Mesopotamia

Subsequently, the Babylonians, who had long been overshadowed by Assyria, seized power, dominating the region for a century as the final independent Mesopotamian realm until the modern era.

The usefulness of irrigation depends upon the ability to mobilize sufficient labor for the construction and maintenance of canals, and this, from the earliest period, has assisted the development of urban settlements and centralized systems of political authority.

Alternatively, military vulnerability to invasion from marginal hill tribes or nomadic pastoralists has led to periods of trade collapse and neglect of irrigation systems.

They compared the genetic signatures to those of modern populations and found similarities with the DNA of people living in today's Turkey and Iraq.

Women as well as men learned to read and write,[25] and for the Semitic Babylonians, this involved knowledge of the extinct Sumerian language, and a complicated and extensive syllabary.

Vocabularies, grammars, and interlinear translations were compiled for the use of students, as well as commentaries on the older texts and explanations of obscure words and phrases.

According to Plutarch, Seleucus even proved the heliocentric system, but it is not known what arguments he used, except that he correctly theorized on tides as a result of the Moon's attraction.

[42] Mesopotamian people invented many technologies including metal and copper-working, glass and lamp making, textile weaving, flood control, water storage, and irrigation.

According to a recent hypothesis, the Archimedes' screw may have been used by Sennacherib, King of Assyria, for the water systems at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and Nineveh in the 7th century BC, although mainstream scholarship holds it to be a Greek invention of later times.

In particular, the Babylonian text Dialogue of Pessimism contains similarities to the agonistic thought of the Sophists, the Heraclitean doctrine of dialectic, and the dialogs of Plato, as well as a precursor to the Socratic method.

Mesopotamia, as shown by successive law codes, those of Urukagina, Lipit Ishtar and Hammurabi, across its history became more and more a patriarchal society, one in which the men were far more powerful than the women.

For example, during the earliest Sumerian period, the "en", or high priest of male gods was originally a woman, that of female goddesses.

[58] In the early period down to Ur III temples owned up to one third of the available land, declining over time as royal and other private holdings increased in frequency.

[59] The geography of southern Mesopotamia is such that agriculture is possible only with irrigation and with good drainage, a fact which had a profound effect on the evolution of early Mesopotamian civilization.

Early settlers of fertile land in Mesopotamia used wooden plows to soften the soil before planting crops such as barley, onions, grapes, turnips, and apples.

Over time the southernmost parts of Sumerian Mesopotamia suffered from increased salinity of the soils, leading to a slow urban decline and a centring of power in Akkad, further north.

al (2017) states that contemporary Assyrian and Yazidis from northern Iraq might "have stronger continuity with the original genetic stock of the Mesopotamian people, which possibly provided the basis for the ethnogenesis of various subsequent Near Eastern populations."

[73][74] While other studies indicate that the Iraqi-Assyrian population was found to be significantly related to other Iraqis, especially Mesopotamian Arabs,[75][73] likely due to the assimilation of indigenous Assyrians with other people groups who occupied and settled Mesopotamia after the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.

Among the rivers and streams, the Sumerian people built the first cities, along with irrigation canals which were separated by vast stretches of open desert or swamp where nomadic tribes roamed.

[78] An Early Dynastic II king (Ensi) of Uruk in Sumer, Gilgamesh (c. 2600 BC), was commended for military exploits against Humbaba guardian of the Cedar Mountain, and was later celebrated in many later poems and songs in which he was claimed to be two-thirds god and only one-third human.

The later Stele of the Vultures at the end of the Early Dynastic III period (2600–2350 BC), commemorating the victory of Eannatum of Lagash over the neighbouring rival city of Umma, is the oldest monument in the world that celebrates a massacre.

Many Assyrian and Babylonian palace walls were decorated with pictures of the successful fights and the enemy either desperately escaping or hiding amongst reeds.

[83] A little later there are a number of figures of large-eyed priests and worshippers, mostly in alabaster and up to a foot high, who attended temple cult images of the deity, but very few of these have survived.

[85] From the many subsequent periods before the ascendency of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Mesopotamian art survives in a number of forms: cylinder seals, relatively small figures in the round, and reliefs of various sizes, including cheap plaques of moulded pottery for the home, some religious and some apparently not.

[86] The Burney Relief is an unusual elaborate and relatively large (20 x 15 inches) terracotta plaque of a naked winged goddess with the feet of a bird of prey, and attendant owls and lions.

[87] Stone stelae, votive offerings, or ones probably commemorating victories and showing feasts, are found from temples, which unlike more official ones lack inscriptions that would explain them.

The Assyrians developed a style of extremely large schemes of very finely detailed narrative low reliefs in stone for palaces, with scenes of war or hunting.

Scholarly literature usually concentrates on temples, palaces, city walls and gates, and other monumental buildings, but occasionally one finds works on residential architecture as well.

Iron Age palaces and temples are found at the Assyrian (Kalhu/Nimrud, Khorsabad, Nineveh), Babylonian (Babylon), Urartian (Tushpa/Van, Kalesi, Cavustepe, Ayanis, Armavir, Erebuni, Bastam) and Neo-Hittite sites (Karkamis, Tell Halaf, Karatepe).

Among the textual sources on building construction and associated rituals, are Gudea's cylinders from the late 3rd millennium, as well as the Assyrian and Babylonian royal inscriptions from the Iron Age.

The Tigris river flowing through the region of modern Mosul in Upper Mesopotamia.
Mesopotamian Marshes at night, southern Iraq. A reed house ( Mudhif ) and a narrow canoe ( Mashoof ) are in the water. Mudhif structures have been one of the traditional types of structures, built by the Marsh people of southern Mesopotamia for at least 5,000 years. A carved elevation of a typical mudhif, dating to around 3,300 BC was discovered at Uruk . [ 15 ]
One of 18 Statues of Gudea , a ruler around 2090 BC
After early starts in Jarmo (red dot, c. 7500 BC ), the civilization of Mesopotamia in the 7th–5th millennium BC was centered around the Hassuna culture in the north, the Halaf culture in the northwest, the Samarra culture in central Mesopotamia and the Ubaid culture in the southeast, which later expanded to encompass the whole region.
A map of 15th century BC, showing the core territory of Assyria with its two major cities Assur and Nineveh wedged between Babylonia downstream. The states of Mitanni and Hatti are upstream.
Square, yellow plaque showing a lion biting in the neck of a man lying on his back
The Code of Hammurabi is a Babylonian legal text composed c. 1755–1750 BC. It is the longest, best-organised, and best-preserved legal text from the ancient Near East . It is written in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian , purportedly by Hammurabi , sixth king of the First Dynasty of Babylon .
The Epic of Gilgamesh , an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, regarded as the earliest surviving notable literature.
A clay tablet , mathematical, geometric-algebraic, similar to the Euclidean geometry. From Shaduppum Iraq. 2003–1595 BC. Iraq Museum .
A medical recipe concerning poisoning. Terracotta tablet, from Nippur , Iraq .
The Burney Relief , First Babylonian dynasty , around 1800 BC
King Meli-shipak I (1186–1172 BC) presents his daughter to the goddess Nannaya . The crescent moon represents the god Sin , the sun the Shamash and the star the goddess Ishtar . [ 51 ] [ 52 ]
The Queen's gold lyre from the Royal Cemetery at Ur . c. 2500 BC . Iraq Museum
Jemdet Nasr Cylinder presenting a hunting scene, with two lions and an antelope. c. 3100 to 2900 BC.
The Babylonian marriage market by the 19th-century painter Edwin Long
Mining areas of the ancient West Asia .
A map of the Fertile Crescent including the location of ancient Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
A 7th-century BC relief depicting Ashurbanipal , r. 669–631 BC, and three royal attendants in a chariot .
See caption
A relief showing a campaign in the Mesopotamian Marshes of southern Babylonia during the reign of Ashurbanipal . Assyrian soldiers are on a boat, chasing fleeing enemies. Some are hiding in the reeds
The Standard of Ur, 2600 BC, the Early Dynastic Period III. Shell, red limestone and lapis lazuli on wood. Discovered at the Royal Cemetery at Ur , Dhi Qar Governorate, Iraq