1. Mesopotamia

2. Every Civilization Needs to provide:
Stability
Explanation
Invention
Question: Which is most important?

3. The Ancient Fertile Crescent Area
The Middle East: “The Cradle of Civilization”

4. Nebuchadnezzar II’s Babylon

5. I. Mesopotamia: earliest examples of civilization
Three Historic Regions
Sumer: Delta of the River
Akkad: Northern Semites
Babylon: Between the rivers

6. The Ancient Fertile Crescent Area
The Middle East: “The Cradle of Civilization”

7. City State Government Indo-European Migration From North Caspian Sea
Language Family – Ethnicity???
Records or Early Cities 3500 BC
Inter regional traded of metals and timber
Bronze Age BC (Adding copper to Tin
City State Government
Are City States independent?
Are City States loyal to each other?
UR capital of Sumeria
Need to control rivers - Tigris and Euphrates crested late, erratically
Effect on Civilization : Very INSTABLE

8. Ziggurat at Ur
Temple
“Mountain of the Gods”

9. Politics of Mesopotamia: Attempt at Stability
City state
Theocratic government – Government by GOD
Not enough resources to go around -- food, water
Emphasis on war to get resources
More INSTABLITLY

10. Mesopotamian Trade
“The Cuneiform World”

11. Two rare examples of empire
Akkadians: Sargon the Great 2340 BC
Old Babylonian Empire (OBE): Hammurabi ( BC)
Empire = Forced Stability

12. Explanation:
Looking outside the three dimensions:
TIME, SPACE, MATTER
Polytheistic
Worship of Land and nature central (agricultural)
Divination
Highly spiritual people--always looking for divine guidance
No value on individual - people and world as plaything of gods
Human world marked for death
Ziggarat temple, reaching towards sky

13. Cuneiform: “Wedge-Shaped” Writing

14. Deciphering Cuneiform

15. Inventions
Creation of a writing system - Cuneiniform
Animal Plows
Wheel
Sail boats
Mathematics: fractions whole #, square roots, geometry

16. Hammurabi, the Judge

17. Rules for everyone to follow
Very important to the creation of civilization
Hammurabi's code
Based on idea of social justice (at least among equals) Destroy wicked and oppression
Based on an eye for an eye--literally

18. Consumer protection laws
The builder who caused the death of a man was put to death
The builder who caused the death of a son had his son killed
Leader who wronged his soldiers was executed
If a leader didn't catch a burglar, he had to pay people who had lost goods!

19. Agricultural laws to restrict and equalize land use, water use, trade
Marriage, gender, and sex
Adultery acceptable by males
Adultery by wives meant being thrown in the river (w/ possibility of pardon)
Parents and children
Hands chopped off for not following what a parent says to do
Possibility of disinheritance