Mesopotamia thread

The Sumerians are long gone, but there are around 3 million people whose origins can be traced back to Assyria.

Some pics from the Mesopotamian section at the Louvres

...

Did you take these?

Well, I think the earliest recorded battle in history was between Lagash and Umma 2450 BC. Both were cities in Sumer, so I'd say there's a high chance.

People always say that either Sumer or Egypt are the earliest civilisations, but you look at Jericho and it's estimated that settlements took place there in 9600 BCE, a good five millenniums before either Egypt or Sumer had their first dynasties.

...

what is the deal with jericho anyway?
it looks like a city, but is there any agriculture or other civilization features connected to it?

göbekli tepe is also ancient, 9 500 bc, but it was definitely built by hunter-gatherers

There's a difference between a settlement and a civilisation. This gets down to one of those definition arguments. When do you transition from a 'village' to a 'town'? To a 'city' to a 'civilisation'?

What places like Jericho, Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük developed were essentially small societies. A monumental feat in its own right, but hardly something that would be considered a "civilisation" from a modern person's perspective. They didn't make much advancement in terms of agriculture/farming, military, infrastructure and supply networks etc. And that's what ultimately differentiates those places from the likes of Egypt and Sumer.

The Bible is the best source on ancient kingdoms and empires, gives detailed explanations on their origins.

It covers Egypt, Assyria, Babylon and Persia.
But most importantly, it covers the "Patriarch" era which starts after the Flood all the way to the Tower of Babel, showing how the first settlements developed.

The Book of Jasher is also interesting, gives a great account on the birth of paganism and a funny story of Abraham smashing Nimrod's idols. It also tells us where the name "Pharaoh" comes from.

I really want to get into the historicity of he bible once my studies end
I'm not a Christian, but the bible is a rather large compendium of ancient documents, which should not be overlooked

I remember debating an atheist (I am an atheist myself) about the bible
he said that the bible was "nothing but lies"
I pointed out that it mentions Augustus, who was a real person
and his response was "well, they needed to mix in some truth in it so as to confuse us"

>t. anti-atheistic atheist

it's a very interesting subject, far from simply all being lies. I wouldn't go as far as to even call the incorrect parts "lies" since that implies that they were intentionally wrong. beyond some slant for propaganda purposes, the authors of the bible probably believed what they wrote. I think even forgeries can be a bit tricky to be called lies with religious documents. perhaps the writer thought that God was revealing a lost document to them by revelation. additionally in cases such as Isaiah which had tons of material added to it over time, the added material often comes from the oral tradition that develops around the document that are eventually added to the document itself

the opposite for me desu
i have a pathological phobia of mummies so reading about egpyt freaks me the fuck out even if it has nothing to do with mummies

Why is Babylon the most famous part of Mesopotamia when it was a dominant power for a much shorter time and on a relatively smaller scale than Assyria?

jews

it was very much a religious/cultural center of Mesopotamia, even when it wasn't a big political power

1. The Bible (Nebuchadnezzar/Tower of Babel etc)
2. Herodotus
3. The Hanging Gardens/Seven Wonders of the World
4. Babylon completely fucking dismantled Assyria and destroyed Nineveh without so much as a trace
5. Marduk is a Babylonian deity, probably the most famous one outside of Ishtar
6. Its ruins are still around

I find them both ominous as fuck. I look at the creepy anatomy of the Sphinx and think "How did they come up with that"? The fact that they were able to build it in the first place also bothers me. They literally just had some sand and mud at their disposal. What could they have known about architecture that allowed them to construct these edifices in such a way that they would last for thousands of years. How did they come up with the concept of a God with the head of a dog who holds dominion over death? It's stuff like that which bothers the shit out of me.

Then you read about the Epic of Gilgamesh, the fucked up shit that goes on in there. These were supposedly the earliest civilised humans, how did this kind of stuff even cross their minds?

It's shit like this that makes me lament the lost history as a result from needless conquest and violence. Sumeria was literally just discovered over 100 years ago with no one knowing about it's existence before that.

Where do i go, what do i read, to find out how things were back in sumeria? What people would wear, humor, opinions, day to day life, it interests me most in all civilizations yet I only ever find information on "famous people" that never led an ordinary life.

this is relevant

>Sumeria was literally just discovered over 100 years ago with no one knowing about it's existence before that.
It really is amazing, isn't it? Everything we know about ancient Mesopotamia probably doesn't even add up to 1/10th of its actual history. That to me is both fascinating and damn disheartening.

Sumerologists complained about Mesopotamia not receiving as much attention as Egypt so that's a reason for a lot of it still being a mystery to this day.

Yea but too bad closest thing we have to the original bible is some guys translation of the edited version.

Go look at an interlinear translation, you'll see that there are barely any differences between texts.
All the fuss over text types is mostly with KJO autists and textual scholars telling them no.

I was thinking about this the other day. We all learned about the ancient Romans, Egyptians, Greeks, Jews, Aztecs etc when we were in primary school, but we never got taught much at all about Mesopotamia.

Why is that? It was over 15 years ago now, maybe there simply wasn't enough to teach?

Probably, not as much to make a curriculum out of anyway. Asia is largely ignored in general.

Mesopotamia is largely still being discovered, when we were kids, for example, Babylon and Ur were thought to be cities which only exists in myth. There is also a new study called Panbabylonism. Which pretty much pinpoints the origins of almost all Christian stories to Mesopotamia.

Largely Christian nations do not want to know about Gilgamesh, the flood, Enkidu, the serpent or Emesh and Enten. The discovery of these stories pretty much objectively denies the christian doctrines.

There is a school of thought within Panbabylonisim which says the big 3 religions took standpoints which essentially were the opposites of their Mesopotamian earlier counter-parts, as a fuck you to their culture.

Most iraqis share the same ancestry. They just speak another language

Holy shit Where have you been my life. Every time I look into Mesopotamia and to some extent Early Egypt I get that pit in my stomach feeling. I think it's because I identify so much with classical European civilizations like the Greeks and Romans, and anything before that is uncharted waters for me.

Yes... Minoan cannibalism (even if they were not Mesopotamians) or other shit

But Egypt gets me too (people buried alive in masouleums with the pharaoh)

Because assyrians were known as cruel savages. Not a good image for the cradle of civilization you know

Here in germany we started history with mesopotamia to learn what constitutes as a civilization and how they started.

When did the age of Mesopotamia/Egypt end? When the Persians conquered them?

For Mesopotamia, yes; nowhere in that region was ever independent again after Babylon fell to Cyrus.

For Egypt, I would say it was a few hundred years later, when Alexander took Giza and established Alexandria. The traditional hierarchy of Pharaohs and dynasties was still maintained, but the land was entirely ruled by Macedonian Ptolemies until the Romans came along.

So were the Mongols and everyone knows about them.

The mongols still exist so you can't ignore them.

So do the Assyrians.

I see. I suppose that makes sense. Much about those other places were constantly recorded throughout their history, but somehow Mesopotamian records just never came to light until relatively recently.

>Babylon and Ur were thought to be cities which only exists in myth
I actually thought the same thing until a few years ago. The only things I knew about it were from when I read the bible. I used to think of it in the same vein as Sodom and Gomorrah or Atlantis.

I'm interested mainly in the Sumerians, since I like primordial things, and since we consider them to be the first true Civilization, I find them particularly neat.

Persia rose again, though. The middle East truly became unrecognizable once the Arabs conquered Persia.

I knew a Chaldean girl; she had great tits

That's a good idea. If I were to construct an ancient History curriculum, I'd start with that as well, along with the origins of Jericho and Catalhoyuk.

You mean Biblical Myths. Christianity came about 600 years after the Babylonian Captivity, and is firmly established in Roman Judea.

The stories of Genesis were probably co-opted from Mesopotamian Myth of ultimately Sumerian origin.

The later books of the Hebrew Bible, think Judges and Kings and then the Prophet authored books, are far more historical than the Mythical Genesis.

We learned about them in my Catholic school, but history started with the origin of life in my World History class

I cum every time I realize that the third Ur period is called Neo-Sumerian and happened before Babylon even became a thing

>Alulim reigned as king for 28,800 years

...

It tells just how old these places really are. Babylon itself is considered ancient but the dynasties of Sumer were already ancient by the time of Hammurabi.

It's even more impressive that Sumerian continued to be a religious language into the First Century AD.

probably like modern day middle-easterners such as Iraqis. light brown

I sort of know what you mean.
Their worldview was the idea that humans are meant to be slaves to the will of the gods, which I guess would explain why their civilization seemed so cold and cruel. Of course that was probably shaped by their environment, but it's definitely less comfy than Egypt seemed at least.

its not as mysterious as you think. human beings are smart and creative as fuck. The ancients were no different

>the big 3 religions took standpoints which essentially were the opposites of their Mesopotamian earlier counter-parts
This is interesting. Got any examples or reading material? All I can think of off the top of my head is the Tower of Babel.

Basically any part of Genesis before Abraham shows up.

Interestingly, Abraham is supposedly a Sumerian, not a Canaanite, since he's from Ur of the Chaldees.

His notion of the Bible being entirely inherited from Babylonia is inaccurate, but the Creation myth and other Genesis myths clearly are.

Which is interesting because the Chaldees showed up long after Ur has lost its significance. It's really easy to pinpoint the creation of the Abraham character to the Neo-Babylonian period

Well, yeah, but Abraham was most likely the mythical founder of the Hebrews before that.

It's not like they had Wikipedia back then.

The Hebrew Bible was composed in exile, most likely in an attempt to preserve Hebrew religious and historical traditions while disparate throughout the Babylonian Empire.

Lots of Babylonian influence, but the more recent stuff, Judges, Kings, and the Prophetical Books, is mostly Historical, as corroborating Assyrian Material states.

The Hebrew people are much older than the Babylonian Captivity, and the bible provides evidence of oral tradition in books like Samuel.

It's important to remember that the Bible isn't one book, but a compendium.

In addition, the Babylonian captivity holds no impact on the New Testament, since it was long dead by then

>but it's definitely less comfy than Egypt seemed at least.
Much of Egyptian society functioned through slavery, though.

During the late Bronze and early Iron ages, how were the relationships between Mesopotamia and nations of the surrounding areas, like the Medes and Hittites?

Wow, so even Judaism comes from Mesopotamia. Neat.

The Medes were one of the peoples that regularly got involved in conflicts with the Assyrians.

During the Bronze age, the Hittites, Achaean/Mycenaeans, Egypt, and the Mesopotamians were trading partners with their own little Globalized society that collapsed

Well, the Jews were Semites, so they were probably related to the Akkadians anyway

True. Were Akkadians the first Semites?

...

what always freaks me out is how, when these civilizations were around, people tend to forget that the earth was still populated by humans.

so in one little tiny corner of the earth you had civilization with advanced things like tools, armies, laws, civil code, literature, monumental art, huge architecture, technology, social class, etc etc and then the rest of the world is just smaller hut-settlements or literal cavemen.

it blows my mind. can you imagine being some hunter-gatherer from central asia for example, or a nomad, and somehow or another stumbling into sumer... "HOLY SHIT HUMANS CREATED THAT SANDSTONE MOUNTAIN? IMPOSSIBLE"

Is Mesopotamia a good place to start learning about history? I really don't know where to begin in relation to European, African, Asian, and American history.

>Is Mesopotamia a good place to start learning about history?
No. Mainly because it's all so new, it's still being discovered, it's one of the more volatile modern parts of archaeology.

>I really don't know where to begin in relation to European, African, Asian, and American history.
Treat each separately, make your own inks once you understand each respective history.

If you are looking for a base point to start, try Egypt or China, both have very detailed records of their early histories.

Not him, and I'm not sure we can find the "first" of any group of people, but I do believe Akkadian is the first recorded semitic language

It's fucking weird, man. Obviously, all human populaces eventually developed their own languages, cultures and infrastructure etc, but it's how it always comes in periods that gets my noggin joggin. For example, Cuneiform is from Sumer, so we know it was developed in at least the 30th century BC; but Basque (Euskera) is often regarded as the oldest European language and, although no one can really trace its origins, it has often been suggested that the Basque people derive from a wave of immigration from Anatolia in the 20th Century BC.

If that hypothesis is to be believed, then that means there's around 1000 years between the oldest Asian language and the oldest European one.

Can anyone recommend a book on the Phoenicians and/or the Canaanites? I understand it's not Mesopotamian or even ancient but there are not much threads on Veeky Forums where you can ask this question.

it has stuff on the sea peoples not phoenicians though

Is there a massive difference between the Phoenicians and the Canaanites?

Found this page for ya:
suellenoceanchatsancestry.wordpress.com/2013/02/12/whats-the-difference-between-israel-canaan-palestine-and-phoenicia/

>3. The Hanging Gardens/Seven Wonders of the World
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE THOSE WERE FROM NINEVEH!! FUCKING BABYLONIANS! FIRST YOU DESTROY OUR EMPIRE THEN YOU STEAL OUR GARDENS! FUCK YOUUUUUU!

>mfw Nineveh gets conquered twice by Babylonians

...

At 19 I might be on the younger end of the users of this board, but I learned about Mesopotamia about as much as all of those.

I'm a senior in a Catholic high school now, we touched on Mesopotamia pretty briefly at the beginning of my world history class.

>tfw militaristic society with no culture
>all the popular city-state pals are jerking off to Babylon and it's "culture"
>you start becoming a kickass kingdom and invade the popular kids
>Now only Babylon left
>tfw gonna get your name on the Kings List
>sack and destroy Babylon
>feelsgood.stele
>but then you remember you're a militaristic society with no culture
>tfw killed all the talented people
>tfw bring about Dark Ages

Thankfully there's not much left for ISIS to destroy, because Sumeria, Akkadia, Babylonia, Assyria, neo-Babylonia and neo-Assyria were all so great at wiping each other out

>You will never excavate Bronze Age Mesopotamian sites because your country is so shit at making friends in the Near East

Why is every great empire a kush empire? From Babylon to the DEC of independence

Another example of We-wuzism.

>Assyrians continue to exist to this day
>Meanwhile Babylonians are no longer around
Why is this?

Bible is a mixed bag. It's generally very reliable when it comes to everything post Babylonian conquest of Judah, but everything before that is literal horseshit.

Because Babylonians were never an ethnic group unlike Assyrians. They were Amorites, Chaldeans, etc.

Sumer is Best Mer.

>ASSyrians found the first empire ruled by terror
>Boast about how cruel they are for centuries
>Eventually get BTFO
>Now modern ASSyrrians cry on tv about MUH OPPRESSION

What goes around comes around, fuck all ASSyrrians, I hope the whole race dies of anal cancer and then burns in hell forever.

"Black headed" clearly means their hair color, otherwise they'd just say "black".

They depicted tehir gods with blue eyes which has lead some WE WUZZing faggots to claim they were "Aryan", but they used blue BECAUSE it was "unnatural" and thus "godly", and because lapis lazuli was the most valuable material they had, and so worthy of use depicting gods.

t. Abdullah Bashur

>What could they have known about architecture that allowed them to construct these edifices in such a way that they would last for thousands of years.

They didn't START with pyramids and sphinxes, the earliest Egyptian structures (the mastabas) are simple and intuitive designs, and the process of making pyramids wasn't smooth (see: the Bent Pyramid) and took literally thousands of years to develop.

>How did they come up with the concept of a God with the head of a dog who holds dominion over death?

Jackals eat the dead. Seems pretty obvious to me.

>These were supposedly the earliest civilised humans, how did this kind of stuff even cross their minds?

People in the past were no less inventive or intelligent than us.

We didn't know it, but we've known about Sumer all along. So many of our myths and legends, not least the whole "Old Myth" portions of the Bible, and the foundations of our math and timekeeping are Sumerian. Their influence is absolutely overwhelming in almost every area, it's almost irrelevant that most people for thousands of years have never even heard of them.

The Bible preserves many Mesopotamian myths, but does so in a distorted way. Luckily we now have authentic versions of such stories as the Great Flood and the Garden of Eden, so we can toss the Bible onto the junkheap of history.