Week Two Between Two Rivers

In week one of the course we tested the idea that Mesopotamian civilisation was simply handed down by its geography. This week’s PDF pushes on the same question from a different angle:

Did the region’s unpredictable flooding force a particular kind of state into being?

The short answer, once you actually look at the archaeology, is no, not in any straightforward way.

BUT there is a companion story worth adding here, one that doesn’t come from excavation trenches or settlement surveys, but from the Mesopotamians’ own telling of their environment back to themselves.