HISTORY: WEEK

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 THE FIRST RIVER VALLEY CIVILIZATIONS: MESOPOTAMIA
 Agriculture did not mean a better lifestyle (social divisions,
overpopulation, food scarcity)
 Food production – more calories, better health, defeat uncivilized
humans and spread wider
 WHY RIVER VALLEYS?
 Access to water and food(fish)
 Fertile soil
 Transportation (people used boats) – transport people and goods,
facilitate control of the area (transporting soldiers etc)
 RIVER VALLEY CIVILIZATIONS
 Tigris and Euphrates= Mesopotamia (modern day iran)
 Nile = ancient Egypt
 Indus = Harappan
 Yellow river = Huang He

1. Change from nomadic to sedentary life

2. Move from experimental plant cultivation to deliberate and
calculated farming (Legumes and grains)
3. Building of houses (for people and for their gods)
4. Burial of dead in cemeteries
5. Invention and growing complexity of pottery
6. Development of specialized crafts and distribution of labour
7. Metal production
 Nomads don’t have cemeteries, because they constant moving
around
 Surplus of food – freedom from labour
 Pottery – used to store food and water (tupperware of ancient times)
 BASIC HALLMARKS OF CIVILIZATION
 Large permanent settlement
 Urban development
 Social stratification
 Specialization of labour
 Centralized organization
 Written or other formal means of communication
 WHY MESOPOTAMIA?
 Fertile crescent – “cradle of civilization”
 Crossroads of the world across to three continents: asia, Africa and
Europe
 Few natural barriers
 Frequent migrations/invasions = organized security
 Highly fertile soil = excess food production
 More fertile soil=more food production=sustain larger populations
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 MESOPOTAMIA AND THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION
 Floods = fertile soil = growing of surplus food
 Fertile soil flooded unpredictable rates when they flood across farm
land and so it can be good and bad
 HOW DID IT START?
 23 000BP hunter-gatherer in levant harvest cereals
 10 000 BCE: early settlement
 c. 4 500 BCE: permanent settlements and crop planting at mouth of
tigris and Euphrates rivers
 c. 3 200 BCE: domination of Sumerians and Akkadians
 539 BCE: fall of Babylon
 332 BCE: becomes part of Seleucid empire
 WHAT IS A “CITY STATE”?
 There are city states in Mesopotamia
 Small independent country
 Vatican City, Monaco, Singapore (only current city states)
 All city states are microstates, but not all microstates are city states
 URBAN DEVELOPMENT
 Prosperous and effective village attracted the attention of other, less
prosperous, tribes who then attached themselves to the successful
settlement
 Gives rise to densely populated centres=cities
 Earlies city – Uruk (situated along the banks of Mesopotamia)
 ELEMENTS OF AN ANCIENT CITY
 Large size and diverse population
 Presence of urban infrastructure
 Effect on the surrounding region
 Presence of authority or institutions
- DIVERSE – diverse backgrounds, identity, jobs
 shapes how people act in that area, it’s the focus of the city
 ideological and economic impact on people, has an effect on the
surrounding region
 cities use trade -for food etc
 largely populated cities needs governance/authority (not just a king
or presidents, but the place: palace atc)
 WHT DO HIERACHIES DEVELOP IN LARGER SOCIETIES?
 Creates order
 Stratification of religion
 Power
 Development of wealth
 SOCIAL STRATIFICATION
 Theocracy of early periods gradually replaced by military leaders
 Rulers seen as gods’ representatives
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Education?

(theocracy is being ruled by a god – zeus, poisidan)

 Boys are taught to read, write and complex mathematics

 HIERACHIES
- Lugal (Kings – 3000 BCE)
- Awilum (Free land- owners, start of stratification, 1800 BCE)
- Mushkenum (workers, bound to elite)
- Wardum (Slaves, mostly domestic)
 TRADE AND WEALTH
 Agriculture: grains, vegetables and dates
 Domestication of animals
- Cows, sheep, and goats (dairy industry)
- Oxen for plowing
- Donkeys for pulling carts
 Textile industry: wool into cloth; flax into linen
 INVENTIONS
 Wheel
 Time (hours, minutes, seconds)
 Maps (know where you are in coordinated with other states,
ownership of land)
 Mass-produced pottery (Tupperware of ancient times and better
architecture)
 Irrigation (more farming, more surplus and more trade)
 Complex maths (Pythagoras theorem- not the same name)
 Writing (could write down historical facts, stories)
 Beer
 ARCHITECTURE
 Development of civic architecture
 Ziggurat: pyramidal stepped temple tower
 Constructed on man-made hills
- Ziggurats are what pyramids are to Egypt, temples
- Religious monuments
 RELIGION
- Animism (belief in a spiritual world)
- Belief in afterlife
- Shamanism
- Ancestor worship
- High gods
- Worship of ancestors or high gods who are active in human life
 RELIGION IN MESOPOTAMIA
- Neolithic religion = changes in lifestyle
- Pantheon of over 3000 gods
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Anthropomorphic (they have human-like features)
Gods as superhuman (extraordinary powers and size)
 WORSHIPPED CHANGED OVER TIME
- Deities’ domains mainly focused on basic needs for human survival
- More structure, deified kings
- Gods associated with the commoners became more prevalent
- Gods became closely associated with specific human empires and
rulers
 HOW DID WE CONTACT THE GODS
 Liver (hepacromancy)
 Dreams (necromancy)
 Intestines
 Flock of birds
 Sacrifice of animals
 THE GODS
- Ea/Enki – water, wisdom, magic, art
- Anu/An- the sky, heaven
- Enlil/Ellil- earth, storms and agriculture and the controller of fates
- Inanna/Ishtar – love, sexuality, prostitution and war
- Dagan/Dagon – crop fertility
- Nabu – wisdom, writing
- Nergal – plague, war and the underworld
 ART
- Art is a form of cultural expressions
- Rock art = palaeolithic art
- Artistic record – we have no written record
- Archaeologist thought it was painted to bring good fortune/ the
others thought they painted it because they liked it
- 4 main rock art zones in Africa – own regional variations (styles,
traditions)
- Far from just a simple picture of daily life or a pretty picture
- Art reflects their beliefs/what they see in the world
 CHARACTER OF MESOPOTAMIAN ART
- Socio-political organization – glorification of military prowess
- Organized religion – statues of gods as physical embodiment
(priestess believed in deities, gods were given offerings, boats,
chariots, nice houses, they were well-dressed, taken care of)
- Natural environment – practical limitations of materials that can be
used (physical restriction: what materials were available for
art/statues, most of their art were made from clay (baked clay
instead of stone)
Votive statues
- same stance, large eyes, same cultural clothing
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Votive statues – people-built statues of themselves prayer; statues
of people not gods, they stand the way they do because they are in
prayer
- Prominence of religion

- Relief works when entering the cities, decorating the cities to show
wealth
- In different periods there are different art

 WHY AND HOW DID WRITING DEVELOP?

- Keep records of harvesting, people, money, history, themselves
(consequences)
- Keep records of trade (why) – they had to keep records of money,
trading for different things (e.g. grapes for bowels)
o Commercial activities increased
o Trade more important
o Need to record trade activities
o Clay tokens to keep trade of economic exchange value
o Cumbersome – put image of clay
 WRITING: CUNEIFORM
- Developed sometime after 3 500BCE
- Scribes made marks pressed into clay which was baked to harden
the clay
- Why clay? Papyrus not available this had a direct impact on the
shape of writing
 DIVISION BETWEEN “PRE-HISTORY” AND “HISTORY”?
- Written laws = centralised organisation
 THE CODE OF HAMMURABI
- Hammurabi: ca. 1790 B.C ruler of Babylon
- Oldest extant collection of laws/example of a legal system
- Based on older Sumerian legal traditions
- 282 laws, including
 Economic provisions (prices, tariffs, trade, and commerce), family
law (marriage and divorce), criminal law (assault, theft) and civil
law (slavery, debt)
- An eye for an eye (punishment should fit the crime)
 WHAT DO THE LAWS TELL US ABOUT SOCIETY?
- “An eye for an eye” = stern of justice, severe punishment
- Class divisions = harsher punishment for crimes against elites
- Advanced business society = regulations to protect property,
contracts, wage laws, loans and interest
- (Relatively) fair treatment of women = allowed to own property &
engage in business
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THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH
Damous myth still available to us today
- Story of a failed quest for immortality
- Also provides info on architecture, rituals etc.
- Part of a larger Mesopotamia literary tradition
 Compare to those of Greece and Rome

(DO CASE STUDY ON THE LAWS OF WOMEN IN THE COURSE READER)