Sumer

The Atrahasis provides a fascinating look into rituals and beliefs present in Ancient Mesopotamia. The story presents a multi-layered origin story with references to both the “fashioning” and “sexual reproduction” creation theories that were discussed in class, and gives insight into some of the rituals and celebrations that might have been performed at the time this tablet was written. The personalities of the gods and interactions between them are clearly defined and explored in this text as…

River Valley Civilizations’ Contributions Past civilizations have contributed many things that have influenced future, or present, civilizations. To look at a few in specific, ancient river valley civilizations such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China have each contributed their own systems/inventions. Mesopotamia brought a writing system and a set of laws. The Sumerians of Mesopotamia created cuneiform, the world’s first written language (Doc 1). According to Doc 1, they used this…

Hatshepsut reigned so long ago and much of evidence of her existence has been tampered with or destroyed.Kara Cooney has and includes lots of sources and notes. Cooney does a good job using primary and sundry sources when write this book about someone who almost erased form history. Kara uses all sources that she can to describe Hatshepsut such as monuments, statues, temples, chapels, obelisks, portraits, stone blocks, reliefs, and chiseled inscriptions. Kara’s book states that Hatshepsut’s body…

Different materials from the past can give historians and archaeologists a look into what the past was like in the places they were found. Although any pieces of evidence are valuable, some are more helpful than others to develop a better idea of the past than others. Physical evidence has been found in the Neolithic Era through Globeke Tepe, in Phoenicia through the shipwreck of Uluburun, and in Egypt through temples and mummies. Globeke Tepe is a structure that was built in the Neolithic Era…

attested.56 The function of Hmt nTr was to perform the same role accomplished by the Hm nTr in the cult of other deities. As mentioned by several scholars, there were two principal classes of priests in the Egyptian priesthood: the Hmw nTr who occupied the higher position and the wabw-priests who were lower in position.57 However, Senbi was a wab aA “great wab-priest.” This title implied a higher rank for its bearer.58 d) Doxey discusses how the epithet imAx(y) xr was used to introduce the name…

Since the beginning of time, art has always been an integral contributor toward recording the history, culture, and traditions of civilizations. Archaeologists have been interpreting the history of civilizations through art, especially sculptures. In ancient Iraq, Mesopotamia, the Sumerians represented their sophisticated relationships between the people and the gods through making clay sculptures (Carr, 2016). While in ancient Egypt, the old kingdom's art was mainly represented in limestone…

Ancient Egyptian Pottery The ancient Egyptians were one of the first civilizations in the world to make pottery. They made these pots (as well as vases, canopic jars, etc...) out of a red-brown clay that was called Nile silt ware. Remember the pottery I am talking about was or the “civilians” of the time, not for royalty. So, it stands to reason that it would look like a regular clay pot/vase and not a glamorous gold one that was put in the tombs of the pharaohs and other royals. This pottery…

The Mayan creation story compares with other creation when discussing the remembrance of the dead. They believed the dead still played a role with those living on earth, which was a very important factor of almost all ancient religions. Mayan beliefs system believed in many gods also known as polytheism. Mayans believed that the gods were involved with every aspect of life such as, the weather, the crops, and etc. When comparing Mayan creation with other creation stories Mesopotamian were very…

Nearly 4,000 years ago, a man named Hammurabi became king of a small city-state known as Babylon. We known very little about Hammurabi’s personal life, we aren’t even sure what he looked like. However, we do know that Hammurabi developed a system of justice carved on a large pillar brick containing 282 laws. What are these laws for and just have it affected it’s people? Even though we know very little about Hammurabi, archaeologists have found a tablet containing details on Hammurabi’s…

The first piece of art that I have decided to discuss is a prehistoric monument in Ireland called Newgrange. It was built during the Neolithic period around 3000 BC to 2500 BC, making it older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. The Newgrange monument primarily consists of a large mound, built of alternating layers of earth and stones, with grass growing on top and a reconstructed facade of flattish white quartz stones studded at intervals with large rounded cobbles covering part of the…