7/8 World History

Week 5

Mesopotamia

Tuesday

Do NowWhy do you think people who practiced

agriculture wanted to live close together in villages?

Objectives• Know what was necessary for a city to exist.• Understand the structure of Sumerian society.

Key TermsTerm Definition Sentence

Mesopotamia The area in the Middle East between and around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

Mesopotamia is often called the “Fertile Crescent” because that’s where the oldest evidence of agriculture comes from.

Sumer The name for the southern part of Mesopotamia, where the world’s first large cities were located.

The people of Sumer produced an amazing variety of art and architecture, as well as the world’s first writing system.

Civilization A general term for a complicated society, including multiple social classes (kings, priests, common people, etc.) and a variety of specialized jobs.

Agriculture resulted in the creation of several civilizations around the world between about 4000 and 2000 BCE.

Irrigation Bringing in water from somewhere else to water a farm (for example: canals from a river, or wells bringing up water from underground).

In dry places, irrigation was needed in order to practice agriculture because there wasn’t enough rainfall.

Mesopotamia

• The name "Mesopotamia" comes from ancient Greek, meaning "between the rivers"

• Mesopotamia describes the area between and around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, in the modern-day country of Iraq

• The southern part of Mesopotamia was called Sumer.

• Agriculture had already been practiced throughout the Middle East for thousands of years, but Sumer was the area where the world's first civilization arose.

Geography• The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers are

medium-sized rivers that run close next to each year-round, and are the only major rivers in the area.

• This area was naturally good for agriculture because the rivers flooded every year, leaving the surrounding soil wet and rich with nutrients.

• Once the area became filled up with farmers thousands of years ago, they began digging irrigation canals away from the rivers, so that more people could start farming further away from the rivers, where the soil was normally too dry.

SumerianCities

• By about 4000 BCE, small villages began turning into the world's first large cities. The two largest cities in Sumer were called Ur and Uruk, which each had around 75,000 people.

• At the center of each large Sumerian city was a huge structure called a ziggurat, that served as a combination of palace for the king, offices for the city government, and fortress if the city was under attack.

• Incredibly, the ziggurat of Ur has survived all the thousands of years since it was first built. Originally, it was several levels taller, but those have since collapsed into the pile of rubble you can see at the top.

• At the peak of Sumer's civilization, the ziggurat of Ur was surrounded by hundreds of brick houses and businesses, along a large grid of streets.

Above: Sumerian nobles entering their cityRight: statue of Gudea, king of the city of Lagash

Sumerian Society• Instead of having one shared

government, the various cities of Sumer each had their own king.

• The Sumerians believed that kings were the descendants (children) of gods, but they were not worshipped or treated like gods during their lives.

• The job of a Sumerian king was to make sure his city was peaceful and prosperous.

• The king often personally acted as a judge during disagreements between citizens.

• Each city also had its own noble class, made up of wealthy landowners and business owners.

• Beneath the nobles were the ordinary citizens, including farmers, craftsmen, and hired workers.

• Women in ancient Sumer were protected from abuse by law, but in general did not have nearly as much power as men.

SumerianReligion

Left: Enki, with fish in water surrounding himRight: Inanna, naked as the goddess of love

• Anu: god of the sky Irkalla: god of the underworld• Enlil: god of the air Inanna: goddess of love and warfare• Enki: god of water Ninurta: god of agriculture

• Sumerian cities had full-time priests and priestesses who worshipped the various gods and performed rituals and left gifts for them called “offerings.”

• These priests worshipped the gods so that regular people didn’t have to, so most ordinary people didn’t really do much for their religion.

• The Sumerians had a polytheistic religion (many gods who ruled over different aspects of life).

Exit Ticket

What important geological feature allowed Sumer to exist and thrive?

Homework

• Read “How Writing Changed the World”• Answer the two reading questions at the end of

the article

Block Day

Do NowUp to this point, we know people speak language

to each other. What made them think about actually starting to WRITE language down?

ObjectivesStudents will understand the form and function of

the first written language.

Reading Quiz

1.Writing was invented mainly for what purpose?

2.At first, writing was mostly pictures. What did it change into?

3.Mesopotamia is in what modern country?

Key TermsTerm Definition Sentence

Cuneiform The world’s first writing system, invented by the Sumerians.

The world’s oldest known book “The Epic of Gilgamesh” was written in ancient Sumer using cuneiform.

Why was writing invented?• Once large cities like Ur and Uruk were created, it

meant that Sumerian people were doing more and more business with each other than ever before.

• Wealthy landowners had to figure out a way of keeping track of their farm produce (food they grew), and how much they sold it for. Business owners doing business with hundreds of different people needed a way to keep track of everything going on with their businesses.

• In order to keep track of wealth (money) and business, someone eventually came up with the idea of writing down the language they spoke, creating symbols to represent different sounds.

• Not only did this invention happen in Sumer, it also happened later in different parts of the world where agriculture led to the formation of cities.

Cuneiform• The first writing system, the one invented in

Sumer, is called cuneiform.• Using different numbers and angles of the

same stroke, it represented all the sounds of the Sumerian language, as well as symbols for numbers.

• Since Sumer did not naturally have a lot of trees, they didn't think of inventing paper. It also didn't have a lot of stone, so they didn't record things on stone.

• What the area did contain was a lot of dirt, like the mud bricks used to build their houses and ziggurats.

• So, cuneiform was written using a hard tool pressing into slightly damp mud bricks, that they called tablets.

• When the writing was done, the tablets were left in the sun to dry and harden.

Now it's your turn! Try writing your name in Sumerian cuneiform, the oldest writing system! Don’t forget, cuneiform was created for the Sumerian language, not English, so you may have to get creative about spelling.

Exit TicketWhat was using cuneiform like? Easy? Difficult?

What surprised you about the first written language?

Homework

• Read selections from the “Epic of Gilgamesh”• Answer the two reading questions at the end of

the selections

Friday

Do NowWhy do you think people started writing, not

just for business, but for fun?

Objectives• Make the connection between writing and

codified law.• Interpret the first written book for cultural

information.• Recognize the reasons for the decline of a

city.

Reading Quiz

1.Gilgamesh is what fraction god?2.Name one deed (action) that

Gilgamesh supposedly did.3.Describe the afterlife according to the

text.

Key TermsTerm Definition Sentence

“Epic of Gilgamesh”

The world’s oldest known book, about the mythical adventures of a real Sumerian king named Gilgamesh.

Although it’s over 4,000 years old, the “Epic of Gilgamesh” is an interesting story still read by millions of people every year.

Law code A system of written laws, giving details of particular punishments for particular crimes.

The invention of law codes made punishments for crimes more fair, instead of leaving decisions up to judges or mobs of people.

Law Codes• Once the Sumerians started regularly using writing for recording

business, people started using it for other purposes as well, like poetry, books, and letters.

• One of the most important uses of writing was the creation of law codes.

• By having a particular punishment for a particular crime, it made things more fair for everyone. If two people committed the same crime, they were given the same punishment. A judge was forced to be more fair.

• The oldest surviving law code is called the Code of Ur-Nammu. Written around 2100 BC, it has been preserved mostly intact, laying out a variety of basic laws.

• Some examples of laws include:1. If a man commits a murder, that man must be killed.2. If a man commits a robbery, he will be killed.3. If a man commits a kidnapping, he is to be imprisoned and pay 15 shekels of silver.9. If a man divorces his first-time wife, he shall pay her one mina of silver.19. If a man has cut off another man's foot, he is to pay ten shekels.25. If a man's slave-woman, comparing herself to her mistress, speaks insolently to her, her mouth shall be scoured with one quart of salt.31. If a man flooded the field of a man with water, he shall measure out three kur of barley per iku of field.

Epic of Gilgamesh• Written around the same time as the

Code of Ur-Nammu (2100 BC), the "Epic of Gilgamesh" is the world's oldest book.

• The author's name is unknown, but the book is considered a classic and is still being printed today.

• The story follows the mythical adventures of a real Sumerian king named Gilgamesh.

• This video gives a good summary of Gilgamesh's many adventures.

Ruins of a street and buildings in the Sumerian city of Mari

Sumer's Decline• Not long after Sumerian civilization

reached its peak, around the time of the writing of the "Epic of Gilgamesh," it began to decline (go downhill). Farming started to become more difficult, and other cities outside Sumer began to grow in power.

• The main reason for the difficult farming was because of Sumer's location near the ocean. After hundreds of years of farming the same plants in the same places, there started to be too much salt in the water and the soil, hurting the plants and making it impossible to grow enough food.

• Right at the time that Sumer was getting weaker, its enemies were getting stronger. By the year 1700 BCE, more than half of Sumer's people had moved away to other places.

• Many of them went to Akkad, a city further north in Mesopotamia, ruled by people who spoke a different language. Eventually, Akkad conquered all the cities of Sumer, making it their territory.

Exit Ticket

How did writing laws down make them more fair?