CONTENTS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1MESOPOTAMIA THE BIRTHPLACE OF CVILIZATION 10 CHAPTER 2 SumMERIAN CIVILIZATION 31 CHAPTER 3 THE FIRST KINGDOM OF BABYLON 50 CHAPTER 4 THE ASSYRIANS AND THE CHALDEANS 61 75 77 CONCLUSION GoSSARY For MORE INFORMATION BIBLIOGRAPHY 79 82 84 INDEX
I n approximately 1750 BC the Babylonian king Hammurabi had a shiny black basalt stela pillar placed in the capital city of Babylon This astonishing object con tained nearly 300 laws By today s standards some of them seem shockingly cruel such as number 195 If a son strike his father his hands shall be hewn off Or 196 If a man put out the eye of another man his eye shall be put out Some even seem downright unfair if a patient died during surgery according to law 218 the doctor s hands would be cut off It can be hard to believe that this code of laws was a great advance in human civiliza tion But Hammurabi was saying in effect that the king does not hold all the power People have a right to live in a society where clear laws apply to everyone It is not surprising that this innovation in legal thought came from a land where so much change had come before After all Babylonia was located in Mesopotamia the home of the world's first civilizations Mesopotamia Greek for between rivers is located between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq These rivers would over flow each year leaving behind enriched soil It
INTRODUCTION ET Starting around 10 000 BC wandering tribes people began to grow crops on the fertile land They gradually stayed in one place sow ing seeds and domesticating animals Towns then cities began to grow Mesopotamia is located at the cross roads between Asia Africa Europe and the Arabian Peninsula That allowed the people A group of schoolchildren visit the site of Ancient Babylon in 1998 Karim Sahib AFP Getty Images
