Download From Out of the Mesopotamian Mud

From Out of the Mesopotamian
Mud
The birth of civilization in the ancient
Near East, 3500 – 3000 BCE
The importance of geography: Civilization is
fundamentally shaped by the physical
environment
• The ancient Middle
East encompasses
the modern
countries of Iraq,
Iran, Israel, Syria,
and Jordan
• The core was
Mesopotamia, “the
land between the
two rivers” – the
Tigris and
Euphrates
The Geography of Mesopotamia
• An endless
plain of mud
• Violent,
unpredictable
thunderstorm
s would cause
destructive
flash floods
When most people think of mudflats they think of the sun-baked areas in the
southern California deserts. Mudflats are wave-protected shorelines characterized
by very fine sediments and often associated to an estuary (where fresh water from
the river meets sea water). They provide a number of vital environmental services
including water purification, a high level of biodiversity, high marine productivity
and a rich source of nutrition.
The geographical characteristics of
Mesopotamia shaped religion and cosmology
• Rivers, the source of irrigation,
and life, came from the
mountains
• Storms and floods also started
in the mountains before
coming down into the plains.
• Mountains were seen as home
of the gods
• Sin could bring retribution from
the gods; not only on yourself,
but also the entire village.
These punishments took the
form of natural disasters:
storms, floods, fires,
earthquakes, disease.
According to scholars, the biblical garden was located in the Mesopotamian Marshlands of
• Randomness of disasters
what is now known as southern Iraq. This system of interconnected lakes, canals, mudflats,
suggested that gods were
and wetlands between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers once covered an area of nearly 3,475
square miles year round and grew to 7,700 with each spring snowmelt. For 5,000 to 7,000
remote, mysterious,
years, the area has been inhabited by Ma’dan tribes (a.k.a. Marsh Arabs), who trace their
unknowable, and their actions roots back to the ancient Sumerians and Babylonians. They construct floating islands of reeds
on which to put their houses, which are also made of reeds. Reeds have many other uses as
were arbitrary and scary
well: mats and baskets (a source of cash income), fodder for water buffalo, fuel for cooking.
Crops grown by the Ma’dan include dates, millet, rice, and wheat. Local fish and wildlife
provide protein.
Few internal geographic boundaries influenced
how civilization developed in Mesopotamia
• Without mountain
ranges and difficult-tocross rivers there were
no natural state
borders
• City-states were able
to grow and conquer
neighbors to form
small empires
• But lack of natural
boundaries made
empires unstable and
fluctuating
By 3000 BCE the first real cities
emerge in Mesopotamia
• The earliest: Sumer
• Labor was organized
• Irrigation systems were
built
• Food surpluses grew
• Governments develop
to systematically collect
and organize food
surpluses
Mesopotamians achieved
many significant “firsts”
The environment was significant in
shaping the forms of these “firsts”.
Mesopotamia was actually poor in
natural resources, but what it did have
in abundance was mud and reeds.
Reeds were used to make baskets and
boats; and also burned as fuel for fires.
Reeds were the foundation for the
invention of storage containers,
including pottery.
Mud bricks were the basic
construction material. The earliest
monumental structures in history were
the Mesopotamian temples to the
gods, known as ziggurat. Since gods
were thought to dwell on the top of
mountains, it was believed these
edifices would take the form of an
artificial mountain.
Ziggurats were temples built so humans could get closer to their gods.
The ziggurat at Uruk has been calculated to have required nearly
100,000 person-days of labor to construct.
The greatest achievement of ancient
Mesopotamia: the invention of writing
• Earliest found in the city of
Sumer, circa ?????
• Cunieform is….
• Confers power in the form
of knowledge
• Writing was most important
in keeping tax records
• Sumerians also developed
earliest known counting
systems
The politics of ancient Mesopotamia
• Each city had its own
king and small amount
of surrounding territory
• Around 2400 BCE,
Sargon of Akkad
conquered all the citystates of Mesopotamia
to forge the world’s first
empire
• From his new position as
king of all Mesopotamia,
he became the first
“god-king”
Legacy of ancient Mesopotamia
• Sargon’s Akkadian
Empire was shortlived and was followed
by a succession of
empires: the
Babylonians, Hittites,
Assyrians, and
Chaldeans
• The life of the people
was arbitrary,
transitory, and ruled
by inexplicable forces