Ziggurat at Ur, c. 2100 B.C. Ziggurats are a form of ancient temple common to the Sumerians, Babylonians and Assyrians. A Ziggurat is a huge platform with a series of smaller platforms on top. They look like a stepped pyramid with stairs leading to the summit where there was a small temple. Each...

Known to the Greeks as Mesopotamia; Greek for "between the rivers," this area falls between the Tigris and Euphrates River. Egypt, one of Africa's earliest civilizations, is known as "the Gift of the Nile" according to a Greek historian. Mesopotamian and the Egyptian areas...

Civilization Civilization is the ways of life started by people who live in cities. Our culture today is influenced by ancient civilizations. The three major early civilizations that have influenced today's cultures are the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Sumerians. Civilizations are more co...

The Great Flood Upon reading The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Old Testament: Hebrew Views on God and History we find embedded into each of the texts a story of the great flood. In analyzing the two pieces we see that the stories are very similar. This is very interesting since they were written with...

Many of the same ancient stories can be found in different cultures. Each story differs in a small way, but the general idea remains synonymous. One story that is paralleled in several cultures is the legend of a great flood. The epic of Gilgamesh resembles the Bible's story of Noah's A...

Many of the same ancient stories can be found in different cultures. Each story differs in some aspects, but the general themes can have striking similarities. One story that is paralleled in several cultures is the legend of a great, disastrous flood. The epic of Gilgamesh resembles the Bib...

Though they were close geographically, the differences in their customs put Mesopotamia and Egypt worlds apart. These two Empires were in some ways radically different, yet in others, amazingly similar. Both built temples, farmed, had social classes, had government, and praised many gods. Under ...

1839 Austen Henry Layard set off with a friend to Ceylon, but in Mesopotamia, he was delayed by a reconnaissance of Assyrian mounds. It was from this reconnaissance of Nineveh that he found a buried library and lost literature. The importance of this find was not understood until much later when the...

The ways of cultural diffusion are manifold, intricate and complex but for Mesopotamia, it set the stage on which many civilizations rose and inventions were made. Notable contributors to the history of Mesopotamia include Sumerians, Phoenicians and Babylonians. Living on the banks of the Tigris and...