The Fertile Crescent

The FC was in present day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Syria & Iraq

Mesopotamia - land between two rivers

– Tigris – Euphrates

• Present Day Iraq• Settled 5000 BC• Flat plain

• Need protection from flooding rivers & from invaders– built dams & channels – irrigation

Sumerian Civilization (3000 BC)

• City State – an independent state consisting of the city & the farms around it

• (12) within Sumer valley

• common culture, language, religion

Religion• Polytheistic – believed in many gods• each City State has a temple – Ziggurat

Deities

• unpredictable & selfish

• bring famine, disease, flood, destruction

• priests & priestesses ask for blessings

• ceremonies to appease gods• An – god of seasons• Enlil – wind and agriculture• Underworld – no light or air

The Story on Enmesh and Enten

• Summer Myth in which Enlil, son of the Sumerian supreme God chooses the gifts of Enten (creator of animals over Enmesh creator of villages)

• Importance of Neolithic

Government

• Kings are also priests, responsible for pleasing the deity.

• This makes the government a Theocracy – or government controlled by religious leaders

Sumerian inventions (develop around the need to trade)

– wheel– arch – sturdier buildings– potter’s wheel– sundial– # system (based on 60)– lunar calendar– 1st bronze – Cuneiform – writing

• symbols for ideas & objects

• hard to learn scribe class studies at eddubas

• business, history, literature

Empires of Mesopotamia & Hammurabi’s Code

Sargon of Akkad– 2350 BC

• conquered all c-s of Sumer

• 1st Empire – many peoples & previously independent states under one ruler

Hammurabi of Babylon

• When- 1792- approx. 1750 B.C.E.

• Problem – many different laws & customs throughout the land and acts of vengeance were common

• Solution- Created a codified law system based on class rank. Harsh punishments.

Pillar of Law

Hammurabi’s Code:“to make justice appear in the land”• 1st “Codified” Law

(organized law code)

• Earliest evidence of Written law – engraved on stones throughout the empire

• Uniform – all had to abide by it

Questions

• Is there equality under Hammurabi’s law?

• Does it “make justice appear in the land?”

• How do Hammurabi’s laws compare with ours in terms of the 1. types of laws, 2. types of punishments, 3. goal of the law?

1. If a man bring an accusation against a man, and charge him with a capital crime, but cannot prove it, he, the accuser, shall

be put to death.

3 If a man, in a case pending judgment, bear false witness, or do not establish the testimony that he has given, if that case be a case involving life, that man shall be put to death.

13. If a fire breaks out in a man’s house and a man who goes to extinguish it cast his

eye on the furniture of the owner of the house, and take

the furniture of the owner of the house, that man shall be thrown

into that fire.

Battery56 If a son strike his father, they shall cut off his fingers.  57 If a man destroy the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye.  58 If a man breaks another man’s bone, they shall break his bone.59. If one destroy the eye of a freeman or break the bone of a freeman, he shall pay sixty shekels [about one pound of silver].  60 If one destroy the eye of a man’s slave or break a bone of a man’s slave he shall pay one half of his price61. If a man knock out a tooth of a man of his own rank, they shall knock out his tooth62   If one knock out the tooth of a freeman, he shall pay 20 shekels63 If a man strike the person of a man who is his superior, he shall receive sixty strokes with

an ox-tail whip in public.64 If a man strike another man of his own rank, he shall pay sixty shekels65 If a man strike a man’s daughter and bring about a miscarriage, he shall pay ten shekels

for her miscarriage66 If that woman die, they shall put his daughter to death. 

67 If, through a blow, he being about a miscarriage to the daughter of a freeman, he shall pay five shekels68 If that woman die, he shall pay 30 shekels.