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MESOPOTAMIA

BY : MOHAMMAD AKOUM
KHALED ABEDALAH
 

What is Mesopotamia?
The Word Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia (from the Greek, meaning
'between two rivers’) was an ancient region
located in the
eastern Mediterranean bounded in the
northeast by the Zagros Mountains and in
the southeast by the Arabian Plateau,
corresponding to today’s Iraq, mostly, but
also parts of modern-day Iran, Syria
and Turkey. The 'two rivers' of the name
referred to the Tigris and the Euphrates
rivers and the land was known as 'Al-Jazirah'
(the island) by the Arabs referencing what
Egyptologist J.H. Breasted would later call
the Fertile Crescent, where
Mesopotamian civilization began.

Mesopotamia map
Timeline
Cultures

The Sumerians Babylon Assyrian Akkadian

The Cultural background
To judge by the pottery, a high A beaker from Susa is painted
degree of technical skill was boldly and fluently with
attained. The walls of some of schematic* yet remarkably lively
their pots are quite amazingly animals in pure silhouette: a
thin and delicate—finer, in fact, frieze of very long-necked birds
than anything produced by their at the top, a band of running
immediate successors— and the dogs and, below, an ibex with
painted decorations foreshadow huge horns
later developments. * Schematic: Simplified

Mesopotamian Pottery, Beaker Painted

Mesopotamian carving depicting Gods of Nature Forces
▪ The civilization which developed about 4000 BC emerged not on the high plateaus favored by the Neolithic
cultures of the Near East, but on the flat, low-lying plains of Mesopotamia formed by the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers, whose waters the new settlers learnt to control. They were able to turn the formerly
unproductive and probably uninhabited flat lands into an enormous oasis, often called the 'fertile crescent',
stretching some way north of the rivers' swampy confluence* at the head of the Persian Gulf.

▪ The settlers called it Sumer. They lived in mud-brick settlements, which gradually grew to the size of towns and
cities, eleven or more, including Uruk, Eridu, Ur, Larsa and the recently discovered Tell Habuba in the Upper
Euphrates region.

▪ Independent and sometimes at war with each other, yet sharing one language and culture, they all held a
common belief in a pantheon* of gods personifying the creative and the destructive forces of nature.

* Confluence: The joining point of two rivers

* Pantheon: a cumulative of Gods of a specific religion

The Epic of Gilgamesh

• The Sumerians had a literature of great quality, for

example “The Epic of Gilgamesh”, which still, after
more than 4000 years, has the power to enthrall and
move. It is the world’s first great poem.

Tablet of Gilgamesh
 CUNEIFORM
Cuneiform or Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform one of the earliest systems of writing, was invented by the Sumerians.[3] It is
distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by means of a blunt reed for a stylus.The name cuneiform
itself simply means "wedge shaped”

Sumerian cuneiform writing

Arts

sculpture
 • Life-size statues of kings were produced, and from
one of them a superb bronze head with braided hair
and neatly curled beard survives
• It displays complete mastery of the techniques of
metal work. It is at once naturalistic and hieratic*, the
image of a ruler with a commanding aspect, which
must have been intensified and made to seem
almost superhuman when eyes of precious stone
flashed from the now empty sockets.

* hieratic: Involving priests

Head of Akkadian Ruler, Nineveh, 2300-2200BC, Broze, 30cm high, Iraq

The lizard man
 • Free-standing sculpture was also being carved before the end of the fourth millennium,
although only fragments survive.
• A life size white marble face of a woman found at Uruk is the finest.
• The carving is of extraordinary delicacy and sensitivity.
• Drill holes in the flat back appear to have been intended for attaching the mask to a
statue, presumably a wooden cult figure.

Female head from Uruk (City of Sumar), 3500-3000BC, Marble, 20cm high, Iraq
 Vase :
• The Mesopotamian art was a predominantly religious art and among the earliest survivals are some
tall alabaster* vases, more than 3 feet (90cm) high, from the temple at Uruk. They date from what is
called the Proto-literate period, i.e. the last centuries of the fourth millennium, when writing was
invented.

• On the top band of carving a man presents a basket to a woman, either the mother-goddess or her
priestess, behind whom other gifts are piled up, more baskets, vases and a ram supporting clothed
statuettes or figures of a man and a woman. Beneath this there is a procession of men carrying more
gifts; they are naked, as men were usually represented when approaching the gods.

* alabaster: a translucent for of gypsum

The Warka, or Uruk Vase

carving
• The artistry displayed in the carving of the vases is similar to that of
cylinder seals (Stamps), little cylinders of hard stone rarely as much as 5
cm high, incised with abstract or figurative designs so that, when one is
rolled across wax or damp clay, it leaves a relief* impression, usually as a
mark of ownership.

* relief: raised surface

Seals from Mohenjo-Daro, 2400-2000BC, 4cm

Ancient handbag
Inventions & Discoveries of
Mesopotamia
Agriculture and Irrigation


Farmers used to cultivate wheat, barley,

cucumbers, and other different foods and
vegetables. They used stone hoes to plow the
ground before the invention of the plow.

The Tigris and the Euphrates rivers that surround

Mesopotamia made irrigation and farming a lot
easier and more convenient. Mesopotamians
learned to control the flow of water from the river
and used it for irrigating crops.

During the main growing season, the flow of water

was properly regulated. Each farmer was allowed
a certain amount of water, which was diverted
from the canal into an irrigation ditch.
The invention of the wheel


The first wheel wasn’t used for transportation. The wheel was
invented to serve as porter’s wheels. The first wheel was believed to
exist around 3,500 BC in Mesopotamia.

Even though the wheel is believed to have first existed in Ancient

Mesopotamia, the oldest wheel named “Ljubljana Marshes Wheel”
was discovered in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia in 2002, and
dates 5,150 years back.

The wheel was not only used for the transportation purposes. It was
used widely in irrigation, pottery making, and milling. It acted as the
luxurious mode of transportation for rich people. The invention of
the chariot and other important inventions in history was based on
the invention of the wheel.
The invention of the Chariot


 Humans learned to domesticate horses, bulls, and
other animals that were useful for them. The chariot
was not a sudden invention, but the gradual
improvement of the earliest carriage.

The chariot was the first concept of personal

transportation. It had been used for years as a key
technology for warfare, for most of the ancient sports,
and as a means of transportation. The structure of
earliest chariot was made of light wood with a
bentwood rim.

The first chariot appeared around 3200 BC in

Mesopotamia. This form of chariot was used in most
every civilization until motorized transportation came
into existence.

Chariots were also used as a luxurious means of

transportation for the Royal families and higher class
people.
 The invention of the Sailboat
Transportation by land was hectic and took an enormous
amount of time. Sumerians realized that transportation via
sea would be a lot easier and more convenient . The first
boat was invented and used as transportation in rivers and
needed to be navigated by humans.

The sailboat was invented with a primitive design, which

ultimately helped the people with prosperous trade and
commerce. It was initially used to cross the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers for fishing and to explore other areas.

The primitive sailboat was square in shape and the sail

was made of cloth. The direction of the sailboat couldn’t be
changed. If the wind didn’t blow in the direction they
wanted to go, they had to wait for a change the wind’s
direction in their favor.
Time
Mesopotamians developed the concept of
time, dividing time units into 60 parts, which
eventually lead to 60-second minutes, and
60-minute hours.

The Babylonians made an astronomical

calculation in the base 60 system inherited
by Sumerians.

The number 60 was chosen because it was

easily divisible by six
Mathematics

When civilization started to flourish, people began to trade items, and they
needed an accurate system to count the goods that they gave and received.
Sumerians were the first people on earth to develop the concept of counting.

They also developed the sexagesimal, or base 60. The sexagesimal helped to
develop concepts like the 360-degree circle and the 12-month year.

They used 12 knuckles to count on one hand, and another five fingers on the
other hand. The Babylonians used base 6 (our modern system uses base 10),
where digits on the left column represent large values.

The concept of zero was developed by the Babylonians. People understood

the value of having nothing, but the concept of numerical zero wasn’t
invented before then.

Many scholars believed that the concept of zero was developed by Babylonian
and followed by various civilizations throughout the world in their own way.
However, some argue it was originally invented in India.
Sumarian Art Analysis:
• These statues found reveal that many of the conventions of religious art in the Near East (Later to be passed on
to Europe and also to the Far East) were already present.
• All of them look straight ahead, standing or kneeling in rigidly symmetrical poses with their hands clasped just
below their chests. Differences in size appear to denote hierarchical importance.
• Inscriptions reveal that to the Sumerians a statue was not simply a representation: it was believed to have a life of
its own.
• Many of the finest third-millennium works of art were discovered in the royal cemetery at Uruk, where Sumerian
kings and queens were buried in all the finery of their gold and jewelry, together with their attendants and
courtiers, who were killed so that they could accompany them into the next world.
* Cult: a religious group or thinking devoted to a particular figure or object
 Who were the 

Akkadians?
• Towards the beginning of the third millennium, if not earlier in some places, war
leaders replaced high priests as the rulers of Sumerian cities, without,
however, modifying the theocratic system of government. A greater change came
about 2350 bc, when Akkadians (regarded as the first empire in history), who had
infiltrated the area from the north-east, gained complete control.

• The expansionist policy of the Akkadians may partly account for a new emphasis
placed on the person of the ruler as an individual leader and conqueror and
not simply as the servant of the local god.
 • Naram Sin himself appears on a stele carved to celebrate victory
over an Iranian frontier tribe. He is shown nearly twice the size
of his soldiers, as gods (represented only by their symbols in the
sky) had previously been distinguished from mortals.
• To emphasize that single moment, the sculptor abandoned the
usual system of superimposed* bands of figures and treated the
whole surface as a single dramatic composition.
• There was originally no inscription (the writing on the hill is a
later addition); the meaning of the scene was expressed in
purely visual terms. Every line of the composition suggests the
climax of the action, with the upward movement of the
Akkadians from the left balanced by the fallen and falling
tribesmen and the survivors begging for mercy on the right.
* superimposed: act of laying objects over each other

Victory of Naram Sin, 2300-2200BC, Pink Sandstone, 203cm high

 • Akkadian rule collapsed about 2180 bc. Only one city survived,
Lagash (modern Telloh in Iraq), where literature and the visual arts
flourished in an oasis of peace under the ruler Gudea.
• Although Gudea followed Akkadian practice and set up life-size statues
of himself, they present a very different conception of kingship. He
styled himself the 'faithful shepherd' of his people, the servant of
Ningirau, the god of irrigation* and fertility.
• His clean-shaven face has a delicate, almost adolescent sensitivity, and he
is always shown in a piously* reflective mood

* irrigation: supply of water

* piously: the spirit of fulfilling religious obligations

Head of Gudea, Telloh, 2100BC, 23.2cm

Temples
• Temples had been built in Mesopotamia since the mid-fourth millennium bc.
• They were small mud-brick structures and not intended for communal* worship— access may well have been limited
to priests and the priest-kings—but raised on platforms which gave them prominence*.
• These platforms were soon transformed into squat stepped pyramids called ziggurats, conceived as holy
mountains, which brought the priests nearer to the gods, if not into their actual presence.

* communal: shared by all members of a community or society

* prominence: importance
Mesopotamian Ziggurat or temple
 Babylon
• A new period in Mesopotamian history began with the rise to pre-eminence* of Babylon early in the second
millennium bc. Under Hammurabi, who ruled from 1792 to 1750 BC, it became the capital of an empire to
the Persian Gulf.
• Hammurabi is of great historical importance as the author of the oldest surviving code of laws. Its
declared aim was to “cause justice to prevail in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil, that the strong might
not oppress the weak”.
• This code is inscribed under a relief of Hammurabi standing before the enthroned sun god at the summit of a holy
mountain or ziggurat—a perfect illustration of the semi-divine status of the priest-king, to whom the god, himself
in human form, delivers the laws

* pre-eminence: the act of surpassing others

 • This code is inscribed on a stone slab under a relief of
Hammurabi standing before the enthroned sun god at the
summit of a holy mountain or ziggurat—a perfect illustration
of the semi-divine status of the priest-king, to whom the god,
himself in human form, delivers the laws

Hamurabi Code, stele, Susa, 1760BC, 223 cm high Closeup of the law engravings on the stone slab
Conclusion
• Numerous civilizations rose and fell in the fertile lands of
Mesopotamia and the neighboring lands in western Asia.
• Still their art forms are surprisingly constant. Artists were hired to
express the authority of gods and rulers, and in doing so they played a
vital role in maintaining authority.
• They produced monuments, magnificent temples, relief free standing
sculpture, often on great scale, as well as intricate carvings on
cylindrical seals in precious metals such as; metals, ivory or stone.
• They also had sophisticated strategies for telling stories and guiding the
visitor’s movements through space