Chapter 2: Western Asia and Egypt

Cuneiform texts

________, however, were also used in schools to train scribes, members of the learned class who served as copyists, teachers, and jurists.

Hatshepsut

________- the first woman to become pharaoh- built a great temple at Deir el Bahri, near Thebes.

Hieratic script

Later, ________ was written on papyrus, a paper made from the papyrus reed that grew along the Nile.

Yahweh

According to Jewish beliefs, there is but one God, called ________, the Creator of the world and everything in it.

2540 BC

Constructed at Giza around ________, the famous Great Pyramid of King Khufu covers 13 acres (5.3 ha), measures 756 feet (230 m) at each side of its base, and stands 481 feet (147 m) high.

Mesopotamian peoples

________ used writing primarily for record keeping.

Sargon

Around 2340 B.C., ________, leader of the Akkadians, overran the Sumerian city- states and set up the first empire in world history.

Nile

The regularity of the ________ floods and the relative isolation of the Egyptians created a feeling of security and changelessness.

Mesopotamia

In 539 B.C., he (Cyrus) entered ________ and captured Babylon.

Humans

________ also played a role in the struggle between good and evil.

000 miles

The Nile is a unique river, beginning in the heart of Africa and coursing northward for more than 4, ________ (6, 436 km)

Cleopatra VII

In the first century B.C., the pharaoh ________ tried to reestablish Egypts independence.

small villages

They paid taxes in the form of crops to the pharaoh, nobles, and priests; lived in ________ or towns; and provided military service and forced labor for building projects.

Irrigation

________ and drainage ditches- part of a large- scale system of water control- made it possible to grow crops on a regular basis.

Dynasty

A(n) ________ is a family of rulers whose right to rule is passed on within the family.

Sirius

The Egyptians developed an accurate 365- day cal- endar by basing their year not only on the move- ments of the moon, but also the bright star ________.

Indo Europeans

The ________ were one of the most important nomadic peoples.

Old Kingdom

One of the great achievements of Egyptian civilization, the building of pyramids, occurred in the time of the ________.

Persians

The ________ were an Indo- European people who lived in what is today southwestern Iran.

Osiris

________ took on an important role for the Egyptians as a symbol of resurrection.

Sumerian city states

________ contained three major social groups: nobles, commoners, and slaves.

Mesopotamian religion

________ was polytheistic because of this belief in many gods.

Amenhotep

________ changed his own name to Akhenaton " (It is well with Aton) "and closed the temples of other gods.

Pyramids

________ were tombs for the mummified bodies of pharaohs.

Code of Hammurabi

The ________ was based on a system of strict justice.

Egyptian hieroglyphs

________ were at first carved in stone.

Pastoral nomads

________ domesticated animals for both food and clothing.

Egyptian scribes

The ________ were masters of the art of writing and also its teachers.

Sumerians

________ viewed kingship as divine in origin.

Gilgamesh

________ is a Mesopotamian epic poem that records the exploits of a legendary king named.

Pharaoh Amenhotep IV

The ________ introduced the worship of Aton, god of the sun disk, as the sole god.

Age of prophecy

The ________ lasted from the eleventh to the fifth centuries B.C., during the time when the people of Israel and Judah faced threats or endured conquests by powerful neighbors.

constant invasion

Unlike Mesopotamia, which was subject to ________, Egypt was blessed by natural barriers that gave it protection from invasion and a sense of security.

Egyptian pharaohs

________ possessed absolute power- that is, they had complete, unlimited power to rule their people.

Sirius

________ rises in the sky just before the annual flooding of the Nile River.