
Louvre /llv/oeuvres/detail_periode.jsp Metropolitan Museum of Art /toah University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology penn.museum/sites/iraq Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago /museum/highlights/meso Iraq Museum Database Websites and Resources on Mesopotamia: Ancient History Encyclopedia .com/Mesopotamia Mesopotamia University of Chicago site British Museum .uk Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Mesopotamia Mesopotamian Culture and Life (38 articles) įirst Villages, Early Agriculture and Bronze, Copper and Late Stone Age Humans (50 articles) Īncient Persian, Arabian, Phoenician and Near East Cultures (26 articles) Most scholars think the Sumerians added the wheel, the brickmold, the pick-axe, and the sailing ship and that they invented, or at least developed, writing to the point where it came to play an essential role in their public and private lives.Ĭategories with related articles in this website: Mesopotamian History and Religion (35 articles) Bronze, already available in southern Canaan and Thailand, was a later addition. Copper was already in use, as was gold and silver.

By the time the Sumerians entered Mesopotamia, around 32-3500 B.C., most of the Technology of Ancient Mesopotamian civilization was already there. Pottery-making had existed in the Near East perhaps since the 7th millennium (7000 to 6000 B.C.). The document called the Sumerian King List, though it dates to the 18th-19th century B.C., suggests frequent warfare between city states, as one city after another was "smitten with weapons, and its kingship carried off" to the victor's capital. the combined valleys of the Tigris-Euphrates were dotted with small cities whose peoples ruled over the built-up area and its supporting agricultural lands. Eridu, to the south of Ur and close to the Gulf, built its first temple before 5000. City living quickly spread down the Euphrates River and into the valley of the Tigris River, reaching the swamps at the head of the Persian Gulf before 4000 B.C. The earlier cities lay in the northern part of Iraq, and in northeastern Syria. Cities, or settlements which became cities, existed in Mesopotamia from 5500 B.C. we find a number of city-states, or rather city-monarchies, in rivalry with one another in the Euphrates Valley in presnt-day Iraq. These tablets provide historians with the opportunity to glimpse the culture of the ancient Mesopotamian civilizations.” Īt the dawn of history in the middle of the fifth millennium B.C. As a result of its extensive use of several centuries, many cuneiform tablets have survived. Even after Sumerian became extinct as a spoken language, many other Near Eastern cultures continued to write using cuneiform. After its development, cuneiform became the dominant system of writing in Mesopotamia for over 2000 years. Cuneiform was a system of writing established by the Sumerians which required the use of a stylus in order to make wedge-shaped marks on wet clay tablets, once the tablets were dry they could by stored, transported, etc. with the development of cuneiform writing. Generally speaking, however, true civilization is said to have begun around 3100 B.C.

Towns grew to be cities, an early form of pictographic writing was used, metal working had begun, and temples were built on a monumental scale. By c.3500 B.C., the Sumerians had developed many of the features that characterized subsequent civilizations. Nancy Demand of Indiana University wrote: “The origins of civilization can be traced to a group of people living in southern Mesopotamia called the Sumerians.
