Mesopotamia

land between the rivers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Meso
potamia#/media/File:Mesopotamian_Chronolo
gy_2-2011-29-03.png
Until one and a half century ago, nothing was known about the
Mesopotamian civilizations. It was thought to be only a legend from the
Bible (old testament). Then in the middle of the 19th century, archeologists
discovered the sites of Ur, Nineveh and other Mesopotamians cities, in
accordance with the Bible.

The first traces of the Mesopotamian civilization were found in the north of
Mesopotamia (in the high plateaux of Armenia) at the source of the
Euphrates and Tigris.

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 The Sumerians (2900-2334 BCE)
From there, they followed the rivers and settled around them, developing
agriculture and creating cities.
The first known civilization was the Sumerians. They built irrigation systems
and developed agriculture. They first built with reeds (some populations in
the South of Iraq still build according to this technique).

Dates for early Mesopotamian history are generally approximations and not universally agreed upon, particularly for anything
before 1,000 BCE. We will use dates from what scholars call the Middle Chronology, but recognize that these dates are disputed
by other scholars.
Genesis 11:3-4 (KJV)
3 And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them

thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime [tar] had they for morter.
4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto

heaven
They start building with bricks, which allows them to build much larger
edifices, for public purposes in particular: palaces, administrative buildings
but also pyramid-like structures called ziggurats . The first one was
believed to have been built in Babylon, it was made of mud bricks and tar.
The bottom was rectangular with a temple located at the foot of the
structure. It is believed that the stairways of the ziggurats represented a
path from earth to the gods.
Two structures stand out as candidates of being the ancient tower of
Babel. Birs Nimrud, a 20-story structure located 15 miles southwest of
Babylon on the west bank of the Euphrates River. The second is Marduk,
located in Babylon.
The term ziggurat, is an anglicized form of the Akkadian word ziqqurratum, the name given to the solid
stepped towers of mud brick. It derives from the verb zaqaru, to be high. According to E. Jan Wilson, the
ziggurat was sometimes referred to as a stepped pyramid, but it was not a pyramid in either form or function,
but rather consisted of three to five levels of ever-decreasing size; instead of culminating in a pointed pinnacle,
the top was a flat surface with a shrine. The Mesopotamians believed ziggurats were holy places where mortals
came into contact with the divine. The British museum explains potential reasons for this belief:

Cuneiform texts from 2100 B.C. onwards refer to temples with seven stories, and are described as being like
mountains linking earth and heaven.The mountains to the east of Mesopotamia were thought to be where
some gods lived (especially celestial deities which appeared to rise up from them). The ziggurat may therefore
have been thought of as bringing the home of the gods to the flat plains of Mesopotamia. It may also have been
viewed as a stairway to heaven or the point where heaven and earth met.

This assessment of the ziggurats as a connecting place for the divine and humans acquires further credence from
the types of names which the Mesopotamians themselves gave to some of their ziggurats. For instance, at Larsa,
they called their ziggurat, The House of the Link between Heaven and Earth; at Borsippa, it was, The House
of the Seven Guides of Heaven and Earth; at Babylon it was The House of the Foundation-Platform of Heaven
and Earth; and at Assur it was, The House of the Mountain of the Universe.

E. Jan Wilson, Inside a Sumerian Temple, Eds. Donald W. Parry and Stephen D. Ricks, Provo, UT: The
Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies at Brigham Young University. 1999, 307-8
Ziggurat of Babylon (ca 3000 bc)
Ziggurat of Ur
Ziggurat of Chogha Zanbil, Iran
The first literate inhabitants of Mesopotamia, the Sumerians, established a proto-
writing system even before the Early Dynastic Period. Like the Greeks of the
sixth and fifth centuries BCE, the Sumerians established city-states, meaning
individual cities that may share cultural and linguistic similarities but which are
politically unconnected to larger government units. Early Sumerian city states
such as Kish, Uruk, Eridu, Lagash, and Ur did not have fortifications. But
constant squabbles over water rights and borders led some cities, in the latter
part of this period, to build defensive walls, such as the one that the author of the
Epic of Gilgamesh proudly credited Gilgamesh for having established in Uruk.

One of the first Sumerian kings to have his deeds recorded was Etana of Kish.
He is said to have lived after the flood in the early third millennium BCE.
Names of other well-known kings of the early dynastic period include
Lugalbanda, Dumuzi, and Gilgamesh, all of Uruk. Gilgamesh probably reigned
at about 2,600 BCE. (See the Sumerian Kings List)
Inventions of the Sumerians:

These early pioneers, the ancient Sumerians, were very ingenious.

They invented, among other things, the wheel, the sailboat, frying
pans, razors, cosmetic sets, shepherds pipes, harps, kilns to cook
bricks and pottery, bronze hand tools like hammers and axes, the
plow, the plow seeder, and even a working battery!
Sumerians played advanced musical instruments: harps, pipes, lutes, drums

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpxN2VXPMLc
The invention of the wheel and the creation of canals allowed them to create
vast systems of irrigation and make the desert flourish.
Agriculture was therefore highly developed. They domesticated sheeps,
goats and cows. They also had advanced agricultural techniques to grow
grain, like the seeder plow.

This Sumerian cylinder seal shows a farmer in his

orchard with domesticated sheep.
The Mesopotamians numeral system was sexagesimal (based on 60),
consequently, all their mathematic system was based on the number 60. This
is how they divided their time, and we inherited their system: today, we still
divide an hour into 60 minutes, and a minute into 60 seconds. They also
divided the year in 12 months (a fifth of 60). The way we measure angles
also comes from the Mesopotamians (360=6*60).
This sexagesimal numeral system allowed them to do trigonometry much
more easily than us (since we use a decimal system), as was discovered
recently.

Trigonometric table Clay tablet Translation

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4820018/Babylonians-beat-Greeks-trigonometry-1-000-years.html
The Mesopotamians had advanced astronomical knowledge.

Sky Map of Ancient Nineveh

 Bagdad battery
Akkadian Empire period (ca. 2334 2154 BCE)

Sometime before the middle of the third millennium BCE, the Akkadians, a
people originally from the Arabian Peninsula, began moving into Mesopotamia.
They adopted many aspects of Sumerian culture including their religious
traditions, particularly their pantheon of gods. They also used the cuneiform
writing system and adopted it in order to write in Akkadian, a language which
was Semitic in origin and unrelated to Sumerian. For several centuries both
Sumerian and Akkadian continued to be used as spoken languages. Eventually,
however, Sumerian died out as a spoken language but continued in use for
centuries as a scholarly written language (much like Latin was in Europe during
the Middle Ages). According to the British Museum, The latest known example
of cuneiform is an astronomical text from AD 75. During its 3,000-year history
cuneiform was used to write around 15 different languages including Sumerian,
Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Elamite, Hittite, Urartian and Old Persian.
The most famous of the Akkadians, Sargon I, united the Sumerian civilization by conquest
into what was possibly one of the worlds first empires. Sargon reigned from 2340 to 2284
BCE and his realm stretched all the way to the Mediterranean. His dynasty lasted almost
200 years.

Ur III period (ca. 2112 2004 BCE)

After a little over two centuries of rule by the Akkadians, the Sumerians returned to power
under the short-lived Third Dynasty of Ur, a period also known as Ur III, or what scholars
often refer to as a time of Sumerian renaissance. The best known king of this period is Ur-
Nammu who reigned from 2112 to 2095 BCE. Among his most famous exploits are the
defeat of Lagash and Uruk, the restoration of roads and societal order after the chaos of the
Gutian period, and the construction of several ziggurats, including the famous Great
Ziggurat of Ur. Many scholars believe that the Epic of Gilgamesh, appeared during the Ur
III period. It is also possible that this is the period that Abraham migrated out of Ur,
eventually settling in the Land of Canaan.
A few artefacts from the city of Ur
The city of Ur was ruled by a king and a complex administration, they kept records of commerce, sale contractsetc on
clay tablets. They had very advanced knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, literature, technologiesetc. The town had
schools, even for the common people.
Amorites (ca. 1894-1595 BCE)

By the beginning of the second millennium, the dominance of the Third

Dynasty of Ur declined and was replaced by Amorite hegemony. The Amorites
were, similar to the Akkadians, a Semitic people. Originally from Syria and
Canaan, they had been settling in Mesopotamia since the late third millennium.
As the Amorites gained strength, they usurped the authority of native rulers in
some city-states and created new cities of their own as well, establishing a
series of small kingdoms in southern Mesopotamia. One of these kingdoms
contained within its boundaries a small town named Babylon which had
remained relatively unimportant until the sixth ruler of this kingdom,
Hammurabi (reigned approximately 1792 to 1750 BCE), turned it into a great
city worthy of his kingship. He became its celebrated king, conquered the
other Amorite towns, as well as some non-Amorite cities in the north, and
established the First Babylonian Empire.
Hammurabi is most famous for the influential law code that he wrote. This code contained 282 regulations
dealing with perjury, theft, land tenure, licensed drinking, commerce, marriage and divorce, inheritance,
adoption, medical treatment, and construction, as well as the hire of livestock, laborers, and slaves. Here is a
sampling of some of these regulations:

1 If a man accuses another man of homicide, but cannot provide evidence against him, the accuser will be put to
death.
14 If a man kidnaps the child of an aristocrat citizen, he will be put to death.
22 If a man is caught stealing, he will be put to death.
129 If a wife is caught committing adultery, she will be bound and tossed into water. If the husband allows her to
live, the king can grant a pardon.
154 If a man commits incest with his daughter, he will be banished.
193 If an adopted child finds his natural parents and leaves the parents who raised him, he will have one eye torn
out.
195 If a child hits his father, he will have a hand cut off.
196 and 200 If one blinds a free man in the eye, he will be blinded in an eye. If he breaks the tooth of a free man,
he will have his tooth broken.
215-217 If a doctor performs a dangerous operation on an aristocrat with a bronze lancet and saves his life, or
opens the eyebrow ridge and saves his eye, he will be paid 10 pieces of silver; if he performs these actions on a
member of the populace, he will be paid 5 pieces of silver; if he performs these actions on a slave, the slaves
master will pay the doctor 2 pieces of silver
Crimes punishable by death required a trial in
front of a bench of judges. Included in these
capital punishment crimes were: bigamy,
incest, kidnapping, adultery and theft. There
were also laws similar to today. For example,
a husband who wished to divorce his wife,
was required to pay alimony and child
support.

Hammurabis set of moral codes provided a

model for other civilizations to duplicate. It
was an early attempt to establish a just society.
In fact, the epilogue to the code reads: Such
are the decisions of justice which Hammurabi,
the capable king, established in order to bind
the country to the truth and to a just order.I
am Hammurabi, the king of justice to whom
Shamash has granted the truth.
Assyria (1124-612 BCE)
By the twelfth century BCE the Assyrians became an important power in the northern part of Mesopotamia. In
the eighth century BCE, the Assyrians achieved the height of their imperial power, having conquered the
southern part of Mesopotamia and even moving into the area of modern Israel. As already noted, the Assyrians
conquered the kingdom of Israel in 721 BCE and carried them north; sometime thereafter, these Israelites lost
their identity and would thereafter be known by many as the Ten Lost Tribes.

At the height of Assyrian power, Nineveh, located today in the suburbs of modern day Mosul, Iraq, was the
Assyrian capital.

The Assyrians made every effort to broadcast their ruthlessness to potential enemies, bragging about cutting
out eyes and cutting off noses, hands, feet, and appendages of captives that had resisted their conquest. The
biblical story of Jonah reflects this reputation in both Jonahs resistance to preaching repentance to the people
of Nineveh, as well as his unwillingness to accept their repentance.

By the last quarter of the seventh century BCE, the Assyrian empire faced civil wars from within and military
pressures from without. In 612 BCE, the rising Babylonian Empire, headquartered in the southern part of
Mesopotamia, along with the Chaldeans, Medes, Persians, and others defeated the Assyrians and destroyed
Nineveh. Assyrias empire and power ended.
Babylonia (626-587 BCE)

Babylon threw off Assyrian rule in 626 BCE and became the capital of the
Neo-Babylonian Chaldean Empire. The Babylonians, a symbol of the
wicked world in both the Bible and the Book of Mormon, attacked the
kingdom of Judah on several occasions at the end of the 7th century BCE.
Both Ezekiel and Daniel, among many other Jews, were taken captive to
Babylon during this period. In addition, at this time God led Lehi and his
family out of Jerusalem showing him that the city would be destroyed by the
Babylonians (I Nephi 1:13). The final assault on Jerusalem, as mentioned,
occurred in 587 BCE. The Babylonians finally destroyed Jerusalem and
carried off most of the rest of the Jews to Babylon, where they remained
until the Persian conquest of the Babylonians in 537 BCE (under Cyrus the
Great).
The Persian empire (550 B.C. until 330 B.C)

The Persian empire starts as Cyrus the Great conquers Median, Lydian and Babylonian
empires. Cyrus behaves very differently from other conquerors, he not only does not
reduce the people he conquered to slaves, but he is also very respectful of local
populations, and of their secular and religious practices. When he arrives in Babylon, he
is received as a liberator from despotism. One of his most notorious acts is that, when he
arrived in Babylon, he freed the jews and not only allowed but also helped those who
wanted to go back to Jerusalem.
The next king, Darius, builds a huge city: Persepolis. This city was very well organized
with irrigation canals, a sewage system and great buildings. He also builds royal roads
to be able to manage his large territory. He conquers large territories, including Egypt. He
tries to conquer Greece but fails (the battle of Marathon.)
The end of the Persian empire comes with the conquest of Alexander the Great (under
Darius III). Persia falls under Greek domination.