Mesopotamia -- Society Day 2

Multiple Choice

What is trading?

• buying and selling of materials and services

• banking money

• inventing new products

Multiple Choice

Mesopotamia's money

• pesos

• dollars

• shekels

• pounds

Multiple Choice

Why is Hammurabi well known?

• He was a scribe and wrote down information.

• He wrote the first laws for an empire.

Multiple Choice

Who was Hammurabi?

• A king

• A scribe

• A lawyer

Reorder

Reorder the following. Put the person on top of the social pyramid first.

• King

• Priest

• Scribe

• Farmers

• Slaves

1

2

3

4

5

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5

Match

Match the following to their job.

• King

• Scribe

• Merchants

• Artisans

• Farmers

made rules

wrote down information

traded with other cities

made things that were traded (pottery)

made sure there was enough crops

• made rules

• wrote down information

• traded with other cities

• made things that were traded (pottery)

• made sure there was enough crops

Daily Life in Mesopotamia

Beef, lamb, pork, goat, ducks, and geese were the meats of choice. Fish, turtles, and shellfish were plentiful in the rivers and canals. Barley and wheat were important foods.

​What did they eat?

Grain was crushed and cooked as porridge or ground into flour and baked into bread. Fruits, oils, juices, and honey were added to the basic recipe and varied the recipe so much that there were more than 300 Mesopotamian words for bread. Locust swarms caused problems by destroying crops, but they were also skewered, roasted, and enjoyed as a tasty delicacy!

Open Ended

List three foods in the Mesopotamians' diet.

Where did they live?

The rich lived in large homes, and the poor lived in small homes. But everyone had a home of their own. Most homes were clustered around the ziggurat (the temple). Most houses shared walls, like townhouses do today. People built their homes of sun-dried brick. The roofs were flat. People cooked and slept on their roofs, when weather permitted.

Open Ended

Why do you think the Mesopotamians spent so much time praying?

Women in Mesopotamia were not equal to men.

Multiple Choice

In Mesopotamia, women had the same rights as men.

• True

• False

Women were very busy, taking care of the house, the kids, meal preparation, and sewing clothing, plus sometimes working in the fields

​

What did they do all day?

Everyone in Mesopotamia had to pray many times each day to the gods to avoid their anger, no matter how busy they were with other things.

A lot of Praying​

​

​Work

There were all sorts of jobs and activities. While many people still worked as farmers in the country, in the city a person could grow up to work in a number of different jobs such as priest, scribe, merchant, craftsman, soldier, civil servant, or laborer.

Only wealthy boys could attend school​

​

Teachers taught reading, writing, math history, geography, zoology, botany, astronomy, engineering, medicine and architecture.  

​School

Multiple Choice

Who was allowed to go to school?

• everyone

• only wealthy boys

• only wealthy girls

​The Sumerians must have loved music because musical instruments, made of wood or bone, have been found by archaeologists in their tombs.

​The ancient Mesopotamians played with board games.  The games were usually made out of clay.  usually, the board games had pieces to them that either were thrown or moved around the board. The Sumerians are credited with the invention of the game checkers.

​Children had toys

They had bows and arrows, sling shots, boomerangs, throw sticks, spinning tops, rattles, jump ropes, hoops, and balls for juggling and other games.  Kids played house using miniature pieces of furniture, beds, tables, stools, dolls, and small animals.  They also had little model vehicles of carts and chariots with wheels that could be pulled on a string.  They had miniature boats that could float.

Open Ended

Life in Mesopotamia was ______ today because _______.

the same as different from