Discover the civilization and long history of Ancient Mesopotamia in our comprehensive guide. Map and timeline included.
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It was in Mesopotamia that the earliest cities, the first urban civilization, appeared, about 3500 BCE. ContentsOverview and Timeline Geography Language and Writing Government Warfare Religion Economy and Society Science and Technology Art and Culture When did Ancient Mesopotamian civilization disappear? Ancient Mesopotamia’s place in world history Further study report this ad report this ad Map of the Ancient Middle East in 3500 BCE, showing the merging Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia. Maps telling the story of Ancient Mesopotamia Timeline of Ancient Mesopotamian Civilization c. 5000-3500 BCE: The first city-states gradually develop in southern Mesopotamia. This is the achievement of the Sumerian people. c. 3500: Writing begins to be developed. At first this is based on pictograms, and takes about a thousand years to evolve into a full cuneiform script. c. 2300: King Sargon of Akkad starts conquering the first empire in world history. The empire reaches its height in c. 2220. c. 2100: The city of Ur becomes the center of a powerful Mesopotamian state. It soon falls into decline. This marks the decline of the Sumerians as the Amorites, a nomadic people, start moving into Mesopotamia. 1792-49: King Hammurabi of Babylon conquers a large empire. Hammurabi is famous for the law code which he issues. His empire begins to decline immediately after his death. c. 1530: Babylonia is conquered by the Kassites, who rule the area for 400+ years. c. 1500: The Mitanni, an Indo-European people, conquer northern Mesopotamia, plus areas of Syria and Asia Minor. After 200 years the kingdom of Assyria conquers northern Mesopotamia from the Mitanni From 1100: Nomadic peoples such as the Aramaeans and the Chaldeans overrun much of Mesopotamia. The kingdoms of Babylon and Assyria go into temporary decline. Please see the article on Assyrian civilization for later developments within Mesopotamia. How did Mesopotamian civilization fit into the wider history of the Ancient World? (Premium Resource) Geography of Ancient Mesopotamia “Mesopotamia” is a Greek word meaning “Land between the Rivers”. The region is a vast, dry plain through which two great rivers, the Euphrates and Tigris, flow. These rivers rise in mountain ranges to the north before flowing through Mesopotamia to the sea. As they approach the sea, the land becomes marshy, with lagoons, mud flats, and reed banks. Today, the rivers unite before they empty into the Persian Gulf, but in ancient times the sea came much further inland, and they flowed into it as two separate streams. Map of Mesopotamia in about 3500 BCE (The first of a sequence of maps covering Mesopotamia’s history) The land has too little rainfall to grow many crops on. As a result, much of it has been – and is still – home to herders of sheep and goat. These nomads move from the river pastures in the summer to the desert fringes in the winter, which get some rain at this time of year. At various times they have had a large impact on Mesopotamian history. Near the rivers themselves, the soil is extremely fertile. It is made up of rich mud brought down by the rivers from the mountains, and deposited over a wide area during the spring floods. When watered by means of irrigation channels, it makes some of the best farmland in the world. The marshy land near the sea also makes very productive farmland, once it had been drained. Here, the diet is enriched by the plentiful supply of fish to had from the lagoons and ponds. It is this geography which gave rise to the earliest civilization in world history. Agriculture is only possible in the dry climate of Mesopotamia by means of irrigation. With irrigation, however, farming is very productive indeed. A dense population grew up here along the Tigris and Euphrates and their branches in the centuries after 5000 BC. By 3500 BC, cities had appeared. The surplus food grown in this fertile landscape enabled the farming societies to feed a class of people who did not need to devote their lives to agriculture. These were the craftsmen, priests, scribes, administrators, rulers and soldiers who made civilization possible. See more on Mesopotamia and the rise of Civilization? (Premium resource) Language and Writing of Ancient Mesopotamia At the time when civilization first arose in Mesopotamia, the population was divided into two distinct groups: those who spoke Sumerian (a language unrelated to any modern language), and those who spoke Semitic dialects (related to modern Arabic and Hebrew). It was the Sumerian-speakers who lived near the great rivers, and it was they who built the first cities. Their language therefore became the first to be written down in world history. The first script to be used was based on pictures, and is therefore known as “pictographic”. They first appeared around 3500 BCE. By 3000 BCE the pictograms (of which there were more than a thousand) had become highly stylized, and were losing their original meanings. They were gradually becoming more “phonetic” – that is, reflecting spoken words. Finally, around 2500 BCE, the script had evolved into “cuneiform” – or wedge-shaped – writing. This was written by means of triangular-tipped stylus tools being pressed onto wet clay, and the symbols (which had been reduced to a more manageable 600 or so) were highly stylized and abstract. Early Mesopotamian writing (The Schoyen Collection) Learning to write in cuneiform was a long and rigorous process, and literacy was confined to a small elite of priests and officials. (Click here for more on the historical context in which writing first developed.) Cuneiform was at first written in the Sumerian language. For more than a millennium Sumerian retained importance as the language of administration, religion and high culture. However, in the centuries after 2000 BCE, it increasingly fell out of everyday use. In its place, a Semitic dialect, Akkadian (also known as “Old Babylonian”) became widespread. Later still, in the early 1st millennium BCE, another Semitic dialect, Aramaic, took its place. The waxing and waning of these languages reflected population movements within Mesopotamia, and to the rise and fall of ruling kingdoms and empires with which they were linked. As each language fell into decline in everyday use, it retained its usage amongst the conservative temple priests – much like Latin was used in the monasteries of Medieval Europe long after the rest of society had moved on. The cuneiform script, first developed by the Sumerians, remained in use, adapted for each successive language. Government in Ancient Mesopotamia One of the most remarkable things about Mesopotamian civilization is that here, right at the dawn of recorded history, we find states which organized their populations more tightly than all but a very few in subsequent ages. In truth, this situation is the result of gradual steps taken over hundreds, even thousands, of years, and only appears to arrive fully formed as written records begin to shed their light; however, the sheer scope of the state’s control over the lives of the people is astonishing. Politically, the each Sumerian city formed its own city-state, composed of the city itself and the farmland for several miles around. These city-states were fiercely independent from one another, and warfare between them was frequent. Priests and bureaucrats In early Sumerian cities, the temple stood at the very center of public life, both political and religious. The god of the city was held to own the city; in practice, this translated into the temple controlling the productive land of the city-state. There are indications that the common people (who were also owned by the god, an therefore under the temple’s authority) brought what they grew to the temple, and received back what they needed to live on from the priests. If this is correct, then we have here as near a communist state as we ever get in history. Whatever the true situation (and it probably varied from city to city) the temple acted as a major center of distribution: receiving, storing and disbursing the food (and other goods, such as seed and agricultural implements) as needed, and keeping back stocks for years of poor harvest or floods. In these circumstances the first bureaucracies in history emerged. Scribes and accountants were needed to keep track of what was being brought into and sent out of the temple store houses. They left behind them thousands and thousands of documents on clay tablets, the majority of them as yet unstudied. The temple would also have employed a large number of menial laborers, as well as skilled craftsmen, and probably even traders who were dispatched to barter with peoples further afield for much needed building materials and other products. In a sense, in fact, the farmers too were temple employees, working the god’s land and under the authority of the temple priests and overseers. The remains of the ancient ziggurat temple at the great Mesopotamian city of Ur (Photo: Hardnfast) Kings By the mid-third millennium, the political dominance of the temple was seriously modified by the rise of kingship in all the Mesopotamian city-states. Exactly how this first came about is unknown, but it seems likely that this development was linked to the endemic warfare that set in between city-states at this time (attested by the appearance of city walls). It may have been that the high priests of the temples – who, in an age when politics and religion were deeply entwined would always have been highly political figures – became more and more important as the people of the city looked to them for military leadership; or it may have been that gifted war-leaders were given (or seized) pre-eminent power in the states. In any event, during the early third millennium BCE kingship arose in all the city-states, and in subsequent centuries became gathered more and more power and status to themselves (judging by the ever-larger palaces that they built). Accompanying this process was the alienation of land away from the temples, with the growth of large estates in the hands of rulers, and later of private individuals. Other aspects of economic life, such as trade and craftwork, followed a similar course. Hammurabi enthroned as king of Babylon by the god, Shamash (The Louvre) The king was held to be the earthly representative of the patron god of the city. He was a sacred being, and to disobey him was to disobey the god. His primary duty was to ensure that the people served their god properly. Because the people believed themselves to be the slaves of their god, they were also viewed as being slaves of the king. However, the king was also seen as the shepherd of his people, and his duty was not simply to ensure their obedience; it was also to provide justice and order, to protect property, and of course to defend the people from attack. Larger states From time to time, one of these city-states would succeed in conquering its neighbors, with the conquering ruler becoming acknowledged by other kings as their overlord, or high king. Extensive states would thus be formed temporarily, enduring for a generation or two. However, holding such conquests together was hard, in the face of invasions from the surrounding mountains or deserts, or from rebellions from within. Mesopotamia would soon fall back into its normal patchwork of small states. As time went by, however, the independence of the city-states was gradually undermined as more enduring states covering many cities arose. From the early 2nd millennium, southern Mesopotamia was usually unified under the control of various dynasties, ruling from the large city of Babylon. As a result, this region came to be called Babylonia. Some time later, northern Mesopotamia came to be dominated by the Assyrians. (You can see these trends by contrasting the map of Mesopotamia in 2500 BCE and in 1500 BCE.) Administration Mesopotamian rulers had wide duties. Not only had they to maintain law and order, but they had to ensure that the canals and irrigation systems were in proper working order, so that agriculture could thrive. As a result, much of the bureaucratic apparatus that had grown up to serve the temple was now under the orders of the king, to assist him in fulfilling his awesome responsibilities. The Sumerian city-states had a complex hierarchy of scribes and officials to look after the complex workings of the temple and royal government. Most notably, Ur, at the height of its power under Shulgi (reigned 2094-2047 BCE), had a large and elaborate bureaucracy to administer the remarkably centralized state it had built up. A few centuries later, Hammurabi, king of Babylon (1792-49 BCE) also had a large organization of officials to assist him rule his empire. By this date, Mesopotamian states also had a regular postal system at their service. To sustain the state apparatus, Mesopotamian landowners had to pay the king a portion of the crops they grew. They also had to provide labor services (“corvée”) to work on the irrigation dykes, channels and canals, and men for the army – theoretically, every male was liable for military service, with only a few exemptions. Also, the king owned large estates from which he could draw income. The individual cities were also responsible for the upkeep of their local irrigation systems, and could raise their own labor for this. To meet their local government needs, the subordinate cities could impose their own taxes and dues, as well as levy duties on local trade. Law One of the major contributions of ancient Mesopotamia to government practice was the development of written law codes. The most famous of these is the Code of Hammurabi, written about 1780 BCE. However, this code drew on earlier codes going back to the Sumerian city-states of the 3rd millennium BCE. Excerpt from Hammurabis Code (The Louvre: photo by Marie-Lan Nguyen) Hammurabi’s code and its predecessors were written on clay tablets or stone pillars, so that they could be seen in public. From them, we know a great deal about the Mesopotamian legal system. Cases were heard by judges appointed by the king; in important cases, a panel of judges was appointed. Appeals could be made to the king. Indeed, it seems that one of the reasons for Hammurabi issuing his Code was to make it clear to all his subjects (who would have been accustomed to different laws in different places) on what basis decisions would be arrived at if appeals were made to the royal court. A person could not be convicted unless there was clear evidence of his or her guilt. However, carelessness or negligence could be harshly punished – famously, the builder of a building which fell down and killed a person could himself be killed (and if it killed a man’s son, then his own son could be killed!). By modern standards, punishments could be harsh – many crimes carried the death penalty (with sentences ranging from hanging to burning). Flogging was used for various crimes, but fines were the most common punishment. As well as criminal law, there was a well-developed body of civil law. Contracts, deeds and agreements had to be written on a clay tablet, witnessed on oath and placed in the temple archives, so that in case of dispute they could be referred to later. Warfare Warfare was endemic in early Mesopotamian society, as cities quarreled over land and water rights. The Sumerian city-states organized the first true armies (as opposed to warrior bands) in history. We know very little about how these armies were composed or organized. Fragmentary evidence suggests that there was a small permanent corps of trained soldiers, which would be supplemented in times of war by a larger group of citizens, called up until they were no longer needed (presumably at the end of the years’ fighting season). Their elite soldiers were armed with bronze armor and weapons, and less-well armed but more mobile troops were deployed slings and bows and arrows. In the 2nd millennium BCE, Mesopotamian armies adopted a new piece of military technology, the horse-drawn chariot. This was an innovation imported from the nomads of the steppes to the north. Mastering chariot warfare demanded considerable training and practice, and the adoption of this technology must have given further impetus to the use of trained, perhaps even professional, soldiers. (Click here for the Assyrian army, which brought Mesopotamian warfare to its peak.) A bas relief showing a Mesopotamian army on the march (Stele of the Vultures, the Louvre; photo: Eric Garba) Ancient Mesopotamian Religion Mesopotamian religion was polytheistic; more than 2,000 gods and goddesses have been identified. The chief of the gods varied from period to period. For the Sumerians, it was Enlin, the Sky God. The Babylonians worshipped Marduk above all others, and Ashur was the supreme god of the Assyrians. Other notable gods and goddesses were Ishtar, goddess of love and fertility, Tiamat, god of the sea and chaos, and Sin, the moon god. Marduk, high god of the Babylonians (the Louvre) The Mesopotamians conceived of the material world as being deeply bound up with the divine. Every household, village and city had its own god. Everything that happened on Earth had a divine dimension to it – was at least as much the result of the wishes of gods as of men and women. The overriding purpose of man was to serve the gods. This meant not just tending the gods’ sanctuaries and burning incense at their altars, it meant feeding them and providing them with all their material needs. In early Mesopotamian times this meant that the entire economic life of a city-state was geared to the service of the temple. Later, with the rise of kings, the idea grew that, as representatives of the gods on Earth (indeed, in some senses kings were seen as being the patron gods of their cities) they were responsible for the people’s service to the gods. This gave religious justification for their complete authority over their subjects. Mesopotamian cosmology viewed the world as a flat disc, with a canopy of air above, and beyond that, surrounding water above and below. The universe was held to have come out of this water. The Mesopotamians had a rich store of myths and legends. The most famous of th… truncated (36,268 more characters in archive)