Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia/Fertile Crescent/Cradle of Civilization

Geography

Conquest

Mesopotamia hardly ever unified, often under control of Persia via Cyrus the Great
Alexander the Great gets it after the Persians
Persians take over again after fall of Alexander’s empire

History

Occupied by the Summerians of Sumer
Eridu – 1st city
City states without clear borders
Pantheon of Gods much like Greek gods, but who also owned and ran the city
First to develop writing – cuneiform – to record financial transactions
Bribery was common (could bribe school teachers for better grades, could bribe ghosts)
Utnapishtim – allegory story of Noah
Priest & Priestess ran the city – En & Nin
King – Lugal – foreign affairs, fortress, military –
Culture of general fear and pessimism due to unpredictable flooding of the rivers
First maths, 60 minute divisions, first writing, first laws (Hammurabi’s code)
Semidic peoples that united the area after Sumer
Epic of Gilgamesh – built walls of Uruk

TIMELINE

3500 BC: Egyptian calendar
3300 BC: Bronze Age begins in the Near East
3200 BC: Rise of Proto-Elamite Civilization in Iran
3100 BC: First dynasty of Egypt
c. 3000 BC: Sumerian cuneiform writing system.
3000 BC: First known use of papyrus by Egyptians
2700 BC: Minoan Civilization ancient palace city Knossos reach 80,000 inhabitants
2700 BC: Rise of Elam in Iran
2700 BC: The Old Kingdom begins in Egypt
2600 BC: Oldest known surviving literature: Sumerian texts from Abu Salabikh, including the Instructions of Shuruppak and the Kesh temple hymn.
2560 BC: King Khufu completes the Great Pyramid of Giza.
2000 BC: Domestication of the horse
1800 BC: alphabetic writing emerges
1600 BC: Minoan civilization on Crete is destroyed by the Minoan eruption of Santorini island.
1600 BC: Mycenaean Greece
1600 BC: Beginning of Hittite dominance of the Eastern Mediterranean region
c. 1180 BC: Disintegration of Hittite Empire
1020 to 930 BC: The beginning of the Kingdom of Israel (united monarchy) occurred sometime between these dates
890 BC: Approximate date for the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey
800 BC: Rise of Greek city-states