’s wife has brought about the death of her husband because
of another man, they shall impale that woman on stakes.
195. If a son strikes his father, they shall cut off his hand.
196. If a seignior has destroyed the eye of a member of the aristocracy, they
shall destroy his eye.
200. If a seignior has knocked out the tooth of another seignior, they shall
knock out his tooth.