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Origins
• Why Mesopotamia?
• Fertile Crescent/Tigris/Euphrates (pg 30)
• Where? Modern day Kuwait and Iraq.
• Who were first to arrive? Sumerians
Disadvantages:
1.unpredictable flooding (unlike Egypt)
2.No natural protection
3.Limited natural resources
• How where these problems solved?
• City-states
SUMER (p. 29-33)
• Cuneiform- knife carves wedges into a tablet
• Scribes worked with over 580 letters. Few could use cuneiform
• Epic of Gilgamesh
• Cultural diffusion
• Ziggurats
• Conquered by Sargon and the Akkadians
• World’s first________.
• After Sargon’s death Akkadians begin a slow decline
• Gutians?
BABYLON (p.33)
• Amorites invade Mesopotamia around 2000 BC
• Establish capital at Babylon on the Euphrates
• Hammurabi and his code (“eye for an eye”)
• Concept of “codification”
• Rights to women?
ASSYRIANS (p.95-97)
• Capital is Ninevah
• Known for being nasty, violent, and vile (often massacred conquered cities)
• Militaristic people with advanced weapons
• Eventually conquered by neo-Babylonians (Chaldeans)and Medes
• 2 important kings= Sennacharib and Ashurbanipal
Relief: Assyrian conquest of Israel
CHALDEANS (p.97-98)
• “New” or “Neo” Babylonians
• Nebuchadnezzar
• Legends about Babylon: Hanging Gardens, 11 mile long wall, walls were supposedly thick enough for a 4 horse chariot to ride on