Mesopotamia! Civilization or Not?

Criteria 2

Criteria 5

Criteria 4

Criteria 1

Large Populated Settlements

Surplus of Food

Variety of Social Classes

A Central Government

Mesopotamia - Agriculture

Mesopotamia - Cities

Mesopotamia - Government

Mesopotamia - Ziggurat

Mesopotamia - Social Classes

Criteria 1 - The ability to produce and store surplus food

Criteria 2 - Large and Thickly Populated Settlements

Criteria 4 - A central government

Criteria 3 - Large Public Buildings

Criteria 5 - A variety of social classes

The Priests

The Upper Class

The people of Sumer and the people of Babylon (the civilization that was built on the ruins of Sumer) were divided into four classes - the priests, the upper class, the lower class, and the slaves. We do not know if you could transfer between classes if you got wealthy, or if you were stuck in your class unless you became a priest. Priests were special.

The Priests:

Priests were very powerful and important. They told people how to behave to keep the gods happy. Priests in Sumer (and in Babylon) were also the local doctors. If you got sick, you sent for a priest. The priests shaved their heads so that everyone knew they were priests.

The Upper Class:

Both men and women wore jewelry. Men wore long hair and long beards and wore a skirt type garment. Women wore long dresses with one shoulder bare. In the colder months they all wore cloaks made from wool to keep warm.

The Lower Class:

The working class wore the same type garments as the rich only theirs were not of the same materials. They too wore jewelry although theirs was not made of gold or precious stones.

The Slaves:

Sumerians did keep slaves. When they defeated another town or tribe in battle they would bring back the prisoners as slaves. The king and the priests kept most slaves, but wealthy Sumerians could buy slaves to work for them.

In ancient Mesopotamia, the people who first settled down in the land between two rivers are known as the Sumerians. The civilization that grew along the riverbanks was named after one of its more famous cities, Sumer. This civilization started out arranged in small villages and towns that were agricultural in nature, with of course some hunting and fishing.

The villages and towns gradually grew into great walled cities that traded amongst themselves as well as with other people. Each city has its own military and its own government. But the people in all the Sumerian city-states (cities) spoke the same language, believed in the same gods, and moved freely from one city-state to another, to trade and also to live. They also went to war with each other. The laws of all the city-states were pretty much universal. Everyone knew them and was expected to obey them. This was understood.

When people are asked today what they think the land in Iraq is like, most would say desert. And in a sense it is. It doesn't rain much so in that way it is a desert, but the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is very fertile. Food crops grow readily if they have water.

When people first moved into the region between the Tigris and Euphrates, they found living pretty easy. There was wildlife to catch, fish in the rivers, and edible vegetation growing wild. So they stayed.

Soon they found that they could grow their own food if they tended the land. Then they figured out how to get river water into the fields, and crops grew in abundance. Other tribes saw the wealth and food the people of the river valleys had, and started raiding to take it. So to protect themselves, they started building walls around their town. Cities grew from these towns.

As they learned how to grow them, the people of the Mesopotamia area planted and grew wheat, barley, dates, cucumbers, onions, apples and many different herbs and spices. They also raised sheep goats and cattle. Thus a civilization grew along the two rivers.

An architect designs buildings. Some of the buildings an architect studied were the ziggurat, the royal tombs, and the Tower of Babel. The Ziggurat of Ur was very important to the civilization, it showed that the city was dedicated to the god. The Tower Of Babel was built to reach the heavens and for the people in the civilization to stay together. The Royal Tomb Of Ur was built to the royal family and their workers. All of these buildings were very important to the civilizations of Ancient Mesopotamia.

One building in Ancient Mesopotamia is the Ziggurat of Ur. At the center of each major city in Mesopotamia was a large structure called a ziggurat. The ziggurat showed that the city was dedicated to the god. It was very important to the civilization. Ziggurats were holy “mountains” where people climbed up and tried to get closer to the heavens. Ur-Nammu wished to build the best ziggurat ever built. He wanted to start right away. The Ziggurat of Ur was named after Ur-Nammu. The Ziggurat of Ur was built by the Sumerians, Babylonians, Elamites, Akkadians and Assyrians for local religions.

The ziggurats were built of sun baked bricks with facings of fired bricks on the outside. The tradition of building a ziggurat was started by the Sumerians, but other civilizations of Mesopotamia such as the Akkadians, Babylonians and the Assyrians also built the ziggurat. Some ziggurats have been rebuilt or reconstructed. The Ziggurat of Ur is one that has been somewhat rebuilt.

Government: The government of the ancient Mesopotamians was an unusual form of government. There was a king and nobles who made the law and declared war and decided how to honor the gods. Then there was an assembly of the people who could overrule the king and say, this is not a good law, get rid of it, or we don't want to go to war, so stop it. The kings, if they were wise, would listen to the people.

Sumerian Laws: The Sumerians did not, to our knowledge, write down their laws. The king passed a law, and everyone was expected to learn it and obey it. If you broke the law in Sumer, you would be punished. The punishment was set for each infraction. If you stole something, you were punished according to what you stole. If you offended the gods, you were punished. Everyone knew what the punishment was so there was no escape by saying you didn't know. The thing is, the Sumerians were organized into city-states. Each city-state had it own royal family and its own military and its own king and assembly of people. So a king in one city-state might pass a law, and pretty soon, if it was a good law and stuck around, all the city-states adopted the same law. So, although they were separate city-states and fought each other all the time, they also had pretty much the same laws and punishments, culture, urban life-style, language, and religion. People were free to move from city to city for trade and also to live.

The Lower Class

The Slaves

How does the development of social classes represent an advance society?

Do you foresee any problems if each city state had its own military?

What would happen if the flood didn't come? How would Mesopotamians survive?

What is a problem with not writing down laws? How would the government make their people aware of the new law?

What does the ability to build these huge Ziggurats show about the Mesopotamian people?

Mesopotamia

Civilization or not?

Mesopotamia - Jobs

Mesopotamia Trade

Mesopotamia Science

Mesopotamia Art

Mesopotamia - Cuneiform

Criteria 10 - Science and Technology

Criteria 6 - A variety of occupations/jobs

Criteria 6 - Trade over long distances

Criteria 9 - Art Style

Criteria 8 - Writing and a system of notation

The ancient Sumerians were the first people to develop an actual written language. We call that writing cuneiform.

The ancient Sumerians kept records of everything. Written records were very important to them. They needed young men to learn to read and write. Their language began as pictographs just like the Egyptians and Chinese. But pictographs are not easy to form into sentences, so they started to use triangle shapes to represent sounds, which they could then use to spell words.

They did not have paper or ink, so they used tools made of wood or stiff reeds to press the symbols into clay tablets. Many thousands of these have survived the ages and we can see them today. Some are worn, some are broken, but many thousands have been found complete. The largest collection of these was found at the Library of Nineveh. There we found complete stories like The Epic of Gilgamesh, which is the oldest written story in the world. The Sumerians invented Cuneiform, but the Babylonians and Assyrians continued to use it long after the Sumerians had been destroyed.

Cuneiform is not easy to read today since through time the meaning of some of the symbols changed as language changed. With patience and effort, it can be deciphered. There are many cuneiform tablets that are still waiting to be translated and ancient tablets are still being found today.

The land of Mesopotamia did not have a lot of natural resources, or at least they did not have the ones in demand during that time period. So, to get the items they needed the Mesopotamians had to trade.

In the southern part of Mesopotamia, docks were built along the sides of the rivers so that ships could easily dock and unload their trade goods. The merchants traded food, clothing, jewelry, wine and other goods between the cities.

Sometimes a caravan would arrive from the north or east. The arrival of a trade caravan or trading ship was a time of celebration.

To buy or trade these goods, the ancient Mesopotamians used a system of barter. But they also used money. They didn't use paper money or coins. They used barley for local trade. Because barley was heavy, they used lead, copper, bronze, tin, silver and gold to "buy" things away from their local area. You had to borrow barley from a barley banker. The banker charged very high interest.

With the growth of large cities, things changed. There were all sorts of jobs and activities. While many people still worked as farmers in the country, in the city a person could grow up to work in a number of different jobs such as priest, scribe, merchant, craftsman, soldier, civil servant, or laborer.

Different Classes of People With people moving to towns and governments being formed, society was dividing into different classes of people for perhaps the first time.

At the top of society was the king and his family. The priests were considered near the top as well. The rest of the upper class was made up of the wealthy such as high level administrators and scribes. Below the upper class was a small middle class made up of craftsman, merchants, and civil servants. They could make a decent living and could work hard to try and move up in class. The lower class was made up of laborers and farmers. These people lived a harder life, but could still work their way up with hard work. At the bottom were the slaves. Slaves were owned by the king or bought and sold among the upper class. Slaves were usually people who were captured in battle.

The civilizations of Ancient Mesopotamia brought many important advances in the areas of science and technology.

Writing

Perhaps the most important advance made by the Mesopotamians was the invention of writing by the Sumerians. Go here to learn more about Sumerian writing. With the invention of writing came the first recorded laws called Hammurabi's Code as well as the first major piece of literature called the Epic Tale of Gilgamesh.

The Wheel

Although archeologists don't know for sure who invented the wheel, the oldest wheel discovered was found in Mesopotamia. It is likely the Sumer first used the wheel in making pottery in 3500BC and then used it for their chariots in around 3200 BC.

Mathematics

The Mesopotamians used a number system with the base 60 (like we use base 10). They divided time up by 60s including a 60 second minute and a 60 minute hour, which we still use today. They also divided up the circle into 360 degrees. They had a wide knowledge of mathematics including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, quadratic and cubic equations, and fractions. This was important in keeping track of records as well as in some of their large building projects.

Astronomy

Using their advanced math, the Mesopotamian astronomers were able to follow the movements of the stars, planets, and the Moon. One major achievement was the ability to predict the movements of several planets.

Technology

The Mesopotamians made many technological discoveries. They were the first to use the potter's wheel to make better pottery, they used irrigation to get water to their crops, they used bronze metal (and later iron metal) to make strong tools and weapons, and used looms to weave cloth from wool.

The art and craftsmanship of the Sumerians was a thing to behold. They worked in gold and lapis as well as clay and wood. They made jewelry and small statues from gold and lapis. They made intricate chairs from wood and reeds. They made musical instruments. They made incredible pottery. And they made mosaics. Archaeologists have found partial remains of some of their mosaics, which appear to be portraits of animals and people, as well as geometric patterns. The thing that they did best was pottery. Their pottery was so good that they used it as a money system, trading pottery for food and other items.

The Babylonians were the next great Mesopotamia civilization. They built on top of the remains of some of the cities of Sumer. They too worked in gold, lapis, wood and clay. They too made jewelry, musical instruments, small statues, intricate chairs, weapons, and mosaics. They continued the art of pottery. To the arts and crafts of the Sumerians, they add massive sculpture, which they created to represent and honor their gods. The Babylonians are also credited with making the first colored egg shells!

In ancient Sumer and in ancient Babylon, people were paid for their goods or labor. In fact, whether they worked in the fields or ran a shop or created beautiful works of art or necessary tools, people were paid for their goods or labor. Everybody was paid, even the king. Typically, people were paid in goods or food.

Another great Mesopotamian civilization, The Assyrians, lived to the north of the Babylonians. They did not create the small statues and objects of art as the Sumerians and the Babylonian people did. They created murals and paintings that showed them fighting or hunting. Their murals showed how the royalty lived. We can tell a lot about their daily life from the activities shown in these paintings and murals.

What is an advantage of being able to write things down?

Where would Mesopotamia get resources from if they had a conflict with their trading partners?

How did a person's job affect their social status/rank?

What does the development of art show about Mesopotamian people?

Which of these technologies do you think is the most important to advance a group of people to a civilization?

Criteria 9

Criteria 8

Criteria 10

Criteria 7

Criteria 6

aRT sTYLE

Writing and Number System

sCIENCE AND tECHNOLOGY

Variety of occupations/jobs

Trade over long Distances