Two civilizations started out at the same time and evolved into empires of great similarities, yet compelling differences lie between them. The two countries represent societies beginnings with their impressive work and there astonishing achievements with such little technology at their disposal, nevertheless brilliant minds found ways to design massive buildings and a new form of language at their time. Mesopotamia and Egypt show there similarities in the aspects of economic, political, and social elements with amazing similarities at a broad level until you look at specific comparison.
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Mesopotamia meaning land between the rivers is located in between the Tigris and Euphrates and is a vary arid zone surrounded by mountains and thanks to the irrigation canal they built it became a very impressive region for trade, on the other hand Egypt was a natural isolation privileged with the presence of the river Nile and its annual floodsthat was an oasis, green, and habitable piece of land in the midst of the dessert. Mesopotamia’s economics and Egypt’s economics were both similar at aspects per say but each was an opposite version of another.
Egypt had good crops at certain point of the year but also relied on trade when it came to their massive amounts of gold for metalworking, and refining, precious ores, and endowed with natural resources far more plentiful than Mesopotamia so they were able to triad for animals, wood, incense, etc… Mesopotamia had crops that were very fertile considering they were in the Fertile Crescent;There civilization relied on trading food and other supplies for raw materials and luxury items as an economic way of life because of there easily accessible country through there two rivers.
Mesopotamia had switched from stone writing to writing on papyrus paper where they would put down what they had traded, and for how much like receipts, Mesopotamian’s would use numbers one through sixty as amounts that were represented by symbols in their language cuneiformwhich was like the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Egyptians with their agriculture wheredependent oftheir pharaohs because it was said that only pharaoh could predict when the floods would occur and make it rain during droughts so that farmers could produce wheat and barley.
The similarities are that they both had crops and trade in their disposal, but the difference that effects those two countries are that Egypt had trade and agriculture plus they were self-sufficient because they had the dessert surrounding them making it hard for people to go theremaking them a lot better off while Mesopotamia had a trading until 5000 B. C. E when agriculture came in but it wasn’t until 3000 B. C. E that agriculture was perfected because of the floods and very little rainfall along with the addition that Mesopotamia was open to attackers so they were constantly investing on repairing instead of progressing like Egypt.
Social elements are similar in Mesopotamia and Egypt in amazing literary, architectural, and intellectual ways that provide us with their history. Egypt initiated hieroglyphics which are writings in pictorial form using pictures to identify thoughts, letters, words, and sounds, there monuments were pyramids that were pointing north, south, east and west and made stepped at first and later smoothened at the reign of kings in the fourth dynasty.
Mesopotamia had cuneiform that is much like hieroglyphics, which is writing in pictorial form describing also words, letters, and sounds, there monuments were called ziggurats and they were stepped, pyramid based, and made of brick. Another thing that is different is that in Egypt women were treated much better and had more freedom than in Mesopotamia where women were only used for procreating and agriculture, but women were still treated as in lower classes in both kingdoms. Proof of their social classes can still be found today in Egypt and Ur.
In Egypt they have the pyramids where inside lays the tombs of ancient pharaohs that have their stories and their possessions because of their death beliefs that when you die you are in another life so pharaohs were buried with their servants and some small portions of their richness, there writing can be found in tombs where they tell the stories of their life’s, in Ur you may find the ziggurats that are used as temples to honor and depict there gods like the god of the moon Nanna, and there writing can be found in walls and old documents, but mostly walls.
The similarities are found in the base of the monuments and in there writing. The reason of the similarity is that the writing has pictures to describe their language, and the monuments have the same type of base but a square. The differences are that there languages use different pictures and symbols, the basses are square but in the ziggurats there are additions of the steps to the top.
Politically Mesopotamia is very different from Egypt in many ways, but a few similarities as the time passes. Mesopotamia has three different classes of political structure including free landowning class that has royalty and high ranking officials, dependentfarmer’s class, and the class of slaves. Egypt on the other hand has the Pharaoh as the highest level as there Divine Kingship, the nobles and priests, to the lowest level which was the slaves that built all the pyramids and etc.
Mesopotamian people were all lead by their king and the priest that followed Hammurabi’s code or more commonly known as “an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth”which had one of the highest ranks in Mesopotamia because of their trade and amounts of money and religious mystique for that reason the kings did not give as much influence until Sargon of Akkad whereas Egypt had the pharaoh being the man truly leading his country into unity and he was considered the line between the gods and the Egyptians with his power to predict the floods and to make the weather change for the farmers to better produce there foods.
Similarities between them are very few but one is that they both have their class of slaves and the monarchy of kings that preceded Sargon, whereas the differences are great until a certain time the entire country of Mesopotamia was divided and Egypt was united as one country. Another difference is that priests had one of the top rankings next to or close to the king in Mesopotamia where Egypt had pharaoh at the top leading the country in religious and political structure.
Ancient kingdoms for many years improved and were made into powerful empires that shared many things in common with one another. Politically each empire had different views, Egypt united at an early age to form a powerful dynasty while Mesopotamia stayed more of a liberal kingdom where power lied in the hands of priests.
Economically both countries had their ways of making money but Egypt had the advantage of knowing when the right time to plant was unlike Mesopotamia that mostly relied on their trade for survival because of various floods at numerous times per year from there rivers Tigris and Euphrates. Socially they were very similar even in written form as well as both had one common class among them working slaves which without them Egypt would not have had suck amazing monuments like the pyramids. Two civilizations so advanced for their time, very much alike, and also divers in many aspects of their history.
