Technology & Infrastructure
What is irrigation?
A method of getting water to crops (done by digging canals and other trenches, and flooding fields)
What are the three main empires in the Mesopotamian world?
What is the (nearly) first written collection of laws?
Hammurabi's Code
What kind of religion did the Mesopotamians practice?
Polytheism
What does the word Mesopotamia mean?
The Land Between Two Rivers
What material were Mesopotamian houses and other structures mainly built out of?
Mud bricks.
What words characterize/describe Assyria's way of waging warfare and ruling its empire?
Violent, brutal, ruthless.
What does "eye for an eye" refer to?
A principle in Hammurabi's code, where an injured person can cause the same injury in the person who hurt them (if they are in the same social class.)
What are the names of the two main rivers of Mesopotamia?
The Tigris and the Euphrates.
What are two technologies that the Mesopotamians developed that made farming easier?
Irrigation and the plow.
Who was the king of Neo-Babylon?
Nebuchadnezzar II.
What do we call the way that the Mesopotamian alphabet and writing represented words? (contrast to our own alphabet, which is phonetic)
Through pictographs or pictograms.
What religion, which still is practiced today, did Nebuchadnezzar have interactions and conflict with?
Judaism.
What is the area called that includes Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt?
The fertile crescent.
How did the Mesopotamians contribute to how we measure a day?
Days composed of two twelve hour blocks, 60 minutes in an hour, 60 seconds in a minute.
What Akkadian king conquered much of Mesopotamia and established the Akkadian Empire?
Sargon the Great.
What do we call the Mesopotamian style of writing?
Cuneiform
How did kings claim that they had right to rule?
By divine right, or the will of the gods.
Ancient Mesopotamia is in what modern day countries? Name at least 2
Iraq, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Kuwait.
Name two areas of study that the Mesopotamians made great advancements in?
Literature, astronomy, mathematics, architecture, law.
Name at least four of the six levels of social structure (the different classes or castes of people) of ancient Mesopotamia.
Kings, priests, nobles, government officials/scribes, merchants/farmers, slaves.
Name two things that the Mesopotamians used written language for.
Law, trade, history, literature, diplomacy.
What large structure was built to honor the gods?
Ziggurats.
Sumer.