Mesopotamia

The Worlds First Civilization

What is a
civilization?
Civilizations (SIHvuhluhZAY
shuhns) are complex societies.
They have cities, organized
governments, art, religion,
class divisions, and a writing
system.

Why were river valleys

important?
Farming - large amounts of people
could be fed
Trade - goods and ideas to move
from place to place.
Cities - grow up in these valleys
and became the centers of
civilizations.

Mesopotamia
The land between two rivers.

Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia was
the worlds first
civilization.
The two rivers
that allowed
Mesopotamia to
succeed were the
Tigris and
Euphrates.

Site of the Garden of Eden

Strong People

Strategic Location

Fertile Soil

Favorable Climate

The fertile crescent

In the spring, the

rivers often flooded,
leaving behind rich
soil for farming. The
problem was that the
flooding was very
unpredictable. It
might flood one year,
but not the next. Every
year, farmers worried
about their crops.

Irrigation
Over time, the farmers learned to
build dams and channels to
control the seasonal floods. They
also built walls, waterways, and
ditches to bring water to their
fields. This way of watering
crops is called irrigation.
Irrigation allowed the farmers to
grow plenty of food and support a
large population.

Today
Regions:
Iraq, Israel, Iran, Syria, & Turkey

Who were the Mesopotamian?

Indigenous Family

5 Main Societies
1.

Summer

2.

Akkad

3.

Babylonia

4.

Assyria

5.

Chaldea

Contributions: many first

Plow & Wheel

Written language and records
Written literature (epic of gilgamesh)
Written laws
Number system
Astrology
Tools for farming and construction
Temples
Segregation of people
Cities and empires with kings and
government

5 Societies in
Ancient
Mesopotamia

Sumer
The first major civilization in
Mesopotamia was in a region called
Sumer.

City-states
Each Sumerian city and the land
around it became a separate city-state.
Each city-state had its own
government and was not part of any
larger unit.
Simple city plan consisted of a ziggurat
pyramid temple, around it were mud
bricks houses, citywalls and farm lands

Social Classes in
Sumer

Upper class - kings, priests,

warriors, and government officials.
Middle class - artisans, merchants,
farmers, and fishers. These people
made up the largest group.
Lower class - enslaved people who
worked on farms or in the
temples.

The Ziggurat

Ziggurat

Entrance
to great
Zigaurat
Reconstru
ction
initiated
by
Saddam
Hussein.

Reconstructed
ziggurat. Significant
differences from

Fairly imaginative reconstruction from a

childs book about Babylon.

Ziggurats were ceremonial and

Food in Sumer
The Sumerians grew several kinds of
crops. The most valuable one was
barley, which was used to make flour
and bread. Dates were also very
valuable to the Sumerians. They were
eaten once ripe or else they were
dried for future consumption. Dates
also made an excellent wine.

Barley and dates

Writing
The most
important
invention of the
Sumerians was
writing.
The writing of
the Sumerians
was called
cuneiform.

Cuneiform
alphabet

TheEpic of
Gilgamesh
The most famous piece of literature
from Sumer is the Epic of
Gilgamesh.
An epic is a long poem that tells the
story of a hero. The hero Gilgamesh
is a king who travels around the
world with a friend and performs
great deeds. When his friend dies,
Gilgamesh searches for a way to live
forever.

Sumerian
Inventions
wagon wheel
plow
sailboat
number system based on 60
geometry
12 month calendar

wagon wheel

plow

sailboat

AKKAD
The First Empire

Akkad

Akkad was the north western

half of ancient Mesopotamia.
The inhabitants of Akkad, had
their own Akkadian language
which eventually came to
replace Sumerian over the
centuries before and after 2000
BCE.
In the 23rd and 24th centuries
BCE, Akkad had emerged as the
strongest of Mesopotamia
Around 2330 BCE, the Akkadian
Empire rose to the strongest in
the region and probably also in
the world at that time.

Akkad

The heartland of Akkad

was where the
Euphrates and Tigris
rivers are at their
closest.

Sargon
In about 2340 B.C.,
Sargon conquered all of
Mesopotamia creating
the worlds first empire.
An empire is a group of
many different lands
under one ruler.
Sargons empire lasted
for more than 200 years
before falling to
invaders.

Akkad had one of the most sophisticated armies of the

Bronze Age
Sargon The Great, who ruled for 56 years, was the
Akkadian military leader and was considered founder of
Mesopotamian military tradition that runs through
Mesopotamian history.
He conquered Sumer and built the Akkadian empire
which stretched over most of the Sumerian city states.
Sargon launched a campaign of military conquest to
unite all of Mesopotamia
He also conquered all of southern Mesopotamia as well
as parts of Syria, Anatolia, and Elam (western Iran)
He then became king over all of southern Mesopotamia

Akkadian Military

Weaponry
The Composite
Bow

The composite bow was

one of the major
inventions of the
Akkadians. Its pull was 23 times that of the simple
bow and it was able to
efficiently penetrate
leather armor and some
of the early bronze
armors at up to100 yards.
Used throughout the next
fifteen hundred years.

Weaponry
The Spear

The Spear was used

for mid range.
It was primarily a
thrusting weapon and
was used to deliver
fatal puncture wounds.

Weaponry
The Mace

The Mace was used for

fighting in short range.
It was a piece of wood
covered in metal studs
which enabled extra
power for bone
breaking.

Weaponry
Armor

Copper helmets were

used to protect
soldiers from strong
bows to the head.
They also had armored
cloaks that covered
the body with metal
disks lined with leather

Babylonia and
Assyria

The Two Empires of

Mesopotamia
After the Sumerians were defeated,
Mesopotamia had two main empires:
Babylonia and Assyria. An empire is an
area of many territories and people that
are controlled by one government.
The Babylonian empire lasted from around
1800 BC to 1600 BC.
The Assyrian empire lasted from around
665 BC to 612 BC.

Babylon - Gate of
God
As we recall from earlier, the Sumerians
were conquered by the Babylonians. The
king of Babylon was Hammurabi.
Hammurabi united the cities of Sumer and
then expanded his empire all the way to Asia
Minor

A Crossroads of Trade
Babylons location made it a good place for
trade. Groups of travelers, called caravans,
traveled back and forth from the Sumerian
cities in the south to the city of Akkad in the
north. Along the way, they always stopped
in Babylon to trade.

Babylon had special

markets, called
bazaars, that people
could go to to buy
cotton cloth from
India. They could
also buy spices from
Egypt there.
Babylon became rich
due to trade.

Hammurabis Code
Hammurabi was the
king who united most
of Mesopotamia and
conquered the
Sumerians. He
developed a code of
laws. The laws were
numbered from 1 to
282. Law number 196
states: If a man put out
the eye of another
man, his eye shall be
put out. Some people
summarize

Law number 195

states: If a son strike
his father, his hands
shall be hewn off.
There are many,
many more laws like
this in Hammurabis
Code.
A statue
of
Hammura
bi

On the left is a stela, which has all 282 of

Hammurabis laws engraved on it. This
stela is located in the Louvre Museum in
Paris, France.
The Hammurabi stela was discovered in
1909, in Susa, Elam, which is now
Khuzestan. Khuzestan is a province of
southern Iran.

Susa

Babylonia is Conquered
Hammurabi
Though Hammurabi
conquered many of
formed a large and
the neighboring
rich empire, the
cities, and he kept
people that ruled after
expanding his
him
could
not
keep
it
empire. Hammurabi
together.
The
empire
would often go to war
kept getting smaller
against his allies as
and smaller until
well..

eventually it was
destroyed.

The Assyrians Rise to

At around 1365 B.C., the Assyrians
Power
Assyria was a

small kingdom of
walled cities that
was located north
of Babylon. Their
city was located in
open land that
was easily
attacked, and they
had to constantly
defend
themselves
against invaders.
Therefore, they
became skilled
warriors.

decided that the best defense they

had was to attack other countries
first, before they could attack
them. By 650 B.C., Assyria had
conquered a large empire. King
Sargon II was a successful and
ruthless Assyrian ruler.

The Assyrian War Machine

The Assyrians were
geniuses at waging
war. They
invented the
battering ram,
which they used to
pound down city
walls. They used
catapults to throw
rocks at enemies,
and the protected
their archers
(people who use a
bow and arrows)
with helmets and
armor.

Assyrian Learning
The capital of the
Assyrian Empire
was a city called
Nineveh. Nineveh
became a great city
of learning. It had a
famous library that
held thousands of
clay tablets with
writings from Sumer
and Babylon..

Assyria Overthrown
In 612 B.C., two groups
joined together to
smash the Assyrian
empire. These groups
were the Medes and
the Chaldeans.

CHALDEA
The New Babylonian Empire

The New Babylonian

Empire
The Chaldeans
created a new
empire, centered at
Babylon after they
defeated the
Assyrians in 612 BC.

A New Center for Learning

Under the Chaldeans,
the New Babylonian
empire became a
center of learning
and science.

This clay tablet shows the world that

was known to the Babylonians

The Fall of the 2nd Babylonian

Empire

The second

Babylonian
empire came
under attack
and was
defeated by the
Persians, who
were led by
Cyrus, in 539
BC. Though the
Chaldeans were
defeated, the
city of Babylon
was spared from
destruction.