Environmental Challenges Of The Nile River In Egypt And Mesopotamia

Both civilizations were taking the advantages of the rivers and the natural resources by developing near the rivers; however, only Mesopotamia was facing a few environmental challenges. The Nile river in Egypt and the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia provided fertile soil and large volumes of freshwater to both regions. They were able to develop artificial irrigations to increase food supplies and increase populations. The yearly flooding of the Nile river was predictable, which benefited the Egyptian cultivators to organize a stable agricultural system. Oppositely, the flooding of Tigris and Euphrates rivers was very unpredictable, which frequently caused destructive floods, destroying villages and farms, and causing deaths. Furthermore, Mesopotamia was a flat land which lack of natural geographic barriers. The raiders and outsiders were able to invade and seize their wealth, so they built defensive walls among the Sumerian cities to protect themselves. Unlike Mesopotamia, Egypt was surrounded by the Rea Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, and hostile deserts that provided natural protection and discouraged foreigners to invade. As a result, Mesopotamians were having harder life and more likely to suffer deaths from disasters than Egyptians due to the geographical disadvantages.

The religious of Egypt and Mesopotamia are closely related to the nature, and both regions were polytheistic which they believed their worlds were ruled by more than one god.

Due to Egyptian's fortunate geographical area, they had positive and optimistic toward life and viewed gods as their protectors. The predictable flooding helped the Egyptians avoid catastrophic events and allowed them to have successful agriculture. “Hymn to the Nile” reflects the...

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...involved enormous transfers of goods. Mesopotamia had better technology advancement due to the environmental constraints, such as producing tools and weapons with iron and bronze, as well as wheeled vehicles and sailing ships. Thirdly, both civilizations developed their own writing systems. In Mesopotamian, cuneiform writing was invented for improving business transactions and record keeping. Graphic symbols were used to represent sounds, syllables, ideas, and physical objects. Later, Egyptian developed hieroglyphic writing due to Mesopotamian influence. It was pictographs with symbols representing sounds and ideas.

To conclude, Egypt and Mesopotamia developed independently in river valleys. Although they had some similar social and economical characteristics, their religious practices and worldviews were unique due to the geographical difference between two regions.