Mesopotamia

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SOCIAL STUDIES. SUMMARIES IN ENGLISH.
MESOPOTAMIA. (THE LAND BETWEEN THE RIVERS)

Mesopotamia WHEN and WHERE?

Between the years 3,000 and 539 BC.
The land between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris in the Persian Gulf.

The first written texts.

The first written texts appeared in Mesopotamia about 5,000 years ago. This is considered the beginning of Human History.
When humans lived in small groups it was easy to control the important information about people, possessions, taxes and trade, but when villages grew it became important to develop a system to record the important information.

River civilizations

About 5,000 years ago many important civilizations grew by the rivers: Egypt by the river Nile, Mesopotamia by the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, China by the rivers Huang-Ho and Yangtze and India by the river Indo.
These civilizations had some points in common:

The kings became very powerful; they had political and religious functions. There were civil servants, priests and an army to protect their interests.
There was a strong hierarchy. A small number of privileged had richness, possessions and power. The rest (non privileged) did not have any right.
They developed important buildings to show their power. Temples, tombs and palaces.

Education

As the Sumerians city states grew, government officials realized that they needed an efficient method of keeping record. Sumerian cuneiform emerges as the first writing system. It takes the name from the shape of the letters that were written on clay tablets.

As a civilization contemporary to Egypt, Mesopotamia developed a quite similar educational system.
Formal education was practical and trained scribes and priests. It extended from basic reading and writing to higher education in law, medicine and astrology. Education was only for upper class boys. Methods of teaching were memorization, oral repetition and copying. The period of education was long, strict and discipline was hard.

Code of Laws

The Hammurabi Code was a collection of laws put together by the king Hammurabi. The laws were applied to everyone and they were placed in public places so everyone would know them.

Stages in the History of Mesopotamia

Unlike other river civilizations as Egypt, Mesopotamia was characterized by a succession of empires.
Sumer, Akkad, Babylon and Assyrian.

Culture (Religion, Architecture and Sculpture)

Mesopotamians believed in many gods (polytheism). Some of the most important were Enlil (the god of the wind) and Ishtar (the goddess of love and fertility)
Gods and Goddesses had human passions, but they could live forever.
The temples in Mesopotamia were called “ziggurat”. They were the centre of the city- state. Each ziggurat housed a god or goddess. Ziggurat means Hill of Heaven.

Mesopotamians were important builders; they invented the arch and the vault. They built palaces and temples in brick that is the reason why we have no evidence of these works.

The characteristic Assyrian art form was narrative relief sculpture. Unlike the other southern Mesopotamian peoples, the Assyrians had access to large quantities of stone, and their many carved reliefs have survived well. These shallow carvings were used to decorate palaces. Its finely carved reliefs include dramatic scenes of a lion hunt, now in the British Museum, London. Winged bulls with human faces, carved partially in the round, stood as sentinels at the royal gateways (Louvre, Paris).