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Ancient Civilizations: Mesopotamia & Egypt Sedentary v. Nomadic? Agriculturalists • Sedentary lifestyle • Cities • Walled • Kings • Surplus • Protected by military • Specialized Labor • Wealth and property Pastoralists • Nomadic lifestyle • Tribal government • Traded with cities • Animal products • Technology • Mobility • Warrior culture Mesopotamia • “land between the rivers” • T&E very unpredictable flooding • 3500 BCE: Sumerians • Cuneiform-first writing • Pressed stylus into clay • Art: statues, frescoes • Advances in agriculture • Astronomy • Base 60 • Wheeled carts • Fertilizer and irrigation Sumer • Organized into city-states • Ruled by divine king • Polytheistic: natural gods • Ziggurats • Divine punishment from floods: inspired Old Testament • Wrote first epic in world history: Epic of Gilgamesh Sumer Social Organization Shamash, the sun god, rising in the morning from the eastern mountains between (left) Inanna, the goddess of the morning star, and (far left) Ninurta, the god of thunderstorms, with his bow and lion, and (right) Enki, the god of fresh water, with (far right) his vizier, the two-faced Usmu. • • • • • Hereditary kings Priests and Priestesses (often relatives of kings) Free clients: peasants, builders, craftsmen, etc…* Dependant clients: owned no land, worked for others* Slaves *paid taxes of surplus or labor • Family life: • Patriarchal • • Men could sell wife and children into slavery Women • • • Women veiled in public Influence in courts Priestesses and scribes Decline of Sumer • Its location as a crossroads made it prone to invasion • Also frequent fighting among citystates • Taken over by the Akkadians then the Babylonians • King Hammurabi • Code of Hammurabi; • early written law code, • “eye for an eye” • different punishments for upper and lower classes and men and women • Taken over by Assyrians then Persians Hammurabi receiving symbols of office Egypt • United by Narmer 3100 BCE • Nile River, 3000 BCE • Very predictable, overflowed once a year • Irrigation • Single, unified state under a divine Pharaoh • Religion • polytheistic, nature gods • Tombs: Pyramids (2700 BCE) • Mummification to preserve body for afterlife Egyptian Gods God of Name Appearance Sun Ra head of falcon and sun disk Music Hathor horns of cow and sun disk Destruction Sekhmet head of lion Sky Nut blue with golden stars Earth Geb colour of plants and Nile mud Dead Osiris dressed in white with crook and flail Desert Seth animal head with long curved snout Pharaoh Horus head of hawk and crown of Egypt Magic Isis throne on head or holding baby Wisdom Thoth head of ibis Embalming Anubis head of jackal Justice Ma'at feather in her hair Creation Amun crowned with feathers Cats Bastet head of cat Egyptian Numbers 1 The symbol for one may come from a finger. 10 The symbols get more complicated as the numbers get bigger. The symbol for ten is a piece of rope. 100 The symbol for a hundred is a coil of rope. 1,000 The symbol for a thousand is the lotus or water lily. 10,000 The symbol for ten thousand is a single, large finger. 100,000 The symbol for a hundred thousand is a tadpole. It seems to be nearly turning into a frog. 1,000,000 The symbol for a million is a god called Heh. It also means just a very large number, like ‘drillion'. The Egyptians even had this symbol for infinity, which is bigger than any number that's ever been written. It is a circle, so you go round forever without finding an end. In the picture of Ra on the right, you can see the falcon holding this symbol in each talon. Egyptian Life • Society: • Patriarchal • Women • Royalty: women could be regent or priestess • Educated women could be scribes • Interacted with Mesopotamia, Kush and Ethiopia • Advances: • Alphabet: Hieroglyphics (not as complex as Cuneiform) • More advanced in math than Sumer • Day- 24hrs • Colorful & Cheerful paintings Rosetta Stone • How we translated Hieroglyphics • Had same text in Hieroglyphics, Demotic, and classical Greek • We could read Greek, so we were able to figure out the Hieroglyphs. Woot! Dailies: • • • • • What is a cataract? Why is Upper Egypt “upper”? Describe the flow of the Nile and the winds. Tell one interesting fact about yourself. How do you represent a million in ancient Egypt?