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=**//Mesopotamia, to 2500 BCE (about 5000 years ago)//**=



Ziggurat:a temple where people prayed to a god or gods. Sumerians prayed here for good crops. Early civilizations first developed in Mesopotamia over six thousand years ago. Some of the first cities were established, a writing system was developed, empires were created and monumental buildings were constructed. As each new group of people moved into the region, or took control of the government, they adopted some of the culture, traditions and beliefs of the people who had come before them. Therefore, certain aspects of civilization in Mesopotamia remained the same, and some changed over time. Much of Mesopotamian history lay buried beneath the sand and soil for thousands of years. However, there were clues, such as the mounds known as '[|tells]', and the ruins of ziggurats, that treasures lay below the surface. In the past two hundred years, people have begun to [|excavate] objects and buildings which reveal the ancient history of this region. In the eighteenth century, travellers seeking adventure and the unknown began to explore the region around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Many people were interested in visiting the area because they had read about it in the Bible, or in the accounts of Greek and Roman writers. However, they could not yet read what the ancient Mesopotamians had written because the [|cuneiform] [|script] had not been [|deciphered]. Claudius James Rich was an Englishman who loved learning foreign languages. As a young man of 21, he took a job with the East India Company and became the ' [|British Resident] ' in Baghdad. Claudius James Rich Rich was fascinated by the ancient ruins he saw and during his free time he explored and recorded many of them. For example, he made a map of the ruins of Babylon in 1813. Rich's map of the ruins of Babylon Although Rich did not excavate the site, he worked out where the main features, like the roads and the important buildings, were located. French and English archaeologists were among the first to excavate important sites in Mesopotamia. In the nineteenth century Paul-Émile Botta was a French diplomat working in Mosul, a city on the River Tigris. Paul-Émile Botta Part of the duty of a diplomat at this time was excavation, and Botta began to dig at the site of Khorsabad. He uncovered some of the first monumental stone sculptures to be found in Mesopotamia at a palace of the Assyrian king Sargon II. Huge winged human-headed bull from Khorsabad. Austen Henry Layard was an Englishman with a taste for adventure and a great love of the Near East. Austen Henry Layard He trained as a solicitor, but he is famous as an archaeologist who uncovered some of the most important Assyrian sites. Layard is lowered on a rope to look at an Assyrian rock relief of Sennacherib. Layard worked for 6 years at the sites of [|Nimrud] and [|Nineveh] where he found the palaces of the Assyrian kings Ashurnasirpal II and Sennacherib.

Henry Rawlinson is known as the 'father of cuneiform' because he managed to work out how to decipher the script. Henry Rawlinson He worked for the East India Company and spent many years exploring the Near East and learning local languages. He visited a cliff face at a place called Bisitun which was carved with a long cuneiform inscription. In 1835 he made a copy of the inscription and managed to decipher the name of the king who had it carved. Later he deciphered the cuneiform tablets from Layard's excavations at Nimrud and Nineveh.  One of Layard's assistants was a young man named Hormuzd Rassam. Hormuzd Rassam When Layard returned to England in 1851 to become a politician, Rassam took over as director of the excavations at Nineveh. He discovered the palace of Ashurbanipal and the famous lion-hunt [|reliefs]. Rassam also excavated the nearby site of Balawat where he found the bronze decoration from wooden gates guarding entrances to a palace and temple.

Modern reconstruction of the Balawat Gates of Shalmaneser III.  At the beginning of the twentieth century, Dr H.R. Hall of the British Museum arrived at Ur to map the site and begin excavation. Leonard Woolley This work was continued in 1922 when Leonard Woolley was appointed director of excavations. His work revealed a great deal about early Mesopotamian history, life and culture.
 * [[image:http://www.mesopotamia.co.uk/time/story/images/ram.jpg width="300" height="350" align="center"]]

One of the many rich objects found by Woolley in the Royal Cemetery at Ur || Around the same time, German archaeologists, led by Robert Koldewey, began to excavate the site of Babylon which shed more light on the history of this famous city. Robert Koldewey 