Mesopotamia The Seeds of Creativity

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Mesopotamia The Seeds of Creativity
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The Rivers and the Land
Between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers
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The Rivers and the Land

• Problems
• Flooding during the growing season
• Salt accumulation
• This required Creativity for civilization to
  flourish
• Flooding Dams and catch basins connected to
  canals.
• Salt Flushed salt out by moving water from the
  high elevation of the Euphrates River to lower
  elevation of the Tigris River.

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Domestication of grain

• 56 wild grasses possible (seed size, seed
  retention, nutrition, storage, etc.)
• 32 varieties in Mediterranean Eurasia (versus 11
  max elsewhere)

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Sumerian Period3500-2350 BC
Note Few natural barriers to invasion
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Sumerian Period3500-2350 BC
Sumeria (Southern Mesopotamia)
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Sumerian Period3500-2350 BC

• Polytheistic religion
• Religion was directed toward ensuring a good crop
  and good trading
• No ethics from religion
• Priests subservient to kings
• Invasion-prone area so armies were important
• First wheeled vehicles
• Ziggurats
• Temples
• Tombs
• Governmental sites

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Ziggurat
Tower of Babel?
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Sumerian Period3500-2350 BC

• Creative Contribution Writing (cuneiform)
• Language not connected to any other (Adamic?)
• Written on clay tablets with reed or sharpened
  stick
• Recorded business and laws
• Adopted by other empires because it could apply
  to any language
• 1200 known characters

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• Started as Pictograms (pictures that were
  individualized)
• Developed to being Ideograms (stylized pictures
  that were customized)
• Became Phonetically-related Symbols

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Akkadian/ Early Babylonian Period (2350-1650 BC)
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Akkadian/ Early Babylonian Period (2350-1650 BC)

• Descendants of Shem
• Semitic language (Arabic, Hebrew, etc)
• Creative Contributions
• Standing army
• System of royal servants and landholders
• Poetry/epic
• Written law
• Governmental bureaucracy
• Mathematics

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Akkadian/ Early Babylonian Period (2350-1650 BC)

• Standing army
• Led by Sargon I the King of Akkad
• Conquered the Sumerians
• Expanded the empire greatly (paid the army from
  the spoils of war)
• New lands and territories that had to be
  controlled
• Royal servants given new lands
• Very loyal
• Created economic vigor in trade
• Created intelligent division of labor

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Akkadian/ Early Babylonian Period (2350-1650 BC)

• Poetry
• Epic of Gilgamesh
• About 2000 B.C.
• Oldest known literary document
• Account of King Gilgamesh
• Includes a flood story (similar to Bible)

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Akkadian/ Early Babylonian Period (2350-1650 BC)

• Written Law The Code of Hammurabi
• Developed by King Hammurabi (1700 B.C.)
• Great leader, ruled during the cultural pinnacle
  of the early Babylonian Period
• Personally supervised navigation, construction of
  temples, agriculture, and tax collection.
• First set of laws (predates Moses by 200 years)
• Brought uniformity to society
• Reduced resentment and possibilities for revolt
• Engraved on 8-foot stella (pillar)

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Code of Hammurabi Trial by ordeal

• "If a man has accused another of laying a death
  spell upon him, but has not proved it, the
  accused shall go to the sacred river, he shall
  plunge in the sacred river, and if the sacred
  river shall conquer him, he that accused him
  shall take possession of his house. If the sacred
  river shall show his innocence and he is saved,
  his accuser shall be put to death. He that
  plunged in the sacred river shall appropriate the
  house of him that accused him."

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Hammurabi Code vs The Bible

• Source God
• Religious Strong
• Capital crimes
• Murder (unless God delivered him)
• Smite or curse parents
• Steal man and sell him
• Killed fetus
• Adultery
• Justice Eye for eye or compensation
• Equality No differences
• Responsibility Repeated ox goring

• Source Existing laws
• Religious Little
• Capital crimes
• False accusation or witness
• Stolen temple goods
• Stolen child
• Assisted fleeing slave
• Adultery
• Justice Eye for eye or compensation
• Equality Changes by rank
• Responsibility Surgeon, home builder

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Akkadian/ Early Babylonian Period (2350-1650 BC)

• Governmental Bureaucracy
• Established by King Hammurabi
• Administrators paid by the government (local
  taxes), unlike Sargon Is.
• Could keep an eye on empire without expensive and
  continuous military entanglements.

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Akkadian/ Early Babylonian Period (2350-1650 BC)

• Mathematics
• Decimal and sexigesimal system
• 60 and 360 religious numbers
• Sexigesimal numbers today
• Circle
• Time
• Placeholder concept
• No Concept of Zero

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Hittites (1450-1200 B.C.)

• From Anatolia (present day Turkey)
• Creative Contribution
• Iron

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Hittites (1450-1200 B.C.)

• Iron
• Much harder and stronger than all former metals
• Found in natural state (soft)
• Gold and copper
• Bronze (copper with tin)
• Brass (copper with zinc)
• Iron required much higher temperatures
• Conquered Mesopotamia because of weapon strength
  (1650 B.C)
• Agricultural productivity higher when farming
  tools were made of iron
• Started the move from the Bronze Age to the Iron
  Age (1500 B.C.)

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Phoenicians/Philistines/Sea Peoples (1200 B.C.)

• Conquered Hittites and learned the secrets of
  iron-working
• Dominated Israelites until time of David
• Controlled the coastal regions of Mesopotamia
  (then called Canaan)

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Phoenicians/Philistines/Sea Peoples (1200 B.C.)

• And the children of Israel cried unto the Lord
  for he Jabin, King of Canaan had nine hundred
  chariots of iron and twenty years he mightily
  oppressed the children of Israel.
• -Judges 43

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• Now there was no smith found throughout all the
  land of Israel for the Philistines said, Lest
  the Hebrews make them swords or spears But all
  the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to
  sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and
  his axe, and his mattock. Yet they had a file
  for the mattocks, and for the coulters, and for
  the forks, and for the axes, and to sharpen the
  goads. So it came in the day of the battle, that
  there was neither sword not spear found in the
  hand of any of the people that were with Saul and
  Jonathan
• -1 Samuel 1319-22

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Assyrians (900-626 B.C.)

• Creative contribution
• Torture
• Creativity can be good or bad
• Extremely vicious
• Entire cities surrendered because of fear
• Conquered Mesopotamia from within the territory
  of old Babylonian empire
• Capital was Ninevah (Jonah story)
• Captured the 10 tribes and carried them northward
  (721 BC)
• Defeated by the Babylonians and Medes (626 BC)

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Babylonians, Medes, Persians626-333 BC
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Babylonians, Medes, Persians626-333 BC

• Powerful rulers
• Nebuchadnezzar
• Cyrus the Great
• Xerxes
• Darius
• Empire very large
• Included Chaldeans and others
• Established king worship
• Daniel and the 3 Israelites
• Jewish temple was built
• Esthers story

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Babylonians, Medes, Persians626-333 BC

• Creative Contibutions
• Art/technology
• Hanging Gardens
• Government
• City planning
• Ethical Monotheism
• Zodiac (astrology and astronomy)
• Mathematics

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Babylonians, Medes, Persians626-333 BC

• Ethical monotheism
• Zoroastrianism (Zoroaster/Zarathustra)
• Arose from Persia in 7th Century B.C.
• Founded by the prophet Zarathustra who used fire
  as part of worship
• Communication with God
• The three wise men in the story of Christs birth
  were likely Zoroastrians
• Driven from Persia in 700 A.D. to India where
  they are known as the Parsi

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Babylonians, Medes, Persians626-333 BC

• Zodiac
• Method of measuring the earths movements though
  the years sky with respect to 12 constellations
• Earthly events (seasons and tides) based on
  celestial bodies
• No difference between astrology and astronomy in
  ancient times
• Astrologers became common
• Three wise men

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Babylonians, Medes, Persians626-333 BC

• Astrology was, after all, a reasonable science.
  The sun dominates life on earth the moon has
  many, more subtle, influences for example, it
  rules the tides. Surely, then, on commonsense
  grounds, the minor planets must have their own
  distinctive influences on the lives of men and
  women?
• Donald Cardwell, The Norton History of
  Technology, 1994

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Mesopotamia

• Conquered by Alexander the Great (333 BC)
• This was the end of what is considered
  Mesopotamian history
• We will discuss him later

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Mesopotamia

• Overall creativity assessment
• Many conquerors kept creativity fresh

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