Mesopotamia was located between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Uruk was an important early city in Mesopotamia that had monumental temples called ziggurats. The priests initially held all the power because they controlled writing and record keeping, which not everyone could do. Over time, kings took on religious roles and overtook the priests' power, declaring themselves the new religious authorities. Some key inventions and developments that emerged from ancient Mesopotamia include cuneiform writing, the earliest form of taxation in the form of paying tribute to governments, and the establishment of one of the first empires in the region by the ruler Hammurabi of Babylon. The neo-Ass

1. 1. What does Mesopotamia mean?
2. Between which two rivers was
Mesopotamia located?
3. What was Uruk? What did it
have?
4. What were the monumental
temples in Uruk called?
The monumental temples in Uruk
were called Ziggurats.
5. Why did the priests have all the power? Why was that talent important?
6. What rival structure showed up 1000 years after the first temples?
7. The responsibility for the __________-__________and __________ of the social order was
shifting from __________ to __________.
8. The kings took on a __________-religious role by engaging in sacred marriage. So the
priests were overtaken by kings, who soon declared themselves priests
9. What is “cuneiform,” and what was it created for? Give an example.
10. Writing and __________ was not something everyone could do. So, they created a
__________ distinction.
11. Once __________ enters the picture you have actual __________ instead of just a lot of
guesswork and archaeology.
12. What did Mesopotamians invented, that we have to pay the government?
13. The most famous of these early monarchs was __________. He ruled the new kingdom of
__________ from 1792 BCE to 1750. He was famous for his __________ __________
14. __________ wasn’t really that powerful. It was soon taken over by the formerly- nomadic
Kassites.
15. The __________ gave us the most important and durable form of political organization, the
__________. The biggest problem with __________ is that they are __________ and multi-
__________ which makes them hard to unify
16. how did the neo-Assyrians conquer the whole of Mesopotamia, the eastern coast of the
Mediterranean, and Egypt?
17. When did the neo-Assyrian Empire come to an end?
Mesopotamia