Egyptian scribe with papyrus scroll Wooden tomb model of a granary with scribes Ancient Egypt įor a more comprehensive list, see List of ancient Egyptian scribes. In societies with low literacy rates, street-corner letter-writers (and readers) may still be found providing scribe service. The profession has developed into public servants, journalists, accountants, bookkeepers, typists, and lawyers. The work of scribes can involve copying manuscripts and other texts as well as secretarial and administrative duties such as the taking of dictation and keeping of business, judicial, and historical records for kings, nobles, temples, and cities. The profession of the scribe, previously widespread across cultures, lost most of its prominence and status with the advent of the printing press. Jean Miélot, a European author and scribe at work Modern scribes with typewriters outside post office, Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, India, 2010Ī scribe is a person who serves as a professional copyist, especially one who made copies of manuscripts before the invention of automatic printing. Further details may exist on the talk page. Please expand the article to include this information. A temple is a building used to worship a god or many gods.This article is missing information about Islamic, Indian, Chinese scribes and more. To honor this god, the city-state built a large temple called a ziggurat, a large pyramid-shaped building with a temple at the top, dedicated to a Sumerian deity. Each city-state, though, claimed one god as its own. This type of belief is called polytheism. The Sumerian people had a common language and they worshiped many gods. Each city-state needed an army to protect itself from its neighbors however, during times of peace, they traded with each other. Sometimes Sumerian city-states fought each other for control of the river water, a valuable resource. Historians believe that each city-state was surrounded by a large wall. As a result, each city stood alone.Īs cities grew, they gained control of the land around them. The cities of Sumer had deserts around them.ĭeserts were hard to travel across. The people of Sumer were called Sumerians. Sumer is the region in southern Mesopotamia. By 3000 B.C., many cities had started and grown in Sumer. Before long, small villages grew into cities. Soon people began to live together in places that helped them trade goods. An artisan is a person who makes a good, such as cloth, tools, or weapons. As a result, not everyone needed to farm. The people of Mesopotamia had extra food, or a surplus. It is good for farming.īy using irrigation, farmers could grow large amounts of food. Floods could destroy crops, but they also left the land covered with silt. A flood is when water overflows from a river onto land. The use of levees and canals is called irrigation, another Sumerian invention.įarmers in Mesopotamia got water from the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The farmers in Sumer created levees to hold back the floods from their fields and cut canals to channel river water to the fields. The wheel, plow, and writing (a system which we call cuneiform) are examples of their achievements. The Sumerians were the first people to migrate to Mesopotamia, they created a great civilization. Beginning around 5,500 years ago, the Sumerians built cities along the rivers in Lower Mesopotamia, specialized, cooperated, and made many advances in technology. This is why Mesopotamia is part of the fertile crescent, an area of land in the Middle East that is rich in fertile soil and crescent-shaped. The flooding deposited silt, which is fertile, rich, soil, on the banks of the rivers every year. However, snow, melting in the mountains at the source of these two rivers, created an annual flooding. There is very little rainfall in Lower Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia at first glance does not look like an ideal place for a civilization to flourish. It also has a government, values, and beliefs. People in a civilization belong to different social classes and do different types of jobs. A civilization is a group of people who have a high level of culture and order. The first known civilization started there. Here large cities lined the rivers and many advances took place. Mesopotamia is located in Southwest Asia. Mesopotamia is considered the cradle, or beginning, of civilization. The first settlers to this region did not speak Greek, it was only thousands of years later that the Greek-speaking Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia, conquered this land and carried with him his culture. The word Mesopotamia comes from Greek words meaning "land between the rivers." The rivers are the Tigris and Euphrates.
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