Their areas also had land routes to places to the north beyond the mountains, where they could obtain materials such as obsidian , a type of rock that can be used in jewelry or for making cutting tools. But they also created gardens shaded by date palms, where they cultivated a wide variety of crops including beans, peas, lentils, cucumbers, leeks, lettuce and garlic, as well as fruit such as grapes, apples, melons and figs.
They also milked sheep, goats and cows to make butter, and slaughtered them for meat. Eventually, the agricultural revolution in Mesopotamia led to what Diamond describes as the next big step in progress, the Urban Revolution. Roughly 5, to 6, years ago in Sumer, villages evolved into cities. One of the earliest and most prominent was Uruk , a walled community with 40, to 50, inhabitants.
The Sumerians developed may have been the earliest system of writing as well as sophisticated art, architecture, and complex government bureaucracies to supervise agriculture, commerce and religious activity.
Sumer also became a hotbed of innovation , as the Sumerians took inventions that other ancient peoples developed, from pottery to textile weaving, and figured out how to do them on an industrial scale. Meanwhile, Upper Mesopotamia developed its own urban areas such as Tepe Gawra , where researchers have discovered brick temples with intricate recesses and pilasters, and found other evidence of a sophisticated culture.
According to Reculeau, climate shifts may have played a role in the development of Mesopotamian civilization. The Chaldeans made a separate alliance with the Elamites, and together they took Babylonia.
Sargon II lost to the Chaldeans but switched to attacking Syria and parts of Egypt and Gaza, embarking on a spree of conquest before eventually dying in battle against the Cimmerians from Russia. Esarhaddon struggled to rule his expanded empire. A paranoid leader, he suspected many in his court of conspiring against him and had them killed. His son Ashurbanipal is considered to be the final great ruler of the Assyrian empire. Ruling from to B.
Nabopolassar attempted to take Assyria but failed. His son Nebuchadnezzar reigned over the Babylonian Empire following an invasion effort in B. Nebuchadnezzar is known for his ornate architecture, especially the Hanging Gardens of Babylon , the Walls of Babylon and the Ishtar Gate.
Under his rule, women and men had equal rights. Nebuchadnezzar is also responsible for the conquest of Jerusalem , which he destroyed in B. He appears in the Old Testament because of this action. Nabonidus was such an unpopular king that Mesopotamians did not rise to defend him during the invasion. Babylonian culture is considered to have ended under Persian rule, following a slow decline of use in cuneiform and other cultural hallmarks.
Eventually, the region was taken by the Romans in A. Mesopotamian religion was polytheistic, with followers worshipping several main gods and thousands of minor gods. The three main gods were Ea Sumerian: Enki , the god of wisdom and magic, Anu Sumerian: An , the sky god, and Enlil Ellil , the god of earth, storms and agriculture and the controller of fates. Ea is the creator and protector of humanity in both the Epic of Gilgamesh and the story of the Great Flood.
In the latter story, Ea made humans out of clay, but the God Enlil sought to destroy humanity by creating a flood. Ea had the humans build an ark and mankind was spared. If this story sounds familiar, it should; foundational Mesopotamian religious stories about the Garden of Eden, the Great Flood, and the Creation of the Tower of Babel found their way into the Bible, and the Mesopotamian religion influenced both Christianity and Islam.
Each Mesopotamian City had its own patron god or goddess, and most of what we know of them has been passed down through clay tablets describing Mesopotamian religious beliefs and practices. A painted terracotta plaque from B. While making art predates civilization in Mesopotamia, the innovations there include creating art on a larger scale, often in the context of their grandiose and complex architecture, and frequently employing metalwork.
A Kneeling bull holding a spouted vessel, one of the earliest examples of metalwork in art from Mesopotamia. One of the earliest examples of metalwork in art comes from southern Mesopotamia, a silver statuette of a kneeling bull from B. Before this, painted ceramics and limestone were the most common art forms.
Another metal-based work, a goat standing on its hind legs and leaning on the branches of a tree, featuring gold and copper along with other materials, was found in the Great Death Pit at Ur and dates to B. Mesopotamian art often depicted its rulers and the glories of their lives. Also created around B.
One famous relief in his palace in Nimrud shows him leading an army into battle, accompanied by the winged god Assur. Ashurbanipal is also featured in multiple reliefs that portray his frequent lion-hunting activity. An impressive lion image also figures into the Ishtar Gate in B. Mesopotamian art returned to the public eye in the 21st century when museums in Iraq were looted during conflicts there. Many pieces went missing, including a 4,year-old bronze mask of an Akkadian king, jewelry from Ur, a solid gold Sumerian harp, 80, cuneiform tablets and numerous other irreplaceable items.
Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization. Paul Kriwaczek. Ancient Mesopotamia. Leo Oppenheim. University of Chicago. Mesopotamia B.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Editors at Phaidon. At some point in antiquity, in the land of Sumer modern-day Iraq and Kuwait , irrigation was invented as a way of exploiting the fertile earth of southern Mesopotamia.
To organise the network of irrigation channels and canals, an administrative system was established that in time stimulated the rise of first city-states, such as Uruk, then kingdoms, and eventually empires.
Following the invention, around BC, by the Sumerians of the cuneiform script — a system of writing that derives its name from the Latin word cuneus wedge , a reference to the distinctive shapes of the signs that scribes impressed with a stylus into soft clay tablets that were then dried in the sun — these customs and beliefs were preserved in written texts.
Many official tablets were also stamped with cylinder seals, another distinctively Mesopotamian piece of technology. There were scribes and bureaucrats who maintained the tradition, despite the rise and fall of empires, and the arrival of new people and ideas. Mesopotamia is like a sponge. Whenever new people arrive in the region, they absorb the long traditions of Mesopotamia.
We see a lot of continuity in terms of religious beliefs and administrative practices. The way that we count time, dividing up each hour into 60 minutes, is something we have inherited from the Mesopotamians. Even the first attested consumption of beer comes from Mesopotamia, where dairy and weaving were also developed. In his new book, Paul Collins traces the interaction between Mesopotamia and the peoples of the highlands of present-day Iran.
The Zagros Mountains were rich copper, which could be used for tools and weapons, as well as lead, silver and gold. Sadly, in recent years the so-called Islamic State has done irrevocable damage to many important Mesopotamian monuments and sites.
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