7/8 World History
Week 5
Mesopotamia
Tuesday
Do Now
Why 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 Terms
Term
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.
Sumerian
Cities
• 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.
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.
Sumerian nobles
• The job of a Sumerian king was Above:
entering their city
to make sure his city was peaceful Right: statue of Gudea, king of
the city of Lagash
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.
Left: Enki, with fish in water surrounding
him
Right: Inanna, naked as the goddess of
love
Sumerian
Religion
•
The Sumerians had a
polytheistic religion (many
gods who ruled over
different aspects of life).
• Anu: god of the sky
• Enlil: god of the air
• Enki: god of water
Irkalla: god of the underworld
Inanna: goddess of love and warfare
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.
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 Now
Up to this point, we know people speak language
to each other. What made them think about
actually starting to WRITE language down?
Objectives
Students 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 Terms
Term
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 Ticket
What 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 Now
Why 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 Terms
Term
Definition
Sentence
“Epic of
Gilgamesh”
The world’s oldest known book, about Although it’s over 4,000 years old,
the mythical adventures of a real
the “Epic of Gilgamesh” is an
Sumerian king named Gilgamesh.
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.
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.
Ruins of a street and buildings in the Sumerian city of Mari
• 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?