Table Of ContentTopic Subtopic
Uncover the undeniable legacy that the Mesopotamians left the world.
History Civilization & Culture
Ancient Mesopotamia
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“Pure intellectual stimulation that can be popped into n
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the [audio or video player] anytime.” ie ANCIENT
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—Harvard Magazine M Life in the Cradle of Civilization
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“Passionate, erudite, living legend lecturers. Academia’s sop MESOPOTAMIA
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best lecturers are being captured on tape.” t Course Guidebook
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—The Los Angeles Times m
i LIFE IN THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION
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“A serious force in American education.” Professor Amanda H. Podany
—The Wall Street Journal California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Amanda H. Podany, PhD
Amanda H. Podany is a Professor of History at California
State Polytechnic University, Pomona. She received her
PhD in Ancient Near Eastern History from the University of
California, Los Angeles. Professor Podany is the author of
The Ancient Near East: A Very Short Introduction; The Land
of Hana: Kings, Chronology, and Scribal Tradition; and the
award-winning Brotherhood of Kings: How International
Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East. She has published
on the Hana kingdom, scribal traditions, and ancient
legal practices.
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Course No. 3166 © 2018 The Teaching Company. PB3166A k
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Amanda H. Podany, PhD
Professor of History
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
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manda H. Podany is a Professor of History at California State
Polytechnic University, Pomona, where she has taught since 1990. She
earned her BA in Anthropology from the University of California, Los
Angeles (UCLA), after which she obtained her MA in the Archaeology of
Ancient Western Asia from the Institute of Archaeology at the University of
London. Professor Podany returned to UCLA in 1982 and received her PhD
in Ancient Near Eastern History from the school in 1988. Her dissertation
was a study of the history and chronology of the ancient Hana kingdom in
present-day Syria.
Professor Podany has continued to publish her findings about the
Hana kingdom and its contributions to the understanding of the chronology
of the 2nd millennium BCE. She has also published in the fields of scribal
tradition, international relations in the ancient Near East, and ancient legal
practices. Professor Podany has been an invited speaker at several international
symposiums in her field and is working on a study of the relationships between
kings and their subjects in the Late Bronze Age.
In 2013, Professor Podany was the recipient of a fellowship from the
National Endowment for the Humanities to support her research. Her
book Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient
Near East was awarded the Norris and Carol Hundley Award by the Pacific
Coast Branch of the American Historical Association. Professor Podany
is also the author of The Ancient Near East: A Very Short Introduction and
The Land of Hana: Kings, Chronology, and Scribal Tradition. She was the co–
general editor of The World in Ancient Times (with Ronald Mellor), a series
of nine books on ancient history for secondary students. Professor Podany
wrote The Ancient Near Eastern World (along with Marni McGee) for that
series. She has also worked extensively in providing professional development
for teachers and received a certificate of recognition from the California
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Department of Education.
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
Professor Biography ......................................
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Course Scope ..........................................
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LECTURE GUIDES
Lecture 1 Uncovering Near Eastern Civilization .............3
Lecture 2 Natufian Villagers and Early Settlements .........10
Lecture 3 Neolithic Farming, Trade, and Pottery ........... 19
Lecture 4 Eridu and Other Towns in the Ubaid Period ......30
Lecture 5 Uruk, the World’s Biggest City .................38
Lecture 6 Mesopotamia’s First Kings and the Military .......47
Lecture 7 Early Dynastic Workers and Worshipers .........57
Lecture 8 Lugalzagesi of Umma and Sargon of Akkad ......66
Lecture 9 Akkadian Empire Arts and Gods ............... 76
Lecture 10 The Fall of Akkad and Gudea of Lagash .........84
Lecture 11 Ur III Households, Accounts, and Ziggurats .....91
Lecture 12 Migrants and Old Assyrian Merchants ..........99
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Table of Contents
Lecture 13 Royalty and Palace Intrigue at Mari ............107
Lecture 14 War and Society in Hammurabi’s Time ......... 115
Lecture 15 Justice in the Old Babylonian Period ........... 124
Lecture 16 The Hana Kingdom and Clues to a Dark Age ....134
Lecture 17 Princess Tadu-Hepa, Diplomacy, and Marriage ..144
Lecture 18 Land Grants and Royal Favor in Mittani ........153
Lecture 19 The Late Bronze Age and the End of Peace ..... 161
Lecture 20 Assyria Ascending .......................... 174
Lecture 21 Ashurbanipal’s Library and Gilgamesh .........185
Lecture 22 Neo-Assyrian Empire, Warfare, and Collapse ...195
Lecture 23 Babylon and the New Year’s Festival ...........206
Lecture 24 End of the Neo-Babylonian Empire ............ 216
SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL
Bibliography ..........................................
226
Image Credits .........................................
246
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ANCIENT
MESOPOTAMIA
LIFE IN THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION
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n this course, we’ll explore the Mesopotamian world from the era of the
first settlements more than 12,000 years ago to the earliest cities in the 4th
millennium BCE. We’ll end up in the 6th century BCE, when Mesopotamia
was conquered by the Persian Empire during the reign of Cyrus the Great.
At that point, the people were no longer ruled by a government within
their own land.
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Course Scope
This course will look at religion—which pervaded everyone’s understanding
of the universe—and at kingship, society, agriculture, trade, justice, literature,
art, warfare, daily life, and more. We’ll encounter some extraordinary
people: kings like Sargon, who created the world’s first empire; Ur-Namma,
who developed the first written laws; and Tushratta, who maintained an
affectionate correspondence with the pharaohs of Egypt.
Others were religious leaders, like Enheduanna, a priestess who survived
an attempt to expel her and wrote hymns about her experiences. We’ll meet
princesses like Kirum of Mari, who was so miserable in her marriage that
she threatened to jump off the roof of her husband’s palace. We’ll also meet
authors like Sin-leqe-unnini, who wrote the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Some of the people who illuminate this era would never have guessed that
they’d be remembered so many thousands of years later. These include
Amat-Shamash, a woman who bequeathed her house to her daughter, only
to have her brothers contest it in court after her death. A written will, spoken
testimony, and justice prevailed on behalf of the younger woman in the face
of her more powerful uncles.
All of these people—and millions of others like them—lived, loved, worried
and celebrated during the long centuries of Mesopotamia’s power. They cared
about the events of their day with the same passion that we have for events
in our own lives.
Each person was an actor in this vast panorama of history, responding to the
events of their time. The documents and objects and buildings that survive
give us a window into their lives. We can read their words, stand in their
houses, admire their sculptures, and try our best to reconstruct their world—
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and to understand them.
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UNCOVERING
NEAR EASTERN
CIVILIZATION
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esopotamia is the ancient name for what’s now Iraq. People
have often heard of it because it was home to a lot of firsts: the
world’s first cities, the earliest writing, the first written laws, the first
diplomatic relationships—along with a host of other things. That’s all true.
However, Mesopotamia was much more than a place of firsts. Its civilization
was rich and long lasting, surviving for more than 3,000 years. This lecture
starts this course’s work of uncovering ancient Mesopotamia.
Lecture 1 Uncovering Near Eastern Civilization
STUDYING MESOPOTAMIA
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The study of Mesopotamian history began relatively recently, with the
decipherment of their writing system about 170 years ago. This was
accompanied by a flurry of archaeological excavations in Iraq, Iran, and
Syria—work that has continued ever since. The excavations revealed cities
of great sophistication that thrived in an era long before the Greeks,
Romans, and Israelites.
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More than a quarter of a million documents have been found—
most of them still unpublished. Many haven’t even been read yet.
Therefore, being a Mesopotamian historian is like being an explorer of
uncharted waters.
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Luckily, the Mesopotamians wrote on clay. That’s fortunate because paper,
papyrus, and parchment all disintegrate over time. Papyrus documents
typically survive only in desert areas. As a result, there are giant gaps in
our knowledge of ancient civilizations that used organic substances to
document their lives.
b
Although many documents do survive from ancient Egypt, Greece,
Rome, and Israel, these are the ones that were considered so important
that they were copied over and over again. Usually missing are records of
daily life—the letters, administrative lists, contracts, court records, and
so on that would give us a deeper understanding of their cultures. These
are exactly the kinds of documents that we do have in huge numbers
from Mesopotamia.
b
Some ancient clay tablets were baked on purpose, to preserve
them. Others were baked by accident, when buildings burned down.
Baked tablets are usually well preserved. They’re like bricks. Other
tablets were left out in the sun to harden. They might still survive in the
ground, but often they fall apart easily and need to be pieced together
and conserved.
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