Comparison Of The Mesopotamia And Egypt Civilizations Essay Example

Both Egypt and Mesopotamia had an advanced human, social, and political organizations compared to previous communities making them civilizations. Both of them had similarities and differences in their political, religious, social, and technological aspects. Some of these similarities and differences are analyzed in this paper albeit shortly.
Politically, in Mesopotamia, the Temple Priests ruled. The rulers used the Hammurabi law code. Religiously, they believed in polytheism and usually described gods as having human characteristics. They held that the spirits of the dead went to the land of no return. Enlil was the god of the air and the cloud. On the other hand, Egypt had the Pharaohs who were representatives of the gods. Therefore, Egypt used theocracy. Religiously, they had the sun god called Ra, Osiris was the god of the dead who weighed the hearts of the dead, and they mummified the dead. The pharaohs represented the gods and usually were buried with all they would ‘need’ in the next journey.
The social patterns of Mesopotamian civilization include a wedge shaped writing called Cuneiform. Mesopotamia had social classes with the kings and the queens, the wealthy merchants, farmers and slaves. Technologically, the Mesopotamian civilization was the first to use bronze. They made wheels, plow, the sail, and used a number system. The Egyptian civilization had a hierarchy of kings, and the royal family, rich landowners, merchants, and peasants. They used geometry and came up with the calendar. They also fixed bones took the heart rates, and performed some of the early surgeries. One can conclude that the two civilizations where more similar than they are different.
The similarities are evident in that the civilizations had stratified social system, had strong religious believes, and had a well-organized political system. They also introduced the writing system, algebra, and even calendars. They also made pyramids. The two developed along major river valleys. The main reason for the civilization to occur in the river valleys is that these river valleys had fertile farming soils as a result of the floods. The floods deposited rich silt that made the valleys very fertile for farming. For example, farming had developed along the Nile valley in 5000 BC (Robert Guisepi, n.d.)

Work cited

Robert Guisepi. “Egypt and Mesopotamia Compared. The Origins Of Civilizations.” Web. 16 Feb. 2015. <http://history-world.org/egypt_and_mesopotamia_compared.htm>