Everyday Life in Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is one of the oldest civilizations that ever existed. What we have now can be traced back to the ways of Mesopotamian culture and society in one way or another. Since they were one of the starters of the new agricultural life, many future civilizations based their own ways of living off of the ways Mesopotamia already used (Prof. Gaddis, Lecture). You can notice many similarities between our present day society and the Mesopotamian society. In fact, even the laws they had took notice upon many of the problems they had and we have today. These primary source texts tell us that the conditions of everyday life and the environment are greatly similar to our very own today. Technically Mesopotamia's existence is long and the living conditions and society's cultures change throughout time. Their existence ranges from 5500BC to 1200BC (Prof. Gaddis, Lecture, 9/4/02). During different periods of time, there existed different ways of living; different leaders promoted different conditions, so to talk about Mesopotamia as a whole with out splitting the time periods up, would be nearly impossible. During Gilgamesh's era around 2700BC, we learn a great deal about the religion that existed at that time in Mesopotamia.
Though thousands of years old, we can draw a lot of similarities about how the people of Mesopotamia lived. They weren't as tolerant to crime and weren't as moral as we are now. This can be related to the fact that we have technology and science to learn from, while all they had were beliefs and stories. Yet if it wasn't for what the Mesopotamians did, we would not be where we are today. The first thing people think about when they talk about the Code of Hammurabi is the saying, "an eye for an eye." This came forth from one of Hammurabi's laws that said, "If a man destroys the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye. (Bailkey, 30)" Now, this does not pertain to any laws that we have in today's society, but this law made it possible for the concept of survival of the fittest to fade away. This was a way to make everyone equal, showing the first signs of democratic or communistic governing. Another way to make people more equal is to have a set of wage regulations. There are a few laws that describe exactly how much a man has to pay when hiring people to help him (31). This is also another example of a communistic society where everyone is equal and gets a set amount of money for their job. Now we can't assume that extra was not given for a job well done, but the law permitted people to pay less. Starting at about 1800BC, a new leader comes to take charge of Babylon. Just by looking at their judicial system and laws, you can find out how they lived and what type of problems they had to deal with. By setting up a code of laws that was enforced by the king, the king gained more power and more support as the majority of the civilians were poor. The hard working and poverty stricken civilians were being taken advantage of by the powerful and wealthy nobles (Neis). Hammurabi set forth a written code of law that would protect the weak (most of the population) and limit the powers of the wealthy. He claimed the god sent his to deliver
Some common words found in the essay are:
Code Hammurabi, Gaddis Lecture, Babylonian Noah, Neis Hammurabi, , Technically Mesopotamia's, Prof Gaddis, prof gaddis lecture, gaddis lecture, code hammurabi, prof gaddis, laws concerning, towards woman, equal set,
Approximate Word count = 1325
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
