Mesopotamia thread

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Does anyone else get kind of a strange ominous feeling when reading about ancient Mesopotamian civilizations pre 700 BC? Ancient Egypt doesn't freak me out, but something about Sumeria, the Hittites and others really unnerves me.

Did Sumeria develop the world's first military?

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>>2536434
Like what? Can you give an example?

i wonder how they looked like, and if any ethnic group that exist now can be compared to them.

>>2536474
I dunno. I suppose an example is when the troops of Xenophon while heading back to Greece stumble upon one of the old Mesopotamian cities that's been deserted for hundreds of years, and it's something straight out of Lovecraft.

Maybe its my discomfort at the idea of a historical disconnect. The world is pretty continuously documented from the time of Classical Greece till nowadays. We kinda lose that before hand, and yet there are thousands of years of civilization still. Maybe its the idea that humanity is older than we act like we are.

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>>2536491

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>>2536497
I think I get what you mean. I guess it's kind of instinctual to have an uneasy feeling about a people we no so little about, sort of like how we're still inherently afraid of the dark. It's the mystery of the unknown.

Especially in a place like Sumer, which is so ridiculously old at this point we didn't even know it existed until Henry Rawlinson learned to read cuneiform. Assyria and Babylon we know from accounts of Herodotus and the bible, but the Sumerian people were completely lost to time for thousands of years.

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>http://faculty.uml.edu/ethan_Spanier/Teaching/documents/CP6.0AssyrianTorture.pdf

>>2536491
they did call themselves "black heads"
which has led afro-centrist claiming they were black

but we know that they did not speak an afro-semitic language
and the general accepted theory is that they originated north, in Syria
where weed was first cultivated, and they moved south between the rivers as they started agriculture proper

I personally think they were "tanned" with dark hair
certainly not Nordic people, but a paert of the spectrum that ran from Europe through Asia at the time

>>2536491
The Sumerians are long gone, but there are around 3 million people whose origins can be traced back to Assyria.

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Some pics from the Mesopotamian section at the Louvres

>>2536656
>>2536661
Did you take these?

>>2536473
Well, I think the earliest recorded battle in history was between Lagash and Umma 2450 BC. Both were cities in Sumer, so I'd say there's a high chance.

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>>2536326
People always say that either Sumer or Egypt are the earliest civilisations, but you look at Jericho and it's estimated that settlements took place there in 9600 BCE, a good five millenniums before either Egypt or Sumer had their first dynasties.

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>>2536656
>>2536661

>>2536805
what is the deal with jericho anyway?
it looks like a city, but is there any agriculture or other civilization features connected to it?

göbekli tepe is also ancient, 9 500 bc, but it was definitely built by hunter-gatherers

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>>2536805
>>2536889
There's a difference between a settlement and a civilisation. This gets down to one of those definition arguments. When do you transition from a 'village' to a 'town'? To a 'city' to a 'civilisation'?

What places like Jericho, Göbekli Tepe and Çatalhöyük developed were essentially small societies. A monumental feat in its own right, but hardly something that would be considered a "civilisation" from a modern person's perspective. They didn't make much advancement in terms of agriculture/farming, military, infrastructure and supply networks etc. And that's what ultimately differentiates those places from the likes of Egypt and Sumer.

The Bible is the best source on ancient kingdoms and empires, gives detailed explanations on their origins.

It covers Egypt, Assyria, Babylon and Persia.
But most importantly, it covers the "Patriarch" era which starts after the Flood all the way to the Tower of Babel, showing how the first settlements developed.

The Book of Jasher is also interesting, gives a great account on the birth of paganism and a funny story of Abraham smashing Nimrod's idols. It also tells us where the name "Pharaoh" comes from.

>>2536975
I really want to get into the historicity of he bible once my studies end
I'm not a Christian, but the bible is a rather large compendium of ancient documents, which should not be overlooked

I remember debating an atheist (I am an atheist myself) about the bible
he said that the bible was "nothing but lies"
I pointed out that it mentions Augustus, who was a real person
and his response was "well, they needed to mix in some truth in it so as to confuse us"

>t. anti-atheistic atheist

>>2537108
it's a very interesting subject, far from simply all being lies. I wouldn't go as far as to even call the incorrect parts "lies" since that implies that they were intentionally wrong. beyond some slant for propaganda purposes, the authors of the bible probably believed what they wrote. I think even forgeries can be a bit tricky to be called lies with religious documents. perhaps the writer thought that God was revealing a lost document to them by revelation. additionally in cases such as Isaiah which had tons of material added to it over time, the added material often comes from the oral tradition that develops around the document that are eventually added to the document itself

>>2536434
the opposite for me desu
i have a pathological phobia of mummies so reading about egpyt freaks me the fuck out even if it has nothing to do with mummies

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>>2536326
Why is Babylon the most famous part of Mesopotamia when it was a dominant power for a much shorter time and on a relatively smaller scale than Assyria?

>>2537237
jews

>>2537237
it was very much a religious/cultural center of Mesopotamia, even when it wasn't a big political power

>>2537237
1. The Bible (Nebuchadnezzar/Tower of Babel etc)
2. Herodotus
3. The Hanging Gardens/Seven Wonders of the World
4. Babylon completely fucking dismantled Assyria and destroyed Nineveh without so much as a trace
5. Marduk is a Babylonian deity, probably the most famous one outside of Ishtar
6. Its ruins are still around

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>>2536434
>>2537200
I find them both ominous as fuck. I look at the creepy anatomy of the Sphinx and think "How did they come up with that"? The fact that they were able to build it in the first place also bothers me. They literally just had some sand and mud at their disposal. What could they have known about architecture that allowed them to construct these edifices in such a way that they would last for thousands of years. How did they come up with the concept of a God with the head of a dog who holds dominion over death? It's stuff like that which bothers the shit out of me.

Then you read about the Epic of Gilgamesh, the fucked up shit that goes on in there. These were supposedly the earliest civilised humans, how did this kind of stuff even cross their minds?

>>2537524
It's shit like this that makes me lament the lost history as a result from needless conquest and violence. Sumeria was literally just discovered over 100 years ago with no one knowing about it's existence before that.

Where do i go, what do i read, to find out how things were back in sumeria? What people would wear, humor, opinions, day to day life, it interests me most in all civilizations yet I only ever find information on "famous people" that never led an ordinary life.

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>>2536326
this is relevant

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>>2537551
>Sumeria was literally just discovered over 100 years ago with no one knowing about it's existence before that.
It really is amazing, isn't it? Everything we know about ancient Mesopotamia probably doesn't even add up to 1/10th of its actual history. That to me is both fascinating and damn disheartening.

>>2536497
Sumerologists complained about Mesopotamia not receiving as much attention as Egypt so that's a reason for a lot of it still being a mystery to this day.

>>2536975
Yea but too bad closest thing we have to the original bible is some guys translation of the edited version.

>>2537638
Go look at an interlinear translation, you'll see that there are barely any differences between texts.
All the fuss over text types is mostly with KJO autists and textual scholars telling them no.

>>2537636
I was thinking about this the other day. We all learned about the ancient Romans, Egyptians, Greeks, Jews, Aztecs etc when we were in primary school, but we never got taught much at all about Mesopotamia.

Why is that? It was over 15 years ago now, maybe there simply wasn't enough to teach?

>>2537711
Probably, not as much to make a curriculum out of anyway. Asia is largely ignored in general.

>>2537711
Mesopotamia is largely still being discovered, when we were kids, for example, Babylon and Ur were thought to be cities which only exists in myth. There is also a new study called Panbabylonism. Which pretty much pinpoints the origins of almost all Christian stories to Mesopotamia.

Largely Christian nations do not want to know about Gilgamesh, the flood, Enkidu, the serpent or Emesh and Enten. The discovery of these stories pretty much objectively denies the christian doctrines.

There is a school of thought within Panbabylonisim which says the big 3 religions took standpoints which essentially were the opposites of their Mesopotamian earlier counter-parts, as a fuck you to their culture.

>>2536491
Most iraqis share the same ancestry. They just speak another language

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>>2536434
Holy shit Where have you been my life. Every time I look into Mesopotamia and to some extent Early Egypt I get that pit in my stomach feeling. I think it's because I identify so much with classical European civilizations like the Greeks and Romans, and anything before that is uncharted waters for me.

>>2536434
Yes... Minoan cannibalism (even if they were not Mesopotamians) or other shit

But Egypt gets me too (people buried alive in masouleums with the pharaoh)

>>2537237
Because assyrians were known as cruel savages. Not a good image for the cradle of civilization you know

>>2537711
Here in germany we started history with mesopotamia to learn what constitutes as a civilization and how they started.

When did the age of Mesopotamia/Egypt end? When the Persians conquered them?

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>>2537824
For Mesopotamia, yes; nowhere in that region was ever independent again after Babylon fell to Cyrus.

For Egypt, I would say it was a few hundred years later, when Alexander took Giza and established Alexandria. The traditional hierarchy of Pharaohs and dynasties was still maintained, but the land was entirely ruled by Macedonian Ptolemies until the Romans came along.

>>2537802
So were the Mongols and everyone knows about them.

>>2537886
The mongols still exist so you can't ignore them.

>>2537904
So do the Assyrians.

>>2537722
>>2537768
I see. I suppose that makes sense. Much about those other places were constantly recorded throughout their history, but somehow Mesopotamian records just never came to light until relatively recently.

>Babylon and Ur were thought to be cities which only exists in myth
I actually thought the same thing until a few years ago. The only things I knew about it were from when I read the bible. I used to think of it in the same vein as Sodom and Gomorrah or Atlantis.

I'm interested mainly in the Sumerians, since I like primordial things, and since we consider them to be the first true Civilization, I find them particularly neat.

>>2537824
>>2537871
Persia rose again, though. The middle East truly became unrecognizable once the Arabs conquered Persia.

>>2537906
I knew a Chaldean girl; she had great tits

>>2537816
That's a good idea. If I were to construct an ancient History curriculum, I'd start with that as well, along with the origins of Jericho and Catalhoyuk.

>>2537768
You mean Biblical Myths. Christianity came about 600 years after the Babylonian Captivity, and is firmly established in Roman Judea.

The stories of Genesis were probably co-opted from Mesopotamian Myth of ultimately Sumerian origin.

The later books of the Hebrew Bible, think Judges and Kings and then the Prophet authored books, are far more historical than the Mythical Genesis.

>>2537986
We learned about them in my Catholic school, but history started with the origin of life in my World History class

>>2537620
I cum every time I realize that the third Ur period is called Neo-Sumerian and happened before Babylon even became a thing

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>>2538010
>Alulim reigned as king for 28,800 years

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>>2538010
>>2538027

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>>2538010
It tells just how old these places really are. Babylon itself is considered ancient but the dynasties of Sumer were already ancient by the time of Hammurabi.

>>2538077
It's even more impressive that Sumerian continued to be a religious language into the First Century AD.

>>2536491
probably like modern day middle-easterners such as Iraqis. light brown

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>>2536434
I sort of know what you mean.
Their worldview was the idea that humans are meant to be slaves to the will of the gods, which I guess would explain why their civilization seemed so cold and cruel. Of course that was probably shaped by their environment, but it's definitely less comfy than Egypt seemed at least.

>>2537524
its not as mysterious as you think. human beings are smart and creative as fuck. The ancients were no different

>>2537768
>the big 3 religions took standpoints which essentially were the opposites of their Mesopotamian earlier counter-parts
This is interesting. Got any examples or reading material? All I can think of off the top of my head is the Tower of Babel.

>>2538168
Basically any part of Genesis before Abraham shows up.

Interestingly, Abraham is supposedly a Sumerian, not a Canaanite, since he's from Ur of the Chaldees.

His notion of the Bible being entirely inherited from Babylonia is inaccurate, but the Creation myth and other Genesis myths clearly are.

>>2538184
Which is interesting because the Chaldees showed up long after Ur has lost its significance. It's really easy to pinpoint the creation of the Abraham character to the Neo-Babylonian period

>>2538198
Well, yeah, but Abraham was most likely the mythical founder of the Hebrews before that.

It's not like they had Wikipedia back then.

The Hebrew Bible was composed in exile, most likely in an attempt to preserve Hebrew religious and historical traditions while disparate throughout the Babylonian Empire.

Lots of Babylonian influence, but the more recent stuff, Judges, Kings, and the Prophetical Books, is mostly Historical, as corroborating Assyrian Material states.

The Hebrew people are much older than the Babylonian Captivity, and the bible provides evidence of oral tradition in books like Samuel.

It's important to remember that the Bible isn't one book, but a compendium.

In addition, the Babylonian captivity holds no impact on the New Testament, since it was long dead by then

>>2538147
>but it's definitely less comfy than Egypt seemed at least.
Much of Egyptian society functioned through slavery, though.

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During the late Bronze and early Iron ages, how were the relationships between Mesopotamia and nations of the surrounding areas, like the Medes and Hittites?

>>2538184
Wow, so even Judaism comes from Mesopotamia. Neat.

>>2538354
The Medes were one of the peoples that regularly got involved in conflicts with the Assyrians.

During the Bronze age, the Hittites, Achaean/Mycenaeans, Egypt, and the Mesopotamians were trading partners with their own little Globalized society that collapsed

>>2538390
Well, the Jews were Semites, so they were probably related to the Akkadians anyway

>>2538411
True. Were Akkadians the first Semites?

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>>2538168

what always freaks me out is how, when these civilizations were around, people tend to forget that the earth was still populated by humans.

so in one little tiny corner of the earth you had civilization with advanced things like tools, armies, laws, civil code, literature, monumental art, huge architecture, technology, social class, etc etc and then the rest of the world is just smaller hut-settlements or literal cavemen.

it blows my mind. can you imagine being some hunter-gatherer from central asia for example, or a nomad, and somehow or another stumbling into sumer... "HOLY SHIT HUMANS CREATED THAT SANDSTONE MOUNTAIN? IMPOSSIBLE"

Is Mesopotamia a good place to start learning about history? I really don't know where to begin in relation to European, African, Asian, and American history.

>>2538799
>Is Mesopotamia a good place to start learning about history?
No. Mainly because it's all so new, it's still being discovered, it's one of the more volatile modern parts of archaeology.

>I really don't know where to begin in relation to European, African, Asian, and American history.
Treat each separately, make your own inks once you understand each respective history.

If you are looking for a base point to start, try Egypt or China, both have very detailed records of their early histories.

>>2538604
Not him, and I'm not sure we can find the "first" of any group of people, but I do believe Akkadian is the first recorded semitic language

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>>2538778
It's fucking weird, man. Obviously, all human populaces eventually developed their own languages, cultures and infrastructure etc, but it's how it always comes in periods that gets my noggin joggin. For example, Cuneiform is from Sumer, so we know it was developed in at least the 30th century BC; but Basque (Euskera) is often regarded as the oldest European language and, although no one can really trace its origins, it has often been suggested that the Basque people derive from a wave of immigration from Anatolia in the 20th Century BC.

If that hypothesis is to be believed, then that means there's around 1000 years between the oldest Asian language and the oldest European one.

Can anyone recommend a book on the Phoenicians and/or the Canaanites? I understand it's not Mesopotamian or even ancient but there are not much threads on /his/ where you can ask this question.

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>>2538963
it has stuff on the sea peoples not phoenicians though

>>2538975
Is there a massive difference between the Phoenicians and the Canaanites?

>>2538985
Found this page for ya:
https://suellenoceanchatsancestry.wordpress.com/2013/02/12/whats-the-difference-between-israel-canaan-palestine-and-phoenicia/

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>>2537305
>3. The Hanging Gardens/Seven Wonders of the World
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE THOSE WERE FROM NINEVEH!! FUCKING BABYLONIANS! FIRST YOU DESTROY OUR EMPIRE THEN YOU STEAL OUR GARDENS! FUCK YOUUUUUU!

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>>2539081
>mfw Nineveh gets conquered twice by Babylonians

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>>2539103

>>2537711
At 19 I might be on the younger end of the users of this board, but I learned about Mesopotamia about as much as all of those.

>>2539385
I'm a senior in a Catholic high school now, we touched on Mesopotamia pretty briefly at the beginning of my world history class.

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>tfw militaristic society with no culture
>all the popular city-state pals are jerking off to Babylon and it's "culture"
>you start becoming a kickass kingdom and invade the popular kids
>Now only Babylon left
>tfw gonna get your name on the Kings List
>sack and destroy Babylon
>feelsgood.stele
>but then you remember you're a militaristic society with no culture
>tfw killed all the talented people
>tfw bring about Dark Ages

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Thankfully there's not much left for ISIS to destroy, because Sumeria, Akkadia, Babylonia, Assyria, neo-Babylonia and neo-Assyria were all so great at wiping each other out

>You will never excavate Bronze Age Mesopotamian sites because your country is so shit at making friends in the Near East

Why is every great empire a kush empire? From Babylon to the DEC of independence

>>2540102
Another example of We-wuzism.

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>Assyrians continue to exist to this day
>Meanwhile Babylonians are no longer around
Why is this?

>>2536975
Bible is a mixed bag. It's generally very reliable when it comes to everything post Babylonian conquest of Judah, but everything before that is literal horseshit.

>>2540121
Because Babylonians were never an ethnic group unlike Assyrians. They were Amorites, Chaldeans, etc.

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>>2536326

Sumer is Best Mer.

>>2536626
>ASSyrians found the first empire ruled by terror
>Boast about how cruel they are for centuries
>Eventually get BTFO
>Now modern ASSyrrians cry on tv about MUH OPPRESSION

What goes around comes around, fuck all ASSyrrians, I hope the whole race dies of anal cancer and then burns in hell forever.

>>2536629

"Black headed" clearly means their hair color, otherwise they'd just say "black".

They depicted tehir gods with blue eyes which has lead some WE WUZZing faggots to claim they were "Aryan", but they used blue BECAUSE it was "unnatural" and thus "godly", and because lapis lazuli was the most valuable material they had, and so worthy of use depicting gods.

>>2540252
t. Abdullah Bashur

>>2537524
>What could they have known about architecture that allowed them to construct these edifices in such a way that they would last for thousands of years.

They didn't START with pyramids and sphinxes, the earliest Egyptian structures (the mastabas) are simple and intuitive designs, and the process of making pyramids wasn't smooth (see: the Bent Pyramid) and took literally thousands of years to develop.

>How did they come up with the concept of a God with the head of a dog who holds dominion over death?

Jackals eat the dead. Seems pretty obvious to me.

>These were supposedly the earliest civilised humans, how did this kind of stuff even cross their minds?

People in the past were no less inventive or intelligent than us.

>>2537551
>>2537620

We didn't know it, but we've known about Sumer all along. So many of our myths and legends, not least the whole "Old Myth" portions of the Bible, and the foundations of our math and timekeeping are Sumerian. Their influence is absolutely overwhelming in almost every area, it's almost irrelevant that most people for thousands of years have never even heard of them.

>>2537690
>>2536975

The Bible preserves many Mesopotamian myths, but does so in a distorted way. Luckily we now have authentic versions of such stories as the Great Flood and the Garden of Eden, so we can toss the Bible onto the junkheap of history.

>>2537990
>The later books of the Hebrew Bible, think Judges and Kings and then the Prophet authored books, are far more historical than the Mythical Genesis.

Historicalesque more like, since even most of these are fiction.

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This was superior to the Egyptian pyramids 2bh.

>91 meters high
>looks way more aesthetic

>>2538941

No, just no. All humans have had a language, probably since before we were modern humans, certainly since before we all left Africa. The oldest /written/ language is Sumerian, and the oldest /written/ European language is Hittite, but both Hitties and Sumerians had language before they had writing.

>>2540305

Also, it had a use. Granted, not a practical one, just a temple, but better than the Pyramids that are literally just Bender screaming REMEMBER ME.

>>2540257
He has a point desu

>>2540316
>not knowing that the pyramids were used to store grain

>>2538963
>>2538985

Phonecians are coastal Canaanites, Hebrews are nomadic / pastoralist Canaanites, and regular Canaanites are agricultural city-dwelling Canaanites. All three have dialects of the same language, and practised the same religion before the Hebrews converted to Yahwehism, they grew apart overtime but share a common origin as a single people.

>>2540325

Ben Carson is living proof that you don't have to be smart to be a surgeon.

>>2540321
>talking about yourself in 3rd person
Stop.

>>2540305
>>2540316
Egypt is a literal meme civilization that gets overrated to high heaven just because of Jewish and Greek obsession with them.

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Does anyone know why did Persian and Mesopotamian art looked the same?

>>2540334

Yeah,no. Egypt is an incredible achievement, not as influential as Sumer but certainly deserving of its praise. Its right up there with Sumer, the Shang, the Harrapans and the Olmecs, imho.

>>2540335
Akkadians were basically the Roman empire of the bronze age and they influenced everyone around them from Eastern Mediterranean to Iran.

Daily reminder that Akkadian was the lingua franca of diplomacy and trade long after Akkadian empire collapsed, much like Latin and Greek in medieval Europe. We have records of Egyptian pharaohs and Mittani kings writing correspondence to each other in Akkadiam.

>>2540335

Because the Persians copied the style and techniques of the Mesopotamians, obviously.

>>2540335
my ancestors :)

>>2540340
t. Jamal the kang of Kemet

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>>2540341
Looks pretty small though.

>>2540366

Now compare it to the empires that came before it.

>>2540366
It was the first actual empire in history. You gotta start somewhere.

>>2536434
It's probably because they disappeared without any real trace until the 19th C, perhaps it reminds us of the transience of humans as a species, regardless of our achievements.

'Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair' and all that.

I get a warm feeling thinking about the Sumerians, but the rapid and desperate collapse of the Hittites at the hands of the Sea people is unnerving though.

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>>2540366
>Akkad?
>AKKAD

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>>2540385
Fucking S*rdinians. What was wrong with them?

>>2540252
>I hope it's one of your family members by brothers slot when clearing houses, sandnigger
>punisher logo on gear (and black ford f150, back home)
>"one shot, two kills" tshirt, of pregnant woman in burka

Nothing's changed, just outward examples and posturing.

>>2540392
Akkad the city was never discovered IIRC, where it is remains a mystery hence the question mark.

Mesopotamian city r8

1.Seleucia
2.Ctesiphon
3.Babylon
4.Baghdad
5.K*ffa

>>2540546
>Uruk
>Ninevah
>Babylon
>Ctesiphon-Seleukia
>Washshukkanni

>>2540546
>Hellenic/Parthian garbage built centuries after Mesopotamia had any relevance
Get the fuck out

>>2540558

You DO realise that Alexander's capital was at Babylon? And that the Seleukids ruled from mesopotamia?

>>2540572
>Seleukids ruled from Mesopotamia
Only for 50 years, then it switched to Antioch.

>>2537711
I graduated from a public American high school in 2012, every first week or two of my world history classes in middle and high school we covered the Sumerians and the other ancient middle eastern cultures, we learned a basic overview of the Epic of Gilgameah. Our books always referred to the Sumerians as being the worlds first known civilization.

>>2537711
>Jews
lmfao

Jews are some of the most irrelevant ancient peoples ever, they were the fucking Albania or Chechnia of the bronze and iron age. The only difference is that they dispersed all over Europe telling Europeans their nonsense genealogies and wewuzian propaganda and the Europeans somehow believed them.

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>>2540546
>Baghdad
I was going to meme you, but in its heyday, before it got BTFO by the Mongs, Baghdad genuinely was the centre of the world for academia and culture. I look at what that city was before 1258, and the shithole it is now, it's a crying shame is what it is.

>>2540546
>Dilmun
>Eridu
>Uruk
>Kish
>Lagash
Everything else is hill-tribe trash.

>>2540546
1. Babylon
2. Nineveh
3. Uruk
4. Eridu
5. Ur

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>>2537795
Even old Europe (Pre-Roman) scares me, because they were not the Europeans that we know and love

>>2540305
You are the same guy who started a thread about Mesopotamian superiority over Egypt and got btfo right?

>>2536491
Olive/tan complexion (with a few approaching brown and a few approaching caucasian).
Black hair.
Brown eyes.

In other words like an average Middle Easterner.

>>2541184
Assyria controlled Egypt.
When did Egypt ever have control over any of Mesopotamia?

>>2541335
So you are an actual Assyrian ha. Thutmose I did a campaign on Mesopotamia where he engraved his name there. also
>military might = superior civilization

>>2537524
>how did they make x
You can apply that logic to things only decades or hundreds of years old, too. Old technologies that were made reduntant. Im sure theres lots of old tools and methods we wouldnt fully understand without being shown.
Humans are a crafty bunch. Through a combination of will, necessity, curiousity and some coincidences we figure things out.

There's lessons to be learned from current stonemasons and tradesmen working with handtools, theres only so many ways to get things done practically and they'll come to the same conclusions as the ancients. See: that american trying to build his own stonehenge, Just pivoted big rocks on pebbles using half turns. Theres guys today making dry stone walls using the same methods that built Hadrians wall 2000 odd years ago.
Their understandings of Astronomy is a big one. I'd put forward that the average person today knows relatively little compared to the average person back then, purely out of necessity and access. how many of us actually take time to look at the night sky, how many could use the stars to find their way? When youre away from the city it's a lot more obvious.

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>>2541474
>Thutmose I did a campaign on Mesopotamia where he engraved his name there
No, he didn't.

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>Susa, the great holy city, abode of their Gods, seat of their mysteries, I conquered. I entered its palaces, I opened their treasuries where silver and gold, goods and wealth were amassed...I destroyed the ziggurat of Susa. I smashed its shining copper horns. I reduced the temples of Elam to naught; their gods and goddesses I scattered to the winds. The tombs of their ancient and recent kings I devastated, I exposed to the sun, and I carried away their bones toward the land of Ashur. I devastated the provinces of Elam and on their lands I sowed salt.

>>2537524
>Mou, Gil-chan, stop touching me there!
>fufufu Enkidu-chan, you're so kawaii I can't help myself~

>>2541707
>>2540335
>>2538147
Why is their depiction of beards so awesome

>>2541783
Everyone was high-test as fuck back then.

>>2541719
Come on, I know that this is a Sumerian stele carving imageboard, but that just lowers the tone of discussion far below its deserved level.

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Post some IRL Mesopotamian architecture pls. I'm not aware of any besides this shitty ziggurat. I'm sure there must be something else.

>>2541976
There's not much, the rest is mostly other ziggurats which have turned into unrecognizable mudpiles, a lot of stone foundations of ancient houses and temples or what remains of city walls

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>>2541976

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>>2541976
You said IRL, didn't say anything about whether they're still around.

>>2536975
>Terah, the head idol-maker for Nimrod has a child
>the child is called Abram (Abraham)
>a sign happens in the heavens
>Pagan priests warn Nimrod of a child that is born that will destroy him
>Nimrod orders Terah to kill bring Abram to him
>Terah brings one of his concubine's baby instead
>Nimrod smashes the baby's head against a rock, killing him

>Abram spends his years growing up with Noah and Shem
>he learns of the one true creator God, Lord of hosts
>he goes back to his father's land in Babylon
>sees all the pagan statues and idols in his father's house
>tells his mom to make some food
>puts the plate of food on the table, offering it to the gods
>statues don't move or speak
>Abram gets angry and takes an axe
>smashes the idols and pagan statues in his father's house
>puts the axe in the hand of the biggest statue
>Terah comes home and sees the statues in shambles
>ask Abram why did he did this
>Abram says he dindu nuffin, he took a plate of food to offer, all the gods fought over it and the biggest god killed the other ones
>Terah says that's ridiculous, idols of stone and wood are not alive
>Abram says: "Exactly. Then why do you worship them?"
>Terah is furious and brings Abram to Nimrod
>Nimrod is angry that Abram turns out to be still alive

>He throws Abram in a fiery furnace (just as what would happen to Daniel centuries later)
>Abram doesn't get burned or feels any pain, God protecting him
>The pagan priests and onlookers are amazed
>Hours pass and Abram just walks around in the fire
>Nimrod orders Abram to come out of the furnace
>Nimrod is scared of the one true living God, and lets Abram go
>God starts to call out Abram from Babylon, starting his journey to Canaan and the promise that his descendants will inhabit the land

Abraham was based as fuck.

"How, then, canst thou serve these idols in whom there is no power to do anything? Can these idols in which thou trustest deliver thee? Can they hear thy prayers when thou callest upon them?"

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>>2541707
Assyrians were on some hardcore shit.

>King Ashurnasirpal laid out many of his sadistic activities in one of his annals. He liked burning, skinning, and decapitating his enemies. When he defeated a rebelling city, he made sure they pay a huge price. Disobedient cities were destroyed and razed to the ground with fire, with their wealth and all material riches taken by the king. Their youth and women were either burned alive or made into slaves or placed into the harem. In the City of Nistun, Ashurnasirpal showed how he cut of the heads of 260 rebelling soldiers and piled it together. Their leader named Bubu suffered horrific punishment. He was flayed and his skin was placed in the walls of Arbail. In the city of Suri, rebelling nobles were also skinned and were displayed like trophies. Some skin were left to rot but some were placed in a stake. Officials of the city suffered decapitation of their limbs. The leader of the Suri rebellion, Ahiyababa, underwent flaying and his skin was then placed in the walls of Niniveh. After Ashurnasirpal defeated the city of Tila, he ordered to cut the hands and feet of the soldiers of the fallen city. Other than that, some soldiers found themselves without noses and ears. But also, many defeated soldiers had their eyes gouged out. The heads of the leaders of the Tila were hang in the trees around the city.

>>2537970
>Atlantis
>Santorini

>>2540366
Still constitutes an empire, though. A collective of states that are all governed by one centralised power.

>>2542115
What's with this guy and his skin fetish? Fucking pervert.

>>2542115
Assyrians were like Prussians and Aztecs rolled into one. And the Aztec at least had some bullshit religious justification for brutality whereas Assyrians just did it for the lulz.

>>2540904
Didn't Baghdad have an automaton that moved with the wind? I read about it a long time ago so I could be wrong.

>>2542115

These accounts were common

But that leads me to question why ANYONE would ever willingly surrender to the Assyrians? Especially leaders of rebellions who could expect zero mercy for them and their families.

Question, is there anything before Sumer we know about? As in a developed city state approaching civilization?

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>>2543487
There were "cities" like Catal Huyuk (7500 BC) but we don't call them civilizations since they didn't have writing.

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Any books to recommend ? I'm currently reading pic related

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>>2543554
Since Mesopotamia is such a volatile subject, if you want to read, you should probably get the most recent (if you can) translations.

The way we understand Sumerian and Akkadian changes with every new discovery.

>>2541976
what the fuck, is that actually a person sitting on it?

damn ziggurats were tiny

>>2543601
Do you even know when that shit got built?

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I'm surprised that no one posted this before, but still

GIRUGAMESH

>>2537237
That doesn't look like Nebuchadnezzer. That looks like someone from one of the bronze age empires like a Babylonian or something.

>>2543571

That's what I was thinking the other day. This book doesn't even talk about the Ubaid period since they didn't know about it when the book was written

>>2543554
Holy Bible, Old Testament.

>>2537237
Because of the Jews who were eternally butthurt about them and the Greeks who were fascinated by them. European culture comes from the Greeks and European religion (Christianity) was created by the Jews so no wonder.

>>2543554
The Code of Hammurabi

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>>2543571

Seconding this.

I've been working my way through both of these - the myth book provides detailed context & explanations along with differing versions of tales.

>>2543690
Barley must have been very precious if the punishment for brewing bad beer was to be drowned in it.

>>2537768
Isn't this sensible though, considering the Israelites and contemporary Mesopotamians neighboring Semitic peoples with heavy contact? I'd always assumed Biblical mythology shared a similar origin to Babylonian mythology.

>>2540958
Imagine Pre-Indo-European-Expansion Europe. All sorts of crazy shit could have been going on. Just look at how insane Basque mythology is.

>>2543954
>Biblical mythology
>mythology
You mean history.

Biblical history.

>>2543966
>It's the christfag again

>>2543966
No, not the histories in the Bible. I mean the supernatural stuff and creation myths. Pardon me for not giving your special book the respect it deserves. I was not born into a Jewish or post-Jewish family so I am at an intellectual disadvantage.

>>2537524
>Spoopy Sumer Statues.jpg
Is this how historians in the far future will look at anime?

>>2543966
>derailing the discussion into something it has nothing to do with so you can be entertained
Literal. Autism.

>>2543989
So you're a philosophical naturalist. You don't believe in afterlife or different dimensions.

>>2543976
*tips fedora* M'lady, I too am a 15 year old atheist rebelling against my parents.

Hmph, society will never understand us anarchists and communists, amirite?

>>2544041
There is no derailment. Just correcting someone's mistake.

>>2544070
Your entire post is a derailment. First response is about metaphysics, second response is edgy shitposting, and the third is a boldfaced lie.

I always thought I was the reincarnation of my great grandfather, in straight male line. When I was m little I saw a ghost, it appeared in front of my window and greeted me with my name, I ran away screaming. I told my parents what I saw, they showed me a photo of a man, it was the ghost. My father and his grandfather had a close bond, and he told my father he would try to make contact after death if it was possible. He was very similar to me, his hair, the way he acted, his hobbys, etc. Eventually I got really into filming, I am obsessed with capturing time. I have an entire archive with every film I made the past years. When I was at my grandpas house I discovered an ancient camera, one of the earliest made. Turns out he managed to get his hands on one, one of the first people in my country to have one

>>2544089

>Paul Feig on the making of Ghostbusters (2016)

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>>2543554
Currently reading this. It's very insightful.

>Your homeland is being shitted up Islamists, Kurds and the West
Must feel pretty bad being an Assyrian.

>>2544586
That's the way of the world m8. People conquer and move in on each other's territories.

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>>2544586
People shitting up your homeland with thier absurd religions and destructive ideologies. Tell me about it.

>>2543487
>But that leads me to question why ANYONE would ever willingly surrender to the Assyrians?
Better yet, why would anyone rebel against them in the first place, knowing what would happen to them if they failed?

>>2544586
Don't forget the Turks that genocided more than half their population.

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>>2536434
For me its because I have this mental image of them as the "first" civilized humans. Like, we stopped being hunter-gatherers and immediately became these strange robed barbarians.

Its a real "Dawn the World" aesthetic. Not historically accurate, but the image of a the sun rising behind a ziggurut still strikes me as otherworldly. Like a glimpse at a world only a few years old.

How much did pre-civilization/hunter-gatherer society influence early civilization? Did they at least have working mathematic knowledge before the transition?

>>2543487
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucuteni-Trypillian_culture

>>2536434
>>2536497
>>2537524
>>2537795
>>2537800
>>2538147
>>2540385
>>2544660
This is very interesting. I, too, feel a foreboding sense of dread when looking back at the earliest times in (semi)recorded human history. It is a subjective thing, sure, but something felt by so many (including others I've talked to) cannot be merely a personal inclination against these earlier times.

Perhaps there is some sort of imprint on the human psyche concerning these times. Perhaps there is something about it that doesn't compute with modern mythology, that the idea of the modern world as the peak of civilization is thrown into question by the idea of the sudden and substantial rise of these most early peoples. Perhaps it is just some great feeling of inadequacy, when looking from the perspective of the most early human civilization looking backward, sort of like standing on the edge of the abyss and gazing in.

one day i will see the Euphrates with my own eyes...

>>2544723
Nah, for me its just the sheer antiquity and that feeling of a world in early spring-time. Its not dread I note so much as a kind of strange vitality.

As though one could really imagine gods and men having children, or ancient unknown things crawling their way through primordial forests.

>>2543487

Same reason why people willingly surrender to ISIS nowadays.

>>2544679
Define "working mathematic knowledge." Very basic mathematics is intuitive and can even be performed by some non-human animals. A grasp of simple arithmetic such as addition and subtraction is needed for even the most basic activities performed by early humans, and an early concept of the number is preserved in some rather primitive languages spoken by isolated hunter-gatherers that have words for one and two but no more discrete numbers than that other than "many." Different prehistoric groups would have had varying levels of competency with arithmetic, but tally sticks are attested back 20,000 years. The constructions built by pre-civilization peoples, including permanent dwellings such as those at Jericho, indicate that knowledge of simple geometry can also be assumed. This would also have been intuitive, growing out of our innate depth perception and spatial reasoning ability. This all predates civilization as we know it, of course, and includes non-sedentary peoples as well, as evidenced by Gobekli Tepe.

As writing was not yet invented though we don't really have a way to know how advanced and how far back any of this went, but I have heard estimates of the development of division as far back as 10,000 BC. Basic theoretical geometry and arithmetic would of course have been a prerequisite to the development of even pre-civilization agriculture and sedentary settlements, which are attested thousands of years before true civilization appears. That gives plenty of time for enough advancements to be made to build the grand cities and extensive irrigation systems of ancient Mesopotamia.

>>2544723
Same as >>2544753 for me. It's not a fear or dread so much as a spookiness and uneasy mystique to it all, as there were innumerable things going on back then that we will never know about and that influenced the folks of that day, and likely have had a huge impact on us today as well. People are scared of what they don't understand, and these people are so removed from us today that we would probably never understand one another, much less the worlds we each inhabit.

>>2544786
Very interesting post. To elaborate on what I meant, working knowledge as in to be able to make architecture and buildings so early on since a civilization needs buildings to be classified as one. I previously thought that early mankind's math was very primitive outside of counting that I couldn't believe that things like Ziggurats were made without prior achievements in geometry and engineering. Thanks for clearing that up.

On a side note, why were the Babylonians in particular so ahead of their neighbors in mathematics? They apparently had the most advanced notional system until the renaissance.

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How powerful would Mesopotamia have been if it was one unified state instead of a bunch of city-states constantly warring with each other?

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>>2544828

I'm gonna wager that when you have inconsistent river flow (iirc things would change from fertile to drought to flooded rather commonly) it helps to have a greater understanding of how to divvy things up, how to best irrigate, partition land for agriculture, perform all the necessary admin that comes with their system involving grains..etc.

The vast amount of the texts we have from them is related to economics and the handling of resources and land.

pic related, it's a complaint written by some guy bitching about getting dicked over with his copper payments.

>>2536434
I can only imagine egypt as this gaping valley with its tentacles stretching outwards into nearby lands
I don't know where this conception came from but it's absolutely claustrophobic

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>>2543554
I don't know if it was published in english, but I just finished reading this and it was really interesting.

>>2544861
please be bait

>>2536661
If he's holding a lion like we would a cat that's putting his height around 36 feet. Did his kind build the pyramids?

Any Middle Easterners here? How do they teach Mesopotamian/Pre-Islamic history there?

>>2545326
More like 18 feet, which is close to some biblical texts on the nephilim.

Remember when everybody in the region united to bring down Assyrians in one swell swoop and the battle was inconclusive? Yeah.

>>2545243
Why? What's wrong with that question?

>>2545402
>and the battle was inconclusive?
No, it wasn't. The Assyrians lost outright. Their capital was razed to the ground and the Babylonians/Medes go the victory they wanted. The only disappointment on their end was that they couldn't wipe out literally everything about Assyria, but they still most certainly won.

>>2540958
I don't mind pre IE or pre Greek Europe at all.I can at least identify as a Nordic or Mycenaean, for it's closeness to Greeks and Germans of classic times.

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I made a post here regarding the spoopyness of this culture and I think I have a reason why.

It's simply because we have zero attachments to it and we cannot relate. This culture is pretty much alien to us, and so is their people. All of us on this board including myself, were to be dropped in ancient Rome and Greece we'd have a high chance of making it well. We understand the ideas (Plato, Aristotle Socrates.) We understand the rulers (Alexander, Caesar, Alcibiades, Romulus.) and we ultimately understand the culture because we're a product of it, and unlike Mesopotamians, our language groups still exists (Romance Languages, Germanic Languages, etc.) And even the people still exist. We look like our ancestors, I look Roman, you look Celtic, etc. We didn't change much ethnically on the outside.

We're afraid of something we cannot understand, but as intellectuals we have the curiosity to learn more and break our fear.

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>>2540341
I hate that Sargon of Akkad will now forever be associated with that fat fuck Youtuber.

>>2545235

Actually frenchfag here, so I don't mind it if it's in french

>>2543683
and humanities was a mistake, it attracts people like you

>>2545612
Very sad indeed

>>2543704
>if the punishment for brewing bad beer was to be drowned in it.
I wholeheartedly agree with this law. Most beer you can buy from supermarkets now is scarcely better than drinking your own piss. We'd see a dramatic rise in the quality of beer if this law were to be enacted.

>>2545621
t. Fedora

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>>2545557
>alien
finally

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>>2536434


I love that history, I have no feelings any different from any other ancient people. I often feel blissful, imaging living in ancient Eridu or Uruk, falling to sleep every night beneath the stars.

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>>2536491

>>2538405
This idea is very intriguing, a globalized world 3000 thousand years before today... And it collapsed.
Spooky.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUcTsFe1PVs

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>>2538405
They even had some form of proto money, the oxhide copper ingots

>>2545717

Not an argument

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Is anybody else always really fucking butthurt about Islam, not because of the shitty ideology, but because the Arab nationalism that characterized it completely destroyed the continuity in the middle east with these cool advanced civilizations? I mean fuck, even the Persian capital was in Asoristan and the lingua franca of the region was still Aramaic. There was native Christianity going on in Mesopotamia too that had its own indigenous influences and was integrating itself into the previous culture similarly to how western Christianity was just appropriating Greco-Roman traditions at the same time, and then bam, Muhammad and Abu Bakr show up and the Ummayads happen and all continuity is aggressively eradicated. They continued to use the irrigation systems and infrastructure their ancestors had built but they had no intellectual relation to them at all because their new dominant ideology Arabized them and gave them laws and traditions meant for desert slave traders and camel herders, not a highly-urbanized agrarian civilization with poleis thousands of years older than the ones in Greece. The sheer number of huge, ancient cities that declined and were abandoned after the Islamic conquest despite having existed for longer than the new rulers thought the world existed is infuriating. The so-called Islamic Golden Age was just Sassanid momentum and a shadow of what the region used to be.

Islam is the reason everybody is spooked by Ancient Mesopotamia. It destroyed the continuity and erased their history in the popular memory, and the whole thing makes me really goddamn asspained. At least the Baiyue were really far away and had little impact on us. These guys were our neighbors.

>>2546363

it's one of the reasons for me, yes.

funny that there are islamists going around cry about about Mongols raping the middle east and erasing so much of the past when they've gone out of their way to smash, bury and kill anything to do with the roots of their peoples all the same, to replace them with Islam and Islam alone.

What's happening to modern Arab and Mesopotamic peoples is similar to what happened to blacks in the US, they had their roots torn away from them and are doomed to be forever coveting and conflicting with other groups who had not, anxious and unsure about their place in the world.

>be Mesopotamia
>So what has your civilization up to in the last 3500 years?
>JUST FUCK MY SHIT UP
>people settle between rivers
>start irrigating land, dig canals, build cities
>try uniting the cities under one ruler, eventually found a big empire
>a pack of savage nomads from the mountains/desert arrive and wreck your shit because apparently your empire has either exhausted itself in the empirebuilding process or just become too civilized
>nomads settle, become kangs and assimilate into the conquered
>repeat ad infinitum
I could never remember all the wacky shit of endless conquerors, empire wannabees and chimpouts that happened throughout Mesopotamian history.

>>2546363

You realize Christians did at least as much damage when they spread, right? Only the Christians burned OUR culture, while the Muslims just burn MENA culture.

>>2546401
Circa 1700 years has passed saince Islam took over, I doubt anybody seriously cares what happened 6000 years ago beside some WE WUZ types.

>>2545557
According to Spengler the Western man would be just as lost and incapable to undestand anything about ancient Rome and Greece because that was a completely different civilization to us with an entirely different concept of time, space, mathematics, culture and everything.

>>2546410
No. Christianity is very much a Roman religion, if only in doctrine and tradition, rather than in initial concept and scripture, though even that was very heavily influenced by Greco-Roman philosophy. As shitty as Christians have been in the past, you cannot ascribe any sort of destructive tendency to the religion itself. Even the organization of the various large churches is just the Roman system of the time put into a Christian religious context.

What aspect of our culture do you purport Christianity to have destroyed? The cities? The infrastructure? The scientific and philosophic traditions? These all remained firmly in place even after the Empire became officially Christian. Even when the neoplatonists were expelled they ran to another Christian country, the Persian province of Asoristan, and then helped further establish a church there that was heavily influenced by Persian and Mesopotamian thought, even going so far as to reject the trinity in favor of Zoroastrianesque dualism.

Islam on the other hand, while in some respects dogmatically respectful to past achievements, was in practice a political ideology and within thirty years of Muhammad's death was characterized by aggressive Arab nationalism, which sought both to prevent indigenous peoples from integrating into the caliphate as well as trample any expression of non-Arab culture as a sign of treason. The people who did this are widely considered founding members of the Islamic tradition and also presided over the establishment of much of its ideology. You are making a false equivalence.

>>2546433
That is where Trey Smith comes in.

His youtube videos make us understand how the culture was, through dramatic music and biblical narrative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSWqkeCm3hw

>>2546410
Germanic culture wasn't anything notable anyway (sorry stormfags). Christianity was the best thing that could have happened to the germanics. While Christianity romanized and civilized the germanics, Islam arabized MENA.

>>2546363
you're right but with caveat. I think you overreach in terms of the islamic golden age. Islam at that time, did in facilitate a wide network of intellectuals that weren't interacting prior. I would argue that in the long term though, the effects of Arabization began to set in and cause things to regress.

>>2546457
I love this comment:

"Even if you studied evolution for 50 years and come to the conclusion that it is absolutely ridiculous and that it has been proven false, Yet! Even after 50 years of knowing all that evolution can provide , If you conclude evolution is stupid and not scientific in the least, and bears more towards faith, and prove that one kind of creature CAN NOT change into another. The ONLY argument an atheist evolutionist will say to you is, "you don't know how evolution works" or "you don't know what you are talking about"...It is crazy how delusional and deceived the world has become..If you don't think your Government is lying to you try remembering that the WHOLE WORLD believes human beings come from apes, which came from monkeys which came from rodents which came from lizards which came from dinosaurs which came from older dinosaurs which came from amphibians which came from fish which came from smaller fish which came from plankton which came from amoeba's which came from single celled organisms which came FROM NOTHING!!!!Give me a break! GOD MADE the Chicken first folks and it has never changed into anything other than that."

Amen to that

Ancient history is much more exciting than we have been told. It can only be properly understood in the Biblical context.

>>2546456
early Islam was relatively bro-tier though. They literally conquered and let things go on while collecting jizya. I think you're right in the long run though. Probably post-13th century

>>2546459
I guess I'll agree with you on that. The effect of a large caliphate was similar to that of the Roman Empire in facilitating contact between diverse and disparate schools of thought. There were far better ways to go about doing that though, and I'd argue the Sassanid Empire did that too, though perhaps not to the same extent considering the integration of Egypt and Africa, as well as more continuous administration of the Levant, in the caliphates.

>>2546466
That is false.

Muslims killed and butchered millions of people. Islam is in conflict with every culture it comes in contact with.

It is an aggressive, violent death cult.

>>2546466
Very, very, very early Islam. Before they had any real control and while most administrators were still natives. The moment they managed to conquer Persia all that went out the window, and during the nationalist Ummayad Caliphate Muhammad was very much in living memory. These were the equivalents of the Christian apostles.

Though >>2546474 is going a bit far, Muhammad himself wasn't a saint either. He claimed to be the best man around and a follower of Jesus, but committed several acts of mass murder and enslavement of civilians, sometimes for perceived treason and sometimes just for the cash.

>>2546456

What a load of shit, you Christcuck apologists are worse than the Muslims, At least they're proud to be culture wreckers, you rats just lie about your crimes with your usual total dishonesty.

>>2546496
no, the abbasid caliphate (8th-13th century) was relatively bro-tier and facilitated a great scholarly network. I agree with >>2546363

But I would argue that the effects of arabization/islamization took a few centuries to really sit in and cause these places to regress. as far as those first few centuries, we should give credit where credit is due and admit that they weren't really that bad and perhaps even good

>>2546530
0/10 weak bait

>>2546530
pre-Christian germanic culture wasn't one capable of facilitating civilization. Christianity was the best thing that could have happened to them.

>>2546467
I wonder how exactly things went bad? Some say it was a sunni-revival. Some say it was the mongol invasions.

>>2546541
>germanic

Who said anything about Germanic """culture"""? I'm talking about the lost libraries, temples and academies of the pagan world, destroyed by fanatic Christcucks.

>>2546564
>I'm talking about the lost libraries, temples and academies of the pagan world, destroyed by fanatic Christcucks.

like which?

Aztec ones? cry me a river.

>>2546530
Christianity was not destructive in the same way that Islam was to local culture. Christianity displaced and in many cases destroyed local religions (especially when iconoclasm was popular), but it lacked the nationalistic sentiment that Islam took on that prevented it from fully destroying cultures. Part of the reason Rome adopted it in the first place was to help keep the empire together, and it ended up transcending cultures.

Islam, on the other hand, ended up having Arab culture become integral to the religion. Because Islam (as with Christianity) was so evangelistic, when Islam was forced into an area, it wouldn't just replace local religions, but cultures as well.

>>2546564
>the lost libraries, temples and academies of the pagan world
And which ones would those be? The only real pagan civilizations that Christianity took hold in before the early modern era was Rome, and Christianity did more to preserve Roman culture and knowledge than it did to destroy it. Hell, monasteries ended up being the major centers of learning once Rome fell apart.

Or are we buying into the "Christian Dark Ages" meme?

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>>2546531
I'm both the guys you replied to. You're right about the Abbasids but by the time they showed up the Umayyads had had free reign for 90 years to massacre kaffirs and infidels and tear down ancient cities, as well as create a deep enmity with the Romans and subsequently the west that would never be mended. They could have just been a successful new Persian dynasty if they hadn't been saddled with their shitty ideology and Bedouin mentality. If the settled Arabs from Petra or the Lakhmid kingdom there might have been a revival of Semitic culture and the Fertile Crescent could have become a new superpower to rival Rome.

>>2546530
I'm not an apologist for anybody. Please, give examples of significant scientific, cultural, architectural, or other sorts of achievements that were destroyed by early Christianity. Perhaps you might convince me if you can provide some evidence for your counter-claim.

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>>2546564
Whatever was lost was more than made up for. Christianity was a net positive on Europe. Check wiki for cursory overview:

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role_of_Christianity_in_civilization

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_science

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>>2546564
Still a net positive.

>>2546564
Those temples, libraries, and academies all survived throughout Christian Rome, and many were heavy influences on Christianity itself, and vice versa. Alexandria was one of the most important cities for the religion. The Hellenistic traditions also continued to be a heavy influence on Christian Roman culture, and references to pagan mythology and pagan writers are no less common in the Christian era than they were before.

>>2546578
>Because Islam (as with Christianity) was so evangelistic, when Islam was forced into an area, it wouldn't just replace local religions, but cultures as well.
I wouldn't say that; at least when it comes to Persia and Egypt. Early Muslims just conquered and let them be. If anything, they were happy to keep collecting jizya revenue from non-Muslim populations. Islamization was a slow multi-century process; forced conversions were rare.

>>2540330
>reddit

>>2546564
If you want to talk about foreign influences destroying your culture, the Mongols did more damage than any Christian of any period could even dream.

>>2546590
The laws of Islam make conversion very a demographically overpowering force though. If I convert I can inherit all the property from my father despite my ten kaffir brothers, and I can marry kaffir women while Muslim women cannot marry kaffir men. If I am found to deviate from orthodoxy too much I might be labeled an apostate, for which I am to be killed, and preference is always given in education and administration to me over my kaffir brothers. My new holy book is also infallible and must be read in Arabic, while the caliphate cracks down on my native tongue, so I am unlikely to teach it to my children.

Not that Christian countries didn't do this sort of thing too, but early Christianity was not hegemonic like Islam was, and so a culture of non-voluntary assimilation and aggressive expansion was not so deeply ingrained in the religion itself, religious justification for doing such things notwithstanding.

As for Egypt, it was a highly-urbanized, densely-populated society with a complex and powerful religious administration and close economic contacts with the west facilitating the slow conversion and survival of the Egyptian spoken language into the 16th century. Persia on the other hand lacked such things and the language was in fact aggressively persecuted for many years, as well as the religion, due to not being Abrahamic in nature. It wasn't really until the Safavids that Islamic fundamentalism died down in Persia among the Arabized Persian elite. The survival of some Persian literature and the fact that the Turks and Mongols were often religiously apathetic was the Persian culture's saving grace, I believe.

>>2546363
What do you think the Middle East would be like today if not for Islam?

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>>2541976
Uruk tho'

>>2542056
OG prophet

>>2546627
I can't say. To make any sort of claim would be fallacious as there are far too many variables. I do believe there would be greater cultural continuity and understanding of ancient Mesopotamia though, and a Christian majority in the Fertile Crescent is likely, barring yet another Sassanid fundamentalist period or the rise of some other powerful religion like Manichaeism or something in the region. Anything beyond that would be a wild guess.

>>2546625
the problem I think is that Islam is so closely tied to arab culture; you cant separate the two. The Quran must be read in Arabic; Islam itself is really a trojan horse for arabization. And arab culture is one of nomadic tribal peoples from Arabia; not for civilization.

>>2545612
>forever
20 years from now nobody will remember the Anglo cuck.

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>>2546405
Mesopotamia was a barrel of fun desu. From reading about it, you couldn't go five minutes without some major HAPPENING going on.

>>2546627
It's impossible to say. You're talking about well over a millenium of history across one of the most fought-over regions in the world.

>>2546648
>Islam itself is really a trojan horse for arabization
Yes, that's the main problem I have with Islam. If not for that aspect most of the peoples conquered could have survived intact, or if not that some relation could have been maintained with the local history.

>And arab culture is one of nomadic tribal peoples from Arabia; not for civilization.
But it's not! You're thinking of Bedouin culture. The Nabataeans of Petra spoke were Arabs, as did the Lakhmids and Ghassanids. And Arabia was one of the less Hellenized and more stable provinces of Rome, the Palmyrene period being an uncharacteristic exception. The mostly settled Levantines are a continuation of this culture in fact, and the Christian Arabs, such as those in Jordan (true, natively Arab-speaking Christians, unlike the Copts and Assyrians which are often labelled as such) have had a constant presence in the cities and villages of the region for two thousand years now.

>>2546696
>But it's not! You're thinking of Bedouin culture.
yes whichever one Muhammad and the early Muslims came from

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>>2546696
>And Arabia was one of the less Hellenized and more stable provinces of Rome

Arabia Petraea wasn't part of the Arabian peninsula, retard. The people that lived there back then were Syrians who spoke Aramaic, not nomad goatfuckers.

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>>2546773

>>2546773
The Nabataeans were very much Arabs. They spoke a heavily Arabized Aramaic language and lived both in nomadic and sedentary groups prior to the Roman conquest, and after that mostly settled down. Their cultural and economic habits were firmly Arabic as well, and by the 3rd century they were speaking Arabic themselves.

Syrians, or in this context, Aramaeans and Phoenicians, on the other hand have been sedentary since long before the founding of Rome.

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>>2546363

How about all those artifacts and monuments demolished by Islamic extremist. And anyone that wants to visit Mesopotamia and see it with their own eyes is gonna have a hard time doing so in a perpetual minefield, which is what the region seems to eternally be.

>>2544861
Some could argue that constant waring was the main driver of innovation there. Unified Egypt stagnated multiple times throughout its history and each time it took a Levantine invasion to bring it back from the brink, that's until the Bronze Age collapse happened and there was no one left to save it.

>>2537768
>There is a school of thought within Panbabylonisim which says the big 3 religions took standpoints which essentially were the opposites of their Mesopotamian earlier counter-parts, as a fuck you to their culture.

And now no scholar believes in it.

>>2538198

This is somewhat interesting textually, Ur of the Chaldees is in multiple documentary hypothesis text such as J and P. Genesis 15:7 represents J (a significantly earlier document, pre-exile) while Genesis 11:31 represents P (pre-exilic to exilic). Though redactions could have been made.

>>2546466
>early Islam was relatively bro-tier though.
That's because Islam wasn't really a thing until 100 years after its founding. Before that it was so vague that people assumed they were Christians of some denomination. Islam didn't really become 'Islam' until they actually wrote everything down and codified it, but at that point we're working with an oral tradition that's probably totally inaccurate given that something like three generations passed before they did write it all down.

>>2538604
Probably not, but they're the first Semites who actually had a civilization.

>>2540326
>All three have dialects of the same language, and practised the same religion before the Hebrews converted to Yahwehism

this requires more evidence on your part, firstly Phoenicians have the dialects in their spoken language, the only similarities is Paleo-Hebrew script which comes from a Phoenician region (likely Bylos), Canaanites is unknown to me though likely wrote their scripts in Ugaritic form, also since the Phoenicians had different deities to the Canaanites and the Hebrews (AKA Israelites). YHWHism is clearly designated to the Israelites from a extremely early time period around the late bronze age to early iron age. The Israelites were indeed migrators (though uncertain how they did the migrating), with them they brought their religious beliefs with them. YHWH comes from the south. Canannites worshipped an Ugaritic pantheon consisting of El, Baal and Asherah (though Asherah was dying out quickly or dead in the region before YHWH became a national deity of Israel).

>>2540286

This assumption though has been doubted by scholars in recent times, there are similarities which do point to influence though dependence is lacking, consider it more like flavouring.

>>2540252
>Earlier empires didn't use terror
wew

>>2536975
>birth of paganism
kek. "paganism" is the default first stage of humanity. From germanics to west african bantus.

>>2548764
Paganism is literally just any religion outside of the three Abrahamic ones.

>>2548819
true. I assumed he was referring to polytheism and/or animism.

>>2540958

This. It feels so alien. Factually I know better but some part of me will always believe civilization started with the Greeks.

>>2548819
Well originally it was just another word for "polytheists" with a connotation of peasantry, since that's where folk religion remained and has remained strongest, and even when it started to mean "everybody who isn't a Christian/Abrahamic" there were still people using it to refer specifically to relatively unorganized ethnic religion. In the original definition Zoroastrians and Manicheans for example are not pagans. In modern discourse that original definition is generally the most accepted as well.

Also, please ignore the bible thumping shitposters. They thrive on your attention.

>>2549235
Well technically, Zoroastrianism would still be classified as pagan since it is not one of the 5 major religions.

>>2549392
Since when has not being one of some arbitrarily-chosen group of five religions been a definition of paganism? Hinduism and Buddhism were considered pagan religions by much of Academia well into the last century. Zoroastrianism is monotheistic and has both an organized hierarchy, if now mostly defunct, as well as universal and codified scripture. The only definition of paganism it falls under is "anything not Abrahamic."

>>2549411
Hinduism and Buddhism meet those requirements as well.it's just that those 5 are the biggest so anything else would be seen as derivative.

>>2549422
>Hinduism and Buddhism meet those requirements as well
Hinduism and Buddhism have are not monotheistic and have neither an organized central hierarchy nor a universal codified scripture. Hell, talking about "Hinduism" is itself somewhat fallacious as under in are included a vast number of disparate religious traditions that sometimes have almost nothing in common with one another, the only commonality being some concept of Dharma, and even that is lacking in some places.
>it's just that those 5 are the biggest
Which five? Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism?
>so anything else would be seen as derivative
What the fuck are you smoking?

>>2549455
>Hinduism and Buddhism have are not monotheistic
Which are not guidelines for being pagan.

>have neither an organized central hierarchy nor a universal codified scripture
Varna, the Vedas and Sanskrit texts.

>Which five? Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism?
I'm talking about Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism, which are regarded as the 'big five' because they are the most influential in impact on the world.

>What the fuck are you smoking?
Reread. SEEN. Zoroastrianism is a mostly dead religion, so of course to an outsider, it would seem that Zoroastrians borrowed from Abrahamic traditions when it was the other way around.

>>2549481
I responded specifically to "meet those requirements as well" which is rather ambiguous but appears to be equating my defense of Zoroastrianism as non-pagan with Hinduism and Buddhism. Sorry if I misunderstood.

The Varna is a social hierarchy which was justified using religion, but is not necessarily religious in origin. I was referring to a organized central religious hierarchy though, not social stratification. And Vedic principles are not nearly universal, nor do most Hindus have any direct knowledge of most of them, often eschewing them in favor of specific hymns and books associated with individual dieties, or for new philosophies and reinterpretations of old dogma preached by popular gurus. As I said, calling "Hinduism" a single religion is somewhat incorrect.

Membership in the "big five" is again, a rather arbitrary deciding factor as to whether something is considered pagan. Hindus are still regularly considered pagans in the west, specifically because of the polytheistic tendencies. The only people who really think much about Zoroastrianism at all tend to be people who already know what it is, and such people are not likely to have such a simplistic definition of "paganism."

This argument is all useless semantics though. The word has a generally accepted modern usage among most knowledgeable people, even if an actual definition is illusory. To define it at all might itself be fallacious, as under it can generally be placed everything that is not easily categorized as a discrete religion.

>>2540335
The Achaemenids were basically a Mesopotamian empire ruled by foreigners. One of their capitals was at Susa. It was like the Yuan or the Qing in China, they were semi-nomad barbarians who integrated into the civilization which they conquered, like the Kassites or Chaldeans before them. Their art and architecture was created by Babylonians, Assyrians, and to a lesser extent Greeks and Egyptians.

>>2549569
I see, thanks for clearing that up. Didn't know Hinduism was such a clusterfuck.

I was mostly using the dictionary definition of paganism which just defines one who is not of the 5 but as you said, it's just semantics. To that end though, I still wouldn't consider Zoroastrians, Hindus and Buddhists as pagan.

>>2549593
Hinduism is actually very interesting in that it provides a more or less intact look at a complete region's worth of indigenous religious and spiritual traditions without the sort of centralizing force you see in Japan and China, where Imperial governments had a lot of say in religious affairs. One god for example might be worshiped in an entirely different way and with a completely disparate connotations in two neighboring villages, despite still being in essence the same general character. Considering the clusterfuck of cults and religious philosophers that was Greco-Roman paganism, even during the Imperial period, it might be presumable that this sort of intense diversity and decentralized folk religion was rather common in much of the world, even when we have generally-attested overarching themes and deity archetypes. In a Roman context Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism would all just be considered different sects or cults, just as they are by many folks in India today. Hinduism might not be a real religion, but it's a great thing it's still around for us to study.

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>>2536326
Gonna need new thread soon. Just saying before it sinks and we forget.

On topic, I'll be an easymodefag and Ur-Nammu's or maybe Shulgi's reign. It literally had all the right components of the akkadian empire and it was ruled by ethnic sumerians, so no chance of rebellion from within. Sure they didn't have the ebin law code of hammurabi but at least they had the right idea with right foundations to get there quickly if it wasn't for those fuggen elamites. Should have built the Wall.

Elamites...why did they have literally to ruin everything every fucking 300 years?

>>2549676
>Elamites
Better question is why did they think it was a good idea to fuck with the Assyrians at the time.

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All this talk about polytheist religions in a thread about Mesopotamia and no talk about ACTUAL MESOPOTAMIAN GODS.

>Marduk killing Tiamat
OP as fuck pls nerf.