Ziggurat
Gilgamesh
Hammurabi
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Mesopotamia is called the Cradle of Civilization as well as the Fertile Crescent.
The name Mesopotamia comes from ancient Greek and means “between rivers”. It was a good name because so much happened between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The world’s first cities and empires started there. The power changed hands from Sumer, to the Akkadians, to the Babylonians, to the Assyrians, back to the Babylonians and then Assyrians again, and finally on to Persia. Today the land is shared by both Iraq and Syria. Around 6000 BC, hunters and gatherers became farmers and shepherds. It changed everything. Sumer, rose to power in 5000 BC. They built large ziggurat temples in the center of their cities. As people learned to farm, they gave up the nomad life. Technologies developed that helped them live in settled communities such as textile weaving, irrigation, glass making and metal work. And, of course, they learned how to build homes. The Sumerians started using the wheel for transportation around 3200 BC. Of course, transportation was not cars. It was carts pulled by animals. The Sumerians created their own form of writing called cuneiform, which means “wedge-shaped”. Using a stylus, lines and symbols were pressed into soft clay. Much of the cuneiform found by archaeologists is financial as well as government records. However, one of the first stories ever written down is the tale of Gilgamesh, the story of an ancient king who lived in Uruk between 2800 and 2500 BC. Over the centuries, kingdoms rose and fell. In 2330 BC, Sargon I conquered Sumer and formed the world’s first empire, the Akkadian Empire. FYI, an empire is a group of states or countries under one ruler. In 1792 BC, Hammurabi came to power in Babylon. He might not have been the first to do so, but he organized a code of laws to help people live together in peace. A whole lot more empires came and went in ancient Mesopotamia. Some of the more famous kings were Nebuchadnezzar ll, Cyrus the Great, Darius l, and Xerxes l. In 333 BC, Alexander the Great conquered Persia as Greece became a new center of the ancient world. |
Look at your ANCIENT CIVILIZATION WEBQUEST PACKET. Go to this website to find the answers to the Mesopotamia vocabulary. questions.