Ancient Mesopotamia(Transcript)

Zoe: Hello, welcome to the first episode of History Fridays!

George: And today, we are going to show you about Ancient Mesopotamia. The first one is the first great civilisation, Sumer.

Zoe: Before going to the slideshow, we will explain what is this first great civilisation.

George: Some 7,000 years ago, farmers began to settle in the area between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. This area was later called 'Mesopotamia' by the Ancient Greeks, which means 'The land between 2 rivers.' It is roughly where Iraq is now. Life was hard there. The weather was hot and dry and the rivers flooded, but the land was fertile when properly looked after. Gradually, in the south, in the land of Sumer, a great civilisation grew up.

Zoe: Now for the slideshow.

The first image of the slideshow is the Map of Sumer.

Zoe: The land of Sumer where the Sumerians lived was in the southern part of Mesopotamia. The land near the Persian Gulf was very marshy and difficult to farm, but there were plenty of fish and wild fowl for the settlers to eat. To the north of Sumer, was the land which later became called Akkad.

The second image of the slideshow is settlers building houses with reeds.

George: Sumer had no stone or tall trees for building. Houses were built with reeds. People still build with reeds here today.

The third image of the slideshow shows settlers on an irrigation.

Zoe: The 2 rivers flooded in early summer. The Sumerians built irrigation canals to water their fields and drain the land.

The fourth image shows the settlers building houses with bricks.

George: Later, they built houses of sun-dried mud bricks. These buildings kept them cool in summer and warm in winter.

The fifth image shows the Sumerian temple.

Zoe: Every village was protected by a god or goddess who lived in a temple. The priests of the temple became very powerful.

The sixth image shows the entire Sumerian village.

George: Sumerian villages grew into huge, walled, self-governing city-states, with a temple at the centre and farmland all around.

The seventh image shows a Sumerian battle.

Zoe: Sometimes, one city-state conquered another, but no-one made himself ruler of all of Sumer, let alone Mesopotamia.

The eighth image shows the Battle Standard in Ur.

George: An inlaid box, called the 'Battle Standard,' was found at Ur. It shows scenes of life in peacetime on one side and scenes of war on the other. This shows what Sumerian warriors, weapons and chariots looked like. Sumerians did not have horses, so chariots were pulled by donkeys or asses.

The ninth image shows statues of nobles and priests.

Zoe: We can get an idea of what Sumerians looked like and what they wore from statues found in temples. Nobles or priests seem to have shaved their heads.

Scene cuts back to Zoe and George in the Ziggurat of Ur which is in Nasiriyah, Iraq.

Zoe: So we are here in Nasiriyah, Iraq where the Ziggurat of Ur is standing.

George: There is a holy shrine where the patron god of the city had one of his dwelling places.

Zoe: There were actually houses where the temple staff lived. But we couldn't see them anymore.

George: This Ziggurat is thought to have been about 21 metres high. Really tall right?

Zoe: Yeah, but not as tall as the Burj Khalifa.

George: Anyways, by about 2000 BC, temples had developed into huge temple-towers, called Ziggurats, like this one at Ur which is now in Iraq. The temples employed large numbers of craftsmen, labourers and scribes.

Zoe: Now it is time for our next slideshow about the invention of writing.

The first image is a stone vase.

Zoe: Temples collected gifts for the gods and goddesses and handed out goods as payment. A system of account-keeping was needed.

The second image is Sumerian writing.

George: They drew sketches of objects using a flattened piece of clay and a reed pen. This is the earliest form of writing.

The third image is a Sumerian man writing in front of a kiln.

Zoe: At first, pictures were drawn on wet clay. The clay was dried in the sun or baked in a kiln to make it into a hard tablet.

The fourth image is just a man writing on a tablet.

George: Later, scribes found it was easier to draw signs sideways. The pictures became less like the objects they represented.

The fifth image shows the images turned sideways and their cuneiform symbol.

Zoe: The reed pen made the pictures look wedge-shaped. We call this writing cuneiform, meaning 'wedge-shaped.'

The sixth image shows the stone tablet.

George: Signs were adapted and used together so other words could be built up and sentences formed to express ideas.

Scene cuts back to Zoe and George.

Zoe: Now let's talk about Sumerian schools.

George: Schools way back during that time were very strict. Let's just see what was going on there.

The first image is a Sumerian mother sending her son to school.

Zoe: Those who could afford to, sent their sons to school. School began very early. The boys had to work very hard.

The second image is a Sumerian school with a headmaster, an apprentice teacher, an assistant master and students.

George: Reading, writing and arithmetics were taught. Discipline was very strict. Boys were beaten for not doing their lessons way. One Sumerian story tells of a boy getting a good report by persuading his father to give the master a gift.