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Egypt Vs Mesopotamia

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The world began with a simple norm, survival of the fittest. The first people of the human race used whatever resources available to survive. Then we transitioned into a revolution where countless technological advances like irrigation and farming, formed some of the world’s first civilizations. Leading to the development of new cultures everywhere . Some of these civilizations formed in the middle east such as Egypt and Mesopotamia. Overall, Egypt and Mesopotamia are more different than similar because politically, they had different forms of government, culturally they had contrasting perceptions of their gods. However a notable similarity is socially Egypt and Mesopotamia had almost identical social hierarchies. Egypt and Mesopotamia, …show more content…

Socially they were similar because both countries had a social hierarchy. A city-state in Mesopotamia was ruled by KIng Hammurabi and he established a series of laws to maintain order in the civilization. Specifically law 15 recites if a thief takes a slave out of city borders then the thief will be killed and the slave will be spared. This reveals how Mesopotamia relied on workers, so although they were not respected they formed the base of the Mesopotamian hierarchy . This allows conveys the message that crimes are not tolerated however some rules are bias to certain groups of people such as rule 129. If a woman cheats on their husband or vise versa, the man’s life is spared while women regardless of what happened get killed. As you can see no matter where people were in the social hierarchy women are considered to be “beneath” men and are considered “less valuable”. Their hierarchy was divided into how much power and influence you have over all. Likewise, Egypt’s hierarchy followed the same idea. In Egypt their social pyramid was organized by laborers on the bottom and pharaohs on the top in terms of how much power they had. Workers had the toughest jobs doing task such as construction and other forms of work that didn’t require a high form of education. As a result of practically everyone being eligible for this job labors were the most highly population social class and was the foundation of the hierarchy. Directly under pharaoh are scribes. Scribes were highly trusted by kings and were valued because their job required a high form of education which was scarce at that time. They were provided with luxuries such as servants, and title a worthy official increasing their social status. The Egyptian hierarchy organized their citizen base off of their skill set. Even if their job was highly important such as laborer or another type of

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