Geography of the Fertile Crescent
This region’s name means “Land Between Two Rivers.”
What is Mesopotamia?
A city and the farmlands around it formed this kind of political unit.
What is a city-state?
These trained writers recorded information on clay tablets.
What are scribes?
The Sumerians invented this wedge-shaped writing system.
What is the cuneiform?
To maintain control, Mesopotamian empires built these long routes to move armies, trade goods, and send messages quickly.
What are roads or transportation networks?
These two rivers made farming possible in Mesopotamia.
What are the The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers?
This group of people created the first civilization in Mesopotamia.
Who are the Sumerians?
Most people in Mesopotamia worked in this job.
What are farmers?
This invention helped farmers till their fields more easily.
What is a plow?
This empire was the first to rule all of Mesopotamia under one government.
What is The Akkadian Empire?
This arc-shaped area of rich soil stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf.
What is The Fertile Crescent?
These pyramid-shaped temples were built in the center of Sumerian city-states.
What are Ziggurats?
This group made up the top social class in Mesopotamia.
What are priests and kings?
Scribes wrote on tablets made from this material.
What is clay?
This king united the Akkadian and Sumerian people, helping create the first major empire in history.
Who is Sargon the Great?
These man-made channels brought water to fields for farming.
What are Irrigation canals?
City-states sometimes fought over this important resource for crops.
What is water or farmland?
Merchants were important because they did this across the region.
What is trade goods?
This famous story about a legendary king is one of the world’s oldest epics.
What is The Epic of Gilgamesh?
These collections of written rules helped leaders keep order and explain expectations to their people.
What are law codes?
The yearly river would __________, leaving behind silt that made the soil fertile.
What is flood?
This ruler created the first set of "laws" for a society.
Who is Hammurabi?
Sumerian builders used mostly this material to make their homes.
What are mud bricks?
The Sumerians developed this number system based on 60, still used for time today.
What is the base-60 (sexagesimal) number system?
This powerful empire built a network of provinces, each with its own governor, to help control its huge territory.
What is The Assyrian Empire?