Transcript EARLY RIVER VALLEY CIV

The Emergence of
civilizations
(@ 4000-3000 BCE)
EARLY RIVER
VALLEY
CIVILIZATIONS
Origins
• Why Mesopotamia?
• Fertile Crescent/Tigris/Euphrates (pg 30)
• Where? Modern day Kuwait and Iraq.
• Who were first to arrive? Sumerians
Disadvantages:
1.unpredictable flooding (unlike Egypt)
2.No natural protection
3.Limited natural resources
• How where these problems solved?
• City-states
The Standard of Ur

Clearly defined social classes
Emergence of organized formalized
religions
SUMER (p. 29-33)
• Cuneiform- knife carves wedges into a tablet
• Scribes worked with over 580 letters. Few
could use cuneiform
• Epic of Gilgamesh
• Cultural diffusion
• Ziggurats
• Conquered by Sargon and the Akkadians
• World’s first________.
cuneiform
writing
Sumerian farmers plowing
Bronze Age tools and
weapons
sailboat
limestone bowls Ur
Sumerian statues of Gods and Goddesses
Standard of Ur
Scenes of Peace
Scenes of war
Sumerian necklace
Sumerian Bull's Head,
Lyre from Tomb of
Paubi, c. 2600 B.C.
Early Sumerian
writing—
pictographs
Later Sumerian
writing—represent
sounds down from
3000 to 300
The Behistun Rock: the key to
deciphering cuneiform
BABYLON (p.33)
• Amorites invade Mesopotamia around 2000
BC
• Establish capital at Babylon on the
Euphrates
• Hammurabi and his code (“eye for an eye”)
• Concept of “codification”
• Rights to women?
ASSYRIANS (p.95-97)
• Capital is Ninevah
• Known for being nasty, violent, and vile
(often massacred conquered cities)
• Militaristic people with advanced weapons
• Eventually conquered by neo-Babylonians
(Chaldeans)and Medes
• 2 important kings= Sennacharib and
Ashurbanipal
Relief: Assyrian
conquest of Israel
CHALDEANS (p.97-98)
• “New” or “Neo” Babylonians
• Nebuchadnezzar
• Legends about Babylon: Hanging Gardens,
11 mile long wall, walls were supposedly
thick enough for a 4 horse chariot to ride on
Solomon’s Temple
Wailing Wall
Lion Hunt