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And if you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc. Art Ancient art. The ancient place where history began. Share using Email. By Alastair Sooke 5th December The idea of Mesopotamia has intoxicated the West for centuries.
Alastair Sooke takes a look at a civilisation where much of modern culture took form. It was a world which was alien and exotic, but with fundamental characteristics that were familiar: empires, cities, kings — Paul Collins. The way that we count time, dividing up each hour into 60 minutes, is inherited from the Mesopotamians.
They resembled step pyramids with a flat roof, on which a shrine would be built. Access to this shrine was by a broad staircase or ramp. A reconstruction of a Sumerian ziggurat mike. Constructing these great buildings demanded high level design and engineering skills. Their exact proportions show that their builders had a complete mastery of the mathematics involved.
Surrounding the central temple building was a complex of ceremonial courtyards, shrines, burial chambers for the priests and priestesses, ceremonial banqueting halls, along with workshops, granaries, storehouse and administrative buildings, as temples were main centers of economic and administrative activity in ancient Mesopotamia.
Palaces: The palaces of Mesopotamian rulers were large and lavishly decorated. The largest of these led off to the throne room, of a size and majesty designed to stun visitors. Gates and important passageways were flanked with massive stone sculptures of mythological figures. Outside, these palaces were often adjoined to expansive gardens and parks, stocked with wild animals for hunting.
The massive remains of the palace walls of Mari, western Mesopotamia photo: Zukaa. Houses: The materials used to build a Mesopotamian house were the same as those used today: sun-baked brick made of mud mixed with straw, mud plaster and wooden doors.
These all used materials naturally available in the locality. Most large houses, whether in town or country, were built around a courtyard. Off one side was a large square room, where the family received guests and ate together.
Leading off this room were the private family quarters. Other sides of the courtyard led to the kitchen, store rooms and servants accommodation. The homes of the poor were probably built of materials such as mud and reeds, which have long since perished. They may have been situated in the ancient equivalent of shanty towns outside of the city walls, but there is very little archaeological evidence for this.
What caused such a robust civilization to decline and fall? What happened to the ancient Mesopotamians? Despite the fact that Mesopotamian civilization experienced chaos and decline in the centuries either side of BCE, it did not vanish. Indeed, the cities of Mesopotamia, above all Babylon, carefully fostered their ancient heritage. The culture of the Assyrians , who came to dominate Mesopotamia after about BCE, owed a huge amount to the ancient Mesopotamians, and they treated Babylon and other Mesopotamian cities with great respect.
The heritage of ancient Mesopotamia experienced a period of great revival in 6th century BCE, under the Babylonian empire of Nebuchadnezzar to BC. By some interpretations, it was under Nebuchadnezzar that ancient Mesopotamia reached its peak.
It had never been wealthier, its capital, Babylon, had never been more magnificent, and it had certainly never been more politically powerful. This is all reflected in its art and architecture. The ruins of Babylon which can be seen today mostly date from this phase in its history, and show what a splendid city it was at that time. More striking still is the fact that this art and architecture stood in an unbroken tradition stretching back to early Sumerian times. There had been some evolution in style, but this had been within quite narrow limits.
For example, the temples which Nebuchadnezzar built were in Ziggurat form, just as had been the temples of the Sumerians in the 3rd millennium BC. Also, the writing that was used by the priests of the temples was in the cuneiform developed by the priests in two and half thousand years before.
It was in this script that the fiendishly exact observations of the stars which brought ancient Mesopotamian astronomy to the height of its achievement were note down by Babylonian scribes. Under the Assyrian empire, Aramaic had spread as the common language of the Middle East.
With its easy-to-learn alphabet, the old languages of Mesopotamia, Sumerian and Akkadian or Old Babylonian , with their complex cuneiform script, had fallen out of everyday use. Indeed, under the Assyrians, Aramaic became the official language of government. It would remain so under the Babylonian and Persians empires. It was really only the wealth and power of the Babylonian temples that kept the old languages and their cuneiform script alive. The fall of the Babylonian empire to the Persians BC brought Mesopotamia under foreign rule, and it was to remain so for more than a thousand years.
In that time, the culture of the people of Mesopotamia was transformed. The Persian ruling class had no high culture of its own — not many centuries before their ancestors had been nomadic wanderers on the central Asian steppes. Settling in southwest Iran, they had been influenced by the culture of the ancient kingdom of Elam , very similar to that of the Mesopotamians.
The Persian kings chose the old Elamite city of Susa as their chief administrative capital, and this thus became one of the great cities of the world at that time — but it must have looked very much like any Mesopotamian city. As for Babylon, the greatest city of Mesopotamia, it was adorned with beautiful temples and palaces by the early Persian kings, Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes.
These were eager to present themselves as legitimate Mesopotamian rulers, one of whose main roles was to keep the temples and other public buildings in good order. Other Mesopotamian cities also received attention from these kings.
Mesopotamia had been ruled by foreigners before the Persians. The Kassites had ruled Babylonia for four hundred years, as we have noted above. However, they had made their capital at Babylon, within Mesopotamia, and had conscientiously followed the ancient traditions of Mesopotamian rulers. These included the building and maintenance of temples and other public buildings. More importantly, it included the royal responsibility, which from time immemorial had been one of main duties of Mesopotamian kings, of keeping the canals, irrigation channels and water storage ponds in good repair.
On these Mesopotamian agriculture depended. The later Persian kings, moreover, neglected the Mesopotamian cities. No new temples or public buildings were erected, and existing ones were not maintained properly. Under the Persians, a long-term trend set in which foreign rulers did not give the irrigation systems of Mesopotamia priority; some neglected it entirely.
Little by little, living standards of the farming population declined, and the economies of the cities came under increasing pressure.
The area of cultivation shrank, and herding became more and more important. In places the desert encroached. Population levels declined. The cities fared somewhat better, with the Persian peace bringing an upswing to trade. Such immigration also caused Aramaic to continue its spread as the language of everyday life, and the old cuneiform languages of Akkad and Sumer to retreat further into the temple precincts. To make matters worse, heavy rents were paid by Mesopotamian farmers to support the lavish lifestyle of absentee Persian landowners, who had been granted extensive estates in Mesopotamia.
Discontent spread. Babylon was the center of the revolt in BC, and in the aftermath it was sacked by Persian forces. Its main temple destroyed, and never repaired. Even so, Babylon probably remained the largest city in the huge Persian empire.
It is quite likely that he intended Babylon to be the capital of his new empire, but his premature death in BC, in Babylon, put an end to any such scheme. His family then ruled Mesopotamia for the next years. Like most of the Persian kings before them, the Seleucid kings did not engage with the traditional Mesopotamian royal duty of restoring temples and constructing great monuments inscribed with the ancient cuneiform script of Akkad and Sumer.
Indeed the Seleucids promoted their native Greek culture within Mesopotamia. Greek became the language of government, and of international trade. The Seleucids founded Greek-style cities all over their dominions, and even in cities of ancient Mesopotamian origin, Greek — or Hellenistic — styles in art and architecture often supplanted more traditional Mesopotamian forms. It was in the Seleucid period that Babylon ceased to be one of the great cities of the world.
Much of the population of the ancient city was resettled on the opposite banks of the Euphrates, in a brand new Greek-style capital called Seleucia. In southern Mesopotamia, however, several cities enjoyed a semi-independent status under temple elites. Traditional Mesopotamian styles in architecture and art were followed, and the temple priests continued to record the motions of the stars and planets in cuneiform.
They kept the old chronicles up to date, and copied the ancient omens, hymns, stories and rituals. Indeed, the Greeks were fascinated by these activities, and Babylonian knowledge, especially in astronomy, became a by-word for ancient wisdom.
Nevertheless, the ancient languages of Mesopotamia were by now confined to religious and ceremonial purposes, and to sacred texts and ancient writings.
In the mid-2nd century the Seleucids lost control of Mesopotamia to a people new to the region, from central Asia. These were the Parthians. They left things very much as they found them, and both Greek-style and Mesopotamian-style cities flourished under their rule. The temples in the cities of southern Mesopotamia continued in being, and traditional forms of art, architecture and literature were followed.
The priests continued their traditional activities in preserving ancient Mesopotamian knowledge in the old Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform. By mid-Parthian times c. Greek and Aramaic were the languages most spoken by the population, and new gods were replacing the old ones. Even in the cities where the old traditions were cherished most strongly, Greek-style temples dedicated to Greek and Iranian gods were appearing.
Furthermore, the Parthian period saw large-scale immigration into Mesopotamia, mainly of Arabs and Iranians. These also brought with them their own gods and cultures, and old Mesopotamia took a further step alongtheu road to oblivion.
The last cuneiform text so far found — an astronomical almanac — was written in AD Some of the old temples continued through the first two centuries CE, and even saw some restoration in late Parthian times. Their priests almost certainly continued their chronicles and astronomical observations, but they increasingly did so in Aramaic, not the old cuneiform. This meant that they wrote on parchment rather than clay, so the texts have not survived. In the s CE, the Parthians were replaced by a much more vigorous line of rulers, a Persian dynasty called the Sasanids.
The Sasanid monarchs imposed a more direct control over the cities of southern Mesopotamia, and also actively promoted their own religion, Zoroastrianism.
These developments deprived the Mesopotamian temple priesthoods of much of most of their revenues. The true extent of their loss of influence amongst the people must now have been laid bare. Christianity had been spreading through Mesopotamia since the 1st century CE, and by the 3rd century may have had the allegiance of the majority of the population.
At some time during the 3rd century the last of the old temples were abandoned, probably too costly for the few remaining priests to maintain. They were left to rot, its antiquarian custodians defeated by the long struggle to keep the past alive. The civilization of ancient Mesopotamia gave up its last gasp. Ancient Mesopotamia must surely be the most influential civilization in world history. For a start, it was the first. All subsequent Western civilizations were ultimately built largely upon foundations laid here.
Mesopotamian civilization deeply influenced societies in Syria, Palestine and Egypt. These in turn, especially via the Phoenicians and the Israelites , would provide the material, religious and cultural models on which the Greek , Roman and Islamic civilizations would later be constructed.
A whole range of technologies and scientific advances were thus made in ancient Mesopotamia which eventually found their way to Medieval and Modern European civilization. To the east, powerful Mesopotamian influences flowed into India at the time of the Assyrians and Persians — for example, the Sanskrit alphabet is based on the Aramaean script.
So, the Mesopotamians built long and well; they were the giants upon whose shoulders later ages have stood. And given that they were the first people to have writing, and the first to record their deeds, their place in world history is, it is no exaggeration to say, as the ones who got it going!
The civilization of Mesopotamia included distinct phases which are often seen as civilizations in their own right — the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, and the Neo-Babylonians. Iran BCE. Ancient Assyrian civilization. Late Babylonian civilization. History of Ancient Mesopotamia. History of Ancient Assyria. The Babylonian Empire. History of the Ancient Middle East includes much on Mesopotamia. The Origins of Civilization has a special focus on Mesopotamia.
Also, an article on the History of Elam deals with a powerful kingdom which, whilst not a Mesopotamian state per se , had a major part to play in Mesopotamian history. References to Mesopotamia, showing its impact on different parts of the world, can be found in passing in the following essays:. The History of Turkey. The History of Syria. The History of Ancient Palestine. And whatever happened to the ancient Mesopotamians?
Roux, G. Saggs, H. The Babylonians , Macmillan, , is, despite its name, a comprehensive and scholarly coverage of ancient Mesopotamian civilization up to the end of the Neo-Babylonian empire in the 6th century BC. Roaf, M. A lavishly illustrated work on archaeology for the general reader which includes good coverage of ancient Mesopotamia, is Renfrew, C. A work on general archaeology aimed more at students, but readable and with very good coverage of ancient Mesopotamia, is Scarre, C.
For an insightful look at government in ancient Mesopotamia, see Finer, S. The University of Chicago has produced a superb site on Ancient Mesopotamia.
Wikipedia has its usual vast amount of information on Ancient Mesopotamia. Subscribe for more great content — and remove ads. Upgrade to Premium to Remove Ads. After years the kingdom of Assyria conquers northern Mesopotamia from the Mitanni From : Nomadic peoples such as the Aramaeans and the Chaldeans overrun much of Mesopotamia.
How did Mesopotamian civilization fit into the wider history of the Ancient World? See more on Mesopotamia and the rise of Civilization? Premium resource Language and Writing of Ancient Mesopotamia At the time when civilization first arose in Mesopotamia, the population was divided into two distinct groups: those who spoke Sumerian a language unrelated to any modern language , and those who spoke Semitic dialects related to modern Arabic and Hebrew. Early Mesopotamian writing The Schoyen Collection Learning to write in cuneiform was a long and rigorous process, and literacy was confined to a small elite of priests and officials.
Government in Ancient Mesopotamia One of the most remarkable things about Mesopotamian civilization is that here, right at the dawn of recorded history, we find states which organized their populations more tightly than all but a very few in subsequent ages.
Priests and bureaucrats In early Sumerian cities, the temple stood at the very center of public life, both political and religious. The remains of the ancient ziggurat temple at the great Mesopotamian city of Ur Photo: Hardnfast Kings By the mid-third millennium, the political dominance of the temple was seriously modified by the rise of kingship in all the Mesopotamian city-states.
Each Mesopotamian City had its own patron god or goddess, and most of what we know of them has been passed down through clay tablets describing Mesopotamian religious beliefs and practices. A painted terracotta plaque from B. While making art predates civilization in Mesopotamia, the innovations there include creating art on a larger scale, often in the context of their grandiose and complex architecture, and frequently employing metalwork.
A Kneeling bull holding a spouted vessel, one of the earliest examples of metalwork in art from Mesopotamia. One of the earliest examples of metalwork in art comes from southern Mesopotamia, a silver statuette of a kneeling bull from B.
Before this, painted ceramics and limestone were the most common art forms. Another metal-based work, a goat standing on its hind legs and leaning on the branches of a tree, featuring gold and copper along with other materials, was found in the Great Death Pit at Ur and dates to B.
Mesopotamian art often depicted its rulers and the glories of their lives. Also created around B. One famous relief in his palace in Nimrud shows him leading an army into battle, accompanied by the winged god Assur. Ashurbanipal is also featured in multiple reliefs that portray his frequent lion-hunting activity. An impressive lion image also figures into the Ishtar Gate in B. Mesopotamian art returned to the public eye in the 21st century when museums in Iraq were looted during conflicts there.
Many pieces went missing, including a 4,year-old bronze mask of an Akkadian king, jewelry from Ur, a solid gold Sumerian harp, 80, cuneiform tablets and numerous other irreplaceable items. Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization.
Paul Kriwaczek. Ancient Mesopotamia. Leo Oppenheim. University of Chicago. Mesopotamia B. Metropolitan Museum of Art. Editors at Phaidon. Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!
Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Sumer was an ancient civilization founded in the Mesopotamia region of the Fertile Crescent situated between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Known for their innovations in language, governance, architecture and more, Sumerians are considered the creators of civilization as The Persian Empire is the name given to a series of dynasties centered in modern-day Iran that spanned several centuries—from the sixth century B.
The Bronze Age marked the first time humans started to work with metal. Bronze tools and weapons soon replaced earlier stone versions. Humans made many technological advances during the The Fertile Crescent is the boomerang-shaped region of the Middle East that was home to some of the earliest human civilizations.
Babylonia was a state in ancient Mesopotamia. The city of Babylon, whose ruins are located in present-day Iraq, was founded more than 4, years ago as a small port town on the Euphrates River. It grew into one of the largest cities of the ancient world under the rule of Palmyra is an ancient archaeological site located in modern-day Syria. Originally founded near a fertile natural oasis, it was established sometime during the third millennium B.
Jerusalem is a city located in modern-day Israel and is considered by many to be one of the holiest places in the world. Jerusalem is a site of major significance for the three largest monotheistic religions: Judaism, Islam and Christianity, and both Israel and Palestine have The Code of Hammurabi was one of the earliest and most complete written legal codes and was proclaimed by the Babylonian king Hammurabi, who reigned from to B.
Hammurabi expanded the city-state of Babylon along the Euphrates River to unite all of southern Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault.
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