Exploring The Four Ancient Civilizations- Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Israel

Before the beginning of history, people from across the land gradually developed numerous cultures, each unique in some ways while the same time having features in common. Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Israel are all important to the history of the world because of religious, social, political and economic development.

In the first civilization, both Mesopotamia and Egypt relied on a hunter-gatherer economic system, during that time, every country in the world strived on it. Mesopotamia had rich soil for agriculture, but experiences floods. For the Mesopotamians, these floods would destroy major cities, but for the Egyptians it would keep the soil rich all year long without the damage that the Mesopotamians had experienced. With the rich soil foods were plentiful around the farm lands, which gave both countries the chance to establish largely dense areas, like what we now know as a city-state. The Nile River also served as a defense for the Egyptians they enjoyed centuries of tranquility and peace in which they used to develop peaceful development of their civilization. For the Mesopotamians, this wasn’t the case.

Mesopotamian society consisted of classes and social differences. The nobles, free clients of the nobility, commoners and slaves and Slave women all made up the different classes. The men dominated the women in Mesopotamia. The nobles consisted of the king, his family, the chief priests, and high palace officials. The king was a war leader elected by the citizens. He established an army and led it into battle. Kingship was hereditary. Commoners were free citizens. In ancient Egypt, both women and men could act on their own and were responsible for their own actions. In contrast, Mesopotami...

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...males much higher. Also, the four ancient civilizations had to overcome the burden of uniting their people under one king.

The need of kings to glorify themselves on statues is a testament of their ruling power, Egypt created many statues that displayed their gods, kings and queens. It was the Egyptians that influenced the Greek to create sculptures of their own ruling powers. Other then sculptures, the Egyptians influenced the Greeks to write on surfaces of buildings, it first started with Hieroglyphs then the ancient Greeks improved on writing, they wrote on large sheets of papyrus which lessened time and made recording events easier.

With so much in common the real differences lie beneath the surfaces of religion, power, equal rights and education. All four of the ancient civilizations principles can still be found in many modern countries.