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Mesopotamia Contributions: By: Cara Koehler

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Mesopotamia Contributions: By: Cara Koehler

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The geography features that helped cities settle Mesopotamia are rivers. The rivers would help because they could settle by them and that would provide them with water. Also after it flooded it would leave behind rich soil for farming. Babylon was located in the best place because it was a very big and popular and located in a good place.

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The form of government that Mesopotamia used was laws, these laws helped keep the Babylon Empire in line. The government was pretty simple to understand, if you did something bad or stepped out of line just a little bit you would be punished. The Babylon king Hammurabi made these laws and his empire stuck with them because some of them had horrible punishments such as death. For example, if you were to steal something you would be put to death. The benefits of these laws were that the city stayed in line and behaved very good and didn't commit crimes very much. One drawback was that if you committed a crime you would have a horrible punishment.

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The forms of art used in Mesopotamia were sculptures and carvings. For example, they would make statues even of different people and also started to build buildings. Also, they created carvings on tablets to show things or write things out.

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The Sumerians believed in many gods. They thought that if they were good and pleased the god they would get good weather or things in return. They Sumerians even created a grand temple called a ziggurat. The word ziggurat means "Mountain of God", or "Hill of Heaven". At the top of it, there was a shrine or a place of worship. Only priests and priestesses were allowed up there.

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The class divisions that were present in Mesopotamia were divided into three social classes. The highest class included kings, priests, and government officials. In the middle class, there were artisans, merchants, farmers, and fishers. In the lowest class, there were enslaved people who were forced to serve others, Some were prisoners of war, while others were criminals. One of the reasons they were in there is because they had to pay off debts. One of the benefits of being in the lowest class of class division was that you could sometimes earn yourself out of it, while one of the drawbacks is that you were a slave and always had to work. One of the benefits of the middle class is that you weren't all of the way in the bottom class and you had good jobs, one of the not good things though is that you had to work very hard, unlike the highest class. Finally, on of the benefits in the highest class is that you could have anything you want, while a drawback is that you were probably always surrounded by people and never were alone.

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The writing that the Mesopotamians used was called cuneiform. Cuneiform was a form of writing that was used to keep track of business deals and other events. Cuneiform was important because it helped us keep records and pass their ideas onto others. I wrote "hello" below. Cuneiform seems like it was hard, and the symbols look somewhat the same but different also.