Many people in Mesopotamia made amulets and statues of Pazuzu during the mid-first millennium B.C., when he was especially popular. In incantations found on these artifacts, Pazuzu claimed to be the son of Hanbu, the king of the lilu-demons, a name that may have been derived from West ...
The invention of writing can be traced back to 4000 BC. The Sumerians who lived in southern Mesopotamia (modern-day southern Iraq) introduced the first writing system to the world. Their descendants known as Sumero-Babylonians developed the timing system that we still use today, whereby an ho...
While human civilization developed in many places around the world, it first emerged thousands of years ago in the ancient Middle East. “We see the first cities, the first writing and first technologies originating in Mesopotamia,” saysKelly-Anne Diamond, a visiting assistant history professor at...
'Our traditions around the stars go back toancient times. It's connected to evervthing in our entire being and who we are in the world. For Indigenous people, it's not just the land and the sea. It's also the sky and in using those reference points. It assigns not just who we a...
The first cities in Mesopotamia developed around 3500 BCE, with others soon developing in Egypt, the Indus Valley and China. These cities of tens of thousands were filled with specialized craftspeople in distinct neighborhoods. This time around, people in the city centers weren’t living cheek ...
and collect payments from its neighbors. Often, a considerable number of farmers lived in these centers to secure greater protection for themselves and their possessions. It is estimated that in southern Mesopotamia (circa 2900¨C2350 BC) more than 80 percent of the total population lived in ...
Nobody knows when people came up with the first vampiric figures, but the legends date back at least 4,000 years, to the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians of Mesopotamia. Mesopotamians feared Lamastu (also spelled Lamashtu), a vicious demon goddess who preyed on humans. In Assyrian legend,...
Mesopotamia (3000 BC - 0 AD) 8. Akkadian Empire (Sumer) The first great leader of the Akkadian Empire was Sargon, who became ruler around 2270 BC. The Akkadian Empire lasted from 2270 BC to 2083 BC. Its center was the city of Akkad. The empire collapsed due to the invasions by the ...
A Brief History of Perfume in France The history of perfume dates back more than 3,000 years, and is believed to have originated in Mesopotamia and Egypt. The word perfume comes from the Latin wordperfumare, meaning “to smoke through”. Ancient perfumes have been discovered all over the wo...
Its first speakers, the Arameans, were desert nomads. (The Bible describes the mythic forebear of the Hebrews as “a wandering Aramean.”) Spreading out from ancient Syria, they so blanketed Mesopotamia that when the Assyrians conquered the Middle East in the eighth century B.C., they ado...