Ancient Mesopotamia

• The land between the rivers – Origins of language, cities

• Tigris and Euphrates– Flood was irregular

Daily Life

• Social classes

• Like to eat

Religion

• Polytheistic – Each city, patron god or goddess

The Role of Women

• Strictly defined– Daughter of her father, or wife of her husband

• Trained in traditional roles or wife, mother – Worked outside, based on work at home

• Arranged marriages – Part of her husband’s family

Writing

• Cuneiform – Sumerians 3,500 BCE– Simple pictures / pictograms

• Idea or object

Literature

• Seals– Rounded showing a story

• Myths, literary workers, folktales,

• Epic of Gilgamesh – Recorded around 2000 B.C.E.

• Long narrative poem • Deeds of the hero

Hammurabi’s code

• Hammurabi ruled – 1792-1750 B.C.E. – Inscribed on stone across the land

Mathematics and Measurement/ Science and Inventions

• 1st to give number a place value

• Concept of zero

• The wheel

• Seeder plow, seeding and plowing at the same time

• Irrigation

• Using a sail to use wind power

Art and Agriculture

• Brick/ mud

• Arch and column

• Wood was in short supply and stone was non-existant

Warfare and Empire

• Monumental Architecture – Conquest divine mission of the kings

Standard of Ur