The Road to Civilization
This is the word that refers to the "Old Stone Age," which lasted until approximately 12,000 years ago.
What is the Paleolithic era?
The name "Mesopotamia" literally means this in Greek.
What is "land between the two rivers"?
This is the name for an Egyptian king or queen
What is a pharaoh?
The 'Old,' 'Middle,' and 'New' periods of ancient Egyptian history are organized using these.
What are kingdoms? (also acceptable: dynasties)
This is the name of the "New Stone Age," which emerged at more or less the same time as the Agricultural Revolution
What is the Neolithic era?
Given its lack of natural resources and the unpredictable nature of its flooding, Mesopotamia would not become known as "the Fertile Crescent" until the advent of this technology, which transformed its agricultural output forever.
What is irrigation?
Unlike their Mesopotamian counterparts, this Egyptian belief about kingship suggested that the pharaohs were actual, literal gods.
What is divine kingship?
These are the rivers that delineate ancient Mesopotamian civilization.
What are the Tigris & Euphrates rivers?
This revolution in planting and settling was the essential precondition for the dawn of states and civilizations.
What is the Agricultural Revolution?
This is the term for Mesopotamia's system of writing, which involves creating small wedge-shaped indentations in a piece of clay
What is cuneiform?
Egyptian hieroglyphics were inscribed not on clay tablets, as in Mesopotamia, but on this.
What is papyrus?
This Akkadian leader became the first emperor in Mesopotamian history - and in the history of the world.
Who was Sargon the Great?
The rise of specialization (the ability to devote one's time to tasks other than farming) could only take place after this had occurred within agricultural settlements for the first time in history.
What is agricultural surplus?
This is the name for a Mesopotamian temple.
What is a ziggurat?
As the result of a peculiar feature of the Nile River, the southern portions of Egypt are often referred to using this term.
What is Upper Egypt?
This was the first Mesopotamian civilization
What is Sumerian civilization?
The rise of specialized labor and the differentiation of roles within an increasingly complex agricultural order meant that the formerly egalitarian world of hunters & gatherers was replaced with one characterized by this.
What is social hierarchy / inequality?
The Babylonian New Year Festival was an annual celebration undertaken in honor of this patron deity of Babylon.
Who is Marduk?
Despite the largely patriarchal nature of ancient Egyptian civilization, this female pharaoh led Egyptian society through an unprecedented era of state-building before her successors erased her name from all public monuments.
Who is Hatshepsut?
Both Egypt and Mesopotamia replaced kinship with this as the basic organizing unit of society (hint: think taxes, bureaucracy, centralization of authority)
What is a state?