THE CODE OF HAMMURABI & ASSYRIANS

OBJECTIVES, KEY TERMS & PEOPLE  Objective  Explain how early empires arose in Mesopotamia  Key Terms & People:  Hammurabi’s Code  Behistun Rock  Chaldeans  Sargon the Great  Lydians  Babylonians  Nebuchadnezzar

FALL OF SUMERIAN CITY-STATES  Around 2350 B.C.  Sargon the Great captured the city-states (ruler of Akkad)  The Sumerian civilization did not die  The rulers of the new kingdoms adopted basic ideas of Sumerian civilization to meet their own needs

BABYLON  Where the first conquerors of Mesopotamia came from  Located upstream from Sumer

BABYLON  Babylonians were nomads  They quickly adopted the civilized ways of the Sumerians  Like what?  Ziggurats, art, written laws, literature, cuneiform, irrigated fields and organized society  Conquered all of Mesopotamia  Why is this important?  Civilization spread over a large area

POLYTHEISM  Belief in many gods  Each city-state considered itself the property of one god

EPIC OF GILGAMESH One of the earliest literary works What did it describe? The underworld

MAJOR ACHIEVEMENTS  Code of Laws known as Hammurabi’s Code  Based on Sumerian city-state laws  More complete because it was for an entire empire  Why do societies develop laws?  Empire  State that has conquered other lands and now rules them

HAMMURABI’S CODE  Written by King Hammurabi  Nearly 300 laws  He picked out ones he liked from city-states of the empire  Written on an 8 foot slab of black rock  Why is this important?  First written law code-public knowledge  Idea of justice required balance  Eye for an eye; small crimes get small punishments History/AncientEgyptNearEastUnit/PDF s/CourtCaseHarboringSlave.pdf

MESOPOTAMIAN ADVANCEMENT  Drew up multiplication & division tables  Made geometry calculations  Use base of 60  Cut circle into 360 degrees  60 minutes in an hour  First written records in astronomy  Kept records of changing positions of planets and phases of the moon  Developed 12 month calendar

BEHISTUN ROCK  Discovered in 1840s by Henry Rawlinson  Key to Mesopotamian history  Behistan Rock includes eyewitness accounts of a battle and a list of provinces in the empire  Used to translate Mesopotamian writing

HITTITES ( B.C.)  Invaded Northern Mesopotamia about 1600 B.C.  Raided Babylon, Syria, Palestine and challenged Egypt’s power  By about 1450 B.C. the Hittite Empire included Asia Minor and Northern Syria  Just and humane laws  Notable architecture  Most important discovery  Iron=huge advantage over other empires  Sharper and stronger than bronze

ASSYRIANS ( B.C.)  Came from Northern Mesopotamia  Their villages were attacked repeatedly by barbarians from the Northern mountains  Assyrians learned to be tough fighters over the centuries of attacks

ASSYRIAN ARMY  Soldiers well equipped with iron swords and iron tipped spears  Most disciplined army so far  Trained to march and fight in tightly organized columns and divisions led by commanders of different ranks  Attacking a city  March within an arrow’s shot of the wall and on a signal shower the city with arrows  Meanwhile, other troops moved to the city gates and hammered them with iron- tipped battering rams

ASSYRIAN ARMY

ATTACKING A CITY (CONT.)  Show no mercy  Tortured, killed or enslaved the people  Assyrians uprooted the conquered people from their homelands, sending great groups of people to distant parts of the empire. Why?  To prevent later rebellion

NINEVEH  Assyrian capital city  Largest city of its day(3 miles long by 1 mile wide)  Housed the treasures of the empire  Held world’s largest library  King Assurbanipal collected 25,000 clay tablets to create it

CHALDEANS ( B.C)  Capital city: Babylon  This was 1000 years after Hammurabi  Babylon became the center of the empire during this time

KING NEBUCHADNEZZAR  Ruled from B.C.  Rebuilt Babylon  Covered the walls of his palace with shining tiles arranged in bright patterns  Most impressive part of the palace was the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon

STARGAZERS OF BABYLON  Highest building: a 7 tier ziggurat that was more than 300 feet high and visible for miles  Priests observed stars nightly  Kept records of positions of stars and planets  The rise of each constellation (group of stars) marked a new month in their calendar  Belief that stars determined human destiny  Chaldeans observed the Zodiac (12 constellations to foretell the future)  Nebuchadnezzar consulted the temples star charts carefully in governing his kingdom

LYDIANS  ***Major achievement: began the use of coins in trade  How did this help with trade?  Got rid of the barter system  Official government coinage came into use in about 560 B.C.  Coins brought about a money economy  Money economy: an economic system based on the use of money

OBJECTIVES & KEY TERMS/PEOPLE  Explain how early empires arose in Mesopotamia  Sargon starts the first empire  Hammurabi’s Code  First written code of laws based on an eye for an eye  Behistun Rock  Translated Mesopotamian writing  Chaldeans  Nebuchadnezzar was the ruler

KEY PEOPLE  Sargon the Great  Conquered the Sumerian city-states  Lydians  Invented coins  Babylonians  King was Hammurabi; code of laws  Nebuchadnezzar  Chaldeans’ leader that built the Hanging Gardens