Because the life of its inhabitants directly depended on the condition of the rivers - the Tigris and Euphrates. With the end of winter, river floods occurred in the valley, which were so violent that they often demolished local dwellings and cattle shelters. To protect themselves from floods, the inhabitants of Mesopotamia learned to dig canals. Excess water flowed through them, which was stored for further irrigation of fields.

Despite the fact that the natural conditions of Mesopotamia were favorable for the development of agriculture, local residents had to make enormous efforts to obtain a rich harvest. Only with their joint efforts could they dig irrigation canals and erect special barriers against stormy river floods. The joint organization of labor united people and contributed to the transformation of the first settlements into city-states.

In addition to agriculture, crafts were developed in Ancient Mesopotamia: leatherworking, weaving, pottery and jewelry. Since most trade connections in Mesopotamia passed along rivers, shipbuilding was developed here.

Climatic features of the Southern and Northern Mesopotamia

The climate of Mesopotamia was dry and hot. In the southern part of the valley, summer temperatures in the shade reached 50 degrees. The winter was mild and relatively warm. In the northern region of Mesopotamia it often rained, and in winter it even snowed. After violent river floods, swamps formed in the lowlands; on the mountains and hills, on the contrary, the soil completely dried out, becoming covered with large cracks.

In the southern region of Mesopotamia, barley, sesame, wheat were grown, and pigs were raised. Date palms grew well here, which were of great importance in the economic life of the country. In the northern regions, goats and sheep and various types of poultry were bred.

Both in the south and in the north, nature did not please the inhabitants with deposits of metals and stones. Therefore, the main building material in the Mesopotamian valley was clay, from which palaces, temples, and residential buildings were built. Compared to stone, large clay bricks were fragile, so the defensive walls of the cities of Mesopotamia were built as wide as possible.

Cities of Mesopotamia

As in Ancient Egypt, two historical regions developed in Mesopotamia - Southern Mesopotamia and Northern. The southern lands were inhabited by tribes Sumerians, northern territories - Akkadians.

The first city-states arose in the south, this happened about 3 thousand years BC. They were inhabited by short, stocky inhabitants, with large heads and large black eyes. The world's oldest civilization, the Sumerians, was born here.

Sumerian civilization

The center of every Sumerian city was a temple dedicated to a god or goddess. The temple was built on a hill, which personified the connection between heaven and earth. It was believed that all wealth, vegetation and wildlife belonged to the deity. The representative of God on earth was considered the ruler of the Sumerian state, to whom all residents were supposed to serve and unquestioningly obey.

The largest cities of Sumer were Ur, Uruk, Quiche, Lagash. They occupied an advantageous position in the Tigris and Euphrates valley and quickly gained leadership in the region. Less large and influential Sumerian cities: Nippur, Larsa, Adab, Umma, Marad, Shuruppak, Kisura. There were continuous wars between the cities of Southern Mesopotamia. The victors made the vanquished pay tribute, most of it was concentrated in the hands of military leaders and priests.

Let's memorize new words!

Tribute is a tax levied by the winner on the defeated people.

In the process of fighting among themselves, the ancient Sumerian cities weakened each other. Continuous fighting required more and more soldiers, who had to be fed by farmers. The fertile southern lands attracted enemies to Sumer: the Akkadian and Assyrian tribes. Weakened by internal strife, the Sumerians became easy prey for the conquerors.

In the 2nd millennium BC Semitic tribes finally conquered Ancient Sumer. Akkadians, Assyrians and other peoples mixed with the Sumerians, which gave rise to the existence of a new people - the Babylonian people.

Let's memorize new words!

Semitic tribes- these are the ancestors of modern Arabs, Jews, Assyrians.

Assyrian civilization

Side by side with the Sumerians, the Assyrians lived in northern Mesopotamia. Unlike the southern lands, the natural conditions for agriculture here were poor, so the main occupation of the people became campaigns of conquest.

Initially, the Assyrians lagged behind the Sumerians in their development. They borrowed the writing of the ancient Sumerians, their art, time measurement system and much more. Over the centuries, the Assyrians improved their methods of warfare and developed successful military tactics, which allowed them to conquer not only all the Sumerian cities, but also Syria, Phenicia, Palestine, and Babylonia. The Assyrians created the strongest and largest power of the Ancient East - the Assyrian kingdom, but it did not last more than 100 years.

The science

Successful farming among the Sumerians contributed to the invention of the wheel and potter's wheel. Around 3500 BC, the first wheeled carts appeared in Mesopotamia, on which local residents transported water, food and the main building material - clay. Writing was invented around this time.

Historians called the writing of the Sumerians cuneiform, since their writing resembled in appearance many different wedge-like dashes. The wedges were drawn on soft clay tablets using sharpened sticks. If necessary, while the clay was still wet, the scribe could erase the mistake and replace one symbol with another. When the inscription dried, the clay tablet was burned with fire for better preservation.

The main centers of literacy among the Sumerians were schools at temples. In addition to ordinary teachers, in the Sumerian school there was a special person who monitored discipline. He always had a stick at hand, with which he beat the offending students.

This is interesting! The need to account for land contributed to the invention of the sexagesimal counting system by the Sumerians. This system has survived to this day, according to it one hour is divided into sixty minutes, and one minute into sixty seconds.

The Sumerians had the most extensive knowledge among the priests. They knew how to keep a calendar, predict solar and lunar eclipses, and predict the appearance of comets. The priests in Mesopotamia possessed enormous wealth and were universally respected. They were under the protection of the king, since it was the priests who emphasized the divine origin of royal power.

Religion

The inhabitants of Mesopotamia revered many gods. Among them, the central position was occupied by Enlil- the supreme god of the Sumerians, the patron of all higher powers. According to the beliefs of the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, he separated heaven from earth, taught people cattle breeding and agriculture, and taught writing. At the same time, they believed that Enlil sent natural disasters and diseases, and once even caused a flood, with the aim of destroying humanity. Traditionally he was depicted with bull horns and hooves.

The Sun God was especially revered among the Sumerian gods. Shamash. He was depicted as a man with a long beard and a high turban on his head. It symbolized the daylight hours, sunrise, sun. According to ancient legends, Shamash healed people from illnesses, brought the dead back to life, freed prisoners, and brought people a rich harvest and prosperity.

Goddess Ishtar revered by the Sumerians as the queen of goddesses, she was simultaneously responsible for fertility, love and war. People believed that Ishtar gave them wisdom, vitality, health and good luck. Women worshiped the goddess with a request for finding happy love and the birth of healthy children. Most often, Ishtar was depicted as winged, with an eight-pointed star on her head and arrows behind her back.

Babylonian kingdom

In place of the Sumerian and Akkadian states at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, a new great power arose - Babylonia. The city of Babylon was chosen as the capital of the kingdom, from which it later received its name. During the heyday of the Sumerian civilization, Ancient Babylon was a relatively small city. But gradually it grew and became rich, thanks to its advantageous location in the center of the river valley, at the intersection of trade routes.

Under the rule of Babylon, many cities of Mesopotamia united, forming the Babylonian kingdom. Babylonia reached its greatest power during the reign of King Hammurabi. He became famous as an outstanding ruler thanks to his numerous military campaigns. King Hammurabi conquered Uruk, Ashur, Mari, Larsa, Issin and other city-states. In the end, almost all of Mesopotamia came under his rule.

The King of Babylonia, Hammurabi, created the first system of laws in history that operated in the territories of the entire Mesopotamia. The code of laws consisted of 282 articles and regulated all aspects of the life of the Babylonian population. The laws of King Hammurabi determined:

• personal and property rights of priests;
• duties of officials;
• different types of punishment for different categories of the population for all kinds of crimes and offenses;
• dimensions taxes;
• rules of marriage and grounds for divorce;
• trading rules, rental fields, gardens, houses and other property;
• procedure for acquiring slaves.

Let's memorize new words!

Taxes- These are mandatory payments levied in favor of the state from the population.

Rent- this is the temporary use of land, premises or any thing for a certain fee .

The laws of Hammurabi have survived to this day, as they were carved on a black stone pillar. With their help, scientists were able to establish what kind of people lived in Ancient Babylon and what they did. Along with the laws, historians found a message on the stone that said that for violating all of the listed rules, people would face hunger, terrible illnesses and death.

After Hammurabi's death, his kingdom fell apart.

Dictionary

1. Civilization is a self-sufficient community of countries and peoples that exists within historical time. Each civilization is unique, different from all other civilizations in traditions, characteristics of the habitat, and characteristics of the peoples representing this civilization.

2. A comet is a small celestial body consisting of ice, rock and metal, around which a tail of gas and dust often forms.

3. A turban is a men's headdress, which is a cloth wrapped around the head.

How not to perish if the two rivers on which your life depends are stormy and unpredictable, and of all earthly riches there is only clay in abundance? The peoples of Ancient Mesopotamia did not perish; moreover, they managed to create one of the most developed civilizations of its time.

Background

Mesopotamia (Mesopotamia) is another name for Mesopotamia (from the ancient Greek Mesopotamia - “mesopotamia”). This is how ancient geographers called the territory located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. In the 3rd millennium BC. Sumerian city-states, such as Ur, Uruk, Lagash, etc., were formed on this territory. The emergence of an agricultural civilization became possible thanks to the floods of the Tigris and Euphrates, after which fertile silt settled along the banks.

Events

III millennium BC- the emergence of the first city-states in Mesopotamia (5 thousand years ago). The largest cities are Ur and Uruk. Their houses were built from clay.

Around the 3rd millennium BC.- the emergence of cuneiform (more about cuneiform). Cuneiform writing arose in Mesopotamia initially as an ideographic rebus and later as a verbal syllabic writing. They wrote on clay tablets using a pointed stick.

Gods of Sumerian-Akkadian mythology:

• Shamash - god of the Sun,
• Ea - god of Water,
• Sin - god of the moon
• Ishtar is the goddess of love and fertility.

Ziggurat is a temple in the form of a pyramid.

Myths and stories:

• The myth of the flood (about how Utnapishtim built a ship and was able to escape during the global flood).
• The Tale of Gilgamesh.

Participants

To the northeast of Egypt, between two large rivers - the Euphrates and the Tigris - is Mesopotamia, or Mesopotamia (Fig. 1).

Rice. 1. Ancient Mesopotamia

The soils in Southern Mesopotamia are surprisingly fertile. Just like the Nile in Egypt, the rivers gave life and prosperity to this warm country. But the river floods were violent: sometimes streams of water fell on villages and pastures, demolishing dwellings and cattle pens. It was necessary to build embankments along the banks so that the flood would not wash away the crops in the fields. Canals were dug to irrigate fields and gardens.

The state arose here at approximately the same time as in the Nile Valley - more than 5,000 years ago.

Many settlements of farmers, growing, turned into the centers of small city-states, the population of which was no more than 30-40 thousand people. The largest were Ur and Uruk, located in the south of Mesopotamia. Scientists have found ancient burials, the objects found in them indicate the high development of the craft.

In the Southern Mesopotamia there were no mountains or forests; the only building material was clay. The houses were built from clay bricks, dried due to lack of fuel in the sun. To protect buildings from destruction, the walls were made very thick, for example, the city wall was so wide that a cart could drive along it.

In the center of the city rose ziggurat- a high stepped tower, at the top of which there was a temple of the patron god of the city (Fig. 2). In one city it was, for example, the sun god Shamash, in another - the moon god Sin. Everyone revered the water god Ea; people turned to the fertility goddess Ishtar with requests for rich grain harvests and the birth of children. Only priests were allowed to climb to the top of the tower - to the sanctuary. The priests monitored the movements of the heavenly gods - the Sun and the Moon. They compiled a calendar and predicted people's destinies using the stars. The learned priests also studied mathematics. They considered the number 60 sacred. Under the influence of the inhabitants of Ancient Mesopotamia, we divide an hour into 60 minutes, and a circle into 360 degrees.

Rice. 2. Ziggurat at Ur ()

During excavations of ancient cities in Mesopotamia, archaeologists found clay tablets covered with wedge-shaped icons. Badges were pressed onto damp clay with a pointed stick. To impart hardness, the tablets were fired in a kiln. Cuneiform icons are a special script of Mesopotamia - cuneiform. The icons represented words, syllables, and combinations of letters. Scientists have counted several hundred characters used in cuneiform writing (Fig. 3).

Rice. 3. Cuneiform ()

Learning to read and write in Ancient Mesopotamia was no less difficult than in Egypt. Schools, or "Houses of Tablets", appeared in the 3rd millennium BC. e., only children from wealthy families could attend, since education was paid. For many years it was necessary to attend a scribe school in order to master the complex writing system.

Bibliography

1. Vigasin A. A., Goder G. I., Sventsitskaya I. S. History of the Ancient World. 5th grade. - M.: Education, 2006.
2. Nemirovsky A.I. A book for reading on the history of the Ancient World. - M.: Education, 1991.

Additional precommended links to Internet resources

1. Project STOP SYSTEM ().
2. Culturologist.ru ().

Homework

1. Where is Ancient Mesopotamia located?
2. What do the natural conditions of Ancient Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt have in common?
3. Describe the cities of Ancient Mesopotamia.
4. Why does cuneiform have tens of times more characters than the modern alphabet?

THE ANCIENT POPULATION OF MEDO FRIVERS

Archaeological data indicate that in the 6th and 5th millennia BC. e. first in Northern and then in Southern Mesopotamia there were settled settlements, whose inhabitants were engaged not only in hunting, fishing and gathering, but also in agriculture. Both cultures close to each other and significantly different from each other arose in both the northern and southern parts of Mesopotamia. Traces of these cultures have reached us: products made of stone and clay, vessels with a characteristic method of ornamentation for each of them, tools, hunting weapons, jewelry, figurines and figurines reflecting ancient beliefs.

Our information about the peoples who once lived in this territory, created ancient cultures here and founded the first settlements, is very scarce. Among the most ancient settlements is the settlement in Kalat Jarmo, discovered in 1948 by the expedition of Robert Braidwood, which apparently arose in the 7th millennium. It was located approximately 50 km east of the city of Kirkuk, in the northern part of the Mesopotamian Plain, between the Lower Zab and Diyala rivers. Braidwood and his collaborators published materials from which it is clear that Jarmo was a settled settlement. Thus, in the Neolithic era, a decisive step was taken - the transition from a nomadic lifestyle to a settled way of life. No clay vessels were found here - they must not have been able to make them yet. But many clay figurines of animals were found, thanks to which it became known that the inhabitants of Jarmo had already domesticated dogs, pigs, goats and sheep. Grain was preserved between the stones that served as millstones. However, since stone hoes have not been found, scientists believe that the inhabitants of Jarmo did not yet know how to cultivate the land, but only collected wild cereals. Clay figurines of the mother goddess indicate the existence of the rudiments of religion. Using the method of radiocarbon analysis, with the help of which modern archeology determines the age of finds, it has been established that the settlement in Jarmo arose no later than 4750 BC. e. Two years after Braidwood's discovery, another settlement of a similar type was excavated near Jarmo. There is an assumption that the inhabitants of Mesopotamia tried to lead a sedentary lifestyle in earlier periods. This is evidenced, for example, by excavations at Barda Balka.

Somewhat younger than the Jarmo culture is the Hassuna culture, which received its name from a city near Mosul, discovered in 1943-1944. expedition of the Iraqi Museum. Clay vessels with painted ornaments and stone agricultural tools have already been found here. The houses of the inhabitants of Tell Hassun, at first primitive, consisting of one room, subsequently expanded: the courtyard was surrounded by several buildings at once. The tools and everyday items discovered here indicate that the inhabitants of this settlement quickly mastered the craft and art of decorating vessels. In a short time, they learned to make large clay vessels for storing grain, build special ovens for baking bread, and much more.

Similar settlements were found in other areas of Mesopotamia, for example, in the lower cultural layers of Nineveh and in Arpacia. Moreover, objects of material culture found in settlements located at a great distance from Mesopotamia, for example in Syria, also show similarities with pottery from Tell Hassun. These still very modest and controversial evidence of a cultural community spanning the space from the Tigris to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea undoubtedly represent one of the most important discoveries of the post-war period.

We should not forget: we are talking about the Stone Age, when man does not yet know metal, the world around is wild and incomprehensible, only a few parts of the globe are inhabited, and the distance of 200-300 km seems enormous and more difficult to overcome than 10-20 centuries later thousands of kilometers separating countries with large populations. And yet, people explore the world, conquer, and populate new territories, bringing with them the traditions of the culture they had previously created. All this must be remembered in order to understand the processes and events associated with the appearance of the Sumerians on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates.

But the Sumerians had not yet appeared on the Mesopotamian scene. Other prehistoric cultures arise and flourish in the Mesopotamian valley. The peoples inhabiting this region are making another leap in the development of civilization and culture after the transition from a nomadic lifestyle to a settled way of life. The Neolithic era, whose representatives were the inhabitants of Jarmo and Tell Hassun, ended. Around the middle of the 5th millennium, the peoples of Western Asia entered the Chalcolithic - Copper-Stone Age. We find the first traces of this new culture in the northern part of Mesopotamia, on the banks of the Khabur tributary of the Euphrates. Here, in Tell Halaf, near which there is now a busy Beirut-Baghdad railway line, in 1911. Baron Max von Oppenheim began archaeological excavations. This happened 12 years after local residents informed him that, in their opinion, Tell Halaf hides the ruins of a very ancient settlement. Getting ready to bury the deceased on a hill, they removed the top layers of wind-blown sand and came across stone sculptures of animals with human heads. Frightened people fled in panic.

Having carried out several expeditions before the First World War and in 1927-1929, Oppenheim reached the deepest layers. The amazingly beautiful painted molded vessels, according to experts, are the most perfect of all products of this kind made in antiquity. It is difficult to imagine how the ancient masters managed to achieve such completeness of the form without the help of a potter's wheel. The vessels are elegantly decorated with black and orange-red ornaments in the form of geometric shapes and images of birds, animals and people, covered with glaze and fired in special closed kilns at high temperatures, making them reminiscent of porcelain. The same closed pottery kilns, in which the temperature was regulated, were discovered in Karke Misha, Tepe Gavra and other prehistoric settlements. The stoves, as well as the similarity of the pottery found in these settlements, indicate the undoubted commonality of the culture of their inhabitants.

We will not describe in detail the priceless treasures of prehistoric eras. Many of them have been found before and continue to be found. We will try to briefly, in general terms, talk about the deep past of the country where, a thousand years later, the kingdom of the Sumerians arose. Archaeological materials indicate that processes took place here that played a huge role in the history of civilization: various cultures arose here, layered on top of each other, more and more numerous settlements were created, the inhabitants of which improved tools, produced a variety of products, knew how to cultivate the land and build .

Traces of settled life from this ancient, archaic period in the history of Mesopotamia are concentrated in the northern part of the Mesopotamian Plain. We are mainly interested in its southern part, the coast of the Persian Gulf, which in ancient times occupied a much larger territory, extending to the northwest for almost 120 km. The waters of the gulf approached Ered, Tell el-Obeid and Ur, and the Tigris and Euphrates did not merge into one channel when they flowed into the gulf.

Here, in the places where the Sumerians appeared on the historical scene, settled settlements began to emerge somewhat later. During excavations in Ur, which were carried out after the Second World War, traces of settlements from the second half of the 5th millennium were discovered in the deepest layers. There are some similarities in the decoration of the clay vessels found in the early layers of Eredu and the vessels from Tell Halaf, but there are much more differences between them. Clay products were found directly above the “virgin” layer, that is, above clean sand. Exactly the same products are found in later layers, and only above the sixth layer they are mixed with ceramics of a different type, known from excavations at Tell el-Obeid.

In Eredu, not only vessels, tools, weapons and everyday items were found, but also the ruins of a small temple, built from sun-dried bricks and dating back to the earliest period of the settlement's history. This temple, the first of fourteen (if not seventeen) prehistoric sanctuaries, built one after another on the same place by successive generations of architects, is considered the oldest in this region of the globe. In later archaeological layers, scientists came across traces of residential buildings - huts made of reeds, covered with clay outside and inside. The reed walls have decayed, but their imprint on the clay has survived thousands of years, and now you can see how the ancient inhabitants of the Persian Gulf coast built their homes.

The settlement of Tell el-Obeid, once located on the banks of the Euphrates, which has now changed its course, apparently arose at the turn of the 5th and 4th millennia BC. e. The greenish clay vessels discovered here are decorated with dark brown or black geometric patterns. Images of animals or people in the ornament are rare. But clay figurines of people and animals were found in large quantities. El Obeid vessels were made by hand, sometimes on a slowly rotating potter's wheel, driven by hand. Houses were built from reeds coated with clay, or from large blocks of clay dried in the sun. A mosaic of cones not only decorated the walls, but also protected them from being washed away by rainwater. Tell el-Obeid appears to have been a large and populous settlement. A cemetery has been excavated on the outskirts of Eredu, located near El Obeid. In the graves - and there are more than a thousand of them - Obeid ceramics were found next to the remains of people.

The influence of the Obeid culture extended far beyond the southern part of the Mesopotamian valley. Settlements with a culture of this type, which has similarities not only in ceramics and tools, but also in burial methods, were discovered in the vicinity of Mosul. Scientists have identified signs of common cultures between El Obeid and some settlements located on the Iranian Plateau and even in the Indus River Valley. These observations are all the more important and interesting because there is evidence of contact between the inhabitants of Tell el-Obeid and the inhabitants of these distant regions of the globe. Thus, during the era of the El Obeid culture, the population of Southern Mesopotamia made beads from lapis lazuli and jewelry from the green semi-precious stone Amazonite. These stones were not mined in Mesopotamia, but were imported: amazonite from the central regions of India or Transbaikalia, and lapis lazuli from Central Asia. Consequently, the trade relations of the ancient population of Southern Mesopotamia were geographically very wide.