In the Beginning
This term describes a complex culture with five defining characteristics, including advanced cities and specialized workers
Civilization
a series of rulers who all come from a single ruling family.
dynasty
A Babylonian king remembered for creating one of the first written law codes in history.
Hammurabi
the longest river in the world, was central to the rise of Egyptian civilization.
Nile
river valley, home to an early civilization, is located on the Indian subcontinent.
Indus
activity between early civilizations helped spread ideas, goods, and technology across long distances.
trade
Particularly arc of farmland, curving between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf, gave Mesopotamian civilization its start.
Fertile Crescent
Code of Hammurabi is famous for applying this principle, sometimes summarized as "an eye for an eye."
retaliation (punishment matching the crime)
Egyptian kings were called this, and were believed to stand at the center of religion, government, and the army.
Pharaoh
seasonal winds dominate India's climate, blowing dry air for part of the year and carrying ocean moisture the rest.
monsoons
Historians consider the invention of this to be what allowed events and laws to be recorded and passed down across generations.
writing
a city and the land it controlled functioned much like an independent country in early Sumer.
city-state
Compared to many legal systems today, the punishments in Hammurabi's Code were generally this level of severity.
Harsh (or other word)
This immense structure served as the resting place for Egyptian kings of the Old Kingdom after death.
pyramid
early civilization, known for its carefully planned grid-pattern cities, developed in the Indus River valley.
Harappan Civilization
Farming and living close to domesticated animals helped spread this unwanted side effect throughout early populations.
disease
Sumerian scribes invented this system of wedge-shaped writing, pressed into clay tablets.
cuneiform
Hammurabi had his code of laws carved into stone and displayed throughout his empire for this reason.
Same laws throughout the Empire
Egyptian practice of embalming and drying a corpse was meant to preserve the body for the afterlife.
mummification
Despite thousands of examples on seals and pottery, historians have never been able to understand this aspect of Harappan civilization.
Written language / script
This defining characteristic of civilization refers to long-lasting organizations, like religion or government, that give structure to a community.
institutions
By uniting northern and southern Mesopotamia under one ruler, this king created the world's first empire.
Sargon
the number of individual laws contained in the Code of Hammurabi
282
writing system, whose name comes from Greek words meaning "sacred carving," remained undeciphered until the discovery of a trilingual stone in 1799.
Hieroglyphics
This is the name of one of the two major excavated cities of the Harappan civilization, a name now used alongside Harappa to describe the whole civilization.
Mohenjo-Daro