As time winds on and centuries pass we are faced with a question. Are we are own county, civilization, government, society? Everything derives from something else. We as humans are the greatest examples. We are molded in the image in which our society finds suitable, but who comes up with these standards of living? The answer is no one individual as it is with everything else . At about 3000 B.C.E. a Sumerian civilization named Mesopotamia began to take shape. only short thereafter so did the civilization of Egypt there is no exception with civilizations Mesopotamia and Egypt they both have similar ideals which were in one way or another diffused into each other’s way of life.
Ancient Egypt political system was comprised of pharaohs ,who were to be believed as gods themselves, for most of their history. Those at the time who were governed under this centralized rule were forced to kneel before the pharaoh when he passed by and were banned from touching him or making eye contact. These pharaohs had numerous responsibilities. They owned most of the land, supervised armies passed laws and oversaw trade. They ruled through a large bureaucracy.
At their death, a pharaoh’s son stepped into his position and this is how great dynasties were born. While on the other hand Mesopotamia was comprised of self-governing city-states, with each one operating on its own as separate and independent political and economic units. Aristocracies emerged, and were made up of kings, their families and nobility. They owned the majority of the surrounding land and controlled most of the highest ranking positions in both the government and the military. Though the kings were not considered divine, as they were in Ancient Egypt, but they did overtake some of the power and authority of religious/theocratic leaders.
The Essay on Valley Civilizations River Mesopotamia India
According to the encyclopedia Encarta, a civilization is an advanced state of a society possessing historical and cultural unity. There are four early river valley societies that had successfully met the requirements to be called civilizations: Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and India. These four civilizations encompass several similarities as to how they developed, including location, spirituality, ...
The social structure of Mesopotamia and Egypt were different in their own respects. In Mesopotamia there was no gender equality. The women of ancient Egypt enjoyed more status, respect and opportunity than those of the less privileged women in Mesopotamia did. This was demonstrated not only socially but politically as well in that Egypt’s bureaucratic system allowed female pharaohs to even rule. Respect shown to Egyptian women, at least to those belonging to the upper class, was influenced some by the desire to maintain and continue stable monarchies.
Women in Mesopotamia were not granted the same respect and gender equality, and were viewed and treated as slaves and property. However, in ancient Egypt, as exampled in female pharos, females had more opportunities to rise in life. In Mesopotamia, although they had different classes of slaves, they were still treated like property. In both societies the very few elite, just as our society today, held enormous amounts of wealth, while the common people normally just got by day-by-day work schedule just as some in our society do today.
The cultures of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia were both quite similar to one another and were also very different; both were largely agricultural societies dependent upon rivers for fertile soil for farming without its civilization wouldn’t exist–the Nile in Egypt and the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia. And in both, the vast majority of people were engaged in agriculture, but both also contained sophisticated and intricate urban based society, bureaucracies and educated and artistic classes and diffused into other civilizations. The distinctive characteristics of Egyptian culture was comprised of stability and order and a certain optimistic confidence, which many scholars attribute to the reliability of the Nile’s annual cycle f flooding so it makes all the soil fertile again.
The centrality of religion in the Egyptian worldview and the development of elaborate and intricate hieroglyphic writing were also the poster boy of this civilization. Life in the Mesopotamian city-states was generally more difficult and challenging and more uncertain, since for most of these city-states, the climate, the fluctuating relations with neighboring tribes and cities and the behavior of the rivers were less stable and a lot less predictable than in Egypt.
The Term Paper on Mesopotamia Egypt And Harappa
Mesopotamia, Egypt and Harappa Mesopotamia was situated between two rivers Tigris and Euphrates. It was established by the small farmers tribes that came to settle down on the river valleys. The floodplains provided them with peas, wheat and barley. They changed the banks of the rivers so that they could direct the water to lower regions. Then summers came to Mesopotamia before 4000 BC. The ...
The ancient Mesopotamians’ cuneiform alphabet was also another huge and important achievement of this civilization. `In the case of the similarities and differences of Mesopotamia and Egypt they are neighbors in some aspects and they are worlds apart in others. Which really shows how much a society can take and learn from another but also can completely be different from it in every other way. it just goes to show how history is this complex and intricate subject that seems to be so simple but its only the first layer of knowledge.
