Why civilization started in mesopotamia

Selected Works. Explore The Exhibition Discover more about ancient Mesopotamia's first writing, cities, and kings. Boisgelin gift, de Clercq collection. Photo: Franck Raux. All events. Exhibition Resources Discover more about the works featured in the exhibition.

Mobile App. By the time the last Sumerian texts were copied in cuneiform in the Hellenistic age of the second century BC, the language had long been superseded by Akkadian as the language of literature in Mesopotamia.

And the Sumerians themselves had long disappeared into the multiracial mix that was ancient Iraq. In the s, when the first major excavations were conducted in Iraq, it was still commonly held that the cultural progenitors of western civilisation were the classical world of Greece and Rome and Judaeo-Christian religion. Though the Book of Genesis mentioned Uruk, Akkad and Babylon, it was never suspected that these much older civilisations had had a profound influence on the civilisations of the Near East and the Mediterranean world.

At that time it was also not known that Mesopotamia had led the way in the invention of writing and literature; in mathematics, science, astronomy and geometry; in the invention of the wheel; and in the earliest law codes.

Even today, when we count time and space in multiples of 12 and 60, we do so because of the Mesopotamians. But if Mesopotamia was a place of cultural and technological innovation, it was also the site of constant conflict. With no natural boundaries, and no protection from neighbours, it was always open to attack from nomads and outside invaders, and internally prey to continual disputes over resources — especially water.

Not surprisingly, then, this is where organised law appears for the first time in history — as well as organised warfare. The history of Mesopotamia was then both uniquely creative and uniquely violent and destructive; marked by invasions and devastating wars in which the great achievements of its civilisation were smashed many times, from the ruin of the Ur III dynasty through Mongols, Tartars and Seljuks, to the savagery of recent wars.

Nevertheless, a single civilisation survived through all these conflicts — one that is recognisably Iraqi: a land of "singular destiny" as the French historian Fernand Braudel put it.

The character that emerges is very different from the optimism of Egyptian culture. Early Iraq was pessimistic in its view of human destiny — its poets knew the achievements of humanity were fragile and always fated to be wiped away. This insight informs the world's earliest literature and comes right down to the rich vein of modern Iraqi poetry.

It perhaps also explains why lamentation became a ritual tradition in ancient Iraq and still is in Iraqi Shiism; a cultural personality that is still part of the way Iraqis are seen by other Arabs. How and when did ancient Iraq end? One should note that in Iraqi culture there is no clear dividing line between the ancient world and the medieval. Alexander's conquest in BC might look like an ending on paper, but in fact it inaugurated Uruk's greatest age during a thousand years of multilingual Hellenic culture in a vast region stretching as far as India.

The Arab conquest of Mesopotamia in the seventh century AD looks like another cultural turning point, but even then, change was slow, with a more immediate impact on mentalities rather than material culture and custom.

Just as Christianity inherited the Roman empire in the West, Islam inherited West Asia and the Near East; and in this sense Islam could be seen simply as a continuation of the much older culture that underlay it. Baghdad, the great capital of the caliphate founded in AD, was still a vast Mesopotamian city, made of burnt brick in the ancient way. And if change was slow in Baghdad, it was even slower in the old cities. The sacred city of Nippur, for example, continued to be a provincial centre for scholars — Christian, Jewish and Muslim.

They also milked sheep, goats and cows to make butter, and slaughtered them for meat. Eventually, the agricultural revolution in Mesopotamia led to what Diamond describes as the next big step in progress, the Urban Revolution. Roughly 5, to 6, years ago in Sumer, villages evolved into cities. One of the earliest and most prominent was Uruk , a walled community with 40, to 50, inhabitants. The Sumerians developed may have been the earliest system of writing as well as sophisticated art, architecture, and complex government bureaucracies to supervise agriculture, commerce and religious activity.

Sumer also became a hotbed of innovation , as the Sumerians took inventions that other ancient peoples developed, from pottery to textile weaving, and figured out how to do them on an industrial scale. Meanwhile, Upper Mesopotamia developed its own urban areas such as Tepe Gawra , where researchers have discovered brick temples with intricate recesses and pilasters, and found other evidence of a sophisticated culture.

According to Reculeau, climate shifts may have played a role in the development of Mesopotamian civilization. When his friend is slain, Gilgamesh goes on a quest to discover the secret of eternal life, finding: "Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands. The Akkadian Empire existed from B.

He was at one point an officer who worked for the king of Kish, and Akkadia was a city that Sargon himself established. When the city of Uruk invaded Kish, Sargon took Kish from Uruk and was encouraged to continue with conquest.

Sargon expanded his empire through military means, conquering all of Sumer and moving into what is now Syria. Under Sargon, trade beyond Mesopotamian borders grew, and architecture became more sophisticated, notably the appearance of ziggurats, flat-topped buildings with a pyramid shape and steps. The final king of the Akkadian Empire, Shar-kali-sharri, died in B. Among these groups were the Gutian people, barbarians from the Zagros Mountains.

In B. The ruler of Ur-Namma, the king of the city of Ur, brought Sumerians back into control after Utu-hengal, the leader of the city of Uruk, defeated the Gutians. Ur-Namma was attacked by both the Elamites and the Amorites and defeated in B. Choosing Babylon as the capital, the Amorites took control and established Babylonia. Kings were considered deities and the most famous of these was Hammurabi , who ruled — B. Hammurabi worked to expand the empire, and the Babylonians were almost continually at war.

The list of laws also featured recommended punishments to ensure that every citizen had the right to the same justice. Together with the control of the Amorites, this conquest marked the end of Sumerian culture. Smelting was a significant contribution of the Hittites, allowing for more sophisticated weaponry that lead them to expand the empire even further.

Their attempts to keep the technology to themselves eventually failed, and other empires became a match for them. The Hittites pulled out shortly after sacking Babylon, and the Kassites took control of the city. Hailing from the mountains east of Mesopotamia, their period of rule saw immigrants from India and Europe arriving, and travel sped up thanks to the use of horses with chariots and carts.

The Kassites abandoned their own culture after a couple of generations of dominance, allowing themselves to be absorbed into Babylonian civilization. Reception of a victorious general of the Assyrian Empire in Mesopotamia.

Around B. The Assyrian Empire continued to expand over the next two centuries, moving into modern-day Palestine and Syria. Under the rule of Ashurnasirpal II in B. His son Shalmaneser spent the majority of his reign fighting off an alliance between Syria, Babylon and Egypt, and conquering Israel. One of his sons rebelled against him, and Shalmaneser sent another son, Shamshi-Adad, to fight for him.

Three years later, Shamshi-Adad ruled. A new dynasty began in B. Modeling himself on Sargon the Great, he divided the empire into provinces and kept the peace. His undoing came when the Chaldeans attempted to invade and Sargon II sought an alliance with them.