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![Civilisations- Mesopotamia [1/6]](http://web.archive.org./web/20121222173856im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/yc8m9DHxH4E/default.jpg "Mesopotamia, or 'the country between two rivers', is the oldest civilisation to have flourished at the confluence of two rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Mesopotamians included various peoples, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Akkadians, who coexisted and succeeded one another, mixing and inter-relating in a Near East with a wide range of racial facets. These different peoples, who once lived along the banks of the two rivers, have left behind an archaeological heritage of inestimable value.How did they flourish in such a hostile environment? Where did their wealth come from? And how did this perfectly structured civilisation finally fade and disappear for ever? This popular series gives new insights into some of the most influential civilisations to shape the world as we know it. To understand where we are now, it might help to understand where we have been.")
![Civilisations- Mesopotamia [2/6]](http://web.archive.org./web/20121222173856im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Rh_NbU7n3Rg/default.jpg "Mesopotamia, or 'the country between two rivers', is the oldest civilisation to have flourished at the confluence of two rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Mesopotamians included various peoples, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Akkadians, who coexisted and succeeded one another, mixing and inter-relating in a Near East with a wide range of racial facets. These different peoples, who once lived along the banks of the two rivers, have left behind an archaeological heritage of inestimable value.How did they flourish in such a hostile environment? Where did their wealth come from? And how did this perfectly structured civilisation finally fade and disappear for ever? This popular series gives new insights into some of the most influential civilisations to shape the world as we know it. To understand where we are now, it might help to understand where we have been.")
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Achaemenid dynasty
The Achaemenid Empire (/ækəˈmɛnɪˌdi/; Old Persian: Parsā, name of ruling dynasty: Haxāmanišiya) (c. 550–330 BCE), sometimes known as First Persian Empire, was an Iranian empire in Southwest Asia, founded in the 6th century BCE by Cyrus the Great who overthrew the Median confederation. It expanded to eventually rule over significant portions of the ancient world which at around 500 BCE stretched from the Indus Valley in the east, to Thrace and Macedon on the northeastern border of Greece making it the biggest empire the world had yet seen. The Achaemenid Empire would eventually control Egypt as well. It was ruled by a series of monarchs who unified its disparate tribes and nationalities by constructing a complex network of roads.
Calling themselves the Parsa after their original Aryan tribal name Parsua, Persians settled in a land which they named Parsua, bounded on the west by the Tigris River and on the south by the Persian Gulf. This became their heartland for the duration of the Achaemenid Empire. It was from this region that eventually Cyrus the Great (Cyrus II of Persia) would advance to defeat the Median, the Lydian, and the Babylonian Empires, opening the way for subsequent conquests into Egypt and Asia minor.
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Achaemenid Empire
The Achaemenid Empire (/ækəˈmɛnɪˌdi/; Old Persian: Parsā, name of ruling dynasty: Haxāmanišiya) (c. 550–330 BCE), sometimes known as First Persian Empire, was an Iranian empire in Southwest Asia, founded in the 6th century BCE by Cyrus the Great who overthrew the Median confederation. It expanded to eventually rule over significant portions of the ancient world which at around 500 BCE stretched from the Indus Valley in the east, to Thrace and Macedon on the northeastern border of Greece making it the biggest empire the world had yet seen. The Achaemenid Empire would eventually control Egypt as well. It was ruled by a series of monarchs who unified its disparate tribes and nationalities by constructing a complex network of roads.
Calling themselves the Parsa after their original Aryan tribal name Parsua, Persians settled in a land which they named Parsua, bounded on the west by the Tigris River and on the south by the Persian Gulf. This became their heartland for the duration of the Achaemenid Empire. It was from this region that eventually Cyrus the Great (Cyrus II of Persia) would advance to defeat the Median, the Lydian, and the Babylonian Empires, opening the way for subsequent conquests into Egypt and Asia minor.
wn.com/Achaemenid_Empire -
Akkadian Empire
Coordinates: 33°6′N 44°6′E / 33.1°N 44.1°E / 33.1; 44.1
The Akkadian Empire (Akkadian URUAkkad KI, Hittite KUR A.GA.DÈ.KI "land of Akkad"; Biblical Hebrew אַכַּד Akkad) was an empire centered in the city of Akkad (Sumerian: Agade) and its surrounding region in Mesopotamia.
During the 3rd millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism.Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as a spoken language somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC (the exact dating being a matter of debate).
The Akkadian Empire reached its political peak between the 24th and 22nd centuries BC, following the conquests of its founder Sargon of Akkad (2334–2279 BC). Under Sargon and his successors, Akkadian language was briefly imposed on neighboring conquered states such as Elam. Akkad is sometimes regarded as the first empire in history, though there are earlier Sumerian claimants.[citation needed]
The precise archaeological site of the city of Akkad has not yet been found.[citation needed] The form Agade appears in Sumerian, for example in the Sumerian King List; the later Assyro-Babylonian form Akkadû ("of or belonging to Akkad") was likely derived from this. The etymology and meaning of Akkad (written a.ga.dèKI or URIKI) are unknown. Centuries later, the neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus mentioned in his archaeological records that Ishtar's worship in Agade was later superseded by that of the goddess Anunit, whose shrine was at Sippar—suggesting proximity of Sippar and Agade. Despite numerous searches, the city has never been found. One theory holds that Agade was situated opposite Sippar on the left bank of the Euphrates, and was perhaps the oldest part of the city of Sippar. Another theory is that the ruins of Akkad are to be found beneath modern Baghdad. Reputedly it was destroyed by invading Gutians with the fall of the Akkadian Empire.
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Armavir, Armenia
Armavir (Armenian: Արմավիր) is a city located in western Armenia. The 1989 census reported that the city had a total population of 46,900, but this has declined considerably: the 2001 census counted 32,034; estimate for 2008 is 26,387. It is the capital of the Armavir province (marz). The city of Armavir in Russia, founded by Armenians in the 19th century, was named after this city. The city was known as Hoktemberyan, Hoktemberian, or Oktemberyan Armenian: Հոկտեմբերյան during the Soviet era up to 1992, and Sardarabad, Sardarapat or Sardar-Apad before 1932.
Armavir was inhabited from the 5th-6th millennium B.C. onwards. Various obsidian instruments, bronze objects and pottery have been found from that period. Armavir was regarded as an old capital of Armenia, said to have been founded by King Aramais in 1980 B.C. King Argishti I of Urartu built a fortress in the area and named it Argishtikhinili. In 331 B.C., when Armenia reasserted its independence under the Orontid Dynasty from the Achaemenid Empire, Armavir was chosen as the capital of Armenia. Slabs of clay have been found from the Achaemenid period written in the Elamite language concerning episodes of the Gilgamesh epic. Various inscriptions in Hellenistic Greek carved around the third century B.C., include poetry from Hesiod, lines from Euripides, a list of Macedonian months, and names of Orontid Kings.
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Armenian Highland
The Armenian Highland (for names in other languages see below; also known as the Armenian Upland, Armenian plateau, Armenian tableland, simply Armenia) is the central-most and highest of three land-locked plateaus that together form the northern sector of the Middle East. To its west is the Anatolian plateau which rises slowly from the lowland coast of the Aegean Sea and rises to an average height of 3,000 feet (910 m). In Armenia, the average height rises dramatically from 3,000 feet (910 m) to 7,000 feet (2,100 m). To its southeast is the Iranian plateau, where the elevation drops rapidly to an average 2,000 feet (610 m) to 5,000 feet (1,500 m) feet above sea level.
When the Treaty of Lausanne was signed in 1923, the Republic of Turkey was established. It is claimed that in its attempts to Turkify the geographical and settlement names in Turkey, the authorities of the republic began a systematic campaign to alter non-Turkish placenames. These attempts included the name change of the geographical expression of "Armenia" or "Armenian plateau" to "Eastern Anatolia." However, as can be seen in Turkish sources, the names Armenian plateau (Ermenistan Platosu) or Armenian Highland (Ermenistan Yaylası) are used to define the plateau. The term "Eastern Anatolia Region" is designated for the region and is mainly used for statistical purposes, while geographic expression Armenian plateau is continued to be used in contemporary Turkish sources.
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Armenian Highlands
The Armenian Highland (for names in other languages see below; also known as the Armenian Upland, Armenian plateau, Armenian tableland, simply Armenia) is the central-most and highest of three land-locked plateaus that together form the northern sector of the Middle East. To its west is the Anatolian plateau which rises slowly from the lowland coast of the Aegean Sea and rises to an average height of 3,000 feet (910 m). In Armenia, the average height rises dramatically from 3,000 feet (910 m) to 7,000 feet (2,100 m). To its southeast is the Iranian plateau, where the elevation drops rapidly to an average 2,000 feet (610 m) to 5,000 feet (1,500 m) feet above sea level.
When the Treaty of Lausanne was signed in 1923, the Republic of Turkey was established. It is claimed that in its attempts to Turkify the geographical and settlement names in Turkey, the authorities of the republic began a systematic campaign to alter non-Turkish placenames. These attempts included the name change of the geographical expression of "Armenia" or "Armenian plateau" to "Eastern Anatolia." However, as can be seen in Turkish sources, the names Armenian plateau (Ermenistan Platosu) or Armenian Highland (Ermenistan Yaylası) are used to define the plateau. The term "Eastern Anatolia Region" is designated for the region and is mainly used for statistical purposes, while geographic expression Armenian plateau is continued to be used in contemporary Turkish sources.
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Arpad (Syria)
Arpad (probably modern Tell Rifa'at, Syria) was an ancient Aramaean city located in north-western Syria, north of Aleppo. In 743 BC, the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III led a military expedition to Syria, defeating there the Uraratian army. But the city of Arpad, which had formed an alliance with Urartu, did not surrender easily. It took Tiglath-pileser three years of siege to conquer Arpad, whereupon he massacred its inhabitants and destroyed the city.
The city is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible several times:
'Tell Rifa'at' is an oval 250 by 233 meters. Within this, the main citadel is 142 by 142 meters with a maximum height of 30 meters. The defensive wall surrounding the site is about two miles long.
The site has been worked by a team from the Institute of Archaeology or the University of London. After a preliminary examination in 1956, Tell Rifa'at was excavated for two seasons in 1961 and 1964. The team was led by M. V. Seton Williams.
In 1977, an archaeological survey was conducted of the area around Tell Rifa'at, also by the Institute of Archaeology.
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Assyrian Empire
Assyria was a Semitic Akkadian kingdom, extant as a nation state from the late 25th or early–24th century BC to 608 BC centred on the Upper Tigris river, in northern Mesopotamia (present day northern Iraq), that came to rule regional empires a number of times through history. It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur (Akkadian: 𒀸𒋗𒁺 𐎹 Aššūrāyu; Aramaic: אתור Aṯur; Hebrew: אַשּׁוּר Aššûr; Arabic: آشور Āšūr). Assyria was also sometimes known as Subartu, and after its fall, from 605 BC through to the late seventh century AD variously as Athura, Syria (Greek), Assyria (Latin) and Assuristan. The term Assyria can also refer to the geographic region or heartland where Assyria, its empires and the Assyrian people were centred. The modern Assyrian Christian minority in northern Iraq, north east Syria, south east Turkey and north west Iran are the descendants of the ancient Assyrians (see Assyrian continuity).
Assyria evolved originally as a minor Akkadian kingdom. From the late 24th Century BC Assyrian kings would certainly have been regional leaders only, and subject to Sargon of Akkad who united all the Akkadian speaking peoples of Mesopotamia under the Akkadian Empire which lasted from 2334 BC to 2154 BC. After the fall of the Akkadian Empire circa 2154 BC, and the succeeding Sumerian 3rd Dynasty of Ur, Mesopotamia eventually coalesced into just two separate nations; Assyria in the north, and some century and a half later, Babylonia in the south.
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Baghdad
Baghdad (Arabic: بغداد, Baġdād, IPA: [bæɣˈdæːd]) is the capital of Republic of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Province. The population of Baghdad as of 2011 is approximately 7,216,040, making it the largest city in Iraq, the second largest city in the Arab World (after Cairo, Egypt), and the second largest city in Western Asia (after Tehran, Iran).
Located along the Tigris River, the city was founded in the 8th century and became the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. Within a short time of its inception, Baghdad evolved into a significant cultural, commercial, and intellectual center for the Islamic World. This in addition to housing several key academic institutions (e.g. House of Wisdom) garnered the city a worldwide reputation as the "Center of Learning". Throughout the High Middle Ages, Baghdad was considered to be the largest city in the world with an estimated population of 1,200,000 people. The city was largely destroyed at the hands of the Mongol Empire in 1258, resulting in a decline that would linger through many centuries due to frequent plagues and multiple successive empires. With the recognition of Iraq as an independent state (formerly the British Mandate of Mesopotamia) in 1938, Baghdad gradually regained some of its former prominence as a significant center of Arabic culture.
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China
China (
i/ˈtʃaɪnə/; Chinese: 中国; pinyin: Zhōngguó; see also Names of China), officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is the world's most-populous country, with a population of over 1.3 billion. Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometres, the East Asian state is the world's second-largest country by land area, and the third- or fourth-largest in total area, depending on the definition of total area.
The People's Republic of China is a single-party state governed by the Communist Party of China. It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four directly controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and two mostly self-governing special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau). Its capital city is Beijing. The PRC also claims Taiwan—which is controlled by the Republic of China (ROC), a separate political entity—as its 23rd province, a claim controversial due to the complex political status of Taiwan and the unresolved Chinese Civil War. The PRC government denies the legitimacy of the ROC.
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Damascus
Damascus (Arabic: دِمَشق / ALA-LC: Dimashq; commonly known in Syria as al-Sham (Arabic: الشام / al-Shām), and as the City of Jasmine (Arabic: مدينة الياسمين / Madīnat al-Yāsmīn), is the capital and the second largest city of Syria. Both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major cultural and religious center of the Levant. The city has an estimated population of 1,711,000 (2009 est.).
Located in southwestern Syria, Damascus is the center of a large metropolitan area of 2.6 million people (2004). Geographically embedded on the eastern foothills of the Anti-Lebanon mountain range 80 kilometres (50 mi) inland from the eastern shore of the Mediterranean on a plateau 680 metres (2,230 ft) above sea-level, Damascus experiences a semi-arid climate due to the rain shadow effect. The Barada River flows through Damascus.
First settled in the 2nd millennium BC, it was chosen as the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate from 661 to 750. After the victory of the Abbasid dynasty, the seat of Islamic power was moved to Baghdad. Damascus saw a political decline throughout the Abbasid era, only to regain significant importance in the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods. During Ottoman rule, the city decayed completely while maintaining a certain cultural prestige. Today, it is the seat of the central government and all of the government ministries. Damascus was chosen as the 2008 Arab Capital of Culture.
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Diyala River
The Diyala River after Darban-e Khan Dam:Kurdish: Sirwan, سيروان, Arabic: نهر ديالى, Persian: سیروان دیاله, is a river and tributary of the Tigris that runs mainly through Eastern Iraq but also Western Iran. It covers a total distance of 445 km (277 mi).
It rises near Sanandaj, in the Zagros Mountains of Iran. It then descends through the mountains, where for some 32 km it forms the border between the two countries. It finally feeds into the Tigris below Baghdad.
Its origin in Kurdish and Persian is called "Sirwan", meaning 'roaring sea' or 'shouting river', as well as being the name of an ancient city near Ilam city in Iran.
Navigation of the upper reaches of the Diyala is not possible because of its narrow defiles, but the river's valley provides an important trade route between Iran and Iraq.
The river is controlled by the Diyala Weir on the lower Diyala valley, which controls floods and irrigates the area northeast of Baghdad.
The Diyala Governorate in Iraq is named after the river.
Coordinates: 33°13′15″N 44°30′23″E / 33.2208°N 44.5064°E / 33.2208; 44.5064
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Egypt
Egypti/ˈiːdʒɪpt/ (Arabic: مصر, Miṣr, Egyptian Arabic: [mɑsˤɾ] ; Coptic: Ⲭⲏⲙⲓ, Kīmi ; Sahidic Coptic: ⲕⲏⲙⲉ, Kēme), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: 
جمهوريّة مصر العربيّة (help·info), is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world. Covering an area of about 1,010,000 square kilometers (390,000 sq mi), Egypt is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west.
Egypt is one of the most populous countries in Africa and the Middle East. The great majority of its over 81 million people live near the banks of the Nile River, in an area of about 40,000 square kilometers (15,000 sq mi), where the only arable land is found. The large areas of the Sahara Desert are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypt's residents live in urban areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria and other major cities in the Nile Delta.
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Elam
Elam was an ancient civilization centered in the far west and southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of what is now Khuzestan and Ilam Province, as well as a small part of southern Iraq. The modern name Elam is a transcription from Biblical Hebrew, corresponding to the Sumerian elam(a), the Akkadian elamtu, and the Elamite haltamti. Elamite states were among the leading political forces of the ancient near east. In classical literature, Elam was more often referred to as Susiana, a name derived from its capital, Susa.
Situated just to the east of Mesopotamia, Elam was part of the early urbanization during the Chalcolithic period (Copper Age). The emergence of written records from around 3000 BC also parallels Mesopotamian history where writing was used slightly earlier. In the Old Elamite period (Middle Bronze Age), Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered in Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Its culture played a crucial role in the Gutian Empire, especially during the Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it, when the Elamite language remained among those in official use. Elamite is generally treated as an isolate language.
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Geography of Iraq
The geography of Iraq is diverse and falls into four main regions: the desert (west of the Euphrates), Upper Mesopotamia (between the upper Tigris and Euphratesh rivers), the northern highlands of Iraqi Kurdistan, and Lower Mesopotamia, the alluvial plain extending from around Tikrit to the Persian Gulf.
The mountains in the northeast are an extension of the alpine system that runs eastward from the Balkans through southern Turkey, northern Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, eventually reaching the Himalayas. The desert is in the southwest and central provinces along the borders with Saudi Arabia and Jordan and geographically belongs with the Arabian Peninsula.
Iraq holds a special distinction in the history of geography: a clay tablet generally accepted as "the earliest known map" was unearthed in 1930 during the excavation of Ga-Sur at Nuzi Yorghan Tepe, near the towns of Harran and Kirkuk, 200 miles (322 km) north of the site of Babylon. The tablet, measuring 6.8 × 7.6 in (173 × 193 mm), is usually dated from the dynasty of Sargon of Akkad between 2500-2300 BC; an even earlier date for the tablet was promulgated by archeologist Leo Bagrow, placing it in the Agade Period (3800 BC).
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Hassuna
Coordinates: 36°10′00″N 43°06′00″E / 36.166667°N 43.100000°E / 36.166667; 43.100000
Hassuna or Tell Hassuna is an ancient Mesopotamian site situated in what was to become ancient Assyria, and is now in the Ninawa Governorate of Iraq west of the Tigris river, south of Mosul and about 35 km southwest of the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh.
By around 6000 BC people had moved into the foothills (piedmont) of northernmost Mesopotamia where there was enough rainfall to allow for "dry" agriculture in some places. These were the first farmers in northernmost Mesopotamia. They made Hassuna style pottery (cream slip with reddish paint in linear designs). Hassuna people lived in small villages or hamlets ranging from 2 to 8 acres (32,000 m2).
At Tell Hassuna, adobe dwellings built around open central courts with fine painted pottery replace earlier levels with crude pottery. Hand axes, sickles, grinding stones, bins, baking ovens and numerous bones of domesticated animals reflect settled agricultural life. Female figurines have been related to worship and jar burials within which food was placed related to belief in afterlife. The relationship of Hassuna pottery to that of Jericho suggests that village culture was becoming widespread.
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Hatra
Coordinates: 35°35′17″N 42°43′06″E / 35.58806°N 42.71833°E / 35.58806; 42.71833
Hatra (Arabic: الحضر al-Ḥaḍr) is an ancient city in the Ninawa Governorate and al-Jazira region of Iraq. It is currently known as al-Hadr, a name which appears once in ancient inscriptions, and it was in the ancient Iranian province of Khvarvaran. The city lies 290 km (180 mi) northwest of Baghdad and 110 km (68 mi) southwest of Mosul.
Hatra was founded by Ancient Arab tribes some time in the 3rd century BCE. A religious and trading centre under the Parthian empire of Iran, it flourished during the 1st and 2nd centuries BCE. Later on, the city became the capital of possibly the first Arab Kingdom in the chain of Arab cities running from Hatra, in the northeast, via Palmyra, Baalbek and Petra, in the southwest. The region controlled from Hatra was the Kingdom of Araba, a semi-autonomous buffer kingdom on the western limits of the Parthian Empire of Iran, governed by Arabian princes.
Hatra became an important fortified frontier city and withstood repeated attacks by the Roman Empire, and played an important role in the Second Parthian War. It repulsed the sieges of both Trajan (116/117) and Septimius Severus (198/199). Hatra defeated the Iranians at the battle of Shahrazoor in 238, but fell to the Iranian Sassanid Empire of Shapur I in 241 and was destroyed. The traditional stories of the fall of Hatra tell of an-Nadira, daughter of the King of Araba, who betrayed the city into the hands of Shapur. The story tells of how Shapur killed the king and married an-Nadira, but later had her killed also.
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Iran
Coordinates: 32°N 53°E / 32°N 53°E / 32; 53
Iran (i/ɪˈrɑːn/ or /aɪˈræn/;Persian: ایران [ʔiˈɾɒn] (
listen)), officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (Persian: جمهوری اسلامی ایران Jomhuri-ye Eslāmi-ye Irān), is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran", which in Persian means "Land of the Aryans", has been in use natively since the Sassanian era. It came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia ( /ˈpɜrʒə/ or /ˈpɜrʃə/). Both "Persia" and "Iran" are used interchangeably in cultural contexts; however, "Iran" is the name used officially in political contexts.
The 18th-largest country in the world in terms of area at 1,648,195 km2 (636,372 sq mi), Iran has a population of around 79 million. It is a country of particular geopolitical significance owing to its location in the Middle East and central Eurasia. Iran is bordered on the north by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. As Iran is a littoral state of the Caspian Sea, which is an inland sea, Kazakhstan and Russia are also Iran's direct neighbors to the north. Iran is bordered on the east by Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the south by the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, on the west by Iraq and on the northwest by Turkey. Tehran is the capital, the country's largest city and the political, cultural, commercial and industrial center of the nation. Iran is a regional power, and holds an important position in international energy security and world economy as a result of its large reserves of petroleum and natural gas. Iran has the second largest proven natural gas reserves in the world and the fourth largest proven petroleum reserves.
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Iraq
Iraq (/ɪˈræk/ or
i/ɪˈrɑːk/; Arabic: العراق al-‘Irāq); officially the Republic of Iraq (Arabic: 
جمهورية العراق (help·info) Jumhūriyyat al-‘Irāq), is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert.
Iraq borders Syria to the northwest, Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, Jordan to the southwest and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to the south. Iraq has a narrow section of coastline measuring 58 km (36 mi) on the northern Persian Gulf. The capital city, Baghdad is in the center-east of the country.
Two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, run through the center of Iraq, flowing from northwest to southeast. These provide Iraq with agriculturally capable land and contrast with the steppe and desert landscape that covers most of Western Asia.
Historically, Iraq was the center of the Abbasid Arabic Islamic Empire. Iraq has been known to the west by the Greek toponym 'Mesopotamia' (Land between the rivers) and has been home to continuous successive civilizations since the 6th millennium BC. The region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is often referred to as the cradle of civilization and the birthplace of writing, law and the wheel. At different periods in its history, Iraq was the center of the indigenous Akkadian, Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Abbasid empires. It was also part of the Achaemenid, Hellenistic, Parthian, Sassanid, Roman, Rashidun, Umayyad, Mongol, Safavid, Afsharid, and Ottoman empires, and under British control as a League of Nations mandate.
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Iraqi Kurdistan
Iraqi Kurdistan or Kurdistan Region (Kurdish: ههرێمی کوردستان, Herêmî Kurdistan; Arabic: إقليم كردستان العراق Iqlīm Kurdistān al-‘Irāq) is an autonomous region of Iraq. It borders Iran to the east, Turkey to the north, Syria to the west and the rest of Iraq to the south. The regional capital is Arbil, known in Kurdish as Hewlêr. The region is officially governed by the Kurdistan Regional Government.
The establishment of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq dates back to the March 1970 autonomy agreement between the Kurdish opposition and the Iraqi government after years of heavy fighting. The Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s and the Anfal genocide campaign of the Iraqi army devastated the population and nature of Iraqi Kurdistan. Following the 1991 uprising of the Iraqi people against Saddam Hussein, many Kurds were forced to flee the country to become refugees in bordering regions of Iran and Turkey. A northern no-fly zone was established following the First Gulf War in 1991 to facilitate the return of Kurdish refugees. As Kurds continued to fight government troops, Iraqi forces finally left Kurdistan in October 1991, leaving the region to function de facto independently; however, neither of the two major Kurdish parties had at any time declared independence and Iraqi Kurdistan continues to view itself as an integral part of a united Iraq but one in which it administers its own affairs. The 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent political changes led to the ratification of a new Constitution of Iraq in 2005. The new Iraqi constitution defines Iraqi Kurdistan as a federal entity of Iraq, and establishes Arabic and Kurdish as Iraq's joint official languages.
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Kalhu
Coordinates: 36°5′57″N 43°19′39″E / 36.09917°N 43.3275°E / 36.09917; 43.3275 Nimrud is an ancient Assyrian city located south on the river Tigris in modern Iraq. In ancient times the city was called Kalhu. The Arabs called the city Nimrud after the Biblical Nimrod, a legendary hunting hero (cf. Genesis 10:11-12, Micah 5:6, and 1Chronicles 1:10).
The city covered an area of around 16 square miles (41 km2). Ruins of the city are found in modern day Iraq, some 30 kilometres (19 mi) southeast of Mosul. The ruins are located in the District of Al Hamdaniya, within 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) of the village of Noomanea. Nimrud has been suggested as the site of the biblical city of Calah or Kalakh.
Assyrian king Shalmaneser I made Nimrud, which existed for about a thousand years, the capital in the 13th century BC. The city gained fame when king Ashurnasirpal II of Assyria (c. 880 BC) made it his capital. He built a large palace and temples on the site of an earlier city that had long fallen into ruins.
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Kultepe
Coordinates: 38°51′N 35°38′E / 38.85°N 35.633°E / 38.85; 35.633 Kültepe (Turkish: Ash Hill) is a modern village near the ancient city of Kaneš or Kanesh (Hittite: Neša, occasionally Anisa), located in the Kayseri Province of Turkey's Central Anatolia Region. The nearest modern city to Kültepe is Kayseri, about 20 km southwest.
Kaneš, inhabited continuously from the Chalcolithic period to Roman times, flourished as an important Hattic/Hittite/Hurrian city, which contained a large merchant quarter (kârum) of the Old Assyrian kingdom, from ca. 20th to 16th centuries BC. A late (c 1400 BC) witness to an old tradition includes a king of Kaneš called Zipani among seventeen local city-kings who rose up against the Akkadian Naram-Sin (ruled c.2254-2218 BC). It is the site of discovery of the earliest traces of the Hittite language, and the earliest attestation of any Indo-European language, dated to the 20th century BC. The native term for the Hittite language was nešili "language of Neša".
The king of Zalpuwa, Uhna, raided Kanes, after which the Zalpuwans carried off the city's "Sius" idol. Pithana, the king of Kussara, conquered level Ia Neša "in the night, by force", but "did not do evil to anyone in it." Neša revolted against the rule of Pithana's son, Anitta, but Anitta quashed the revolt and made Neša his capital. Anitta further invaded Zalpuwa, captured its king Huzziya, and recovered the Sius idol for Neša.
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Mari, Syria
Mari (modern Tell Hariri, Syria) was an ancient Sumerian and Amorite city, located 11 kilometers north-west of the modern town of Abu Kamal on the western bank of Euphrates river, some 120 km southeast of Deir ez-Zor, Syria. It is thought to have been inhabited since the 5th millennium BC, although it flourished with series of superimposed palaces that spans a thousand years, from 2900 BC until 1759 BC, when it was sacked by Hammurabi.
Mari was discovered in 1933, on the eastern flank of Syria, near the Iraqi border. A Bedouin tribe was digging through a mound for a gravestone that would be used for a recently deceased tribesman, when they came across a headless statue. After the news reached the French authorities currently in control of Syria, the report was investigated, and digging on the site was started on December 14, 1933 by archaeologists from the Louvre in Paris. Discoveries came quickly, with the temple of Ishtar being discovered in the next month. Mari was classified by the archaeologists as the "most westerly outpost of Sumerian culture".[citation needed] Since the beginning of excavations, over 25,000 clay tablets in Akkadian language written in cuneiform were discovered. Finds from the excavation are on display in the National Museum of Aleppo, the National Museum of Damascus, and the Deir ez-Zor Museum. In the latter, the southern façade of the "Court of the Palms" of Zimri-Lim's palace has been reconstructed, including the wall paintings.
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Medes
The Medes (/midz/) (from Old Persian Māda-) were an ancient Iranian people who lived in Iran in an area known as Media and spoke a northwestern Iranian language referred to as the Median language. Their arrival to the region is associated with the first wave of Iranian tribes in the late second millennium BCE (the Bronze Age collapse) through the beginning of the first millennium BCE.
In the 7th century BCE a unified Median state was formed which together with Babylonia, Lydia, and Egypt became one of the four major powers of the ancient Near East. An alliance with the Babylonians helped the Medes to capture Nineveh in 612 BCE which resulted in the collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Medes were subsequently able to establish their Median kingdom (with Ecbatana as their royal centre) beyond their original homeland (central-western Iran) and had eventually a territory stretching roughly from northeastern Iran to the Halys River in Anatolia. The Median kingdom was conquered in 550 BCE by Cyrus the Great who established the next Iranian dynasty—the Achaemenid Empire.
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Minoan Eruption
The Minoan eruption of Thera, also referred to as the Thera eruption or Santorini eruption, was a major catastrophic volcanic eruption with a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of 6 or 7 and a Dense-rock equivalent (DRE) of 60 km3 (14 cu mi), which is estimated to have occurred in the mid second millennium BCE. The eruption was one of the largest volcanic events on Earth in recorded history. The eruption devastated the island of Thera (also called Santorini), including the Minoan settlement at Akrotiri, as well as communities and agricultural areas on nearby islands and on the coast of Crete.
There are no clear ancient records of the eruption; the eruption seems to have inspired certain Greek myths, may have caused turmoil in Egypt, and may be alluded to in a Chinese chronicle. Additionally, it has been speculated that the Minoan eruption and the destruction of the city at Akrotiri provided the basis for or otherwise inspired Plato's story of Atlantis.
Geological evidence shows the Thera volcano erupted numerous times over several hundred thousand years before the Minoan eruption. In a repeating process, the volcano would violently erupt, then eventually collapse into a roughly circular seawater-filled caldera, with numerous small islands forming the circle. The caldera would slowly refill with magma, building a new volcano, which erupted and then collapsed in an ongoing cyclical process.
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Neo Assyrian Empire
The Neo-Assyrian Empire was an empire in Mesopotamian history which began in 934 BC and ended in 605 BC. During this period, Assyria assumed a position as the most powerful nation on earth, successfully eclipsing Babylonia, Egypt, Urartu/Armenia and Elam for dominance of the Near East, Asia Minor, Caucasus, North Africa and east Mediterranean, though not until the reforms of Tiglath-Pileser III in the 8th century BC did it become a vast empire. Assyria was originally an Akkadian kingdom which evolved in the 25th to 24th Centuries BC. The earliest Assyrian kings such as Tudiya were relatively minor rulers, and after the founding of the Akkadian Empire, which lasted from 2334 BC to 2154 BC, these kings became subject to Sargon of Akkad, who united all the Akkadian and Sumerian speaking peoples of Mesopotamia under one rule.
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Neo-Assyrian Empire
The Neo-Assyrian Empire was an empire in Mesopotamian history which began in 934 BC and ended in 605 BC. During this period, Assyria assumed a position as the most powerful nation on earth, successfully eclipsing Babylonia, Egypt, Urartu/Armenia and Elam for dominance of the Near East, Asia Minor, Caucasus, North Africa and east Mediterranean, though not until the reforms of Tiglath-Pileser III in the 8th century BC did it become a vast empire. Assyria was originally an Akkadian kingdom which evolved in the 25th to 24th Centuries BC. The earliest Assyrian kings such as Tudiya were relatively minor rulers, and after the founding of the Akkadian Empire, which lasted from 2334 BC to 2154 BC, these kings became subject to Sargon of Akkad, who united all the Akkadian and Sumerian speaking peoples of Mesopotamia under one rule.
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Nineveh
Coordinates: 36°21′34″N 43°09′10″E / 36.35944°N 43.15278°E / 36.35944; 43.15278
Nineveh (English pronunciation: /ˈnɪn.ɪv.ə/; Akkadian: Ninwe; Classical Syriac: ܢܸܢܘܵܐ; Hebrew: נינוה Nīnewē; Greek: Νινευη Nineuē; Latin: Nineve; Arabic: نينوى Naynuwa; Persian: نینوا Nainavā) was an ancient Assyrian city on the eastern bank of the Tigris River, and capital of the Neo Assyrian Empire. Its ruins are across the river from the modern-day major city of Mosul, in the Ninawa Governorate of Iraq.
The origin of the name Nineveh is obscure. Possibly it meant originally the seat of Ishtar, since Nina was one of the Babylonian names of that goddess. The ideogram means "house or place of fish," and was perhaps due to popular etymology (comp. Aramaic "nuna," denoting "fish").
Ancient Nineveh's mound-ruins of Kouyunjik and Nabī Yūnus are located on a level part of the plain near the junction of the Tigris and the Khosr Rivers within a 7 km² (1732 acres) area circumscribed by a 12-kilometre (7.5 mi) brick rampart. This whole extensive space is now one immense area of ruins overlaid in parts by new suburbs of the city of Mosul.
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Nippur
Coordinates: 32°7′37″N 45°13′51″E / 32.12694°N 45.23083°E / 32.12694; 45.23083
Nippur (Sumerian: Nibru, often logographically recorded as 𒂗𒆤𒆠, EN.LÍLKI, "Enlil City;"Akkadian: Nibbur) was one of the most ancient of all the Sumerian cities.[citation needed] It was the special seat of the worship of the Sumerian god Enlil, the "Lord Wind," ruler of the cosmos subject to An alone. Nippur was located in modern Nuffar in Afak, Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate, Iraq.
Nippur never enjoyed political hegemony in its own right, but its control was crucial, as it was considered capable of conferring the overall "kingship" on monarchs from other city-states. It was distinctively a sacred city, important from the possession of the famous shrine of Enlil.
According to the Tummal Chronicle, Enmebaragesi, an early ruler of Kish, was the first to build up this temple. His influence over Nippur has also been detected archaeologically. The Chronicle lists successive early Sumerian rulers who kept up intermittent ceremonies at the temple: Aga of Kish, son of Enmebaragesi; Mesannepada of Ur; his son Meskiang-nunna; Gilgamesh of Uruk; his son Ur-Nungal; Nanni of Ur and his son Meskiang-nanna. It also indicates that the practice was revived in Neo-Sumerian times by Ur-Nammu of Ur, and continued until Ibbi-Sin appointed Enmegalana high priest in Uruk (ca. 1950 BC).
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Parthian Empire
The Parthian (pronounced /ˈpɑrθiən/) Empire (247 BC – 224 AD), also known as the Arsacid (/ˈɑrsəsɪd/) Empire (Modern Persian: اشکانیان Ashkāniān), was a major Iranian political and cultural power in ancient Persia. Its latter name comes from Arsaces I of Parthia who, as leader of the Parni tribe, founded it in the mid-3rd century BC when he conquered the Parthia region in Iran's northeast, then a satrapy (province) in rebellion against the Seleucid Empire. Mithridates I of Parthia (r. c. 171–138 BC) greatly expanded the empire by seizing Media and Mesopotamia from the Seleucids. At its height, the Parthian Empire stretched from the northern reaches of the Euphrates, in what is now south-eastern Turkey, to eastern Iran. The empire, located on the Silk Road trade route between the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean Basin and Han Empire of China, became a center of trade and commerce.
The Parthians largely adopted the art, architecture, religious beliefs, and royal insignia of their culturally heterogeneous empire, which encompassed Persian, Hellenistic, and regional cultures. For about the first half of its existence, the Arsacid court adopted elements of Greek culture, though it eventually saw a gradual revival of Iranian traditions. The Arsacid rulers were titled the "King of Kings", as a claim to be the heirs to the Achaemenid Empire; indeed, they accepted many local kings as vassals where the Achaemenids would have had centrally appointed, albeit largely autonomous, satraps. The court did appoint a small number of satraps, largely outside Iran, but these satrapies were smaller and less powerful than the Achaemenid potentates. With the expansion of Arsacid power, the seat of central government shifted from Nisa, Turkmenistan to Ctesiphon along the Tigris (south of modern Baghdad, Iraq), although several other sites also served as capitals.
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Persian Empire
The Achaemenid Empire (/ækəˈmɛnɪˌdi/; Old Persian: Parsā, name of ruling dynasty: Haxāmanišiya) (c. 550–330 BCE), sometimes known as First Persian Empire, was an Iranian empire in Southwest Asia, founded in the 6th century BCE by Cyrus the Great who overthrew the Median confederation. It expanded to eventually rule over significant portions of the ancient world which at around 500 BCE stretched from the Indus Valley in the east, to Thrace and Macedon on the northeastern border of Greece making it the biggest empire the world had yet seen. The Achaemenid Empire would eventually control Egypt as well. It was ruled by a series of monarchs who unified its disparate tribes and nationalities by constructing a complex network of roads.
Calling themselves the Parsa after their original Aryan tribal name Parsua, Persians settled in a land which they named Parsua, bounded on the west by the Tigris River and on the south by the Persian Gulf. This became their heartland for the duration of the Achaemenid Empire. It was from this region that eventually Cyrus the Great (Cyrus II of Persia) would advance to defeat the Median, the Lydian, and the Babylonian Empires, opening the way for subsequent conquests into Egypt and Asia minor.
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Persian Gulf
The Persian Gulf is located in Western Asia between Iran (Persia) and the Arabian Peninsula. It is an extension of the Indian Ocean.
The Persian Gulf was the focus of the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq War, in which each side attacked the other's oil tankers. In 1991, the Persian Gulf again was the background for what was called the "Persian Gulf War" or the "Gulf War" when Iraq invaded Kuwait and was subsequently pushed back, despite the fact that this conflict was primarily a land conflict.
The Persian Gulf has many good fishing grounds, extensive coral reefs, and abundant pearl oysters, but its ecology has come under pressure from industrialization, and in particular, oil and petroleum spillages during wars in the region.
Historically and internationally known as the Persian Gulf, this body of water is sometimes controversially referred to as the Arabian Gulf or simply The Gulf by most Arab states, although neither of the latter two terms are recognized internationally. The name Gulf of Iran (Persian Gulf) is used by the International Hydrographic Organization.
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Samaria
Samaria ( /sə.ˈmɛr.iː.ə/), or the Shomron (Hebrew: שֹׁמְרוֹן, Standard Šoməron Tiberian Šōmərôn; Greek: Σαμάρεια; Arabic: سامريّون, Sāmariyyūn or السامرة, as-Samarah – also known as جبال نابلس, Jibal Nablus) is a mountainous region in the northern part of the geographical area to the west of the Jordan River, roughly corresponding to the northern part of the West Bank. The name derives from the ancient city Samaria, the capital of the Kingdom of Israel. During the 1967 Six-Day War, the entire West Bank was captured by Israel. Jordan ceded its claim to the area to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in November 1988. In 1994, control of Areas 'A' and 'B' were transferred to the Palestinian Authority.
The name Samaria is of biblical origin, derived from the individual [or clan] Shemer, from whom Omri purchased the site. (1 Kings 16:24). It was the only name used for this area from ancient times until the Jordanian conquest of 1948, at which point the Jordanians coined the term West Bank.
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Samarra
Sāmarrā (Arabic: سامَرّاء) is a city in Iraq. It stands on the east bank of the Tigris in the Salah ad-Din Governorate, 125 kilometers (78 mi) north of Baghdad and, in 2003, had an estimated population of 348,700.
Medieval Islamic writers believed that the name “Samarra” is derived from the Arabic phrase “Sarra man ra’a” (Arabic: سر من رأى), which translates to “A joy for all who see”. Later when the city declined the name changed to “Sa'a man ra’a” (Arabic: ساء من رأى), which translates to “A sadness for all who see”. Eventually the two names merged to its current form Samarra' (Arabic: سامَرّاء).
In 2007, UNESCO named Samarra one of its World Heritage Sites.
The remains of ancient Samarra were first excavated between 1911 and 1914 by the German Archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld. Since 1946, the notebooks, letters, unpublished excavation reports and photographs have been in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
Though the present archaeological site covered by mudbrick ruins is vast, the site of Samarra was only lightly occupied in ancient times, apart from the Chalcolithic Samarran Culture (ca 5500–4800 BC) identified at the rich site of Tell Sawwan, where evidence of irrigation—including flax— establishes the presence of a prosperous settled culture with a highly organized social structure. The culture is primarily known by its finely-made pottery decorated against dark-fired backgrounds with stylized figures of animals and birds and geometric designs. This widely-exported type of pottery, one of the first widespread, relatively uniform pottery styles in the Ancient Near East, was first recognized at Samarra. The Samarran Culture was the precursor to the Mesopotamian culture of the Ubaid period.
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Shatt al-Arab
Shatt al-Arab (Arabic: شط العرب, literally "Coast/Beach of the Arabs") or Arvand Rūd (Persian: اروندرود, "Arvand River"), is a river in Southwest Asia of some 200 km (120 mi) in length, formed by the confluence of the Euphrates and the Tigris in the town of al-Qurnah in the Basra Governorate of southern Iraq. The southern end of the river constitutes the border between Iraq and Iran down to the mouth of the river as it discharges into the Persian Gulf. It varies in width from about 232 metres (761 ft) at Basra to 800 metres (2,600 ft) at its mouth. It is thought that the waterway formed relatively recently in geologic time, with the Tigris and Euphrates originally emptying into the Persian Gulf via a channel further to the west.
The Karun river, a tributary which joins the waterway from the Iranian side, deposits large amounts of silt into the river; this necessitates continuous dredging to keep it navigable.
The area is judged to hold the largest date palm forest in the world. In the mid-1970s, the region included 17 to 18 million date palms, an estimated one-fifth of the world's 90 million palm trees. But by 2002, war, salt, and pests had wiped out more than 14 million of the palms, including around 9 million in Iraq and 5 million in Iran. Many of the remaining 3 to 4 million trees are in poor condition.
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Syria
Syria (/ˈsɪriə/ ( listen) SIRR-ee-ə; Arabic: سورية Sūriyya or سوريا Sūryā; Syriac: ܣܘܪܝܐ; Kurdish: Sûrî), officially the Syrian Arab Republic (Arabic: الجمهورية العربية السورية al-Jumhūriyyah al-‘Arabīyah as-Sūriyyah Arabic pronunciation (help·info)), is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest.
In English, the name Syria was formerly synonymous with the Levant, known in Arabic as Sham, while the modern state encompasses the sites of several ancient kingdoms and empires, including the Eblan civilization of the third millennium BC. In the Islamic era, its capital city, Damascus, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate, and a provincial capital of the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt.
The population of Syria is 74% Sunni, 12% Alawi, 10% Christian, and 3% Druze. Combined, 87% of the Syrian population is Muslim, while the other 10% is Christian, which includes mainly Arab Christians but also Assyrians and Armenians. Major ethnic minorities in Syria include Kurds (9%), Assyrians, Armenians, Turkmens and Circassians. The majority of the population is Arab (90%).
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Tigris
The Tigris River (/ˈtaɪɡrɪs/; Arabic: دجله) is the eastern member of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of southeastern Turkey through Iraq.
The Tigris is 1,850 km long, rising in the Taurus Mountains of eastern Turkey about 25 km southeast of the city of Elazig and about 30 km from the headwaters of the Euphrates. The river then flows for 400 km through Turkish territory before becoming the border between Syria and Turkey. This stretch of 44 km is the only part of the river that is located in Syria. The remaining 1,418 km are entirely within the Iraqi borders.
The Tigris unites with the Euphrates near Basra, and from this junction to the Persian Gulf the mass of moving water is known as the Shatt-al-Arab. According to Pliny and other ancient historians, the Euphrates originally had its outlet into the sea separate from that of the Tigris.
Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, stands on the banks of the Tigris. The port city of Basra straddles the Shatt al-Arab. In ancient times, many of the great cities of Mesopotamia stood on or near the Tigris, drawing water from it to irrigate the civilization of the Sumerians. Notable Tigris-side cities included Nineveh, Ctesiphon, and Seleucia, while the city of Lagash was irrigated by the Tigris via a canal dug around 2400 BC.
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Turkey
Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye), known officially as the Republic of Turkey ( Türkiye Cumhuriyeti (help·info)), is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia (mostly in the Anatolian peninsula) and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe. Turkey is bordered by eight countries: Bulgaria to the northwest; Greece to the west; Georgia to the northeast; Armenia, Azerbaijan (the exclave of Nakhchivan) and Iran to the east; and Iraq and Syria to the southeast. The Mediterranean Sea and Cyprus are to the south; the Aegean Sea is to the west; and the Black Sea is to the north. The Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles (which together form the Turkish Straits) demarcate the boundary between East Thrace and Anatolia; they also separate Europe and Asia.
Turkey is one of the six independent Turkic states. The vast majority of the population are Muslims. The country's official language is Turkish, whereas Kurdish and Zazaki languages are spoken by Kurds and Zazas, who constitute 18% of the population.
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Umm Qasr
Umm Qasr (Arabic: أم قصر, also transliterated as : Um-qasir, Um-qasser), is a port city in southern Iraq. It stands on the canalised Khawr az-Zubayr, part of the Khawr Abd Allah estuary which leads to the Persian Gulf. It is separated from the border of Kuwait by a small inlet. A bridge across the waterway linked the port with Kuwait prior to the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Umm Qasr was originally a small fishing town, but was used as a military port on several occasions before advancing trades and jobs by building a deep-water port on the coast. It was said to have been the site of Alexander the Great's landing in Mesopotamia in 325 BC. During the Second World War a temporary port was established there by the Allies to unload supplies to dispatch to the Soviet Union. It fell back into obscurity after the war, but the government of King Faisal II sought to establish a permanent port there in the 1950s.
After the Iraqi Revolution of 1958, a naval base was established at Umm Qasr. The port was subsequently founded in 1961 by the Iraqi ruler General Abdul-Karim Qassem. It was intended to serve as Iraq's only "deep water" port, reducing the country's dependence on the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway that marks the border with Iran. The port facilities were built by a consortium of companies from West Germany, Sweden and Lebanon, with a railway line connecting it to Basra and Baghdad. The port opened for business in July 1967.
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Ur
Coordinates: 30°57′45″N 46°06′11″E / 30.9625°N 46.10306°E / 30.9625; 46.10306 Ur (Sumerian: Urim;Sumerian Cuneiform: 𒋀𒀕𒆠 URIM2KI or 𒋀𒀊𒆠 URIM5KI;Akkadian: Uru) was an important city-state in ancient Sumer located at the site of modern Tell el-Muqayyar in Iraq's Dhi Qar Governorate. Once a coastal city near the mouth of the Euphrates on the Persian Gulf, Ur is now well inland, south of the Euphrates on its right bank, 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) from Nasiriyah.
The city's patron deity was Nanna, the Sumerian moon god, and the name of the city is in origin derived from the god's name, URIM2KI being the classical Sumerian spelling of LAK-32.UNUGKI, literally "the abode (UNUG) of Nanna (LAK-32)".
The site is marked by the ruins of the Ziggurat of Ur, which contained the shrine of Nanna, excavated in the 1930s. The temple was built in the 21st century BC (short chronology), during the reign of Ur-Nammu and was reconstructed in the 6th century BC by Nabonidus. The ruins cover an area of 1,200 metres (3,900 ft) northwest to southeast by 800 metres (2,600 ft) northeast to southwest and rise up to about 20 metres (66 ft) above the present plain level.
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Uruk
Coordinates: 31°19′20″N 45°38′10″E / 31.32222°N 45.63611°E / 31.32222; 45.63611 Uruk (Cuneiform: 𒌷𒀔,URU UNUG; Sumerian: Unug; Akkadian: Uruk; Aramaic: Erech; Hebrew: Erech; Greek: Ὀρχόη Orchoē, Ὠρύγεια Ōrugeia; Arabic: وركاء, Warkā') was an ancient city of Sumer and later Babylonia, situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates river, on the ancient dry former channel of the Euphrates River, some 30 km east of modern As-Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq.
Uruk gave its name to the Uruk period, the protohistoric Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age period in the history of Mesopotamia spanning c. 4000 to 3100 BC, succeeded by the Jemdet Nasr period of Sumer proper. Uruk played a leading role in the early urbanization of Sumer in the mid 4th millennium BC. At its height c 2900 BC, Uruk probably had 50,000–80,000 residents living in 6 km2 of walled area; making it the largest city in the world at the time. The semi-mythical king Gilgamesh, according to the chronology presented in the Sumerian king list, ruled Uruk in the 27th century BC. The city lost its prime importance around 2000 BC, in the context of the struggle of Babylonia with Elam, but it remained inhabited throughout the Seleucid and Parthian periods until it was finally abandoned shortly before or after the Islamic conquest.
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Yerevan
Coordinates: 40°11′00″N 44°31′00″E / 40.183333°N 44.516667°E / 40.183333; 44.516667
Yerevan (Armenian: Երևան, Armenian pronunciation: [jɛɾɛˈvɑn]) is the capital and largest city of Armenia and one of the world's oldest continuously-inhabited cities. Situated along the Hrazdan River, Yerevan is the administrative, cultural, and industrial center of the country. It has been the capital since 1918, the thirteenth in the history of Armenia.
The history of Yerevan dates back to the 8th century BC, with the founding of the fortress of Erebuni in 782 BC by king Argishti I at the western extreme of the Ararat plain. After World War I, Yerevan became the capital of the Democratic Republic of Armenia as thousands of survivors of the Armenian Genocide settled in the area. The city expanded rapidly during the 20th century as Armenia became one of the fifteen republics in the Soviet Union. In fifty years, Yerevan was transformed from a town of a few thousand residents within the Russian Empire, to Armenia's principal cultural, artistic, and industrial center, as well as becoming the seat of national government.
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Zagros Mountains
The Zagros Mountains (Arabic: جبال زغروس, Aramaic: ܛܘܪ ܙܪܓܣ, Kurdish: زنجیرهچیاکانی زاگرۆس, Lurish: کو یه لی زاگروس, Persian: رشته كوه زاگرس) are the largest mountain range in Iran and Iraq. With a total length of 1,500 km (932 mi), from northwestern Iran, and roughly correlating with Iran's western border, the Zagros range spans the whole length of the western and southwestern Iranian plateau and ends at the Strait of Hormuz. The highest points in the Zagros Mountains are Zard Kuh-bakhtiari and Dena. The Hazaran massif in the Kerman province of Iran forms an eastern outlier of the range, the Jebal Barez reaching into Sistan.
The Zagros fold and thrust belt was formed by collision of two tectonic plates — the Eurasian and Arabian Plates. Recent GPS measurements in Iran have shown that this collision is still active and the resulting deformation is distributed non-uniformly in the country, mainly taken up in the major mountain belts like Alborz and Zagros. A relatively dense GPS network which covered the Zagros in the Iranian part also proves a high rate of deformation within the Zagros. The GPS results show that the current rate of shortening in SE Zagros is ~10 mm/yr and ~5mm/yr in the NW Zagros. The NS strike-slip Kazerun fault divides the Zagros into two distinct zones of deformation. The GPS results also show different shortening directions along the belt, i.e. normal shortening in the South-East and oblique shortening in the NW Zagros.
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Zeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus ( /ˈzjuːs/ ZEWS;Ancient Greek: Ζεύς; Modern Greek: Δίας, Dias) is the "Father of Gods and men" (πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε, patēr andrōn te theōn te) who rules the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father rules the family. He is the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and Etruscan counterpart is Tinia. His Hindu equivalent is Indra.
Zeus is the child of Cronus and Rhea, and the youngest of his siblings. In most traditions he is married to Hera, although, at the oracle of Dodona, his consort is Dione: according to the Iliad, he is the father of Aphrodite by Dione. He is known for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many godly and heroic offspring, including Athena, Apollo and Artemis, Hermes, Persephone (by Demeter), Dionysus, Perseus, Heracles, Helen of Troy, Minos, and the Muses (by Mnemosyne); by Hera, he is usually said to have fathered Ares, Hebe and Hephaestus.
As Walter Burkert points out in his book, Greek Religion, "Even the gods who are not his natural children address him as Father, and all the gods rise in his presence." For the Greeks, he was the King of the Gods, who oversaw the universe. As Pausanias observed, "That Zeus is king in heaven is a saying common to all men". In Hesiod's Theogony Zeus assigns the various gods their roles. In the Homeric Hymns he is referred to as the chieftain of the gods.
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Alexander the Great
Alexander III of Macedon (20/21 July 356 – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great (Greek: Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Μέγας, Aléxandros ho Mégas from the Greek αλέξω alexo "to defend, help" + ανήρ aner "man"), was a king of Macedon, a state in northern ancient Greece. Born in Pella in 356 BC, Alexander was tutored by Aristotle until the age of 16. By the age of thirty, he had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world, stretching from the Ionian Sea to the Himalayas. He was undefeated in battle and is considered one of history's most successful commanders.
Alexander succeeded his father, Philip II of Macedon, to the throne in 336 BC after Philip was assassinated. Upon Philip's death, Alexander inherited a strong kingdom and an experienced army. He was awarded the generalship of Greece and used this authority to launch his father's military expansion plans. In 334 BC, he invaded Persian-ruled Asia Minor and began a series of campaigns that lasted ten years. Alexander broke the power of Persia in a series of decisive battles, most notably the battles of Issus and Gaugamela. He subsequently overthrew the Persian King Darius III and conquered the entirety of the Persian Empire. At that point, his empire stretched from the Adriatic Sea to the Indus River.
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Ancient Egyptians
This is a list of ancient Egyptian people who have articles on Wikipedia. The list covers key ancient Egyptian individuals from the start of the first dynasty until the end of the ancient Egyptian nation when the Ptolemaic Dynasty ended and Egypt became a province of Rome in 30 BC.
Note that the dates given are approximate. The list presented below is based on the conventional chronology of Ancient Egypt, mostly based on the Digital Egypt for Universities database developed by the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology.
A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - M - N - O - P - Q - R - S - T - U - V - W - X - Y - Z
Other articles including lists of ancient Egyptians:
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Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs (Arabic: عرب, ʿarab), are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing an important part of Arab identity.
The word "Arab" has had several different, but overlapping, meanings over the centuries (and sometimes even today). In addition to including all Arabized people of the world (with language tending to be the acid test), it has also at times been used exclusively for bedouin (Arab nomads [although a related word, "`a-RAB," with the Arabic letter "alif" in the second syllable, once was sometimes used when this specific meaning was intended] and their now almost entirely settled descendants). It is sometimes used that way colloquially even today in some places. Townspeople once were sometimes called "sons of the Arabs." As in the case of other ethnicities or nations, people identify themselves (or are identified by others) as "Arabs" to varying degrees. This may not be one's primary identity (it tends to compete with country, religion, sect, etc.), and whether it is emphasized may depend upon one's audience.
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Ashur
Ashur (Hebrew: אַשּׁוּר; often also transliterated as Asshur to reflect the pointing of Hebrew letter 'ש' (Shin) in the Masoretic text, which doubles the 'ש'), was the second son of Shem, the son of Noah. Ashur's brothers were Elam, Arphaxad, Lud, and Aram.
The Hebrew text of Genesis 10:11 is somewhat ambiguous as to whether it was Asshur himself (as the 1611 Authorized Version says), or Nimrod (as in some other English translations) who, according to Biblical tradition, built the Assyrian cities of Nineveh, Resen, Rehoboth-Ir and Calah, since the name Asshur can refer to both the person and the country.(Genesis 10:8-12 AV, Genesis 10:8-12 ESV)
The 1st century Judaeo-Roman historian Flavius Josephus further gives the following statement: "Ashur lived at the city of Nineve; and named his subjects Assyrians, who became the most fortunate nation, beyond others” (Antiquities, i, vi, 4).
According to some Judaeo-Christian traditions, the city of Ashur (also spelled Assur or Aššur) was founded by Ashur the son of Shem, who was deified by later generations as the city's patron god. However, no record of this has been found in Mesopotamian annals; Assyrian tradition lists an early Assyrian king named Ushpia as having dedicated the first temple to the god Ashur in the city in ca. the 21st century BC. It is highly likely that the city was named in honour of the Assyrian god of the same name.
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Assyrian people
The Assyrian people, most commonly known as Assyrians and other later names, such as: Chaldeans, Syrians, Syriacs (see names of Syriac Christians), are a distinct ethnic group whose origins lie in ancient Mesopotamia. They are Eastern Aramaic speaking Semites who trace their ancestry back to the Sumero-Akkadian civilisation that emerged in Mesopotamia circa 4000- 3500 BC, and in particular to the northern region of the Akkadian lands, which would become known as Assyria by the 24th Century BC. The Assyrian nation existed as an independent state, and often a powerful empire, from the 24th century BC until the end of the 7th century BC.
Today that ancient territory is part of several nations; Assyria remained a Geo-political entity after its fall, and was ruled as an occupied province under the rule of various empires from the late 7th century BC until the mid 7th century AD when it was dissolved, and the Assyrian people have gradually become a minority in their homelands since that time. They are indigenous to, and have traditionally lived all over what is now Iraq, north east Syria, north west Iran, and Southeastern Turkey. They are predominantly Christian.
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Chaldea
Chaldea or Chaldaea ( /kælˈdiːə/), from Greek Χαλδαία, Chaldaia; Akkadian māt Kaldu; Hebrew כשדים, Kaśdim;Aramaic: ܟܐܠܕܘ, Kaldo) was a marshy land located in modern-day southern Iraq which came to rule Babylon briefly. Tribes of settlers who arrived in the region from the 8th Century BC became known as the Chaldeans or the Chaldees. The Hebrew Bible uses the term כשדים (Kaśdim) and this is translated as Chaldaeans in the Septuagint.
The short-lived 11th dynasty of the Kings of Babylon (6th century BC) is conventionally known to historians as the Chaldean Dynasty, although only the first four rulers of this dynasty were known to be Chaldeans, and the last ruler was known not to be. Their kingdom in the southern portion of Babylonia lay chiefly on the right bank of the Euphrates. Though the name came to be commonly used to refer to the whole of southern Mesopotamia, Chaldea proper was in fact the vast plain in the far south east formed by the deposits of the Euphrates and the Tigris, extending to about four hundred miles along the course of these rivers, and about a hundred miles in average width.
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China
China (i/ˈtʃaɪnə/; Chinese: 中国; pinyin: Zhōngguó; see also Names of China), officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is the world's most-populous country, with a population of over 1.3 billion. Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometres, the East Asian state is the world's second-largest country by land area, and the third- or fourth-largest in total area, depending on the definition of total area.
The People's Republic of China is a single-party state governed by the Communist Party of China. It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four directly controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and two mostly self-governing special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau). Its capital city is Beijing. The PRC also claims Taiwan—which is controlled by the Republic of China (ROC), a separate political entity—as its 23rd province, a claim controversial due to the complex political status of Taiwan and the unresolved Chinese Civil War. The PRC government denies the legitimacy of the ROC.
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Edwin Long
Edwin Longsden Long RA (12 July 1829 – 15 May 1891) was an English genre, history, biblical and portrait painter.
Long was born in Bath, Somerset, the son of E. Long, an artist (from Kelston in Somerset), and was educated at Dr. Viner's School in Bath. Adopting the profession of a painter, Long came to London and studied in the British Museum. He was subsequently a pupil in the school of James Mathews Leigh in Newman Street London, and practiced first as a portrait artist painting Charles Greville, Lord Ebury and others.
Long made the acquaintance of John Phillip RA, and accompanied him to Spain, where they spent much time. Long was greatly influenced by the paintings of Velasquez and other Spanish masters, and his earlier pictures, such as 'La Posada' (1864) and 'Lazarilla and the blind beggar' (1870), were painted under Spanish influence. His first important pictures were 'The Suppliants' (1872) and 'The Babylonian marriage market' (both subsequently purchased by Thomas Holloway). In 1874, he visited Egypt and Syria, and subsequently his work took a new direction. He became thoroughly imbued with middle-eastern archaeology and painted oriental scenes like 'The Egyptian Feast' (1877), 'The Gods and their makers' (1878) etc.
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George Sarton
George Sarton (1884–1956) was a Belgian chemist and historian who is considered the founder of the discipline of history of science. He left Belgium because of the First World War and settled in the United States where he spent the rest of his life researching and writing about the history of science. His daughter is the American writer May Sarton.
George Alfred Leon Sarton was born in Ghent, Belgium on August 31, 1884. He graduated from the University of Ghent in 1906 and two years later won a gold medal for one of his papers on chemistry. He received his PhD in mathematics at the University of Ghent in 1911. He married Mabel Eleanor Elwes, an English artist, in 1911 and their daughter Eleanore Marie (known as: May) was born the following year. Although he emigrated to England after World War I broke out, he came to the United States in 1915, where he would live for the rest of his life. He worked for the Carnegie Foundation for International Peace and lectured at Harvard University, 1916-18, where he became a lecturer in 1920 and then professor of the history of science from 1940 until his retirement in 1951. He was also a research associate of the Carnegie Institution of Washington from 1919 until 1948.
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Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh ( /ˈɡɪl.ɡə.mɛʃ/; Akkadian cuneiform: 𒄑𒂆𒈦 [
𒂆
], Gilgameš, often given the epithet of the King, also known as Bilgames in the earliest Sumerian texts) was the fifth king of Uruk, modern day Iraq (Early Dynastic II, first dynasty of Uruk), placing his reign ca. 2500 BC. According to the Sumerian king list he reigned for 126 years. In the Tummal Inscription, Gilgamesh, and his son Urlugal, rebuilt the sanctuary of the goddess Ninlil, in Tummal, a sacred quarter in her city of Nippur. Gilgamesh is the central character in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the greatest surviving work of early Mesopotamian literature. In the epic his father was Lugalbanda and his mother was Ninsun (whom some call Rimat Ninsun), a goddess. In Mesopotamian mythology, Gilgamesh is a demigod of superhuman strength who built the city walls of Uruk to defend his people from external threats, and travelled to meet the sage Utnapishtim, who had survived the Great Deluge. He is usually described as two-thirds god and one third man.
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Hammurabi
Hammurabi (Akkadian from Amorite ʻAmmurāpi, "the kinsman is a healer", from ʻAmmu, "paternal kinsman", and Rāpi, "healer"; (died c. 1750 BC) was the sixth king of Babylon (that is, of the First Babylonian Dynasty) from 1792 BC to 1750 BC middle chronology (1728 BC – 1686 BC short chronology). He became the first king of the Babylonian Empire following the abdication of his father, Sin-Muballit, extending Babylon's control over Mesopotamia by winning a series of wars against neighboring kingdoms. Although his empire controlled all of Mesopotamia at the time of his death, his successors were unable to maintain his empire.
Hammurabi is known for the set of laws called Hammurabi's Code, one of the first written codes of law in recorded history.[citation needed] These laws were inscribed on stone tablets (stelae) standing over eight feet tall (2.4 meters), of unknown provenance, found in Persia in 1901. Owing to his reputation in modern times as an ancient law-giver, Hammurabi's portrait is in many government buildings throughout the world.
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Heraclitus
Heraclitus of Ephesus (Ancient Greek: Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος—Hērákleitos ho Ephésios; c. 535 – c. 475 BCE) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom. From the lonely life he led, and still more from the riddling nature of his philosophy and his contempt for humankind in general, he was called "The Obscure" and the "Weeping Philosopher".
Heraclitus is famous for his insistence on ever-present change in the universe, as stated in the famous saying, "No man ever steps in the same river twice" (see panta rhei, below). He believed in the unity of opposites, stating that "the path up and down are one and the same", all existing entities being characterized by pairs of contrary properties. His cryptic utterance that "all entities come to be in accordance with this Logos" (literally, "word", "reason", or "account") has been the subject of numerous interpretations.
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Ionians
The Ionians (Greek: Ἴωνες, Íōnes, singular Ἴων, Íōn) were one of the four major Greek tribes into which the Classical Greeks considered the population of Hellenes to have been divided (along with the Dorians, Aeolians and Achaeans). The Ionian dialect was one of the three major linguistic divisions of the Hellenic world, together with the Dorian and Aeolian.
"Ionian" with reference to populations had several senses in Classical Greece. In the narrowest sense, it was used of the region of Ionia in Asia Minor. In a more broad sense, it could be used to describe all speakers of the Ionic dialect, which also included the populations of Euboea, the Cyclades and many colonies founded by Ionian colonists. Finally, in the broadest sense, it could be used to describe all those who spoke languages of the East Greek group, which included Attic.
The foundation myth which was current in the Classical period suggested that the Ionians were named after Ion, son of Xuthus, and lived in the north Peloponnesian region of Aegilaus. When the Dorians invaded the Peloponnese and expelled the Achaeans from the Argolid and Lacedaemonia, the Achaeans moved into Aegilaus (henceforth known as Achaea), and the Ionians were in turn expelled. The Ionians went to Attica and mingled with the population there, before many people finally emigrated to the coast of Asia Minor, founding the historical region of Ionia.
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Iranian languages
The Iranian languages (also called Iranic languages) form a subfamily of the Indo-Iranian languages which in turn are a subgroup of the Indo-European language family. The speakers of Iranian languages are known as Iranian peoples.
The Iranian languages are considered in three stages of Old (until 400 BCE), Middle (400 BCE – 900 CE), and New (since 900 CE). From the Old Iranian languages the better understood and recorded ones are Old Persian (a language of Achaemenid Iran) and Avestan (the language of Zarathushtra). Middle Iranian languages included Middle Persian (a language of Sassanid Iran) and Parthian (a language of Arsacid Iran). There are many Iranian languages, the largest amongst them are Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, and Balochi.
Today, there are an estimated 150–200 million native speakers of Iranian languages. The Ethnologue lists 87 Iranian languages.Persian has about 65 million native speakers, Pashto about 50 million, Kurdish about 18 million, Balochi about 7 million, and Lurish about 2.3 million.
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Iraqi people
The Iraqi people (Arabic: العراقيون ʿIrāqīyūn, Kurdish: گهلی عیراق Îraqîyan, Aramaic: ܥܡܐ ܥܝܪܩܝܐ ʿIrāqāyā) or Mesopotamian people (Arabic: شعب بلاد ما بين النهرين) are the native inhabitants of the country of Iraq, (also known as Mesopotamia), and their related diaspora. From late Assyrian and Babylonian times until the early Islamic era, the Iraqi people spoke Aramaic but also witnessed a minority Arab presence.
Arabic had been a minority language in Iraq since the 8th century BC, it was spoken in Hatra in the 1st and 2nd centuries, and by Iraqi Christians in Al-Hirah from the 3rd century, and from the 8th century following the Muslim conquest of Mesopotamia it became the common language of Iraqi Muslims, due to Arabic being the language of the Qur'an and the Caliphate. This change was facilitated by the fact that Arabic being a Semitic language, shared a close resemblance to Iraq's traditional languages of Akkadian and Aramaic. Some of Iraq's Christians and Mandaeans retained dialects of Aramaic, since it remained the liturgical language of their faiths. Kurdish-speaking Iraqis live in the mountainous Zagros region of northeast Iraq to the east of the upper Tigris. The Kurds and Arabs of Mesopotamia have interacted and intermarried for well over a millennium. Modern genetic studies indicate that Iraqi Arabs and Kurds are very closely related. Arabic and Kurdish are Iraq's national languages.
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Iraqi Turkmen
The Iraqi Turkmens (also spelled Turcomans, Turkomens, and Iraqi Turkmans), Iraqi Turks, or Turks of Iraq (Turkish: Irak Türkmenleri/Irak Türkleri) are the third largest ethnic group in Iraq who are the ethnic kin of the Turks. They mainly reside in northern Iraq and share close cultural and linguistic ties with Turkey.
The Iraqi Turkmen are the descendants of various waves of Turkic migration to Mesopotamia dating from the 7th century until Ottoman rule. The first wave of migration dates back to the 7th century when some 1,000 Turkmen soldiers were recruited in the Muslim armies of Ubayd-Allah ibn Ziyad; however, most of today's descendants of these first migrants have been assimilated into the local Arab population. The second wave of migrants were the Turks of the Great Seljuq Empire; finally, the third wave, and largest number of Turkmen migrants into Iraq arose during the Ottoman Empire. With the conquest of Iraq by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1534, followed by Sultan Murad IV's capture of Baghdad in 1638, a large influx of Turks settled down in the region. Thus, most of today's Iraqi Turkmen are the descendants of the Ottoman soldiers, traders and civil servants who were brought into Iraq during the rule of the Ottoman Empire.
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Jean Bottéro
Jean Bottéro (30 August 1914 – 15 December 2007) was a French historian born in Vallauris. He was a major Assyriologist and a renowned expert on the Ancient Near East. He died in Gif-sur-Yvette.
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John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes,CB FBA ( /ˈkeɪnz/ KAYNZ; 5 June 1883–21 April 1946) was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments. He greatly refined earlier work on the causes of business cycles, and advocated the use of fiscal and monetary measures to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions and depressions. His ideas are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics, as well as its various offshoots.
In the 1930s, Keynes spearheaded a revolution in economic thinking, overturning the older ideas of neoclassical economics that held that free markets would, in the short to medium term, automatically provide full employment, as long as workers were flexible in their wage demands. Keynes instead argued that aggregate demand determined the overall level of economic activity, and that inadequate aggregate demand could lead to prolonged periods of high unemployment. Following the outbreak of World War II, Keynes's ideas concerning economic policy were adopted by leading Western economies. During the 1950s and 1960s, the success of Keynesian economics resulted in almost all capitalist governments adopting its policy recommendations.
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Kingdom of Iraq
The Kingdom of Iraq (Arabic: المملكة العراقية al-Mamlakah al-'Irāqiyyah) was officially declared as an independent state in 1932, granting full sovereign rights to Hashemites and ending the British Mandate regime.
Although the League of Nations mandate was awarded to Britain in 1920, the 1920 Iraqi revolt resulted in the scrapping of the original mandate plan in favor of British administered semi-independent kingdom, under the Hashemite allies of Britain. The kingdom of Iraq was granted full independence in 1932, following the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty (1930).
The kingdom ended in 1958, when the monarchy was over thrown in a military coup, led by Abd al-Karim Qasim.
Mandatory Mesopotamia was created under the League of Nations Class A mandate under Article 22 and entrusted to Britain, when the Ottoman Empire was divided in August 1920 by the Treaty of Sèvres, following World War I. This award was prepared on April 25, 1920, at the San Remo conference in Italy. France controlled the Mandates of Syria and Lebanon. Faisal ibn Husayn, who had been proclaimed King of Syria by a Syrian National Congress in Damascus in March 1920, was ejected by the French in July of the same year. Faisal was then granted the territory of Iraq, to rule it as a kingdom, with the British RAF retaining certain military control, though de facto, the territory remained under British Mandate until 1932.
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Kings of Assyria
The list of Assyrian kings is compiled from the Assyrian King List, an ancient kingdom in northern Mesopotamia (modern northern Iraq) with information added from recent archaeological findings. The Assyrian King List includes regnal lengths that appear to have been based on now lost limmu lists (which list the names of eponymous officials for each year). These regnal lengths accord well with Hittite, Babylonian and ancient Egyptian king lists and with the archaeological record, and are considered reliable for the age.
Prior to the discovery of cuneiform tablets listing ancient Assyrian kings, scholars before the 19th century only had access to two complete Assyrian King Lists, one found in Eusebius of Caesarea's Chronicle (c. 325 AD), of which two editions exist and secondly a list found in the Excerpta Latina Barbari.
An incomplete list of 16 Assyrian kings was also discovered in the literature of Sextus Julius Africanus. Other very fragmentary Assyrian king lists have come down to us written by the Greeks and Romans such as Ctesias of Cnidus (c. 400 BC) and the Roman authors Castor of Rhodes (1st century BC) and Cephalion (1st century AD).
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Mandaeans
Mandaeism or Mandaeanism (Modern Mandaic: Mandaʻiūtā (מנדעיותא); Arabic: مندائية Mandāʼīyah/Mandāʾiyyah; Persian: مندائیان Mandâ'iyân) is a gnostic religion[citation needed] (Aramaic manda means "knowledge", as does Greek gnosis) with a strongly dualistic worldview.
Its adherents, the Mandaeans, revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enosh, Noah, Shem, Aram and especially John the Baptist, but reject Jesus of Nazareth and are hostile to Christianity. They are sometimes identified with mentions in the Quran of the Sabian religion, particularly in an Arabian context, but the Sabian religious community is extinct today.
According to most scholars, Mandaeans migrated from the Southern Levant to Mesopotamia in the first centuries CE and are certainly of pre-Arab and pre-Islamic origin. They are Semites and speak a dialect of Eastern Aramaic known as Mandaic. They may well be related to the "Nabateans of Iraq" who were pagan, Aramaic speaking indigenous pre-Arab and pre-Islamic inhabitants of southern Iraq.
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Mandaeism
Mandaeism or Mandaeanism (Modern Mandaic: Mandaʻiūtā (מנדעיותא); Arabic: مندائية Mandāʼīyah/Mandāʾiyyah; Persian: مندائیان Mandâ'iyân) is a gnostic religion[citation needed] (Aramaic manda means "knowledge", as does Greek gnosis) with a strongly dualistic worldview.
Its adherents, the Mandaeans, revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enosh, Noah, Shem, Aram and especially John the Baptist, but reject Jesus of Nazareth and are hostile to Christianity. They are sometimes identified with mentions in the Quran of the Sabian religion, particularly in an Arabian context, but the Sabian religious community is extinct today.
According to most scholars, Mandaeans migrated from the Southern Levant to Mesopotamia in the first centuries CE and are certainly of pre-Arab and pre-Islamic origin. They are Semites and speak a dialect of Eastern Aramaic known as Mandaic. They may well be related to the "Nabateans of Iraq" who were pagan, Aramaic speaking indigenous pre-Arab and pre-Islamic inhabitants of southern Iraq.
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Medes
The Medes (/midz/) (from Old Persian Māda-) were an ancient Iranian people who lived in Iran in an area known as Media and spoke a northwestern Iranian language referred to as the Median language. Their arrival to the region is associated with the first wave of Iranian tribes in the late second millennium BCE (the Bronze Age collapse) through the beginning of the first millennium BCE.
In the 7th century BCE a unified Median state was formed which together with Babylonia, Lydia, and Egypt became one of the four major powers of the ancient Near East. An alliance with the Babylonians helped the Medes to capture Nineveh in 612 BCE which resulted in the collapse of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Medes were subsequently able to establish their Median kingdom (with Ecbatana as their royal centre) beyond their original homeland (central-western Iran) and had eventually a territory stretching roughly from northeastern Iran to the Halys River in Anatolia. The Median kingdom was conquered in 550 BCE by Cyrus the Great who established the next Iranian dynasty—the Achaemenid Empire.
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Otto E. Neugebauer
Otto Eduard Neugebauer (May 26, 1899 – February 19, 1990) was an Austrian-American mathematician and historian of science who became known for his research on the history of astronomy and the other exact sciences in antiquity and into the Middle Ages. By studying clay tablets, he discovered that the ancient Babylonians knew much more about mathematics and astronomy than had been previously realized. The National Academy of Sciences has called Neugebauer "the most original and productive scholar of the history of the exact sciences, perhaps of the history of science, of our age."
Neugebauer began as a mathematician, turned first to Egyptian and Babylonian mathematics, and then took up the history of mathematical astronomy. In a career of sixty-five years, he largely created our current understanding of mathematical astronomy from Babylon and Egypt, through Greco-Roman antiquity, to India, Islam, and Europe of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. His influence on the study of the history of the exact sciences is profound.
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Parthia
Parthia is a region of north-eastern Iran, best known for having been the political and cultural base of the Arsacid dynasty, rulers of the Parthian Empire.
The name "Parthia" is a continuation from Latin Parthia, from Old Persian Parthava, which was the Parthian language self-designator signifying "of the Parthians" who were an Iranian people.
Parthia roughly corresponds to the western half of Khorasan region in northeastern Iran. It was bordered by the Kopet Dag mountain range in the north and the Dasht-e-Kavir desert in the south. It bordered Media on the west, Hyrcania on the north west, Margiana on the north east, and Aria on the south east.
During Arsacid times, Parthia was united with Hyrcania as one administrative unit, and that region is therefore often (subject to context) considered a part of Parthia proper.
As the region inhabited by Parthians, Parthia first appears as a political entity in Achaemenid lists of governorates ("satrapies") under their dominion. Prior to this, the people of the region seem to have been subjects of the Medes, and 7th century BC Assyrian texts mention a country named Partakka or Partukka (though this "need not have coincided topographically with the later Parthia").
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Plato
Plato ( /ˈpleɪtoʊ/; Greek: Πλάτων, Plátōn, "broad"; 424/423 BC – 348/347 BC) was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science. In the words of A. N. Whitehead:
The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them.
Plato's sophistication as a writer is evident in his Socratic dialogues; thirty-six dialogues and thirteen letters have been ascribed to him. Plato's writings have been published in several fashions; this has led to several conventions regarding the naming and referencing of Plato's texts. Plato's dialogues have been used to teach a range of subjects, including philosophy, logic, ethics, rhetoric, and mathematics.
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Plutarch
Plutarch (English pronunciation: /'pluːtɑːk/; Greek: Πλούταρχος, Ploútarkhos, Koine Greek: [plŭːtarkʰos]) then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (Μέστριος Πλούταρχος),c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia. He was born to a prominent family in Chaeronea, Boeotia, a town about twenty miles east of Delphi.
Plutarch was born in 46 AD in the small town of Chaeronea, in the Greek region known as Boeotia. His family was wealthy. The name of Plutarch's father has not been preserved, but it was probably Nikarchus (Greek: Nίκαρχoς), from the common habit of Greek families to repeat a name in alternate generations. The name of Plutarch's grandfather was Lamprias, as he attested in Moralia and in his Life of Antony.
His brothers, Timon and Lamprias, are frequently mentioned in his essays and dialogues, where Timon is spoken of in the most affectionate terms. Rualdus, in his 1624 work Life of Plutarchus, recovered the name of Plutarch's wife, Timoxena, from internal evidence afforded by his writings. A letter is still extant, addressed by Plutarch to his wife, bidding her not give way to excessive grief at the death of their two year old daughter, who was named Timoxena after her mother. Interestingly, he hinted at a belief in reincarnation in that letter of consolation.
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Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (Arabic: صدام حسين عبد المجيد التكريتي Ṣaddām Ḥusayn ʿAbd al-Maǧīd al-Tikrītī; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and later, the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organisation Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region, which espoused ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup, later referred to as the 17 July Revolution, that brought the party to long-term power of Iraq.
As vice president under the ailing General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, and at a time when many groups were considered capable of overthrowing the government, Saddam created security forces through which he tightly controlled conflict between the government and the armed forces. In the early 1970s, Saddam nationalized oil and other industries. The state-owned banks were put under his control, leaving the system eventually insolvent mostly due to the Iran–Iraq War, the Gulf War, and UN sanctions. Through the 1970s, Saddam cemented his authority over the apparatuses of government as oil money helped Iraq's economy to grow at a rapid pace. Positions of power in the country were filled with Sunnis, a minority that made up only a fifth of the population.
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Seleucus of Seleucia
Seleucus (or Seleukos) of Seleucia (born c. 190 BC, fl. 150s BC) was a Hellenistic astronomer and philosopher. Coming from Seleucia on the Tigris, the capital of the Seleucid empire, or, alternatively, Seleukia on the Red Sea, he is best known as a proponent of heliocentrism and for his theory of the origin of tides.
Teaching around 150 BC, he is known to have been a follower of the heliocentric theory of Aristarchus of Samos, which stated that the Earth rotated around its own axis which in turn revolved around the Sun. According to Plutarch, Seleucus was the first to demonstrate the heliocentric system through reasoning, but it is not known what arguments he used. According to Bartel Leendert van der Waerden, Seleucus may have constructed his heliocentric theory by determining the constants of a geometric model and by developing methods to compute planetary positions using this model, as Nicolaus Copernicus later did in the 16th century. He may have used trigonometric methods that were available in his time, as he was a contemporary of Hipparchus.
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Semitic
In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic (from the Biblical "Shem", Hebrew: שם, translated as "name", Arabic: ساميّ) was first used to refer to a language family of largely Middle Eastern origin, now called the Semitic languages. This family includes the ancient and modern forms of; Akkadian, Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic, Ge'ez, Maltese, Canaanite/Phoenician, Amorite, Eblaite, Ugaritic, Sutean, Chaldean, Mandaic, Old Persian, Ahlamu, Amharic, Tigre and Tigrinya among others.
As language studies are interwoven with cultural studies, the term also came to describe the extended cultures and ethnicities, as well as the history of these varied peoples as associated by close geographic and linguistic distribution.
The term Semite means a member of any of various ancient and modern Semitic-speaking peoples originating in southwestern Asia, including; Akkadians (Assyrians and Babylonians), Eblaites, Ugarites, Canaanites, Phoenicians (including Carthaginians), Hebrews (Israelites, Judeans and Samaritans), Ahlamu, Arameans, Chaldeans, Amorites, Moabites, Edomites, Hyksos, Arabs, Nabateans, Maganites, Shebans, Sutu, Ubarites, Dilmunites, Maltese, Mandaeans, Sabians, Syriacs, Mhallami, Amalekites and Ethiopian Semites. It was proposed at first to refer to the languages related to Hebrew by Ludwig Schlözer, in Eichhorn's "Repertorium", vol. VIII (Leipzig, 1781), p. 161. Through Eichhorn the name then came into general usage (cf. his "Einleitung in das Alte Testament" (Leipzig, 1787), I, p. 45). In his "Geschichte der neuen Sprachenkunde", pt. I (Göttingen, 1807) it had already become a fixed technical term.
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Sennacherib
Sennacherib (pronounced /səˈnækərɪb/; Akkadian: Sîn-ahhī-erība "Sîn has replaced (lost) brothers for me") was the son of Sargon II, whom he succeeded on the throne of Assyria (705 – 681 BC).
As the crown prince, Sennacherib was placed in charge of the Assyrian Empire while his father, Sargon II, was on campaign. Unlike his predecessors, Sennacherib's reign was not largely marked by military campaigns, but mainly by architectural renovations, constructions, and expansions. After the violent death of his father, Sennacherib encountered numerous problems in establishing his power and faced threats to his domain. However, he was able to overcome these power struggles and ultimately carry out his building projects. During his reign, he moved the empire's capital from his father's newly-constructed city of Dur-Sharrukin to the old city and former capital of Nineveh. It is considered striking that Sennacherib not only left his father's city, but also doesn’t name him in any official inscription during his reign.
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Settler
A settler is a person who has migrated to an area and established permanent residence there, often to colonize the area. Settlers are generally people who take up residence on land. However, Canadian First Nations people often refer to all non-natives as "settler peoples", or "settler populations".[citation needed]
In almost every real historical case, settlers live on land which previously belonged to long-established peoples, known as indigenous people (often called "natives", "Aborigines" or, in the Americas, "Indians"). This land is usually settled against the wishes of the indigenes, and then controlled, defended and expanded by force, or it is bought or leased from indigenous people on terms highly favourable to the settlers, sometimes under a treaty (e.g. the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand). In some cases (such as Australia), the legal ownership of some lands is contested much later by indigenous people, who seek or claim traditional usage, land rights, native title and related forms of ownership or partial control.
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Sin-liqe-unninni
Sîn-lēqi-unninni was an incantation/exorcist priest (mashmashshu) who lived in Mesopotamia in the period between 1300 BC and 1000 BC. He is the compiler of the best preserved version of the Epic of Gilgamesh. His name is listed in the text itself, which is unusual for works written in cuneiform. His version is known by its incipit, or first line, "He who saw the deep" or "The one who saw the Abyss". It is unknown how different his version is from the earlier texts. The only time when Sin-liqe-unninni narrates the story in first person is in the prologue. His version includes Utnapishtim's story of the Flood in tablet XI and in tablet XII the Sumerian Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Netherworld. Sîn-lēqi-unninni's name means 'Sîn (the Moon God) is one who accepts my prayer'. It is also sometimes transcribed, albeit less probably, as 'Sîn-liqe-unninni', meaning 'O Sîn! Accept my prayer'.
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Socrates
Socrates ( /ˈsɒkrətiːz/; Greek: Σωκράτης, Ancient Greek pronunciation: [sɔːkrátɛːs], Sōkrátēs; c. 469 BC – 399 BC) was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary Aristophanes. Many would claim that Plato's dialogues are the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity.
Through his portrayal in Plato's dialogues, Socrates has become renowned for his contribution to the field of ethics, and it is this Platonic Socrates who also lends his name to the concepts of Socratic irony and the Socratic method, or elenchus. The latter remains a commonly used tool in a wide range of discussions, and is a type of pedagogy in which a series of questions are asked not only to draw individual answers, but also to encourage fundamental insight into the issue at hand. It is Plato's Socrates that also made important and lasting contributions to the fields of epistemology and logic, and the influence of his ideas and approach remains strong in providing a foundation for much western philosophy that followed.
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Soil
Soil is a natural body that consists of layers (soil horizons), composed primarily of minerals, which differ from their parent materials in their texture, structure, consistency, color, chemical, biological and other physical characteristics. The end result, soil, is the end product of the influence of the climate (temperature, precipitation), relief (slope), organisms (flora and fauna), parent materials (original minerals), temperature, and time. In engineering, soil is referred to as regolith, or loose rock material. Strictly speaking, soil is the depth of regolith that influences and has been influenced by plant roots and may range in depth from centimeters to many meters.
Soil is composed of particles of broken rock (materials) that have been altered by chemical and mechanical processes that include weathering, erosion and precipitation. Soil is altered from its parent material by the interactions between the lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. It is a mixture of mineral and organic materials that are in solid, gaseous and aqueous states. Soil is commonly referred to as earth or dirt; technically, the term dirt should be restricted to displaced soil.
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Sumerian king list
The Sumerian King List is an ancient manuscript originally recorded in the Sumerian language, listing kings of Sumer (ancient southern Iraq) from Sumerian and neighboring dynasties, their supposed reign lengths, and the locations of "official" kingship. Kingship was believed to have been handed down by the gods, and could be transferred from one city to another, reflecting perceived hegemony in the region. Throughout its Bronze Age existence, the document evolved into a political tool. Its final and single attested version, dating to the Middle Bronze Age, aimed to legitimize Isin's claims to hegemony when Isin was vying for dominance with Larsa and other neighboring city-states in southern Mesopotamia.
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Thales
Thales of Miletus ( /ˈθeɪliːz/; Greek: Θαλῆς, Thalēs; c. 624 BC – c. 546 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Miletus in Asia Minor, and one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regard him as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition. According to Bertrand Russell, "Western philosophy begins with Thales." Thales attempted to explain natural phenomena without reference to mythology and was tremendously influential in this respect. Almost all of the other pre-Socratic philosophers follow him in attempting to provide an explanation of ultimate substance, change, and the existence of the world—without reference to mythology. Those philosophers were also influential, and eventually Thales' rejection of mythological explanations became an essential idea for the scientific revolution. He was also the first to define general principles and set forth hypotheses, and as a result has been dubbed the "Father of Science", though it is argued that Democritus is actually more deserving of this title.
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Tiglath-Pileser I
Tiglath-Pileser I ([pronunciation?]; from the Hebraic form of Akkadian: Tukultī-apil-Ešarra "My Trust is in the Son of Esharra", Classical Syriac: ܬܲܟܲܠܬܝܼ ܐܵܦܸܠ ܥܝܼܫܵܪܵܐ Takaltyu ʾapel ʿyushara) was a king of Assyria during the Middle Assyrian period (1114–1076 BC). According to Georges Roux, Tiglath-Pileser was "one of the two or three great Assyrian monarchs since the days of Shamshi-Adad I". Under him, Assyria became the leading power of the Middle East, a position the kingdom largely maintained for the next five hundred years. He expanded Assyrian control into Anatolia and Syria, and to the shores of the Mediterranean. From his surviving inscriptions, he seems to have carefully cultivated a fear of himself in his subjects and in his enemies alike.
The son of Ashur-resh-ishi I, he ascended to the throne in 1115 BC, and became one of the greatest of Assyrian conquerors.
His first campaign was against the Mushkuin 1112 B.C. who had occupied certain Assyrian districts in the Upper Euphrates; then he overran Commagene and eastern Cappadocia, and drove the Hittites from the Assyrian province of Subartu, northeast of Malatia.
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Ur-Nammu
Ur-Nammu (or Ur-Namma, Ur-Engur, Ur-Gur, ca. 2047-2030 BC short chronology) founded the Sumerian 3rd dynasty of Ur, in southern Mesopotamia, following several centuries of Akkadian and Gutian rule. His main achievement was state-building, and Ur-Nammu is chiefly remembered today for his legal code, the Code of Ur-Nammu, the oldest known surviving example in the world.
Year-names are known for 17 of Ur-Nammu's 18 years, but their order is uncertain. One year-name of his reign records the devastation of Gutium, while two years seem to commemorate his legal reforms: "Year in which Ur-Nammu the king put in order the ways (of the people in the country) from below to above", and "Year Ur-Nammu made justice in the land".
Among his military exploits were the conquest of Lagash and the defeat of his former masters at Uruk. He was eventually recognized as a significant regional ruler (of Ur, Eridu, and Uruk) at a coronation in Nippur, and is believed to have constructed buildings at Nippur, Larsa, Kish, Adab, and Umma. He was known for restoring the roads and general order after the Gutian period.
wn.com/Ur-Nammu
karaoke
Turn your watch, turn your watch back,
about a hundred thousand years.
A hundred thousand years.
I'll meet you by the third pyramid
I'll meet you by the third pyramid
Ah come on, that's what I want, we'll meet
in Mesopotamia. oh oh oh
(We're goin' down to meet) I ain't no student,
(Feel those vibrations) of ancient culture
(I know a neat excavation) Before I talk
I should read a book.
But there's one thing I do know,
There's a lot of ruins in Mesopotamia.
Six or eight thousand years ago
They laid down the law. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa
Six or eight thousand years ago
They laid down the law. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa
I'll meet you by the third pyramid
I'll meet you by the third pyramid
Ah come on, that's what I want, we'll meet
in Mesopotamia. oh oh oh
(We're goin' down to meet) Now I ain't no student,
(Feel those vibrations) of ancient culture
(I know a neat excavation) Before I talk
I should read a book. (Mesopotamia, that's where I wanna go)
But there's one thing that I do know, (Mesopotamia, that's where I wanna go)
There's a lot of ruins in Mesopotamia.
Six or eight thousand years ago
They laid down the law. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa
Six or eight thousand years ago
They laid down the law. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa
In Mesopotamia. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa
They laid down the law. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa
In Mesopotamia. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa
Turn your watch, turn your watch back,
about a hundred thousand years.
A hundred thousand years.
I'll meet you by the third pyramid
I'll meet you by the third pyramid
Ah come on, that's what I want, we'll meet
in Mesopotamia. oh oh oh
(We're goin' down to meet) I ain't no student,
(Feel those vibrations) of ancient culture
(I know a neat excavation) Before I talk
I should read a book.
But there's one thing I do know,
There's a lot of ruins in Mesopotamia.
Six or eight thousand years ago
They laid down the law. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa
Six or eight thousand years ago
They laid down the law. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa
I'll meet you by the third pyramid
I'll meet you by the third pyramid
Ah come on, that's what I want, we'll meet
in Mesopotamia. oh oh oh
(We're goin' down to meet) Now I ain't no student,
(Feel those vibrations) of ancient culture
(I know a neat excavation) Before I talk
I should read a book. (Mesopotamia, that's where I wanna go)
But there's one thing that I do know, (Mesopotamia, that's where I wanna go)
There's a lot of ruins in Mesopotamia.
Six or eight thousand years ago
They laid down the law. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa
Six or eight thousand years ago
They laid down the law. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa
In Mesopotamia. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa
They laid down the law. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa
You angel you
You got me under your wing
The way you walk and the way you talk
I feel I could almost sing.
You angel you
You're as fine as anything's fine
I just want to watch you talk
With your memory on my mind
You know, I can't sleep at night for trying.
Yes, I never did feel this way before
I never did get up and walk the floor
If this is love then give me more
And more and more and more and more.
You angel you
You're as fine as can be
The way you walk and the way you talk
Is the way it ought to be.
You know, I can't sleep at night for trying
Never did feel this way before
Never did get up and walk the floor
If this is love then give me more
And more and more and more and more.
You angel you
You got me under your wing
The way you walk and the way you talk
I swear it makes me sing.
Mesopotamia, Mesopotamia
You fucking give me the creeps
You fucking give me the creeps
I've never known another city to burn
Face down in the bottom of a river
Swimming with the dead makes me want to shiver
If you really wanna know, I'd rather just drown alone
Clay fingers reaching for the ceiling
Once numb, now tingling with feeling
You'll see in the end that nothing really gets away
And I'd give it all just to be with you
Mesopotamia, Mesopotamia
You fucking give me the creeps
You fucking give me the creeps
I've never known another city to burn
You took back the mud from which you're made
And threw it at me like a fucking grenade
You keep cutting my throat, then you ask me if I'm feelin ok
This city is just like any other
They keep blowing it up, then building up another
If you look in the hole, you'll see it ain't going away
And I'd give it all away just to be with you
Mesopotamia, Mesopotamia
You fucking give me the creeps
You fucking give me the creeps
I've never known another city to burn
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Mesopotamia: Crash Course World History #3
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 12:06
- Updated: 22 Dec 2012
In which John presents Mesopotamia, and the early civilizations that arose around the Fertile Crescent. Topics covered include the birth of territorial kingdoms, empires, Neo-Assyrian torture tactics, sacred marriages, ancient labor practices, the world's first law code, and the great failed romance of John's undergrad years. Resources: The British Museum's Mesopotamia site: dft.ba The Epic of Gilgamesh: dft.ba or get a hard copy at dft.ba Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians by Enrico Ascalone: dft.ba The Mesopotamians by TMBG: dft.ba Credits: Written by Raoul Meyer and John Green Produced by Stan Muller Animations by Smart Bubble Society: thoughtbubble.org Thought Bubble team: Suzanna Brusikiewicz Jonathon Corbiere Allan Levy Jin Kyung Myung James Tuer Adam Winnik Original Music: Jason Weidner Script Supervisor & Doll Costumer: Danica Johnson Set Design: Donna Sink Props: Brian McCutcheon Photos courtesy of: Mbzt Hardnfast Marie Lan-Nguyen Follow us! @thecrashcourse @realjohngreen @raoulmeyer @crashcoursestan @saysdanica @thoughtbubbler Like us! www.facebook.com Follow us again! thecrashcourse.tumblr.com
http://wn.com/Mesopotamia_Crash_Course_World_History_3
In which John presents Mesopotamia, and the early civilizations that arose around the Fertile Crescent. Topics covered include the birth of territorial kingdoms, empires, Neo-Assyrian torture tactics, sacred marriages, ancient labor practices, the world's first law code, and the great failed romance of John's undergrad years. Resources: The British Museum's Mesopotamia site: dft.ba The Epic of Gilgamesh: dft.ba or get a hard copy at dft.ba Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians by Enrico Ascalone: dft.ba The Mesopotamians by TMBG: dft.ba Credits: Written by Raoul Meyer and John Green Produced by Stan Muller Animations by Smart Bubble Society: thoughtbubble.org Thought Bubble team: Suzanna Brusikiewicz Jonathon Corbiere Allan Levy Jin Kyung Myung James Tuer Adam Winnik Original Music: Jason Weidner Script Supervisor & Doll Costumer: Danica Johnson Set Design: Donna Sink Props: Brian McCutcheon Photos courtesy of: Mbzt Hardnfast Marie Lan-Nguyen Follow us! @thecrashcourse @realjohngreen @raoulmeyer @crashcoursestan @saysdanica @thoughtbubbler Like us! www.facebook.com Follow us again! thecrashcourse.tumblr.com
Civilisations- Mesopotamia [1/6]
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:57
- Updated: 18 Dec 2012
Mesopotamia, or 'the country between two rivers', is the oldest civilisation to have flourished at the confluence of two rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Mesopotamians included various peoples, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Akkadians, who coexisted and succeeded one another, mixing and inter-relating in a Near East with a wide range of racial facets. These different peoples, who once lived along the banks of the two rivers, have left behind an archaeological heritage of inestimable value.How did they flourish in such a hostile environment? Where did their wealth come from? And how did this perfectly structured civilisation finally fade and disappear for ever? This popular series gives new insights into some of the most influential civilisations to shape the world as we know it. To understand where we are now, it might help to understand where we have been.
http://wn.com/Civilisations_Mesopotamia_1_6_
Mesopotamia, or 'the country between two rivers', is the oldest civilisation to have flourished at the confluence of two rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Mesopotamians included various peoples, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Akkadians, who coexisted and succeeded one another, mixing and inter-relating in a Near East with a wide range of racial facets. These different peoples, who once lived along the banks of the two rivers, have left behind an archaeological heritage of inestimable value.How did they flourish in such a hostile environment? Where did their wealth come from? And how did this perfectly structured civilisation finally fade and disappear for ever? This popular series gives new insights into some of the most influential civilisations to shape the world as we know it. To understand where we are now, it might help to understand where we have been.
- published: 10 Dec 2007
- views: 203016
- author: easeen
Lost civilisations - 01 - Mesopotamia.avi
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 50:40
- Updated: 21 Dec 2012
lost civilaisation- Mesopotamia or New awan
http://wn.com/Lost_civilisations_01_Mesopotamiaavi
lost civilaisation- Mesopotamia or New awan
- published: 07 Feb 2011
- views: 68572
- author: Bahman Bahrami
B-52's Mesopotamia
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:53
- Updated: 14 Dec 2012
from 1990
http://wn.com/B-52's_Mesopotamia
Turning Points in History - Mesopotamia
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:25
- Updated: 15 Dec 2012
The rise of cities in Mesopotamia changes the course of human civilization forever
http://wn.com/Turning_Points_in_History_Mesopotamia
The rise of cities in Mesopotamia changes the course of human civilization forever
- published: 29 Sep 2009
- views: 17025
- author: AllHistories
The B-52's "Mesopotamia"
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:53
- Updated: 22 Dec 2012
"Mesopotamia", 1982. Stereo: uk.youtube.com I don't often do this you know, but here's the lyrics: Turn your watch, turn your watch back, about a hundred thousand years. A hundred thousand years. I'll meet you by the third pyramid I'll meet you by the third pyramid Ah come on, that's what I want, we'll meet in Mesopotamia. oh oh oh (We're goin' down to meet) I ain't no student, (Feel those vibrations) of ancient culture (I know a neat excavation) Before I talk I should read a book. But there's one thing I do know, There's a lot of ruins in Mesopotamia. Six or eight thousand years ago They laid down the law. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa Six or eight thousand years ago They laid down the law. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa I'll meet you by the third pyramid I'll meet you by the third pyramid Ah come on, that's what I want, we'll meet in Mesopotamia. oh oh oh (We're goin' down to meet) Now I ain't no student, (Feel those vibrations) of ancient culture (I know a neat excavation) Before I talk I should read a book. (Mesopotamia, that's where I wanna go) But there's one thing that I do know, (Mesopotamia, that's where I wanna go) There's a lot of ruins in Mesopotamia. Six or eight thousand years ago They laid down the law. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa Six or eight thousand years ago They laid down the law. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa In Mesopotamia. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa They laid down the law. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa In Mesopotamia. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa
http://wn.com/The_B-52's_Mesopotamia
"Mesopotamia", 1982. Stereo: uk.youtube.com I don't often do this you know, but here's the lyrics: Turn your watch, turn your watch back, about a hundred thousand years. A hundred thousand years. I'll meet you by the third pyramid I'll meet you by the third pyramid Ah come on, that's what I want, we'll meet in Mesopotamia. oh oh oh (We're goin' down to meet) I ain't no student, (Feel those vibrations) of ancient culture (I know a neat excavation) Before I talk I should read a book. But there's one thing I do know, There's a lot of ruins in Mesopotamia. Six or eight thousand years ago They laid down the law. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa Six or eight thousand years ago They laid down the law. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa I'll meet you by the third pyramid I'll meet you by the third pyramid Ah come on, that's what I want, we'll meet in Mesopotamia. oh oh oh (We're goin' down to meet) Now I ain't no student, (Feel those vibrations) of ancient culture (I know a neat excavation) Before I talk I should read a book. (Mesopotamia, that's where I wanna go) But there's one thing that I do know, (Mesopotamia, that's where I wanna go) There's a lot of ruins in Mesopotamia. Six or eight thousand years ago They laid down the law. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa Six or eight thousand years ago They laid down the law. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa In Mesopotamia. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa They laid down the law. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa In Mesopotamia. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haa
- published: 12 Nov 2008
- views: 267011
- author: roddy76to86
Ancient Mesopotamia (clip)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:34
- Updated: 14 Dec 2012
The contributions of the Sumerians, Semites, Babylonians and Assyrians are depicted against authentic locales, including the cities of Babylon, Ur and Nineveh. A Coronet release. 9 minutes, color. direct link to purchase video: www.phoenixlearninggroup.com
http://wn.com/Ancient_Mesopotamia_clip
The contributions of the Sumerians, Semites, Babylonians and Assyrians are depicted against authentic locales, including the cities of Babylon, Ur and Nineveh. A Coronet release. 9 minutes, color. direct link to purchase video: www.phoenixlearninggroup.com
- published: 13 Dec 2007
- views: 174038
- author: phoenixfilmandvideo
The Mesopotamians - They Might Be Giants (official video)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:05
- Updated: 22 Dec 2012
Directed by David Cowles. From the breakthrough 2007 album "The Else" Buy it on vinyl www.rounder.com or at iTunes: phobos.apple.com
http://wn.com/The_Mesopotamians_They_Might_Be_Giants_official_video
Directed by David Cowles. From the breakthrough 2007 album "The Else" Buy it on vinyl www.rounder.com or at iTunes: phobos.apple.com
- published: 22 Oct 2007
- views: 2036212
- author: ParticleMen
Mesopotamia From Nomads to Farmers
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 13:58
- Updated: 11 Dec 2012
http://wn.com/Mesopotamia_From_Nomads_to_Farmers
Civilisations- Mesopotamia [2/6]
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:59
- Updated: 10 Dec 2012
Mesopotamia, or 'the country between two rivers', is the oldest civilisation to have flourished at the confluence of two rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Mesopotamians included various peoples, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Akkadians, who coexisted and succeeded one another, mixing and inter-relating in a Near East with a wide range of racial facets. These different peoples, who once lived along the banks of the two rivers, have left behind an archaeological heritage of inestimable value.How did they flourish in such a hostile environment? Where did their wealth come from? And how did this perfectly structured civilisation finally fade and disappear for ever? This popular series gives new insights into some of the most influential civilisations to shape the world as we know it. To understand where we are now, it might help to understand where we have been.
http://wn.com/Civilisations_Mesopotamia_2_6_
Mesopotamia, or 'the country between two rivers', is the oldest civilisation to have flourished at the confluence of two rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Mesopotamians included various peoples, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Akkadians, who coexisted and succeeded one another, mixing and inter-relating in a Near East with a wide range of racial facets. These different peoples, who once lived along the banks of the two rivers, have left behind an archaeological heritage of inestimable value.How did they flourish in such a hostile environment? Where did their wealth come from? And how did this perfectly structured civilisation finally fade and disappear for ever? This popular series gives new insights into some of the most influential civilisations to shape the world as we know it. To understand where we are now, it might help to understand where we have been.
- published: 10 Dec 2007
- views: 110157
- author: easeen
Ancient Mesopotamia
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:09
- Updated: 20 Dec 2012
Media Blitz on Ancient Mesopotamian Empires. Has information and relevant dates on the Ancient Mesopotamian Empires (Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Neo-Babylonians).
http://wn.com/Ancient_Mesopotamia
Media Blitz on Ancient Mesopotamian Empires. Has information and relevant dates on the Ancient Mesopotamian Empires (Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Neo-Babylonians).
- published: 30 Oct 2009
- views: 28273
- author: MissEstherKim
Ancient Mesopotamia Song By Mr. Nicky
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:51
- Updated: 22 Dec 2012
COMMENT-LIKE-SUBSCRIBE ! ~~ ALL RIGHT GO TO MR. NICKY~~
http://wn.com/Ancient_Mesopotamia_Song_By_Mr_Nicky
COMMENT-LIKE-SUBSCRIBE ! ~~ ALL RIGHT GO TO MR. NICKY~~
- published: 24 Sep 2011
- views: 179081
- author: Ania22Ania
Mesopotamia (Sumerians, first civilization on earth)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:35
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
http://wn.com/Mesopotamia_Sumerians,_first_civilization_on_earth
Grandes Civilizaciones: Mesopotamia
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 11:13
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
www.artehistoria.com El Antiguo Oriente Medio y Mesopotamia conforman una vasta región y una de las cunas de la civilización. Es en esta extensa zona donde se produjo la transición fundamental desde las formas de vida basadas en la caza y la recolección hacia la agricultura. Es aquí donde por primera vez fueron levantados templos y ciudades, donde primero se trabajó el metal, donde apareció la escritura y donde surgieron grandes reinos e imperios. El corazón del Oriente Medio es Mesopotamia, "país entre ríos", como la llamaron los historiadores griegos. Esta inmensa área geográfica, de casi 80.000 km2, comprende el actual Irak y zonas de Irán y Siria. Fueron los ríos Tigris y Eufrates quienes, gracias a irrigar las fértiles llanuras por las que discurren, posibilitaron la vida en esta región de condiciones extremas, con temperaturas actuales por encima de los 50º en verano y muy escasas lluvias anuales. La tierra y el agua fueron los principales recursos, proporcionando abundantes pastos y una próspera agricultura. Los habitantes de Mesopotamia dispusieron de una gran variedad de animales como alimento. Las estepas estaban pobladas por gacelas, gamos y onagros. En las montañas había ciervos, jabalíes, tigres, leones, osos y cabras salvajes. Hacia el 6500 aC, ovejas, cabras, cerdos y vacas están en la dieta de las gentes de Mesopotamia. No será hasta finales del III milenio aC cuando el caballo y el camello sean domesticados. Las condiciones del terreno eran, pues ...
http://wn.com/Grandes_Civilizaciones_Mesopotamia
www.artehistoria.com El Antiguo Oriente Medio y Mesopotamia conforman una vasta región y una de las cunas de la civilización. Es en esta extensa zona donde se produjo la transición fundamental desde las formas de vida basadas en la caza y la recolección hacia la agricultura. Es aquí donde por primera vez fueron levantados templos y ciudades, donde primero se trabajó el metal, donde apareció la escritura y donde surgieron grandes reinos e imperios. El corazón del Oriente Medio es Mesopotamia, "país entre ríos", como la llamaron los historiadores griegos. Esta inmensa área geográfica, de casi 80.000 km2, comprende el actual Irak y zonas de Irán y Siria. Fueron los ríos Tigris y Eufrates quienes, gracias a irrigar las fértiles llanuras por las que discurren, posibilitaron la vida en esta región de condiciones extremas, con temperaturas actuales por encima de los 50º en verano y muy escasas lluvias anuales. La tierra y el agua fueron los principales recursos, proporcionando abundantes pastos y una próspera agricultura. Los habitantes de Mesopotamia dispusieron de una gran variedad de animales como alimento. Las estepas estaban pobladas por gacelas, gamos y onagros. En las montañas había ciervos, jabalíes, tigres, leones, osos y cabras salvajes. Hacia el 6500 aC, ovejas, cabras, cerdos y vacas están en la dieta de las gentes de Mesopotamia. No será hasta finales del III milenio aC cuando el caballo y el camello sean domesticados. Las condiciones del terreno eran, pues ...
- published: 17 Jul 2008
- views: 448365
- author: artehistoriacom
BLACK LIGHT BURNS "Mesopotamia" (HD)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:36
- Updated: 15 Dec 2012
The official video for Wes Borland and Black Light Burns´ "Mesopotamia", from the album "Cruel Melody"
http://wn.com/BLACK_LIGHT_BURNS_Mesopotamia_HD
The official video for Wes Borland and Black Light Burns´ "Mesopotamia", from the album "Cruel Melody"
- published: 16 Dec 2011
- views: 18297
- author: earMUSICofficial
Ancient History - Mesopotamia PART 1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:35
- Updated: 21 Dec 2012
Subscribe!!!!!!!! www.olgurbanpromotions.ning.com CLICK LINK ABOVE TO VIEW MORE INFORMATIVE FOOTAGE. PEACE AND ALSO SIGN UP TO THE NETWORK WEBSITE. LEARN YOUR HISTORY
http://wn.com/Ancient_History_Mesopotamia_PART_1
Subscribe!!!!!!!! www.olgurbanpromotions.ning.com CLICK LINK ABOVE TO VIEW MORE INFORMATIVE FOOTAGE. PEACE AND ALSO SIGN UP TO THE NETWORK WEBSITE. LEARN YOUR HISTORY
- published: 05 Mar 2010
- views: 68688
- author: onelifegame
Inventions and Discoveries in Ancient Mesopotamia (Part 1)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:11
- Updated: 04 Dec 2012
Part 2: www.youtube.com (Part 1) In a laudable effort to raise awareness on societies in Ancient Mesopotamia, DTG Productions® has produced a documentary exposing civilization in this part of the world: Inventions and Discoveries in Ancient Mesopotamia.
http://wn.com/Inventions_and_Discoveries_in_Ancient_Mesopotamia_Part_1
Part 2: www.youtube.com (Part 1) In a laudable effort to raise awareness on societies in Ancient Mesopotamia, DTG Productions® has produced a documentary exposing civilization in this part of the world: Inventions and Discoveries in Ancient Mesopotamia.
- published: 15 Mar 2008
- views: 62638
- author: DTGProductions
La Mesopotamia Antigua 1-2
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 8:03
- Updated: 19 Dec 2012
http://wn.com/La_Mesopotamia_Antigua_1-2
![Civilisations- Mesopotamia [3/6]](http://web.archive.org./web/20121222173856im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tFxPXKBUDdE/default.jpg "Civilisations- Mesopotamia [3/6]")
Civilisations- Mesopotamia [3/6]
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:55
- Updated: 13 Dec 2012
Mesopotamia, or 'the country between two rivers', is the oldest civilisation to have flourished at the confluence of two rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Mesopotamians included various peoples, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Akkadians, who coexisted and succeeded one another, mixing and inter-relating in a Near East with a wide range of racial facets. These different peoples, who once lived along the banks of the two rivers, have left behind an archaeological heritage of inestimable value.How did they flourish in such a hostile environment? Where did their wealth come from? And how did this perfectly structured civilisation finally fade and disappear for ever? This popular series gives new insights into some of the most influential civilisations to shape the world as we know it. To understand where we are now, it might help to understand where we have been.
http://wn.com/Civilisations_Mesopotamia_3_6_
Mesopotamia, or 'the country between two rivers', is the oldest civilisation to have flourished at the confluence of two rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Mesopotamians included various peoples, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Akkadians, who coexisted and succeeded one another, mixing and inter-relating in a Near East with a wide range of racial facets. These different peoples, who once lived along the banks of the two rivers, have left behind an archaeological heritage of inestimable value.How did they flourish in such a hostile environment? Where did their wealth come from? And how did this perfectly structured civilisation finally fade and disappear for ever? This popular series gives new insights into some of the most influential civilisations to shape the world as we know it. To understand where we are now, it might help to understand where we have been.
- published: 10 Dec 2007
- views: 64868
- author: easeen
![Civilisations- Mesopotamia [4/6]](http://web.archive.org./web/20121222173856im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/xG9XkIs32ow/default.jpg "Civilisations- Mesopotamia [4/6]")
Civilisations- Mesopotamia [4/6]
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:00
- Updated: 26 Nov 2012
Mesopotamia, or 'the country between two rivers', is the oldest civilisation to have flourished at the confluence of two rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Mesopotamians included various peoples, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Akkadians, who coexisted and succeeded one another, mixing and inter-relating in a Near East with a wide range of racial facets. These different peoples, who once lived along the banks of the two rivers, have left behind an archaeological heritage of inestimable value.How did they flourish in such a hostile environment? Where did their wealth come from? And how did this perfectly structured civilisation finally fade and disappear for ever? This popular series gives new insights into some of the most influential civilisations to shape the world as we know it. To understand where we are now, it might help to understand where we have been.
http://wn.com/Civilisations_Mesopotamia_4_6_
Mesopotamia, or 'the country between two rivers', is the oldest civilisation to have flourished at the confluence of two rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Mesopotamians included various peoples, the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Akkadians, who coexisted and succeeded one another, mixing and inter-relating in a Near East with a wide range of racial facets. These different peoples, who once lived along the banks of the two rivers, have left behind an archaeological heritage of inestimable value.How did they flourish in such a hostile environment? Where did their wealth come from? And how did this perfectly structured civilisation finally fade and disappear for ever? This popular series gives new insights into some of the most influential civilisations to shape the world as we know it. To understand where we are now, it might help to understand where we have been.
- published: 10 Dec 2007
- views: 52887
- author: easeen
Scribes in Mesopotamia
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:17
- Updated: 18 Dec 2012
Professor of Hittite and Anatolian Languages Theo van den Hout tells us about who scribes in Mesopotamia and Anatolia were. This video was made for the Oriental Institute Museum special exhibit "Visible Language: Inventions of Writing in the Ancient Middle East" which runs from September 28, 2010 through March 6, 2011.
http://wn.com/Scribes_in_Mesopotamia
Professor of Hittite and Anatolian Languages Theo van den Hout tells us about who scribes in Mesopotamia and Anatolia were. This video was made for the Oriental Institute Museum special exhibit "Visible Language: Inventions of Writing in the Ancient Middle East" which runs from September 28, 2010 through March 6, 2011.
- published: 05 Oct 2010
- views: 7917
- author: JamesHenryBreasted
B52's - Mesopotamia (Live)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:54
- Updated: 28 Nov 2012
B52's - Mesopotamia (Live) Dedicado para ti, xq te chiflan... muaak
http://wn.com/B52's_Mesopotamia_Live
B52's - Mesopotamia (Live) Dedicado para ti, xq te chiflan... muaak
- published: 16 Apr 2006
- views: 139177
- author: gascon26
What The Ancients Did For Us - The Mesopotamians Part 1/6
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:48
- Updated: 20 Dec 2012
Mesopotamia (from Greek Μεσοποταμία "[land] between the rivers", rendered in Arabic as بلاد الرافدين bilād al-rāfidayn)[1] is a toponym for the area of the Tigris-Euphrates river system, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, largely corresponding to modern Iraq,[2] as well as some parts of northeastern Syria,[2] some parts of southeastern Turkey,[2] and some parts of the Khūzestān Province of southwestern Iran.[3][4] Widely considered as the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian empires. In the Iron Age, it was ruled by the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires. The indiginous Sumerians and Akkadians (including Assyrians & Babylonians) dominated Mesopotamia from the dawn of written history circa 3100 BC to the fall of Babylon in 539 BC. It was then conquered by the Achaemenid Empire. It fell to Alexander the Great in 332 BC and after his death it became part of the Greek Seleucid Empire, by around 150 BC Mesopotamia was under the control of the Parthians. Mesopotamia became a battle ground between the Romans and Parthians, with parts of Mesopotamia (particularly Assyria) coming under periodic Roman control. In 226 AD it fell to the Sassanid Persians, and remained under Persian rule until the 7th century AD Arab Islamic conquest of the Sassanid Empire. A number of primarily Christian native Mesopotamian states existed beween the 1st Century BC and 3rd Century AD; Adiabene, Oshroene and Hatra. The Assyrians
http://wn.com/What_The_Ancients_Did_For_Us_The_Mesopotamians_Part_1_6
Mesopotamia (from Greek Μεσοποταμία "[land] between the rivers", rendered in Arabic as بلاد الرافدين bilād al-rāfidayn)[1] is a toponym for the area of the Tigris-Euphrates river system, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, largely corresponding to modern Iraq,[2] as well as some parts of northeastern Syria,[2] some parts of southeastern Turkey,[2] and some parts of the Khūzestān Province of southwestern Iran.[3][4] Widely considered as the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian empires. In the Iron Age, it was ruled by the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires. The indiginous Sumerians and Akkadians (including Assyrians & Babylonians) dominated Mesopotamia from the dawn of written history circa 3100 BC to the fall of Babylon in 539 BC. It was then conquered by the Achaemenid Empire. It fell to Alexander the Great in 332 BC and after his death it became part of the Greek Seleucid Empire, by around 150 BC Mesopotamia was under the control of the Parthians. Mesopotamia became a battle ground between the Romans and Parthians, with parts of Mesopotamia (particularly Assyria) coming under periodic Roman control. In 226 AD it fell to the Sassanid Persians, and remained under Persian rule until the 7th century AD Arab Islamic conquest of the Sassanid Empire. A number of primarily Christian native Mesopotamian states existed beween the 1st Century BC and 3rd Century AD; Adiabene, Oshroene and Hatra. The Assyrians
- published: 10 Mar 2010
- views: 12929
- author: A55YRlAN
photo: AP / Fahd al-Bakoush
20 Dec 2012
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three senior U.S. State Department officials were asked to resign after an official inquiry harshly criticized their offices for failing to provide adequate security at the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, before it came under attack in September, a U.S. official said on Wednesday ... State Department officials declined to comment on the matter, saying it was a personnel issue ... Joint Chiefs of Staff ... facilities....(size: 5.4Kb)
photo: AP / Carolyn Kaster
20 Dec 2012
Obama held a White House news conference on Wednesday to announce that Vice President Joe Biden will lead an interagency effort to craft new gun policies. The group is expected to offer its proposals in January. “We know this is a complex issue that stirs deeply held passions and political divides,” Obama said. “But the fact that this problem is complex can no longer be an excuse for doing nothing.” ... WAKE-UP CALL ... ....(size: 6.1Kb)
photo: AP / Alfred de Montesquiou
21 Dec 2012
UNITED NATIONS -- The U.N. Security Council on Thursday authorized military action to wrest northern Mali from the control of al-Qaida-linked extremists, but it demanded progress first on political reconciliation, elections and training African troops and police ... Instead, it set out benchmarks to be met before the start of offensive operations, starting with progress on a political roadmap to restore constitutional order ... U.N ... On Nov ... ....(size: 3.1Kb)
photo: AP / Narciso Contreras
19 Dec 2012
GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations appealed on Wednesday for $1.5 billion (920.1 million pounds) to provide life-saving aid to Syrians suffering from a "dramatically deteriorating" humanitarian situation ... "The magnitude of this humanitarian crisis is indisputable," said Radhouane Nouicer, U.N ... Inside Syria, U.N ... ....(size: 1.5Kb)
photo: AP / Ahn Young-joon
20 Dec 2012
SEOUL, South Korea — Park Geun-hye's election as South Korea's first female president could mean a new drive to start talks with bitter rival North Korea, though it's unclear how much further she will go than the hard-line incumbent, a member of her own conservative party ... On Thursday, Park mentioned the North Korean rocket launch during a nationally televised speech ... Ties between the Koreas plummeted during Lee's term ... ....(size: 4.5Kb)
The Examiner
22 Dec 2012
PRINGLE KENNEDY. Pringle Kennedy has observed (Arabian Society at the Time of Muhammad, pp.8, 10, 18, 21). Muhammad was, to use a striking expression, the man of the hour ... Photo credit. ... On the field of battle, though, the inspired Arabs rapidly conquered all of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine ... However, Mesopotamia and Egypt, the two cradles of ancient civilization, have remained Arab, as has the entire coast of North Africa ... J. H ... ....(size: 32.7Kb)
noodls
21 Dec 2012
(Source. CSU - California State University) ... "Some of them are lists of the people working on a job site," says Cal Poly Pomona History Professor Amanda Podany. Podany has made a career of studying the clay tablets of Mesopotamia, which are inscribed with cuneiform writing - symbols made of small wedge-like shapes ... "Clay survives very well in the ground." ... "The kings in Mesopotamia weren't regarded as gods; they were people," Podany says....(size: 5.5Kb)
Buffalo News
20 Dec 2012
I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready for the world to end. As the date has gotten nearer and nearer, and people are talking more and more about it, I’ve been getting a bit more nervous ... I looked at them ... According to the scientists, the story began with Nibiru, or Planet X, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians (an ancient civilization in Mesopotamia) that was supposed to impact the world in May 2003 ... 1....(size: 6.4Kb)
Yahoo Daily News
19 Dec 2012
American Writers & Artists Inc. Newest Report Finds that Writing Skills – Not Technical Knowledge - are Key to Niche Online Business Success. Delray, FL (PRWEB) December 18, 2012 Doing business on the Internet may seem overwhelming to many ... An American Writers & Artists Inc. member profiled in the report, Karen McCamy, uses her site to indulge in her love of archaeology, specifically human evolution, Mesopotamia, and Mesoamerica ... ....(size: 3.7Kb)
PhysOrg
18 Dec 2012
The diverse origins of the obsidian tools, which date from the rise of the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia to several centuries after its fall, revealed how social networks and trading routes evolved during this period ... "This time of transition in Mesopotamia has received great attention for the concurrence of aridification, de-urbanisation, and the decline of the Akkadian Empire about 4,200 years ago ... "Quite the opposite ... ....(size: 5.0Kb)
noodls
18 Dec 2012
(Source. Moscow Patriarchate). December 17, 2012 - The Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church of Antioch has elected a new Patriarch of Great Antioch and All the East ... His Beatitude Youhanna X, Patriarch of the Great City of God Antioch, Cilicia, Iberia, Mesopotamia and All the East, was born in 1966 in Latakia, Syria ... DECR Communication Service....(size: 2.2Kb)
noodls
18 Dec 2012
(Source ... The diverse origins of the obsidian tools, which date from the rise of the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia to several centuries after its fall, revealed how social networks and trading routes evolved during this period ... "This time of transition in Mesopotamia has received great attention for the concurrence of aridification, de-urbanisation, and the decline of the Akkadian Empire about 4,200 years ago ... "Quite the opposite....(size: 8.6Kb)
The Examiner
17 Dec 2012
965 of the Common Era, Kiev. Also see Part 2 of this story. And if you'd like to read more of a story like this one as a novel, check out my published paperback fiction book or also in the Kindle edition, Adventures in my Beloved Medieval Alania and Beyond ... I promise." ... "Over there." ... Jewish refugees from Byzantium, Persia, Mesopotamia, and all the lands of Europe have flooded into our realm for at least the past two hundred years." ... # ... ....(size: 28.2Kb)
Indian Express
16 Dec 2012
Putting WWI India Office records online shows how memory can be recovered in the digital age. Penny Brook and Florian Stadtler ... Stationed at the trenches on the western front in northern France and Belgium, in Mesopotamia, East Africa and Gallipoli, including non-combatants, the War Office in Britain records that some 1.5 million men from pre-Partition India were involved in World War I ... contd. PAGE. 123 ....(size: 1.9Kb)
Richmond Times Dispatch
16 Dec 2012
Humans first began making glass around 3500 B.C. in ancient. Mesopotamia. Eons later, one man advanced the craft by a. quantum leap. His name is Harvey K. Littleton. When you look at an intricate glass bowl, a delicate flower vase or an exquisite lamp, you’re looking at part of his legacy. The Visual Arts Center of Richmond is celebrating the artist’s. career with “Harvey K. Littleton. A Legacy in Glass.” The exhibit spans ... We kids loved it.” ... ....(size: 4.6Kb)
The Hindu
15 Dec 2012
Let’s welcome the crack of the first Margazhi dawn with 12 pieces of trivia on the Sun God. 1. The Sun is known in Hindu mythology by twelve names. Mitra, Ravi, Surya, Bhanu, Kha, Pusha, Hiranyagarbha, Marichin, Aditya, Savitr, Arka and Bhaskara. 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 5 ... 6 ... 7. Worship of a solar deity was also prevalent in the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece and Mesopotamia. 8 ... 9 ... 10....(size: 1.9Kb)
Philadelphia Daily News
14 Dec 2012
Rick Bentley, FRESNO BEE. Posted. Friday, December 14, 2012, 3.01 AM. A teddy bear, a super spy, and a baby are fodder for this week's new DVD releases. Ted, Grade A-minus. A grown man must deal with his cherished childhood toy ... The Bourne Legacy, Grade C ... This is not the legacy the series deserves. Entertainment Today ... The 12-hour History Channel series spans the first flourishing of civilization in Mesopotamia to the discovery of America ... 0....(size: 19.5Kb)
The Examiner
14 Dec 2012
The creation of man … the creation of earth; Brigham Young’s remarks here in 1859 are in quite agreement with our Urantia Books presentation of the origin of our world AND of Adam and Eve’s arrival on it. Brigham Young, October 9, 1859. Intelligence, Etc. Remarks by President BRIGHAM YOUNG, ... D. Watt ... And some of the descendants of the rebellious Dalamatians subsequently joined Van and his loyal followers in the lands north of Mesopotamia ... ....(size: 10.5Kb)
For other uses, see Mesopotamia (disambiguation).
Mesopotamia (from the Ancient Greek: Μεσοποταμία: "[land] between rivers"; Arabic: بلاد الرافدين (bilād al-rāfidayn); Syriac: ܒܝܬ ܢܗܪܝܢ (beth nahrain): "land of rivers") is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.
Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian empires. In the Iron Age, it was controlled by the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires. The indigenous Sumerians and Akkadians (including Assyrians and Babylonians) dominated Mesopotamia from the beginning of written history (c. 3100 BC) to the fall of Babylon in 539 BC, when it was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire. It fell to Alexander the Great in 332 BC and, after his death, it became part of the Greek Seleucid Empire.
Around 150 BC, Mesopotamia was under the control of the Parthians. Mesopotamia became a battleground between the Romans and Parthians, with parts of Mesopotamia coming under ephemeral Roman control. In AD 226, it fell to the Sassanid Persians, and remained under Persian rule until the 7th century Arab Islamic conquest of the Sassanid Empire. A number of primarily neo Assyrian and Christian native Mesopotamian states existed between the 1st century BC and 3rd century AD, including Adiabene, Osroene and Hatra.
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Etymology[link]
The regional toponym Mesopotamia comes from the ancient Greek root words μέσος (meso) "middle" and ποταμός (potamia) "river" and literally means "(Land) between rivers". The oldest known occurrence of the name Mesopotamia comes from the Anabasis Alexandri, which was written in the late second century AD but specifically refers to sources from the time of Alexander the Great. In the Anabasis, Mesopotamia was used to designate the land east of the Euphrates in north Syria. The Aramaic term biritum/birit narim corresponded to a similar geographical concept.[1] Later, the term Mesopotamia was more generally applied to the all the lands between the Euphrates and the Tigris, thereby incorporating not only parts of Syria but also almost all of Iraq and southeastern Turkey.[2] The neighbouring steppes to the west of the Euphrates and the western part of the Zagros Mountains are also often included under the wider term Mesopotamia.[3][4][5] A further distinction is usually made between Upper or Northern Mesopotamia and Lower or Southern Mesopotamia.[6] Upper Mesopotamia, also known as the Jezirah, is the area between the Euphrates and the Tigris from their sources down to Baghdad.[3] Lower Mesopotamia is the area from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf.[6] In modern academic usage, the term Mesopotamia often also has a chronological connotation. It is usually used to designate the area until the Muslim conquests, with names like Syria, Jezirah and Iraq being used to describe the region after that date.[2][7] It has been argued that these later euphemisms are Eurocentric terms attributed to the region in the midst of various 19th century Western encroachments.[7][8]
Geography[link]
Main article: Geography of Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia encompasses the land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, both of which have their headwaters in the mountains of Armenia in modern-day Turkey. Both rivers are fed by numerous tributaries, and the entire river system drains a vast mountainous region. Overland routes in Mesopotamia usually follow the Euphrates because the banks of the Tigris are frequently steep and difficult. The climate of the region is semi-arid with a vast desert expanse in the north which gives way to a 15,000 square kilometres (5,800 sq mi) region of marshes, lagoons, mud flats, and reed banks in the south. In the extreme south, the Euphrates and the Tigris unite and empty into the Persian Gulf.
The arid environment which ranges from the northern areas of rain-fed agriculture to the south where irrigation of agriculture is essential if a surplus energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) is to be obtained. This irrigation is aided by a high water table and by melting snows from the high peaks of the Zagros Mountains and from the Armenian cordillera, the source of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, that give the region its name. 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.
Agriculture throughout the region has been supplemented by nomadic pastoralism, where tent-dwelling nomads herded sheep and goats (and later camels) from the river pastures in the dry summer months, out into seasonal grazing lands on the desert fringe in the wet winter season. The area is generally lacking in building stone, precious metals and timber, and so historically has relied upon long distance trade of agricultural products to secure these items from outlying areas. In the marshlands to the south of the area, a complex water-borne fishing culture has existed since prehistoric times, and has added to the cultural mix.
Periodic breakdowns in the cultural system have occurred for a number of reasons. The demands for labor has from time to time led to population increases that push the limits of the ecological carrying capacity, and should a period of climatic instability ensue, collapsing central government and declining populations can occur. Alternatively, military vulnerability to invasion from marginal hill tribes or nomadic pastoralists have led to periods of trade collapse and neglect of irrigation systems. Equally, centripetal tendencies amongst city states has meant that central authority over the whole region, when imposed, has tended to be ephemeral, and localism has fragmented power into tribal or smaller regional units.[9] These trends have continued to the present day in Iraq.
History[link]
Main article: History of Mesopotamia
Further information: History of Iraq, History of the Middle East, and Chronology of the Ancient Near East
The history of ancient Mesopotamia begins with the emergence of urban societies during the Ubaid period (ca. 5300 BC). The history of the Ancient Near East begins in the Lower Paleolithic period, and ends with either the arrival of the Achaemenid Empire in the late 6th century BC, or with the Arab Islamic conquest of Mesopotamia and the establishment of the Caliphate in the late 7th century AD, from which point the region came to be known as Iraq. Mesopotamia housed some of the world's most ancient highly developed and socially complex states. The region was one of the four riverine civilizations where writing was invented (it being the first), along with the Nile valley in Egypt, the Indus Valley in the Indian subcontinent, and Yellow River valley in China (although writing is also known to have arisen independently in Mesoamerica). Mesopotamia housed historically important cities such as Uruk, Nippur, Nineveh, Assur and Babylon, as well as major territorial states such as the city of Ma-asesblu, the Akkadian kingdom, the Third Dynasty of Ur, and the various Assyrian empires. Some of the important historical Mesopotamian leaders were Ur-Nammu (king of Ur), Sargon (who established the Akkadian Empire), Hammurabi (who established the Old Babylonian state), Ashur-uballit II and Tiglath-Pileser I (who established the Assyrian Empires).
Periodization[link]
- Pre- and protohistory
- Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (10,000–8700 BC)
- Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (8700–6800)
- Hassuna (~6000 bc–? BC), Samarra (~5700 BC–4900 BC) and Halaf (~6000 BC–5300 BC) cultures
- Ubaid period (~5900–4400 BC)
- Uruk period (~4400–3100 BC)
- Jemdet Nasr period (~3100–2900 BC)[10]
- Early Bronze Age
- Early Dynastic period (~2900–2350 BC)
- Akkadian Empire (~2350–2100 BC)
- Ur III period (2112–2004 BC)
- Early Assyrian kingdom (24th to 18th c. BC)
- Middle Bronze Age
- Early Babylonia (19th to 18th c. BC)
- First Babylonian Dynasty (18th to 17th c. BC)
- collapse: Minoan Eruption (c. 1620 BC)
- Late Bronze Age
- Middle Assyrian period (16th to 11th c. BC)
- Assyrian Empire (ca. 1365 BC–1076 BC)
- Kassite dynasty in Babylon, (ca. 1595 BC–1155 BC)
- collapse: Bronze Age collapse (12th to 11th c. BC)
- Iron Age
- Neo-Hittite or Syro-Hittite regional states (11th to 7th c. BC)
- Neo-Assyrian Empire (10th to 7th c. BC)
- Neo-Babylonian Empire (7th to 6th c. BC)
- Classical Antiquity
- Persian Babylonia, Achaemenid Assyria (6th to 4th c. BC)
- Seleucid Mesopotamia (4th to 3rd c. BC)
- Parthian Babylonia (3rd c. BC to 3rd c. AD)
- Osroene (2nd c. BC to 3rd c. AD)
- Adiabene (1st to 2nd c. AD)
- Hatra (1st to 2nd c. AD)
- Roman Mesopotamia, Roman Assyria (2nd c. AD)
- Late Antiquity
- Persian Mesopotamia, Persian Asuristan (Assyria) (3rd to 7th c. AD)
- Arab Muslim conquest of Mesopotamia (mid 7th c. AD)
Language and writing[link]
The earliest language written in Mesopotamia was Sumerian, an agglutinative language isolate. Along with Sumerian, Semitic dialects were also spoken in early Mesopotamia. Akkadian, came to be the dominant language during the Akkadian Empire and the Assyrian empires, but Sumerian was retained for administration, religious, literary, and scientific purposes. Different varieties of Akkadian were used until the end of the Neo-Babylonian period. Aramaic, which had already become common in Mesopotamia, then became the official provincial administration language of first the Neo Assyrian Empire, and then the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Akkadian fell into disuse, but both it and Sumerian were still used in temples for some centuries. The last Akkadian texts date from the late 1st century CE.
Early in Mesopotamia's history (around the mid-4th millennium BC) cuneiform script was invented. Cuneiform literally means "wedge-shaped", due to the triangular tip of the stylus used for impressing signs on wet clay. The standardized form of each cuneiform sign appears to have been developed from pictograms. The earliest texts (7 archaic tablets) come from the E Temple dedicated to the goddess Inanna at Uruk, from a building labeled as Temple C by its excavators.
The early logographic system of cuneiform script took many years to master. Thus, only a limited number of individuals were hired as scribes to be trained in its use. It was not until the widespread use of a syllabic script was adopted under Sargon's rule[citation needed] that significant portions of Mesopotamian population became literate. Massive archives of texts were recovered from the archaeological contexts of Old Babylonian scribal schools, through which literacy was disseminated.
During the third millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism.[11] The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian (and vice versa) is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a massive scale, to syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence.[11] This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the third millennium as a sprachbund.[11] Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as the spoken language of Mesopotamia somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BC (the exact dating being a matter of debate),[12] but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary, and scientific language in Mesopotamia until the 1st century CE.
Literature[link]
Main article: Akkadian literature
Libraries were extant in towns and temples during the Babylonian Empire. An old Sumerian proverb averred that "he who would excel in the school of the scribes must rise with the dawn." Women as well as men learned to read and write,[13] and for the Semitic Babylonians, this involved knowledge of the extinct Sumerian language, and a complicated and extensive syllabary.
A considerable amount of Babylonian literature was translated from Sumerian originals, and the language of religion and law long continued to be the old agglutinative language of Sumer. 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. The characters of the syllabary were all arranged and named, and elaborate lists were drawn up.
Many Babylonian literary works are still studied today. One of the most famous of these was the Epic of Gilgamesh, in twelve books, translated from the original Sumerian by a certain Sin-liqe-unninni, and arranged upon an astronomical principle. Each division contains the story of a single adventure in the career of Gilgamesh. The whole story is a composite product, although it is probable that some of the stories are artificially attached to the central figure.
Science and technology[link]
Mathematics[link]
Main articles: Babylonian mathematics and Babylonian calendar
Mesopotamian mathematics and science was based on a sexagesimal (base 60) numeral system. This is the source of the 60-minute hour, the 24-hour day, and the 360-degree circle. The Sumerian calendar was based on the seven-day week. This form of mathematics was instrumental in early map-making. The Babylonians also had theorems on how to measure the area of several shapes and solids. They measured the circumference of a circle as three times the diameter and the area as one-twelfth the square of the circumference, which would be correct if pi were fixed at 3. The volume of a cylinder was taken as the product of the area of the base and the height; however, the volume of the frustum of a cone or a square pyramid was incorrectly taken as the product of the height and half the sum of the bases. Also, there was a recent discovery in which a tablet used pi as 25/8 (3.125 instead of 3.14159~). The Babylonians are also known for the Babylonian mile, which was a measure of distance equal to about seven modern miles (11 km). This measurement for distances eventually was converted to a time-mile used for measuring the travel of the Sun, therefore, representing time.[14]
Astronomy[link]
Main article: Babylonian astronomy
The Babylonian astronomers were very adept at mathematics and could predict eclipses and solstices. Scholars thought that everything had some purpose in astronomy. Most of these related to religion and omens. Mesopotamian astronomers worked out a 12-month calendar based on the cycles of the moon. They divided the year into two seasons: summer and winter. The origins of astronomy as well as astrology date from this time.
During the 8th and 7th centuries BC, Babylonian astronomers developed a new approach to astronomy. They began studying philosophy dealing with the ideal nature of the early universe and began employing an internal logic within their predictive planetary systems. This was an important contribution to astronomy and the philosophy of science and some scholars have thus referred to this new approach as the first scientific revolution.[15] This new approach to astronomy was adopted and further developed in Greek and Hellenistic astronomy.
In Seleucid and Parthian times, the astronomical reports were thoroughly scientific; how much earlier their advanced knowledge and methods were developed is uncertain. The Babylonian development of methods for predicting the motions of the planets is considered to be a major episode in the history of astronomy.
The only Greek Babylonian astronomer known to have supported a heliocentric model of planetary motion was Seleucus of Seleucia (b. 190 BC).[16][17][18] Seleucus is known from the writings of Plutarch. He supported Aristarchus of Samos' heliocentric theory where the Earth rotated around its own axis which in turn revolved around the Sun. 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 Moon's attraction).
Babylonian astronomy served as the basis for much of Greek, classical Indian, Sassanian, Byzantine, Syrian, medieval Islamic, Central Asian, and Western European astronomy.[19]
Medicine[link]
The oldest Babylonian texts on medicine date back to the Old Babylonian period in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC. The most extensive Babylonian medical text, however, is the Diagnostic Handbook written by the ummânū, or chief scholar, Esagil-kin-apli of Borsippa,[20] during the reign of the Babylonian king Adad-apla-iddina (1069-1046 BC).[21]
Along with contemporary Egyptian medicine, the Babylonians introduced the concepts of diagnosis, prognosis, physical examination, and prescriptions. In addition, the Diagnostic Handbook introduced the methods of therapy and aetiology and the use of empiricism, logic, and rationality in diagnosis, prognosis and therapy. The text contains a list of medical symptoms and often detailed empirical observations along with logical rules used in combining observed symptoms on the body of a patient with its diagnosis and prognosis.[22]
The symptoms and diseases of a patient were treated through therapeutic means such as bandages, creams and pills. If a patient could not be cured physically, the Babylonian physicians often relied on exorcism to cleanse the patient from any curses. Esagil-kin-apli's Diagnostic Handbook was based on a logical set of axioms and assumptions, including the modern view that through the examination and inspection of the symptoms of a patient, it is possible to determine the patient's disease, its aetiology, its future development, and the chances of the patient's recovery.[20]
Esagil-kin-apli discovered a variety of illnesses and diseases and described their symptoms in his Diagnostic Handbook. These include the symptoms for many varieties of epilepsy and related ailments along with their diagnosis and prognosis.[23]
Technology[link]
Mesopotamian people invented many technologies including metal and copper-working, glass and lamp making, textile weaving, flood control, water storage, and irrigation. They were also one of the first Bronze age people in the world. They developed from copper, bronze, and gold on to iron. Palaces were decorated with hundreds of kilograms of these very expensive metals. Also, copper, bronze, and iron were used for armor as well as for different weapons such as swords, daggers, spears, and maces.
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.[24] Later during the Parthian or Sassanid periods, the Baghdad Battery, which may have been the world's first battery, was created in Mesopotamia.[25]
Religion and philosophy[link]
Main article: Mesopotamian religion
Mesopotamian religion was the first to be recorded. Mesopotamians believed that the world was a flat disc[citation needed], surrounded by a huge, holed space, and above that, heaven. They also believed that water was everywhere, the top, bottom and sides, and that the universe was born from this enormous sea. In addition, Mesopotamian religion was polytheistic.
Although the beliefs described above were held in common among Mesopotamians, there were also regional variations. The Sumerian word for universe is an-ki, which refers to the god An and the goddess Ki. Their son was Enlil, the air god. They believed that Enlil was the most powerful god. He was the chief god of the Pantheon, equivalent to the Greek god Zeus and the Roman god Jupiter. The Sumerians also posed philosophical questions, such as: Who are we?, Where are we?, How did we get here?.[citation needed] They attributed answers to these questions to explanations provided by their gods.
Philosophy[link]
The origins of philosophy can be traced back to early Mesopotamian wisdom, which embodied certain philosophies of life, particularly ethics, in the forms of dialectic, dialogs, epic poetry, folklore, hymns, lyrics, prose works, and proverbs. Babylonian reasoning and rationality developed beyond empirical observation.[26]
The earliest form of logic was developed by the Babylonians, notably in the rigorous nonergodic nature of their social systems. Babylonian thought was axiomatic and is comparable to the "ordinary logic" described by John Maynard Keynes. Babylonian thought was also based on an open-systems ontology which is compatible with ergodic axioms.[27] Logic was employed to some extent in Babylonian astronomy and medicine.
Babylonian thought had a considerable influence on early Greek and Hellenistic philosophy. In particular, the Babylonian text Dialogue of Pessimism contains similarities to the agonistic thought of the sophists, the Heraclitean doctrine of contrasts, and the dialectic and dialogs of Plato, as well as a precursor to the maieutic method of Socrates.[28] The Ionian philosopher Thales was influenced by Babylonian cosmological ideas.
Culture[link]
Festivals[link]
Ancient Mesopotamians had ceremonies each month. The theme of the rituals and festivals for each month is determined by six important factors:
- The phase of the Moon (a waxing moon meant abundance and growth, while a waning moon was associated with decline, conservation, and festivals of the Underworld)
- The phase of the annual agricultural cycle
- Equinoxes and solstices
- The local mythos and its divine Patrons
- The success of the reigning Monarch
- Commemoration of specific historical events (founding, military victories, temple holidays, etc.)
Music[link]
Main article: Music of Mesopotamia
Some songs were written for the gods but many were written to describe important events. Although music and songs amused kings, they were also enjoyed by ordinary people who liked to sing and dance in their homes or in the marketplaces. Songs were sung to children who passed them on to their children. Thus songs were passed on through many generations as an oral tradition until writing was more universal. These songs provided a means of passing on through the centuries highly important information about historical events.
The Oud (Arabic:العود) is a small, stringed musical instrument used by the Mesopotamians. The oldest pictorial record of the Oud dates back to the Uruk period in Southern Mesopotamia over 5000 years ago. It is on a cylinder seal currently housed at the British Museum and acquired by Dr. Dominique Collon. The image depicts a female crouching with her instruments upon a boat, playing right-handed. This instrument appears hundreds of times throughout Mesopotamian history and again in ancient Egypt from the 18th dynasty onwards in long- and short-neck varieties. The oud is regarded as a precursor to the European lute. Its name is derived from the Arabic word العود al-‘ūd 'the wood', which is probably the name of the tree from which the oud was made. (The Arabic name, with the definite article, is the source of the word 'lute'.)
Games[link]
Hunting was popular among Assyrian kings. Boxing and wrestling feature frequently in art, and some form of polo was probably popular, with men sitting on the shoulders of other men rather than on horses.[29] They also played majore, a game similar to the sport rugby, but played with a ball made of wood. They also played a board game similar to senet and backgammon, now known as the "Royal Game of Ma-asesblu."
Family life[link]
Mesopotamia across its history became more and more a patriarchal society, one in which the men were far more powerful than the women. Thorkild Jacobsen, as well as many others, has suggested that early Mesopotamian society was ruled by a "council of elders" in which men and women were equally represented, but that over time, as the status of women fell, that of men increased. As for schooling, only royal offspring and sons of the rich and professionals, such as scribes, physicians, temple administrators, went to school. Most boys were taught their father's trade or were apprenticed out to learn a trade.[30] Girls had to stay home with their mothers to learn housekeeping and cooking, and to look after the younger children. Some children would help with crushing grain or cleaning birds. Unusual for that time in history, women in Mesopotamia had rights. They could own property and, if they had good reason, get a divorce.
Burials[link]
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Hundreds of graves have been excavated in parts of Mesopotamia, revealing information about Mesopotamian burial habits. In the city of Ur, most people were buried in family graves under their houses, along with some possessions. A few have been found wrapped in mats and carpets. Deceased children were put in big "jars" which were placed in the family chapel. Other remains have been found buried in common city graveyards. 17 graves have been found with very precious objects in them. It is assumed that these were royal graves.
Economy and agriculture[link]
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This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability. |
Agriculture arrived in the civilization about 5000 B.C.E. [31] Sumer developed the first large-scale economy, but the Babylonians developed the earliest system of economics. It was comparable to modern post-Keynesian economics, but with a more "anything goes" approach.[27]
The word Ensi wa used to describe the official who organized the work of all facets of commune argiculture. Villeins are known to have worked most frequently within agriculture, especially in the grounds of temples or palaces. [32]
The geography of Mesopotamia is such that agriculture is possible only with irrigation and good drainage, a fact which has had a profound effect on the evolution of Mesopotamian civilization. The need for irrigation led the Sumerians, and later the Akkadians, to build their cities along the Tigris and Euphrates and the branches of these rivers. Major cities, such as Ur and Uruk, took root on tributaries of the Euphrates, while others, notably Lagash, were built on branches of the Tigris. The rivers provided the further benefits of fish (used both for food and fertilizer), reeds, and clay (for building materials). With irrigation, the food supply in Mesopotamia was quite rich. The Tigris and Euphrates River valleys form the northeastern portion of the Fertile Crescent, which also included the Jordan River valley and that of the Nile. Although land nearer to the rivers was fertile and good for crops, portions of land farther from the water were dry and largely uninhabitable. This is why the development of irrigation was very important for settlers of Mesopotamia. Other Mesopotamian innovations include the control of water by dams and the use of aqueducts. 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. Mesopotamian settlers were some of the first people to make beer and wine. As a result of the skill involved in farming in the Mesopotamian, farmers did not depend on slaves to complete farm work for them, but there were some exceptions. There were too many risks involved to make slavery practical (i.e. the escape/mutiny of the slave). Although the rivers sustained life, they also destroyed it by frequent floods that ravaged entire cities. The unpredictable Mesopotamian weather was often hard on farmers; crops were often ruined so backup sources of food such as cows and lambs were also kept.
Government[link]
The geography of Mesopotamia had a profound impact on the political development of the region. 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. Communication among the isolated cities was difficult and, at times, dangerous. Thus, each Sumerian city became a city-state, independent of the others and protective of its independence. At times one city would try to conquer and unify the region, but such efforts were resisted and failed for centuries. As a result, the political history of Sumer is one of almost constant warfare. Eventually Sumer was unified by Eannatum, but the unification was tenuous and failed to last as the Akkadians conquered Sumeria in 2331 BC only a generation later. The Akkadian Empire was the first successful empire to last beyond a generation and see the peaceful succession of kings. The empire was relatively short-lived, as the Babylonians conquered them within only a few generations.
Kings[link]
The Mesopotamians believed their kings and queens were descended from the City of Gods, but, unlike the ancient Egyptians, they never believed their kings were real gods.[33] Most kings named themselves “king of the universe” or “great king”. Another common name was “shepherd”, as kings had to look after their people.
Power[link]
When Assyria grew into an empire, it was divided into smaller parts, called provinces. Each of these were named after their main cities, like Nineveh, Samaria, Damascus, and Arpad. They all had their own governor who had to make sure everyone paid their taxes. Governors also had to call up soldiers to war and supply workers when a temple was built. He was also responsible for enforcing the laws. In this way, it was easier to keep control of a large empire. Although Babylon was quite a small state in the Sumerian, it grew tremendously throughout the time of Hammurabi's rule. He was known as “the law maker”, and soon Babylon became one of the main cities in Mesopotamia. It was later called Babylonia, which meant "the gateway of the gods." It also became one of history's greatest centers of learning.
Warfare[link]
As city-states began to grow, their spheres of influence overlapped, creating arguments between other city-states, especially over land and canals. These arguments were recorded in tablets several hundreds of years before any major war—the first recording of a war occurred around 3200 BC but was not common until about 2500 BC. At this point, warfare was incorporated into the Mesopotamian political system, where a neutral city may act as an arbitrator for the two rival cities. This helped to form unions between cities, leading to regional states.[33] When empires were created, they went to war more with foreign countries. King Sargon, for example, conquered all the cities of Sumer, some cities in Mari, and then went to war with northern Syria. Many Assyrian and Babylonian palace walls were decorated with the pictures of the successful fights and the enemy either desperately escaping or hiding amongst reeds. A king in Sumer, Gilgamesh, was thought to be two-thirds god and only one-third human. His exploits were recorded in many poems and songs of the time.
Laws[link]
King Hammurabi, as mentioned above, was famous for his set of laws, the Code of Hammurabi (created ca. 1780 BC), which is one of the earliest sets of laws found and one of the best preserved examples of this type of document from ancient Mesopotamia. He codified over 200 laws for Mesopotamia.
Architecture[link]
Main article: Architecture of Mesopotamia
The study of ancient Mesopotamian architecture is based on available archaeological evidence, pictorial representation of buildings, and texts on building practices. 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.[34] Archaeological surface surveys also allowed for the study of urban form in early Mesopotamian cities.
The most notable architectural remains from early Mesopotamia are the temple complexes at Uruk from the 4th millennium BC, temples and palaces from the Early Dynastic period sites in the Diyala River valley such as Khafajah and Tell Asmar, the Third Dynasty of Ur remains at Nippur (Sanctuary of Enlil) and Ur (Sanctuary of Nanna), Middle Bronze Age remains at Syrian-Turkish sites of Ebla, Mari, Alalakh, Aleppo and Kultepe, Late Bronze Age palaces at Bogazkoy (Hattusha), Ugarit, Ashur and Nuzi, Iron Age palaces and temples at Assyrian (Kalhu/Nimrud, Khorsabad, Nineveh), Babylonian (Babylon), Urartian (Tushpa/Van Kalesi, Cavustepe, Ayanis, Armavir, Erebuni, Bastam) and Neo-Hittite sites (Karkamis, Tell Halaf, Karatepe). Houses are mostly known from Old Babylonian remains at Nippur and Ur. Among the textual sources on building construction and associated rituals are Gudea's cylinders from the late 3rd millennium are notable, as well as the Assyrian and Babylonian royal inscriptions from the Iron Age.
See also[link]
References[link]
- ^ Finkelstein, J.J. (1962), "Mesopotamia", Journal of Near Eastern Studies 21 (2): 73–92, DOI:10.1086/371676, JSTOR 543884
- ^ a b Foster, Benjamin R.; Polinger Foster, Karen (2009), Civilizations of ancient Iraq, Princeton: Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0-691-13722-3
- ^ a b Canard, M. (2011), "al-ḎJazīra, Ḏjazīrat Aḳūr or Iḳlīm Aḳūr", in Bearman, P.; Bianquis, Th.; Bosworth, C.E. et al., Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Leiden: Brill Online, OCLC 624382576
- ^ Wilkinson, Tony J. (2000), "Regional approaches to Mesopotamian archaeology: the contribution of archaeological surveys", Journal of Archaeological Research 8 (3): 219–267, DOI:10.1023/A:1009487620969, ISSN 1573-7756
- ^ Matthews, Roger (2003), The archaeology of Mesopotamia. Theories and approaches, Approaching the past, Milton Square: Routledge, ISBN 0-415-25317-9
- ^ a b Miquel, A.; Brice, W.C.; Sourdel, D.; Aubin, J.; Holt, P.M.; Kelidar, A.; Blanc, H.; MacKenzie, D.N. et al. (2011), "ʿIrāḳ", in Bearman, P.; Bianquis, Th.; Bosworth, C.E. et al., Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, Leiden: Brill Online, OCLC 624382576
- ^ a b Bahrani, Z. (1998), "Conjuring Mesopotamia: imaginative geography a world past", in Meskell, L., Archaeology under fire: Nationalism, politics and heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, London: Routledge, pp. 159–174, ISBN 978-0-415-19655-0
- ^ Scheffler, Thomas; 2003. “ 'Fertile crescent', 'Orient', 'Middle East': the changing mental maps of Southeast Asia,” European Review of History 10/2: 253–272.
- ^ Thompson, William R. (2004) "Complexity, Diminishing Marginal Returns, and Serial Mesopotamian Fragmentation" (Vol 3, Journal of World Systems Research)
- ^ Pollock, Susan (1999), Ancient Mesopotamia. The Eden that never was, Case Studies in Early Societies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 2, ISBN 978-0-521-57568-3
- ^ a b c Deutscher, Guy (2007), Syntactic Change in Akkadian: The Evolution of Sentential Complementation, Oxford University Press US, pp. 20–21, ISBN 978-0-19-953222-3, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=XFwUxmCdG94C
- ^ Woods C. 2006 “Bilingualism, Scribal Learning, and the Death of Sumerian”. In S.L. Sanders (ed) Margins of Writing, Origins of Culture: 91-120 Chicago [1]
- ^ Tatlow, Elisabeth Meier Women, Crime, and Punishment in Ancient Law and Society: The ancient Near East Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd. (31 March 2005) ISBN 978-0-8264-1628-5 p. 75
- ^ Eves, Howard An Introduction to the History of Mathematics Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969 p. 31
- ^ D. Brown (2000), Mesopotamian Planetary Astronomy-Astrology , Styx Publications, ISBN 90-5693-036-2.
- ^ Otto E. Neugebauer (1945). "The History of Ancient Astronomy Problems and Methods", Journal of Near Eastern Studies 4 (1), p. 1-38.
- ^ George Sarton (1955). "Chaldaean Astronomy of the Last Three Centuries B. C.", Journal of the American Oriental Society 75 (3), p. 166-173 [169].
- ^ William P. D. Wightman (1951, 1953), The Growth of Scientific Ideas, Yale University Press p.38.
- ^ Pingree (1998)
- ^ a b H. F. J. Horstmanshoff, Marten Stol, Cornelis Tilburg (2004), Magic and Rationality in Ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman Medicine, p. 99, Brill Publishers, ISBN 90-04-13666-5.
- ^ Marten Stol (1993), Epilepsy in Babylonia, p. 55, Brill Publishers, ISBN 90-72371-63-1.
- ^ H. F. J. Horstmanshoff, Marten Stol, Cornelis Tilburg (2004), Magic and Rationality in Ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman Medicine, p. 97-98, Brill Publishers, ISBN 90-04-13666-5.
- ^ Marten Stol (1993), Epilepsy in Babylonia, p. 5, Brill Publishers, ISBN 90-72371-63-1.
- ^ Stephanie Dalley and John Peter Oleson (January 2003). "Sennacherib, Archimedes, and the Water Screw: The Context of Invention in the Ancient World", Technology and Culture 44 (1).
- ^ Twist, Jo (20 November 2005). "Open media to connect communities". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4450052.stm. Retrieved 2007-08-06.
- ^ Giorgio Buccellati (1981), "Wisdom and Not: The Case of Mesopotamia", Journal of the American Oriental Society 101 (1), p. 35-47.
- ^ a b Sheila C. Dow (2005), "Axioms and Babylonian thought: a reply", Journal of Post Keynesian Economics 27 (3), p. 385-391.
- ^ Giorgio Buccellati (1981), "Wisdom and Not: The Case of Mesopotamia", Journal of the American Oriental Society 101 (1), p. 35-47 43.
- ^ Karen Rhea Nemet-Nejat (1998), Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia
- ^ Rivkah Harris (2000), Gender and Aging in Mesopotamia
- ^ Richard Bulliet, Pamela Kyle Crossley, Daniel Headrick, Steven Hirsch, Lyman Johnson, David Northup. [[http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jvsVSqhw-FAC&pg=PA29&dq=mesopotamian+agriculture&hl=en&sa=X&ei=NeDFT-3PDcPW8gPMg_iRBg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=mesopotamian%20agriculture&f=false The Earth and Its Peoples: A Global History]. Cengage Learning, 1 Jan 2010. [http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jvsVSqhw-FAC&pg=PA29&dq=mesopotamian+agriculture&hl=en&sa=X&ei=NeDFT-3PDcPW8gPMg_iRBg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=mesopotamian%20agriculture&f=false. Retrieved 2012-05-30.
- ^ H. W. F. Saggs - Professor Emeritus of Semitic Languages at University College, Cardiff. Babylonians. University of California Press, 1 Jun 2000. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BPdLxEyHci0C&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=agricultural+practice+in+Babylonia&source=bl&ots=sTSSaHbcs5&sig=t6CxtOHRU2qHWgyaVma06YoN46o&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oCnFT_TxEImA8wPFgcnnCg&sqi=2&ved=0CHkQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=agricultural%20practice%20in%20Babylonia&f=false. Retrieved 2012-05-29. ISBN 0520202228
- ^ a b Robert Dalling (2004), The Story of Us Humans, from Atoms to Today's Civilization
- ^ Dunham, Sally (2005), "Ancient Near Eastern architecture", in Daniel Snell, A Companion to the Ancient Near East, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 266–280, ISBN 0-631-23293-1
Further reading[link]
- Atlas de la Mésopotamie et du Proche-Orient ancien, Brepols, 1996 ISBN|2503500463.
- Benoit, Agnès; 2003. Art et archéologie : les civilisations du Proche-Orient ancien, Manuels de l'Ecole du Louvre.
- Jean Bottéro; 1987.Mésopotamie. L'écriture, la raison et les dieux, Gallimard, coll. « Folio Histoire », ISBN|2070403084.
- Jean Bottéro; 1992. Mesopotamia: writing, reasoning and the gods. Trans. by Zainab Bahrani and Marc Van de Mieroop, University of Chicago Press: Chicago.
- Edzard, Dietz Otto; 2004. Geschichte Mesopotamiens. Von den Sumerern bis zu Alexander dem Großen, München, ISBN 3-406-51664-5
- Hrouda, Barthel and Rene Pfeilschifter; 2005. Mesopotamien. Die antiken Kulturen zwischen Euphrat und Tigris. München 2005 (4. Aufl.), ISBN 3-406-46530-7
- Joannès, Francis; 2001. Dictionnaire de la civilisation mésopotamienne, Robert Laffont.
- Korn, Wolfgang; 2004. Mesopotamien – Wiege der Zivilisation. 6000 Jahre Hochkulturen an Euphrat und Tigris, Stuttgart, ISBN 3-8062-1851-X
- Kuhrt, Amélie; 1995. The Ancient Near East: c. 3000-330 B.C. 2 Vols. Routledge: London and New York.
- Liverani, Mario; 1991. Antico Oriente: storia, società, economia. Editori Laterza: Roma.
- Matthews, Roger; 2005. The early prehistory of Mesopotamia – 500,000 to 4,500 BC, Turnhout 2005, ISBN 2-503-50729-8
- Oppenheim, A. Leo; 1964. Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a dead civilization. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London. Revised edition completed by Erica Reiner, 1977.
- Pollock, Susan; 1999. Ancient Mesopotamia: the Eden that never was. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
- Postgate, J. Nicholas; 1992. Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the dawn of history. Routledge: London and New York.
- Roux, Georges; 1964. Ancient Iraq, Penguin Books.
- Silver, Morris; 2007. Redistribution and Markets in the Economy of Ancient Mesopotamia: Updating Polanyi, Antiguo Oriente 5: 89-112.
- Snell, Daniel (ed.); 2005. A Companion to the Ancient Near East. Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub, 2005.
- Van de Mieroop, Marc; 2004. A history of the ancient Near East. ca 3000-323 BC. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
External links[link]
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Mesopotamia |
- Ancient Mesopotamia — timeline, definition, and articles at Ancient History Encyclopedia
- Mesopotamia — introduction to Mesopotamia from the British Museum
- By Nile and Tigris, a narrative of journeys in Egypt and Mesopotamia on behalf of the British museum between the years 1886 and 1913, by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, 1920 (a searchable facsimile at the University of Georgia Libraries; DjVu & layered PDF format)
- A Dweller in Mesopotamia, being the adventures of an official artist in the Garden of Eden, by Donald Maxwell, 1921 (a searchable facsimile at the University of Georgia Libraries; DjVu & layered PDFPDF (7.53 MB) format)
- Mesopotamian Archaeology, by Percy S. P. Pillow, 1912 (a searchable facsimile at the University of Georgia Libraries; DjVu & layered PDFPDF (12.8 MB) format)
- [2] Sumerian Philosophy
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Mesopotamia (from the Ancient Greek: Μεσοποταμία: "[land] between rivers"; Arabic: بلاد الرافدين (bilād al-rāfidayn); Syriac: ܒܝܬ ܢܗܪܝܢ (beth nahrain): "land of rivers") is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.
Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian empires. In the Iron Age, it was controlled by the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires. The indigenous Sumerians and Akkadians (including Assyrians and Babylonians) dominated Mesopotamia from the beginning of written history (c. 3100 BC) to the fall of Babylon in 539 BC, when it was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire. It fell to Alexander the Great in 332 BC and, after his death, it became part of the Greek Seleucid Empire.
Around 150 BC, Mesopotamia was under the control of the Parthians. Mesopotamia became a battleground between the Romans and Parthians, with parts of Mesopotamia coming under ephemeral Roman control. In AD 226, it fell to the Sassanid Persians, and remained under Persian rule until the 7th century Arab Islamic conquest of the Sassanid Empire. A number of primarily neo Assyrian and Christian native Mesopotamian states existed between the 1st century BC and 3rd century AD, including Adiabene, Osroene and Hatra.
