History 1000 Section 3

Mesopotamia Civilization

2009-02-25T10:09:00.000-08:00

Mesopotamia

"The Two Rivers" redirects here. For other uses, see Two Rivers.

Ancient Mesopotamia

Euphrates · Tigris
Empires / Cities
Sumer
Eridu · Kish · Uruk · Ur Lagash · Nippur · Ngirsu
Elam
Susa
Akkadian Empire
Akkad · Mari
Amorites
Isin · Larsa
Babylonia
Babylon · Chaldea
Assyria
Assur · Nimrud Dur-Sharrukin · Nineveh
Hittites · Kassites Hurrians / Mitanni
Chronology
Mesopotamia
Sumer (king list)
Kings of Assyria Kings of Babylon
Mythology
Enûma Elish · Gilgamesh
Assyro-Babylonian religion
Language
Sumerian · Elamite
Akkadian · Aramaic
Hurrian · Hittite

Mesopotamia (from the Greek meaning "land between the rivers")^[1] is the area of the Tigris-Euphrates river system, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, largely corresponding to modern Iraq,^[2] as well as some parts of northeastern Syria,^[2] some parts of southeastern Turkey,^[2] and some parts of the Khūzestān Province of southwestern Iran.^[3]^[4]

Commonly known as the "cradle of civilization", Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer, Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian empires. In the Iron Age, it was ruled by the Neo-Assyrian Empire and Neo-Babylonian Empire, and later conquered by the Achaemenid Empire. It mostly remained under Persian rule until the 7th century Islamic conquest of the Sassanid Empire. Under the Caliphate, the region came to be known as Iraq.

Etymology

The regional toponym Mesopotamia ( < class="mw-redirect" title="Hellenistic" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic">Hellenistic period without any definite boundaries, to refer to a broad geographical area and probably used by the Seleucids. The term biritum/birit narim corresponded to a similar geographical concept and coined at the time of the Aramaicization of the region, in the 10th century BCE.^[5] It is however widely accepted that early Mesopotamian societies simply referred to the entire alluvium as kalam in Sumerian (lit. "land"). More recently terms like "Greater Mesopotamia" or "Syro-Mesopotamia" have been adopted to refer to wider geographies corresponding to the Near East or Middle East. The later euphemisms are Eurocentric terms attributed to the region in the midst of various 19th century Western encroachments.^[6]

History

Main article: Timeline of Ancient Mesopotamia

Overview map of ancient Mesopotamia

The history of Mesopotamia begins with the emergence of urban societies in northern Iraq in 5000 BCE, and ends with either the arrival of the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century BCE, when Mesopotamia began being colonized by foreign powers, or with the arrival of the Islamic Caliphate, when the region came to be known as Iraq.

A cultural continuity and spatial homogeneity for this entire historical geography ("the Great Tradition") is popularly assumed, though the assumption is problematic. Mesopotamia housed some of the world's most ancient states with highly developed social complexity. The region was famous as one of the four riverine civilizations where writing was first invented, along with the Nile valley in Egypt, the Indus Valley in the Indian subcontinent and Yellow River valley in China (Although writing is also known to have arisen independently in Mesoamerica).

Mesopotamia housed historically important cities such as Uruk, Nippur, Nineveh, and Babylon Akkadian kingdom, Third Dynasty of Ur, and Assyrian empire. Some of the important historical Mesopotamian leaders were Ur-Nammu (king of Ur), Sargon (who established the Akkadian Kingdom), Hammurabi Tiglath-Pileser I (who established the Assyrian Empire). as well as major territorial states such as the city of Ma-asesblu, (who established the Old Babylonian state), and

"Ancient Mesopotamia" begins in the late 6th millennium BC, and ends with either the rise of the Achaemenid Persians in the 6th century BCE or the Islamic conquest of Persian Mesopotamia in the 7th century CE. This long period may be divided as follows:

Trends in Mesopotamian History

Pre-Pottery Neolithic:
- Jarmo (ca. 7000 BCE-? BCE)
Pottery Neolithic:
- Hassuna (ca. 6000 BCE-? BCE), Samarra (ca. 5500 BCE-4800 BCE) and Halaf (ca. 6000 BCE-5300 BCE) "cultures"
Chalcolithic or Copper age:
- Ubaid period (ca. 5900 BCE–4000 BCE)
- Uruk period (ca. 4000 BCE–3100 BCE)
- Jemdet Nasr period (ca. 3100 BCE–2900 BCE)
Early Bronze Age
- Early Dynastic Sumerian city-states (ca. 2900 BCE–2350 BCE)
- Akkadian Empire (ca. 2350 BCE–2193 BCE).
- Third dynasty of Ur ("Sumerian Renaissance" or "Neo-Sumerian Period") (ca. 2119 BCE–2004 BCE)
Middle Bronze Age
- Early Assyrian kingdom (20th to 18th c. BCE)
- First Babylonian Dynasty (18th to 17th c. BCE)
Late Bronze Age
- Kassite dynasty, Middle Assyrian period (16th to 12th c. BCE)
- Bronze Age collapse (12th to 11th c. BCE)
Iron Age
- Neo-Hittite or Syro-Hittite regional states (11th–7th c. BCE)
- Neo-Assyrian Empire (10th to 7th c. BCE)
- Neo-Babylonian Empire (7th to 6th c. BCE)
Classical Antiquity
- Achaemenid Assyria (6th to 4th c. BCE)
- Seleucid Mesopotamia (4th to 1st c. BCE)
- Parthian Mesopotamia (3rd c. BCE to 3rd c. CE)
  - Roman Mesopotamia (2nd c. CE)
- Sassanid Mesopotamia (3rd to 7th c. CE)
- Islamic conquest of Persian Mesopotamia (7th c.CE)

Dates are approximate for the second and third millennia BCE; compare Chronology of the Ancient Near East.

Geography

Further information: Geography of Sumer and Geography of Iraq

Mesopotamia encompases the land inbetween the Euphrates and Tigris rivers; both of which have their headwaters in the mountains of Armenia in modern Turkey. Both rivers are fed by numerous tributaries, and the entire river system drains a vast mountainous region. Overland routes in Mesopotamia usually follow the Euphrates because the banks of the Tigris are frequently steep and difficult. The climate of the region is semi-arid with a vast desert expanse in the north which gives way to a 6,000 square mile region of marshes, lagoons, mud flats, and reed banks in the south. In the extreme south the Euphrates and the Tigris unite and empty into the Persian Gulf.

The arid environment which ranges from the northern areas of rain fed agriculture, to the south where irrigation of agriculture is essential if a surplus energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) is to be obtained. This irrigation is aided by a high water table and by melted snows from the high peaks of the Zagros Mountains and from the Armenian cordillera, the source of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, that give the region its name. The usefulness of irrigation depends upon the ability to mobilize sufficient labor for the construction and maintenance of canals, and this, from the earliest period, has assisted the development of urban settlements and centralized systems of political authority. Agriculture throughout the region has been supplemented by nomadic pastoralism, where tent dwelling nomads move herds of sheep and goats (and later camels) from the river pastures in the dry summer months, out into seasonal grazing lands on the desert fringe in the wet winter season. The area is generally lacking in building stone, precious metals and timber, and so historically has relied upon long distance trade of agricultural products to secure these items from outlying areas. In the marshlands to the south of the country, a complex water-borne fishing culture has existed since pre-historic times, and has added to the cultural mix.

Periodic breakdowns in the cultural system have occurred for a number of reasons. The demands for labour has from time to time led to population increases that push the limits of the ecological carrying capacity, and should a period of climatic instability ensue, collapsing central government and declining populations can occur. Alternatively, military vulnerability to invasion from marginal hill tribes or nomadic pastoralists have led to periods of trade collapse and neglect of irrigation systems. Equally, centripetal tendencies amongst city states has meant that central authority over the whole region, when imposed, has tended to be ephemeral, and localism has fragmented power into tribal or smaller regional units.^[7] These trends have continued to the present day in Iraq.

Language and writing

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The earliest language written in Mesopotamia was Sumerian, an agglutinative language isolate. Scholars agree that other languages were also spoken in early Mesopotamia along with Sumerian. Later a Semitic language, Akkadian, came to be the dominant language, although Sumerian was retained for administration, religious, literary, and scientific purposes. Different varieties of Akkadian were used until the end of the Neo-Babylonian period. Then Aramaic, which had already become common in Mesopotamia, became the official provincial administration language of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Akkadian fell into disuse, but both it and Sumerian were still used in temples for some centuries.

In Early Mesopotamia (around mid 4th millennium BC) cuneiform script was invented. Cuneiform literally means "wedge-shaped", due to the triangular tip of the stylus used for impressing signs on wet clay. The standardized form of each cuneiform sign appear to have been developed from pictograms. The earliest texts (7 archaic tablets) come from the E-anna super sacred precinct dedicated to the goddess Inanna at Uruk, Level III, from a building labeled as Temple C by its excavators.

The early logographic system of cuneiform script took many years to master. Thus only a limited number of individuals were hired as scribes to be trained in its reading and writing. It was not until the widespread use of a syllabic script was adopted under Sargon's rule^{[citation needed]} that significant portions of Mesopotamian population became learned in literacy. Massive archives of texts were recovered from the archaeological contexts of Old Babylonian scribal schools, through which literacy was disseminated.

Literature and mythology

Main articles: Babylonian literature and Mesopotamian mythology

In Babylonian colonies times there were libraries in most towns and temples also homes which is a curifouins an old Sumerian proverb averred that "he who would excel in the school of the scribes must rise with the dawn." Women as well as men learned to read and write, and for the Semitic Babylonians, this involved knowledge of the extinct Sumerian language, and a complicated and extensive syllabary.

A considerable amount of Babylonian literature was translated from Sumerian originals, and the language of religion and law long continued to be the old agglutinative language of Sumer. Vocabularies, grammars, and interlinear translations were compiled for the use of students, as well as commentaries on the older texts and explanations of obscure words and phrases. The characters of the syllabary were all arranged and named, and elaborate lists of them were drawn up.

There are many Babylonian literary works whose titles have come down to us. One of the most famous of these was the Epic of Gilgamesh, in twelve books, translated from the original Sumerian by a certain Sin-liqe-unninni, and arranged upon an astronomical principle. Each division contains the story of a single adventure in the career of Gilgamesh. The whole story is a composite product, and it is probable that some of the stories are artificially attached to the central figure.

Philosophy

Further information: Babylonian literature: Philosophy

The origins of philosophy can be traced back to early Mesopotamian wisdom, which embodied certain philosophies of life, particularly ethics, in the forms of dialectic, dialogs, epic poetry, folklore, hymns, lyrics, prose, and proverbs. Babylonian reasoning and rationality developed beyond empirical observation.^[8]

The earliest form of logic was developed by the Babylonians, notably in the rigorous nonergodic nature of their social systems. Babylonian thought was axiomatic and is comparable to the "ordinary logic" described by John Maynard Keynes. Babylonian thought was also based on an open-systems ontology which is compatible with ergodic axioms.^[9] Logic was employed to some extent in Babylonian astronomy and medicine.

Babylonian thought had a considerable influence on early Greek philosophy and Hellenistic philosophy. In particular, the Babylonian text Dialog of Pessimism contains similarities to the agonistic thought of the sophists, the Heraclitean doctrine of contrasts, and the dialectic and dialogs of Plato, as well as a precursor to the maieutic Socratic method of Socrates.^[10] The Phoenician philosopher Thales is also

Science and technology

Astronomy

Main article: Babylonian astronomy

Further information: Babylonian astrology and Babylonian calendar

The Babylonian astronomers were very interested in studying the stars and sky, and most could already predict eclipses and solstices. People thought that everything had some purpose in astronomy. Most of these related to religion and omens. Mesopotamian astronomers worked out a 12 month calendar based on the cycles of the moon. They divided the year into two seasons: summer and winter. The origins of astronomy as well as astrology date from this time.

During the 8th and 7th centuries BC, Babylonian astronomers developed a new approach to astronomy. They began studying philosophy dealing with the ideal nature of the early universe logic within their predictive planetary systems. This was an important contribution to astronomy and the philosophy of science and some scholars have thus referred to this new approach as the first scientific revolution.^[11] This new approach to astronomy was adopted and further developed in Greek and Hellenistic astronomy. and began employing an internal

In Seleucid and Parthian times, the astronomical reports were of a thoroughly scientific character; how much earlier their advanced knowledge and methods were developed is uncertain. The Babylonian development of methods for predicting the motions of the planets is considered to be a major episode in the history of astronomy.

The only Babylonian astronomer known to have supported a heliocentric model of planetary motion was Seleucus of Seleucia (b. 190 BC).^[12]^[13]^[14] Seleucus is known from the writings of Plutarch. He supported the heliocentric theory where the Earth rotated around its own axis which in turn revolved around the Sun. According to Plutarch, Seleucus even proved the heliocentric system, but it is not known what arguments he used.

Babylonian astronomy was the basis for much of what was done in Greek and Hellenistic astronomy, in classical Indian astronomy, in Sassanian, Byzantine and Syrian astronomy, in medieval Islamic astronomy, and in Central Asian and Western European astronomy.^[15]

Mathematics

Main article: Babylonian mathematics

Further information: Babylonian calendar

The Mesopotamians used a sexagesimal (base 60) numeral system. This is the source of the current 60-minute hours and 24-hour days, as well as the 360 degree circle. The Sumerian calendar also measured weeks of seven days each. This mathematical knowledge was used in mapmaking.

The Babylonians might have been familiar with the general rules for measuring the areas. They measured the circumference of a circle as three times the diameter and the area as one-twelfth the square of the circumference, which would be correct if pi were estimated as 3. The volume of a cylinder was taken as the product of the base and the height, however, the volume of the frustum of a cone or a square pyramid was incorrectly taken as the product of the height and half the sum of the bases. Also, there was a recent discovery in which a tablet used pi as 3 and 1/8 (3.125 for 3.14159~). The Babylonians are also known for the Babylonian mile, which was a measure of distance equal to about seven miles (11 km) today. This measurement for distances eventually was converted to a time-mile used for measuring the travel of the Sun, therefore, representing time.^[16]

Medicine

The oldest Babylonian texts on medicine date back to the Old Babylonian period in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC. The most extensive Babylonian medical text, however, is the Diagnostic Handbook written by the physician Esagil-kin-apli of Borsippa,^[17] during the reign of the Babylonian king Adad-apla-iddina (1069-1046 BC).^[18]

Along with contemporary ancient Egyptian medicine, the Babylonians introduced the concepts of diagnosis, prognosis, physical examination, and prescriptions. In addition, the Diagnostic Handbook introduced the methods of therapy and aetiology and the use of empiricism, logic rationality in diagnosis, prognosis and therapy. The text contains a list of medical symptoms and often detailed empirical observations along with logical rules used in combining observed symptoms on the body of a patient with its diagnosis and prognosis.^[19] and

The symptoms and diseases of a patient were treated through therapeutic means such as bandages, creams and pills. If a patient could not be cured physically, the Babylonian physicians often relied on exorcism to cleanse the patient from any curses. Esagil-kin-apli's Diagnostic Handbook was based on a logical set of axioms and assumptions, including the modern view that through the examination and inspection of the symptoms of a patient, it is possible to determine the patient's disease, its aetiology and future development, and the chances of the patient's recovery.^[17]

Esagil-kin-apli discovered a variety of illnesses and diseases and described their symptoms in his Diagnostic Handbook. These include the symptoms for many varieties of epilepsy and related ailments along with their diagnosis and prognosis.^[20]

Technology

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Mesopotamian people invented many technologies including metal and copper-working, glass and lamp making, textile weaving, flood control, water storage, and irrigation.

They were also one of the first Bronze age people in the world. Early on they used copper, bronze and gold, and later they used iron. Palaces were decorated with hundreds of kilograms of these very expensive metals. Also, copper, bronze, and iron were used for armor as well as for different weapons such as swords, daggers, spears, and maces.

The earliest type of pump was the Archimedes' screw, first used by Sennacherib, King of Assyria, for the water systems at the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and Nineveh in the 7th century BC, and later described in more detail by Archimedes in the 3rd century BC.^[21] Later during the Parthian or Sassanid periods, the Baghdad Battery, which may have been the first batteries, were created in Mesopotamia.^[22]

Religion

Mesopotamian religion was the first to be recorded. Mesopotamians believed that the world was a flat disc, surrounded by a huge, holed space, and above that, heaven. They also believed that water was everywhere, the top, bottom and sides, and that the universe was born from this enormous sea. In addition, Mesopotamian religion was polytheistic.

Although the beliefs described above were held in common among Mesopotamians, there were also regional variations. The Sumerian word for universe is an-ki, which refers to the god An and the goddess Ki. Their son was Enlil, the air god. They believed that Enlil was the most powerful god. He was the chief god of the Pantheon, as the Greeks had Zeus and the Romans had Jupiter. The Sumerians also posed philosophical questions, such as: Who are we?, Where are we?, How did we get here?. They attributed answers to these questions to explanations provided by their gods.

Holidays, Feasts, and Festivals

Ancient Mesopotamians had ceremonies each month. The theme of the rituals and festivals for each month is determined by six important factors:

The phase of the Moon;
waxing Moon = abundance and growth;
waning Moon = decline, conservation, and festivals of the Underworld;
the phase of the annual agricultural cycle;
equinoces and solstices of the solar year;
the mythos of the City and its divine Patrons;
the success of the reigning Monarch;
commemoration of specific historical events (founding, military victories, temple holidays, etc.)

Primary gods and goddesses

Mahore was the god of love and birth
Anu was the Sumerian god of the sky. He was married to Ki, but in some other Mesopotamian religions he has a wife called Uraš. Though he was considered the most important god in the pantheon, he took a mostly passive role in epics, allowing Enlil to claim the position as most powerful god.
Enlil was initially the most powerful god in Mesopotamian religion. His wife was Ninlil, and his children were Iškur (sometimes), Nanna - Suen, Nergal, Nisaba, Namtar, Ninurta Pabilsag, Nushu, Enbilulu, Uraš Zababa and Ennugi. His position at the top of the pantheon was later usurped by Marduk and then by Ashur. (sometimes),
Enki (Ea) god of Eridu. He was the god of rain.
Marduk was the principal god of Babylon. When Babylon rose to power, the mythologies raised Marduk from his original position as an agricultural god to the principal god in the pantheon.
Ashur was god of the Assyrian empire and likewise when the Assyrians rose to power their myths raised Ashur to a position of importance.
Gula or Utu (in Sumerian), Shamash (in Akkadian) was the sun god and god of justice.

Ereshkigal was goddess of the Netherworld.
Nabu was the Mesopotamian god of writing. He was very wise, and was praised for his writing ability. In some places he was believed to be in control of heaven and earth. His importance was increased considerably in the later periods.
Ninurta was the Sumerian god of war. He was also the god of heroes.
Iškur (or Adad) was the god of storms.
Erra was probably the god of drought. He is often mentioned in conjunction with Adad Nergal in laying waste to the land. and
Nergal was probably a plague god. He was also spouse of Ereshkigal.
Pazuzu, also known as Zu, was an evil god, who stole the tablets of Enlil’s destiny, and is killed because of this. He also brought diseases which had no known cure.

Burials

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Hundreds of graves have been excavated in parts of Mesopotamia, revealing information about Mesopotamian burial habits. In the city of Ur, most people were buried in family graves under their houses (as in Catalhuyuk), along with some possessions. A few have been found wrapped in mats and carpets. Deceased children were put in big "jars" which were placed in the family chapel. Other remains have been found buried in common city graveyards. 17 graves have been found with very precious objects in them ; it is assumed that these were royal graves.

Culture

Music, songs and instruments

Some songs were written for the gods but many were written to describe important events. Although music and songs amused kings, they were also enjoyed by ordinary people who liked to sing and dance in their homes or in the marketplaces. Songs were sung to children who passed them on to their children. Thus songs were passed on through many generations until someone wrote them down. These songs provided a means of passing on through the centuries information about historical events that were eventually passed on to modern historians. highly important

The Oud (Arabic:العود) is a small, stringed musical instrument. The oldest pictorial record of the Oud dates back to the Uruk period in Southern Mesopotamia over 5000 years ago. It is on a cylinder seal currently housed at the British Museum and acquired by Dr. Dominique Collon. The image depicts a female crouching with her instruments upon a boat, playing right-handed. This instrument appears hundreds of times throughout Mesopotamian history and again in ancient Egypt from the 18th dynasty onwards in long- and short-neck varieties.

The oud is regarded as a precursor to the European lute. Its name is derived from the Arabic word العود al-‘ūd 'the wood', which is probably the name of the tree from which the oud was made. (The Arabic name, with the definite article, is the source of the word 'lute'.)

Games

Hunting was popular among Assyrian kings. Boxing and wrestling feature frequently in art, and some form of polo was probably popular, with men sitting on the shoulders of other men rather than on horses.^[23] They also played majore, a game similar to the sport rugby, but played with a ball made of wood. They also played a board game similar to senet and backgammon, now known as the "Royal Game of Ma-asesblu."

Family life

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The Babylonian marriage market, in the Royal Holloway College.

Mesopotamia across its history became more and more a patriarchal society, in which the men were far more powerful than the women. Thorkild Jacobsen, and others have suggested that early Mesopotamian society was ruled by a "council of elders" in which men and women were equally represented, but that over time, as the status of women fell, that of men increased. As for schooling, only royal offspring and sons of the rich and professionals such as scribes, physicians, temple administrators, and so on, went to school. Most boys were taught their father's trade or were apprenticed out to learn a trade.^[24] Girls had to stay home with their mothers to learn housekeeping and cooking, and to look after the younger children. Some children would help with crushing grain, or cleaning birds. Unusual for that time in history, women in Mesopotamia had rights. They could own property and, if they had good reason, get a divorce.

Economy

Sumer developed the first economy, while the Babylonians developed the earliest system of economics, which was comparable to modern post-Keynesian economics, but with a more "anything goes" approach.^[9]

Agriculture

The geography of Mesopotamia is such that agriculture is possible only with irrigation and good drainage, a fact which has had a profound effect on the evolution of Mesopotamian civilization. The need for irrigation led the Sumerians and later the Akkadians to build their cities along the Tigris and Euphrates and the branches of these rivers. Some major cities, such as Ur and Uruk, took root on tributaries of the Euphrates, while others, notably Lagash, were built on branches of the Tigris. The rivers provided the further benefits of fish (used both for food and fertilizer), reeds and clay (for building materials).

With irrigation the food supply in Mesopotamia was quite rich with the Tigris and Euphrates River valleys forming the northeastern portion of the Fertile Crescent, which also included the Jordan River valley & that of the Nile. Although land nearer to the rivers was fertile and good for crops, portions of land farther from the water were dry and largely uninhabitable. This is why the development of irrigation was very important for settlers of Mesopotamia. Other Mesopotamian innovations include the control of water by dams and the use of aqueducts. Early settlers of fertile land in Mesopotamia used wooden plows to soften the soil barley, onions, grapes, turnips and apples. Mesopotamian settlers were some of the first people to make beer and wine. before planting crops such as

Although the rivers sustained life, they also destroyed it by frequent floods that ravaged entire cities. The unpredictable Mesopotamian weather was often hard on farmers; crops were often ruined so backup sources of food such as cows and lambs were also kept. As a result of the skill involved in farming in the Mesopotamian, farmers did not depend on slaves mutiny of the slave). to complete farm work for them, with some exceptions. There were too many risks involved to make slavery practical (i.e. the escape/

Government

The geography of Mesopotamia had a profound impact on the political development of the region. Among the rivers and streams, the Sumerian people built the first cities along with irrigation canals which were separated by vast stretchs of open desert or swamp where nomadic tribes roamed. Communication among the isolated cities was difficult and at times dangerous. Thus each Sumerian city became a city-state, independent of the others and protective of it's independence. At times one city would try to conquer and unify the region, but such efforts were resisted and failed for centuries. As a result, the political history of Sumer is one of almost constant warfare. Eventually Sumer was unified by Eannatum, but the unification was tenuous and failed to last as the Akkadians conquered Sumeria in 2331B.C. only a generation later.

The Akkadian Empire was the first successful empire to last beyond a generation and see the peaceful succession of kings. The empire was relatively short lived, as the Babylonians conquered them within only a few generations.

Kings

Further information: Sumerian king list, List of Kings of Babylon, and Kings of Assyria

The Mesopotamians believed their kings and queens were descended from the City of Gods, but, unlike the ancient Egyptians, they never believed their kings were real gods.^[25] Most kings named themselves “king of the universe” or “great king”. Another common name was “shepherd”, as kings had to look after their people.

Notable Mesopotamian kings include:

Eannatum of Lagash who founded the first (short-lived) empire.

Sargon of Akkad who conquered all of Mesopotamia and created the first empire that outlived its founder.

Hammurabi founded the first Babylonian empire.

Tiglath-Pileser III founded the neo-Assyrian empire.

Nebuchadnezzar was the most powerful king in the neo-Babylonian Empire. He was thought to be the son of the god Nabu. He married the daughter of Cyaxeres, so the Median and the Babylonian dynasties had a familial connection. Nebuchadnezzar’s name means: Nabo, protect the crown!

Belshedezzar was the last king of Babylonia. He was the son of Nabonidus whose wife was Nictoris, the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar.

Power

When Assyria grew into an empire, it was divided into smaller parts, called provinces. Each of these were named after their main cities, like Nineveh, Samaria, Damascus and Arpad. They all had their own governor who had to make sure everyone paid their taxes; he had to call up soldiers to war, and supply workers when a temple was built. He was also responsible for the laws being enforced. In this way it was easier to keep control of an empire like Assyria. Although Babylon was quite a small state in the Sumerian, it grew tremendously throughout the time of Hammurabi's rule. He was known as “the law maker”, and soon Babylon became one of the main cities in Mesopotamia. It was later called Babylonia, which meant "the gateway of the gods." It also became one of history's greatest centers of learning.

Warfare

Assyrian soldiers, from a plate in THE HISTORY OF COSTUME by Braun & Schneider (ca. 1860).

As city-states began to grow, their spheres of influence overlapped, creating arguments between other city-states, especially over land and canals. These arguments were recorded in tablets several hundreds of years before any major war - the first recording of a war occurred around 3200BCE but was not common until about 2500BCE. At this point warfare was incorporated into the Mesopotamian political system, where a neutral city may act as an arbitrator for the two rival cities. This helped to form unions between cities, leading to regional states.^[26] When empires were created, they went to war more with foreign countries. King Sargon, for example conquered all the cities of Sumer, some cities in Mari, and then went to war with northern Syria. Many Babylonian palace walls were decorated with the pictures of the successful fights and the enemy, whether desperately escaping, or hiding amongst reeds. A king in Sumer, Gilgamesh, was thought two-thirds god and only one third human. There were legendary stories and poems about him, which were passed on for many generations, because he had many adventures that were believed very important, and won many wars and battles.

Laws

King Hammurabi, as mentioned above, was famous for his set of laws, The Code of Hammurabi (created ca. 1780 BC), which is one of the earliest sets of laws found and one of the best preserved examples of this type of document from ancient Mesopotamia. He made over 200 laws for Mesopotamia For more information, see Hammurabi and Code of Hammurabi. See also: Laws of Eshnunna, Code of Ur-Nammu.

Architecture

The study of ancient Mesopotamian architecture is based on available archaeological^[27]Uruk from the 4th millennium BC, temples and palaces from the Early Dynastic Diyala River valley such as Khafajah and Tell Asmar, the Third Dynasty of Ur Nippur (Sanctuary of Enlil) and Ur (Sanctuary of Nanna), Middle Bronze Age remains at Syrian-Turkish sites of Ebla, Mari, Alalakh, Aleppo and Kultepe, Late Bronze Age palaces at Bogazkoy (Hattusha), Ugarit, Ashur and Nuzi, Iron Age palaces and temples at Assyrian Kalhu/Nimrud, Khorsabad, Nineveh), Babylonian (Babylon), Urartian (Tushpa/Van Kalesi, Cavustepe, Ayanis, Armavir, Erebuni, Bastam) and Neo-Hittite sites (Karkamis, Tell Halaf, Karatepe). Houses are mostly known from Old Babylonian remains at Nippur and Ur. Among the textual sources on building construction and associated rituals, Gudea's cylinders from the late 3rd millennium are notable, as well as the Assyrian and Babylonian royal inscriptions from the Iron Age. evidence, pictorial representation of buildings and texts on building practices. Scholarly literature usually concentrates on temples, palaces, city walls and gates and other monumental buildings, but occasionally one finds works on residential architecture as well. Archaeological surface surveys also allowed for the study of urban form in early Mesopotamian cities. Most notably known architectural remains from early Mesopotamia are the temple complexes at period sites in the remains at (

Houses

The materials used to build a Mesopotamian house were the same as those used today: mud brick, mud plaster and wooden doors, which were all naturally available around the city,^[28][3]. The smallest rooms may not have coincided with the poorest people; in fact it could be that the poorest people built houses out of perishable materials such as reeds on the outside of the city, but there is very little direct evidence for this.^[29] although wood could not be naturally made very well during the particular time period described. Most houses had a square center room with other rooms attached to it, but a great variation in the size and materials used to build the houses suggest they were built by the inhabitants themselves

The Palace

The palaces of the early Mesopotamian elites were large scale complexes, and were often lavishly decorated. Earliest examples are known from the Diyala River valley sites such as Khafajah and Tell Asmar. These third millennium BC palaces functioned as a large scale socio-economic institutions, therefore, along with residential and private function, they housed craftsmen workshops, food storehouses, ceremonial courtyards, and often associated with shrines. For instance, the so-called "giparu" (or Gig-Par-Ku in Sumerian) at Ur where the Moon god Nanna's priestesses resided was a major complex with multiple courtyards, a number of sanctuaries, burial chambers for dead priestesses, a ceremonial banquet hall, etc. A similarly complex example of a Mesopotamian palace was excavated at Mari in Syria, dating from the Old Babylonian period.

Assyrian palaces of the Iron Age, especially at Kalhu/Nimrud, Dur Sharrukin/Khorsabad and Ninuwa/Nineveh, have become famous due to the pictorial and textual narrative programs on their walls, all carved on stone slabs known as orthostats. These pictorial programs either incorporated cultic scenes or the narrative accounts of the kings' military and civic accomplishments. Gates and important passageways were flanked with massive stone sculpture of apotropaic mythological figures. The architectural arrangement of these Iron Age palaces were also organized around large and small courtyards. Usually the king's throneroom opened to a massive ceremonial courtyard where important state councils met, state ceremonies performed.

Massive amounts of ivory furniture pieces were found in many Assyrian palaces pointing out an intense trade relationship with North Syrian Neo-Hittite states at the time. There is also good evidence that bronze repousse bands decorated the wooden gates.

Ziggurats

Ziggerates (Akkadian ziqquratu from the verb zaqāru) were massive pyramids found in certain Mesopotamian sanctuaries. A good example of such structure was the temple dedicated to Ea at Eridu (Tell Abu Shahrain) excavated by Fuad Safar and Seton Lloyd in 1940s, or the "White" Temple dedicated to Anu at Uruk in the Late Uruk period. Ur-Nammu's ziggurat, built at the height the Third Dynasty of Ur, at the site of Ur (Tell al Mugayyar) in the sanctuary of the Moon God Nanna, is also believed to be encasing earlier temples of the Early Dynastic Period. Ur-Nammu's ziggurat is considered one of the earliest of all planned ziggurats. After that time Kassites and Elamites of the Late Bronze Age, and Assyrians and Babylonians of the Iron age continued to build artificially erected ziggurats. Examples of such structures were found in Dur Kurigalzu (Aqar Quf), Dur-Untash (Tschoga Zanbil), Kalhu (Nimrud), Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad) and Babylon among others.

It has been suggested that ziggurats were built to resemble mountains, but there is little textual or archaeological evidence to support that hypothesis.

Ur-Nammu's ziggurat at Ur was designed as a three-stage construction, today only two of these survive. This entire mudbrick core structure was originally given a facing of baked brick envelope set in bitumen, circa 2.5 m on the first lowest stage, and 1.15 m on the second. Each of these baked bricks were stamped with the name of the king. The sloping walls of the stages were buttressed. The access to the top was by means of a triple monumental staircase, which all converges at a portal that opened on a landing between the first and second stages. The height of the first stage was about 11 m while the second stage rose some 5.7 m. Usually a third stage is reconstructed by the excavator of the ziggurat (Leonard Woolley), and crowned by a temple. At the Tschoga Zanbil ziggurat archaeologists have found massive reed ropes that ran across the core of the ziggurat structure and tied together the mudbrick mass. The Ancient Mesopotamians were located at the center of the near east. It was in present day Syria, Turkey, and Iraq. Ancient Mesopotamia was between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Mesopotamia literally means “The land between two rivers”. The southern part of Mesopotamia made up part of the Fertile Crescent. Because of where it is, Mesopotamia has hot summers and cold winters. The first city in Mesopotamia was Eridu. The rivers of Mesopotamia helped sustain life and provide food. The rivers helped the Mesopotamians by wetting and irrigating the soil and land. The rivers could also be dangerous, and cause floods and wash away crops and newly planted seeds. The Mesopotamians lived a similar lifestyle to the Marsh Arabs, who live on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and use them to help them live. During the rain bringing season sometimes the rivers would partially flood the land, so only the highest points or dirt mounds would not be covered with water. If this happened then the Mesopotamians would have to use boats to go to other people’s houses or to outside of the flooding areas. The river affected Mesopotamian life in many different ways. The Mesopotamians had complex and intricate ways of farming. They would use canals (which they often had to repair and re - dig) to irrigate during the dry season. The Mesopotamians had bucket lifting devices to move water between different levels in the canals and to bring water to the crops. The irrigation was counted on so crops could grow and the crops would be enough food to last through the winter. Irrigation in Mesopotamia played an important role. The Mesopotamians were the first people to invent writing, or an alphabet! At the beginning, writing was simple, a picture to show what you wanted to show. Eventually writing evolved to complex cuneiform. There were hundreds of letters in the cuneiform alphabet. The language Mesopotamians spoken was not called Mesopotamian, but Sumerian. Cuneiform has been adapted for use with Akkadian, Babylonian, Persian, and many other languages.

Farmers grew food to feed the people of Mesopotamia, but the wealth of the cities of Mesopotamia came from merchants and craftspeople. The Mesopotamians placed great value on commerce. Mesopotamia didn’t have many natural resources, so they traded mostly grain and textiles. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers were responsible for getting the goods to and from Mesopotamia. They traded goods as far as Africa, Asia, and Europe. Mesopotamia didn’t use coins, but standards based on the weight of silver and grains were established. Money from taxes helped a program to build a bridge across the Euphrates river to trade even more. Without trade Mesopotamia would have easily failed. Mesopotamians created the first wheeled vehicles in about 3500 B.C.E. They first used the wheel to make wheel – thrown pottery and then in Uruk, while trying to figure out how to carry a heavy load of goods a man created a sort of wheel. He placed a block of wood on a log and used it to pull his goods.Without the invention of the wheel the modern world would not be the same.

The temple of Ziggurat

2009-02-25T10:04:00.000-08:00

The Epic of Gilgamesh

2009-02-25T10:02:00.000-08:00

Storytelling, the Meaning of Life,
and The Epic of Gilgamesh

Stories do not need to inform us of anything. They do inform us of things. From The Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, we know something of the people who lived in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the second and third millenniums BCE. We know they celebrated a king named Gilgamesh; we know they believed in many gods; we know they were self-conscious of their own cultivation of the natural world; and we know they were literate. These things we can fix -- or establish definitely. But stories also remind us of things we cannot fix -- of what it means to be human. They reflect our will to understand what we cannot understand, and reconcile us to mortality.

We read The Epic of Gilgamesh, four thousand years after it was written, in part because we are scholars, or pseudo-scholars, and wish to learn something about human history. We read it as well because we want to know the meaning of life. The meaning of life, however, is not something we can wrap up and walk away with. Discussing the philosophy of the Tao, Alan Watts explains what he believes Lao-tzu means by the line, "The five colours will blind a man's sight." "[T]he eye's sensitivity to color," Watts writes, "is impaired by the fixed idea that there are just five true colors. There is an infinite continuity of shading, and breaking it down into divisions with names distracts the attention from its subtlety" (27). Similarly, the mind's sensitivity to the meaning of life is impaired by fixed notions or perspectives on what it means to be human. There is an infinite continuity of meaning that can be comprehended only by seeing again, for ourselves. We read stories -- and reading is a kind of re-telling -- not to learn what is known but to know what cannot be known, for it is ongoing and we are in the middle of it.

To see for ourselves the meaning of a story, we need, first of all, to look carefully at what happens in the story; that is, we need to look at it as if the actions and people it describes actually took place or existed. We can articulate the questions raised by a character's actions and discuss the implications of their consequences. But we need to consider, too, how a story is put together -- how it uses the conventions of language, of events with beginnings and endings, of description, of character, and of storytelling itself to reawaken our sensitivity to the real world. The real world is the world without conventions, the unnameable, unrepresentable world -- in its continuity of action, its shadings and blurrings of character, its indecipherable patterns of being. The stories that mean most to us bring us back to our own unintelligible and yet immeasurably meaningful lives.

The Epic of Gilgamesh opens with the convention of a frame -- a prologue that sets off the story of Gilgamesh's life. An unnamed narrator states, "I will proclaim to the world the deeds of Gilgamesh" (61). Thus the narrator introduces himself before he introduces the hero, and by doing so, welcomes us, as the imaginary listeners and actual readers, into the endless present of the telling of the tale. The deeds of Gilgamesh took place in the past. Having returned from his journey and resting from his labor, Gilgamesh, the narrator recounts, engraved the whole story on a clay tablet. What we are reading, then, is the transcription of an oral telling that repeats a written telling. On the one hand the frame helps verisimilitude. By referring to Gilgamesh's own act of writing, the narrator attempts to convince us that Gilgamesh was an actual king and that the story that follows is a true story. On the other hand, by calling our attention to the act of telling, the narrator reminds us that the truth of a story might lie in the very fact of its being a story -- the undeniable fact of its narration. To deny its narration would be to deny our own existence. Either way, the frame blurs the distinction between Gilgamesh's world, or the world of the tale, and our own.

And yet there is an irony in the prologue of which the narrator himself seems unaware -- an irony that highlights our position as readers and not listeners. Praising Gilgamesh's accomplishments, the narrator invites us to survey the city of Uruk: "Look at it still today.... Touch the threshold, it is ancient.... Climb upon the wall of Uruk; walk along it, I say; regard the foundation terrace and examine the masonry: is it not burnt brick and good? The seven sages laid the foundations" (61). It seems as if the narrator is counting on the walls themselves to verify his story, while from where we stand in time and space, these walls are nowhere to be seen -- they have been buried for centuries. However, we could say that the writer of the clay tablets anticipates our distance from Uruk and asks only that we imagine the walls, the way all storytellers ask their audiences to imagine what they are about to hear. Our ability to imagine the walls -- our inability not to as we read the sentence that describes them -- once again makes the act of narration part of the story and forces us, as readers, into the world of the text. The story has been passed on from narrator to narrator to listener to reader -- from writer to reader to reader. Thus even before we begin to read this story about the death of a friend and the hero's failed attempt to find immortality, we are made aware of the passage of time that connects us even as it separates us.

In the prologue we learn that Gilgamesh was two-thirds god and one-third man, and this knowledge is key to all that follows. Gilgamesh is a hero -- more beautiful, more courageous, more terrifying than the rest of us; his desires, attributes, and accomplishments epitomize our own. Yet he is also mortal: he must experience the death of others and die himself. How much more must a god rage against death than we who are merely mortal!And if he can reconcile himself with death then surely we can. In fact, without death his life would be meaningless, and the adventures that make up the epic would disappear. In celebrating Gilgamesh -- in reading The Epic of Gilgamesh -- we celebrate that which makes us human.

The story begins with the coming of Enkidu. As a young man and a god, Gilgamesh has no compassion for the people of Uruk. He is their king but not their shepherd; he kills their sons and rapes the daughters. Hearing the people's lament, the gods create Enkidu as a match for Gilgamesh, a second self: "`Let them contend together and leave Uruk in quiet'" (62). The plan works in several ways. First, Enkidu prevents Gilgamesh from entering the house of a bride and bridegroom; they fight and then they embrace as friends. Second, Enkidu and Gilgamesh undertake a journey into the forest to confront the terrible Humbaba. There they encourage each other to face death triumphantly:

All living creatures born of the flesh shall sit at last in the boat of the West, and when it sinks, when the boat of Magilum sinks, they are gone; but we shall go forward and fix our eyes on this monster. (81)

While everlasting life is not his destiny, Gilgamesh will leave behind him a name that endures. "I will go to the country where the cedar is felled," he tells Enkidu. "I will set up my name in the place where the names of famous men are written" (70). Thus Gilgamesh turns his attention away from small personal desires to loftier personal desires -- desires that benefit rather than harm Uruk. We remember from the prologue that the walls of the city, made from the cedar taken from the forest, still stand in actuality or in imagination to proclaim Gilgamesh's fame, and the very first sentence of the epic attests to the immortality of his name. But the immortality of a name is less the ability to live forever than the inability to die. Third and most important, Enkidu teaches Gilgamesh what it means to be human; he teaches him the meaning of love and compassion, the meaning of loss and of growing older, the meaning of mortality.

From its beginnings, Enkidu's story raises many questions on the nature of man. Created of clay and water and dropped into the wilderness, Enkidu is "innocent of mankind," knowing "nothing of cultivated land" (63). He lives in joy with the beasts until a trapper sees that Enkidu is destroying the traps and helping the beasts escape. The trapper needs to tame Enkidu just as the people of Uruk need to tame Gilgamesh, or to redirect his desires. As we read the story, we are not necessarily on the trapper's or the people's sides; we may identify more with the heroes -- with Enkidu and Gilgamesh. Civilization is less a thing than a process, the transformation of the primitive. Without the primitive, civilization would cease to exist. The Epic of Gilgamesh
helps us see past the conventional classifications of "civilized" and "primitive" so that we might recall what each of us gains and loses in developing from one state of being to another. Would civilized man, if he could, go back to being primitive? Or, to put it another way, what does primitive man lose in the process of becoming civilized -- and what does he gain?

What Enkidu gains is wisdom. The harlot -- brought to the wilderness to trap Enkidu -- stands for this wisdom and speaks for civilization, even as she stands also as an outcast and an object of sexual desire. Enkidu is seduced by the harlot and then rejected by the beasts. This seems a dirty trick. Recognizing the corruption in himself, civilized man corrupts primitive man to weaken him and make him one of his own. Yet for Enkidu as for human beings in general, sexual desire leads to domesticity, or love. "Enkidu was grown weak," the narrator tells us, "for wisdom was in him, and the thoughts of a man were in his heart." The woman says to him, "You are wise, Enkidu, and now you have become like a god. Why do you want to run wild with the beasts in the hills?" She tells him about "strong-walled Uruk" and "the blessed temple of Ishtar and of Anu, of love and of heaven," and about Gilgamesh himself. Enkidu is pleased: "he longed for a comrade, for one who would understand his heart" (65).

Ultimately, Enkidu's journey out of the wilderness and his adventure with Gilgamesh lead to his death, and, looking back in his sickness, Enkidu curses the walls of the city: "O, if I had known the conclusion!If I had known that this was all the good that would come of it, I would have raised the axe and split you into little pieces and set up here a gate of wattle instead" (90). He curses the trapper and the harlot, who had destroyed his innocence -- as if innocence were precisely innocence of death and without consciousness, or knowledge, or wisdom, there would be no death. Yet Shamash, the Sun God, reminds him that the loss of innocence brings recompense:

Enkidu, why are you cursing the woman, the mistress who taught you to eat bread fit for gods and drink wine of kings? She who put upon you a magnificent garment, did she not give you glorious Gilgamesh for your companion, and has not Gilgamesh, your own brother, made you rest on a royal bed and recline on a couch at his left hand?

Above all, Shamash reminds Enkidu that he will be mourned by the people of Uruk and that "When you are dead [Gilgamesh] will let his hair grow long for your sake, he will wear a lion's pelt and wander through the desert" (91). Hearing Shamash, Enkidu changes his curse to a blessing. Bitter as his death is to him, and to Gilgamesh, it gives meaning to his life, for it makes companionship a thing of consequence. When Enkidu tells Gilgamesh his dream of the Underworld, Gilgamesh responds, "we must treasure the dream whatever the terror; for the dream has shown that misery comes at last to the healthy man, the end of life is sorrow" (93). Enkidu is in the story to die. In his rage and despair, Gilgamesh must live with the death of his friend, and with the knowledge that "What my brother is now, that shall I be" (97).

Afraid of this knowledge, even hoping to deny it, Gilgamesh goes on a search for everlasting life. Two-thirds god, he is able to go farther than the rest of us could go except by participating in the act of storytelling. In the repetition of passages, the story gives us not only a description but the sense of Gilgamesh's journey into the twelve leagues of darkness: "At the end of five leagues, the darkness was thick and there was no light, he could see nothing ahead and nothing behind him. At the end of six leagues the darkness was thick and there was no light, he could see nothing ahead and nothing behind him" (99). Gilgamesh speaks for us when he says, "Although I am no better than a dead man, still let me see the light of the sun" (100). And in the repetition of his own description of himself and recounting of what has happened to him, we feel his grief over the loss of his friend; we feel his aging, and the inevitability of our own grief and aging: "[W]hy should not my cheeks be starved and my face drawn? . . . Enkidu my brother, whom I loved, the end of mortality has overtaken him" (101).

Beside the sea, Gilgamesh meets Siduri, "the woman of the vine, the maker of wine," who reminds him of the meaningfulness of being human. "Gilgamesh, where are you hurrying to?" she asks.

You will never find that life for which you are looking. When the gods created man they allotted to him death, but life they retained in their own keeping. As for you, Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things; day and night, night and day, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice. Let your clothes be fresh, bathe yourself in water, cherish the little child that holds your hand, and make your wife happy in your embrace; for this too is the lot of man. (102)

If it is "life" the gods retain in their keeping, it is not human life, for human life depends on the passage of time and the possibility of death.

Yet Gilgamesh still cannot rest. He continues his journey to Utnapishtim the Faraway, the only mortal to whom the gods have given everlasting life. With Urshanabi, the ferryman, Gilgamesh crosses the waters of death. Like Siduri, Utnapishtim asks Gilgamesh, "Where are you hurrying to?" (105), and in answer to Gilgamesh's question, "How shall I find the life for which I am searching?" he says, "There is no permanence" (106). But he reveals the mystery of his own possession of everlasting life. He tells Gilgamesh the story of the flood, of the time when the gods, unable to sleep for the uproar raised by mankind, agreed to destroy mankind, and would have succeeded had not Ea, one of man's creators, instructed Utnapishtim to build a boat and "take up into [it] the seed of all living creatures" (108). The story is familiar to us not only because it anticipates Noah's story in the book of Genesis, but because it is the story of life, the story of destruction and renewal.

When Gilgamesh is ready to begin his long journey home, Utnapishtim, at the urging of his wife, reveals a second mystery of the gods. He tells Gilgamesh of a plant growing under water that can restore youth to a man. Gilgamesh finds the plant and picks it; he decides to take it to Uruk to give it to the old men. But as Gilgamesh bathes in the cool water of a well, a serpent rises up and snatches away the plant; immediately it sloughs its skin and returns to the well. Again this story is familiar to us, not only because we recognize this snake as a precursor of the more sinister one that appears in the Garden of Eden, but because we comprehend it as a symbol. In the Sumerian world, Ningizzida, the god of the serpent, is "the lord of the Tree of Life" (119). While Gilgamesh himself has lost the ability to live forever, or the opportunity to pass on this ability to the men of Uruk, it is enough that the snake recalls for us, in its sloughing of its skin, nature's pattern of regeneration.

And with this dramatic statement of theme, Gilgamesh returns to the strong-walled city of Uruk, and the story itself returns to its beginning. Gilgamesh says to the ferryman, with whom he has made the journey home, "Urshanabi, climb up on to the wall of Uruk, inspect its foundation terrace, and examine well the brickwork; see if it is not of burnt bricks; and did not the seven wise men lay these foundations?" We have taken the ferryman's place by passing the story on -- even if only to ourselves. The narrator tells us once again that Gilgamesh, worn out with his labor, "engraved on a stone the whole story" (117). And finally, with the death of Gilgamesh -- the end of the story and the end of the telling of it -- the text returns us to our mortal lives.

Mesopotamian/Sumerian Calendar

2009-02-25T09:59:00.000-08:00

Mesopotamian/Sumerian Calendar

In Mesopotamia the solar year was divided into two seasons, the "summer," which included the barley harvests in the second half of May or in the beginning of June, and the "winter," which roughly corresponded to today's fall-winter. Three seasons (Assyria) and four seasons (Anatolia) were counted in northerly countries, but in Mesopotamia the bipartition of the year seemed natural. As late as c. 1800 BC the prognoses for the welfare of the city of Mari, on the middle Euphrates, were taken for six months.

The months began at the first visibility of the New Moon, and in the 8th century BC court astronomers still reported this important observation to the Assyrian kings. The names of the months differed from city to city, and within the same Sumerian city of Babylonia a month could have several names, derived from festivals, from tasks (e.g., sheep shearing) usually performed in the given month, and so on, according to local needs. On the other hand, as early as the 27th century BC, the Sumerians had used artificial time units in referring to the tenure of some high official--e.g., on N-day of the turn of office of PN, governor. The Sumerian administration also needed a time unit comprising the whole agricultural cycle; for example, from the delivery of new barley and the settling of pertinent accounts to the next crop. This financial year began about two months after barley cutting. For other purposes, a year began before or with the harvest. This fluctuating and discontinuous year was not precise enough for the meticulous accounting of Sumerian scribes, who by 2400 BC already used the schematic year of 30 12 = 360 days.

At about the same time, the idea of a royal year took precise shape, beginning probably at the time of barley harvest, when the king celebrated the new (agricultural) year by offering first fruits to gods in expectation of their blessings for the year. When, in the course of this year, some royal exploit (conquest, temple building, and so on) demonstrated that the fates had been fixed favorably by the celestial powers, the year was named accordingly; for example, as the year in which "the temple of Ningirsu was built." Until the naming, a year was described as that "following the year named (after such and such event)." The use of the date formulas was supplanted in Babylonia by the counting of regnal years in the 17th century BC.

The use of lunar reckoning began to prevail in the 21st century BC. The lunar year probably owed its success to economic progress. A barley loan could be measured out to the lender at the next year's threshing floor. The wider use of silver as the standard of value demanded more flexible payment terms. A man hiring a servant in the lunar month of Kislimu for a year knew that the engagement would end at the return of the same month, without counting days or periods of office between two dates. At the city of Mari in about 1800 BC, the allocations were already reckoned on the basis of 29- and 30-day lunar months. In the 18th century BC, the Babylonian Empire standardized the year by adopting the lunar calendar of the Sumerian sacred city of Nippur. The power and the cultural prestige of Babylon assured the success of the lunar year, which began on Nisanu 1, in the spring. When, in the 17th century BC, the dating by regnal years became usual, the period between the accession day and the next Nisanu 1 was described as "the beginning of the kingship of PN," and the regnal years were counted from this Nisanu 1.It was necessary for the lunar year of about 354 days to be brought into line with the solar (agricultural) year of approximately 365 days. This was accomplished by the use of an intercalated month. Thus, in the 21st century BC, a special name for the intercalated month iti dirig appears in the sources. The intercalation was operated haphazardly, according to real or imagined needs, and each Sumerian city inserted months at will; e.g., 11 months in 18 years or two months in the same year. Later, the empires centralized the intercalation, and as late as 541 BC it was proclaimed by royal fiat. Improvements in astronomical knowledge eventually made possible the regularization of intercalation; and, under the Persian kings (c. 380 BC), Babylonian calendar calculators succeeded in computing an almost perfect equivalence in a lunisolar cycle of 19 years and 235 months with intercalations in the years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19 of the cycle. The new year's day (Nisanu 1) now oscillated around the spring equinox within a period of 27 days.

The Babylonian month names were Nisanu, Ayaru, Simanu, Du'uzu, Abu, Ululu, Tashritu, Arakhsamna, Kislimu, Tebetu, Shabatu, and Adaru. The month Adaru II was intercalated six times within the 19-year cycle but never in the year that was 17th of the cycle, when Ululu II was inserted. Thus, the Babylonian calendar until the end preserved a vestige of the original bipartition of the natural year into two seasons, just as the Babylonian months to the end remained truly lunar and began when the New Moon was first visible in the evening. The day began at sunset. Sundials and water clocks served to count hours.

The influence of the Babylonian calendar was seen in many continued customs and usages of its neighbor and vassal states long after the Babylonian Empire had been succeeded by others. In particular, the Jewish calendar in use at relatively late dates employed similar systems of intercalation of months, month names, and other details (see below The Jewish calendar). The Jewish adoption of Babylonian calendar customs dates from the period of the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century BC.

Other calendars used in the ancient Near East

The Assyrians and the Hittites. Of the calendars of other peoples of the ancient Near East, very little is known. Thus, though the names of all or of some months are known, their order is not. The months were probably everywhere lunar, but evidence for intercalation is often lacking; for instance, in Assyria. For accounting, the Assyrians also used a kind of week, of five days, as it seems, identified by the name of an eponymous official. Thus, a loan could be made and interest calculated for a number of weeks in advance and independently of the vagaries of the civil year. In the city of Ashur, the years bore the name of the official elected for the year; his eponym was known as the limmu. As late as about 1070 BC, his installation date was not fixed in the calendar. From about 1100 BC, however, Babylonian month names began to supplant Assyrian names, and, when Assyria became a world power, it used the Babylonian lunisolar calendar.

The calendar of the Hittite Empire is known even less well. As in Babylonia, the first Hittite month was that of first fruits, and, on its beginning, the gods determined the fates.

Iran

At about the time of the conquest of Babylonia in 539 BC, Persian kings made the Babylonian cyclic calendar standard throughout the Persian Empire, from the Indus to the Nile. Aramaic documents from Persian Egypt, for instance, bear Babylonian dates besides the Egyptian. Similarly, the royal years were reckoned in Babylonian style, from Nisanu 1. It is probable, however, that at the court itself the counting of regnal years began with the accession day. The Seleucids and, afterward, the Parthian rulers of Iran maintained the Babylonian calendar. The fiscal administration in northern Iran, from the 1st century BC, at least, used Zoroastrian month and day names in documents in Pahlavi (the Iranian language of Sasanian Persia). The origin and history of the Zoroastrian calendar year of 12 months of 30 days, plus five days (that is, 365 days), remain unknown. It became official under the Sasanian dynasty, from about AD 226 until the Arab conquest in 621. The Arabs introduced the Muslim lunar year, but the Persians continued to use the Sasanian solar year, which in 1079 was made equal to the Julian year by the introduction of the leap year.

Mesopotamia

2009-02-25T09:56:00.000-08:00

Mesopotamia

A region in the Middle East which is defined as the land lying between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris in what is Iraq today. This region was the birthplace of the first civilizations, and among the leading regions in the world for about 3,000 years. A wider definition of Mesopotamia is the land that that lies between the Zagros and Anti-Taurus Mountains in the northern end, and the Arabian plateau and Persian Gulf to the south, corresponding to modern Iraq, eastern Syria and southeastern Turkey.
The name 'Mesopotamia' comes from Greek, and means 'between rivers'.
The most important ancient civilizations in the region were first the Sumerian (3500 BCE- 2000 BCE), the Babylonian (18th century BCE- 539 BCE) and Assyrian (1350 BCE- 612 BCE). During the last two millenniums the Muslim Abbasids must be considered as the strongest rulers of Mesopotamia, both in might and in cultural achievements.
It was the two rivers that became the basis upon which the wealth of the region was based. Through relatively easy irrigation the agriculture could yield heavy crops. There were fish in the rivers, the area had a diversified agriculture and wildfowl was available out near the coast.
There was never a regular supply of water in Mesopotamia, and therefore irrigation was central to controlling the crops in southern Mesopotamia. In northern Mesopotamia, agriculture proved successful at an earlier date, dating back to 10th millennium BCE.
The result was an easy surplus of food products — a prerequisite for urbanization (since the city did not produce basic products, only refined) so cities developed. The cities were centres of trade, as well as production of handicrafts, state administration and military defence. Mesopotamia also had other important raw materials available, even if stone and wood was rare, which had to be imported. The most important local raw material was clay, which was used for building houses, and which was used to create tablets to write on.
The richness of Mesopotamia made it attractive for neighbouring peoples, and its lack of mountains made it fairly difficult to protect against invaders. The result was numerous invasions through the history, and many times did foreign warlords replace the existing rulers. Few dynasties lasted more than a few hundred years. The threat from the neighbours, was another reason for establishing the cities: The cities could be fortified and defended.

Cultural achievements
Much mathematical and astronomical science owes its beginnings to the Mesopotamians. They developed the sexagesimal system, which was used for all types of calculations, but which is still used for the clock all around the world.
Architecture and art are often impressive seen relative to its epoch, but cannot be compared to what is found in Egypt. But one achievement is among the greatest found in antiquity: The ziggurat, a temple structure of impressive size and high esthetical values.
Science was at a relatively early stage, and there are no known attempts to create laws and little use of analogy.
It was in Mesopotamia cuneiform writing was developed, and with this much literature of high value was produced. Enuma Elish and Gilgamesh are examples of great religious literature, while the Code of Hammurabi is one of the greatest early examples of juridical literature. Still, much of the available literature still remain untranslated.

History
People have been living in Mesopotamia for many thousands of years, the region probably belong to the longest inhabited regions of the world.
10th millennium BCE: Agriculture is starting to be developed in northern Mesopotamia.
7th millennium: Tiny settlements start to grow into villages.
4th millennium: Irrigation agriculture of southern Mesopotamia is starting to be developed, and proves to be more effective than the agriculture in the northern regions.
— Some of the villages started to grow into cities, where Eridu and Uruk were among the very first.
Around 3500: City-states in southern Mesopotamia develop, and form the culture we call Sumer.
Around 3100: The cuneiform writing system is starting to be used.
Around 2330: Mesopotamia is conquered by the Akkadians.
Approx. 2218: The tribesmen Gutians defeat the Akkadians.
22nd century: The 3rd dynasty of Ur gets control over large parts of Mesopotamia, and the region is revived.
Around 1760: Most of Mesopotamia comes under the control of Hammurabi and Babylonia.
Around 1600: Babylon is first sacked by the Hittites, then by the Kassites, who take control over the city.
Around 1350: The Assyrians become an important power in northern Mesopotamia, and can at times threaten Babylonia. In the centuries that followed, the Assyrian politics of deporting rebellious subjects made races mix in Mesopotamia.
11th century: Decline in strength and importance of Babylonia. Political chaos would last for about 200 years.
9th century: The Chaldeans get control over Babylonia, and makes it one of the strongest states in Mesopotamia.
612: Assyria collapses.
539: Babylon is conquered by the Persians. The Persians divided Mesopotamia into 2 satrapies; Babylon and Ashur, where Babylon was the most important in politics and administration. The following period was one of slow economic decline for the region.
312: Seleucus conquers Babylon, and a period of Hellenistic culture and economic growth comes to Mesopotamia.
Approx. 250: Mesopotamia is conquered by the Parthians.
226 CE: Mesopotamia is conquered by the Sassanids. Under their rule, prosperity continued and irrigation was improved.
635: Mesopotamia is conquered by the Muslim Arabs.
763: Baghdad is started to be built, as part of moving he centre of the Muslim world from Damascus to the Mesopotamian region. This involves the start of one the most impressive periods of the region, where Mesopotamia in many fields is the centre of the world.
1258: Following a sack of the Mongols, many state structures of Mesopotamia and the Muslim deteriorates. Both culture and economy suffer.
16th century: Ottoman Turks and Safavid Persians start battling over Mesopotamia.
17th century: The Ottomans get control over Mesopotamia.
1840: The first archaeological excavations start.
1932: The eastern and largest parts of Mesopotamia becomes part of Iraq with its independence.
1945: Syria becomes independent, with a territory that covers the western parts of Mesopotamia.

Akkad

2009-02-25T09:55:00.001-08:00

Akkad

Ancient region in Mesopotamia, the northwestern half of this region, until the rise of Babylonia in the 18th century. The other, southern half of Mesopotamia was Sumer. Many wars were fought between the two regions, but both sides also had to defend themselves against enemies in neighbouring countries.
The Akkadian homeland was the area where the Euphrates and Tigris were at their closest, a position corresponding approximately to today's Baghdad.
Akkad had its name from the city Agade, founded by Sargon around 2330 BCE. For about a century, Agade was the richest and most important city in the world.
The inhabitants of Akkad were Semits, and they spoke Akkadian, which was to become one of the dominating languages of Mesopotamia.

History
Around 2330: Sargon 1 the Great conquers all of Sumer, and makes the north Mesopotamian city, Agade, his new capital. This became the beginning of the Akkadian dynasty. His kingdom came to be known as 'Sumer and Akkad'.
2279: Sargon dies, and is succeeded by his son.
Around 2220: Akkad is conquered and sacked by the Gutians from the Zagros Mountains. The Gutians took control over Sumer as well.

The Amorites

2009-02-25T09:53:00.000-08:00

The Amorites

The Amorites were member of an ancient Semitic-speaking people who dominated the history of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine from about 2000 to about 1600 BC. In the oldest cuneiform sources (c. 2400-c. 2000 BC), the Amorites were equated with the West, though their true place of origin was most likely Arabia, not Syria. They were troublesome nomads and were believed to be one of the causes of the downfall of the 3rd dynasty of Ur (c. 2112-c. 2004 BC).

During the 2nd millennium BC the Akkadian term Amurru referred not only to an ethnic group but also to a language and to a geographic and political unit in Syria and Palestine. At the beginning of the millennium, a large-scale migration of great tribal federations from Arabia resulted in the occupation of Babylonia proper, the mid-Euphrates region, and Syria-Palestine. They set up a mosaic of small kingdoms and rapidly assimilated the Sumero-Akkadian culture. It is possible that this group was connected with the Amorites mentioned in earlier sources; some scholars, however, prefer to call this second group Eastern Canaanites, or Canaanites.

Almost all of the local kings in Babylonia (such as Hammurabi of Babylon) belonged to this stock. One capital was at Mari (modern Tall al-Hariri, Syria). Farther west, the political center was Halab (Aleppo); in that area, as well as in Palestine, the newcomers were thoroughly mixed with the Hurrians. The region then called Amurru was northern Palestine, with its center at Hazor, and the neighboring Syrian desert.

In the dark age between about 1600 and about 1100 BC, the language of the Amorites disappeared from Babylonia and the mid-Euphrates; in Syria and Palestine, however, it became dominant. In Assyrian inscriptions from about 1100 BC, the term Amurru designated part of Syria and all of Phoenicia and Palestine but no longer referred to any specific kingdom, language, or population.

Assyria

2009-02-25T09:51:00.000-08:00

Assyria
ashur, assur (Ancient)

KINGS
Old Assyrian


Middle Assyrian
Eriba-Adad 1	ca. 1380-1353
Ashur-uballit 1	ca. 1353-1318
Enlil-nirari	ca. 1317-1308
Arik-den-ili	ca. 1307-1296
Adad-nirari 1	ca. 1295-1264
Shalmaneser 1	ca. 1263-1234
Tukulti-Ninarta 1	ca. 1233-1197
Ashur-nadin-apli	ca. 1196-1194
Ashur-ninari 3	ca. 1193-1188
Enlil-kudurri-usur	ca. 1187-1183
Ninurta-apal-Ekur	ca. 1182-1180
Ashur-Dan 1	ca. 1179-1133
Ashur-resh-ishi 1	ca. 1133-1115
Tiglath-Pileser 1	ca. 1115-1076
Asharid-apal-Ekur	ca. 1076-1074
Ashur-bel-kala	ca. 1074-1056
Eriba-Adad 2	ca. 1056-1054
Shamsi-Adad 4	ca. 1054-1050
Ashur-nasir-pal 1	ca. 1050-1031
Shalmaneser 2	ca. 1031-1019
Ashur-nirari 4	ca. 1019-1013
Ashur-rabi 1	ca. 1013-972
Ashur-resh-ishi 2	ca. 972-967
Tiglath-Pileser 2	ca. 967-935
Ashur-Dan 2	ca. 935-912
Neo-Assyrian
Adad-niari 2	912-891
Tukulti-Ninurta 2	891-884
Ashur-nasir-pal 2	884-859
Shalmaneser 3	859-824
Shamsi-Adad 5	822-811
Shammu-ramat	811-808
Adad-nirari 3	811-783
Shalmaneser 4	783-773
Ashur-Dan 3	773-755
Ashur-nirari 5	755-745
Tiglath-Pileser 3	745-727
Shalmaneser 5	727-722 (709)
Sargon 2	722-705
Sennacherib	705-681
Esarhaddon	681-669
Ashurbanipal	669-ca. 631
Ashur-etil-ilani	ca. 631-ca. 627
Sin-shumu-lishir	626
Sin-shar-ishkun	ca. 627-612

Ancient country in the Middle East, with centre in modern Iraq along the Tigris river. At its height in the 7th century BCE, Assyria also covered areas in modern eastern Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, western Iran, Kuwait and Egypt.

Society and Economy
Basic to the central region of Assyria was farming, fed by both the Tigris river and water from the Armenian mountains in the north, and the Zagros mountains in the east. With the expansion of Assyria, more land brought other economies, like mining and forestry.
It is believed that Assyria's civilization resulted from the immigration of an unknown people into the area around 6000 BCE. This was followed by Semitic immigration about 3 millenia later.
Life was confined to small villages, and there was an intricate system of irrigation that fed the agriculture. There were few larger cities, and these served as trade and craft centres. Assyria had some slaves, but these played only a small part in the economy.
The Assyrians were noted for their vast knowledge in warfare and organization.

Administration
Assyria had a traditional form of monarchy, in which the king answered only to his court. The king's son would normally take over as the new ruler at the old king's death. Local administration was organized around area rulers who paid taxes to the king as well as provided men for the army.
As Assyria extended its territories through military campaigns, local rulers were allowed to continue to govern their old regions, as long as they fulfilled their duties to the Assyrian king.
Under Sargon 2, Assyria was divided into 70 provinces.

Culture
Among the finest cultural achievements of Assyria was literature, which initially used a cuneiform alphabet from the Babylonians written on clay tablets. Later an Aramaic script written on parchment predominated. The literature dealt with a number of subjects like legal issues, medicine and history.
Assyrian architecture used mud bricks, and occasionally stone. Houses and buildings never exceeded one storey and had flat roofs. While most houses were modest, palaces and temples could cover large areas inside the cities.
Sculptures and wall carvings were another central part of Assyrian culture, and showed high skill in craftsmanship. Document cylinder seals became an art form in itself, as intricate patterns and shapes were given to these.

History
Around 6500 BCE: First traces of agriculture in this region.
3rd millennium: Immigration of Semitic nomads, whose language becomes the leading one in the region.
— Strong influence from the Sumerian civilization in southern Mesopotamia.
Around 2300: Assyria is part of the Sumer-Akkadian empire.
Around 2000: Heavy immigration of the Amorites, a Semitic people from Arabia.
Around 1850: Assyrian merchants colonize parts of central Anatolia.
Around 1810: The Assyrian king Shamshi-Adad gets control over the territory from the Zagros Mountains to the Mediterranean (from western modern Iran to Syria/Lebanon). He establishes an administrative system, dividing the kingdom into districts with couriers bringing information between the different parts.
1760: Shamshi-Adad's son, Ishme-Dagan, is defeated by King Hammurabi of Babylonia, and Assyria once again becomes a province of another Mesopotamian Empire.
Around 1500: Assyria comes under control of the kingdom of Mitanni.
Around 1350: Assyria regains its independence from Mitanni under the ruler Ashur-uballit 1. A period of territorial expansions that stretches over 2 centuries starts.
Around 910: King Adad-nirari 2 conquers the state Nisibis.
884-859: King Ashurnasirpal 2 conducts several campaigns that extend the territory of Assyria. The campaigns led to heavy destruction in the defeated regions. He also establishes Calah as the new capital.
Around 830: King Shalmaneser 3 gets control over the Mediterranean trade routes.
Around 820: Following a revolt in the royal court, a year long civil war starts. This civil war results in a decline of Assyrian power.
Around 730: King Tiglath-pileser 3 conquers Syria and Israel, and he becomes king of Babylonia. Under him the power of the king grew stronger and an army was established. He conducted a policy of deporting peoples from their homelands in order to reduce their national identity.
722-705: Under Sargon 2, Assyrian territory is extended to southern Anatolia and the Persian Gulf. He also has the population of Israel deported. In order to get better control over his territory, he has Assyria divided into 70 provinces.
Around 705: King Sargon 2 has Dar Sharrukin built to become his new capital.
689: King Sennacherib destroys Babylon after several attacks. He later makes Nineveh capital of Assyria.
681-669: King Esarhaddon has Babylon rebuilt. He also captures Memphis, the capital of Egypt.
627: With the death of king Ashurbanipal, there is a court revolution, which results in heavy weakening of Assyria's power.
614: The Medes conquer Ashur.
612: The Medes and the Babylonians conquers Nineveh, and the Assyrian Empire comes to its final end.

Babylonia

2009-02-25T09:47:00.000-08:00

Babylonia
Babylonian: bābili
Old Persian: babirush

Ancient kingdom in Mesopotamia, lasting from approximately the 18th century until the 6th century BCE.
The Babylonian society was both an urban society and an agricultural one. The economy rested upon agriculture, but governance, industries and fine arts were carried out in the cities. In the entire kingdom there were no more than about 10-15 cities with 10,000 to 50,000 inhabitants. Apart from that, people lived in villages and hamlets.
The Babylonian heartland was between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, but at its largest the kingdom extended to the entire populated Middle East.

Administration
The society was governed by an absolute monarch, the king, who was active in all fields of life, both as a legislator, judge, administrator and warlord. He was directly in charge of governing the system below him, and appointed directly his closest coworkers, the governors. Local administration around the country was performed by mayors and councils of elders.
The courts of Babylonia were central for justice in Babylonia. Each court had between 1 and 4 judges, and appeals could only be directed towards the king. Punishment varied from capital punishment and mutilation to flogging, reduction to slavery, and banishment. Many of the rulings involved indemnities, in which the fine varied from 3 to 30 times the value of the object to be restored.

Society
The Babylonian society was roughly divided into three classes: awilu (upper class), musheknu (free, but of little means) and wardu (slaves). All groups were protected by law, and enjoyed a minimum of rights. All groups (also the wardu, slaves) could engage in business and borrow money. However, there were differences between all classes in all fields, and many of the differences were fixed in the laws. All evidence tells us that the Babylonian society did not change much through its 1,200 years of existence.
Slaves were either life-time slaves or slaves for a limited period of time. In the situations where people were slaves for only a limited period of time, the reference is to free people. Free citizens could become slaves, either as a punishment for certain offences, or children or wives could be sold as slaves by their parents. Slaves were not protected by any laws in their relationship to their owners, but it is believed that they were treated well, since a healthy slave could work harder and better. Slaves could buy their own freedom, or they could get their freedom by marrying a free person. The average price for an adult male slave would correspond to about US$300-400 in today's values.
The upper class, awilus, were officials, priests, wealthy landowners and the the more affluent traders. This group owned much of Babylonia's land, the other great land-owning group being the temples.
The other group of free people, the musheknus were craftsmen, clerks and farmers.
One of the differences between the free classes of awilus and mushkenus were that the awilus could claim higher compensation for injuries inflicted upon them. But if one inflicted injuries upon others, a higher fine was then exacted.
Marriages were arranged by parents, and it was expected that the groom present a gift to the father of the bride. The marriage was concluded by a contract inscribed on a tablet. The woman had some rights in the marriage; she could have property and engage in business. But it was the man who enjoyed most rights in the marriage: he could easily divorce his wife, and marry a second if the first did not give him children.

Economy and Culture
The most important industry of Babylonia was agriculture, but other industries were fairly well developed too. Babylonia was involved in foreign trade, and exported manufactured goods, while the country had to import metal, wood and stone — materials that the country lacked.
Babylonian cities resemble to some extent the modern village in the Middle East. Most houses were only one-storey high, and built of mud bricks. They had no windows towards the street, and there were several rooms arranged around an inner courtyard. Inside the house, one of the rooms could be devoted to the gods. Family members were often buried in the ground of the house, together with items that were intended to help them in the afterlife.
The public and monumental architecture of the Babylonians, often involved the use of mud bricks as well, but in some respects their skills were more advanced. For example, they had a unique technique of making all straight lines slightly curved, so that hard lines would appear softer. In spite of it, the eye would not discover the curve.
The Babylonians inherited much of their technology from the Sumerians, mainly in irrigation and agriculture, the most important fields in the national economy. In order to govern agriculture, they had to be able to make maps, surveys, plans and do calculations. They used a fairly well developed mathematical system, which had 6 as the root number, not 10, as we now have. In order to be well prepared for different seasons, when there was a chance of flood, or little water, they needed almanacs. These were used in great detail, and relied upon a good calendar system developed by the Sumerians.
Other fields that saw some sort of development, were cosmetics, perfumery, medicine and pharmacology.

History
The earlier history of Babylonia is normally connected to that of Sumer, the land of city-states that covered the same part of Mesopotamia as Babylonia.
The rise of Babylonia must not be understood as the rise of a new region and people. It rather involved that old Sumer came under the effective control of a single city, Babylon. Hammurabi's first year of reign is generally considered as the beginning of Babylonia's history, but its exact dating is uncertain. There are 3 chronological systems for the ancient Middle East, and according to these, Hammurabi's first year is either 1848 BCE, 1792 BCE or 1728 BCE. The middle of these is used by most publications.
Around 1900 BCE: The Semitic tribe, the Amorites, conquers most of Mesopotamia, and establishes its kings in Babylon.
1792 BCE: With Hammurabi's accession to power as king of Babylonia, the kingdom starts to become an important force in the region.
1760s: Hammurabi wins important victories against Babylonia's neighbours, principally Elam and Larsa. The kingdom rises to one of the regions most important powers.
Last half 18th century: Babylonian civilization continues its progress under king Samsu-iluna (1750- 1712 BCE), son of Hammurabi. His strongest opponents are the Kassites and the Sea-Land under the leadership of Iluma-ilum.
17th century: Babylonia declines in power and territory under less apt rulers.
Around 1595: The Hittites attack Babylonia, and loot the kingdom and remove king Samsuditana from power. Babylonia was so weakened that for a period comes under control of the country known as Sea-Land.
Around 1600: Babylon is sacked by the Kassites, who take control over the kingdom. From this followed a 400 year period of growth and prosperity for the region. This was also a period of great cultural achievement, and one of the most impressive literary works, the Enuma Elish, belongs to it.
Around 1350: The Assyrians start to exercise their politics towards Babylonia, but do not conquer the country.
Around 1160 The Elamites conquer Babylonia, and loot the cities.
Around 1120: With king Nebuchadnezzar 1, Babylonia is revived. Under him, the kingdom attacks both Elam and Assyria.
11th century: After Nebuchadnezzar 1's death, Babylonia went into a period of political chaos, that would last for about 200 years.
9th century: The Chaldeans take control over Babylonia, and they revive Babylonia, making it into the dominant power in Mesopotamia.
8th century: Many bitter wars are fought against Assyria.
Around 625: The Chaldean king, Nabopolassar, makes Babylon his capital, and a new great era starts for Babylonia.
612: In an alliance with the Medes, the Babylonian king Nabopalassar (626- 605 BCE), defeats Assyria, and brings the kingdom to a final end.
605: King Nebuchadnezzar 2 wins a decisive victory against the Egyptians at Carchemish — Egypt had until then carried out many campaigns in the region after the fall of Assyria. During his reign, Babylonia becomes a new great power, politically and culturally.
562: Following the death of Nebuchadnezzar 2, there was a power struggle between several contenders for the throne. This resulted in a weaker Babylonia.
539: After capturing king Nabonidus of Babylonia, Persia is able to conquer Babylon without meeting resistance. Babylonia was annexed to Persia. This represent the end of what we call Babylonia, but much of the culture and most of the cities survived for some additional centuries.

The Chaldeans

2009-02-25T09:45:00.000-08:00

The Chaldeans,

The Chaldeans (Neo-Babylonian) Empire

(Neo-Babylonians)

After the fall of Assyrian power in Mesopotamia, the last great group of Semitic peoples dominated the area. Suffering mightily under the Assyrians, the city of Babylon finally rose up against its hated enemy, the city of Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire, and burned it to the ground.

While the Median kingdom controlled the highland region, the Chaldeans,

with their capital at Babylon, were masters of the Fertile Crescent.

Nebuchadnezzar, becoming king of the Chaldeans in 604 B.C., raised Babylonia

to another epoch of brilliance after more than a thousand years of eclipse. By

defeating the Egyptians in Syria, Nebuchadnezzar ended their hopes of

re-creating their empire. As we have seen (p. 29), he destroyed Jerusalem in

586 B.C. and carried thousands of Jews captive to Babylonia.

Nebuchadnezzar reconstructed Babylon, making it the largest and most

impressive city of its day. The tremendous city walls were wide enough at the

top to have rows of small houses on either side. In the center of Babylon ran

the famous Procession Street, which passed through the Ishtar Gate. This arch,

which was adorned with brilliant tile animals, is the best remaining example

of Babylonian architecture. The immense palace of Nebuchadnezzar towered

terrace upon terrace, each resplendent with masses of ferns, flowers, and

trees. These roof gardens, the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon, were so

beautiful that they were regarded by the Greeks as one of the seven wonders of

the ancient world.

Nebuchadnezzar also rebuilt the great temple-tower or ziggurat, the

Biblical "Tower of Babel," which the Greek historian Herodotus viewed a

century later and described as

a tower of solid masonry, a furlong [220 yards]

in length and breadth, upon which was raised a second

tower, and on that a third, and so on up to eight.

The ascent to the top is on the outside, by a path which

winds round all the towers. ^28

Nebuchadnezzar was the last great Mesopotamian ruler, and Chaldean power

quickly crumbled after his death in 562 B.C. The Chaldean priests - whose

interest in astrology so greatly added to the fund of Babylonian astronomical

knowledge that the word "Chaldean" came to mean astronomer - continually

undermined the monarchy. Finally, in 539 B.C., they opened the gates of

Babylon to Cyrus the Persian, thus fulfilling Daniel's message of doom upon

the notorious Belshazzar, the last Chaldean ruler: "You have been weighed in

the balances and found wanting" (Dan. 5:27).

The Kassites

2009-02-25T09:40:00.000-08:00

The History of The Kassites including their kings, cities, art and contributions to civilization..

The Kassites were an ancient people known primarily for establishing the second, or middle, Babylonian dynasty; they were believed (perhaps wrongly) to have originated in the Zagros Mountains of Iran. First mentioned in Elamite texts of the late 3rd millennium BC, they penetrated into Mesopotamia in the 2nd millennium, were repulsed by Hammurabi's son, but secured holdings within the Tigris-Euphrates valley on the northern frontiers of Babylonia and later established the second Babylonian dynasty. Chronicles and king lists are imprecise, and although the Kassite kings traditionally ruled over Babylonia for 576 years, it is probable that the first Kassite kings reigned in Babylonia simultaneously with the last kings of the first Babylonian dynasty; thus Gandash, the first Kassite king, possibly began his reign about the middle of the 18th century Bc, but not at Babylon.

The Kassite kings appear to have been members of a small military aristocracy but were apparently efficient rulers and not locally unpopular. Their capital city was Dur-Kurigalzu. The horse, the sacred animal of the Kassites, probably first came into use in Babylonia at this time. Contemporary Kassite records are not numerous. Most belong to the archives of the guenna (provincial governor) of the city of Nippur and seem to indicate a feudal system of government during the 14th and 13th centuries.

One Kassite invention was the boundary stone (kudurru), a block of stone that served as a record of a grant of land by the king to favored persons. The interest of the boundary stones for modern scholars is not only economic and religious but also artistic. The temples that the Kassite kings built or rebuilt are mainly in the Babylonian tradition, although one Kassite innovation was the use of molded bricks to form figures in relief.

In the 12th century Elam struck the final blow at Kassite power in Babylonia, already weakened by local insurrection. In the 1st millennium the Kassites withdrew to the Zagros Mountains, where they opposed the eastward expansion of Assyrian power and paid tribute to Persia. They were conquered by Alexander the Great but later regained their independence.

The Kassites in Babylonia

The Kassites had settled by 1800 BC in what is now western Iran in the region of Hamadan-Kermanshah. The first to feel their forward thrust was Samsuiluna, who had to repel groups of Kassite invaders. Increasing numbers of Kassites gradually reached Babylonia and other parts of Mesopotamia. There they founded principalities, of which little is known. No inscription or document in the Kassite language has been preserved. Some 300 Kassite words have been found in Babylonian documents. Nor is much known about the social structure of the Kassites or their culture. There seems to have been no hereditary kingdom. Their religion was polytheistic; the names of some 30 gods are known.

The beginning of Kassite rule in Babylonia cannot be dated exactly. A king called Agum II ruled over a state that stretched from western Iran to the middle part of the Euphrates valley; 24 years after the Hittites had carried off the statue of the Babylonian god Marduk, he regained possession of the statue, brought it back to Babylon, and renewed the cult, making the god Marduk the equal of the corresponding Kassite god, Shuqamuna. Meanwhile, native princes continued to reign in southern Babylonia. It may have been Ulamburiash who finally annexed this area around 1450 and began negotiations with Egypt in Syria. Karaindash built a temple with bas-relief tile ornaments in Uruk (Erech) around 1420. A new capital west of Baghdad, Dur Kurigalzu, competing with Babylon, was founded and named after Kurigalzu I (c. 1400-c. 1375). His successors Kadashman-Enlil I (c. 1375-c. 1360) and Burnaburiash II (c. 1360-c. 1333) were in correspondence with the Egyptian rulers Amenhotep III and Akhenaton (Amenhotep IV). They were interested in trading their lapis lazuli and other items for gold as well as in planning political marriages. Kurigalzu II (c. 1332-c. 1308) fought against the Assyrians but was defeated by them. His successors sought to ally themselves with the Hittites in order to stop the expansion of the Assyrians. During the reign of Kashtiliash IV (c. 1232-c. 1225), Babylonia waged war on two fronts at the same time--against Elam and Assyria--ending in the catastrophic invasion and destruction of Babylon by Tukulti-Ninurta I. Not until the time of the kings Adad-shum-usur (c. 1216-c. 1187) and Melishipak (c. 1186-c. 1172) was Babylon able to experience a period of prosperity and peace. Their successors were again forced to fight, facing the conqueror King Shutruk-Nahhunte of Elam (c. 1185-c. 1155). Cruel and fierce, the Elamites finally destroyed the dynasty of the Kassites during these wars (about 1155). Some poetical works lament this catastrophe.

Letters and documents of the time after 1380 show that many things had changed after the Kassites took power. The Kassite upper class, always a small minority, had been largely "Babylonianized." Babylonian names were to be found even among the royalty, and they predominated among the civil servants and the officers. The new feudal character of the social structure showed the influence of the Kassites. Babylonian town life had revived on the basis of commerce and handicrafts. The Kassitic nobility, however, maintained the upper hand in the rural areas, their wealthiest representatives holding very large landed estates. Many of these holdings came from donations of the king to deserving officers and civil servants, considerable privileges being connected with such grants. From the time of Kurigalzu II these were registered on stone tablets or, more frequently, on boundary stones called kudurrus. After 1200 the number of these increased substantially, because the kings needed a steadily growing retinue of loyal followers. The boundary stones had pictures in bas-relief, very often a multitude of religious symbols, and frequently contained detailed inscriptions giving the borders of the particular estate; sometimes the deserts of the recipient were listed and his privileges recorded; finally, trespassers were threatened with the most terrifying curses. Agriculture and cattle husbandry were the main pursuits on these estates, and horses were raised for the light war chariots of the cavalry. There was an export trade in horses and vehicles in exchange for raw material. As for the king, the idea of the social-minded ruler continued to be valid.

The decline of Babylonian culture at the end of the Old Babylonian period continued for some time under the Kassites. Not until approximately 1420 did the Kassites develop a distinctive style in architecture and sculpture. Kurigalzu I played an important part, especially in Ur, as a patron of the building arts. Poetry and scientific literature developed only gradually after 1400. The existence of earlier work is clear from poetry, philological lists, and collections of omens and signs that were in existence by the 14th century or before and that have been discovered in the Hittite capital of Hattusa, in the Syrian capital of Ugarit, and even as far away as Palestine. Somewhat later, new writings appear: medical diagnoses and recipes, more Sumero-Akkadian word lists, and collections of astrological and other omens and signs with their interpretations. Most of these works are known today only from copies of more recent date. The most important is the Babylonian epic of the creation of the world, Enuma elish. Composed by an unknown poet, probably in the 14th century, it tells the story of the god Marduk. He began as the god of Babylon and was elevated to be king over all other gods after having successfully accomplished the destruction of the powers of chaos. For almost 1,000 years this epic was recited during the New Year's festival in the spring as part of the Marduk cult in Babylon. The literature of this time contains very few Kassitic words. Many scholars believe that the essential groundwork for the development of the subsequent Babylonian culture was laid during the later epoch of the Kassite era.

Rivers-Tigris

2009-02-25T09:34:00.000-08:00

Tigris
Arabic: dijla

River of Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Its length is 1,850 km, and it has two principal sources, Lake Hazer and Lake Van, both in Anatolia in Turkey. These two streams joins at Til in Turkey. Tributaries include Great Zab, Little Zab, Diyala, and Adhaim.
Along its course, the Tigris passes through some of the major cities of Iraq, like Mosul, Tikrit, Samarra, and the capital Baghdad. At Qurna, Tigris joins with the Euphrates, and for the remaining 170 km to the outlet at the Persian Gulf, it is known as Shatt El Arab.
At Samarra a barrage is constructed, in order to improve the control of the floods that can occur between March and May, when snow melts in the mountains. This barrage was also constructed to provide better irrigation, but there have been few agricultural achievements. The barrage has reduced the amount of silt carried with the water, an advantage for sailing on the river, as it is shallow, but its negative effect is that it has reduced the quality of the soil of the region.
The Tigris has been an important river up through history, and was one of the main sources for the ancient Mesopotamian civilizations.

Euphrates

2009-02-25T09:33:00.000-08:00

Euphrates
Turkish: Firat
Arabic: 'al-furāt

River in the Middle East, rising in Turkey, passing through Syria before it ends in Iraq where together with Tigris it forms the Shattu l-Arab river way.
Euphrates is 2,735 km long and has a discharge of 900,000 litres per second. The surface of the river is 450,000 km². The Euphrates gets 90% of its water from Turkey, through a set of tributary rivers like Karasu, Murat and Khabur.

Shatt El Arab

2009-02-25T09:31:00.000-08:00

Shatt El Arab
Arabic: shattu l-¢arabi
Persian: arvand-rood

River in Iran and Iraq (defines the border), of about 170 km length, ending in the Persian Gulf. In Iran the river is called Arvand-Rood.
Shatt El Arab is the continuation of the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, which joins at Qurna, but has other tributary rivers further downstream, like the important Iranian Karun. The landscape to the south of the Shatt El Arab is marshy, and has hosted the development of a distinct Arab culture, where isolation and the natural conditions have been the basic factors.
The water of Shatt El Arab carries so large amounts of silt that the river has to be frequently dredged to remain navigable. This problem has been reduced with the barrage of Samarra.
Among the most important economic activities along the Shatt El Arab are shipping of oil from Iraq and Iran, and large-scale date production. The two major cities of the river are Abadan in Iran and Basra in Iraq.

History
1639: Treaty of Zohab, between the Persian and the Ottoman Empires, where the rights of Shatt El Arab were disputed. This agreement did not manage to close the disagreements on the border issue between the two empires.
1847: Agreement of Ezerum, which was understood so that the Shatt El Arab was to remain under the Ottomans, while the Persians had navigation rights. At this point Russia and Britain were involved in the conflict, Russia on Persian side and the British on Ottoman side.
1914: New agreements, establishing the border at some points along the middle of the river, but most of the time the border ran along the shores on Persian side, leaving the Ottomans as the strongest party.
1971-75: Iranian- Iraqi disagreements on the border, where Iran occupies a small group of Iraqi islands just at the outlet of Shatt El Arab.
1980: With old disagreements on the border line in mind, Iraq attacks Iran, and the eight years of war between the two countries start.
1988: Peace between Iran and Iraq, without changes in the borders between the two countries.
1991: After the defeat in the Gulf War, Iraq starts planning for a canal system that will drain out the marshes on the Iraqi side of the Shatt El Arab. While this is a measure that will bring southern Iraq back to the natural conditions that dominated in earlier and more prosperous times of the region's history, this is all planned without consideration of the interests of the Marsh Arabs.

King-Nebuchadnezzar 2

2009-02-25T09:28:00.000-08:00

Nebuchadnezzar 2
Akkadian: nabu-kudurri-usur

(Ca. 635 BC-561 BCE) King of Babylonia (ca. 605 BC-561 BCE), being the second king of the Chaldean dynasty.
Nebuchadnezzar 2 was one of the greatest kings of the Middle East, but is in the Western world known principally for conquering Jerusalem, and deporting the king of Judah, Jehoiakim, and many of his people to Babylonia. His main achievements were, however, to revitalize Babylon, constructing the hanging gardens (which, actually, might never have existed — it could be a myth, since there are no contemporary accounts of it and no archaeological traces), rebuilding the temple of Marduk and the nearby ziggurat.
In addition to completing and extending the fortifications around Babylon, he also had built the Median Wall. This was erected in order to defend Babylonia against the Medes to the north, a people that grew increasingly strong through his reign.
His father was king Nabopolassar, who was the founder of the Chaldean dynasty. While Nabopolassar never had claimed royal descent, Nebuchadnezzar propagated that the Akkadian king Naram-Sin was his ancestor. Moreover, he claimed that he had been granted universal kingship by the chief-god Marduk.
Even if Nebuchadnezzar was the king that had the leading people of Judah deported, he is still presented in a positive light in the Bible. Nebuchadnezzar is actually presented as the instrument of God by Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

History
Approx. 635 BCE: Born.
610: Nebuchadnezzar starts acting as a military administrator, but is also active in restoring the temple of Marduk.
607: He commands an army together with his father north of Assyria.
605: Nebuchadnezzar leads a campaign against the Egyptians near Carchemish in today's Syria, and returns victorious. This resulted in Babylonia becoming the leading military power in the Middle East.
— September 7: With the death of his father, Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar returns to Babylon to ascend the throne within 3 weeks after his death.
604: Nebuchadnezzar gets the oath of submission from the rulers of local states in Syria and Palestine.
600: He gets his first serious military defeat when fighting an Egyptian army. This defeat also weakened him politically, and many of his vassal states defected.
597 March 16: Nebuchadnezzar conquers Jerusalem, and captures the king of Judah, Jehoiakim. Judah had been among the states that vowed their submission to Nebuchadnezzar in 604, but which defected in 600.
595: An invasion from Elam is stopped.
594: Revolt in Babylonia inside the army.
588: Fierce revolt in Judah, and Nebuchadnezzar moves his troops in, but does not achieve any quick results.
587: The revolt in Judah is suppressed.
587/6: The Temple of Jerusalem is destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar.
582: Many more of the inhabitants of Judah are deported to Babylonia.
568: Nebuchadnezzar's troops invade Egypt.
562 October: Nebuchadnezzar dies, and is succeeded by his son, Amel-Marduk.

Hammurabi

2009-02-25T09:15:00.000-08:00

Hammurabi
Other spelling: Hammurapi

King of Babylonia 1792-1750 BCE.
Estimates on the emergence of the state of Babylonia corresponds with the rise of Hammurabi, even if he was actually the 6th king in his dynasty.
Other time reconstructions make his governance 1728-1686 BCE.
Hammurabi is principally known for his codification of Babylonian laws, which was probably not his own creation, but a continuation of older legal systems.
Although Hammurabi experienced many military victories during the last period of his reign, he was not a great state builder — principally due to the existence of relatively few models for states and their structure. He did not develop a functional bureaucracy and chose to follow a totalitarian approach to governance. Hence, Hammurabi was active in building and restoring temples, city walls and public buildings, building canals for irrigation and fighting wars. But at the very same time, he was forced to rely upon the aid of his supporters to survive as ruler.
The strategic concern of Hammurabi throughout his reign was to assure Babylonia's control over the Euphrates — the life source of the country.
For the first 25 or so years of his reign, Hammurabi's Babylonia was the victim of much pressure from neighbouring countries and cities. The main contenders were Larsa, Mari, Ashur and Eshnunna, countries that at some periods would also ally with him.
Hammurabi is probably the most recognized ruler in the history of early civilizations in Mesopotamia — but it would be wrong to call him the most important. The only real importance he had was, during an extended period, to strengthen northern Mesopotamia at the expense of the southern regions — an act that would have impact on the region for a period of about 1,000 years.

History

Around 1810 BCE?: Born in Babylon. It is not known when Hammurabi was born, but when he took power in 1792, he was relatively young, although old enough to be an effective leader.

1794: King Rim-Sin of Larsa conquers Isin, the country between Babylonia and Larsa. Over the years this resulted in some clashes between Babylonia and Larsa, but no war.

1792: King Sin-muballit dies, and Hammurabi becomes ruler.

1787: Hammurabi conquers Uruk and Isin.

1786: Clashes with Larsa, but there is no final outcome to the conflicts.

1784: Fightings with the neighbours in the northwest and east.

1764: Hammurabi wages a war against a coalition of Ashru, Eshnunna and Elam, countries that blocked Babylonia's access to the metal-producing areas in Iran.

1763: New war against King Rim-Sin of Larsa, where it is believed that Hammurabi dammed the river Euphrates to weaken Larsa. This war ends with the total victory of Hammurabi.

1760: War against Babylonia's neighbours in the east.

1761: War against Mari in the northwest, despite the fact that King Zimrilim of Mari had been Hammurabi's ally for decades.

1755: Eshnunnu in the north is totally defeated by Hammurabi. This time too, it results from damming up the Tigris River.

1750: Hammurabi dies, and is succeeded by his son, Sumsuiluna.

Writing-Cuneiform

2009-02-24T10:33:00.000-08:00

Cuneiform Tablet

Account of Rations for Six Persons
Working as Messengers for the City Governor

Mesopotamia, Umma.

ca. 2040 B.C.

x 3.23

This tablet was taken by astronaut Sonny Carter, an Emory University alumnus, on the November 1989 mission of the space shuttle Discovery as part of NASA's Object in Space Program. Representing the oldest human artifact to have traveled in space, the cuneiform writing on the tablet lists rations for 6 messengers undertaking a journey:

Here is the translation:

For Bama: 5 quarts beer; 5 quarts bread; 5 ounces onions; 3 ounces oil; 2 ounces alkali

For Baza: the menial: same amount

For Lugal-sazu: same amount

For Su-Esdar: 10 quarts beer; 10 quarts bread; 5 ounces onions; 3 ounces oil; 2 ounces alkali

For Mas: 5 quarts beer; 5 quarts bread; 5 ounces (onions); 3 ounces oil; 2 ounces alkali

For Ubarum: 3 quarts beer; 2 quarts bread; 56 ounces (onions); 3 ounces oil; 2 ounces alkali

Day; 24 Year: Huhnuri was raided (=Amar-Suen 7, 2040 B.C.)

Cuneiform numbers

Cuneiform numbers were written using a combination of just two signs: a vertical wedge for '1' and a corner wedge for '10'. Handwriting varied as much in Old Babylonian times as it does now but the basic system of numbers is illustrated below.

1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20
30	40	50	60

Some common variants are

	for 4
	for 7
	for 8.

Occasionally, 19 was written as something like , meaning 20 - 1, although there are a huge number of minor variations in the way this sign is written.

Additionally, there were special signs for some common fractions. These were used when the numbers stood for metrological quantities, such as 1/2 gin.

	1/2
	1/3
	2/3
	5/6

Larger cuneiform numbers

For computation, the Mesopotamians used what is usually referred to as a 'sexagesimal' (i.e., base-60) system. Technically, this is a slightly inaccurate designation as they used only combinations of two symbols bundled together for writing numbers up to 60. For writing numbers greater than 60, they just repeated the symbols in different columns, just as we do, except that where for us a '1' in the 'tens' column means 10, for the Babylonians a in the 'sixties' column meant 60. Each column increased the value of the number by a factor of 60, and the Babylonians wrote their numbers with the largest values to the left, just as we do. Here are some examples of cuneiform numbers, their transliterations and values in our notation.

Cuneiform	Transliteration	Decimal value
	1,15	75
	1,40	100
	16,43	1003
	44,26,40	160000
	1,24,51,10	305470

There are a few differences between the way we write our numbers and the way the Babylonians did. First, they had no special way to mark an empty column. We would write a zero to mark the place, they would often leave a space, but not always. For example, it is not always clear if should mean '2' or '61', or even '3601'. In practice, empty columns don't arise that often in a base-60 system and so this was not such a problem as you may think. Later on, in the Neo-Babylonian and Seleucid times, when astronomers needed to do lots of many-place sexagesimal computations, they did introduce an empty-column marker.

One of the great advantages of a place-value system is that you can use the same symbols to make ever larger numbers. There is no limit to how large a number you can write down. Another advantage is that you can continue writing numbers in places to the right of the units column in order to denote fractions. All that distinguishes the number 1234 from the number 1.234 is the use of a decimal point (or comma in Europe) to mark where the units come. Computations with fractions are just the same as computations with whole numbers. The Babylonians used the same idea, except that they did not bother with a decimal point - that absolute size of a number was 'determined by inspection.' For example, the number could mean 160000, as noted above, but it could also be 1/81, the reciprocal of 81, which is why it was widely used. In the early days of deciphering Mesopotamian mathematics, people were puzzled as to why they would go to the trouble of writing a 160000-times multiplication table. The last sexagesimal number given in the table above, , also has a more useful meaning than 305470.