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Compare and Contrast

The Mesopotamian calendar are very different yet the same, here I'll tell you all I know about the differences.

Same

Mesopotamian Calendar

Modern Calendar

  • 354 days a year
  • Every few years they added another month to even out the 354 days
  • 356 days a year
  • We have a leap year where there is a 29th day in February
  • 24 hours a day
  • 7 days a week
  • 29-30 days a month

The Mesopotamian Calendar

Artifact Image:

By: Claire C

This artifact, the star chart, is pretty much what the people of Mesopotamia knew as a calendar. This artifact shows when and where the stars will be at a certain time.

Star Chart

Artifact Description

The calendar is what I would say is one of the most important contributions to today from Mesopotamia. Today, everyone would be so mixed up if the Sumerians, the people of Mesopotamia, did not create time back then! The calendar helped the Sumerians, and all the people today, create a more organized way of life. For example, since Enamu Anu Elil, a scribe (a person who did the writing in Mesopotamia), and the other scribes of Mesopotamia created days, weeks, months, and years, the people of Mesopotamia then knew when all their festivals were. They all had a festival at the beginning and end of a month, so they were probably no longer confused when they were. The calendar also helped introduce astronomy. As the scribes were creating time, they used the stars to create all sources of time. For instance, every time they had a new moon, like a waxing crescent, it represented a new month. Although it does not seem like a calendar would help the culture in Mesopotamia, it did. Each city-state soon had their own calendar, and began and ended the month with different festivals. For example, in Nippur (a city-state in Mesopotamia) they ended the month with rituals mostly for farming, but in Girsu (Another city-state in Mesopotamia) the Queen traveled around giving barley. Surely everyone is thankful to the Sumerians for the calendar. Who knows what would've happened today without it!

Research: MIDAS Notes

Timeline

http://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline/latest/embed/index.html?source=0Am-iB1u9fC9RdFJoR1c0dXUwRGlrQkkzdC0wUWNhN2c&font=Bevan-PotanoSans&maptype=toner&lang=en&height=650

This is a link to an awesome timeline I made about the calendar! Enjoy!

7+1 Characteristics

Religion brought the Sumerians together and the calendar helped them know when. The reason I say this is because each city-state soon had their own calendar according to their different religions. For example, the city-state of Nippur usually started and ended the month with reflecting on their farm work. So if it was the ritual of hitching and unhitching the plows, sowing, or harvesting that was pretty much the start and end of the month for them. On the other hand, the people of Girsu always ended their month with a festival, and also, the Queen would hand out barley through out the country. So, the calendar was good for time and good for getting more food too! There was also something called the Royal Year. This is when the King would present a god with the first fruit of the year, as an offering to the god. Religion is also noticed for the fact that the Sumerians believed that the God of Heaven was responsible for indicating the appropriate stars for them to keep track of time. In conclusion, festivals are very important, and we need a calendar to mark them on.

Impact on Present Day

The calendar is an object that is still known and used all the time today! It is still doing what it does today, than what it did nearly 5000 years ago! Some similarities to today's calendar is that it uses most of the same time divisions as it did back in Mesopotamia. For example, their calendar had 24 hours for a day, 7 days for a week, and 29 to 30 days for a month. The only difference was that a year had 354 days, rather than 365 days. The Sumerians even had names for their months too! Their names were quite different than ours though. Their names were: Nissanu, Ajaru, Simanu, Tamuzu, Abu, Ululu, Tashritu, Arasamnu, Kissilimu, Tebetu, Shabatu, Addaru. Another example is, in Mesopotamia each city-state have a little bit different of a calendar, this is a lot like the present day too. For instance, the people of Nippur ended their month with rituals of harvesting, but the people of Girsu had the Queen pass out barley at the end of the month. In the present day though, the Singaporeans have national day as a holiday, while the Americans have the 4th of July off. So, we're not that different from people 5000 years ago, they did create most of what we have today!

7+1 Characteristic

Research Analysis

Although it seems like a kind of weird connection, I think that the calendar also represents social structure. While I was researching, I noticed one thing in common for all of the websites, they always said the scribes this, the scribes that. So I think that probably back in Mesopotamia the scribes were the people really making Mesopotamia the civilization it was. Another example is the scribes were pretty much the only people in Mesopotamia who could write. They helped us today a ton to figure out what exactly Mesopotamia did. To conclude, I think that the scribes would have been like today's Steve Jobs, they were just as important as the King because they created most of what we still use today.

I have to say there was not a lot of research online about the calendar. But I found that my most reliable source was this website: http://history-world.org/mesopotamiancalander.htm

This was because the language was very subject- specific , a bit confusing, yet very precise. Another reason was because the title of the piece. This piece was named "world history project" and that means to me that it was well researched and probably even put in for a grade, so they had to make it good. There was also some conflicts through my research sources about the names of the months. Most of them were the same but some of them were different. I didn't really know which one to go with so I picked the site that was all about the months. Overall, I think that the research I used was for the most part reliable and well researched.

Sources

Photos

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/LH_95.jpg

https://38.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_meje4cXeVb1qfub7eo1_500.jpg

Research

Mesopotamia: The world’s earliest civilization by Kathleen Kuiper

http://www.astronomy.pomona.edu/archeo/outside/calendar.html

http://www.crystalinks.com/sumercalendars.html

http://history-world.org/mesopotamiancalander.htm

http://historicconnections.webs.com/mesopotamia.htm

7+1 Characteristics

Technology is probably what Mesopotamia was most advanced in and this artifact is just another example of it. You may have heard of how the Sumerians invented the wheel and the plow and lots of other things to just help with their daily life. The Star Chart was one thing that helped keep track of time. This artifact was disk shaped and inscribed with angles of where the stars would be in any given month. There isn't any reason that I can find that led the Sumerians to look at the stars in the first place. Since they were the first civilization, they couldn't have just looked over at the Egyptians and steal their ideas or something, they came up with it all on their own. Honestly, I think that probably one of the scribes looked up at the sky and started wondering about it, and how it worked. So then, they looked at it and detected a pattern in the stars, and Bang! The calendar was born. All in all, without the technology, we wouldn't have the most important part of our system of time, the calendar.

Reflection

1. What was your learning process for this project?

My learning process was first reading a lot of sources about my contribution and then taking MIDAS notes. Then, with the information I had I wrote out everything and added some more things. Lastly, I edited and improved my presentation.

2. What challenges did you face? How did you overcome them?

Well, for my project there wasn't a lot of sources for my contribution, so I just kept on researching and eventually found the research I needed. Also there was some frustrations with the choice of presentation. To overcome this, I searched up how to do it on the internet.

3. What new skills did you apply?

I used the method of TREC paragraphs to write all my paragraphs, and I used a new presentation method.

4. How did you improve on this project compared to your archaeology project?

I definitely made my presentation better by making sure that the colors went well together and that there was a cool background. I think that my writing was also better on this project because I used TREC paragraphs.

5. What surprised you along the way?

I was mostly surprised by my research on the calendar. I was really surprised about how similar the calendar is to today's calendar and also that each city-state had their own calendar.

Here is a link to my MIDAS Notes https://docs.google.com/a/sas.edu.sg/document/d/13t8omGpOVE03-f4nqD28sW7DTI5_Dops1JvOFGgvHl8/edit?usp=sharing

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