World History I

Chapter 2: Agrarian-Urban Centers of the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean
11,500-600 BCE

13: Wed, Oct 15, 2025

This assignment is under revision for 2023-2024.

Please post in the forum for the day a short essay in response to this question:

The cultures that develop in the Mesopotamian valley and in Egypt are similar in many ways, but yet they still developed different cosmologies and dependencies on their gods. Describe some of these differences, and explain how differing situations could have given rise to them.

Take a look at the following Creation Stories:

• The Enuma Elish (focus on table V)
• The Pyramid Texts (focus on Utterances 173-174, the Open Mouth Ceremony)
• Genesis 1 (NRSV) (chose your own translation by selecting from the drop-down at the top of the page.)

For each of these, consider how the following factors might influence one's perception of the universe, and one's own place in it:

• Vulnerability to invasion from neighboring city-states or tribal cultures.
• Vulnerability to weather change and/or flooding.
• Availability of resources.
• Continuity of political and cultural institutions.

Contents of this page © Copyright 2020-2024 by Christe A. McMenomy, Bruce A. McMenomy, Sarah Miller Esposito, and Richard M. Esposito.
Permission to download or print this page is hereby given to members of Scholars Online for purposes of personal study only. All other use constitutes a violation of copyright.