1. Mesopotamia Writing
Subtitle

2. The Cradle of Civilization
The Written Revolution
The Beginning of Empires
Laws and Order

3. Mesopotamia - “The land between rivers”

6. The Rise of the City-State:
Village – People assembled based on family and tribal loyalties – small, rural bands of amateur farmers living together
City-State - People bound by political and economic relationships – centralized government and economy
the world’s first cities
Each had their own customs and social orders
Would lead to the world’s first empires

7. The Beginnings of Writing
Step 1: Farmers needed to keep records. - The Sumerians were very good farmers –
mainly goats, cows and wheat and barley
Early farmers Used tokens to symbolize their yearly production
They created clay shapes and dried them to use as tokens
Step 2: Tokens were used for trade - trade receipts, records and bookkeeping
For example: A cone shape represented a bag of wheat.
Tokens were placed inside clayball and enclosed
sending five goats - five tokens in the clay ball.

8. With the development of cities came a more complex economy...
Elaborate goods, different merchants
more complex and diverse system of tokens
The number of tokens began to be pressed on the outside
This developed to different symbols carved to represent different things

9. Step 3: Writing develops -The earliest form of writing dates back to 3300 B.C.
People drew "word-pictures" using a stylus → to represent trade goods
These "word-pictures" then developed into wedge-shaped signs – cuneiform writing

10. Even in Ancient Sumer, how was education used to establish the haves from the have nots?
Think about who had access to writing?
Think about what was necessary to learn to write
What important things did scribes keep track of?
Economic?
Religious
Political
Social?