Everyday Life in Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is one of the oldest civilizations that ever existed. What we have now can be traced back to the ways of Mesopotamian culture and society in one way or another. Since they were one of the starters of the new agricultural life, many future civilizations based their own ways of living off of the ways Mesopotamia already used (Prof. Gaddis, Lecture). You can notice many similarities between our present day society and the Mesopotamian society. In fact, even the laws they had took notice upon many of the problems they had and we have today. These primary source texts tell us that the conditions of everyday life and the environment are greatly similar to our very own today. Technically Mesopotamia's existence is long and the living conditions and society's cultures change throughout time. Their existence ranges from 5500BC to 1200BC (Prof. Gaddis, Lecture, 9/4/02). During different periods of time, there existed different ways of living; different leaders promoted different conditions, so to talk about Mesopotamia as a whole with out splitting the time periods up, would be nearly impossible. During Gilgamesh's era around 2700BC, we learn a great deal about the religion that existed at that time in Mesopotamia.
This is a problem for historians when reading these stories. This can be related to the fact that we have technology and science to learn from, while all they had were beliefs and stories. I will remember these days - never to forget them (16). Eventually it made its way onto stone or clay tablets, but the story changed considerably while in oral transition (Prof. Most of the folk stories were about things that really happened, such as the flood in 2900BC. The punishments for broken rules were very simplistic, just like modern times. They weren't as tolerant to crime and weren't as moral as we are now. (Bailkey, 30)" Now, this does not pertain to any laws that we have in today's society, but this law made it possible for the concept of survival of the fittest to fade away. Hammurabi set forth a written code of law that would protect the weak (most of the population) and limit the powers of the wealthy. They were so human like; they learned lessons, which is not something an all-mighty god needs to do. Just by looking at their judicial system and laws, you can find out how they lived and what type of problems they had to deal with. The first thing people think about when they talk about the Code of Hammurabi is the saying, "an eye for an eye. He claimed the god sent his to deliver his message to everyone.
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