|
( Mesopotamia)
Commonly known as the "cradle of civilization", Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian empires. In the Iron Age, it was ruled by the Neo-Assyrian Empire and Neo-Babylonian Empire, and later conquered by the Achaemenid Empire. It mostly remained under Persian rule until the 7th century Islamic conquest of the Sassanid Empire. Under the Caliphate, the region came to be known as Iraq. The regional toponym Mesopotamia ( < meso (µ?s??) = middle and potamia < p?taµ?? = river, literally means "between two rivers") was coined in the Hellenistic period without any definite boundaries, to refer to a broad geographical area and probably used by the Seleucids. The term biritum/birit narim corresponded to a similar geographical concept and coined at the time of the Aramaicization of the region, in the 10th century BCE.[5] It is however widely accepted that early Mesopotamian societies simply referred to the entire alluvium as kalam in Sumerian (lit. "land").More recently terms like "Greater Mesopotamia" or "Syro-Mesopotamia" have been adopted to refer to wider geographies corresponding to the Near East or Middle East. The later euphemisms are Eurocentric terms attributed to the region in the midst of various 19th century Western encroachments.[6] The history of Mesopotamia begins with the emergence of urban societies in northern Iraq in 5000 BCE, and ends with either the arrival of the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century BCE, when Mesopotamia began being colonized by foreign powers, or with the arrival of the Islamic Caliphate, when the region came to be known as Iraq.
|
Mesopotamia Subcategories
Mesopotamia Articles
|
|
