2. MESOPOTAMIA
What culture gave this region between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers the name Mesopotamia?

3. Code of Hammurabi “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”

4. The Fertile Crescent Modern day Iraq Meso (Greek) = middle
Potamos (Greek) = river
“The land between the rivers”

5. Civilization What is Civilization? “Cradle of Civilization”
Society with a developed knowledge of farming, trade, government, art and science.
“Cradle of Civilization”
First known civilization in human history
3, ,000 B.C.E. - Earliest evidence of civilization

6. Ancient Sumer
Earliest known civilization.
Southern Mesopotamia
Each Sumerian city was considered a state in itself with its own god and government
The Sumerians were the first city builders in Mesopotamia

7. Levees Wet Season Control flood waters Dry Season Irrigate crops
Sumerians where the first people to attempt to control their natural environment: Levees and Irrigation
Wet Season
Control flood waters
Dry Season
Irrigate crops

8. Vocabulary
City-State: A city and surrounding territory which also has it’s own independent government
Ziggurat: A Sumerian temple which means “mountain of god.” They served as the city center.

9. Ziggurat: Modern Iraq

10. Recent Events in Ur (Iraq)

11. Religious and Family Life
Ziggurats served as the center of Sumerian cities around them were courts
The Sumerians believed that the forces of nature such as wind, rain and flood were gods: There were over 3,000 Sumerian Gods
Sumerians believed that the gods created humans from the mud of rivers to do their work

12. Sumerian Priests They were very powerful
All of a Sumerian city-state’s land was controlled and administered by the city’s priests
Also, priests controlled the schools

13. Respond to the prompt below:
Remember a time when you had trouble with a relationship? A friend, a coach, a parent, a teacher that you needed to get along better with?
What did you do?

14. Tablet Schools
Only the sons of the rich could attend school: students sat on stone benches and wrote with sharp edged reeds on clay tablets. Only the sons of the rich could attend school: students sat on stone benches and wrote with sharp edged reeds on clay tablets
Schools were referred to as tablet houses because students learned how to write
Sumerian writing was called: Cuneiform: it was made of hundreds of markings shaped like wedges

15. Cuneiform

16. Early Cuneiform-Pictographs

17. Sumerian Classroom
Learning to Write

18. Sumerian Proverbs He who has much gold may be happy,
He who has much silver may be happy,
But he who has nothing can sleep.
A mere friend may agree with you,
A real friend will argue.

19. Writing Writing developed as a result of the development of business
Initially, Sumerians used pictures to represent objects. Then they used pictures to represent ideas. Finally the used pictures to represent syllables.
When a student graduated from school he became a scribe: or a writer.
Scribes worked for the Temple, the palace, the government or the army.
Some scribes set up their own businesses

20. Priests and Kings
At first Sumerian Priests were the Kings of city-states
Priest-Kings received advice from an assembly made of free men
When war broke out with another city-state the assembly would select one of its members to serve as military leader until the war was over.
As time went on these leaders stayed in charge even after the war was over: 3000 B.C. the took the place of priests as permanent kings
At the same time kingship became hereditary: or passed from parent to child.

21. Priest-Kings to Kings
Free men took power from the priests during times of war
After the war was over, the newly appointed kings remained in power
Their power passed through a hereditary system
Parent to child