Our first stop is a web study site created by Marcia Snyder, a teacher at Hollidaysburg Area Junior High School in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania.

1.  Read her opening remarks and proceed to the Student Area and click on the IMPORTANT VOCABULARY link and read all of the vocabulary words and familiarize yourselves with them. These will be our vocabulary words for the Unit. Write them in your Vocabulary Books for our future use.

Vist the University of Pennsylvania's Web site and read about cuneiform and the how it developed from pictograms. At first, Pictograms represented objects but as the need to communicate grew the pictograms became symbols for the sounds the the pictograms and they could be combined to make new 'words' and express abstract thoughts. The Behistun inscriptions in Persia are like what other famous language translator?

At this site, please follow the directions to get your cuniform initals. Copy your cuneiform initals into your journals. Do these initals resemble your current initals? Enter your thoughts in your journals also.

With the advent of cuneiform writing, scribes and storytellers could make permanent records of their lives, their history and their beliefs. The stories of Gilgamesh, an early ruler of city-state Uruk in Babylonia, are the oldest known written manuscript. Gilgamesh lived about 2700 B.C. and is the folk  hero of Sumerian and Babylonian poetry and epic tales . His epic journeys were written in cuneiform on tables of clay, the stories have survived and give us a glimpse into the past.

1. Click on the link and read about gilgamesh and his friend, Enkidu and the cedar forest.

2. Do you think Gilgamesh had super human powers? Why was he depicted that way?

Travel to The Metropolitan Museum of Art Web site and explore the art of the First Cities exhibition. Visit each of the eight topics on the main page and select ‘Mesopotamia’ on the map that appears. Read all of the links that follow and answer the following questions.

Masterpieces

1. What did the ‘standard of Ur’ encompass?

Cities

2. When did the cities in southern Mesopotamia start to grow and why did the city of Ur ultimately fail to prosper?

The Ruler

3. What were the Kings roles in the city-states?

The Divine World

4. Each city in Mesopotamia had a patron______ and a temple that served as a place of _____ and the center of the city’s ____ with distant lands.

Death and Burial

5. What was so shocking about the grave of Queen Puabi that Leonard Woolley found?

Writing

6. Name the reasons (at least 4) for the development of cuneiform.

Seals and Sealing

7. What were the three uses of cylinder seals?

Clothing and Personal Adornment

8. During the Early Dynastic period (ca. 2900–ca. 2250 B.C.), what material served as the basis of men’s and women’s clothing? 

Read the Overview of Mesopotamian mathematics and be prepared to answer the question why did the Mesopotamians seal their messages in wet clay?

Next click on the link to Tokens and answer the question why were the tokens standardized.

Deep thoughts: What does the standardization of tokens mean for civilization and the forming of the first empires?

Study the Cuneiform numbers and then go to the worksheet, print it out and complete.

We have completed some reading, some writing, and some arithmetic, so now it's time to play. The Royal Game of Ur - a board game from Mesopotamia was found in a grave site in Ur by Leonard Woolley in the 1930's. Similar games are still played today in the Middle East. Try it! Good luck!