Transcript CR Version PPP- People of Mesopotamia - Buckhannon

Where did human society begin?
Mesopotamia
“The Cradle of Civilization”
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People of Mesopotamia
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People of Mesopotamia
The term Mesopotamia refers not only to a geographical area,
but also to a period of history that lasted for more than 3000
years.
Mesopotamia was a “melting pot” of cultures, social structures,
religious traditions, and at times, polities or political groups.
There was uniformity of things Mesopotamian
the long-time use of the same writing system, the duration of
the same city features, royal ideas, mythology and literature,
and so forth.
“Mesopotamian” was a person who participated in
Mesopotamian religions, traditions, social organizations,
languages, and culture.
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Fertile Crescent
(shown in green)
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The Fertile Crescent
How does your environment impact your life? All human
societies are shaped in some way by the environment around
them.
The term Mesopotamia itself refers most often to a
geographical area, that of the “Land Between the Rivers:” an
area which covers modern Iraq and the north and northeastern
part of modern Syria.
This region is part of the Fertile Crescent, a term describing the
arc of fertile land stretching from the top of the Persian Gulf all
the way to the Nile River of Egypt.
Although we use these terms today, remember, the actual
Mesopotamians didn’t.
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Tigris and Euphrates
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A view of the Euphrates
Tigris and Euphrates
Just like highways in America make towns pop up around off-ramps,
two major rivers made Mesopotamia a booming area.
The Tigris and Euphrates rivers provided good land for crops and easy
transportation. The rivers started in the north of Mesopotamia in
modern Turkey, flowing southward to the Persian Gulf.
The rivers were vital for transporting goods and people and remained so even
after the domestication of the camel.
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Canals and Irrigation
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Canals and Irrigation
The term Fertile Crescent makes one think this entire area was a lush
garden, but don’t forget that this was also a desert region with widely
different environments.
Southern Mesopotamia did not receive enough precipitation for rainfed agriculture and farming. The southern areas depended completely
upon successful irrigation.
Irrigation allowed southern Mesopotamia to become the agricultural
center of the ancient Near East; some scholars have even called it a
“bread-basket.”
Using the rivers to the fullest, the southern Mesopotamians carved
massive canals into the landscape to channel river waters into their
huge farmlands.
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Farming the Desert
Hoisting water out of the river into a canal
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Farming the Desert
Those who live near water, cringe when they hear the “F” word—
FLOODING. Even though this canal system allowed for the
development of Mesopotamian civilization, it was not without big
problems. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers could be violent and
unpredictable , causing surprise and disastrous floods.
Another problem was salinization, or the gradual deposit of salt onto
fields. Over time, fields became too saline and many types of crops
would not be able to absorb moisture, failing to grow.
Fields had to be left fallow if they were to recover.
The result of these disasters could be devastating to communities and probably
contributed to the generally pessimistic outlook that the Mesopotamians had.
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International Trade
Relief from Khorsabad showing Assyrian workers as they move valuable,
imported
timber along a waterway
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A Necklace
from Ur, made
of gold, lapis
lazuli, and
carnelian,
imports to
Mesopotamia
International Trade
The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers served as lifelines for Mesopotamia.
They were vital for getting goods in and out of the area.
The most notable products of Mesopotamian economy were wool and
grains.
Wool was made into cloth, which was often dyed and used as clothing and a
selection of both practical and luxury items.
Grain was used for feeding animals and people, for whom it was made into
breads and beer.
Both textiles and grains were exported out of Mesopotamia to neighboring
societies in exchange for the materials that Mesopotamia lacked: large,
monumental stones, precious metals, and large, sturdy timber.
Precious stones and metals had to be imported to the ancient
Mesopotamians.
They were considered symbols of royal power and wealth.
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Cities
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Cities
Mesopotamian cities may not have had subways, but they had canal
ways that kept them thriving.
In ancient Mesopotamia, cities were places of economy, religion, and
points of political life.
Cities had many farms located near, or even, inside the city walls.
They also housed craft specialists and manufacturers.
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Mud-Bricks
Modern mud-brick making-- exactly as it was done in Mesopotamia
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Mud Bricks
Not only was there water, water everywhere near Mesopotamian
cities, but there was mud in abundance.
All Mesopotamian cities owe their existence to the mud-brick.
The marshy banks of the rivers in Mesopotamia provided clay,
which was used throughout Mesopotamian history to make mudbricks.
The bricks could be baked or unbaked, depending on their purpose.
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Walls and Gates
The Gate at Nineveh
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Depiction of the walls and gate of Babylon
Walls and Gates
With loads of bricks laying around, Mesopotamian builders and
planners could get creative.
Most cities had massive, mud-brick walls with towers.
The walls did not necessarily define the boundary of the city, they
served a military and protective purpose.
It has long been pointed out that these walls symbolized the constant warfare
among Mesopotamian cities and foreign enemies.
As places of high traffic, gates were also places of economic activity
and sometimes markets.
Instead of meeting friends at a particular building one might meet at a wall or
gate.
The walls were gigantic, conspicuous symbols of the king’s authority
over the city, and they could be seen on the horizon from miles away.
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Ziggurats
The ziggurat at Ur
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Ziggurats
Walls and gates weren’t the only massive architectural structures in
town. In early Mesopotamia, monumental buildings dominated the
inner part of cities: temples sprawled the city centers while ziggurats
governed city skylines.
Ziggurats were step-shaped structures built of mud-brick, which
would have been painted or glazed with bright colors.
They were usually located in the center of the gods’ temples, and were perhaps
meant to symbolize mountains, the birthplace of gods.
Ziggurats were solid in the center and did not contain interior rooms.
What the Mesopotamians did atop ziggurats remains unclear, but they were
certainly used for sacred rituals of some kind.
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Palaces
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Palaces
• Palaces served as private spaces for the royal family, but were also
housed archives, storerooms, and craft workshops.
• One of the most famous and better-preserved Mesopotamian palaces
comes from the city of Mari.
• It was a wonder of the world, decorated with murals, statues, and even palm
trees.
• The palace had almost 300 rooms, including kitchens, workshops, storerooms,
offices, archive rooms, private residential quarters, a throne room, and more.
• These rooms were oriented around two great courtyards, the larger of which
served an audience hall for the king where he could receive, entertain, and
impress his guests.
• The palace was in fact so impressive that rival kings ordered their messengers
to bring them reports about its splendor.
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Uruk
Colored clay cone mosaic
used to decorate the temples
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The remains of the city, with a ziggurat still towering above the
temple complex
Uruk
Important in mythology and real life. the city of Uruk is one of the
first cities in Mesopotamia. It was a huge city with two main areas or
precincts.
Uruk’s size is still recognizable today even though it’s in ruins and hidden by
the desert.
One precinct was called Eanna, where there was a temple complex for
the goddess Ishtar (who was the chief goddess of Uruk) and a
ziggurat.
These buildings were beautifully decorated with painted clay cone mosaics.
The other precinct, Anu, also contained large buildings and was
named for the god An.
Also, notice that the name Uruk sounds almost like the modern-day name Iraq
which makes some believe that the term “Iraq” may have come from “Uruk”.
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Nineveh
The gates of
Nineveh,
reconstructed
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Ninevah
Nineveh (modern Kuyunjik) is undoubtedly one of the most famous
ancient Mesopotamian cities. It was famous in the ancient world as
well as today.
It even appears in the Old Testament of the Bible.
Assurbanipal, the grandson of the great King Sennacherib, built the
famous North Palace at Nineveh, which was decorated with a stone
relief of a lion hunt – a symbol of kingly power and mastery over
nature.
Nineveh’s dominance and power was forever destroyed when the
Medes and Babylonians conspired to end Assyrian domination of
northern Mesopotamia in the late 600’s BCE.
The impressive palace reliefs and reconstructed remains of the city’s walls still
stand today.
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Writing: Cuneiform
Clay tokens
Archaic style of cuneiform
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Writing Cuneiform
Thanks to the Mesopotamians, writing was born.
One of the most important revolutions to occur in ancient
Mesopotamia, and in human history in general, is the invention of
writing.
Writing systems are means by which a language is expressed.
The Mesopotamian writing system, cuneiform, expressed language
through signs from the Sumerian and Akkadin language.
We have examples of the language in the form of coins, tokens and tablets
made of clay.
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Writing Cuneiform
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Writing Cuneiform
Cuneiform looks like a kind of stick figure writing system.
It was a writing system designed for clay; throughout the 3000 years
of its use, cuneiform was written on clay tablets with the use of a reed
stylus.
The earliest signs in cuneiform were pictographic; that is, they looked
like the object that they represented.
They were in essence a form of stick figure artwork.
Over time, the signs became more abstract and stylized, and at some
point rotated 90 degrees on their sides.
By the first millennium BCE, the signs are so abstract that they no
longer resemble objects or pictures.
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Early accounting texts
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Early Accounting Texts
Just as today, buying and selling items in Mesopotamia required
paperwork.
The Mesopotamians invented writing to address that field of the
economy: accounting.
Around 3300 BCE, people and institutions (such as governments and
schools) required ways to store and share information.
The first use of writing was for making receipts, records of
deliveries/accounts, shipments, donations, and so forth.
The numerical system that was used on these accounting texts was so
complicated that modern mathematicians and scholars still struggle to
understand it completely.
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Literature
The “Flood Tablet” of the Epic of Gilgamesh
The Babylonian Map of the World
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Literature
Within a few hundred years of its invention, scribes began to
develop other uses for writing, such as writing literature.
Some of the earliest works in literature, such as stories about
the legendary king Gilgamesh.
The Flood Story
Stories could be saved and added to by each generation
The transmission of literature and knowledge no longer depended on
oral traditions.
The “Babylonian map of the world” is probably the earliest
known map in history.
The scholarly text on the tablet explains that the map is supposed to be
of the entire universe, with the city of Babylon as the physical and
cultural center of the world.
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Writing in Royal Inscriptions
Cone inscription of king Lipit-Eshtar
Writing on stone: strictly a royal prerogative
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Writing in Royal Inscriptions
Kings understood the power writing had.
It is likely that most Mesopotamian kings could not read or write
themselves, but they nonetheless commissioned writing for royal
inscriptions.
The kings treated writing as a marker of intellect, a means for expressing
royal ideology, and even a venue through which they could communicate
with the gods.
Writing on stone was strictly a royal prerogative in Mesopotamia, and
many kings had stones inscribed for building dedications, such as UrNamma’s stone figurine and stone tablet.
These objects were placed in the exposed foundations of temples that
were being reconstructed. Since the writing would have been hidden, to
human eyes, it is clear that the memorial inscriptions were meant for the
gods to read.
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Literacy
Assyrian scribe with
a stylus and tablet
A bilingual glossary,
showing Sumerian
and Akkadia
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Literacy
Most people in ancient Mesopotamia were illiterate and scribal
training was reserved exclusively for a small elite.
The scribes were educated in writing.
“School” began for the scribes when they were children.
An instructor would make tablets with several vertical columns and
inscribe the first column with a series of cuneiform signs or phrases, the
level of difficulty depending on the student’s degree of development and
understanding.
The students would then copy the instructor’s signs in the remaining,
blank columns.
After on completion of this exercise, the instructor scraped off the top
layer of clay, thus creating a blank slate, and the student copied the
signs again presumably until they were memorized.
When a student finished his cuneiform training, he could either
work for everyday people in the marketplace or for the royalty.
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School
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Homework
School texts, the top of which contains
musical notations
A scribe-in-training practices copying basic signs in columns
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Mesopotamian Deities-the Gods and Goddesses
Figurine of the
goddess Baba
Tablet
recording a
Hymn to the
god Marduk
Head of a god,
with beard and
horned headdress
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A seal impression
showing battling gods.
Divinities are indicated
by their horned
headdresses
Mesopotamian Deities-the Gods and Goddesses
In ancient Mesopotamia, gods and goddesses were part of both
public and private worlds.
no large-scale images of gods and goddesses have survived.
Scholars suspect that the large temple statues of divinities were
fashioned out of material like wood, which could not have survived to the
modern times.
Consequently, most images of the divine are small-scale and found on a
range of personal and household items.
They are found on figurines and statuettes, jewelry and amulets, and on
a variety of ritual items.
They are also found on seals—a seal is a device engraved with a picture
that is used to create an impression on wet clay.
Mesopotamian mythology shows that the gods were organized
from most important to least important, just like human society.
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Divine Kings
Close-up of
King Naram-Sin
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Divine Kings
A small handful of Mesopotamian kings claimed that they were
appointed by the gods to rule on earth and have certain divine
powers.
As the kings got their orders from higher ups, no one was to question
their authority.
They were said to be deified, either by themselves or by their followers.
The deification of kings in Mesopotamia was a rare and somewhat
controversial occurrence; it almost exclusively occurs in the context of
state formation.
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Kingship
King Assurbanipal’s hunting scenes from his palace at Nineveh
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Kingship
It’s nice to know who’s boss.
For most of Mesopotamian history, the highest political office in the land
was that of king.
It didn’t involve any sort of election or campaign promises.
The Mesopotamians believed that kingship “came down from heaven”
and was an office “installed by the gods” during the very creation of the
universe.
Kings in Mesopotamia were links between the gods and
humanity, shepherds of their people, and military aggressors
against their enemies.
Kings stood above both nature and humanity.
Many kings literally depicted themselves as conquerors of nature and
barbarians.
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Officials and the King’s Court
Two officials who worked
for Sargon II, depicted in
the palace at Khorsabad
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Officials and the King’s Court
The king couldn’t rule solo. He would have needed a staff of
supporters.
While much of Mesopotamian literature and art reduces the
government to merely the king (probably at the king’s orders),
there were in fact a large number of elites and official personnel
who helped run the office of kingship and the central
government.
In addition, the king’s palace would also have contained a
range of personnel responsible for entertainment and waiting
on the king and his family.
Musicians, for example, as shown on this Old Babylonian plaque, seem
to have been particularly abundant in court life.
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The Religious Role of Kings
King Assurbanipal carries a basket for
the construction of a temple
The Pedestal of King Tukulti-Ninurta from
the temple of Ishtar in Assur: in it the king
approaches and kneels before a pedestal.
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The Religious Role of Kings
To be a king meant one was a leader of the people, but he was
still bound by duty to serve the gods.
Kings were obligated to perform religious functions on a regular basis.
The purpose of such rituals was to maintain the very order of the state
and its people.
As the highest of humans, the king was the only living person
who could be heard by the highest deities.
One of the most timeless routines of the kings was to rebuild,
renovate, or repair temples.
IT WAS A ROYAL DUTY AND RESPONISBILITY!!
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Duties of kings- military
Relief showing Assurbanipal’s attack of the
city of Susa in Iran. At the top, Assyrian
soldiers hack apart the palace while, below,
other soldiers carry off their loot.
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Duties of kings- military
It may seem all messed up that a brutal, soldier king could also
be sacred and religious. When they weren’t showcasing their
religious virtues, Mesopotamian kings represented themselves
as military heroes.
Throughout its history, kings were shown with weapons and
armor, enemies trampled underfoot, and large, organized
groups of military specialists and soldiers.
Kings campaigned into foreign lands to destroy and plunder
enemy cities.
King Sennacherib, for example, routinely boasted to the gods and people
that, “His [the enemy king’s] cities I destroyed and devastated. I turned
them into ruins.”
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Royal tombs of Ur
Headdress of Queen Puabi
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Royal tombs of Ur
If your employer died, would you let people bury you next to
them? Well it happened in Mesopotamia.
The Royal Tombs of the city of Ur, which dates to ca. 2600
BCE. The occupants of the tombs were royal and wealthy, highranking persons.
Many burials contained servants of the deceased royalty who were laid
alongside their royal person a possible indication of human sacrifice.
One such servant, a woman, was found in situ (she was still in the
position she had been originally placed at the time of burial)wearing her
original jewelry. This woman’s headdress was only slightly less ornate
than that of her queen, Queen Puabi.
The tombs contained an huge amount of rich, beautiful and luxury items
made from gold, lapis lazuli, carnelian, silver, and alabaster.
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Legendary Kings
Gilgamesh, typically shown
as a conqueror of lions
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Legendary Kings
Nowadays, people recognize a big difference between mankind
and spiritual beings. For the ancient Mesopotamians, a being
could be part godlike and part human.
For the Mesopotamians, the primary difference between gods
and man was mortality.
If a being had a percentage of divinity, he or she was still mortal as long
as he or she were even the smallest part human.
The legendary king Gilgamesh was said to be two-thirds divine
and one-third human, since he was born out of the union of a
goddess and a human man.
As the Epic of Gilgamesh laments, “when the gods created humanity,
they reserved immortality for themselves.” Nonetheless, Gilgamesh’s
semi-divine status gives him some power over humanity and nature.
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Law
The god Shamash, holding the rod
and ring. His symbol, a solar disc,
appears in the middle of the scene
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Law
The king’s word was law.
The god Shamash, the sun god, was associated with law and with giving
the kings law/justice.
The royal literature of Mesopotamia says that the gods gave
justice and order upon the people and that law was only
realized under the rule of a king.
Each king claimed that he was the one who realized order in the land
and settled the disputes of the people.
Justice itself was defined in three ways.
First, justice was the protection of the socially weak, for example, widows
and orphans.
Next, justice was the punishing of criminals and traitors.
Finally, justice was the giving of wise decisions by the king.
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Stele of Hammurabi
Hammurabi
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Shamash
Stele of Hammurabi
King Hammurabi’s Law Code is the most famous source on
Mesopotamian Law.
Probably made around 1750 BCE, the 7 1/2 foot basalt stele features an
image at the top and a long inscription on the body.
The image at the top of the stele shows the god Shamash (God of
Justice)and King Hammurabi, standing on the left.
The seated Shamash is handing Hammurabi two symbolic items, a rod
and a ring, conferring authority to the king.
The inscription begins with an account of creation describing
how the gods created the city Babylon and how they came to
install Hammurabi as its king.
The text next lists 282 legal clauses, most of which appear in
the form “If… then…,”
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Stele of Hammurabi Part 2
The laws pertain to matters ranging from homicide, to fair
wages, to family and property law, but the code is most famous
because it contains one of the earliest examples of Lex
Talionis, the Principle of Equal Retribution.
This principle is best known as Hammurabi explains it in the code: “An
eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”
Example: “If a man kills another man, then he will be killed.”
The same form of law later appears in the Biblical laws of the Old
Testament.
“Let any wronged man who has a lawsuit come before me, the
king of justice, ……let my stele reveal the lawsuit for him; may
be examine his case, may be calm his heart, and may be praise
me.”
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Legal Records
Sumerian Legal
Record of a Trial
The Laws of
Ur-Namma
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Legal Records
Hammurabi's scribes relied heavily on the legal texts of
previous kings.
Sumerian King Ur-Namma, who founded dynasty at Ur around
2100 BCE, also wrote a law code.
Even though it was probably inscribed on a monument like Hammurabi's
stele, the monument has never been found.
But we know about Ur-Namma’s laws from the homework assignments
of school children: as part of their training, children repetitively copied
inscriptions from monuments. The code has been reconstructed from
their assignments.
The Mesopotamians also left thousands upon thousands of
records of their private legal affairs.
tablets document their marriages, divorces, adoptions, wills, debts,
loans, trials, and even problems related to caring for the elderly.
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Xenophobia
Impaled captives
A fragment from the Stele of the Vultures,
showing the god Ningirsu with a sack full
of captured enemies and a mace
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Xenophobia
As nice as it might have been to be a Mesopotamian, to NOT
be a Mesopotamian in Mesopotamia was not a nice thing.
Foreigners and foreign lands represented utter chaos to the
Mesopotamians and were threats to their way of life and
perception of the universe. (Xenophobia)
Foreigners who refused to submit to Mesopotamian rule or
culture were targeted for warfare and destruction.
The Mesopotamian “xenophobia” (fear or dislike of foreigners)
was depicted throughout royal and personal art.
Kings would depict themselves punishing incompliant foreigners—for
example, by scenes of impaling, mass murder and utter destruction of
others.
It was a kings “duty” to protect his people and their culture- with any
means needed.
Economy
A depiction of Uruk
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Economy
The palaces and temple of Mesopotamian cities were the
dominating units of the economy. They owned land, contracted
labor, disbursed loans, ran productive industries, and bought,
traded, and sold both moveable and immovable property.
At the same time, entrepreneurs, merchants, and businessmen
made fortunes for themselves in markets through private
transactions.
Cities were where most of the economic activity took place
mainly because they contained busy marketplaces, call karu.
Scribes were available in these markets to write up contracts
and receipts for buyers and sellers, to draw up loan documents
and interest calculations, and to help people keep written
inventories of their stock.
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Money?
Shell “money”
A duck-shaped weight from Lagash
Raw grains for trade
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Money??
Money makes the world go round, but for Mesopotamians
money wasn’t around. They needed other forms of
CURRENCY.
The Mesopotamians often traded goods using shell rings or grain a
medium of exchange.
Silver was also used for exchanges, especially if one was buying or
selling a slave or large-scale property such as land. Silver was used for
large or “risky” business transactions.
Mesopotamians did not have one central currency for everything, but
rather had a system of using different objects for different types of needs.
In order to keep quantities of goods even, the Mesopotamians
used standardized weights and measures against which they
could weigh the products or “currencies” in question.
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Up to Today
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Up to Today
As the ages passed, the Mesopotamians and their history
became buried and lost through time and changes of rulers.
At any given time, the region we call Mesopotamia was ruled
by Babylonians, the Hittites, Assyrians, and others, until it
became a part of the Ottoman Empire in 1533.
After World War One and the dissolution of the Ottomans, the
area came under British control, until it became a kingdom and
finally the Republic of Iraq that we know today.
What is our situation with Iraq today???
Is this any different from their past---- even in ancient times?
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National Museum in Baghdad
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National Museum in Baghdad
In late February, 2009, the National Museum in Baghdad was
reopened after closing during the Iraq War in 2003.
Many of the items stored in the museum were stolen by looters,
though some of them were actually taken for safe-keeping by
museum staff.
Some items, too big to move, were protected by sandbags in
case the Americans accidentally bombed the building.
To date, many items are still missing and being sought by
international police.
The Museum was, and still is, an important record-keeper of
Mesopotamian history.
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Beneath the sands of the Middle East lies the foundation of a
culture that reigned supreme for hundreds of years.
The Mesopotamian culture contributed to some of the greatest
accomplishments of mankind.
It created a writing system and a kind of school system.
It was the birthplace of literature.
It was also known for its code of laws.
It even boasted of a water management system that would
fascinate today’s plumbers.
It truly was the start of a magnificent world as it was the
“Cradle of Civilization.”
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