80 Fun Facts About Mesopotamia

The name Mesopotamia comes from Greek roots meaning what?

Mesos means 'middle' and potamos means 'river'; Arabic and Syriac names for the region carry the same sense, and most of it lies within one modern country.

Which two rivers frame the historical region of Mesopotamia?

The region sits in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent, mostly within modern Iraq.

Mesopotamia corresponds roughly to the territory of which modern country?

Southwestern Iran lies just beyond it, where the land rises into the Persian plateau.

What is the name of the earliest known civilization, which arose in southern Mesopotamia?

Its farmers along the two great rivers grew grain surpluses that made the first cities possible.

The Sumerians called their own land by what name, meaning 'Country of the noble lords'?

The familiar modern name comes from the Akkadians who later conquered the Sumerian city-states; Emegir was the Sumerians' word for their language.

How do linguists classify Sumerian?

It is agglutinative and related to no known language, which is one reason its early speakers' origins are still debated.

What is the name of the earliest known writing system, developed to write Sumerian?

It stayed in active use from the early Bronze Age until the 1st century BC and was adapted for Akkadian, Hittite, Elamite and more.

The script's modern name comes from the Latin cuneus, meaning what?

The name describes the wedge-shaped impressions a stylus left in wet clay.

The latest known Mesopotamian clay tablet, an astronomical almanac, is dated to roughly which year?

By then the script had been in use for more than three thousand years.

Approximately how many clay tablets are in the world's largest collection, held by a museum in London?

An estimated half a million tablets sit in museums worldwide, but comparatively few have ever been published.

The trilingual Behistun Inscription was commissioned by kings of which empire?

Henry Rawlinson and Edward Hincks completed the decipherment in the 19th century.

What was the name of the wild man the gods created to stop Gilgamesh from oppressing his people?

He lost a test of strength to Gilgamesh in Uruk, and the two became inseparable friends.

Who guards the Cedar Forest that Gilgamesh and his companion travel six days to reach?

They kill the guardian and cut down the sacred cedar, one of the acts that turns the gods against them.

What does the goddess Ishtar send to punish Gilgamesh for spurning her advances?

The heroes kill it and insult Ishtar in the process, which seals Enkidu's death sentence.

Who is the flood survivor Gilgamesh seeks out to learn the secret of eternal life?

He and his wife were the only humans to survive the flood the gods unleashed, a story that closely parallels the biblical Noah.

What creature steals the plant of rejuvenation while Gilgamesh stops to bathe?

It sheds its skin as it slithers away, an ancient explanation for why snakes seem to renew themselves.

How many tablets make up the Standard Babylonian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh?

About two-thirds of this version has been recovered, some of the best copies from the ruins of a 7th-century BC royal library.

Which scribe compiled the Standard Babylonian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh?

His version opens with the words 'He who saw the deep', while the older version began 'Surpassing all other kings'.

Which Assyriologist read the Gilgamesh flood story to a biblical society in 1872?

His fuller translation appeared in 1876 as The Chaldaean Account of Genesis.

According to the epic, what fraction of Gilgamesh was divine?

The Sumerian King List places his reign at Uruk in the 27th century BC, so a real king may lie behind the legend.

The stele bearing the Code of Hammurabi is carved from which stone?

It stands 2.25 metres tall and carries about 4,130 lines of text.

At which site, in present-day Iran, was the Hammurabi stele rediscovered in 1901?

It had been carried there as plunder some 600 years after it was made.

Which museum acquired the original Hammurabi stele after its 1901 rediscovery?

Replicas stand in many institutions, including the United Nations headquarters, and the US Capitol carries a relief portrait of Hammurabi.

Which god is shown with Hammurabi in the relief at the top of his stele?

As sun god and god of justice he was the fitting patron for a king who claimed to rule 'to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak'.

The 'eye for an eye' principle scholars identified in Hammurabi's laws is known by what Latin name?

The laws are casuistic, framed as 'if ... then' sentences covering crime, family, property and commerce.

Hammurabi was which king of the First Dynasty of Babylon?

His code, composed around 1753 BC, was copied and studied by scribes for more than a thousand years.

Which king built the Great Ziggurat of Ur in the 21st century BC?

He dedicated it during the Third Dynasty of Ur; the last king of Babylon rebuilt it 1,500 years later.

The ziggurat at Ur, like the city itself, was dedicated to which deity?

The city's very name is derived from a sign meaning 'the abode of Nanna'.

Etemenanki, the great ziggurat of Babylon, is associated by scholars with which biblical story?

A stele records its restoration by Nebuchadnezzar II; the structure no longer survives.

Who founded the Akkadian Empire, often called the first empire in world history?

He defeated the Sumerian king Lugal-zage-si and ruled from a capital, Akkad, that archaeologists have still not located.

Which Akkadian ruler took the unprecedented step of declaring himself a living god?

The founder's grandson also adopted the title 'King of the Four Quarters'.

The Sumerian King List says Akkad's founder was cup-bearer to which city's ruler?

His name is normalized as Šarru-kēn, 'the king is legitimate', which may hint at a usurper's insecurity.

Enheduanna, high priestess at Ur and daughter of the Akkadian founder, is history's earliest known named what?

Works such as the Exaltation of Inanna name her as narrator, though scholars debate whether she truly composed them.

In which year did excavators find the alabaster disk that rediscovered Enheduanna's existence?

The disk from the Giparu at Ur names her, her father and her office on the reverse.

Which god was the patron deity of Babylon and hero of its creation epic?

Some late Assyrian copies of the epic swap in their own national god instead.

On how many clay tablets is the Babylonian creation epic Enūma Eliš recorded?

The whole poem runs to about a thousand lines of Akkadian.

In the Enūma Eliš, which primordial being existed alongside Apsu before creation?

Her body, in the myth, is used to form the heavens and the earth.

For how many years did Nebuchadnezzar II rule the Neo-Babylonian Empire?

He was the dynasty's longest-reigning king, from his father Nabopolassar's death in 605 BC to his own in 562 BC.

Which city did Nebuchadnezzar II besiege and destroy in 587 BC?

He deported much of Judah's population, an event remembered as the Babylonian captivity.

The glazed bricks of Babylon's Ishtar Gate were mostly what colour?

The glaze imitated a precious stone, and the animals on it were picked out in coloured relief.

A reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate's smaller frontal gate was built after 1918 in which institution?

Other panels from the façade are scattered across museums around the world.

Which German archaeologist led the excavation of the Ishtar Gate from 1904 to 1914?

The gate was 15 metres high, with foundations extending another 14 metres underground.

According to legend, Nebuchadnezzar II built the Hanging Gardens for which homesick queen?

She was Median and missed the green hills of her homeland; the story comes from the priest Berossus around 290 BC.

Stephanie Dalley argues the Hanging Gardens really stood in which Assyrian capital, built by Sennacherib?

It is the only ancient wonder whose location has never been definitively established, and no Babylonian text mentions it.

The Library of Ashurbanipal held more than how many clay tablets and fragments?

H. G. Wells called it 'the most precious source of historical material in the world'.

In which year was the Neo-Assyrian capital sacked by a coalition of Babylonians, Medes and Scythians?

It had been the largest city in the world for roughly fifty years and never again served as a political centre.

Sennacherib's great residence at his capital was known by what name?

Its recovered plan measures about 503 by 242 metres.

The ruins of the Assyrian capital lie within which modern Iraqi city?

Its two main mounds are Kuyunjiq and Nabi Yunus, the latter the site of a shrine to Jonah.

Which British archaeologist excavated the Royal Cemetery at Ur between 1922 and 1934?

The dig was jointly funded by a London museum and the University of Pennsylvania.

The two mosaic sides of the Standard of Ur have been dubbed what?

One shows a military campaign, the other a banquet; its actual purpose is unknown.

Which deep-coloured stone, along with shell and red limestone, forms the mosaics of the Standard of Ur?

The stone would have been imported from as far away as Afghanistan, a sign of Ur's trading wealth.

Which curator reconstructed the rules of the Royal Game of Ur from a Babylonian tablet?

The tablet, written by the scribe Itti-Marduk-balāṭu, describes the game as played in the second century BC.

A version of the Royal Game of Ur survived to the 1950s among the Jews of which Indian city?

They called it 'Asha' and kept playing until they began emigrating to Israel.

At its peak around 3100 BC, Uruk may have had up to how many residents?

That made it the largest urban area in the world at the time, with tens of thousands more in its environs.

William Kennett Loftus, who first excavated Uruk in the 1850s, identified it with which biblical city?

Loftus led the first digs there from 1850 to 1854.

The best-preserved version of the Sumerian King List is recorded on which object?

It begins with fictional kings who reigned before a flood and ends with the dynasty of Isin.

According to the Sumerian King List, the reigns of the kings before the flood add up to how many years?

Individual reigns in that section run between 28,800 and 43,200 years.

Which city does the Sumerian King List treat as the earliest in southern Mesopotamia?

Raised temple platforms from the Ubaid period there predate the great ziggurats by millennia.

Which final Babylonian king favoured the moon god Sîn over Babylon's patron, handing Persia a pretext to invade?

He also rebuilt the ziggurat at Ur, and his religious policies were used by Cyrus to pose as a divine restorer of order.

Who conquered Mesopotamia in 539 BC, ending its last independent native realm until modern times?

Alexander followed in 332 BC, and after him the Seleucids, Parthians, Romans and Sasanians all fought over the land.

The Sumerian counting system, still used for minutes and degrees, was based on which number?

Sixty has twelve divisors, which makes it unusually convenient for splitting hours and circles into equal parts.

Assur, the first Assyrian capital, was founded around which date?

It only became independent after the Third Dynasty of Ur collapsed in the 21st century BC.

Which museum acquired the Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal reliefs recovered by Hormuzd Rassam?

The king slaying lions was propaganda for his power and his ability to protect Assyria from danger.

The Tigris rises in the Taurus Mountains of which modern country?

It flows about 1,750 km, and its source lies only about 30 km from the Euphrates valley.

Approximately how long is the Euphrates, the longest river in West Asia?

Its drainage basin of 440,000 square kilometres covers six countries.

The ruins of Babylon lie within which modern Iraqi city, about 85 km south of Baghdad?

The city's earliest mention, as a small town, is on a tablet from the reign of the Akkadian king Shar-Kali-Sharri.

Which Hittite king is thought to have sacked Babylon in 1595 BC, ending its First Dynasty?

The attack came during the reign of Samsu-Ditana; the Kassites then held Babylon until about 1155 BC.

Babylon was perhaps the first city in history to pass which population milestone?

It is estimated to have been the world's largest city around 1770-1670 BC and again around 612-320 BC.

Which Babylonian king escaped Assyrian rule and, with the Medes, destroyed Assyria by 609 BC?

His son Nebuchadnezzar II inherited the Neo-Babylonian, or Chaldean, Empire he founded.

Which 1855 calamity sank a ship and four rafts of Babylonian finds on the Tigris?

Much of the 1852-54 French excavation led by Fresnel, Oppert and Thomas was lost with the cargo.

Which dictator inscribed his own name on bricks at Babylon in imitation of Nebuchadnezzar?

A portrait of him beside the ancient king was installed at the entrance to the ruins.

The first unequivocal written documents come from which period, beginning about 3300 BC?

Cuneiform grew out of pictographic proto-writing and a Near Eastern token system used for accounting.

Which Sumerian king, later celebrated in poems, ruled Uruk in the Early Dynastic period c. 2600 BC?

He was commended for military exploits against Humbaba, guardian of the Cedar Mountain.

Which of these is NOT one of the four river civilisations where writing was independently invented?

Mesopotamia joins Egypt, the Indus and China as the four cradles of writing.

Around 150 BC Mesopotamia came under which empire, beginning centuries of war with Rome?

Western parts fell briefly to Rome, and in 226 AD the east passed to the Sasanians.

What is Upper Mesopotamia, from the rivers' sources down to Baghdad, also called?

Lower Mesopotamia ran from Baghdad down to the Persian Gulf.

Which Greek-Babylonian astronomer, born c. 190 BC, is the only one known to back a heliocentric model?

Known through Plutarch, he supported the heliocentric theory of Aristarchus of Samos.

Which Sumerian ruler first unified Sumer after centuries of inter-city warfare?

The geography of canals and desert fostered rival city-states whose history is one of almost constant war.

At which military engagement of 539 BC did Cyrus the Great defeat the Neo-Babylonian Empire?

Babylon's walls were considered impenetrable, so the city could only be entered through its gates or by the river.

Whose year name holds the earliest firm mention of Babylon, recording two temples built there?

At that point Babylon was merely a religious centre, ruled by a governor rather than a king.