How Much Do You Know About Ancient Mesopotamia?

According to Mesopotamian myth, the sea goddess Tiamat creates beings who are half-human, half-scorpion, and sends them to avenge the murder of her husband, Apsu. In many ancient Mesopotamian stories, the scorpion men are frequently seen guarding doorways, including the gate to heaven. They were also enormous: According to the myth, the creatures were so large, their heads touched the sky.

A vast forest of cedar trees was the land of the gods in Mesopotamian mythology. One of the most famous depictions of the Cedar Forest is in “The Epic of Gilgamesh.” In the story, Gilgamesh enters the Cedar Forest in order to cut down its trees, but first he must fight the monster Humbaba, whom the gods had placed outside the forest to guard their home.

The Babylonians used a sexigesimal number system, meaning they used the number 60 as the basis for their mathematics. With this system, Babylonian astronomers divided the circular paths that celestial bodies took through the sky into 360 units. When the Greeks developed the concept of “degrees” to measure an angle, they drew on the Babylonian astronomical system to divide all circles into 360 degrees.

According to ancient mythology, the Mesopotamian gods once decided to destroy humanity with a great flood. The god Enki instructed a Sumerian man named Ziusudra to build a huge boat and fill it with animals. Ziusudra did as he was told and survived the flood. Scholars have noted the similarities between this myth and the story of Noah’s Ark in the Bible.

The emperor Sargon founded the Akkadian Empire around 2334 BCE. Sargon ruled in the city of Akkad, which gave the empire its name, and under his leadership the Akkadians united many disparate civilizations across Mesopotamia. According to clay tablets discovered in the region, Sargon was the former cup-bearer to King Ur-Zababa of Kish. From this humble rank, he went on to rule a vast kingdom.

One of the earliest known records of a heliocentric model of the solar system (the sun at the center) was proposed by a Babylonian priest named Seleucus around 150 BCE. Historians believe he arrived at this theory through mathematical and geometrical calculations based on his observations of the tides. Seleucus was also one of the first known thinkers to propose that the tides were caused by the moon.

Ishtar, also known by the ancient Sumerian name Inanna, was a deity worshiped as the queen of heaven in ancient Mesopotamian cultures. She was the goddess of love, beauty, war, and fertility, and makes frequent appearances in Mesopotamian mythology.

After the death of Gilgamesh’s beloved friend Enkidu, the grief-stricken hero goes on a long journey to find the secret of eternal life. His quest leads him to the bottom of the sea, where he obtains an enchanted plant capable of restoring youth. Before he can consume the plant, however, it is devoured by a serpent and Gilgamesh must return home, still doomed to die.

Uruk was established by the Sumerians around 4500 BCE, and is considered to be the world’s first city. According to ancient cuneiform texts, the clay brick city contained large temple complexes and was surrounded by walls. Uruk flourished until the Tigris and Euphrates rivers changed course in the fourth century CE, abandoning the city to the desert.

Sumerians invented the wheel in the fourth millennium BCE. The first wheels were solid discs of wood joined by an axel. It was not until 2000 BCE that wheels began to be hollowed out, making them lighter and faster. The development of the wheel ultimately revolutionized transportation and agriculture.

One of the oldest and most complete collections of laws, the Code of Hammurabi was created by the Babylonian king Hammurabi between 1792 and 1750 BCE. The code lays out 282 laws and their related punishments. It also includes one of the earliest references to laws of retribution, or “an eye for an eye.” The code was preserved on a huge black stone stele, which was rediscovered in 1901.

Known as ziggurats, the monumental pyramidal towers found in Mesopotamian cities were made from baked mud bricks, as stone was a scarce resource in the region. These stepped structures were sacred spaces and important features of Mesopotamian cities. One of the best-preserved ziggurats is found in the ancient Sumerian city of Ur in modern-day Iraq.

In 331 BCE, Alexander the Great assumed control of Babylon after defeating the Persian troops of King Darius III at the Battle of Gaugamela. Babylon became a central hub of Alexander’s vast empire, and according to some sources he planned to establish his capital there. However, Alexander died in Babylon in 323 BCE before he could accomplish this goal.

The Middle East’s Fertile Crescent was the first region in the world to develop agriculture, around 10,000 BCE. In Mesopotamia, farmers developed irrigation systems to ensure crops flourished in the fertile soil, and produced enough food to support the creation of larger settlements.

Babylonian priests had sophisticated knowledge about the motions of the celestial bodies. They were able to predict the paths of planets and stars in order to forecast changes in seasons, upcoming floods, and other important events. Eventually, they started using their detailed knowledge of the heavens to make more ambitious prophecies about future events, forming the root of modern-day astrology.

The “Epic of Gilgamesh” is one of the masterpieces of Mesopotamian mythology. The tale follows the adventures of Gilgamesh, a semi-mythical king who was considered part god and part mortal. The most complete version of the epic was found in the mid-19th century on 12 clay tablets written in cuneiform. They were discovered in the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal at the ancient city of Nineveh in modern-day Iraq.

The Sumerians developed the earliest form of written language, cuneiform, around 5,500 years ago. The complex system of characters originally represented sounds in the Sumerian language and was inscribed using wedge-shaped marks made in clay tablets with a reed stylus. Many other languages in the region adopted the script, which continued to be used until around 75 CE.

The word "Mesopotamia" comes from the ancient Greek “meso,” meaning “between,” and “potamia,” meaning “rivers.” The name describes the geographic position of the region, which was situated in the fertile valleys between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Ancient Mesopotamia covered parts of modern-day Iraq, Kuwait, Turkey, and Syria from prehistoric times until the Arab conquest in the seventh century CE.

The first civilizations began to form in Mesopotamia around 4000 BCE. Over the course of several thousand years, a number of civilizations rose to dominance, including the Babylonians, Akkadians, Sumerians, and Assyrians. These groups interacted with each other through trade and cultural exchange, and Mesopotamia became a region of agricultural and technological innovation.

Mesopotamia was where the first cities on Earth developed, which is why it is sometimes referred to as the Cradle of Civilization. The region’s geographic position between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers made the land ideal for cultivating crops. This abundance of food allowed humans to build settlements, form complex societies, and develop new technologies.