📚 VOCABULARY
The region located between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
Mesopotamia
The fertile material left behind after rivers flood.
Silt
The early form of writing based on pictures of objects.
Pictographs
The ruler who conquered Sumer and established the Akkadian Empire.
Sargon the Great
The Mesopotamian people who used powerful armies and bows and arrows to conquer an empire.
Assyrians
A city and the surrounding land it controls.
City-state
The two major rivers along which the city-states of Sumer and Akkad developed.
Tigris and Euphrates Rivers
The wedge-shaped writing system developed by the Sumerians.
Cuneiform
The reason Sargon was able to gain loyalty from conquered peoples.
He allowed them to keep their local customs and rulers
The people known for sailing and trading across the Mediterranean Sea.
Phoenicians
A system that brings water to crops.
Irrigation
The natural feature that helped make Mesopotamian farming successful.
Fertile soil
The people who wrote and kept important records.
Scribes
The major problem that caused the Akkadian Empire to fall.
It grew too large to maintain order
The achievement for which the New Babylonian Empire was known.
The Hanging Gardens
A large territory made up of different lands and peoples under one ruler.
Empire
The independent political units that made up the civilization of Sumer.
Separate city-states
A tool used to press writing into wet clay.
Stylus
The Babylonian ruler known for organizing a famous collection of laws.
Hammurabi
The Persian ruler who improved communication by building a system of roads.
Darius I
A written collection of laws.
Code of laws
The large temple structures where Sumerians visited religious shrines.
Ziggurats
The clay surfaces used by Sumerians to preserve written records.
Clay tablets
The famous Babylonian collection of nearly 300 laws.
Hammurabi's Code
The geographic feature that bordered the Akkadian Empire to the west.
Mediterranean Sea