Review from Mesopotamia to Charlemagne

Samaria/Mesopotamia

• Cuneiform is the earliest script, and started in Samaria.
• Samaritans gave us writing, and laws.
• The Code of Hammurabi comes from the Samaritans- ex: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
• A Zigurat is a temple.
• The scriptures describe the Garden of Eden being in Mesopotamia.
• Mesopotamia is the "country between two rivers", the Tigris and the Euphrates.
• Up until the 19th century, we really did not understand much about Mesopotamian culture.
• A Zigurat was excavated, before that it would have been a big pile of dirt, which archaeologists call a tel. It "tells" you that you may want to dig there.

Egypt

• Tutankhamen- King Tut
• King Tut had lots of treasure in his tomb
• Death, in the Egyptian religion, is the single most important thing about Egyptian culture. They put all of their money and time into the pyramids, which are basically big tombs.
• The Pharaoh was not just the leader of Egypt, he was the God on Earth, and he controlled the necessary flow of the Nile river
• The Egyptians believe that everyone has a life force called your ka.
• your ka waited around to see if you made it to the afterlife. There are lots of paintings and such on the wall to entertain the ka.
• After this, one's heart is weighed against a feather, which decides whether your soul is destroyed or whether you get to go to the afterlife. The feather Ma'at is held by the God Horus. He weighs the feather against the heart. It is good if the heart is lighter.
• The annual flood of the Nile river
• On either side of the Nile there is unmanageable desert land. The flood of the Nile makes good land, and the Nile floods 4 months out of the year.
• The Nile itself creates sort of a partition through Africa.
• The Pharaoh was responsible for the rise and fall of the Nile because he was a God on Earth.

The Minoans

• The legend: The Minotaur lives in a labyrinth underneath the palace, King Minos demanded sacrifice from Athens, and children are killed by the Minotaur.
• Listen for more in audio notes
• Thera was the volcano that erupted, which then caused tsunamis, which wiped out a lot of the Minoan civilization. The sulphuric acid hung around in the air, killing all th crops and causing drought, so the civilization fell.

Invasion, technology, and natural disasters are the biggest causes of falls of civilizations

The Mycenaean civilization

• The Trojan wars: between the Mycenae Greeks against Troy.
• Some think that the Trojan war did not really happen, that it was really an earthquake.

• Herodotus- A Greek historian, considered the first historian.
• Herodotus was the first to write down history in the narrative, in an actual book.