The Fertile Crescent
Mesopotamia means
What is between two rivers?
a large arc of rich farmland extending from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea
What is the Fertile Crescent?
What is rural?
people who performed religious ceremonies
Who are priests?
picture symbols that represented objects such as trees or animals
What are pictographs?
Mesopotamia lays between these two rivers
What are the Euphrates & the Tigris rivers?
the Sumerian system of writing, which used symbols to represent basic parts of words
What is cuneiform?
about 3000 BC these people created a complex, advanced society
Who are the Sumerians?
established the world’s first empire
Who is Sargon?
the science of building
What is architecture ?
two grains grown by Mesopotamian farmers
What are wheat & barley?
the worship of many gods
What is polytheism?
land with different territories and people under a single rule
What is an empire?
they could bring a good harvest or a disastrous flood, illness or they could bring good health and wealth. The Sumerians believed that success in every area of life depended on pleasing them.
Who are the gods?
small stone cylinder that was engraved with designs and could be rolled over wet clay to decorate containers or to “sign” documents.
What is a cylinder seal?
this destroyed crops, killed livestock, and washed away homes.
What is flooding?
a political unit consisting of a city and the surrounding countryside
What is a city-state?
Sargon was the leader of a people who lived to the north of Sumer.
Who are the Akkadians?
Although the role of most of them was limited to the home and raising children, some in the upper-class were educated and even became priestesses.
Who are women?
a device that spins wet clay as a craftsperson shapes it into bowls.
What is the the potter’s wheel?
became the political, religious, cultural, and economic centers of Mesopotamian civilization.
What are cities?
a pyramid-shaped temple tower
What is a ziggurat ?
a division of society by rank or class
What is a social hierarchy?
They were at the top of the social hierarchy which developed in Sumerian city-states
Who are kings?
This invention greatly improved farm production.
What is the ox-drawn plow?