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01: The Iraq Museum

Artifacts looted from the Iraq Museum in Baghdad remind us of the extraordinary culture that once flourished in Mesopotamia and that contributed to human civilization the earliest cities, complex economies, the first writing system, and the first empires.

31 min

02: Geography and Environment

This orientation to Mesopotamia's diverse geography and environment includes an examination of how some factors unique to the region may have encouraged agriculture and urbanism, and how geography shapes cultural and political organization.

29 min

03: Discovering Mesopotamia

In this first of two lectures on archaeology, we ask why the discipline is important to our understanding of Mesopotamia, and how early excavations helped shape Western ideas about the region in the 19th and 20th centuries.

31 min

04: Archaeological Methods

This lecture analyzes some of the methods that archaeologists use, the artifacts they find, and the methods used to interpret them, providing us with a framework for understanding not only why we know what we know, but also those facts that we cannot know.

30 min

05: Farming and Early Settlements

Recognizing that many questions about the prehistoric era remain unanswered, we speculate about the events that led people to settle in the first villages, finishing with a look at some early evidence of social complexity.

30 min

06: The Uruk Phenomenon

Early cities developed in their fullest form about 5,000 years ago. The city of Uruk - the earliest and largest city in southern Mesopotamia - has come to represent the rise of the city.

30 min

07: Writing

We trace early forms of record keeping, considering whether they contributed to the development of writing, and examine the technology of writing, the development of cuneiform script, and the modern-day translation of cuneiform.

31 min

08: Temples

This lecture looks at how and why temples were built, how they filled their religious purposes, their economic function within an urban setting, and how temples and rulers filled each others' needs and justified their respective roles in the city.

30 min

09: Mesopotamian Deities

We meet some of the gods who were honored in temples, discussing their powers, their relationships with each other and with their human worshipers, and the rituals necessary to encourage their favor.

29 min

10: Gilgamesh—Hero and King

We shift our focus from the gods to individuals, specifically heroes, as represented in the "Epic of Gilgamesh," the world's first epic description of a hero and his adventures.

31 min

11: The Early Dynastic Period

The idea of the city spreads quickly, and a string of them soon reaches up to central Mesopotamia. This lecture examines contemporary historical texts to see the emergence of political structures and rulers in these cities and examines their relationships with regions outside Mesopotamia.

31 min

12: Warfare and Diplomacy

Having learned that documents recording contemporary events are preserved for the Early Dynastic period, we turn to the subject of warfare to see how disputes were represented in written sources and images.

28 min

13: The Royal Cemetery at Ur

Burials were a final opportunity to display the strength and control of a king, and we examine one of the most spectacular and widely publicized examples, revealing much about the funerary customs for members of the political, religious, or social elite.

29 min

14: The Akkadians

We move from the kings of cities to the first ruler who could legitimately claim his mastery over northern and southern Mesopotamia: Sargon of Akkad, whose rise marks the beginning of a new dynasty.

28 min

15: Ideology of Kingship—Naram-Sin and Gudea

The reign of Naram-Sin, Sargon's grandson, shows, for the first time, a ruler worshiped as divine during his lifetime. With the reign of Gudea, the first ruler of a new dynasty, we see the king's representation return to a more traditional style.

29 min

16: The Ur III Dynasty

The end of Akkadian control sees the newly independent city-state of Ur come to dominate Babylonia. Ur's rulers organize a much more centralized government that effectively controls the region for more than 100 years.

30 min

17: Life in a Mesopotamian City

We return to the theme of urbanism to see what developments have occurred since we last explored the topic in the Uruk era, extrapolating from several centuries and sites to create a picture of urban life.

30 min

18: Food and Drink

This lecture examines food and drink from prehistory to the time of Alexander the Great, drawing on evidence ranging across artistic representations, archaeological discoveries, scattered written references to feasts sponsored by temples or rulers, and even poetry.

30 min

19: Assyrian Trade Networks

A mammoth archaeological find of 20,000 tablets found at an Assyrian merchant outpost allows us to study trade not as part of a statewide bureaucracy, but as a private enterprise, with evidence of an international trade network in textiles, tin, silver, and gold.

30 min

20: Hammurabi of Babylon

A long reign gives a new ruler time to found a new and impressive kingdom, forging a strong personal rule largely concerned with justice for his people and bringing peace to the era.

31 min

21: Zimri-Lim of Mari

We will discuss the turbulent closing decades of the rich state of Mari (destroyed by Hammurabi's final major campaign) which was controlled first by the Assyrians and then by the last of its rulers, Zimri-Lim.

30 min

22: Laws

We survey the types of Mesopotamian laws that have survived, from the very end of the 3rd millennium B.C. to Hammurabi's laws of the 18th century, to the 11th-century Middle Assyrian precepts that regulated the appeal and behavior of the royal court.

31 min

23: Medicine, Science, and Math

This lecture examines scientific thought and how science helped order and explain the natural world for Mesopotamian cultures. We will discuss medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and divination - the most challenging and important science in the Mesopotamian world.

30 min

24: Poetry and Literature

We look at poetry and literature that explores a range of themes (including creation, the deeds and personalities of the gods, suffering, and divine justice) and also examine proverbial wisdom, jokes, love poems, and the use of magic spells.

30 min

25: Internationalism

We return to our survey of the political history of the region by looking at the Near East as a whole, with much of our insight coming from a collection of letters between kings discovered at an Egyptian site known as Tell el-Amarna.

31 min

26: Assyrian Expansion

We focus on two 9th-century B.C. rulers, Ashurnasirpal II and Shalmaneser III, whose leadership and innovations were essential to the expansion of the Assyrian Empire.

29 min

27: Sargon II

This lecture traces the remarkable spread of the Assyrian empire in the second half of the 8th century B.C., beginning with the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III and continuing with that of Sargon II, six years later.

30 min

28: Ideology of Empire

Using both literary and visual sources, we look at several features of Assyria's rulers and military that characterized the empire and contributed to its dominance.

30 min

29: Control and Revolt

In the 8th and 7th centuries B.C., Assyria is in firm control of an enormous empire, ranging from Mesopotamia to Egypt. But certain trouble spots, especially in Babylonia, reveal weaknesses that will contribute to its unexpected collapse in the late 7th century.

31 min

30: Medes and the Neo-Babylonian State

When Assyria falls, it is at the hands of the Babylonians and their king, Nabopolassar, who were aided by the Medes, a tribal people. We look at both of these peoples, including Nabopolassar's son, Nebuchadnezzar, whose building successes exceed even his political and military accomplishments.

30 min

31: The Rise of the Achaemenids

This lecture focuses on the Achaemenids, or Persians, an Iranian culture that blended elements of earlier cultures to rule the empire, using a variety of methods, including a new language, coinage, and road network, to control the area.

31 min

32: Persians in Egypt and Greece

We look at Persia's excursions against both Egypt and Greece, (the latter of which likely an attempt by the Persian king, Darius, to gain access to the riches of the West) resulting in a stunning defeat far from home.

30 min

33: Xerxes’s Invasion of Greece

Ten years later, Greece again repels a Persian invasion. This lecture focuses on descriptions of the Persian king, Xerxes, by the Greek historian Herodotus, who compares Greeks with Persians as representative of a democratic versus tyrannical way of life.

31 min

34: Persian Art and Culture

This lecture considers an array of artifacts, from small seal stones to massive palace architecture, to illustrate the blend of many artistic and cultural themes to create a new, identifiably Persian, style of art.

31 min

35: Alexander the Great

Alexander defeats the Persians in 331 B.C. and quickly captures Babylonia. Welcomed as a legitimate successor, he often behaves as a traditional Mesopotamian ruler might, rebuilding temples and seeking to expand the empire, ultimately dying without naming a successor.

30 min

36: After Alexander

This final lecture glances ahead at the history of the region after Alexander's campaigns in light of the course's major themes.

30 min

Overview Course No. 3180

All cultures lie in the shadow of ancient Mesopotamia - the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers that is now mostly encompassed by the borders of modern Iraq. In this fascinating series of 36 lectures, award-winning professor Alexis Q. Castor of Franklin & Marshall College leads you on a vivid journey through Mesopotamian history - from Neolithic times to the age of Alexander the Great - and into the lives of mighty emperors, struggling farmers, ambitious merchants, and palace servants to reveal why this ancient culture occupies such a foundational position in our history.

The lectures look back to the time when the first cities arose in Mesopotamia and kings created complex bureaucracies to rule their expanding territories, thus fostering the invention of writing and other technologies. You peer into the lives and fortunes of Mesopotamia's people and learn about the birth of the urban lifestyle. Professor Castor creates a detailed image not only of larger Mesopotamian society but of life on the level of the individual Mesopotamian as well. Among the many fascinating insights into daily Mesopotamian life you examine are how they ate, worked, learned, worshiped, married, and reared children; used scientific ideas to help them order and understand the natural world; engaged with their powerful neighbors in Egypt, Syria, and Anatolia (modern-day Turkey); waged war and experienced peace; and endured the collapse of their cities.

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About

Alexis Q. Castor

The shattered objects and destruction seen in the Iraq Museum remind us of the widespread effects of war on cultures throughout human history.

ALMA MATER

Bryn Mawr College

INSTITUTION

Franklin & Marshall College

Dr. Alexis Q. Castor is Assistant Professor of Classics at Franklin & Marshall College, where she teaches ancient history, archaeology, and Greek. She earned her her B.A. in History from George Mason University and M.A. and Ph.D. in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr College. She also completed graduate courses in Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern history at The George Washington University. Professor Castor taught at GWU and was a research associate at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art. In 2004, she team-taught the course Between the Rivers with Hilary Gopnik, Ph.D. At Franklin & Marshall, Professor Castor has been named Most Influential Professor twice by the senior class. Her research interests are in social history in the Greek world, especially the use of luxury goods to display status. In addition, she is interested in connections between Greece, the Black Sea, and Asia Minor.

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