Encyclopedia
Mesopotamia refers to the region now occupied by modern
Iraq, eastern
Syria, and southeastern
Turkey. The
toponym comes from the Greek words µ?s?? "between" and p?taµ?? "river, referring to the basins of the
Euphrates and the
Tigris rivers and the area in between. Comparably, the
Arabic term is
Bayn Nahrain "between two rivers". The fertile geographical area watered by these two rivers is often referred to as the "Cradle of Civilization," since it was here that the first
literate societies developed in the late 4th millennium BC. Mesopotamia was coined in the
Hellenistic period without any definite boundaries, to refer to a broad
geographical area and probably used by the
Seleucids. The area became a short-lived province of the
Roman Empire at the time of
Trajan, with the name
Provincia Mesopotamia.Scholars have suggested that the Akkadian term
biritum/birit narim corresponded to a similar geographical concept and coined at the time of the Aramaicization of the region. It is however widely accepted that early Mesopotamian societies simply referred to the entire alluvium as
kalam in Sumerian . More recently terms like "Greater Mesopotamia" or "Syro-Mesopotamia" have been adopted to refer to wider geographies corresponding to the Near East or Middle East. The later two are Euro-centric terms attributed to the region in the 19th century.
History
Mesopotamia is usually used to refer to an ancient historical geography or the societies, cultures, civilizations that are associated with it, from the emergence of urbanization in Southern Iraq in the 4th millennium BC to the arrival of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC . A cultural continuity and spatial homogeneity for this entire historical geograhy is popularly assumed through millenia, though not unproblematic. Mesopotamia is understood to have housed some of the world's most ancient states with highly developed social complexity, acting as one of the famous four riverine civilizations where writing was first invented, along with the Nile valley in Egypt, the Indus Valley in the Indian Subcontinent and Yellow River valley in China.
Mesopotamia housed the major prehistoric cultures such as
Ubaid and Jemdet Nasr, as well as the
Sumerian city states, and the Akkadian, Babylonian, and
Assyrian Empires. Some of the important historical Mesopotamian leaders were Ur-Nammu ,
Sargon ,
Hammurabi and Tiglath-Pileser I .
"Ancient Mesopotamia" is taken to include the period from the late 4th millennium BCE until the rise of the
Achaemenids in the
6th century BCE. This long period may be divided in
- Uruk period , ca. 41st to 32nd c. BCE
- Sumerian city states ca. 31st to 24th c.
- Akkadian Empire 24th to 23rd c.
- Gutean period 22nd c.
- Third dynasty of Ur 22nd to 20th c.
- Early Assyrian kingdom 20th to 18th c.
- First Babylonian Dynasty 18th to 17th c.
- Kassite dynasty, Middle Assyrian period 16th to 12th c.
- Dark Age 12th to 10th c.
- Neo-Assyrian Empire 10th to 7th c.
- Neo-Babylonian Empire 7th to 6th c.
2nd and 3rd millennium dates are approximate, compare Chronology of the Ancient Near East.
Language and writing
The earliest written
language in Mesopotamia was
Sumerian, a language isolate, even though now scholars agree that other languages were also spoken in early Mesopotamia alongside with Sumerian. Later a
Semitic language,
Akkadian, came to be the dominant language, although Sumerian was retained for administrative,
religious,
literary, and
scientific purposes. Different varieties of Akkadian were used until the end of the Neo-Babalonian period. Then
Aramaic, which had already become common in Mesopotamia, became the official language of the
Achaemenid Persian Empire. Akkadian fell into disuse, although both it and Sumerian were still used in
temples for some centuries.
Royal libraries and museums
One of the largest collections of cuneiform
writing comes from the archives of
Ashurbanipal, the leader of
Assyria. Around 650 BCE he decided to create a
library in
Nineveh. As all
temples in Babylonia had libraries, he sent his
scribes to collect
tablets from them. If a temple was unwilling to give away a tablet, the scribes had to make a copy. Soon the
royal library in
Nineveh was the largest in Assyria. Much of what we know about
ancient Mesopotamia today comes from this library.
The Babylonian king
Nebuchadnezzar II founded a
museum where important
statues, objects and some tablets were displayed. This is an example of Babylonian literature.
Science and technology
Mesopotamian people developed many technologies, among them
metalworking,
glassmaking,
textile weaving, food control, and water storage and
irrigation. They were also one of the first
Bronze age people in the world. Early on they used
copper,
bronze and
gold, and later they used
iron. Palaces were decorated with hundreds of kilograms of these very expensive metals. Also, copper, bronze, and iron were used for
armor as well as for different weapons such as swords,
daggers, and
spears. They also made weapons from gold, but most likely these were used only for decoration.
Mathematics
The Mesopotamians used a
sexagesimal numeral system. This is the source of the current 60-minute hour and 24-hour
day, as well as the 360 degree circle. The Sumerian calendar also measured weeks of seven days each. This mathematical knowledge was used in mapmaking.
Astronomy
Religion
Mesopotamian
religion is the oldest religion recorded. Mesopotamians believed that the world was a flat disc, surrounded by a huge, holed space, and above that,
heaven. They also believed that water was everywhere, the top, bottom and sides, and that the
universe was born from this enormous sea. Mesopotamian religion was highly polytheistic, that is people believed in many gods.
Although the beliefs described above were held in common among Mesopotamians, there were also regional variations. The Sumerian word for universe is an-ki, which refers to the god An and the goddess Ki. Their son was Enlil, the air god. They believed that Enlil was the most powerful god. He was the chief god of the Pantheon, as the Greeks had
Zeus and the Romans had
Jupiter. The Sumerians also posed
philosophical questions, such as: Who are we?, Where are we?, How did we get here?. They attributed answers to these questions to explanations provided by their gods.
If someone was sick they prayed to the gods so that person would recover. As mentioned above, the Mesopotamian doctors were not medically advanced, so instead people asked help from the gods.
Primary gods and goddesses
- An was the Sumerian god of the sky, later known as Anu. He was married to Ki, but in some other Mesopotamian religions he has a wife called Uraš.
- Marduk was the principal god of Babylon. The people glorified him, so he would allow Babylon to rise into a great empire from a small state.
- Gula, or in other places Ninishina, was the goddess of healing. When somebody was sick, she was one of the goddess they prayed to.
- Nanna was the moon god. He was one of the sons of Enlil.
- Utu was the sun god.
- Ishtar was the goddess of love and of sex.
- Enlil was the most powerful god in Mesopotamian religion. His wife was Ninlil, and his children were Inanna, Iškur, Nanna-Suen, Nergal, Ninurta, Pabilsag, Nushu, Utu, Uraš Zababa and Ennugi.
- Nabu was the Mesopotamian god of writing. He was very wise, and was praised for his writing ability. In some places he was believed to be in control of heaven and earth.
- Iškur was the god of storms.
- Ninurta was the Sumerian god of war. He was also the god of heroes.
- Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of love and war, was also the wife of Ninurta.
- Pazuzu, also known as Zu, was an evil god, who stole the tablets of Enlil’s destiny, and is killed because of this. He also brought diseases which had no known cure.
Burials
Archeologists found hundreds of graves in some parts of Mesopotamia. These graves tell us many things about Mesopotamian
burial habits. In the city of
Ur, most people were buried in family graves under their houses. Children were put in big jars and were taken to the family
chapel. Other people were just buried into common city
graveyards. A few people were wrapped in mats and
carpets. In most graves some belongings of the people were with them, and there were 17 graves with very precious objects in them so it is assumed that these were royal graves.
Ziggurats
Ziggurats were huge temples built to worship the gods. They were built from
clay and
mud and had three or four parts. They were very high so that at times of flood they would stay dry.
Many workers were required to build a
ziggurat. There had to be enough people to dig clay, make
bricks, and carry those bricks and put them together. The bricks were made from mud and crushed reeds. Only the Ur ziggurat survived because the builders in the later years learnt that firing the clay would make the bricks last longer.
Culture
Music and songs
Music and songs were a large part of Mesopotamian
entertainment. Some were written for the gods but many were written to describe important events. Although music and songs amused kings and
rulers, they were also enjoyed by ordinary people who liked to sing and dance in their homes or in the
marketplaces. Songs were sung to children who passed them on to their children. Thus songs were passed on through many generations until someone wrote them down. These songs provided a means of passing on through the centuries highly important information about historical events that were eventually passed on to us.
The
Oud is a small, stringed musical instrument. The oldest pictorial record of the Oud dates back to the Uruk period in Southern Mesopotamia over 5000 years ago. It is on a cylinder seal currently housed at the British Museum and acquired by Dr. Dominique Collon. The image depicts a female crouching with her instruments upon a
boat, playing right-handed. This instrument appears hundreds of times throughout Mesopotamian history and again in ancient
Egypt from the 18th dynasty onwards in long- and short-neck varieties.
The oud is regarded as a precursor to the
European lute. Its name is derived from the Arabic word ????? al-‘ud 'the wood', which is probably the name of the tree from which the oud was made.
Games
Hunting was popular among Assyrian kings.
Boxing and
wrestling feature frequently in art, and
polo was probably popular, although with men sitting on the shoulders of other men rather than on horses. .
Family life
Infant mortality was between 75 to 95 percent. As for schooling, only royal offspring and sons of the rich and professionals such as scribes, physicians, temple administrators, and so on, went to school. Most boys were taught their father's trade or were apprenticed out to learn a trade. Girls had to stay home with their mothers to learn housekeeping and cooking, and to look after the younger children. Unusual for that time in history, women had rights. They could own property and, if they had good reason, get a divorce.
Agriculture
Food supply in Mesopotamia was quite rich due to the location of the two rivers from which its name is derived,
Tigris and
Euphrates. Although land nearer to the rivers was fertile and good for crops, portions of land further from the water were dry and largely uninhabitable. This is why the development of
irrigation was very important for
settlers of Mesopotamia. Other Mesopotamian
innovations include the control of water by dams and the use of
aqueducts.
Early settlers of fertile land in Mesopotamia used
wooden
plows to soften the
soil before planting crops such as
barley,
onions,
grapes,
turnips, and
apples. Mesopotamian settlers were some of the first people to make
beer and
wine.
The unpredictable Mesopotamian weather was often hard on farmers; crops were often ruined so backup sources of food such as cows and lambs were also kept.
As a result of the skill involved in farming in the Mesopotamian, farmers did not depend on slaves to complete farm work for them, with some exceptions. There were too many risks involved to make slavery practical .
Tigris and Euphrates
The two rivers surrounding ancient Mesopotamia were the
Tigris and the
Euphrates. The land in that region is very dry and yearly
rainfall was low, so the Mesopotamians used the rivers to
irrigate their lands. They had to collect and control
water with
dams. If a dam was built in a high place, the dammed water did not go further down. This caused a problem for the lower cities, resulting in many
wars in that region.
Government
Kings
The Mesopotamians believed their kings and queens were descended from the city
gods, but, unlike the
ancient Egyptians, they never believed their kings were actually gods. Most kings named themselves “king of the universe” or “great king”. Another common name was “
shepherd”, as kings had to look after their people.
Nebuchadnezzar was the most powerful king in Babylonia. He was thought to be the son of the god Nabu. He married the daughter of Cyaxeres, so the Median and the Babylonian dynasties had a familial connection. Nebuchadnezzar’s name means: Nabo, protect the crown!
Belshedezzar was the last king of Babylonia. He was the son of Nabonidus whose wife was Nictoris, the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar.
The first king of the first dynasty of Ur was Mesanepada. He made Ur Sumer’s main city.
First Dynasty of Ur c. 2563-2387 B.C.2563-2524: Mesannepadda
2523-2484: A'annepadda
2483-2448: Meskiagnunna
2447-2423: Elulu
2422-2387: Balulu
Dynasty of Lagash c. 2494-2342 B.C.2494-2465:
Ur-Nanshe2464-2455: Akurgal
2454-2425: Ennatum
2424-2405: Enannatum I
2402-2375: Entemena
2374-2365: Enannatum II
2364-2359: Enentarzi
2358-2352: Lugal-anda
2351-2342: Uru-inim-gina
Dynasty of Uruk c. 2340-2316 B.C.2340-2316: Lugal-zaggesi
Dynasty of Akkad c. 2334-2154 B.C.2334-2279: Sargon
2278-2270: Rimush
Power
When
Assyria grew into an
empire, it was divided into smaller parts, called provinces. Each of these were named after their main cities, like Nineveh, Samaria,
Damascus and
Arpad. They all had their own governor who had to make sure everyone paid their taxes; he had to call up
soldiers to
war, and supply workers when a
temple was built. He was also responsible for the laws being enforced. In this way it was easier to keep control of an empire like Assyria.
Although Babylon was quite a small state in the Sumerian, it grew tremendously throughout the time of
Hammurabi's rule. He was known as “the law maker”, and soon
Babylon became one of the main cities in Mesopotamia. It was later called Babylonia, which meant "the gateway of the gods." It also became one of history's greatest centers of learning.
Warfare
As city-states began to grow, their spheres of influence overlapped, creating arguments between other city-states, especially over land and canals. These arguments were recorded in tablets several hundreds of years before any major war - the first recording of a war occurred around 3200BC but was not common until about 2500BC. At this point warfare was incorporated into the Mesopotamian political system, where a neutral city may act as an arbitrator for the two rival cities. This helped to form unions between cities, leading to regional states.
When
empires were created, they went to war more with foreign countries. King Sargon, for example conquered all the cities of
Sumer, some cities in Mari, and then went to war with northern
Syria.
Many Babylonian
palace walls were decorated with the pictures of the successful fights and the enemy, whether desperately escaping, or hiding amongst reeds.
A king in Sumer, Gilgamesh, was thought two-thirds god and only one third human. There were legendary stories and poems about him, which were passed on for many generations, because he had many adventures that were believed very important, and he won lots of wars and battles.
Laws
King Hammurabi, as mentioned above, was famous for his set of laws,
The Code of Hammurabi, which is one of the earliest sets of laws found and one of the best preserved examples of this type of document from ancient Mesopotamia.
For more information, see Hammurabi and Code of Hammurabi.Architecture
The study of ancient Mesopotamian architecture is based on available
archaeological evidence, pictorial representation of buildings and texts on building practices. Scholarly literature usually concentrates on temples, palaces, city walls and gates and other monumental buildings, but occasionally one finds works on residential architecture as well. Archaeological surface surveys also allowed for the study of urban form in early Mesopotamian cities. Most notably known architectural remains from early Mesopotamia are the temple complexes at Uruk from the 4th millennium BC, temples and palaces from the Early Dynastic period sites in the Diyala River valley such as Khafajah and Tell Asmar, the Third Dynasty of Ur remains at Nippur and
Ur , Middle
Bronze Age remains at Syrian-Turkish sites of
Ebla, Mari, Alalakh,
Aleppo and
Kultepe, Late Bronze Age palaces at Bogazkoy ,
Ugarit, Ashur and Nuzi, Iron age palaces and temples at Assyrian , Babylonian , Urartian and
Neo-Hittite sites . Houses are mostly known from Old Bablylonian remains at Nippur and Ur. Among the textual sources on building construction and associated rituals, Gudea's cylinders from the late 3rd millennium are notable, as well as the Assyrian and Babylonian royal inscriptions from the
Iron Age.
Houses
The materials used to build a Mesopotamian house were the same as those used today: mud brick, mud plaster and wooden doors, which were all naturally available round the city, although wood could not be naturally made very well during the particular time period described. Most houses had a square centre room with other rooms attached to it, but a great variation in the size and materials used to build the houses suggest they were built by the inhabitants themselves . The smallest rooms may not have coincided with the poorest people, in fact it could be that the poorest people built houses out of perishable materials such as reeds on the outside of the city, but there is little direct evidence for this.
The Palace
The
palaces of the early Mesopotamian elites were large scale complexes, and were often lavishly decorated. Earliest examples are known from the Diyala River valley sites such as Khafajah and Tell Asmar. These third millennium BC palaces functioned as a large scale socio-economic institutions, therefore, along with residential and private function, they housed craftsmen workshops, food storehouses, ceremonial courtyards, and often associated with shrines. For instance, the so-called "giparu" at Ur where the Moon god Nanna's priestesses resided was a major complex with multiple courtyards, a number of sanctuaries, burial chambers for dead priestesses, a ceremonial banquet hall, etc. A similarly complex example of a Mesopotamian palace was excavated at Mari in
Syria, dating from the Old Babylonian period.
Assyrian palaces of the Iron Age, especially at Kalhu/
Nimrud, Dur Sharrukin/
Khorsabad and Ninuwa/
Nineveh, have become famous due to the pictorial and textual narrative programs on their walls, all carved on stone slabs known as orthostats. These pictorial programs either incorporated cultic scenes or the narrative accounts of the kings' military and civic accomplishments. Gates and important passageways were flanked with massive stone sculpture of apotropaic mythological figures. The architectural arrangement of these Iron age palaces were also organized around large and small courtyards. Usually the king's throneroom opened to a massive ceremonial courtyard where important state councils met, state ceremonies performed.
Massive amounts of ivory furniture pieces were found in many Assyrian palaces pointing out an intense trade relationship with North Syrian
Neo-Hittite states at the time. There is also good evidence that bronze repousse bands decorated the wooden gates.
Economy
There was a large difference in
money and
wealth between rich and
ordinary people. Ordinary people were highly dependent on their crops, because they had very little
money. Rich people had many
slaves and usually lots of money.
1 talent
= 60 mina
= 3600
shekel 30 kg of
silver 
