During the period of the Mesopotamian civilization, 4 important towns stood out:
– Sumerians
– Akkadians
– Babylonians
– Assyrians
By the year 6000 a. C., nomadic groups began to organize in communities in the lower area of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Near the gulf the Sumerians settled and further north the Akkadians.
Peoples of the Mesopotamian Civilization
The Sumerians
They were lovers of agriculture and organized life, raised straw and mud huts, sowed the land, domesticated animals and socially organized the first communities.
Long centuries passed in peace, progress and civilization, dedicated to agriculture and internal trade. This ended in the year 2350 a. C when they suffered the first Acadia invasion.
The Sumerians created the first cities in the world, they were large walled cities and in the center they built the temple, dedicated to the god of the city. Next to the temple they built a tall tower called Ziggurat and around these houses were built.
Each city had its own organization and was independent, creating the city-state model. They were autonomous cities and each had its own god, its laws and its own customs.
The most important cities were: Ur, Sumerian capital and the homeland of Patriarch Abraham. Uruk, Nippur and Lagash, all of them were famous in the struggles against the Akkadians.
The temple was the religious center of the town, place of worship, but it was also the seat of government, justice and science. The time was the center of the city’s economy and commerce. The temple was also the bank and they made deposit and loan operations.
Sumerian society is made up of the king who is also the high priest; the courtiers, the artists, the craftsmen, the farmers and the shepherds. As a consequence of the wars the first slaves appear.
The Akkadians
They inhabited the north of the Sumerians, were a Semitic people that invaded all of Mesopotamia. His leader, Sargon, tried to build a unified kingdom, making the Sumerian political division disappear. This leader unified the Akkadians with the Sumerians and formed a great empire that extended to the Taurus and the plateaus of Iran.
This Acadian splendor only lasted until his boss died. After him came several battles against the incursions of the Guti, coming from the Northeast Mountain. The Guti ended up dominating Mesopotamia until the new Sumerian people emerged. mesopotamian civilization
The Babylonians
They were two peoples from Arabia called the Amorites and the Elamites who conquered Mesopotamia and founded two cities: Mari and Babylon.
The Elamites founded Marí, which was the most modern city of the time and built a library with 21,000 tablets written in Sumerian and Akkadian, which embodied all the cultural wealth of this civilization.
The Amorites found Babylon and made it the capital of the great Empire, it was the city of greatest culture, splendor and opulence.
Hammurabi, king of Babylon, unifies the Empire and dictates the most famous laws of that time.
The Assyrians
They were a very warrior Semitic people, they seized Mesopotamia with their battle tanks and advanced battering rams. They really were a scourge for other peoples. Each time they conquered a town, they deported their leaders to Assyria and repopulated the territory with Assyrians.
One of his most famous kings was Sennacherib, who set the capital at Nineveh, set Babylon on fire and sacked and besieged Jerusalem.
The great extension of the Assyrian Empire made it unsustainable and had a very bloody end. The Babylonians allied with the Medes swept Nineveh and managed to end the Empire.
The neo-Babylonian Empire
After the fall of the Assyrian Empire, Babylon returns to be an independent state, with the great ruler Nebuchadnezzar II, reached a great splendor.
Nebuchadnezzar built a large palace with hanging gardens that today are considered one of the wonders of the world.
There are different accounts in relation to the end of the Babylonian Empire, which is undoubtedly that Babylon fell into the hands of King Cyrus of Persia in 539 a, from J, C.
