Early Agrarian Centers - Part 1 (Mesopotamia) Flashcards
Module 2
Mesopotamia
“between rivers” in Greek
Land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the Middle East/Eurasia
Part of the Fertile Crescent
Cuneiform Writing
3200 B.C.
Southern Mesopotamia, Sumerians
One of the oldest forms of writing
means “wedge-shaped”
people wrote it using a reed stylus cut to make a wedge-shaped mark on clay tablets.
Pictographs
Main Sumerian cities
Uruk
Nippur
Girsu
Ur
How did Mesopotamian cities differ from Neolithic settlements?
- Places of more than 5,000 people
- Centers of political/military authority + economic trade
- city-states, controlled surrounding areas/regions outside city limits
- massive buildings
- priests maintained organized religions
- scribes developed writing traditions and formal education
Sumerian Religion
- Believed in many gods (polytheism)
- Mesopotamian gods would take physical forms to interact with people and nature
- Natural phenomenon like flooding was credited to certain gods as they were being punished
- Myths were important
Sumerian gods
Enlil - god of wind, Nippur
Enki -god of water and the world, Eredu
Urdu - god of justice and truth, Lhasa
Inanna (Ishtar) - goddess of fertility love and war, Uruk
There were at least 7 gods
Uruk population
80,000 at one point
largest city-state in Mesopotamia
Major Mesopotamian/Sumerian Inventions
- Wheels
- pottery wheel
- Plow (farming)
- Bronze (mixing copper and tin)
- Shipbuilding
- Cuneiform writing, clay tablets + stylus
- 12 month calendar
- hours of the day into 60 min, 60 seconds
Ecology of Mesopotamia
The region being surrounded by rivers and in-between bodies of water was prone to major seasonal flooding. Sumerians irrigated their fields for farming but that eventually caused the earth to dry up and crack from salt rising to the surface.
Gilgamesh
Fifth king of Uruk and hero/protagonist of the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Legends say he was responsible for much of the building including the walls around Uruk.
1/3 human and 2/3 god, according to myth
What are Myths?
Symbolic or foundational stories about the origins and destiny of human beings and their world.
Eliade - Historical value of myths
The profane = the everyday world.
The sacred = the realm of the extraordinary and supernatural, the source of the universe and its values.
The profane is unimportant. The sacred is significant.
Divine models contained in myths show the ideals people had about how life ought to be lived, and ideals can tell us about people’s values.
Flood story from the Epic of Gilgamesh
Similar to Noah’s Ark in the Bible.
Enlil was displeased with men, wanted to swallow them up with a flood. Enki tried to stop him, but asked a man named Ziusudra to build an arc and take animals in pairs. 6 days and nights of storm, world was submerged, 7th day storm stopped. sent a Dove but no land. 8th day a Raven found land (did not return)
Sargon of Akkad
2334 B.C. (24th century B.C.)
First Empire, the Akkadians (Semitic people) took over after the fall of the Sumerians.
Sargon was abandoned by his mother as a baby who sent him down a river in a basket.
His daughter, Enheduanna, was the first known female writer (and a high priestess of Inanna)
Hammurabi’s Code
18th century B.C.
Most extensive ancient law code made by Babylonian King Hammurabi (r. 1792-1750 B.C.)
- Women had property rights
- if a man raped a virgin wife or child-wife he was killed
- Men were heads of household, could sell their wife and children into slavery to pay off debt
- Adulterous women were drowned, but men could engage in consensual relationships outside their marriage without penalty
- regulated prices, wages, and slavery conditions
- prescribed death for murder and theft
Lex Talionis
Law of retaliation,
“an eye for an eye”
Applied to everyone except for Nobles who could get away with paying a fine.
Ziggurat
Sumerian building that reaches to heaven and the sky, including a temple dedicated to the gods of the stars or sun/moon
Assyrians
19th century B.C.
- first professional army divided into standardized units
- decorated their palaces with battle scenes
- used horse-drawn chariots (taken from nomadic invention)
- deported the ten northern tribes of Israel
- Used iron weapons (recently invented)
- kept large libraries (like in Nineveh)
- followed Hammurabi’s law code
New Babylonian Empire
6th century B.C.
King Nebuchadnezzar, destroyed Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem and deported Jews to Babylonia
Marduk
Mesopotamian god who wore a tunic adorned with stars, sometimes a dragon with a forked tongue
Evidence of interaction/influence between Hebrews and Mesopotamian civilization
In Genesis; Abraham came from Ur, Noah’s Ark flood story (Epic of Gilgamesh) and the Tower of Babel might resemble a Ziggurat
In Exodus; infant Moses in basket similar to Sargon’s story, Lex talionis, acknowledged Mesopotamian gods (before time of the Prophets)
- there is also concrete evidence of Jerusalem trading with Mesopotamian cities
Polytheism
Henotheism
Monotheism
-Multiple gods
-One chosen out of many gods, usually by a tribe or family
-Only one god
Abraham
Abraham from the Bible was born in the Sumerian city of Ur
Solomon’s temple
After King David established Jerusalem as the capital of his empire, his son Solomon built a temple in honor of Yahweh rather than a Ziggurat to oppose the false Mesopotamian gods
Diaspora
the dispersion or spread of a people from their original homeland
Covenants
Promise/agreement.
In Ancient Judaism:
Noah - rainbow
Abraham - Canaan, Descendants
Moses - Mt. Sinai (Ten Commandments)
First Sumerian crop
Einkorn-Wheat
a kind of wild wheat that grows in Anatolia and Mesopotamia
