History 101 chapter 1

a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age

a terraced tower built of baked brick and culminating in a temple, probably for the patron god of the Sumerian city

a script characterized by wedge-shaped marks made by pressing the end of a reed or bone stylus into wet clay

king in Sumer; in The Epic of Gilgamesh a great hero and ruler said to be part man and part god

an Akkadian city-state (founded in 1867 BC by an Amorite dynasty) of ancient Mesopotamia

the sixth king of Babylon; greatest legacy is the most significant of all the documents written down to this time, the Code of Hammurabi; primary example of the lawgiver, the man who grasped the organizing power of royal declarations of law; recognized three classes within his society: gentleman, landless free citizen, and slave; took care to protect women and children in his code; regulated marriage with care

thick paper-like material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant

an ancient Egyptian granodiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek

"rulers of foreign lands"; probably a group of western Asiatic peoples from Syria and Palestine; part of their success was due to their use of the horse-drawn chariot in war; seized and controlled mainly the region of the delta; the period following their expulsion is called the New Kingdom or the Egyptian Empire

period in Egypt consisting of the Hyksos, Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Akhnaton, and Ramses I

most powerful female ruler of ancient times; had herself portrayed as a sphinx with a beard

the physical disc or circle of the sun

the most famous of the Ninteenth Dynasty pharaohs; fought a major, though inconclusive, battle with the Hittites that was ended with what may have been the world's first nonagression pact; devoted much of Egypt's wealth to amazing building projects

Palestinians who were famous as sailors and explorers; developed a simple alphabet that became the mother of all the scripts of Europe

the first people to accomplish a political unification of large parts of the Near East; descended from Semitic nomads who had founded the city of Ashur, named after their chief god; spoke a dialect closely resembling that of the Babylonians; wrote in cuneiform; in about 900 B.C. began their most important period of conquest and expansion; their territory included Babylonia to the south, the cities of Palestine to the west, and northern Egypt; the army was especially dominant and efficient; the kings exacted heavy payments of tribute as the price of leaving the conquered territories in peace; kings took pride in their brutal treatment of enemies and victims; much of its wealth was spent on glorifications of the king and his conquests; relied heavily on omens and their interpretation by priests to guide royal policy

Semitic language; originally spoken by the Aramaeans, who controlled parts of Mesopotamia from about 1100 to 900 B.C; was ultimately spoken everywhere in lands dominated by Assyria; later became the common tongue of the Near East; was the official language of the Persian Empire; in Palestine, was spoken by the Jews

an ancient Assyrian city on the eastern bank of the Tigris River; capital of the Neo Assyrian Empire; captured in 612 B.C. by the Medes

king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, who reigned c. 605 BC - 562 BC. According to the Bible, he conquered Judah and Jerusalem, and sent the Jews into exile. He is credited with the construction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and also known for the destruction of the First Temple

the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE), a reconstructed prehistoric language of Eurasia

King of Anshan in Persia from c. 600 to 580 BC or, according to others, from c. 652 to 600 BC

the most skilful administrator of the Persian Empire; left behind a summary of his reign written in three languages; divided his empire into some twenty satrapies

provinces of the Persian Empire under Darius; each was ruled by a satrap ("protector of the realm")

the chief of the Babylonian deities

the first great warlord of Western history; from Akkad; conquered all Mesopotamia; his language is called Akkadian

one of the most important of all groups of peoples in Western civilization; those speaking a number of related languages including Akkadian, Hebrew, and Canaanite

in Egyptian mythology, the god who ruled over the dead; originally a god of fertility; had given Egypt its laws and shown the people how to prosper; was murdered by his treacherous brother and his body cut into grafments

an abstract ethical quality regonised by Egyptians; "right order"; existed if everythign was in the order that the gods had ordained; a kind of primeval and cosmic harmonizing force that arranged all created things in the right relationships

designating or pertaining to a pictographic script, particularly that of the ancient Egyptians, in which many of the symbols are conventionalized, recognizable pictures of the things represented

name for Egyptian kings beginning in the Eighteenth Dynasty

early in his reign began to oppose the worship of Amen-Re, for centuries the traditional god of Thebes, and sponsored the worship of the aton; married to Nefertiti; changed his name from Amenhotep IV; moved capital from Thebes to a completely new city called Akhetaton, where he built a temple to Aton; composed a soaring hymn in praise of Aton, hailing him as the creator of the world

includes the Phoenicians and Israel

was not considered divine; taught that the supreme god was Ahura Mazda; taught a dualist religion, that is, one with two divine forces; rejected the sacrifice of animals; Persian king

the god of the Persians; a god of light; had created the world and directed the heavens and seasons

period from 3000 B.C. to 1200-1000 B.C; took place when workers discovered how to blend other metals with copper to fashion bronze, especially for weapons

the creator in Sumerian mythology

the rise of agriculture; people turned from hunting animals and gathering food to producing food from the earth

the period during which people gathered food; stage before the Neolithic Revolution; the "Old Stone Age"

established after the Akkadian kingdom was dissolved; its chief ruler was Ur-Nammu, who issued the first law code and spelled out regulations and penalties for a broad range of offences