MESOPOTAMIA

9th Ancient History

Mr. Melvin Rodríguez-Rodríguez
 WHAT DO
NOTICE ON
THIS MAP?
 FERTILE CRESCENT

• Tigris and Euphrates rivers floods

• Silt – bed of mud
• Water provides irrigation
• Harvests of wheat and barley
• Surpluses of food allowed villages to grow
 UR IN SUMER

• Irrigation systems provide a

steady food supply
• After several generations
agricultural villages develop
into cities
• Food surpluses allow people to
invest time in other skills and
craft things like pottery, woven
cloth, metal objects
 SOCIAL CHANGES

• Large irrigation systems require workers

• Social classes with varying wealth, power and influence
emerge
• Religion becomes more complex and organized
• Beliefs centered around nature, animal spirits, and some
idea of the afterlife
 RECORD
KEEPING

• Priests, merchants, government need

to keep account of numbers
• Around 3000 BC, Sumerian scribes
invented the cuneiform system of
writing
• Cuneiform means wedge-shaped
• The scribes’ tool was called a stylus
• The stylus was pressed into moist clay
to create symbols
• The tablet was then baked in the sun
 THE
WHEEL
NO MONEY?
ZIGGURAT: MOUNTAIN OF GOD
ZIGGURAT
 ZIGGURAT

• Flight of around 100 mud-brick stairs

• Animal sacrifices
• Storage of grains, fabrics, and gems
• Works as a city hall
C I TY- S TAT E S
 CITY-STATES

• Emerge by 3000 BC
• A city and its surrounding lands
• Shared culture, but different governments
 HOW RULERS CAME TO BE

You’re the city’s high priest. Information arrives, telling of an army that is
approaching your city. You don’t want your city to be ravaged, but you need to
stay in the city in order to offer sacrifices to the gods, so they can protect your
people. How do you manage both?
 RELIGION

• Polytheism – belief in more than one god

• Gods had human desires, love stories, quarrels, etc.
• They were all powerful, immortal and enormous
• They controlled certain aspects of nature