Ancient Mesopotamian civilizations

Ancient Mesopotamian civilizations

History and Characteristics of Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian Culture

 Introduction

Mesopotamia was a sizeable ancient land that involved the region of the Tigris-Euphrates river system. Often referred to as the "cradle of civilization", Mesopotamia is generally relating to modern-day Iraq, southwestern Iran, southeastern Turkey, and northeastern Syria. 

It was the site of a progression of early social advances, including the primary system of writing. Expanded prosperity and security prompted religious formalities of worship (in sanctuaries) and burial, in megalithic tombs.

The ancient art of Mesopotamia includes that of Sumeria, Akkad, Babylonia, and Assyria, until the 6th century BCE, when Babylon fell to the Persians. 

Mesopotamian Sculpture (c.3000-500 BCE) incorporates a large group of ceramic art, styles, various stone sculptures, carved cylinder seals, mosaic art, and monumental architecture exemplified by Ziggurats built in Ur, Babylon, Uruk, Sialk, Nimrud in (3200-500 BCE). 

Mesopotamia is also known for unbelievable Hanging Gardens of Babylon, built in the old city-province of Babylon, by King Nebuchadnezzar II. Mesopotamia was additionally home to megalithic art like that of Catalhoyuk in Asia Minor.

Origin

Archeological unearthings demonstrate that Mesopotamia was first settled around 10,000 BCE, by an unknown tribe of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. Around 7,000 BCE, the way of life transformed from a primitive semi-nomadic of hunting and gathering food, to a more settled kind of way of life, in view of farming and raising of trained animals after a short intermediate of the Epipaleolithic period. 

Amid the "Neolithic" period, the settled communities prompted a progression of new activities, incorporating a rapid increment in trade, the construction of ships to transport goods, a growth of religious beliefs and ceremonies. 

New "urban communities" sprung up, including Eridu, Uruk, and Ur, took after later by Nineveh, Nippur, Assur, and Babylon.

Map showing the extent of Mesopotamia

Sumerians

Sumerian civilization initially took shape in southern Mesopotamia around 4000 BCE or 6000 years prior—which would make it the principal urban civilization in the area. 

Mesopotamians are noted for developing one of the primary written scripts around 3000 BCE: wedge-formed imprints pressed into clay tablets. This cuneiform—(another way to say wedge-molded)—the script was additionally adopted by surrounding people groups to develop their own language for approximately 2000 years, until Phoenician, (on which the letters of modern language depend on), became predominant script in the first millennium BCE. 

Cuneiform is additionally the script in which, one of the world’s incredible works of literature, The Epic of Gilgamesh, was written in. Mesopotamians utilized written work to record deals and purchases, to write letters to each other, and to tell stories. 

The amazingly important creation of the wheel is also credited by the Sumerians; the earliest found wheel dates to 3500 BCE in Mesopotamia. Sumerians built ships that allowed them to travel into the Persian Gulf and exchange with other early human civilizations, for example, the Harappans in northern India. They traded textiles, leather goods, and jewelry for Harappan semi-precious stones, copper, pearls, and ivory.

Sumerian religion was polytheistic—or worshiped various divine beings or gods many of which were anthropomorphic—they took human-like shape. Temples to these divine beings were built on enormous Ziggurats which were in the center of the urban areas. These structures would have taken a huge number of people and numerous years to construct.

Akkadian Empire

Around 3000 BCE, the Sumerians had huge cultural trade with a group in northern Mesopotamia known as the Akkadians—named after the city-province of Akkad. The Akkadian language is identified with the modern language of Hebrew and Arabic. 

These languages are known as Semitic dialects. The term Semitic originates from the scriptural character Shem, a child of Noah, the purported progenitor of Abraham and, as needs be, the Jewish and Arab people.

Around 2334 BCE, Sargon of Akkad came to power and built up what may have been the world's first dynastic empire. The Akkadian Empire ruled over both the Akkadian and Sumerian speakers in Mesopotamia and the Levant—present-day Syria and Lebanon. The Empire of Akkad fallen in 2154 BCE, within 180 years of its establishment.

Assyrian Empire

Assyria is named for its unique capital, the old city of Asur—otherwise called Ashur—in northern Mesopotamia. Ashur was initially one of the various Akkadian-speaking city-states led by Sargon and his descendants during the Akkadian Empire. Within a few hundred long periods of the fall of the Akkadian Empire, Assyria had turned into a noteworthy empire.

For a great part of the 1400 years from the late twenty-first century BCE until the late seventh century BCE, the Akkadian-speaking Assyrians were the prevailing force in Mesopotamia, particularly in the north. 

The empire achieved its peak near the end of the period in the seventh century. Around then, the Assyrian Empire extended from Egypt and Cyprus in the west to the fringes of Persia, modern Iran—in the east. 

The significant special exception to Assyrian predominance was the Babylonian Empire built up by Hammurabi and some more chaotic dark ages where there was no dominating force.

 Babylon Empire 

Babylon was a minor city-state in central Mesopotamia for a century after it was established in 1894 BCE. Things changed with the rule of Hammurabi, from 1792 to 1750 BCE. He was an efficient ruler, building up a centralized bureaucracy with tax collection. Hammurabi liberated Babylon from foreign rule and after that conquered the entirety of southern Mesopotamia, bringing security, stability and the name of Babylonia to the district.

The first vital works by this Dynasty of Babylon was the compilation in around 1754 BCE of a code of laws. Which called the Code of Hammurabi, which echoed and enhanced on the composed laws of Sumer, Akkad, and Assyria. It's similar to the Sumerian ruler Ur-Nammu of Ur's code, composed from 2100 to 2050 BCE. 

Hammurabi's code is one of the most established deciphered writings of noteworthy length on the planet. Written in around 1754 BCE by the 6th lord of Babylon, Hammurabi, the Code was written on stone stele—slabs—and clay tablets. 

The Code comprises of 282 laws with scaled punishments relying upon social status adjusting "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth".

The Burney Relief, First Babylonian Dynasty, around 1800 BC

The Babylonian Empire set up by Hammurabi went on for a long time until the point when Babylon got sacked by invaders in 1531 BCE. In the period between 626 BCE and 539 BCE, Babylon stood up for itself again over the region with the Neo-Babylonian Empire. 

This new empire was overthrown in 539 BCE by the Persians who at that point administered over the locale until the season of Alexander the Great, 335 BCE.