Chapter 1 - The Birth of Civilization

Clay tablets

________ chronicled specific deformations as well as historical events that they predicted.

Royal princesses

________ were occasionally designated as priestesses of major gods.

Epic poetry

________ were written to celebrate the deeds of the rulers of Ur's forefathers.

personal poetry

Despite being an Akkadian, she produced sophisticated, impassioned, and profoundly ________ in Sumerian.

Mesopotamia

________ appears to have been the birthplace of the first civilization.

Semitic speaking

The Amorites, a(n) ________ population from the north and west, entered Mesopotamia in great numbers, settling near Sumerian towns and eventually establishing their own dynasties in several of them, including Uruk, Babylon, Isin, and Larsa.

Ur

The Elamites raided ________ from the east and seized the king.

ancient art

In ________, the early Sumerian monarchs are seen leading an army, murdering prisoners, and making presents to the gods.

Disputes

________ over property and other grievances were initially heard by local city assembly of important citizens and leaders of government.

Hammurabi

________ was preoccupied with the minutiae of his empire, and his preserved letters frequently deal with tiny local conflicts.

sacrifice of sheep

The ________ and goats was one of the first divination methods utilized by the Mesopotamians.

Mesopotamians

________ believed in divination in the same manner that many people now believe in science.

entrails of sacrifice

The hunt for omens in the ________ animals was extremely significant for Mesopotamian monarchs, who usually conducted that procedure before embarking on major state activities.

False testimony

________ was a capital offense.

Sumerian

________ was held in such high regard that when Alexander the Great arrived in Babylon in 331 B.C.E., seventeen centuries after the destruction of Ur, ________ was still in use.

Sumerian metropolis of Uruk

The ________ was the biggest city in the world by 3000 B.C.E.