Unit 2: River Valley Civilizations

Chapter 3: Mesopotamia

¨     Earliest known civilizations developed along Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in modern day Iraq.

¨     Mesopotamia means the land between the rivers.

¨     People migrated to area and found rich soil and food from rivers (fish and waterfowls).

Section 1: The Rise of Sumer

¨     People settled in Sumeria (S. Mesopotamia) ~3500 BC.

¨     Sumeria (Sum.) is oldest known civilization.

¨     Tried to control river flood with levees and used irrigation ditches.

¨     Irrigation took a lot of work and people working together.

¨     These people developed cities to live in like Ur.

¨     Used sun baked mud/reed bricks for building.

City-States

¨     Each city had own god and government.

¨     City-state was made up of city and surrounding farm area.

¨     Rich lived in center of cities, middle class lived next, and lower class lived furthest out.

¨     Wars frequent between different city-states.

Religious and Family Life

¨     Ziggurat (temple to a god) was center of each city.

¨     Areas around ziggurat were called courts and where schools and markets were.

¨     Lots of gods who supposedly controlled all of nature.

¨     People believed they were on Earth to serve gods.

¨     Priests were very powerful since they knew gods best.

¨     School was only for rich boys and they could learn writing and become a scribe.

¨     Cuneiform was system of writing using wedges and lines.

¨     Cuneiform evolved from picture writing.

¨     Women had right to own property and run businesses but wives & children could be sold as slaves and could be divorced easily.

¨     Children were expected to support parents in old age.

Priests and Kings

¨     Most powerful priests were also rulers called priest-kings.

¨     Priest-kings got advice from assembly of free men.

¨     Gradually priest-king became hereditary (passed down to child).

Section 2: Later Mesopotamian Empires

¨     Some civilizations became powerful when Ur faded.

Sargon I

¨     Sargon I ruled Akkad (N. Mesopotamia) and conquered a lot of area.

¨     United city-states into first empire (group of states under one ruler).

¨     Took some ideas from Sumeria.

¨     Empire fell after Sargon I’s death.

Hammurabi of Babylon

¨     Established own empire by conquering Akkad and Sumeria ~500 years after Sargon I died.

¨     Babylon was center of Hammurabi’s (Ha.) empire.

¨     People took a lot of culture (way of life) from groups they had conquered.

¨     Ha. made a lot of reforms (improvements) that helped people.

¨     Ha. biggest reform was to make law code the same for all city-states and that it was fair.

¨     Judges were appointed and laws covered most of daily life.

¨     If found guilty could be fined, injured, or killed depending on offense.

¨     Babylon became an important trading center that traded with far away places like China and India.

¨     After Ha.’s reign (period in power) Babylon declined and city-states became independent again.

Section 3: Contributions

¨     Lots of people copied ideas like writing from Mesopotamia.

¨     Sumerians invented wheel, plow, and sailboat.

¨     People of Mesopotamia invented 12 month calendar, a water clock,  number system based on 60 (we get 60 min/hr. 60 sec/min, 360 degrees in circle from this).