Similarities And Differences Between Ancient Egypt And Mesopotamia

943 Words2 Pages

Ancient Egypt and ancient Mesopotamia, without them we may not have many of the things we consider standard technology in modern day. Although they both helped shape modern society, the Egyptians and Mesopotamian people had other similarities, as well as differences. These differences and similarities can be seen between their societies, their style of art, and their innovations that contributed to modern day.

First, we will discuss their cultures. Hierarchy ruled Mesopotamia society. Generally, in Mesopotamian society, there were three main social classes. The first, and highest class, was the nobility. Nobility included priests and priest-kings. These were the city 's tax collectors. If you were of nobility, you were in charge of maintenance, …show more content…

As mentioned, there were many different types of craftsmen in Mesopotamia and Egypt, but their style of art varied. Ancient Egyptian art includes paintings, wood sculptures, ceramics, papyrus drawings, jewelry, and other art media that displayed a representation of the ancient Egyptian 's social and economic status and belief systems. Much of the Egyptians surviving art comes from tombs and monuments. This gave an emphasis on life after death and the preservation of knowledge of the past ("Art of Ancient Egypt," n.d.). The art of Mesopotamian people rivaled that of Egyptian art as the grandest, sophisticated, and elaborate from the 4th millennium BC until the 6th century BC. A lot of Mesopotamian art has not survived, but from what is available we know their art consisted of cylinder seals, small figures, and reliefs. Their art displayeddeities, alone or with worshippers, and animals repeated in rows, alone, fighting ("Art of Mesopotamia," n.d.). The last topic we have to discuss is the innovations from Mesopotamia and Egypt. Mesopotamia was often called ‘The Cradle of Civilization ', and for many good reasons like writing, agriculture, and time. The Sumerians developed the first form of writing which was called"Cuneiform." This kind of writing was used mainly in trade, where the merchants could record information pertaining to a trade. Mesopotamians also used writing to record astronomy. Agriculture was another big step. Farmers cultivated wheat, barley, and many other foods. With the Tigris and the Euphrates riverssurrounding Mesopotamia, it made irrigation and farming a lot easier.The most common thing to this day was created by Mesopotamians, time, where they decided to divide time units into 60 parts (Adhikari, 2014-2016). Egyptians created some pretty amazing things as well, like paper, ink, and makeup. Egyptians made paper with the interior of a

Open Document