The civilization of the two river basins originated in today's southern Iraq, and China and Egypt are called the three earliest civilizations in the ancient world. Since the Neolithic Age, the Euphrates River and the Tigris River have nurtured many agricultural villages in this area. Around 3000 BC, Sumerians who migrated from outside to the arid and rainless areas in southern Iraq began to use river water to irrigate farmland, and invented the world's earliest characters-cuneiform characters in production, thus creating a number of the earliest city-states and splendid Sumerian civilization. Under the influence of Sumerians, the local Akkadians who spoke Sem in the two river basins joined the stage of civilization history, and successively established two empires, Akkadians and the Third Ur Dynasty, standing side by side with Sumerians. Subsequently, Sumerians were integrated into Giuseppe. The Hammurabi dynasty in Sem language turned the city of Babylon, located at the narrowest place between the two rivers, into the center of the southern part of the two river basins and developed into the Babylonian empire; Qian Xi and Adade developed Ashur City on the Tigris River into the center of the northern part of the two river basins and founded the Assyrian Empire. Therefore, the civilization of the two river basins is famous for its Babylonian-Assyrian cuneiform civilization (hence the name Assyrian studies, a modern humanities discipline).

Three. Two rivers basin culture

1, Sumerian and Akkadian languages and scripts.

The ancient Chinese characters in the two river basins are one of the earliest known characters in West Asia and the world today. The earliest known Sumerian pictures, characters, stone tablets and clay tablets were found in uruk in the south and Temdietnasek in the middle, belonging to the cultural period at the end of 4000 BC. It was created by Sumerians, the earliest creators of ancient civilizations in the two river basins. Sumer region is located in the alluvial plain in the lower reaches of the two river basins, and is rich in reeds and clay. Therefore, clay tablets and wooden or reed pens have become unique local writing tools. Sumerians carved picture symbols on clay tablets with sharpened wooden poles to create the earliest characters, and then dried or dried the clay tablets with characters, which is the earliest "clay tablet literature" in human history. Like ancient Chinese characters in China and Egypt, Sumerian characters developed from picture symbols. From the early pictures, we can see the prototype of the wedge symbol. After more than 300 years' development, cuneiform characters developed from picture characters appeared in Shulupak around 2600 BC: the original circular strokes of picture characters changed into horizontal, vertical, oblique and rotational strokes, and the font basically became square, similar to the strokes of Chinese characters. Because the wooden pen must be pressed into the surface of the clay tablet before writing strokes, each stroke of a Chinese character has a triangular head at the beginning, making each stroke like a small wooden wedge, so it is called "cuneiform writing". Because each stroke has a wedge head, we can see the beginning and end of the stroke. The symbol arrangement of the earliest pictures and characters is changeable and disorderly, and the characters are separated by squares. Mature writing is very regular, the strokes of symbols are from top to bottom, and continuous writing is a top-down word behavior sequence, and each line is written from left to right. After the invention of writing in the two river basins, the whole ancient West Asia, whether Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians and Canaanites who spoke semantics, Hittites and Persians who spoke Indo-European, and Julians and Uratos whose language families were uncertain, successively borrowed this writing symbol to record their national languages. In the two river basins, Sem began to replace Sumerian as the common language from Ising dynasty (20th century BC), and Akkadian cuneiform finally became the common language in the two river basins in Babylonian dynasty (founded in18th century BC). Sumerian and written languages have gradually become ancient languages that only scholars can master, and are used as advanced knowledge in religion, ceremony and literature. After the Parthian period (65438 BC+026-227 AD), all kinds of cuneiform characters were lost.

Sumerian characters, like Chinese characters, are basically ideographic characters, but they also use phonetic symbols. Sumerian language is basically not composed of ideographs like Chinese characters, but of ideographs and phonetic symbols. Verbs, nouns and adjectives are basically expressed by ideograms. Different from Chinese characters, because it does not increase the number of symbols indefinitely (there are about 1800 Sumerian characters known now), it uses one symbol to represent several words with similar meanings but different pronunciations at the same time, for example, "mouth, nose and words" all use one symbol. In order to distinguish different words represented by the same symbol, phonetic symbols representing different pronunciations are attached to semantic symbols, or "radicals" representing meanings are attached to suffixes and prefixes, such as "wood, spirit, place names and fabrics". The grammatical features of Sumerian language are called sticky words. Its root is unchanged, and its grammatical function is expressed by adding the pre-,middle-and post-stops to the root. Like Chinese, nouns and verbs are homographs. Its vocabulary is basically monosyllabic, and a thing or a concept is written with a symbol (word).

The morphological evolution of cuneiform symbols is similar to that of our Chinese characters, and it also develops from round strokes of picture symbols to abstract Fang Bi, and from multi-strokes of picture symbols to abstract few strokes. There are many round strokes in ancient Sumerian paintings, which are different in size, patchwork and numerous in strokes, equivalent to Oracle Bone Inscriptions and bronze inscriptions in China. When the Akkadian kingdom was reunified, Akkadian characters still kept some round pens, but they were standardized and elegant in shape, just like paintings and characters, and they were the most exquisite cuneiform characters from the perspective of calligraphy aesthetics. It is equivalent to the standardized seal script of the Qin Empire in China. By the Babylonian period, due to calligraphers' requirements for writing efficiency, the round strokes had all disappeared, and the glyph strokes were greatly simplified, similar to the official script revolution in China from Qin to Han. In order to pursue artistic effect, the king's stone carvings still use the elegant archaic characters of ancient Akkad and the third dynasty of Ur. For example, the famous code of hammurabi was written in traditional ancient Chinese characters. In the folk, the new simplified characters are widely used, which greatly improves the writing efficiency. The simplification process of cuneiform continued in the later Babylonian and Assyrian periods. Especially in Assyria in the north, the final simplified characters not only have fewer strokes, but also change oblique strokes into horizontal strokes or vertical strokes, which is more and more different from ancient fonts. The final Persian cuneiform, influenced by pinyin, not only simplified the strokes to the minimum, but also gave up a large number of ideograms and homophones, becoming a very concise new character with 4 1 syllable and very few ideograms.

Akkadian script is the most widely used and longest cuneiform script in ancient two river basins. It originated in the second half of the third millennium and was completely abolished around the first century. Akkadian belongs to the East Semitic branch of Semitic language family and belongs to the same language family as Arabic. In the third Millennium BC, Akkadians who spoke Sem and Sumerians who had a unique language lived together in the southern two river basins, which were widely distributed in the surrounding areas, but their culture was backward and they belonged to Sumerians. At present, the earliest Akkadian inscription belongs to the early Sumerian dynasty (about 2700-2400 BC). Around 2300 BC, sargon, the king of Akkadian semantics, conquered the Sumerian city-states in the two river basins and began to write semantics with Sumerian cuneiform symbols. This early semantics is called Akkad. Since then, Akkadian and Sumerian are the common languages and characters in the two river basins. In the first Babylonian dynasty, Akkadian completely replaced Sumerian as the common language of the two river basins, because a large number of Amauri tribes who spoke Sem flooded into the two river basins. In the second half of the second millennium, Akkadian script became the common diplomatic language for communication between countries in the Near East. The correspondence between the Pharaoh of Egypt and the king of Asia was written in Akkadian. Akkadian script is an Sem language written by borrowing Sumerian symbols, that is, using Sumerian cuneiform symbols to express Akkadian pronunciation. Because of the different language features, the cuneiform syllables representing Sumerian pronunciation can't perfectly express various consonants in Sem, which leads to Akkadian characters can't accurately express Sem language. Some symbols represent several similar consonants at the same time, and non-native speakers need to analyze and judge to read the correct words. Akkadian and script are divided into two dialects: Babylonian dialect in the south and Assyrian dialect in the north. As many as 600-700 commonly used Akkadian phonetic knots and ideograms bring difficulties to Chinese learners. Since complex cuneiform characters can't accurately and efficiently express Sem language, since the Assyrian Empire (9th-7th century BC), new alphabet characters of Sem language began to appear in West Asia. At the same time, a large number of Sami-speaking Aramaic residents in the two river basins began to use alphabets. Akkadian began to be replaced by simple Aramaic letters. Aramaic is one of the earliest letters in the world. By the first century, cuneiform was completely extinct.

Secondly, the literary works of Sumerians and Akkadians in the two river basins.

According to their styles, ancient literary works in the two river basins can be divided into four categories: (1) inscriptions of kings; (2) Myths and epics; (3) Wisdom literature: proverbs and fables; (4) Religious hymns and exorcism spells.

(a) the court inscription

The royal court inscription is an official style, which describes the activities of the king in a fixed format. The first inscription is the cornerstone inscription that records the temple architecture carried out by the king. This kind of inscription is usually buried in the foundation of the building, and often begins with praising God and ends with a spell of "those who build this building will perish if they destroy it". However, the Sumerian inscription on the establishment of the temple of laroche, the ruler of Gudia, has a unique style, which not only vividly describes the grand festival of the temple inauguration ceremony in detail, but also contains many theological speculations. The second category is the inscriptions describing the king's war. The representative work of Sumerian period is the vulture monument of King Ananton of Lahore. King Akkad's war inscriptions are not long. Assyria has frequent foreign wars, and the war inscriptions of kings are mostly long. Especially in the sargon dynasty, the king's inscriptions were exquisite and vivid, and the war scenes were vivid, which often revealed the king's personal characteristics. The Akkadian architectural inscription of the King of Babylon of the Chaldeans has rich and free words, strong sense of rhythm and certain literary value.

(2) Myths and epics

Myths and legends and heroic epics are important parts of literary works in the two river basins. The sources of these myths and epics are mostly folk oral stories, processed and written, and also created by unknown priests. Epic is a great story about ancient demigod heroes. Early myths and heroic epics mainly discussed the creation of the world, human life and death and other major issues. Judging from the current literature, Sumerian mythology only puts forward some vague views on the theme of "creation": the beginning of the world, the beginning of heaven and earth, and human beings are as ignorant as animals. The main heroic epics of Sumerians are based on the early kings of uruk, namely Emil Karl, Lumain Lebanda and Gil Metz. The epic of Emil Karl and his son Rujuele Banda tells the hegemony struggle between uruk and the legendary alien Alata. There are five Sumerian epics about famous heroes Giles Maggs: Giles Maggs and Aj, which reflect the hegemony between uruk and Kish; Giles's Mesh and Living Place and Giles's Mesh and Bull tell the protagonist's pursuit of eternal life and honor. And, which describes the underworld. Besides fairy tales, Babylon also expounded Sumerian epic Gil de Metz from a new angle. Around BC 1 100, Akkadian, a scribe in uruk, compiled many heroes of Sumerian epic Gilles de Metz into a *** 12 large clay tablet poem. Its unique style and exploration of eternal themes of human nature such as death, confrontation and friendship make it a classic in the history of world literature. The epic tells the story that the war and construction in Gilead brought a heavy burden to the people of uruk. So God sent Lekench, a wasteland, to uruk to fight against Gilead. Heroes cherish heroes. Enkidu and Gillette Mace forged a deep friendship in wrestling, and they made great achievements together. They defeated Huwa, the guardian demon of Lebanese cedar forest, and killed the cow of the goddess Hista. Enkidu's sin angered God. His death gave Gillette a fear of death. He began to travel across mountains and rivers in search of the secret of eternal life. After many twists and turns, Gilles Mash finally found Utna Bistti, king of Shulupak, who won eternal life by saving mankind from the flood. Utna Bistti told him the story of the flood and asked him to go to Haidilao for grass. According to Utnapishti's instructions, Gillette successfully obtained Ganoderma lucidum. On his way home, he took a bath and let the snake steal the fairy grass. A humble snake can shed its skin and start a new life, but a great man like Gilles Mish can't escape the fate of mankind and return to uruk in vain.

/kloc-After the 4th century, some epics with historical events appeared in Assyria and Babylon. For example, there is an epic that reflects the late Gassett dynasty from the Babylonian perspective and mourns the disaster caused by the Elamite invasion. In the 3rd century BC/KLOC-0, 900 poems appeared in Assyria, which rendered Tukletininurta's victory over Babylon. The later epics are all political and reflect historical facts to some extent.

The Babylonian myth in Seme language formed its own theory about the creation of the world and the emergence of human beings on the basis of Sumer's view of creation. The Babylonian myth "Atrahasis the Wise" tells the story of the emergence of human beings and the flood: at the beginning of the world, only gods existed, and the great gods enjoyed themselves, while the small gods (Igigi) undertook heavy labor tasks such as irrigation and pumping water. The discontented strikes of the little gods threaten the dominance of the great gods, and rebellion is imminent. So humans were created to replace small gods. Enqi, the water god, and the mother god created the first man by mixing mud with God's blood, and human beings never stopped living. 1200 years later, people's numbers and desires began to swell, and they prayed to God for wisdom that did not belong to them. The angry god sent plagues and pests to reduce the number of people, but the problem was not solved. Ilir, the king of God, decided to exterminate mankind with floods. Enzi revealed the news of the flood to King Atala Haasis of Shurupak. So Atala Haasis built an ark, transported his family and all kinds of animals to the ship, and escaped the flood disaster. After the flood, the gods accepted the sacrifice of Atala Haasis. Enriel also forgave him and gave him eternal life. His two children began to carry on the family line and became the ancestors of new human beings. From then on, mankind will never be extinct, only sinners will be punished, and a new world order will be established. Another famous Babylonian myth is Genesis. This myth, created by Babylonian priests, compiles the story of Duke, the Babylonian god, replacing Ilir, the king of Sumerian gods, as the supreme creator. This myth was sung in Babylon's annual New Year celebration. When the Babylonian myth of Genesis spread to Assyria, Assyrians replaced the protagonist of Genesis, and replaced Marduk with the local Ashur god as the protagonist of the story. The story about the Great Flood and Noah's Ark in Genesis obviously comes from the creation literature of the two river basins.

Besides inheriting Sumerian culture, Babylon also has its own humorous fairy tales. Etana is the masterpiece of this kind of fairy tales. After the flood, Etana was a king, barren and childless. The eagle and the snake are good friends, but one day, the eagle ate the offspring of the snake while the snake was away. Under the instruction of Chamakh, the sun god, the snake tore the eagle's wings and threw it off the cliff when it was pecking at carrion. The hungry eagle begged Chamakh. Chamakh ordered Etana to rescue the eagle and feed it until it recovered. Etana asked the eagle for the "tree of fertility" in return. Unable to do this, the eagle decided to take Etana to heaven for eternity. But when the eagle flew higher and higher, Etana felt dizzy. Fall from the sky and break into pieces. Since then, people's hopes for eternal life have been dashed.

(3) Proverbs and fables

Proverbs and fables, also known as "wisdom literature", include proverbs, aphorisms, fables and humor, dialogues and debates, riddles and so on. This kind of literary works is short in length, flexible in style and rich in connotation, which is accepted by ordinary people. Sumerians took the lead in compiling various popular aphorisms, and school students in Babylon copied them as Chinese homework many times. These proverbs involve social life and religious fields, but they are all obscure. There are not many proverbs in pure Akkadian, but they are widely circulated. If there is a proverb: "What benefits can a scorpion get from biting?" What does an informer get for killing someone else? "Dialogue and debate are the treasures of literature in the two river basins. The two sides of the argument have their own opinions and are at loggerheads. The debate revolves around a more important theme, such as creation and the origin of mankind. The two sides involved in the argument can be people or anthropomorphic things, such as shepherds and farmers, father and son, Xia Dong, sheep and barley. God or the king was finally invited to arbitrate for both sides. Later debate works have a certain irony, such as the famous Dialogue between Master and Servant: the master first tells him to do this or that, and the servant says yes to everything; Later, the master changed his mind and said that he didn't want to do this or that. The servant cited evidence to prove that the master was not wrong. Finally, the master said that he would kill the servant, and the servant replied tactfully: "My master will live three days longer than me at most. "Fables and humorous stories play an important role in wisdom literature. This style is lively and not limited by the framework. Fables are mostly stories that happen between animals. There is an ironic argument about social life between fox and wolf, hyena and lion. There have also been quarrels between Setaria viridis and date palms. Humorous stories with the theme of school life are written by students or teachers of booksellers' schools. There is a story about a student's day's life: he was beaten at school for various reasons, but his helpless father invited the teacher home, praised him and gave him gifts, so the student became a good student of the teacher. Some humorous stories with practical significance, such as Poor Jimeneuta, satirize the official conformity and greed, as well as the corruption of the royal family. Assyrian humorous short stories have many similarities with Arabic short stories. The world-famous fable of Aesop in Greece must be inspired by the fables of the two river basins.

(4) hymns, hymns and prayers

At present, the earliest known Sumerian hymn is a religious hymn in the middle of 3000 BC, but hymns appeared in large numbers after the third Ur dynasty. These hymns praising God describe God's lofty position in the human world. This hymn is magnificent and neat. For example, a hymn praising Enlille, the main god of Nipur: Without Enlille, a towering mountain, there would be no city and no inhabited house; No stables, no animals; No one can be king, and senior monks will not appear; Rivers stagnate and birds don't build nests; Clouds no longer rain, Yuan Ye no longer has beautiful scenery, and barley in the field no longer blooms. ...

In addition to religious hymns, there is another kind of king hymns. The object of this kind of hymn is mainly the deified Sumerian king. Generally, it describes the king's family background, legitimacy of power, devotion to God, concern for temples, concern for the poor and lonely, and some also mention the king's strong physique, achievements in the election and so on. After Hammurabi, the king was no longer deified, and the king's hymns disappeared. During the Babylonian period, there were hymns praising the deeds of God, such as "The Song of Ishtar" and "The Song of the Sun God Chamakh". The length of the hymn is relatively long, reaching more than 200 lines. Different from religious hymns, hymns are not all praises to God, but also contain many humanized descriptions of God. For example, Song of estelle describes estelle's willfulness and disobedience to God's rules. From this point of view, hymns are more enjoyable than hymns.

Prayer has various forms, some are written independently, and some are attached to other words. There are often one or two prayers behind the general architectural inscriptions, hoping that the building will last for a long time and cursing those who destroy it in the future. Writing to God is another form of prayer. In the letter, Carl told God his wish. The prayer to God in Gaxit period was engraved on the roller seal, with confession and asking for forgiveness as the main contents. Many people's names are themselves a kind of prayer, thanking the gods for giving their children. Prayer is not just prayer and repentance. There is a kind of prayer called "holy sacrifice", which is very expressive. Sometimes it describes the life in "Yuanye" experienced by animals as sacrifices, and sometimes it describes the silent and heavy night; People's prayers for atonement are often embedded in China's ceremonies. There is also a kind of prayer called "spell prayer", which is used in some specific prayer ceremonies. Recite by the spell priest and communicate with Chamakh, Marduk, Eya (Enqi) and other great gods. Prayer begins with praising God, and then tells us that we hope to get God's love, forgive sins and eliminate disasters. Finally, praise God. The confessional part of these prayers is sincere and touching, and has a strong artistic appeal.

There is a style called "Elegy". Elegy has a wide range of contents, and the objects of mourning include city-states and gods, such as two elegies in memory of Akkad City and city of ur destroyed by the enemy, and elegies in memory of Dumuzi, the agricultural god who fell into the underworld, and so on. Some elegies spread to Darius, king of Persia.

The main knowledge of ancient world history-the ancient two river basins

2008-0 1-24 10:03

Ancient two river basins

I. Explanation of Nouns

1. Cuneiform writing: Sumerian writing is carved on a clay tablet with a triangular reed pole as a pen, and naturally becomes cuneiform writing after writing, which was produced during the Gemditenase culture period.

2. Sumerian city-state: Sumerian city-state was the first city-state in the southern part of the ancient two river basins. Important city-states are Ur, lagache and uruk. Its main economic form is temple economy. After the annexation war between the city-states, sargon established a unified kingdom-Akkad Kingdom, which marked the end of the Sumerian city-state era.

3. Uluka? Kina's Reform: Uruka, King of lagache City-State in Sumerian City-State Period? China has carried out reforms. He abolished the misgovernment during the Anda period in Lugal, with the aim of easing the contradictions within the city-state and strengthening the dictatorship of the city-state power over slaves. Secondly, it is forbidden for nobles to buy livestock and houses of civilians at low prices. Third, the abolition of heavy taxes on priests strengthened the rights of priests and weakened the royal power. Reform has played a certain role in promoting the development of social production.

4. Sean: Sumerian city-state period was the supreme ruler of each city-state. He was a local official of the Third Ur Dynasty.

5. sargon: the founder of Akkad Kingdom, fought in the vast surrounding areas, established centralized rule and formed a standing army of 5,400 people.

6. The Third Dynasty of Ur: King Ullner of Ur defeated Wutu Hrgar, unified the two southern rivers and established the Third Dynasty of Ur. Ullner promulgated the world's first code, Ullner Code.

7. The first epic in the world, The Epic of Gilgamesh, vividly reflects people's desire to explore the mysteries of nature. Originated from Sumerian city-states, and forgot that one was the king of uruk city-states.

8. Hanging Garden: King Nebuchadnezzar II of the new kingdom of Babylon built it for his queen from Mytis, located on the Tigris River. 3B。 C, the hanging garden was destroyed.

9. Avilu: a free man with civil rights in ancient Babylonian society.

10.Mushgennu: a free man without citizenship in ancient Babylonian society.

1 1. isaku: There are two kinds of statements. One is tenant farmers, who obtained a piece of land from the royal manor on the condition of paying tribute in Babylonian society. The second is the early Assyrian, and the king's name is Ishaku.

12. Nebuchadnezzar II: King of New Babylon. His reign was the most prosperous period of the new Babylonian kingdom. At 586B. C, he besieged Jerusalem, plundered local people and property to Babylonia, and was called "the prisoner of Babylon" in history.

Two. Question and answer discussion

1. Why did ancient civilization first appear in the big river basin?

Fertile land, abundant water resources and relatively good climatic conditions.

2. Why did Assyria become a great empire across Asia and Africa?

First, there are no strong enemies in the world, and Egypt and Hittites no longer exist as powerful countries. Second, the extensive use of domestic iron can reclaim more land, promote its rapid social and economic development, and at the same time provide sharper weapons and enhance its combat effectiveness. Third, frequent foreign conquest. Fourth, the reform of Tiglath Parashar III, including military reform; Resume foreign wars.

3. How did the Assyrian Empire change its ruling policy?

From the policy of brutal slaughter in conquered areas to the relocation of its residents from one place to another, this eased the sharp contradiction with the ruled areas. The policy change began with Tigray Parashar III.

4. Briefly describe the social and economic situation of new Babylon during the period of Nebuchadnezzar II.

(1) Great achievements have been made in urban construction. Nebuchadnezzar II built the city of Babylon on a large scale, making it the largest city in the world at that time. (2) Economic prosperity, developed commodity currency and frequent usury activities. (3) Compared with the past, slavery has developed greatly, the number of slaves has increased, and slave owners have diversified ways to exploit slaves.