Egypt vs Mesopotamia

488 Words2 Pages
Ancient Egypt vs Mesopotamia: the political, social economical aspects of two ancient civilizations Egypt and Mesopotamia were both great Empires of the ancient world, and have left equally great impacts on history and shaped the world we live in today. And while these impressive civilizations shared many similarities in areas such as politics and economics, society, they also shared many differences. At first glance, the political patterns in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia seem fairly similar, sharing an upper/ruling class consisting of priests and nobles however there are many fundamental differences between the two. Mesopotamia’s ruling class consists mainly of priests and later rulers of city states, in Egypt however the ruling class is almost completely taken up by the pharaoh, ;A god among men to the egyptians, who ruled over all of Egypt; followed by members of the royal family and important priests. Egyptian government was much more centralized than the city states of Mesopotamia. Adding to the list of political differences, Mesopotamia is also famous for later being the birthplace of Hammurabi’s code, the first law code ever, written by Babylonian king Hammurabi in around 1750 B.C.E, while Egypt has no known written law code. Just as the rulers in each civilisation shared similarities and differences, so did the societies set up by them. While both of them had a similar social hierarchy of upper, lower and middle classes and a noticeable patriarchy (because what would an ancient civilization be without one), there were a few differences, one pertaining to the role of women. Women in Egypt enjoyed many more rights and were treated with higher regard (almost equal to men) than the women in Mesopotamia, who like in most ancient civilizations were treated as second class citizens. Another difference in social life

More about Egypt vs Mesopotamia

Open Document