Mesopotamian Government
- In southern Mesopotamia, a group of people called Sumerians built the first type of civilization we know of with an advanced society and government
- Sumer had units called city-states that were the city and the land surrounding it
- City-states controlled their amount of land based upon the strength of their military
- City-states would fight against each other in order to gain more farmland
- Another society developed north of the Sumerians but were not Sumrians nor did they speak their language
- This society was built by the Akkadians
- Both societies lived in peace until the 2300 BC's when the Akkadian emperor Sargon sought to extend his capital so his army defeated all the city-states of Sumer and they conquered northern Mesopotamia
- Sargon had the entire region under his rule, establishing the first empire
- Sargon ruled for 50 years but the empire only lasted a century after his death
- The empire went into chaos after invaders could not be kept out
- The Sumerian city-state of Ur built up its stregnth and conquered much of remaining Mesopotamia becoming the most powerful in the region yet again
- Ur layed to ruins in 2000 BC allowing another power to come forward
- Babylon was a near by town that had once been a Sumerian city
- In 1792 BC, Hammurabi became the ruler of Babylon
- Hammurabi was a very talented war leader who brought all of Mesopotamia under his Babylonian rule
- Hammurabi was also very skilled at ruling his huge empire using tax money to pay for building and irrigation projects
- He is most famous for creating his code of laws called Hammirabi's Code of Laws that covers all the aspects of daily life
- Each crime had a specific penalty
- These penalties could be read by people from all over the empire to know exactly what was against the law
- Hammurabi ruled for 42 years and after his death, Babylonian power began to decline do to invasions from cities Hammurabi conquered