Vocab
The reason(s) it is called the Fertile Crescent.
It has fertile soil and is shaped like a crescent.
The class of people at the bottom of Mesopotamian society.
Enslaved people.
Early Mesopotamians learned to control the flow of water into their fields by building dams and channels in a process called...
Irrigation
The belief that there are many gods.
Polytheism.
The names of the two rivers that brought fertile soil to the Fertile Crescent.
Tigris and Euphrates
An independent city and its surrounding land.
City-State
This ancient conquerer defeated all the other Sumerian city-states to create the world's first Empire.
Sargon the Great
An invention created for pottery and for attaching to other things to allow them to move faster and easier.
The Wheel
In Mesopotamia, the king also held this religious title.
Head Priest
The large body of saltwater that borders Mesopotamia to the west.
Mediterranean Sea
The written language of the ancient Mesopotamians.
Cuneiform
What the ancient Mesopotamians wrote on.
Clay Tablets
An invention attached to ships to help them move faster with the wind.
The Sail.
The reason humans created religion.
To explain the world around them.
The large body of water the borders Mesopotamia to the southeast.
Persian Gulf
Another word for deities.
Gods
An ancient code of law with harsh penalties for crimes, including the term "an eye for an eye."
The Code of Hammurabi
An invention created to help till fields faster so that planting crops would be easier.
The Plow
A large building in the center of every city-state, built to house the gods and used for religious ceremonies.
Ziggurat
The mountain range to the north of Mesopotamia.
Zagros Mountains
Cultural Diffusion
The name of Hammurabi's empire, and the city-state he was from.
Babylon
The world's longest epic poem, written in ancient Mesopotamia.
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The name of the head god of Babylon.
Marduk
The body of water to the north of Mesopotamia that has water that has been tinted a darker color due to the soil in the area.
Black Sea