Topic Subtopic Uncover the undeniable legacy that the Mesopotamians left the world. History Civilization & Culture Ancient Mesopotamia A “Pure intellectual stimulation that can be popped into n c the [audio or video player] anytime.” ie ANCIENT n t —Harvard Magazine M Life in the Cradle of Civilization e “Passionate, erudite, living legend lecturers. Academia’s sop MESOPOTAMIA o best lecturers are being captured on tape.” t Course Guidebook a —The Los Angeles Times m i LIFE IN THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION a “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. THE GREAT COURSES® Corporate Headquarters 4840 Westfields Boulevard, Suite 500 Chantilly, VA 20151-2299 USA G Phone: 1-800-832-2412 u www.thegreatcourses.com id Professor Photo: © Jeff Mauritzen - inPhotograph.com. e b Cover Image: De Agostini Picture Library/A. De Gregorio/Bridgeman Images; o © jsp/iStock/Thinkstock o Course No. 3166 © 2018 The Teaching Company. PB3166A k PUBLISHED BY: THE GREAT COURSES Corporate Headquarters 4840 Westfields Boulevard, Suite 500 Chantilly, Virginia 20151‑2299 Phone: 1‑800‑832‑2412 Fax: 703‑378‑3819 www.thegreatcourses.com Copyright © The Teaching Company, 2018 Printed in the United States of America This book is in copyright. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of The Teaching Company. Amanda H. Podany, PhD Professor of History California State Polytechnic University, Pomona A 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 ■ Department of Education. ii Table of Contents INTRODUCTION Professor Biography ...................................... i Course Scope .......................................... 1 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 iii 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 iv ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA LIFE IN THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION I 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. 1 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— ■ and to understand them. 2 1 UNCOVERING NEAR EASTERN CIVILIZATION M 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 b 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. b 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. b 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. 4