Ancient Beginnings

Taught by: [Imperator]



Sections in order

1. Sumer, Akkad, and Babylon
2. Ancient Israel
3. Early Empires




Sumer, Akkad, and Babylon

The Tigris and Euphrates rivers run parallel to each other creating a fertile crescent in ancient Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq. By 3000 B.C., a people called the Sumerians had mastered control of the rivers through irrigation ditches allowing food to be grown year round. Due to the surplus of food, people began to live together in cities and one of the first civilizations in the world developed. The Sumerians built their cities out of mud bricks due to shortage of wood and stone in Mesopotamia. The most important structures were the temples. Sumerians believed that the gods controlled the cities and people were created to execute the gods’ manual labor, which they were unwilling to do themselves. The priests served the gods and lived in the temples, commoners farmed and crafted goods, and slaves served the nobility and priests. This thriving civilization even invented the wheel to make the transport of trade goods easier.

The development of more and larger cities began to cause conflict as the city-states fought one another for control of vital resources. In 2340 B.C., the Akkadians, a people to the north of Sumer, conquered the Sumerian city-states and set up a unified empire, the first empire in history. By 2100 B.C., the empire had fallen to peoples from the mountainous east of Mesopotamia. With the empire gone, the independent city-states resumed their internal warfare until 1792 B.C. when the city-state of Babylon united Sumer and Akkad once more. The leader of Babylon, Hammurabi, developed an important law code to govern the people that consisted of 282 laws. The code was strict and followed the principle of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Hammurabi’s empire fell after his death in 1750 B.C. due to the inability of his successors to keep the various people together.




Ancient Israel

Around 1600 B.C., the Hittite Empire formed in Asia Minor and grew strong enough to threaten even the power of the Egyptian Empire to the south. Then around 1200 B.C., wandering people from Greece known as the “Sea Peoples” destroyed the empire and weakened Egypt. This left no dominant kingdoms in the eastern Mediterranean and allowed for the rise of the Phoenicians and Israelites.

The Phoenicians lived on the coast of modern day Lebanon and Syria. Their economy was based on trade and they formed routes across the Mediterranean and even extended into the Atlantic, reaching the British Isles and the down the west coast of Africa. The most well known Phoenician colony was that of Carthage on the North African coast.

The Israelites lived in modern day Israel and Jordan and established the Kingdom of Israel around 1200 B.C. with Jerusalem as its capital. In 970, King Solomon came to power and attained for ancient Israel its height of power. After his death in 930 B.C., the kingdom split into two parts, the Kingdom of Israel and Judah. The Kingdom of Israel to the north was composed of ten tribes while the Kingdom of Judah consisted of two.




Early Empires

The Assyrians lived in Northern Mesopotamia and used iron weapons as opposed to bronze ones. They conquered the entire Fertile Crescent as well as the Nile River all the way to the Egyptian city of Thebes by 700 B.C. In order to control the populations, the Assyrians brutally murdered and deformed people as a terror tactic. In 722 they destroyed the Kingdom of Israel and sent the people to other parts of their empire while the Kingdom of Judah survived.

In 612 B.C. the Assyrian Empire fell to the Chaldeans who created their own empire on largely the same territory and had their capital at Babylon. In 586 B.C. the Chaldeans reached Jerusalem and sacked the city as well as sending the population to Babylon as captives. The Chaldean Empire itself would fall to the Persians from the east in 539 B.C.




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