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Crash Course in World History: Mesopotamia

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Crash Course in World History: Mesopotamia

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Mesopotamia: Crash Course World History #3

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"Hammurabi, the king of righteousness, on whom Shamash has conferred the law, am I."

"An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth."

This phrase, along with the idea of written laws, goes back to ancient Mesopotamian culture that prospered long before the Bible was written or the civilizations of the Greeks or Romans flowered.

"An eye for an eye ..." is a paraphrase of Hammurabi's Code, a collection of 282 laws inscribed on an upright stone pillar. The code was found by French archaeologists in 1901 while excavating the ancient city of Susa, which is in modern-day Iran.

Hammurabi is the best known and most celebrated of all Mesopotamian kings. He ruled the Babylonian Empire from 1792-50 B.C.E. Although he was concerned with keeping order in his kingdom, this was not his only reason for compiling the list of laws. When he began ruling the city-state of Babylon, he had control of no more than 50 square miles of territory. As he conquered other city-states and his empire grew, he saw the need to unify the various groups he controlled.

A Need for Justice

Hammurabi keenly understood that, to achieve this goal, he needed one universal set of laws for all of the diverse peoples he conquered. Therefore, he sent legal experts throughout his kingdom to gather existing laws. These laws were reviewed and some were changed or eliminated before compiling his final list of 282 laws. Despite what many people believe, this code of laws was not the first.

Oldest Code Known

The prologue or introduction to the list of laws is very enlightening. Here, Hammurabi states that he wants "to make justice visible in the land, to destroy the wicked person and the evil-doer, that the strong might not injure the weak." The laws themselves support this compassionate claim, and protect widows, orphans and others from being harmed or exploited.

The phrase "an eye for an eye" represents what many people view as a harsh sense of justice based on revenge. But, the entire code is much more complex than that one phrase. The code distinguishes among punishments for wealthy or noble persons, lower-class persons or commoners, and slaves.

The Laws

Hammurabi's Law Code

Hammurabi's own words illustrate this point: "If a man has destroyed the eye of a man of the gentleman class, they shall destroy his eye .... If he has destroyed the eye of a commoner ... he shall pay one mina of silver. If he has destroyed the eye of a gentleman's slave ... he shall pay half the slave's price." The Babylonians clearly did not live under a social system that treated all people equally.

The code deals with many topics of concern other than assault. It outlines rules for witnesses and those making accusations of crimes. For example, "If any one bring an accusation of any crime before the elders, and does not prove what he has charged, he shall, if it be a capital offense charged, be put to death." It details how theft or destruction of property should be handled and gives guidelines for dealing with trade and business problems.

In some cases, these rules are quite reasonable and fair: "If any one owe a debt for a loan, and a storm prostrates (kills) the grain, or the harvest fail, or the grain does not grow for lack of water, in that year he need not give his creditor any grain; he washes his debt-tablet in water and pays no rent for this year."

The code also gives rules for family matters, such as marriage, divorce, incest, and adoption. Payment amounts for the work of doctors and other professionals are outlined. Although the pay for doctors was good, they suffered severe punishments for fatal errors. The code states that "if a physician make a large incision with the operating knife, and kill him, ... his hands shall be cut off." (Talk about a need for malpractice insurance!)

The Code covers all types of issues related to farming and herding animals, and it also lays out rules on the ownership and sale of slaves.

Go Jump in a River!

Hammurabi's Code may not seem very different from more recent laws and precedents that guide the processes of a trial. But, there are a few major differences between ancient Babylonians and today's laws. Hammurabi's Code required accusers to bring the accused into court by themselves.

A number of the laws refer to jumping in the Euphrates River as a method of demonstrating one's guilt or innocence. If the accused returned to shore safely, they were deemed innocent; if they drowned, they were guilty. This practice follows the Babylonians's belief that their fates were controlled by their gods.

From the code, it is evident that the Babylonians did not believe all people were equal. The code treated slaves, commoners, and nobles differently. Women had a number of rights, including the ability to buy and sell property and to obtain a divorce. The Babylonians understood the need for honesty by all parties in a trial and for court officers to be free of corruption so that the justice system could function effectively.

Hammarabi's Code serves as a window into the prevailing values of ancient Babylon.

The History of Plumbing in Babylon
Most students don't browse the Web for commercial plumbing supply sites, but here's a concise and nicely told history of the Babylonian sewer system. Amaze everyone with a detailed description of King Nebuchadnezzar's privy or the town latrine!

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Code of Hammurabi
In the days of Hammurabi, if someone accused an elder of a crime and he was found not guilty, the accuser would be put to death. Thieves, too, wree put to death. What other punishments did Hammurabi decree? To find out more, take a look at the Code of Hammurabi on this Yale Law School site.

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You Be the Judge on Hammurabi's Code
If a son strikes his father, they shall cut off his hand. That statement is number 195 of the Code of Hammurabi and the answer to one of the activity questions on this award-winning site. Great graphics, links to more information, and a teachers' page make this resource as valuable for teachers as it is for students.

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Ethics of Sumer, Babylon, and Hittites
One in a series of essays about the ethics of ancient civilizations, this piece deals with Sumer, Babylon, and the Hittites. Using mythology and ancient texts, the author reconstructs what different ancient peoples would have considered morally important. The introductory description of what Sumerian life was like is especially worthwhile, as are the sections on the Epic of Gilgamesh and Hammurabi's Babylon. The downside is that the site reads a bit like an encyclopedia entry and has no pictures.

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Hammurabi's Code: An Eye for an Eye [ushistory.org]

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"Hammurabi, the king of righteousness, on whom Shamash has conferred the law, am I." "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." This phrase, along with the idea of written laws, goes back to ancient Mesopotamian culture that prospered long before the Bible was written or the civilizations of the Greeks or Romans flowered.

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HISTORY'S HISTORIES You are history. We are the future.

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Essential Themes
Geography: Why do people move and live where they do?

Today, you will take a quick tour of Mesopotamia and talk about its geography and natural barriers. is the study of how humans interact with their environment. are geographic features of a landscape that make crossing that land difficult. Examples of natural barriers are rivers, mountains, deserts, ice fields, and seas.

Sometimes natural barriers isolate an area, which doesn't sound good, but isolation might also provide some security to a region. While you complete this quick tour of ancient Mesopotamia, try to pick out its natural barriers. Think about whether or not those natural barriers helped the ancient Mesopotamians who settled there and built the world's first civilization thousands of years ago.

Where is Mesopotamia?
Mesopotamia sits in the Middle East at the intersection of Europe, Africa, and Asia, where Iraq is today.

Mesopotamia is known by a few nicknames such as "﻿ The Fertile Crescent ﻿ " and "The Cradle of Civilization." Another name for Mesopotamia, though, is "The Land Between the Rivers." In fact, the word Mesopotamia, derived from ancient G reek, means "the land between the rivers."

In this case, the rivers are the Tigris River and the Euphrates River. The Tigris is east of the Euphrates or, if you're looking at a map, it's to the right side of the Euphrates.

Both rivers flow out of the Taurus Mountains to the north and, after traveling over a thousand miles through what is mostly desert, they flow into the Persian Gulf to the South. To the east, Mesopotamia is bordered by the Zagros Mountains.

The land of Mesopotamia, then as now, is mostly desert and rarely receives more than about 12 inches of rain per year. Mesopotamian deserts include the Syrian Desert and the Arabian Desert.
How did irrigation help Mesopotamia's early settlers?

Why Mesopotamia?
Drawn by the promise of the two rivers, by about 8000 BCE, that's "before the common era," communities based on and the domestication of animals were already being established in northern Mesopotamia. These agricultural communities were pe rmanent settlements .

The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers made the soil of Mesopotamia good for growing crops, and by 6000 BCE farmers had already started to rely on rather than on rainfall to grow crops. Irrigation is a system of canals leading from the rivers to the fields. With the development of irrigation, people turned from being controlled by the environment to being able to change their environment. As a result, communities began to push further and further south along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers until, between 3500 and 3000 BCE, true cities emerged.

What resources did the Tigris and Euphrates provide the people who settled "the land between the rivers?"

The cities that developed in Mesopotamia were mostly concentrated in the South, near the Persian Gulf, and included such powerhouses as Ur, Uruk, Lagash, Eridu and, later, Babylon. The growth of cities along the banks of those two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, depended on the ability of the farmers to use the Tigris and the Euphrates to develop robust agriculture throughout the region. Because of the acres and acres of green crops in the middle of the desert, Mesopotamia became known as the "fertile crescent." You might think living in ancient Mesopotamia, surrounded by deserts and mountains, would be an awful place to live. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers, however, provided early settlers in Mesopotamian all they needed to survive and prosper. The rivers provided water for drinking, bathing, and irrigating crops. The rivers also provided an

abundance of fish and water birds, such as ducks and geese, for eating. The mud along the banks of the rivers provided clay for pottery and materials for brick making. Due to the resources provided by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the Mesopotamians were able to develop agriculture, which led to a food , permanent mud brick dwellings, and specialized workers. Together, those three things led to a more complex society and the birth of "civilization."

Now, how many of the "natural barriers" that are a part of Mesopotamia can you name?

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Essential Themes Geography: Why do people move and live where they do? Today, you will take a quick tour of Mesopotamia and talk about its geography and natural barriers. is the study of how humans interact with their environment. are geographic features of a landscape that make crossing that land difficult.

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Historian Jean Bottéro concluded his 2001 article, "The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia," with an insult of sorts. "I would not advise trying to incorporate their culinary tradition, just as it stands, into our own," he wrote, speculating that a modern eater would not enjoy the garlic-heavy, salt-light dishes that people ate nearly 4,000 years ago.

But ever since, chefs around the globe have attempted Mesopotamian recipes, the oldest on record, in their home kitchens. Nawal Nasrallah, an Iraqi scholar and and cookbook author, has written about adapting the ancient recipes for modern kitchens. Nearly a decade ago, Laura Kelley, founder of the blog The Silk Road Gourmet, organized an ancient Mesopotamian cooking challenge. More recently, an interdisciplinary team from Yale and Harvard whipped up a Mesopotamian feast in 2018. All three endeavors had the same source material: a set of four ancient clay tablets in the Yale Babylonian collection.

The tablets provide substantial evidence for a haute Mesopotamian cuisine. 4,000 years ago, the Mesopotamian region, which includes present-day Iraq and parts of Syria and Turkey, was already an established hotbed of innovation, encompassing the first cities, writing systems, and even the first recorded cuisine. Early scribes impressed wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets with reed styluses. Applying this method to the recipe tablets, scribes recorded culinary routines using Akkadian, an ancient Semitic language. Scholars estimate that three of the four recipe tablets originated around 1730 BC, and the fourth around 1,000 years later. Unfortunately, little is known about their origins, except that Yale added them to their collection in 1911, in a purchase of therapeutic and pharmaceutical texts.

For decades, their contents had historians stumped. In 1933, curator Ferris Stephens interpreted them as recipes for medicine. In the 1940s, curators Mary Inda Hussey and Albrecht Goetze came to the same conclusion, although Hussey later suspected that the tablets communicated more than just medical recipes. Nearly 40 years later, when Bottéro began retranslating the tablets for his research on Babylonian cooking, he found that the tablets were stamped with dozens of ancient Mesopotamian recipes.

After Bottéro's initial discovery, historians continued to uncover surprising patterns. Portions of the tablets have either broken off or eroded with time, but astute translators identified both long and short recipes along with titles for individual recipes. While a few ingredients have ambiguous translations, Nasrallah has identified striking similarities between Mesopotamian and modern Iraqi recipes. "Some of the ingredients are unidentified, which is frustrating, but I do see similarities to what is being used in Iraq nowadays," she says. "Such in the case of the herb erishtu, which I believe to be what we call today rashshād, pepper grass."

The most complete of the tablets contains 25 recipes: 21 meat dishes, three vegetable-meat dishes, and one vegetarian dish. One of its simplest recipes, Bottéro notes, consists of only two lines: "Meat broth. Take some meat. Get the water ready. Add some fat. Some ... [the word is lost], leek and garlic pounded together, and plain shuhutinnu. "

Though the recipes are short, with limited instructions and no measurements, they all call for multiple ingredients and likely took hours to prepare. To this day, why ancient scribes recorded these particular recipes remains a mystery. However, the expensive cuts of meat, elaborate techniques, and various seasonings could mean that chefs prepared these dishes for special occasions.

To sample flavors from the oldest cuisine in the world, today's chefs must read between the lines. The recipe for meat broth doesn't even specify what meat to use. However, census records from the time mention fowl, sheep, and cattle. When it comes to the unknown ingredients, consensus on their translations is rare. In the case of the broth, the jury is out on whether shuhutinnu is an onion, an herb, or a root vegetable. With all these varying translations, it's impossible to argue for one interpretation with complete certainty.

Beyond Yale's tablets, additional Mesopotamian dishes appear in records on food rituals and upon archaeological artifacts. Mesopotamians not only fed themselves, but also assembled elaborate dishes for their gods. Sweets, which made their way into popular traditions and rituals, incorporated honey and date fruits. Mesoptomian pastry chefs crafted recipes for qullupu, a sweet date-filled cookie, and mersu, a date and pistachio candy. Ancient texts reveal that ancient Mesopotamians offered qullupu to the Sumerian goddess Inanna during the New Year and Spring Festivals.

Bottéro may not have endorsed Mesopotamian cuisine, but cooks today keep making it, using complex spices, unique textures, and diverse flavors while tipping a nod to the original texts. No matter what, there will be a few inconsistencies. Today's versions can't incorporate the same ingredients, use the same cookware, or utilize the same cooking techniques as 4,000 years ago. But you can still try for a taste of ancient Mesopotamia in your modern kitchen with recipes for meat broth and mersu. For a challenge, try searching the Yale Babylonian collection for the tablet recipes yourself, and cook up your own interpretation of Mesopotamian cuisine.

Serves: 4
Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 2 hours
8 cloves of garlic, sliced
1 cup leeks, sliced
1 1/2 cup carrots, sliced
1 lb beef chuck roast
3 cups water
Salt and pepper to taste (or go without, as the Mesopotamians did)
1. Prepare the Vegetables and Meat

Slice the carrots, garlic, and leeks. Using a mortar and pestle or a spoon, grind the leeks and garlic together in a mixing bowl. Set aside. Cut the beef into large one-inch cubes and season with salt and pepper, if you wish. Drizzle oil in a wide-brimmed pot, before adding the meat and browning lightly on both sides.

2. Start the Soup

After the meat has browned, turn the stove to medium heat, and add the carrots and mashed garlic and leeks. Quickly transfer three cups of water to the pot. When the pot starts bubbling, turn the stove to low heat.

3. Sit Tight!

Cover the pot and let the soup simmer for two hours, with occasional stirring. Before serving, skim off the beef fat with a strainer and flavor with salt and pepper to your taste.

Servings: 12 mersu balls
Prep Time: 45 minutes

1. Prepare the Dates and Pistachios
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Cut the dried dates into halves and transfer to a medium bowl. Pour 2 cups of boiling water over the dates and cover with tin foil or a lid. Let the dates sit for 30 minutes. In the meantime, shell 2 cups of pistachios and grind the nuts into a fine powder using a blender. Set aside.

2. Mix the Ingredients

When the dates are ready, drain the water (leave a little water for easier mixing) and add a cup of pistachio powder and the melted butter to the bowl. Using a fork, potato masher, or mortar and pestle, grind the ingredients into a smooth mix.

3. Roll the Balls

Using your hands, roll the mix into 12 balls and coat each ball with the remainder of the pistachio mix. If you prefer smaller candies, you can make around 18 balls. Transfer the rolled mersu to the fridge to chill before serving.

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Cook Like an Ancient Mesopotamian With the World's Oldest Recipes

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Historian Jean Bottéro concluded his 2001 article, "The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia," with an insult of sorts. "I would not advise trying to incorporate their culinary tradition, just as it stands, into our own," he wrote, speculating that a modern eater would not enjoy the garlic-heavy, salt-light dishes that people ate nearly 4,000 years ago.

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What did the clothing in Mesopotamian look like? Let's do a Sumerian costume breakdown. Basically, fashion changes when the world changes. And in Mesopotamia, fashion didn't need to change for 5,000 years. When we look at the sculptures or drawings from that era, we see dull and neutral colors and shapes, but was it really so? You'll find out from this article.

The article is based on a video by Amanda Hallay, fashion historian

Let's do a Sumerian costume breakdown. This culture was around for a very long time, so fashion did change. We're going just sort of move slightly chronologically. But, basically, fashion changes when the world changes. Fashion changes when it needs to change. And in Mesopotamia, fashion didn't need to change for 5,000 years.

The mainstay of early Mesopotamian fashion was the following. It is called a "kaunake" and it's this sort of a wrap-around skirt, worn quite high on both men and women. On men - just under the nipple; on women - wrapped under one arm and over the shoulder of another.

But what the Mesopotamian tiered skirt is made out of? Some costume historians maintain that it was made of cloth, that this cloth was just cut into these wonderful leaf scalloped shapes. Other historians think that a kaunake was made out of leaves because they really do look like leaves on various Mesopotamian sculptures. Others, however, say they were made out of feathers. No Mesopotamian clothing exists to this day, so we just have to guess. Maybe they were made of all three.

But let's break down the structural elements of Byzantine clothing. You can see, everything was based on wraps at the beginning of this culture. But then, we start seeing tailored garments later on - in the Assyrian era. Garments with sleeves, for example.

But one thing we know the Mesopotamians gave us was fringe. They were nuts for fringe - we see it on carvings, we see it on sculptures. This was a culture that really used clothing to reflect itself, to reflect status. Fringe on everything - it must have been spectacularly exotic.

Of course, there was a social strata in Mesopotamia. And, obviously, the people at the top of it - the royals, the aristocrats, and the big-time land owners - used clothing as status.

Take a look at all of these elements of clothing. The man here is wearing a tunic and over the tunic. He has garments that are wrapped around his body. These garments were made of silk, they were embroidered, and they had fringe.

Take a look at the colored middle image here. You can really get an idea that a lot was going on. The more decorations, the more status you had. The image on the right shows us that a lot of gold was used during the Mesopotamian era.

So, this was very flashy clothing. Get away from this idea that people in the ancient world were neutrals - they didn't. Color was so important to them, more important than it is to us today. We all often go around in black, gray, and neutrals - that would not have been very fashionable in Mesopotamia.

But where the Mesopotamians really showed their style was in their jewelry, their work with gold, and their work with bronze. Look at these headdresses and crowns. Obviously, if you were a baker's wife, you did not wear one of these. These were for royals, these were for High Priestesses. But take a look at the detail - the flowers. Flowers were such an important motif in Mesopotamian, Assyrian, and Babylonian fashion. Also look at these incredible earrings, necklaces, and rings. Absolutely gorgeous gold, bronze, stone, beadwork - this is ancient stuff.

To survive on the planet as a human being, you do not need to be wearing a gold crown with leaves and flowers springing out of it. It's not necessary. So, these pieces and the Mesopotamian fashion in general was being used to signify something else - status, spirituality, money, or just good old-fashioned style.

Let's take a look at hair and beauty. Well, so many Mesopotamian sculptures show guys with long crinkly beards and with matching long hair. We know absolutely that these beards were often curled artificially and they were certainly treated with oils. Beards were important to Mesopotamians. When we look through the ancient world, we'll find that beards signify wisdom. So, whenever you see a beard on an ancient sculpture or an ancient painting, this guy was wise - he was older, he was wiser, he had status.

So, we know that beards were important, but so were shaved heads. Look at this guy - he doesn't have a beard, he has a shaved head. And there are a lot of statues like this. Obviously, to shave your head and be clean-shaven, you had to have a status, too. Maybe this hairdo was typical for priests.

Women's hair was certainly quaffed. Mesopotamian ladies seem to wear these kind of bulbous updos. We see it so often that this really was the hairdo of the Fertile Crescent.

What about makeup? We know they wore makeup, and we're sure that it was extremely exotic, because look at their clothing, look at their jewelry - it was so exotic, it was so flashy that their makeup, probably, was, too. And we know for a fact that they wore makeup because a lot of it has remained intact, like this shell which is full of eye-makeup: a powdered pigment in this wonderful blue (which must have been even more blue 4 or 5 thousand years ago) to use as an eye-shadow. And we know that it went on the eyes because so many of the sculptures, that remain, have detachable eyes and each of them is lined with eyeliner.

Time robs history of color

Think about it. Anything that's left over from the ancient world has lost its color. Everything is the color of sandstone, or white marble, or granite. Everything is neutral or white.

So when we get this statue from the Mesopotamian era and look at her hairdo - she's a bit like a Princess Leia from Star Wars, isn't it? With these two sort of buns on either side of her ears. When we get a statue like this, it's so easy to forget that her clothing would not have looked like this 5,000 years ago.

We know that Mesopotamia was alive with color. She must have been ablaze with color because exotic color was so important to the Mesopotamians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the whole culture of Sumer. They had incredible gold headdresses, and earrings, and necklaces. And we know they wore a lot of makeup. This was an exotic look. So, when you're looking at a dull ancient sculpture, remember that it used to be bright, colorful, and eye-catchy back then.

(c) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aTPB6YnAEA

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Traditional clothing of Mesopotamia. What did it look like? - Nationalclothing.org

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What did the clothing in Mesopotamian look like? Let's do a Sumerian costume breakdown. Basically, fashion changes when the world changes. And in Mesopotamia, fashion didn't need to change for 5,000 years. When we look at the sculptures or drawings from that era, we see dull and neutral colors and shapes, but was it really so?

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The land of Mesopotamia did not have a lot of natural resources, or at least they did not have the ones in demand during that time period. To get the items they needed the Mesopotamians had to trade.

In the southern part of Mesopotamia, docks were built along the sides of the rivers so that ships could easily dock and unload their trade goods. The merchants traded food, clothing, jewelry, wine and other goods between the cities.

Sometimes a caravan would arrive from the north or east. The arrival of a trade caravan or trading ship was a time of celebration.

To buy or trade these goods, the ancient Mesopotamians used a system of barter. For example, in exchange for six chairs, you might give someone two goats and a bag of dates. You had to work out an agreement and make a deal for the things you bought. Tokens were made of clay. They were designed in unique ways. Each shape had a meaning. One chape might mean a fancy chair. Another might mean a bag of dates. Prior to loading the chairs onboard a ship for delivery, token would be placed in a clay ball. The clay ball was then sealed and witnessed and signed with cylinder seals. If you had made six chairs for someone, you would put six chair tokens inside the clay ball. When the person who bought the chairs received their delivery, they opened the clay ball and counted the tokens to make sure everything had arrived as ordered. Deliveries and the opening of the clay ball were witnessed so there was never a problem.

They used barley for local trade. You had to borrow barley from a barley banker. The banker charged very high interest.

Because barley was heavy, they used lead, copper, bronze, tin, silver and gold to "buy" things away from their local area.

It was a very cumbersome system, whether you used barley, clay balls and tokens, or copper and gold. Many historians believe that this system of barter is what triggered the invention of the first written language, cuneiform. It was much easier to write a contract that was witnessed, and sign it with your cylinder seal.
A Tale of Three Merchants Trade and Transport Mathematics and Measurement
Cuneiform, the first written language

Cylinder Seals

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Ancient Mesopotamia Commerce and Money - Mesopotamia for Kids

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The land of Mesopotamia did not have a lot of natural resources, or at least they did not have the ones in demand during that time period. To get the items they needed the Mesopotamians had to trade.

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Kids learn about the history of the Artisans, Art, and Craftsmen of Ancient Mesopotamia including pottery, jewelry, stone masons, and more.

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Kids learn about the ziggurats from Ancient Mesopotamia. Tall step pyramids at the center of each town built for their gods.

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By: William B. Hafford View PDF

Modern cities have neighborhoods, shops, factories, religious centers, and cemeteries. They have transportation networks along streets and alleyways, and drainage and sewage systems to carry away waste. Cities also have large and ornate public buildings, typically for city administration and religious observance. All of these elements were paralleled in ancient Mesopotamian cities such as Ur and Nippur by 2000 BCE, and most are in evidence much earlier.

Life today may be faster paced, but the overall concerns have not really changed. We all need housing and food, work and leisure, family and friends.

We are intimately familiar with our modern daily lives and we might think them too dull for future scholars to investigate. In reality, they are full of nuance and interest and, by comparing our lives to those of the past, we uncover extraordinary similarities that help us to identify with our ancient ancestors.

So, what was daily life like for an average person in a Mesopotamian city 4,000 years ago? Because the development of the city meant expansion in work specialization, there were a variety of jobs and different daily routines. Farming did not disappear with the rise of cities, but urban dwellers became less involved in raising their own food and more involved on earning it through wages or rations. Without having to spend time growing food, they could concentrate their activity in new fields of industry, commerce, or administration.

Work and Play

In order to support an expanding population performing large numbers of jobs, farms outside the city had to increase production. This meant, in southern Mesopotamia at least, that canals had to be dug to bring more water to the fields. Just as in modern cities, a labor force was essential. Cuneiform texts sometimes tell us the names of the members and supervisors of canal digging crews, as well as their payments. Even though it seems anachronistic, wage labor was in place long before coinage was ever struck. We have clear evidence of it by 1800 BCE, but it likely occurred much earlier, possibly a thousand years earlier.

As cities expanded, builders came into high demand. Canal digging provided huge amounts of mud that brickmakers formed into bricks that builders then used in construction. The king was seen to be the chief builder, responsible for major buildings and expansion in the city. In a groundbreaking ceremony, he brought in the first basket of bricks for temples and palaces. He also had his name stamped into the bricks themselves. Most bricks, however, were less grandiose, and, while they dried in brick molds, they sometimes received more humble markings-misplaced footsteps and wandering dogs being the primary culprits.

Secondary markings on bricks provide a glimpse into everyday life in the city. We can easily imagine a brickmaker cursing the dogs that ran through the drying mud or a bored builder doodling marks on a baked brick. In fact, a few ancient Mesopotamian bricks have been found with the outline of a game board scratched onto them. The outline takes the same form as the much fancier, inlaid game boards found in the Royal Cemetery at Ur. It represents a widespread game played by Mesopotamians, similar to backgammon. Builders probably carved the brick boards to play on while awaiting instructions for their upcoming tasks.

Just as today, then, daily life involved both work and play. Apart from the evidence of board games and gaming pieces, archaeologists have also uncovered toys, such as clay model boats that could be pulled along the ground. More elaborate model chariots with clay wheels, the wooden axles of which have long since deteriorated, have also been found, along with many animal and human figurines that may have been dolls. Children likely played with all of these miniatures in imitation of the adult life they saw around them.

Religion

Miniature clay animals, vehicles, and furniture have also been found in religious contexts. These may not have been toys, but representative offerings to the gods. Of course, the specifics of a religion may be difficult for an outsider to understand, but some form of ritual is important to all people, and ancient Mesopotamians were no exception. Many Mesopotamian houses had their own private chapel complete with incense chimney and altar. There were also neighborhood shrines to local deities and major temples to the primary deities of the Sumerian pantheon.

Each city had its own patron god. At Ur it was Nanna, the moon god, while at Nippur it was Enlil, chief of all Mesopotamian deities. Temples dedicated to these gods might not be accessible to all people at all times, but there were lesser deities and shrines to help the common people. Minor deities are often depicted on cylinder seals, where they are shown leading the seal owner into the presence of a major deity. People curried favor with many gods, dedicating objects or food offerings at shrines in hopes of gaining otherworldly protection, while also discussing local issues with their neighbors and priests.

Priests and priestesses managed the cult of particular deities and played an important, specialized role in the city. At Ur, the most powerful of them all was the entu priestess. She maintained the temples and rituals of Nanna and his consort Ningal, the patron gods of Ur. The position of entu was usually occupied by the king's daughter. The entu priestess around 2300 BCE was Enanatuma, the daughter of King Sargon of Agade. Apart from managing the cult of the primary deity at Ur, she wrote and collected hymns to the goddess Inana that were still being read and copied down more than 1,000 years later. She is the first person whose name is directly associated with having created a written work, making her the first named author in history.

Entertainment

Ancient Mesopotamians created some of the first written literature and poetry in the world. They enjoyed music as well, as shown by the impressive stringed instruments found in Ur's Royal Cemetery. But clay models of lyres and plaques showing people playing flutes and small stringed instruments tell us that music was not solely for high ceremony. People sang and danced often, celebrating life whenever they could.

Music requires keeping rhythm and ancient Mesopotamian plaques also show people with drums and rattles. Drums are usually made of perishable materials and are not often found in the archaeological record, but clay rattles are common. These can take many forms, from a hollow clay disk to various animal shapes. Archaeologists are uncertain whether these rattles were used solely for music or also for entertaining children. A hollow clay pig with beads inside might keep children occupied while their mother ground grain to make bread for the family.

Education and Industry

In ancient Mesopotamian cities, it was typically the mother who cared for the children and managed the household. Many children helped their mothers at home and then went on to apprentice in a profession. But some professions required a more scholarly education and formal schooling was a part of the ancient city. The children who were to become scribes, for example, would practice writing by impressing repeated cuneiform characters on clay. They would then move on to copying literary passages and even mathematical problems. Writing was very important for the administration of the city and of commerce, just as it is today.

It was by no means exclusively men who learned to write; many female scribes are attested. Additionally, women, along with children, worked in the textile industry. Cloth and finished garments-made from the wool of sheep raised outside the city-were extremely important exports. They were used in long-distance exchange to provide the resources that Mesopotamia lacked, such as metal and stone. Making them required a large workforce. Unfortunately, since cloth is perishable, very little physical evidence of this massive industry survives. Weaving implements such as spindles and spindle whorls are found, however, and the textual record attests to the enormity of the overall task. Tablets indicate that around 2000 BCE as many as 10,000 women were active in the weaving industry in the region of Ur, and up to 15,000 in the region of Lagash and Girsu.

Other industries were equally intense. Many, such as firing pottery and smelting metal, created so much smoke that they were located well outside the city. At Ur, the main industrial center was at a suburb known as Diqdiqqeh, about a mile to the northeast of the city wall. Artifacts found here-such as molds, test carvings, tools, and weights-attest to manufacturing and commerce.

Commerce

Although woven cloth, finished garments, and other items were exchanged for resources far away from Mesopotamia, the commercial system was much more complex than barter. In fact, a clear concept of abstract money and physical currency existed in Mesopotamia by 2500 BCE. Even though coinage as we know it would not be created for almost another 2,000 years, raw materials and finished objects, even sheep and houses, were already being evaluated in silver by weight 4,500 years ago. The unit of weight was known as the shekel, from the verb shaqalu, meaning "to weigh out," and this unit in southern Mesopotamia was equivalent to 8.4 grams.

Mesopotamian merchants carried their own sets of weights and compared them with the weight systems of neighboring regions in order to conduct international business. They also loaned out silver at interest for local purchases like houses, and they financed large-scale shipping over long distances. Law codes, such as the famous Code of Hammurabi, dated to about 1750 BCE, set maximum interest rates and decreed punishments for using false weights.

The average person would not have had much, if any, silver. The standard pay of a laborer around 1800 BCE amounted to only 1/4 shekel (2.1 grams) of silver per week, about the weight of a modern U.S. dime. But there were equivalencies-one shekel of silver was worth one GUR of grain, about 300 liters. This was the unit in which laborers were paid-a day of work would result in 10 liters of grain, from which the family's bread could be made.

Daily Routine

So, the daily routine of ancient Mesopotamians around 4,000 years ago was rather like many of ours today. Men and women got up, ate breakfast, and went to work. That work might have been building, digging, metallurgy, pottery, carpentry, weaving, tending to ritual observance, writing, or buying and selling. Although many of these jobs are largely mechanized in modern times, we still see them in our cities. A worker might have a bit of time in the day to play a quick game with a friend or stop off at the local chapel to discuss neighborhood issues, then, after work, go home for dinner with the family and probably a bit of music or story-telling before going off to bed. Sounds pretty familiar.

Discovering the Royal Game of Ur

Leonard Woolley found the remains of shell inlaid game boards, along with disk-shaped game pieces and four-sided dice, in a few of the royal tombs at Ur. All of the boards had a distinctive notched shape, and this same form has been found carved onto bricks. It has typically been called the "Royal Game of Ur," but even though royalty had the finest boards, commoners played the game too.

Luckily, a much later cuneiform tablet tells us how at least one version of the game was played. The board consists of a square made of 16 places joined to a rectangle of 8 places. The notch created by the join is where pieces enter and leave to complete a circuit. The game is a strategy race, essentially a predecessor to backgammon. Each player attempts to complete a circuit with all of their pieces while also trying to block or disrupt their opponent's circuit.

William B. Hafford, PH.D. conducts research in the Penn Museum as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Near East Section.

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By: William B. Hafford View PDF Modern cities have neighborhoods, shops, factories, religious centers, and cemeteries. They have transportation networks along streets and alleyways, and drainage and sewage systems to carry away waste. Cities also have large and ornate public buildings, typically for city administration and religious observance.

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In ancient Mesopotamia, being king meant many things. Find out more about kings in Mesopotamia and the exhibition, Mesopotamia: Civilization Begins.

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Timeline of Ancient Mesopotamia - Great Cities of Mesopotamia

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Great Cities of Mesopotamia Facts for Kids

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Background As the world’s earliest civilization, Mesopotamia is credited with the invention of cities. There were many cities in Mesopotamia. These cities were all ruled by different kings and had their own gods. Eridu Eridu was established in around 5400 BC and was regarded by many as being the fi…

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The Temperature and Climate in Ancient Mesopotamia

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The Temperature and Climate in Ancient Mesopotamia

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HomoCosmicos/iStock/GettyImages

Mesopotamia is a region of Southwest Asia that corresponds to modern-day Iraq, Syria, western Iran and southeast Turkey. Thousands of years ago Mesopotamia's weather was semi-arid, with hot summers and sporadic rain. However, the presence of two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, made it humid, fertile and ideal for nomads to start settlements. The abundance of water and nutrient-rich soil made it an ideal place to develop agriculture. More tribes made the region home and gave birth to one of the world's first settlements. Mesopotamia, which in Greek means "the land between the rivers," eventually became the cradle of world civilization.

TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read)

Ancient Mesopotamia and the "Fertile Crescent" experienced enough rainfall, and had more than adequate supplies of water from the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, to make the region suitable for agriculture and permanent human settlement.

The Tigris and the Euphrates follow roughly parallel courses as they flow from the highlands of eastern Turkey through Syria and Iraq and into the Persian Gulf. The rivers flooded the area every spring when snow from nearby mountains melted and made its way into their currents. The floods, although destructive, also enriched the sandy soil with vital nutrients, which made agriculture feasible. Little by little the cities that were adjacent to the rivers managed to produce enough food to trade with other settlements.

Human creativity is also responsible for ancient Mesopotamia's development. When the first cities were formed, their dwellers discovered that they could have access to water year-round if they built an irrigation system. To tame the rivers, early Mesopotamians built canals and reservoir basins. By 3500 BCE, Mesopotamia's residents had adapted to the then semi-arid region and had learned how to produce sustainable crops.

For years scientists have been trying to explain why Mesopotamian culture vanished. The first hypothesis suggests that Mesopotamia's collapse was the result of environmental changes. Irrigation systems can leave behind traces of mineral salts that may have reached very high levels and rendered the soil poisonous for some edible plants. Other theories concentrate on armed conflicts such as invasions.

Ancient Mesopotamia used to have about 10 inches of rain per year and very hot temperatures - in summer average temperatures reached 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Modern-day Iraq and Syria have an arid climate. They have hot, dry summers and short cool winters.

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The Temperature and Climate in Ancient Mesopotamia

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HomoCosmicos/iStock/GettyImages Mesopotamia is a region of Southwest Asia that corresponds to modern-day Iraq, Syria, western Iran and southeast Turkey. Thousands of years ago Mesopotamia's weather was semi-arid, with hot summers and sporadic rain. However, the presence of two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, made it humid, fertile and ideal for nomads to start settlements.