1. Means Land Between 2 rivers: Euphrates River, Tigris River
MESOPOTAMIA
Means Land Between 2 rivers: Euphrates River, Tigris River
Present day Iraq

2. The Fertile Crescent
Mesopotamia—the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers
Irrigation transformed the original hunter-gatherers into small farming communities
ca BCE the peoples of Mesopotamia began to replace stone and bone tools and weapons with metal, thus marking the end of the Stone Age and the beginning of the Bronze Age

3. Eastern Mediterranean Basin and Major Mesopotamian Capitals, ca
Eastern Mediterranean Basin and Major Mesopotamian Capitals, ca BCE

4. Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia
Polytheistic—multiple gods and goddesses connected to the forces of nature (sun and sky, water and storm, earth and its fertility
Mesopotamian ruler often represented as a “priest-king” and believed to possess divine attributes
Ziggurats, pyramidal temples consisting of successive platforms with outside staircases and shrines at the top, functioned as sacred places

5. Mesopotamia Sumerian: 3000-2300 BCE Akkadian: 2300-2150 BCE
Neo-Sumerian: BCE
Babylonian: BCE
Hittites from Anatolia: BCE
Assyrian: BCE largest empire to date

6. Mesopotamia Neo-Babylonian: 612-538 BCE Achaemenid Persian 538-330 BCE
(even larger empire than Assyrian)
Alexander conquers Persia & Egypt
Greco-Roman rule CE
Sassanian: BCE

7. Remains of the City of Ur (modern Muqaiyir, Iraq), ca. 2100 BCE

8. The Ziggurat at Ur ca. 2100 BCE

9. Reconstructed Drawing of the Ziggurat at Ur
The best preserved and most fully restored of the ancient Sumerian temples
Platforms might have been covered with soil and planted with trees
Weeper holes, venting ducts loosely filled with broken pottery, in the side of the ziggurat would have drained rainwater
Bridge between heaven and earth

10. Tell Asmar Statues
Discovered in shrine room of the Abu Temple ziggurat in Tell Asmar, near modern Baghdad
Ten men and two women, the tallest being approx. 30”
Huge eyes and clasped hands, suggestive of worshippers gazing in perpetual awe at the deity

11. Tell Asmar Statues Marble, Alabaster, and Gypsum ca. 2590-2500 BCE

12. Mesopotamian Music
Two lyres discovered at Ur in the royal tombs of either King Meskalamdug or Queen Puabi
Bodies of two women (the singers or musicians?) found under the lyres
Decorations related to the Epic of Gilgamesh
Indicate that music was important in Mesopotamian society

13. Soundbox front panel of the lyre
Lyre from Tomb at Ur
Gold leaf and lapis lazuli over wood core,
ca BCE
Soundbox front panel of the lyre
Wood with inlaid gold, lapis lazuli, and shell
ca BCE

14. Royal Standard of Ur Rectangular box of unknown function
Main panels called “War” and “Peace” because they illustrate on one side a military victory and on the other a banquet with musicians
Social perspective, or hierarchy of scale—most important figures (king) represented as larger than the others

15. Royal Standard of Ur Shell, lapis lazuli, and red limestone, 8’ x 19’ ca. 2600 BCE

16. Cuneiform Writing
Writing first appeared in the middle of the 4th millennium BCE as pictograms—pictures that represent a thing or concept—etched into clay tablets
Beginning about 2900 BCE, scribes adopted a straight-line script made with a triangular-tipped stylus, or writing tool, cut from reeds
The resulting impressions looked like wedges. Cuneiform writing is named from the Latin cuneus, wedge
Pictograms

17. Sumerian Tablet from Lagash, modern Tello, Iraq Clay, ca. 2360 BCE

18. Fragment of Tablet 11 of the Epic of Gilgamesh Second millennium BCE

19. 1/9 stopped here