The modern-day Assyria and Babylon were known as Ancient Mesopotamia. This is the place where nearly all farming programs began. In every community, people have guiding principles that they follow to ensure that there are harmony and corporation in the community. Assyria and Babylon had gender roles, ideals and relationships that kept them together. The division of roles ensures that people respect orders, roles, and the community’s morals are enhanced (Chapman, 2018). In this paper, more information will be discussed about Assyria and Babylon based on the social, economic, roles division, religion, structure and beliefs, technological and cultural innovation and invention. Thus clear definitions will be given about the civilization of the two societies.
Gender Roles in Babylon and Assyria
Civilization is good to society and has advantages to the society members and impact positively to the norms and beliefs of the society. In ancient times, the roles of the women were limited to those around home and household. They were majorly wives and mothers. The ladies were not allowed to attend schools rather they stayed home to learn household work which they were to perform in their homes after they marry (Hauser, 2017). The ladies will not be allowed to do farming and bring food because this was a work that was majorly left for men to do.
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Household duties were considered supreme when it came to marriage, ladies would not be married if they didn’t know the home activities, especially cooking for the husband. This made the fathers arrange the marriages of their daughters when they reached puberty age. It was the role of men to organize marriages of their daughters. The families involved had targets that they were to meet, the lady’s family paid the dowry and the grooms paid the price for the bride; these encouraged families to be stable. Religious roles were practiced by both the genders, thus families could give their daughters for the priesthood work (Jastrow, 2019); this is a work that both the genders did.
The work of raising children was entirely pegged on women; men were not involved in bringing up young ones. This is a work that requires a higher science because they had to ensure that they are instilling good morals to the young ones ensuring that the young ones grow up to be responsible people in society. However, it was tricky because in as far as they will bring them up they had little for the boy- child because the roles and work of the boy- child was a bit different from what the ladies did and in as far as they had more for the girl- child, they needed men’s support in bringing up the boy- child and help them be responsible grown to provide for their families when they get married (Liverani, 2016).
The other roles of women were cleaning, cooking for the family and weaving clothes for the family members to ensure that people are dressed well in the family. It was the role of the mother to provide clothing for the family; this help protects them from harsh weather conditions like strong extremely hot and cold conditions. However, because of weaving and brewing, women made much wealth and were employed by the church to make clothes and sell which led to many of the women engaging in trade and prostitution (Robson, 2019).
On the other side, it was the responsibility of men to go hunt and bring food to their families; this is because women were majorly engaged in the home and its duties they had no time to go look for food, which they will feed the family with, it was the work of the husband to go hunt and come home with food for the family (Svärd, 2016). However, men also engaged in looking after the animals and farming; this is because Mesopotamia had enough water for farming which was used for irrigation as shown in the map below.
The other responsibility of men was to be heads of their families; they were to make critical decisions for their families and ensure that all people in the family are guided well. Men will make the rules and regulations that the community followed to ensure that good morals are in the community. In case of immorality, men will be blamed and they will be put to task to ensure that the morals of the community are safeguarded and respected; they will sit young men and share with them how the society was run and how they expect them to take responsibility. Upon issues of disputes, it was the role of men to settle them (Yalçın, 2016); women were not engaged in the work of settling land disputes.
Social and Economic Structure of the Assyrian and the Babylonian
In Babylon and Assyria, there was no money to engage in trade but trading was done through the exchange of other goods and services thus leading to the development of the writing system. In barter trade, people could exchange what they had with those that they did not have. However, this was tricky because there was no measurement to know a value of a given product (Chapman, 2018), thus more will be exchanged with little and there were no complaints because the two parties engaged were satisfied exchanging what they lacked with what they had.
Through barter trade, there was an invention of writing; this ensured that there was some balancing between the commodities that were used for the exchange program. Through learning how to do irrigation the farmers learned how to buy and sell their product, thus more land was brought under cultivation and farmers would plant more than they would consume; the more products were sold (Hauser, 2017). This trading system was developed because farmers and other people that were involved in it needed the goods and services they could not provide or produce for them but were necessary and basic needs for life. Thus different people will come with different goods and services to trade.
The Mesopotamia people were cleaver, they will develop one thing using different materials, like the boats they hard three types of boat. Trade is better if we slightly change the value and use different materials to produce the same stuff. This kept trading and economic advances in the great Babylon and Assyria. With time and the invention of writing, people began thinking of using cash to make the exchanges; this was a technology that was later adopted with time because people needed to keep cash and use it at an appropriate time (Jastrow, 2019).
Religious/ ethical Belief of the Assyrian and the Babylonian
The Babylonians were polytheists; people who believed in the existence of many gods that ruled different parts of the world; these gods had their king god who was the sovereign and had power over all the other gods that were worshipped. The religious services were not limited to males only, some daughters could be given for the services of the temple, and they could work without limitations. All the people paid homage to the worship of these different gods and temples were built for them (Liverani, 2016); thus people will spend some time of the day to go and worship them and even offer sacrifices to them.
The Babylonian people believed that these gods which were placed in major cities were responsible for the progress and other outcomes of the community. In case of troubles, they will take their time to seek guidance from these gods and upon hardship the issue will be placed on the god that was related to the problem. The Assyrian religion and that of Babylon were geared towards having a peaceful community (Robson, 2019). This is because it trained people on how to deal with different issues. For example, the religious leaders will spend their time to seek the guidance of these gods to solve the issues; this ensured that at that time there was enough peace for the people to see what they could be doing wrong.
This religion of Assyria and Babylon had similarities with that of ancient Egypt temples where the gods were represented as human beings though with supernatural powers. The religious beliefs of these two societies have a similar source which is ancient Mesopotamia. However, with the spread of the gospel about, the biblical gospel in the Christian some of the Assyrians embraced Christianity while others embraced other religious beliefs like the Islamic faith, etc. This transitioning during the Christian era had another impact on the side of the Babylonian gods. Just as those in Assyria, Babylonia was divided into different faiths where each faith emphasized peace of the people and hard work (Robson, 2019).
The Impacts of Technological Innovation in Assyria and Babylon
The technological innovation is Assyria and Babylon led to a new idea in agriculture where the farmers were able to bring more land under cultivation. The farmers embraced irrigation which allowed bringing more land under cultivation and because of this there was more food production which they traded with other people who had different products. However, with more food, the population grows because if the people eat well to reproduce healthy young ones because there is enough food for them and people do not die of hunger (Svärd, 2016).
The other impact of innovation in the two societies is leading to the development of writing. The writing was invented because the people needed to keep their data and other trading facts which they will use to teach their children trade. However, with writing the people also opened other avenues where the children could become enlightened on other things which affect plants and animals and clear measures were given to them to help them know how to deal with such problem.
There was increased production, the machines used in agriculture could manage larger portions of land than the people could. With better storage mechanisms, food was prevented from spoiling because of the chemical which could enhance the long life of food (Yalçın, 2016).
The other impact is the costs of work were reduced in bother societies because the cash that could be paid for people to do irrigation was spent in doing other business worthy profit. After all, the machine did irrigation perfectly. Thus the employees’ expenses were reduced and the people used the cost for bringing more land under cultivation (Hauser, 2017).
There was a proper circulation of information within the members involved. This is because people could not take the time to carry information from one person to another. The people could pass through the notice board and read the instructions pinned for farther guidance on what was expected from them; this helped save on more time because nobody was moving from place to place to pass the information. However, another benefit with this is that it was good because the information was not distorted, especially when information is passed from one person to another. Thus with invention people within the group can get the same information at the same time and they can be asked to refer to it in case they forget it. With innovation and invention the employees’ can lose their job in the process because a lot of work they used to do is assigned to the machines which do perfect work within a short period hence saving more time; this negative on the side of the workers they leave the work which maybe they have been depending on to provide for the family (Yalçın, 2016).
Innovation helps grow the market where the people will trade, for example in the different inventions of boats which people could use depending on the reasons and where they wanted the services, this helped the business grow because the people will get all they wanted at lower prices. With many inventions in Assyria and Babylon, there was the development of the calendar that helped in agriculture especially to know the season to place their crops to ensure that they are not of the season to enhance more harvest (Hauser, 2017).
Conclusion
In summary, Assyria and Babylon have more similarities than differences; this is because they share an origin, which is Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia is the land where historically agriculture and irrigation started from and because of more silt deposition from the two rivers; this land was fertile for food production which became the main activity for the people of Mesopotamia and those of Assyria and Babylon. Thus we cannot discuss this topic without mentioning how this land evolved. It’s in this place that the modern-day technological innovations have an origin from (Hauser, 2017). Examples include the invention of the calendar, mathematical calculations and record-keeping, etc.
References
Chapman, C. R. (2018). The Gendered Language of Warfare in the Israelite-Assyrian Encounter . Brill.
Hauser, S. R. (2017). Post‐Imperial Assyria. A companion to Assyria , 113 , 229.
Jastrow, M. (2019). The religion of Babylonia and Assyria . Good Press.
Liverani, M. (2016). CONSERVATIVE VERSUS INNOVATIVE CULTURAL AREAS IN THE NEAR EAST CA. 800–400 BC. Eurasia at the Dawn of History: Urbanization and Social Change , 198.
Robson, E. (2019). Ancient Knowledge Networks: A Social Geography of Cuneiform Scholarship in First-Millennium Assyria and Babylonia . UCL Press.
Svärd, S. (2016). Studying Gender: A Case Study of Female Administrators in Neo-Assyrian Palaces. The Role of Women in Work and Society in the Ancient Near East , 13 , 447.
Yalçın, S. (2016). Men, Women, Eunuchs, Etc.: Visualities of Gendered Identities in Kassite Babylonian Seals (ca. 1470–1155 BC). Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research , 376 (1), 121-150.
