Then, about 1720 B.C., a Babylonian king named Hammurabi became ruler. He conquered other kingdoms around Babylonia and built an empire.

His empire weakened and was taken over by Assyria, until another king, Nebuchadnezzar, started another strong empire to succeed that of Hammurabi. Babylon was the capital city of this empire, and Nebuchadnezzar built many magnificent temples there. Another prominent city in Babylonia was the city of Ur.

Ashurbanipal, a king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, was proud of his scribal education. His youthful scholarly pursuits included oil divination, mathematics, reading and writing as well as the usual horsemanship, hunting, chariotry, soldierliness, craftsmanship, and royal decorum. During his reign he collected cuneiform texts from all over Mesopotamia, and especially Babylonia, in the library in Nineveh, the first systematically organized library in the ancient Middle East, which survives in part today.

In ancient Egypt, literacy was concentrated among an educated elite of scribes. Only people from certain backgrounds were allowed to train to become scribes, in the service of temple, pharaonic, and military authorities. The hieroglyph system was always difficult to learn, but in later centuries was purposely made even more so, as this preserved the scribes’ status. The rate of literacy in Pharaonic Egypt during most periods from the third to first millennium BC has been estimated at not more than one percent, or between one half of one percent and one percent.

One thousand years later, in ancient Israel and Judah a basic education eventually became more widespread. The Torah (the fundamental religious text) includes commands to read, learn, teach and write the Torah, thus requiring literacy and study. In 64 AD the high priest caused public schools to be opened in every town and hamlet for all children above six or seven years of age (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 21a). The expense was borne by the community, and strict discipline was observed. Raba fixed the number of pupils at twenty-five for one teacher; if the number was between twenty-five and forty an assistant teacher was necessary; and for over forty, two teachers were required. The standard education texts were all hand-written until the invention of printing. However significant emphasis was placed on developing good memory skills in addition to comprehension by practice of oral repetition. For details of the subjects taught, see History of education in ancient Israel and Judah. Although girls were not provided with formal education in the yeshivah, they were required to know a large part of the subject areas to prepare them to maintain the home after marriage, and to educate the children before the age of seven. Despite this schooling system, it would seem that many children did not learn to read and write, because it has been estimated that “at least ninety percent of the Jewish population of Roman Palestine [in the first centuries AD] could merely write their own name or not write and read at all”, or that the literacy rate was about 3 percent.

Gods and goddesses were assigned different jobs. Some planted crops; some dug the fields while others brought water to the fields. 

Please, note that their job was not easy thing to do, and this made the gods unhappy. One day, they got together to discuss what could be done to make their job easier. They couldn’t find the solution to the problem, so they went to Enki’s underwater house to get advice from him. Enki was a very smart god and he always found the solution to the problems.

(The god Enki) Picture taken from: http://www.mesopotamia.co.uk/gods/explore/exp_set.html

Enki told the other gods and goddesses that he would create creatures to serve them by getting things done for them–working the land. Of course, the lazy gods and goddesses loved the idea. Enki collected clay from his water and used it to make humans.

Enki breathed life into the clay figures he made, but he decided that only the gods and goddesses would live forever, so he limited how long the humans would live.

The humans were put to work, and they were the servants of the gods and goddesses. The humans provided food and drinks to the gods and goddesses. The gods and goddesses no longer had to work; the humans did everything for them. They took the water from the rivers to feed the lands. They dug the soil and planted many crops. With hard work the servants (the humans) brought life to the land, and the gods and goddesses were happy with the results.

References

http://www.mesopotamia.co.uk/gods/explore/exp_set.html

Known in history under various names, among which the most common are the Syriac, Siri, assouri, Syriac Christians, are a nation of origin assirienii Semitic language speakers of Aramaic dialect of Eastern and whose origins are lost in the mists of time.

Archaeological evidence discovered so far speak uninterrupted continuity in the ancient Mesopotamia, about 3500 years ago.

The famous ancient civilization summero-Akkadian civilization consists in the forerunners of today’s Assyrians. Yet its inception under the aegis of the god Assur (Ashur or in some translations), who named the first Assyrian capital. The image of the god, embodied by a circle and its characteristic halo wings, became a symbol of this great historical civilizations of mankind.

Old land of Mesopotamia was inhabited primarily by Sumerian and Akkadian native Semitic tribes in the region. With more than 2,400 years before Christ, akkadienii, led by the ambitious king Sargon the Great, and conquered the Sumerians, thus founding the first empire in history. Not only lasted about 300 years. At the time immediately following the collapse, akkadienii were split into two nations, Assyrians, Babylonians respectively. The two cultural entities similar, but separate political, harmonious cohabitation now have 1900 years before Christ, the Amorites, a Semitic tribe another, invaded western Mesopotamia, destroying kingdoms and Lars ISIN Akkadian.

Amorites founded after Babylon as a city with independent powers. Amorites joy lasted only 100 years, after which they were expelled by the king of Assyria ADAS-hero.

Assyria and Babylon had become the largest regional powers, with the influx of neighboring civilizations like hurrienii, kasiţii and mitannii. Empire of Neo-Assyrian period 911-608 was a crucible in which the Assyrians were mixed and coexisted with Aramaic tribes coming from a small kingdom on the outskirts of Mesopotamia. Also in this historical period, many Hebrew tribes were deported to Assyria, and a significant proportion of Hebrew was embedded in the ethnic Assyrian.

The turning point of the ancient civilization of the Assyrians was the fall of ancient Nineveh. For 700 years from now dramatically asiro-Babylonian lands fell under the dominion of Persians Achaemenids turn, the Macedonians of Alexander the Great, the parties arascizi, the Romans ruled the Sassanid Persians and Trajan.

Syriac Christianity

Official Christianity and the Gnostic with sabienilor and Manichean sects, was installed in the region between I-III century AD King Shapur I ordered the parts Zoroastrian massacre of all Christians in his kingdom in 214 AD by chance or No, most Christians were Assyrians. During the persecution, about 1150 Christians were martyred. Assyrian Christians – or Syriac, as have been appointed since the Christianization – were divided into the fifth century of schism Nestorians, and the eighth century would have become a religious minority, following the conquest by Muslim Arabs of Mesopotamia.

St. Ephrem the Syrian is the most important religious figures of Christianity Syriac time, exegezele biblical poems and prayers enjoying a great appreciation and movement in the Christian world.

Islam strikes

Arab invasion was a great blow to the Assyrians. However, as followers of the ancient civilizations mespotamiene, Assyrians had a huge contribution to Islamic civilization fresh.

In subsequent periods, under the leadership ommeyazilor and abbasizilor, Assyrians translated into Arabic philosophers and mathematicians Greek works. Assyrians excelled, in fact, in science, philosophy and technology. It did not matter too much. Their refusal to Islamize mass excesses led to amplified by the strict application of Sharia law. Excesses led many Assyrians to flee in Central Asia, India, China and even Mongolia, remote places where the Assyrians were the first Christians who built churches.

Historical shots continued, however, materialized as Mongol and Turkish invasions.

After the fall of Baghdad in 1258, Hans Mongols were very tolerant of Christians. Not as can be said about Tamerlane, whose massacres against Syriac Christians were close to you lead them to total exincţia.

The region fell into the hands of two brotherhood then the Turkic tribes, and Kara Qoyunlu Qoyunlu Aq. In the fifteenth century, Ottoman Turks conquered the region in turn. Syriac Christians were embedded with the so-called Armenian millyet sites, relatively autonomous forms of management, built on ethnic and social criteria in the Turkish non-Muslim religious communities embedded in the Ottoman Empire.

Another blow over this nation was hardly tested in the massacre of Hakkari. In 1842, Assyrians lived quietly in the mountains of Hakkari car in southeastern Anatolian plateau were attacked and abused by Free Turkish armed forces and Kurdish troops. The attack resulted in thousands of deaths among unarmed Assyrians.

Pan-Islamic revival among the dying Ottoman Empire, Sultan Abdul Hamid led the second, reached its peak with the massacres which have fallen victims equally Syriac Christians and the Armenians between 1894-1897.

The result “otomanizării” carried a gun in hand Turkish troops and Kurdish gangs was the death of thousands of other Christians and destruction, looting and burning a number of villages inhabited by Assyrians 254. Their women were raped, tortured and sold. The same fate had a terrible and children.

Assyrians today

No modern period did not bring long awaited peace and tranquility of this ancient and peaceful people alike. Third Assyrian genocide, carried all the Turkish troops and Kurdish volunteers, took place between 1914-1918 and killed a number of 500000-750 000 Assyrians, ie not less than two thirds of the population. The survivors fled to Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Syria, Iran and Iraq.

Sime massacre was one of the first massacres in which the Christian population was subjected to by the Iraqi government in 1933. Campaign al-Anfal, after which Saddam Hussein ordered the eradication of Kurds in northern Iraq, would disfigure some Assyrian towns and villages. With the war in Iraq and the U.S. invasion in 2003, installed anarchy and social unrest led back to outbreaks of violence against Christians Syriac unprovoked. Muslims have been hit as Sunni and Shiite, Kurdish guerrillas and the.

In these conditions should not surprise us that, currently, the Assyrian diaspora are more people than traditional communities in the Middle East. Most Assyrians live in Syria, Iraq and Iran. In the diaspora, most communities are found in the United States, Sweden, Jordan, Germany, Australia, Russia and Canada. Their festivals and holidays coincide in general with those of the Christian calendar, Easter is the most important holiday. However, Assyrians have kept a number of pre-Christian celebrations and Kha b-Nisan, the Assyrian New Year, celebrated on April 1, Som Baoutha, Feast of Nineveh or Somikka, a kind of Halloween Assyrians, whose purpose is to scare restless children.

Genetic and racial, Assyrians were labeled Caucasian Caucasians with type Mediterranean. Have Olive skin, aquiline nose, dark hair and eyes. Genetically, they kept quite homogeneous in terms invasions and attacks that have had to face. Among the outstanding personalities of origin ancient Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal are second Nineveh Dinh (Fox News reporter), Biblical king Abgar of Edessa, who had a correspondence with Jesus Christ himself, and your famous tennis player Andre Agassi will, of whose father is an ethnic Assyrian. Former world tennis glory was involved, in fact, the sponsorship of several organizations whose object is to preserve the Assyrian culture and civilization.

Vitamins have a long history, but until recently no one had been recognized. In ancient times, when humans abandoned the nomadic life of hunters and gatherers and formed the first cities and developed at the beginning of sustainable agriculture and firm, but soon realized and noted ancient scribes in Sumer ( in modern Iraq ) that food can affect health in more subtle ways than just keeping people alive.

This is probably what was already known to the priests, shamans of the tribes, even before, but in the Sumerian city-states of Mesopotamia and ancient Babylon, which was studied in more detail, and the results recorded on clay tablets. Unfortunately, now most of them were either destroyed over the centuries or discovered under the desert sand. Although it is known that in ancient Egypt, some foods are recommended for improving night vision.

As the science of nutrition was born, and unfortunately has not improved in these initial view for a considerable time. The ancient Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and later advances in medicine, but especially in the prevention of health problems and diseases that occur in the first place. Instead, he focused on curing the symptoms of the disease were observed.

Herbalists with early preventative potions were fired often ( sometimes violently so) as witches or sorcerers, and his work was treated with extreme suspicion. Later, in Europe, which deteriorated further with the Church is not fond of discussion by some scientists, most of which are classified as dangerous blasphemy. And so millions of people continue to suffer from horrible diseases that could have been avoided by the light of knowledge.

Image via Wikipedia

Akkadia: the first to carve out an empire.  Located around Northern Mesopotamia.  Launched a series of conflicts from 2400 BCE (Before Common Era) to 2200 BCE.  Used “battle Wagons” which were carts pulled by four donkeys, Heavy spears, battle-axes and daggers.

Assyria: the predecessors of the Akkadians. Located around the upper Tigris where the Upper and Lower Zab flow from the Northeast.  Shamshi-Adid (1813-1781 BCE) considered to be the first ruler of Assyria, began launching raids and expeditions that expanded Assyrian territory.

Babylon: Located on the Tigris and Euphrates river.  At first it was not a very well know town until the coming of Hammurabi.  Launched a series of expeditions beginning in the northwestern regions against the Mari, then the great city in western Euphrates.  Went after the Assyrians next and thus fulfilled Sargon’s dream of a united Mesopotamia.  Hammurabi was also know for creating “Hammurabi’s code” which was the first set of written laws know to man.

Elam: Located in Southwest Iran.  Conquered during the Old Babylonian Period (1894-1595 BCE)

Eridu: Located along the Euphrates River, South of Ur.  Considered to be the Holiest place in the ancient world for that was where they worshiped the old gods such as Marduk.

Hittites: Located around central and Eastern Turkey.  Conquered during the 5th year of the reign of Ramses the 2nd.  (1274 BCE)

Ur: Located around the Southern Euphrates.  In 2100 BCE, King Ur-Nammu was able to achieve enough power to turn the city into an empire.  Smaller than that of the Akkadian empire, but was able to revive the arts and be able to build the famed Ziggurat at Ur.  Fell to conflicts between the Elamites and the Amorites a century later.

Uruk: Located east of the Euphrates River.   Know for being one of the first Urbanized cities in Mesopotamia, it was also the capital city for the kingdom ruled by Gilgamesh in “The Epic of Gilgamesh”.  Fell in decline during the struggles between Babylon and Elam.

Lost Civilizations series, Empires of Mesopotamia, by Don Nardo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elam

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Hittites

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eridu

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruk

Cover of Merriam Webster Dictionary

Ever since Wittgenstein, we have known that everything we think or intend gains its meaning from the use of words and that words, in turn, gain their meaning from the customs of the collective human culture.  Lera Boroditsky demonstrated that people who speak different languages (and whose realities are therefore different) have different abilities.  The classical example she uses is that of a five-year old Aboriginal girl who can unfailingly point North while distinguished scholars cannot.  The reason, she argues, has to do with the way the girl’s community talks about space.  Instead of talking about right, left, forward and back; the Aboriginals in Australia speak of north, south, east and west.  If someone asks you where you are going, an appropriate response would be something like “South/southwest in the middle distance.”  So if you are not able to orient yourself in cardinal direction terms at all times, you will never be able to say hello.

All this means that in order to understand another culture, we must make every effort to learn the language.  For only then will we gain an understanding of how the peoples we are trying to learn about think and what their world is like.  But what if the language is dead?  What if not a single person speaks it anymore?  What then?

This was the problem that James Henry Breasted, founder of the Oriental Institute of the Near East and the man who established Egyptology in the United States started to resolve.  In 1921, he started to compile a dictionary of Akkadian (or as it is mis-named Assyrian).  Breasted did not live to see his work completed; he died fourteen years after starting his work—which was completed this year.  But had it not been for him, we would not today have a dictionary of the language in which the Epic of Gilgamesh, perhaps the oldest written story, was written.

Of course it may be something of a misnomer to call this 21-volume work a dictionary.  It is more of an encyclopedia of its world than it is a Merriam-Webster dictionary.  The word “ardu,” or slave, for example, introduces extensive material available on slavery in the culture.  Word by word (and even letter by letter—for this dictionary contains letters such as one from a young man at boarding school who wrote his mother to complain about his clothes—sheds light on a world quite different from ours.  

Dr. Roth, editor of the project, expects this dictionary to become  the foundation upon which all other scholarship in the field will be built.  And, having looked at the 28,000 word dictionary (if you don’t have $2,000 for the hard-cover set; you can download it for free here), I agree with her.

This dictionary does indeed begin to tell us what ancient Mesopotamian reality was like.

1. The very earliest civilization Mesopotamia, located between the rivers, developed into what is present day Iraq. The two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates flow from what is modern day Turkey to the Persian Gulf.  Iraq today is said to be the only country blessed with both oil and water.    2. Due to the lack of trees, houses were made out of sun dried bricks like adobe bricks in the American southwest. The famous town of Babel of the bible fame was mostly of bricks.

3. The town of Babel and buildings (Ziggurats)  was pyramid shaped with tenaces. They served 2 functions. A ladder for the gods to descend from heaven a place to worship.

             Over in mesopotemia, this brings us up to the rule of 3rd Dynesty of Ur, the Dynesty of Isin, Larsa and !st dynesty of Babylon ( the time 1,200 years after the art of writting disovered).The indus valley is one of the land mentioned in scriptures relating to Gudea, it is found in many olden maps named Meluhha and the people lived in that area were called mellah, which means fisher men. the people of this valley were awere of the locational value of the indus velly so the opened this port for buisness to the whole world and soon became an important part of buisness world. The country of Meluhha is mentioned in mesopotemian text as a trading partner in 3rd BC which is generally identified as Indus Valley.

            The buissness relations with INdus valley were already maintaned around 2350 BC as a check of all the accurences, no details were given of alltype  merchandice trade. It is sinificant that imports were so highly prized that Sargons of Akkhad discreed that ships were laden with goods from Indus valley.They use seals and the document every thing . the were awere of all the buisness rules and they were famous and well known for their work and excellence.

            The vast majority of the inscribed clay and tables recovered the economic matters such as, production, distribution and proccesing the raw material. Everything Except animal and vagetables were expoted. the materials, clay, seeds,  building material, ornaments, precious stones and interior quelity wood had to be exported. Maluhha was a supplier for building and other costly material to Gudea the city ruler of Lagash. 

           “The goods were exported by ships from Meluhha with gold,dust ,silver, copper, tin and Lapis lazuli(a semi precious stone, a deep , complex silicate containing sculpture). The goods were not taken directly from indus but indirectly via the intermediate trading port of Dilmun(ancient island of behram)”.

The game was a central element of human life even before 4000 years, states in the graduate work from zhe field ofarchaeology, defended at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, which explores the social significance of the phenomenon of games and playing in the Bronze Age in the valley of the Indus River in what is now Pakistan. 

It is not uncommon for archaeologists to unearth ancient settlements with some srt of playground, but archeology often ignored this type of discovery. ”

 She has studied the objects associated with games found during excavations in the ruins of the ancient city of Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan today. 

The remains make up the largest urban settlement from the Bronze Age in the Indus Valley, a cultural complex in the same period as ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. 

The settlement is difficult to interpret, for example, archaeologists have not found any remains of temples or palaces. Therefore, it was difficult to offer an opinion on how to manage the city or what was relationshio between aristocracy of the society. 

Elke Rogersdotter study shows some surprising results. 

Almost every third discovery in the ruins of the city is associated with playing. This includes, for example, various forms of dices or parts of some games. In addition, the reviewed findings were not scattered all over the place.
Repeating patterns were detected in the spatial distribution, which may indicate the specific locations where the games were played. Outstanding amount of inventions that are associated with games and structured distribution shows that  playing was an important part of everyday life, for these people more than 4000 years ago.

“The reason the games and items associated with the games have often been ignored or misinterpreted during archaeological excavations is probably a mismatch in scientific thinking with the irrational phenomenon of the game” thinks Elke.

 ”The purpose of determining the social importance of the games questions the established ways of thinking. It is an instrument that we can use to get interpretations that are closer to the individuals who “played” these games.