Varna
Vedas
Yahweh
ziggurat
Mesopotamia
The world’s earliest civilization arose in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in an area the
Greeks called Mesopotamia (“Land Between the Rivers”). The cultural achievements of Mesopotamia
represented independent innovation, achievements that it passed on to other river valley civilizations
in Egypt and, especially, the Indus valley. Around 4000 BCE, the inhabitants of Mesopotamia used
bronze and copper. By this time they had already invented the wheel and developed irrigation canals
to farm the arid lands of their environment.
About 3500 BCE, a group of invaders called the Sumerians settled in the southernmost portion of
Mesopotamia. The Sumerians developed the first example of writing. Called cuneiform , it involved
pictures pressed into clay using a wedge-shaped stylus. The pictographs initially stood for objects, but
later were refined to represent sounds. The Sumerians also developed a number system based on 60
and studied the movement of heavenly bodies. In architecture, the Sumerians expressed the glories of
their civilization and of the many gods of nature that they worshipped by building towers called
ziggurats . They are credited with relating the first epic in world history, The Epic of Gilgamesh,
which includes a story of a great flood similar to that of the biblical account in Genesis.
The Tigris and Euphrates rivers were noted for their unpredictable and often violent flooding.
Irrigation systems to control flooding and channel water for agricultural use required the
cooperation of Mesopotamia’s settlements. This need promoted the beginnings of government. Early
Mesopotamian government was in the form of city-states, with a city government also controlling
surrounding territory.
A social structure headed by rulers and elite classes controlled the land, which was farmed by
slaves. Slaves could sometimes purchase their freedom. Sumerian families were patriarchal , with
men dominating family and public life. Men had the authority to sell their wives and children into
slavery to pay their debts. By the sixteenth century BCE, Mesopotamian women had begun to wear the
veil in public. In spite of these restrictions, Mesopotamian women could sometimes gain influence in
the courts, serve as priestesses, or act as scribes for the government. Some worked in small
businesses.
A lack of natural protective barriers made Mesopotamia vulnerable to invasion by outsiders; most
cities in the region constructed defensive walls. Frequent conflicts among local Sumerian kings over
water and property rights weakened the city-states. The Sumerian culture later fell to conquest by the
Akkadians and the Babylonians, both of whom spread Sumerian culture. The Babylonian king
Hammurabi devised a code of laws that regulated daily life and also provided harsh “an eye for an
eye” punishments for criminal offenses. The Code of Hammurabi drew distinctions between social
classes and genders, administering less severe punishments to elite classes over commoners and men
over women for the same offense. After 900 BCE, Assyrians and Persians dominated Mesopotamia.