A Journey on the Path Less Traveled
Authorities do not all agree about the definition of civilization. Most accept the view that “a civilization is a culture which has attained a degree of complexity usually characterized by urban life.” In other words, a civilization is a culture capable of sustaining a substantial number of specialists to cope with the economic, social, political, and religious needs of a populous society. Other characteristics usually present in a civilization include a system of writing to keep records, monumental architecture in place of simple buildings, and an art that is no longer merely decorative, like that on Neolithic pottery, but representative of people and their activities. All these characteristics of civilization first appeared in Mesopotamia.
Cosmogony and cosmology Thorkild Jacobsen: Professor of Assyriology, Harvard University, 1962-74. Author of The Sumerian Kinglist; “Mesopotamia” in The Intellectual History of Ancient Man Though the “Eridu Genesis” may have come close to treating existence as a whole, a true …
Mesopotamian – Sumerian Calendar In Mesopotamia the solar year was divided into two seasons, the “summer,” which included the barley harvests in the second half of May or in the beginning of June, and the “winter,” which roughly corresponded to …
The Genesis narrative in the light of recent scholarship The saga of Abraham unfolds between two landmarks, the exodus from “Ur of the Chaldeans” (Ur Kasdim) of the family, or clan, of Terah and “the purchase of ” (or “the …
Cuneiform was the system of writing used most extensively in the ancient Middle East. Cuneiform was employed for writing a number of languages from about the end of the 4th millennium BC until about the 1st century BC. The most …
Archaeology Before the mid-19th century AD, the existence of the Sumerian people and language was not suspected. The first major excavations leading to the discovery of Sumer were conducted (1842-1854) at Assyrian sites such as Nineveh, Dur Sharrukin, and Calah …