Sample Essays: Ancient Mediterranean World (Exam One)
Read each essay carefully. After reading them think of specific ways that they could be improved. All three
essays are good, but they also have many areas of weakness. If you were to re-write each essay, what
specific changes would you make and why? Be specific.
Essay One:
Egypt like many of the countries of the time thrived around a river, the Nile. Unlike the other rivers
the Nile flooded on a regular timetable, providing fertile soil for farm land. The Nile itself and
ports on the Mediterranean Sea provided the Egyptians a water highway for trade and
transportation. The desert surrounding their home provided many ores, and a barrier from invasion.
The only true way to attack Egypt was through the Nile delta. As a government this was the only
unified state of its time. All the other countries were made up with many separate individual citystates. Like all those societies, Egypt was made up of a social hierarchy. The king and his family
were on the top followed by their relatives, priests, advisors, governors, and army officials. The
common people did all the manual labor such as farming and building. Women had rights and
usually kept to private life tending to the households and properties.
Greece on the other hand was very different in geography than many other places at the time. They
did not thrive around rivers because they dried up each summer. The land was very mountainous,
so they couldn’t mass farm. They instead lived near either the Mediterranean, or Aegean Sea. This
provided trade routes and food. They also herded sheep, goats, and swine. In the areas where they
could farm they practiced polyculture or the cultivation of olives, grapes, and grain in one
agricultural system. This allowed less people to produce much more because of the crop cycles.
The mountainous terrain did not allow them to unify, so they developed polis or separate city-states.
Unlike many other places they did not have a king, but rather all citizen males gathered at political
meetings to vote on issues. The lack of materials for some polis prompted them to attack others,
which happened very often. Each city had an army of hoplites to defend themselves. Wars
happened so often it was a from of arête for men to try and out do each other by having elaborate
armor and weapons.
The Sumerians were the first civilization to appear in Mesopotamia, the land between two rivers.
They lived in walled cities such as Ur and Uruk. They made technological advancements with a
sturdy wheel that allowed for the transportation of materials. They also developed the first written
language called cuneiform. They first used it mainly for accounting, but expanded to use it to keep
track of math, oral traditions, and history. Unlike the Nile, the Tigris and Euphrates randomly
flooded in a violent manner wiping out crops. Each city was ruled by a king and had a social
hierarchy similar to the Egyptians. They also used and abused slaves, for they had no laws defining
their treatment. The random dumping of wastes polluted the water supply so wines and other
beverages were prominent. The cities had a park area for people to go in order to escape the smells.
They traded some or raided other city-states for slaves and materials.
Essay Two:
Natural material factors such as geography, environment, & climate significantly affect the
development of civilizations. These factors then affect how non-material factors such as politics,
religion, & social structure evolve as civilizations develop.
The most important material factor in the formation of ancient Egyptian civilization is the Nile
River. Every year the Nile would flood, washing away harmful salt deposits, & leaving fertile silt
loaded with nutrients. Egyptian life revolved around these floods and they could make or break a
monarchy. The king, said to be god in human form, enjoyed support as long as the Nile flooded.
When the floods failed to come however, he was said to have lost his ma’at—the force which led to
harmony in the world. The Egyptians were also heavily influenced by their neighbors the to the
south, the Nubians. Their hierarchy is said to have been learned from them. Also the writings of
Egyptians, hieroglyphs (a pictographic script) is believed to have been influenced by Nubian.
Ruled by a divine king, the Egyptians were consumed with religion. A strong belief in the afterlife
led to the building of the pyramids, some of the grandest monuments left in the world today. Much
of the work done on the pyramids was labor to pay taxes by the free people (not slaves) while the
Nile was flooding & no farming could be done. This illustrates how a material factor (geography)
affects a non-material one (religion).
In Greece the mountainous region limited farmable land, & isolated the people living there. This is
why Greece was never a unified state. The many sea ports led to abundant trade, which greatly
affected Greek culture, pulling the Greeks from the Dark Age when Phoenicians re-introduced the
alphabet and brought the technology of smelting ore. The fact that there were no powerful rulers of
the multiple city-states led to great competition for power. Arete, the Greek word for excellence,
described the competitive value in Greek society. Men demonstrated this through war, persuasive
speeches, and athletic competition (Olympic Games); women showed it in the ability to manage a
household. The Greeks also believed strongly in divine justice, they believed Zeus, the ruler of the
gods was its source. In Homer’s Iliad & Odyssey, we see an example of how the Greeks thought
the gods influenced their lives. Honor was truly important to them.
Finally, the Hebrews go against the grain in that their material factors influenced them very little.
They did wander from place to place to find a steady source of food & avoid conflict. This
wandering led to them enslavement in Egypt. Developing a monarchy for only a brief period under
Saul, David, & Solomon, the Hebrews were usually at the mercy of more powerful civilizations.
They were constantly overrun by others. However the development of the Jewish law dictated how
a faithful Jew should live their life allowed them to adapt outside their homeland.
Essay Three:
A civilization means to live a large community with many other people with economics, identity,
and a writing system. Before civilization, people were known as hunter-gatherers. They roamed
around looking for food. The men would go out and hunt for game while the women and children
gathered grain, roots, and fruits from plants. At this time both genders shared equality.
Between 10,000 and 4,000 B.C., people started to turn away from hunting and became farmers.
This Neolithic Revolution, aided by a warmer and wetter climate, started to establish permanent
crops such as barley and wheat settling of communities with people settling in villages and cities.
The first cities like Ur were formed in the Fertile Crescent where conditions were particularly good
for farming along the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. Like most early civilizations, the emphasis on
religion was important. Sumerians built huge temples of mud-brick called ziggurats in a stair-step
design. They also invented a writing system around 3,000 B.C. called cuneiform to handle
accounting. Cuneiform was made up pictures initially and became more abstract and phonetic as it
evolved.
Around the same time ancient Egyptian civilization emerged along the banks of the Nile River.
Unlike the Sumerians, Egyptians were unified under a single ruler rather than warring city-states.
King Narmer united both Upper (south) and Lower (north) Egypt around 3,000 B.C. Also different
from Mesopotamia, the Nile’s floods were predictable. When the river flooded, the people would
work on building temples and pyramids as preparation places for the afterlife. When the land
wasn’t flooded, they would farm the land. Like the Sumerians, Egyptians were polytheistic,
worshipping many gods and goddesses. They constructed pyramids for rulers like Khufu who
themselves were believed to be divine. These rulers’ job was to keep Ma’at in balance, the floods
regular and life in a stable, repeating cycle. Egyptians also had a writing system that connected to
their religion called hieroglyphs. It wasn’t until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799 that
hieroglyphs could be read by modern scholars.
A third ancient civilization were the Greeks. Their settlements were made up of tiny, fragmented
city-states called polises. Because of their mountainous terrain, different from the river-based
societies of Egypt and Mesopotamia, there wasn’t much farm land or land of livestock. Instead, the
Greeks grew grapes and olives for wine and olive oil to trade and raised goats and sheep. Many
city-states were within 40 miles of the coast, trading with the civilizations of Egypt and
Mesopotamia. The Greeks developed different political systems, in part because of their
geographical situation. They also adopted ideas from other cultures through trade such as Egyptian
style sculpture and the Phoenician alphabet for writing.
All three of these civilizations were polytheistic, in contrast to the ancient Hebrews who developed
monotheism over time. Belief in a single god, Yahweh, and an agreement with this god or covenant
would greatly shape later Western civilization. Civilization developed from nomads to settled cities
for farming. Different civilizations developed differently because of geographical factors and
differing beliefs. However, they were all important to Western civilization as it is today.
Reminders:
1) Clear Introductory Paragraph: Lays out what the essay will be about and its broad
argument
2) Evidence Paragraphs: Provide specific evidence, explanations, and details that support the
broad argument connecting directly to the question
3) Relevant Information: All essays must contain facts or evidence that is actually related to
the questions being asked.
4) Time Constraints: All essays could be better if given more time, but you have to work
within the time limit. This means being concise, specific, and organized. Therefore,
practice is the only real way to improve [see below].
Practice Activities:
Re-write the essays above within a time limit. Add information, re-word sentences, edit out empty
language, etc. Also practice by taking the essay question you did not answer for Exam One and
write a response within a time limit. I will gladly look at these examples and discuss their strengths
& weaknesses with you outside of class time.