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Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia was the home of not one but a succession of glorious civilizationsthe
civilizations of Sumer, Babylonia,and Assyriathat together flourished for more than three
millennia from about 3500 to 500 B.C.E.
It was ancient Greek travelers and historians who first gave the land the name by which we
know it: Mesopotamia. The name means the land between the rivers (from mesos, the
Greek word for between or in the middle; potamos, the Greek word for river; and ia, a
suffix that the Greeks attached to the names of places). The ancient Mesopotamians did not
have a name for the whole land; instead, their mental horizons were limited to the names of
the cities and kingdoms where they lived. Today, most of ancient Mesopotamia lies within the
borders of modern Iraq, with some partsto the west and northin Syrian and Turkish
territory
The rivers that defined Mesopotamia were the Tigris and the Euphrates. Like the name
Mesopotamia itself, the spelling of the rivers names is something we owe to the Greeks. The
original name of the Tigris was the Idiglat; the original name of the Euphrates, the Buranum
names that were first used by the inhabitants of the land in prehistoric times and which
survive in their earliest records. In the Bible, the Tigris was called the Hiddekel, the Hebrew
pronunciation of the rivers authentic name, while the Euphrates was simply called the Prat.
The book of Genesis describes them as two of the four rivers that flowed out of Eden and
watered its famous garden. Biblical tradition thus connects Mesopotamian geography with
the beginnings of the human race.
The river valleys of Mesopotamia are framed by the desert, the mountains, and the sea. To the
west is the Syrian Desert; to the north and east, the mountains of Turkey and Iran; to the
south, the Persian Gulf. (during the fourth and third millennia B.C.E.) the Gulf extended as
much as 150 miles farther inland than it does today, making ancient cities like Ur and Eridu
(inland today) virtual seaports. Over the centuries, heavy accumulations of silt deposited by
the rivers along with the seas own retreat pushed the coastline south.
The geographic differences between north and southbetween Assyria in the north and
Babylonia in the southbred differences in temperament between their peoples and
generated political division and tension. At times, greed or vindictiveness ignited war.
Meanwhile, there were also ethnic differences within the south. In the deepest south lived the
Sumerians, who created the worlds first civilization. Though the Sumerians were united by a
common language and common traditions, the control of the lands and waterways inspired
intercity rivalries and war. To their north dwelt the Semitic Akkadians, who coveted what the
Sumerians possessed and conquered them, joining Sumer to Akkad. With the rise of the city
and kingdom of Babylon, the whole of the south came to be called Babylonia
Babylon, Babylonias largest city, lay on the Euphrates; Nineveh, Assyrias largest city, on the
Tigris. Baghdad, Iraqs modern capital, is situated midway down the Tigris at the point where
it veers closest to the Euphrates. The name Mesopotamia is, in fact, a misnomer: many of
the lands ancient cities were located not between the two rivers but just outside the edge of
the irregular spearpoint they form as they aim southeast to the sea.
Mesopotamias major resources were its water and fertile soil. If, as the ancient Greek
historian Herodotus claimed, Egypt was the gift of the Nile, Mesopotamia was the gift of the
Tigris and Euphrates. This was especially true of the alluvial plain to the south, where the
well-watered fertility of the land nurtured such staples of the peoples diet as barley, sesame,
and dates.

Resources
From riverine clay the Mesopotamians not only made bricks but also fashioned clay tablets to
write on with the help of pens cut from the reeds that grew along the rivers banks.
A unique resource of the land was bitumen, a natural asphalt that seeped from beds in the
ground, especially in the area around Hit on the Euphrates. Bitumen had many uses: as an
adhesive for bricks, as a waterproof coating in construction, and as a cement to create works
of art.
The critical resources that Mesopotamia largely lacked were building stone (except in Assyria
where gypsum was available), construction-grade timber, and minerals, including copper and
tin (needed to make bronze), iron, silver, and gold. Combined with the demands of an
increasingly affluent society and the desires of its rulers for splendor, the scarcity of these
resources encouraged foreign trade and the rise of a merchant class as the Mesopotamians
exchanged agricultural produce and textiles for the commodities they lacked. As a result,
caravans plied regular overland trade routes throughout the Middle East and ships sailed up
and down the Persian Gulf. Timber was hauled in from the Zagros Mountains and Lebanon;
copper and tin from Anatolia, the Caucasus, and Iran; silver from the Taurus Mountains; and
gold from Egypt and even India. From Afghanistan came a precious blue mineral called lapis
lazuli. Ships were sailing as early as the fifth millennium B.C.E. between Mesopotamia and
ports in Bahrain and Oman, and as early as the third millennium B.C.E. between
Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. So great was the influence of Babylonian merchants that
their Akkadian language and cuneiform script became tools for international commercial and
diplomatic correspondence throughout the ancient Near East.

Neighbouring Civilizations
As we have seen, commerce brought Mesopotamia into contact with other lands, both near
and far. At almost the same time that civilization was born in Sumer (near the end of the
fourth millennium B.C.E.), it also was born to the west in Egypt, land of the Nile. Indeed,
scholars still debate where it was born first. And when Sumers monarchs were later laid in
their graves surrounded by their royal retinues and splendor, the pyramids of Egypts
pharaohs were just being built.
Striking cultural parallels between them exist (their nearly simultaneous invention of writing
and monumental architecture, for example), but are offset by equally striking differences in
style and intent.
About five centuries after the earliest civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia arose, yet
another civilization was born, the civilization of the Indus Valley, represented by the ruined
cities of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa. Artifacts and inscriptions point to commercial contact
between Mesopotamia and this land, which the Mesopotamians called Meluhha.
In the second and first millennia B.C.E., the imperialistic ambitions of the Assyrians and
Babylonians brought them into military conflict with an array of other nations that vied for
the control of the lands known today as Syria and Israel. These lands were important because
of the trade routes that passed through them and the tribute that could be exacted from their
cities. During the second millennium B.C.E. Egypt fought for the control of this region
against two other superpowers: the Hittites, who were based in Turkey, and the Mitanni, who
occupied northwestern Mesopotamia.
By the first millennium B.C.E. direct strikes were made against cities in ancient Israel by
Assyrian and Babylonian armies. Assyrian armies went so far as to invade Egypt, and a
Babylonian army under Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem and took Jewish prisoners of

war back to Babylon. The emotional turmoil of these times resonates in the writings of the
Hebrew prophets and the biblical book of Lamentations.
By the sixth century B.C.E., the armies of Babylon were defeated by a new player that had
stepped on the stage of world politics, the Persians, who were to amass the largest empire the
world had ever seen, one that stretched from Turkey in the west to India in the east and south
into Egypt. The kings of Persia even invaded Greece, but they were valiantly rebuffed there
in a series of battles fought in the early fifth century B.C.E. In the late fourth century B.C.E. a
charismatic leader named Alexander the Great led an army of Macedonian and Greek soldiers
in a war against Persia fought for revenge and greater glory. After defeating the Persians,
Alexander made Babylon the capital of his new empire, seeking to create a new multicultural
society on a global scale, one in which the European heritage of Greece would be blended
with the legacy of the Orient. Though Alexander died before he could see his dream fulfilled,
the forces he set into motion brought West and East closer together than they had ever been
before, or would ever be again.

Dating
To track the passage of time, the ancient Mesopotamians used not one but three different
dating systems over the long course of their history. The first and the simplest was to name a
year after the king who was then ruling, and to number it according to the year of his reign:
for example, the fifth year of King Shulgi. The second systemfar richer in the historical
data it can provide us withwas to name a year after an important event that had occurred:
for example, the year the temple of Ishtar was built or the year the Guti were defeated.
The third system, introduced by the Assyrians, was to name a year after the personal name of
a royal official, called the limmu. In this dating system, the first year was named for the king,
and then each successive year for a different limmu, the honorary title being passed on
annually from one high official to another. To make sequential sense out of their past,
Mesopotamian scribes kept running lists of kings and dynasties and officials as well as
chronicles of historical events of major significance. Thanks to the discovery of these
cuneiform records and their decipherment, we possess Babylonian and Assyrian King
Lists,and even Synchronistic Lists giving the names of the Kings who ruled the south and the
north as contemporaries. Copies also survive of a comprehensive Sumerian King List that
begins in the mythic days before the legendary Great Flood and continues to the end of the
First Dynasty of Isin (about 1800 B.C.E.), enumerating the many rulers of Sumer and the
lengths of their reigns. The farther back into the past we go, however, the more history
morphs into myth: thus, the eight kings who ruled before the flood are each assigned an
average reign of 30,150 years. In attributing the greatest longevity to its earliest leaders, the
Sumerian King List parallels the biblical book of Genesis, where Adam is said to have lived
930 years and Methuselah 969mere youngsters compared to their antediluvian Sumerian
peers. To their credit as scientific historians, some of the Sumerian chroniclers omitted these
mythical kings from their list or attached the details of their reigns as an addendum.
Unfortunately for our purposes, however, the various Mesopotamian King Lists are rife with
scribal errors and chronological gaps. In addition, dynasties are presented as though they all
came one after the other, whereas some may have actually overlapped or functioned
simultaneously in different cities and regions. On the positive side, the Lists give us a firm
grasp of Mesopotamias relative chronology:
which kings came first, which next, and which last, including how many years each ruled
(with all due allowance for mythic exaggeration and clerical discrepancy). What we lack,
however, is an equally firm grasp of absolute chronology: the actual and precise years when a
given king ruled or particular events took place in terms of our own calendarthat is, how
many years ago B.C.E. It is at this point that heaven can come to our aid. Because the

ancient Mesopotamians stood in awe of the sky and its mysteries, celestial phenomena such
as lunar and solar eclipses were among the special events they cited in their chronicles. Due
to their meticulous observations, todays astronomers can calculate exactly when these events
would have taken place. Since the ancient astronomer also noted who was then sitting on the
throne, modern calculations can help us date not only heavenly events but terrestrial ones as
well. Astronomy thus provides us with the very keys we need to unlock the absolute
chronology of the Mesopotamian past. An Assyrian limmu list, for example, records
that a complete eclipse of the sun took place inthe month of June in the tenth year of King
Ashur-dan IIIs reign. Just such an eclipse would have been visible in the Assyrian capital of
Nineveh between 9:33 A.M. and 12:19 P.M. on June 15, 763 B.C.E. Pegging the tenth year of
Ashurdans reign to 763 B.C.E. generates B.C.E. dates for all the other kings in the list as
well, spanning almost three centuries of Assyrian history. Our chronological chart can be
unrolled even farther thanks to the work of the second century C.E. Alexandrian astronomer
Ptolemy, who drew up a list of over four centuries of unusual heavenly phenomena arranged
in sequence according to the kings who then governed the Near East, from Nabonassar of
Babylon to Alexander the Great. Because these events can be precisely dated by modern
astronomers, the kings who then ruled can be dated too. And because the Assyrian limmu list
(stretching from 911 to 627 B.C.E.) and Ptolemys Canon (stretching from 747 to 323
B.C.E.) overlap, six centuries of Mesopotamian history are covered. In fact, with the
additional help of Greek and Roman historians, absolute dates can be assigned to most of the
first millennium B.C.E. If we head farther back to the second millennium
B.C.E., its a planet that comes to our aidVenus, one of the most important heavenly
bodies in antiquity because it was associated(as its Roman name shows) with the
goddess of love. During the eighth year in the reign of a Babylonian king named Ammisduqa,
an ancient astronomer who had been keeping his eye on Venus for years recorded his
observations, including the dates in the Babylonian calendar when she first poked her head
out from behind the sun and then later withdrew(her heliacal rising and setting). The Venus
Tablets, as theyve come to be called, allow astro-historians to date Ammisduqas reign
with one wrinkle: because Venus has a 60-year orbital cycle, there are three possible dates for
Ammisduqas accession to the throne1702 B.C.E., 1646 B.C.E., or 1582 B.C.E.all of
which fit the celestial data. This means that there are also three possible dates for all the other
kings of the era! Thus, the problem for historians is to decide which of the three is correct: the
so-called High Chronology (which pushes events farther back into the past), the Middle
Chronology, or the Low Chronology (which views events as more recent). Ancient records of
lunar eclipses seem to support the validity of the High Chronology, though many scholars
(including this writer) still abide by the more middle of the road Middle one. Today, the
Low is least favored. Though Shakespeare claimed our destiny lies not in the stars, but in
ourselves, it has been the starsthe Sun and the evening star that have pointed our way to
a sharper vision of the Mesopotamian past.

ANCIENT NARRATIVES
Whether they offer firsthand accounts or preserve still older traditions, ancient narratives
are the pasts own testimony about itself and an authentic witness to history.
To the first categoryfirsthand accountsbelong the self-congratulatory utterances of
monarchs proud of their military victories and domestic accomplishments, which were
celebrated on tablets of clay and stelae of stone. To the same category belong the
lamentations of those whose cities and homes were destroyed by those very same kings. Such
accounts, whether by the victors or the vanquished, are inevitably biased, but taken together
convey a composite truth. To the second category belong works by ancient historians whose
writings survive in whole or in part. After the anonymous chroniclers of the Babylonians and

Assyrians, two authors come to the fore whose personalities are distinct: Berossus, the thirdcentury B.C.E. Babylonian scholar-priest, and Herodotus, the fifth-century B.C.E. peripatetic
Greek traveler. Berossuss multivolume Babyloniaca tracked Babylonian history from the
Deluge to Alexander. Berossus was a native Babylonian and had access to temple archives,
but his history is preserved only in fragments cited by classical authors. Herodotus, on the
other hand, was a Greek, and a tourist at that, but an intelligent one, handicapped by language
but impelled by a curiosity that still radiates from the first book of his History that describes
his visit to Babylonia. Nevertheless, he lacked access to the valuable documentary sources
Berossus was intimate with. Yet chronological beggars cant be choosers, and we must
remain grateful even for the crumbs from historys banquet table. It is time now to survey that
table and reconstruct from the menu the grand order of the banquets historic courses.

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