Mesopotamian Civilization

Mesopotamia is the ancient land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It covers modern day Iraq and parts of Iran, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. Mesopotamian civilizations were the first in history to exist in well-populated and fixed settlements. As settlements became larger and more organized, they progressed politically and socially into city-states. They developed irrigation methods and invented the wheel and the plow. After they developed the first written language, economic transactions and legal codes were kept. Mesopotamian literature was recorded. Great architectural structures were built. In time, empires, kings, and innovative military establishments emerged. These advancements, along with scientific, mathematical, and communal ceremonies, are the legacies of the great Mesopotamian civilizations.

Mesopotamia was the heartland of emerging nations and empires that would control the Near East for centuries. Mesopotamia is a general name for a number of diverse ethnic groups that contributed to the culture of the region. The most well-known Mesopotamian civilizations include the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians. Other cultural groups may have been key players on the Mesopotamian stage, but none was as influential as these groups.

The Sumerians captured the region beginning in the Early Dynastic period (ca. 2900 BC) and ending with the Third Dynasty of Ur (ca. 2004 BC). Over these years, Sumerians developed the first writing system and created epic literature. They invented the wheel, the plow, and the earliest known irrigation methods, enabling an otherwise unstable agricultural environment to prosper as Sumerian settlements grew into the world's first political city-states. Under an Akkadian Empire (ca. 2334–2193 BC), this land of independent city-states consumed the entire Mesopotamian.

Babylon was located in the southern part of modern Iraq, between Baghdad and the Persian Gulf. At its cultural height (1900 BC to 1595 BC), the Babylonian civilization unified its Mesopotamia region. Many adored Babylonian civilization because it was a melting pot of many ethnic groups. Even the emperors and barbarians who battled for control of Babylon preferred assimilation into its dynamic cultural heritage.

Assur lay to the north in the Upper Tigris Valley and around the ancient city of Nineveh. Assyrians were a fierce cultural group, and the Assyrian empire reigned during a time of intense warfare. Assyrian control constantly expanded and receded in its quest for complete domination of Mesopotamia. At one time, the empire had expanded from Egypt, far to the east, to Iran in the west. At another time, Assyrian control receded to near extinction. The civilization reached its zenith from 910 BC to circa 610 BC but would eventually fall to a renewed Babylonian military.