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Mesopotamia:
“The Cradle of Civilization”

Dr Kaibalya Charan Pati

PG Dept of Ancient Indian History, Culture And Archaeology
Utkal University, Odisha
Odisha,, India
 Earliest Civilization: the
Fertile Crescent
 Earliest of all civilizations as people formed
permanent settlements

 Mesopotamia is a Greek word that means

“between the rivers”, specifically, the area
between the Tigris River and Euphrates River
(present day Iraq)

 Lasted for approximately 3000 years

 Its peoples were the first to irrigate fields,

devised a system of writing, developed
mathematics, invented the wheel and learned to
work with metal
 Geographic Conditions
 Little rainfall

 Hot and dry climate

 windstorms leaving muddy river valleys in

winter

 catastrophic flooding of the rivers

in spring

 Arid soil containing little minerals

 No stone or timber resources

 Then why live in
Mesopotamia?
NATURAL LEVEES:
LEVEES: embankments produced by build-
build-up of sediment
over thousands of years of flooding
 Natural Levee

 create a high and safe flood plain

 make irrigation and canal construction easy

 provide protection

 the surrounding swamps were full of fish &

waterfowl

 reeds provided food for sheep / goats

 reeds also were used as building resources

 History of Mesopotamia
 Over the centuries, many different people
lived in this area creating a collection of
independent states
 Sumer
Sumer-- southern part (3500-
(3500-2000 BCE)
 Akkad
Akkad-- northern part (2340 – 2180 BCE)
 Babylonia
Babylonia-- these two regions were unified
(1830--1500 BCE and 650-
(1830 650-500 BCE)
 Assyria
Assyria-- Assyrian Empire (1100 -612 BCE)
 Religion
 Position of King was enhanced
and supported by religion

 Kingship believed to be created

by gods and the king’s power
gods were worshipped at was divinely ordained
huge temples called
ziggurats  Belief that gods lived on the
distant mountaintops
Polytheistic religion consisting of
over 3600 gods and demigods  Each god had control of certain
things and each city was ruled
Prominent Mesopotamian gods by a different god
Enlil (supreme god & god of air)
 Kings and priests acted as
Ishtar (goddess of fertility & life)
interpreters as they told the
An (god of heaven) people what the god wanted
Enki (god of water & underworld) them to do (ie. by examining
Shamash (god of sun and giver of law)
the liver or lungs of a slain
sheep)
 Ziggurats
 Large temples dedicated to
the god of the city
 Made of layer upon layer of
mud bricks in the shape of
a pyramid in many tiers
(due to constant flooding
and from belief that gods
Ziggurat of Ur -2000BCE resided on mountaintops)
 Temple on top served as
the god’s home and was
beautifully decorated
 Inside was a room for
offerings of food and goods
 Temples evolved to
ziggurats-- a stack of 1-
ziggurats 1-7
platforms decreasing in size
from bottom to top

 Famous ziggurat was

Tower of Babel (over 100m
above ground and 91m
base)
 Political structure an early form of
democracy
 Frequent wars led to the
emergence of warriors as leaders
 Eventually rise of monarchial
system
 co--operation was the basis of
co
government
 Followed leadership of god of the
city which was interpreted by a
council of leading citizens > or >
priests > or leader of the city (ie.
king)
 Sumerians
 social, economic and intellectual basis
 Irrigated fields and produced 3 main
crops (barley, dates and sesame seeds)
 built canals, dikes, dams and drainage systems
 develop cuneiform writing
 invented the wheel
 Abundance of food led to steady increase of population (farm, towns,
cities)
 first city of the world
 Developed a trade system with bartering
bartering:: mainly barley but also wool
and cloth for stone, metals, timber, copper, pearls and ivory
 Individuals could only rent land from priests (who controlled land on
behalf of gods); most of profits of trade went to temple

 However, the Sumerians were not successful in uniting lower

Mesopotamia
 Akkadians
 Leader: Sargon the Great
 Sargon unified lower Mesopotamia (after conquering Sumerians in
2331 BCE)
 Established capital at Akkad
 Spread Mesopotamian culture
 However, short-
short-lived dynasty as Akkadians were conquered by the
invading barbarians by 2200 BCE
 Babylonians KING HAMMURABI’S BABLYON

 (6th Amorite king) who conquered

Akkad and Assyria (north and south)
 He build new walls to protect the city
and new canals and dikes to improve
crops
 Economy based on agriculture and
wool / cloth
 individuals could own land around
cities
 Artisans and merchants could keep
most profits and even formed guilds /
associations
 Grain used as the medium of
exchange > emergence of
measurement of currency
currency:: shekel =
• Babylonians reunited Mesopotamia in 180 grains of barley; mina = 60
1830 BCE shekels
 Mina was eventually represented by
• central location dominated trade and metals which was one of first uses of
money (but it was still based on
secured control grain)
• YET AGAIN, Mesopotamia was not  Hammurabi’s Legacy: law code
unified for long…
 Code of Hammurabi
 To enforce his rule, Hammurabi collected all the laws of
Babylon in a code that would apply everywhere in the land

 Most extensive law code from the ancient world (c. 1800
BCE)

 Code of 282 laws inscribed on a stone pillar placed in the

public hall for all to see

 Hammurabi Stone depicts Hammurabi as receiving his

authority from god Shamash

 Set of divinely inspired laws; as well as societal laws

 Punishments were designed to fit the crimes as people must

be responsible for own actions

 Hammurabi Code was an origin to the concept of “eye

“eye for
an eye…” ie. If a son struck his father, the son’s hand
would be cut off

 Consequences for crimes depended on rank in society (ie.

only fines for nobility)
 10th century BCE, Assyria emerged as dominant force in the
north
 City of Assur
Assur-- became important trading and political centre
 After Hammurabi’s death, Babylon fell apart and kings of Assur
controlled more of surrounding area and came to dominate
 Made conquered lands pay taxes (food, animals, metals or
timber)
 Rule by fear as kings were first to have a permanent army
made up of professional soldiers (estimated 200 000 men)
 Made superior weapons of bronze and iron
 iron changed lifestyles in Mesopotamia in weapons and in daily
life ie. replaced wooden wheels and applied to horse drawn
chariots

• Assyrian reunited Mesopotamia and

established the first true empire
• However, states began to revolt and
ONCE AGAIN, Assyrian Empire collapsed
by late 7th century BCE

• By 539 BCE, Mesopotamia part of the

vast Persian Empire (led by Cyrus the
Great)
• Persian Empire dominated for 800 years
until Alexander the Great
Development
Of
WRITING
 Development of Writing

 Click here to see the

development of writing
from pictograms to
cuneiform

 Pictograms: picture to show meaning

 Ideograms: signs to represent words / ideas
 Phonetics: signs to represent sounds

*Phonetics are the basis of most writing systems

 Writing
 Greatest contribution of Mesopotamia to
western civilization was the invention of
writing

 allowed the transmission of knowledge,

the codification of laws, records to
facilitate trade / farming

 Sumerians wrote on wet clay tablets

with the point of a reed > then dried in
the sun to make a tablet

 Scribes were only ones who could read

and write and served as priests, record
keepers and accountants

 As society evolved, the first form of

writing was developed called
CUNEIFORM (meaning “wedge
shaped”), dating to 3500 BCE

 Cuneiform spread to Persia and Egypt

and became the vehicle for the growth
and spread of civilization and the
exchange of ideas among cultures
Gilgamesh
 Gilgamesh is an ancient story or epic
written in Mesopotamia more than
4000 thousand years ago

 Gilgamesh is the first known work of

great literature and epic poem

 Epic mentions a great flood

 Gilgamesh parallels the Nippur Tablet,

Tablet,
a six-
six-columned tablet telling the story
of the creation of humans and animals,
the cities and their rulers, and the
great flood

ANALYSIS
 Gilgamesh and the Nippur tablet both
parallel the story of Noah and the Ark
(great flood) in the Old Testament of
the Jewish and Christian holy books

 Modern science argues an increase in

the sea levels about 6,000 years ago
(end of ice age)

 the melting ice drained to the oceans

causing the sea level to rise more than
ten feet in one century
Royal Tombs
of Ur
 From 1922 to 1934, excavation of
the ancient Sumerian city of Ur

 City famed in Bible as the home of

patriarch Abraham

 discoveries such as extravagant

jewelry of gold, cups of gold and
silver, bowls of alabaster, and
extraordinary objects of art and
culture

 opened the world's eyes to the full

glory of ancient Sumerian culture

Great Death Pit

 mass grave containing the bodies of
6 guards and 68 servants
 grave was a great funeral procession
 drank poison, choosing to
accompany the kings and queens in
the afterlife
 Interesting Facts!
 Mesopotamia, specifically Babylon used a
mathematical system based on sixty as all their
numbers were expressed as parts of or multiples
of sixty
 Some parts of the ‘base-
‘base-sixty’ system still remain
today: 360 degrees in a circle, 60 seconds in a
minute and 60 minutes in 1 hour
 Devised a calendar base on cycles of the moon
(number of days between the appearance of two
new moons was set as a month; 12 cycles made
up a year
 Who was the best?
Sumer Babylon Assyria
 Closely tied to  Production of food
environment through farming  Kings conquered
 Irrigation  Private ownership
lands to create
techniques for of land vs empire of Assyria
farming ownership by the  Cooler climate could
 wheel gods produce crops with
 Developed
little irrigation
 Trade-- bartering
Trade
mathematics and  Deposits of ore
 Writing-- cuneiform
Writing calendar system allowed for
 Religion tied to and system of units development and use
government as for currency of iron
priests and kings  Hammurabi’s law  Assyrian army
made decision for code became most
gods effective military
 ziggurats force
 Legacies of Mesopotamia
Revolutionary innovations emerged in
Mesopotamia such as:
 codified laws
 ziggurats
 Cuneiform
 Irrigation
 Metal working, tools
 Trade
 transportation
 wheel
 Writing
 mathematics
 prosperous living based on large scale agriculture
Suggested Books
 Civilization: The West and the Rest
by Niall Ferguson
 Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization
by Paul Kriwaczek
 Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City
by Gwendolyn Leick
 Early Mesopotamia
Society and Economy at the Dawn of History
by Nicholas Postgate
 Ancient Mesopotamia
by Susan Pollock
 Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia
by Jeremy Black