“A History of Mathematics: From Mesopotamia to Modernity”

The Importance of Mesopotamia
The research provides an overview of the historical, social, technological and economic importance of early Mesopotamia, which as been described as the "Cradle of Civilization." This paper outlines some of the historical elements related to the creation of civilization in this area, including a view of two Mesopotamian civilizations that existed between 3500 BC and 333 BC. Bibliography lists 5 sources.

Stephanie Dalley's "Myths Of Mesopotamia" And Homer's "

Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt: Differing Interpretations
Kingship is a primary component of both Stephanie Dalley's Myths Of Mesopotamia and Homer's The Odyssey, in that each author's account of mythological existence is replete with hierarchical implications. Power is akin to kingship within the literary boundaries of Dalley and Homer's writings, which is clearly portrayed through the use of power, legal association and the aspect of determinism. No additional sources cited.

The Sarakatsani Of Mesopotamia & Modern Gypsies in Rome

Egypt and Mesopotamia Comparison
The research provides an overview of the Sarakatsani of Mesopotania, -- who are the forebearers of contemporary Gypsies in Rome.

The Temple-State System in Egypt and Mesopotamia.
The research focuses on the temple-state system that became in the ancient Near East and the differences between the system in Mesopotamia and Egypt.

Agriculture and Mesopotamia
The research examines why agriculture was the most significant contribution, made in Mesopotamia, to civilization. 

Egypt and Mesopotamia: Geography
The research examines the geographical influence on the political and intellectual outlooks of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Medicine in Ancient Mesopotamia.
The research provides information about the practice of medicine in ancient Mesopotamia

Crete, Egypt And Mesopotamia
Civilizations have much to offer contemporary society by way of their individual and collective abilities to not only assemble their respective communities but also flourish in the face of constant political, social and economic adversity. Examining some of the distinguishable characteristics, major accomplishments and overall significant factors of such classical civilizations as Crete, Egypt and Mesopotamia provides a significantly better understanding of how each was able to develop and survive.

Ancient Egypt and Early Mesopotamia: Similarities in Structure and Rule
The research discusses the governmental structure and rulers of these cultures. The author emphasizes the span of time covered by each and observes that the rulers were at the head of a strongly stratified system. This arrangement allowed these leaders to achieve great cultural accomplishments.

Ancient Mesopotamia
The research examines whether it was internal or external conflict that caused the greatest problems in ancient Mesopotamia

Egypt and Mesopotamia
The research which looks at the similarities and differences between culture and civilization in Egypt and Mesopotamia, in terms of their influence on neighboring regions.

The Kings of Mesopotamia
The research gives an overview of the kings reigning over Mesopotamia - how they were treated, what ceremonies they participated in, how their subjects revered them.

The Cradles Of Civilization / Mesopotamia And Ancient Egypt

Common Developmental Characteristics Between Mesopotamia And Egypt
The research concentrates on comparison of the cultures of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. Presents information about their similarities in geographical considerations, and material and mythological cultures. Relates the importance of this region as the cradle of civilization

Women's Social Status In Ancient History As Compared To Mesopotamia, Rome
In ancient Mesopotamia, women were not considered equal to men. They had some rights but not all rights. Women could freely go out of their homes and go to the market.  They were allowed to own property. They could start a business. They could become involved in court cases. They could learn to read and write. They could get a paid job. But they were not allowed a vote in the assembly, so they had no voice in making laws. The role of Mesopotamian women in their society, as in most cultures throughout time, was primarily that of wife, mother and housekeeper. Girls, for example, did not attend the schools run by priests or scribes unless they were royalty. Girls stayed home and learned the household tasks they would perform when they grew up and married.

However, as the polytheistic religion practiced by Mesopotamians included gods and goddesses, women were also priestesses, some of them not only important, but powerful. A family might sell a daughter to the temple, and they were honored to have a priestess in the family. Families could also sell their daughters into prostitution or slavery. Prostitution, however, was not regarded as vile or degrading at that time. In fact, a form of sacred prostitution in the temples existed side by side with secular prostitution.

Shortly after girl reached puberty, her father arranged a marriage for her. Marriages were legal contracts between two families and each family had obligations to meet. A bride’s father paid a dowry to the young couple. The groom’s family paid a bride price. While ancient Sumerians and Babylonians could and did fall in love, and romantic love was celebrated in songs, stories and literature, it wasn’t encouraged in real life. The basis for a society is the family unit, and Mesopotamian societies structured the laws to encourage stable families.

Most women, then, were wives and mothers, doing the necessary tasks of women everywhere: taking care of their families, raising children, cleaning, cooking and weaving. Some women, however, also engaged in trade, especially weaving and selling cloth, food production, brewing beer and wine, perfumery and making incense, midwifery and prostitution. Weaving and selling cloth produced much wealth for Mesopotamia and temples employed thousands of women in making cloth.

Mesopotamian women in Sumer, the first Mesopotamian culture, had more rights than they did in the later Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian cultures. Sumerian women could own property, run businesses along with their husbands, become priestesses, scribes, physicians and act as judges and witnesses in courts. Archeologists and historians speculate that as Mesopotamian cultures grew in wealth and power, a strong patriarchal structure gave more rights to men than to women. Perhaps the Sumerians gave women more rights because they worshipped goddesses as fervently as they did gods.

For men, divorce was easy. A husband could divorce a wife if she was childless, careless with money or if she belittled him. All he had to say was “You are not my wife.” Women could initiate divorce, but had to prove her husband’s abuse or adultery. Monies paid to each family, in cases of divorce, had to be returned. If Mesopotamian women were caught in adultery, they were killed. If men were caught in adultery, a man might be punished financially but not killed. While women were expected to be monogamous, husbands could visit prostitutes or take concubines.

The Impact of Geography on the Development of City-States in Mesopotamia 

The Fertile Crescent
Mesopotamia's soil was uniquely fertile, which gave humans reason to settle in the region and begin farming. As early as 5,800 B.C.E., people were living in the area known as the "Fertile Crescent" to take advantage of the rich soil. The soil's richness came from runoff from nearby mountains, which regularly deposited nutritious silt onto the river floodplain. This region stretched from modern-day Kuwait and Iraq northward to Turkey. Before the settlement of Mesopotamia, neolithic humans were largely hunters and gatherers who did sporadic farming. Mesopotamia's unique fertility allowed humans to settle in one place to farm.

Trade Routes
Mesopotamia's rivers and location in central Asia supported extensive trade routes. In the time of Mesopotamia, smaller civilizations existed to the west in Europe and North Africa and to the east in India. For these regions to trade, they needed to traverse Mesopotamia's territory between them. This allowed Mesopotamia to access resources not native to its region, like timber and precious metals. In turn, Mesopotamia developed key aspects of civilization, like a token system to keep trading records.

Tigris and Euphrates
While Mesopotamia's soil was fertile, the region's semiarid climate didn't have much rainfall, with less than ten inches annually. This initially made farming difficult. Two major rivers in the region -- the Tigris and Euphrates -- provided a source of water that enabled wide-scale farming. Irrigation provided Mesopotamian civilization with the ability to stretch the river's waters into farm lands. This led to engineering advances like the construction of canals, dams, reservoirs, drains and aqueducts. One of the prime duties of the king was to maintain these essential waterways.

Flat With Few Mountains
The Mesopotamian region is relatively flat with few mountains and few forests. This made the people who lived there vulnerable to foreign invasion and conquest, because there were few natural places to hide. Vulnerability spurred the development of major organizational aspects of human civilization like government, professional warfare and concepts of empire. By the first millennium B.C.E., the region was home to the world's first multinational empire, the Assyrian Empire. Assyria introduced government innovations such as dividing its empire into provinces. Mesopotamia's geography also made governance challenging, and numerous rebellions occurred in the early millennia.

A Comparative Analysis of Ancient Civilizations Four River Valleys (Mesopotamia)

Early River Valley Civilizations
Homo sapiens, our species, evolved in Africa somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago. For tens of thousands of years, human populations existed in nomadic bands of hunter-gatherers that steadily spread across the world. Then, between 8,000 and 5,000 BCE, some of these groups went and did something rather strange. They stopped moving around. In what archeologists call the Neolithic Revolution, human groups across the world developed settled societies that relied on intensive agricultural practices. The first societies were often found near rivers, which provided the water, security, and other resources needed to make the move from hunting to farming. We call these societies the early river valley civilizations.

Afro-Eurasian Civilizations
There are four settled societies that each developed agriculture independently along major rivers that are traditionally considered the early river valley civilizations. The are the Mesopotamian civilizations, the Nile River civilizations, the Indus River civilizations, and the Yellow and Yangtze River civilizations.

The earliest settled society is Mesopotamia, which is a actually a Greek word meaning 'the land between the rivers.' Mesopotamia is the region between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is today Syria and Iraq. With these two major water sources and abundantly fertile soil, people started farming here around 6,000 BCE. These farming villages turned into some of the world's first major cities, where innovations were made, such as the wheel, sailboats, and the world's first system of writing.

The next river to encourage the rise of civilization was the Nile, which runs from roughly the Sahara Desert north to the Mediterranean. The Nile floods on an extremely consistent basis, rejuvenating and fertilizing the soil, which allowed for a very successful agricultural economy. At the northern end of the Nile, societies began to develop early on, which were unified as the kingdom of Egypt around 3,100 BCE. South of Egypt, the Nile allowed for the rise of Nubia, another African kingdom that became a powerful trade empire.

In what we now call India is a major fertile valley system based around the Indus River. Around 3,000 BCE, India's first major civilizations grew into major cities around this river. We call these people the Harappan civilizations, although really they were diverse and independent cities, sort of like those in Mesopotamia. While it's evident that there were some complex societies here, we know relatively little about them since the Harappan written language has yet to be deciphered.

Pentateuchal Sources In Noah And The Flood
Throughout the Biblical book of Genesis (and, in fact, the entire Torah), discrepancies andinconsistencies can be recognized, and as early as the eighteenth century, it was proposed that the author had used at least two sources. In the nineteenth and twentieth century, this idea, called the Documentary Hypothesis, was elaborated, but no two scholars have agreed upon the exact attribution of every verse. At the end of the twentieth century, the aim to reconstruct every source has been abandoned by many scholars. However, it is more or less agreed-upon that the story of the Great Flood is based on two sources, with a couple of glosses. One source, sometimes called "Priestly", is interested in an exact chronology, mentions that the Flood lasted 150 days and states that two animals of every sort entered the Ark; linguistically, this text is close to Ezekiel, which suggests a date in c.600 BCE, but this is not uncontested. The first Creation Story (Genesis 1) belongs to this source too.The other source states that the Flood lasted 40 days and gives Noah the care for seven couples of pure animals and one couple of impure animals. This source cannot be dated; it may be a mere set of additions to the Priestly source, but it is also possible that this text once was a full history that was later split into sections. In any case, the second Creation story (Genesis 2) belongs to this source.

Gilgamesh and the Mesopotamian Concept of Kings
Some historians believe that Gilgamesh was a real king of the city of Uruk between 2700 and 2500 B.C.E. According to the story, Gilgamesh was part god and part man. His mother was Ninsun, a goddess, and his father, Lugalbanda, was the half-god king of Uruk

Minoan Civilization
The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age Aegean civilization on the island of Crete and other Aegean Islands, flourishing from c. 3000 BC to c. 1450 BC until a late period of decline, finally ending around 1100 BC.

The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Laws of Manu
Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, and his companion Enkidu are the only heroes to have survived from the ancient literature of Babylon, immortalized in this epic poem that dates back to the third millennium BC. Together they journey to the Spring of Youth, defeat the Bull of Heaven and slay the monster Humbaba. When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh’s grief and fear of death are such that they lead him to undertake a quest for eternal life. A timeless tale of morality, tragedy and pure adventure, The Epic of Gilgamesh is a landmark literary exploration of man’s search for immortality.

Epic of Gilgamesh as an Historical Text
Manu (Sanskrit: मनु) is a term found with various meanings in Hinduism. In early texts, it refers to the archetypal man, or to the first man (progenitor of humanity).The Sanskrit term for 'human', मानव (IAST: mānava) means 'of Manu' or 'children of Manu'. In later texts, Manu is the title or name of fourteen mystical Kshatriya rulers of earth, or alternatively as the head of mythical dynasties that begin with each cyclic kalpa (aeon) when the universe is born anew. The title of the text Manusmriti uses this term as a prefix, but refers to the first Manu – Svayambhuva, the spiritual son of Brahma. 

According to Puranas, each kalpa consists of fourteen Manvantaras, and each Manvantara is headed by a different Manu. The current universe is asserted to be ruled by the 7th Manu named Vaivasvata.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manu_(Hinduism) - cite_note-dalalp229-2

In Vishnu Purana, Vaivasvata, also known as Sraddhadeva or Satyavrata, was the king of Dravida before the great flood. He was warned of the flood by the Matsya (fish) avatar of Vishnu, and built a boat that carried the Vedas, Manu's family and the seven sages to safety, helped by Matsya. The tale is repeated with variations in other texts, including the Mahabharata and a few other Puranas. It is similar to other flood such as that of Gilgamesh and Noah.[

“Eannatum, Prince of Lagash” and “Woman or Goddess with Snake

How the "Epic of Gilgamesh" Reveals the Mesopotamians' View of Life and death
The research Examines how the ancient tablets known as the "Epic of Gilgamesh" reveals how the early peoples of Mesopotamia viewed life and death. Specifically considered are how they regarded their leaders and women, the historical significance of Enkidu and his change, what Utnapishtim's story and other parts of the epic suggest about the Mesopotamian view of the gods, and how the conclusion reveals their overall outlook about life and death.

The History of the “Zero”: The Influence of Geography and Culture
Ancient Art Commonalities
Economic Contributions of Sumer.
Minoan Civilization
The Prisons of the Ancient Worlds

The research looks at the 'prisons' of ancient biblical lands - Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, lands of the New and Old Testament. Rather than physical structures to keep people incarcerated, 'prisons' were primarily slavery, banishment, or death.

The Importance of Writing to the Emergence of Ancient Civilizations
The research provides an overview of the basic process through which writing developed in the ancient cultures of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece and underscores the importance of language development and writing in the expansion of these cultures.

Egyptian Mythology
The research addresses various topics pertaining both to Egyptian mythology and to the societies that flourished in Mesopotamia.

The History of Numbers
The research discusses the ways in which humanity has developed numerical systems corresponds to the ways that the human species also developed. As human thinking grew in complexity, so did the application of numbers and the understanding of numbers. And yet, little thought is given to why human beings came up with the idea of numbers or how it is possible to count. . Modern historians and social scientists have traced the processes associated in the history and development of numbers from Europe to China, via the Classical World, Mesopotamia, South America and, even more than any where else on Earth, India and Arab lands.

Creation Stories (Myths)
The research compares an contrasts the creation stories (myths) of such civilizations as Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, Greco-Roman, North American Indian (Aztec and Mayan) and Western

Early River Valley Civilizations
The research describes the social, agricultural, political and religious development of early river valley civilizations. The writer specifically offers a look at the development of civilizations in Mesopotamia and in the Nile River Valley.

Mesopotamian architectural project 
The architecture of Mesopotamia is ancient architecture of the region of the Tigris–Euphrates river system (also known as Mesopotamia), encompassing several distinct cultures and spanning a period from the 10th millennium BC, when the first permanent structures were built in the 6th century BC. Among the Mesopotamian architectural accomplishments are the development of urban planning, the courtyard house, and ziggurats. No architectural profession existed in Mesopotamia; however, scribes drafted and managed construction for the government, nobility, or royalty.

The study of ancient Mesopotamian architecture is based on available archaeological evidence, pictorial representation of buildings, and texts on building practices. According to Archibald Sayce, the primitive pictographs of the Uruk period era suggest "Stone was scarce, but was already cut into blocks and seals. Brick was the ordinary building material, and with it cities, forts, temples and houses were constructed. The city was provided with towers and stood on an artificial platform; the house also had a tower-like appearance. It was provided with a door which turned on a hinge, and could be opened with a sort of key; the city gate was on a larger scale, and seems to have been double. ... Demons were feared who had wings like a bird, and the foundation stones – or rather bricks – of a house were consecrated by certain objects that were deposited under them."

Scholarly literature usually concentrates on the architecture of temples, palaces, city walls and gates, and other monumental buildings, but occasionally one finds works on residential architecture as well. Archaeological surface surveys also allowed for the study of urban form in early Mesopotamian cities.

Achaemenid architecture (Persian: معماریهخامنشی) includes all architectural achievements of the Achaemenid Persians manifesting in construction of spectacular cities used for governance and inhabitation (Persepolis, Susa, Ecbatana), temples made for worship and social gatherings (such as Zoroastrian temples), and mausoleums erected in honor of fallen kings (such as the burial tomb of Cyrus the Great). The quintessential feature of Persian architecture was its eclectic nature with elements of Assyrian, Egyptian, Median and Asiatic Greek all incorporated, yet producing a unique Persian identity seen in the finished product. Achaemenid architecture is academically classified under Persian architecture in terms of its style and design

Achaemenid architectural heritage, beginning with the expansion of the empire around 550 B.C.E., was a period of artistic growth that left an extraordinary architectural legacy ranging from Cyrus the Great's solemn tomb in Pasargadae to the splendid structures of the opulent city of Persepolis. With the advent of the second Persian Empire, the Sassanid dynasty (224–624 C.E.), revived Achaemenid tradition by construction of temples dedicated to fire, and monumental palaces. 

Perhaps the most striking extant structures to date are the ruins of Persepolis, a once opulent city established by the Achaemenid king, Darius the Great for governmental and ceremonial functions, and also acting as one of the empire's four capitals. Persepolis would take 100 years to complete and would finally be ransacked and burnt by the troops of Alexander the Great in 330 B.C.E Similar architectural infrastructures were also erected at Susa and Ecbatana by Darius the Great, serving similar functions as Persepolis, such as reception of foreign dignitaries and delegates, performance of imperial ceremonies and duties, and also housing the kings.