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| An ambiguous term often used to denote more complex societies but sometimes used by anthropologists to describe any group of people sharing a set of cultural traits. |
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| Socially transmitted patterns of action and expression. Material culture refers to physical objects, such as dwellings, clothing, tools, and crafts. Culture also includes arts, beliefs, knowledge, and technology. |
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| The study of past events and changes in the development, transmission, and transformation of cultural practices. |
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| The historical period characterized by the production of tools from stone and other nonmetallic substances. It was followed in some places by the Bronze Age and more generally by the Iron Age. |
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| The period of the Stone Age associated with the evolution of humans. It predates the Neolithic period. |
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| The period of the Stone Age associated with the ancient Agricultural Revolutions. It follows the Paleolithic period. |
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| People who support themselves by hunting wild animals and gathering wild edible plants and insects. |
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| The change from food gathering to food production that occurred between 8000 and 2000 BCE. Also known as the Neolithic Revolution. |
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| The geological era since the end of the Great Ice Age about 11,000 years ago. |
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| Structures and complex of very large stones constructed for ceremonial and religious purposes in Neolithic times. |
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| The largest and most important city in Mesopotamia. It achieved particular eminence as the capital of the Amorite King, Hammurabi in the 18th century BCE and the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in the 6th century BCE. |
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| The people who dominated southern Mesopotamia through the end of the 3rd millennium BCE. They were responsible for the creation of many fundamental elements of Mesopotamia. Culture-irrigation, cuneiform, religious conceptions-taken over by the Semitic successors. |
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| Family of related languages long spoken across parts of western Asia and northern Africa. In antiquity these languages included Hebrew, Aramaic, and Phoenician. The most widespread modern member of the Semitic family is Arabic. |
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| A small independent state consisting of an urban center and the surrounding agricultural territory. A characteristic political form in early Mesopotamia, Archaic and Classical Greece, Phoenicia, and early Italy. |
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| Amorite ruler of Babylon (1792-1750 BCE). He conquered many city-states in southern and northern Mesopotamia and is best known for a code of laws, inscribed on a black pillar, illustrating the principles to be used in legal cases. |
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| In the governments of many ancient societies, a professional position reserved for men who had undergone the lengthy training required to be able to read and write using cuneiforms, hieroglyphics, and other early, cumbersome writing systems. |
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| A massive pyramidal stepped tower made of mudbricks. It is associated with religious complexes in ancient Mesopotamian cities, but its function is unknown. |
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| Small charm meant to protect the bearer from evil. Found frequently in archaelogical excavations in Mesopotamia and Egypt, amulets reflect the religious practices of the common people. |
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| A system of writing in which wedge-shaped represented words or syllables. It originatedin Mesopotamia and was used initially for Sumerian and Akkadian but later was adopted to represent other languages of western Asia. Because so many symbols had to be learned, literacy was confined to a relatively small group of administrators and scribes. |
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| The central figure in the ancient Egyptian state. Believed to be an earthly manifestation of the gods, he used his absolute power to maintain the safety and prosperity of Egypt. |
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| Egyptian term for the concept of divinely created and maintained order in the universe. Reflecting the ancient Egyptian's belief in an essentially benificent world, the divine ruler was the earthly grantor of this order. |
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| A large, triangular stone monument, used in Egypt and Nubia as a burial place for the king. The largest pyramid's erected during the old kingdom near Memphis with stone tools and compulsory labor, reflect the Egyptian belief that the proper and spectacular burial of the divine ruler would guarantee the continued prosperity of the land. |
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| The capital of Old Kingdom Egypt, near the head of Nile Delta. Early rulers were interred in the nearby pyramids. |
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| Capital city of Egypt and home of the ruling dynasties during the middle and New Kingdoms. Amon, patron diety of Thebes, became one of the chief gods of Egypt. Monarchs were buried across the river in the Valley of the Kings. |
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| A system of writing in which pictorial symbols represented sounds, syllables, or concepts. It was used for official and monumental inscriptions of Egypt. Long period to learn, literacy in hieroglyphs was confined to relatively small groups of scribes and administrators. Cursive symbol-forms were developed for rapid composition on other media, such as papyrus. |
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| A reed that grows along the banks of the Nile River in Egypt. From it was produced a coarse, paperlike writing medium used by the Egyptians and many other peoples in the ancient Mediterrenean and Middle East. |
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| A body preserved by chemical processes or special nature circumstances, often in the belief that the deceased will need it again in the afterlife. In Egypt, bodies of people who could afford mummification underwent a complex process: removing organs, filling body cavities, dehydrating the corpse with natron, and wrapping the body with linen bandages and enclosing it in a wooden sarcophagus. |
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| Site of one of the great cities of the Indus Valley civilization of the 3rd millennium BCE. It was located on the northwest frontier of the zone of cultivation (in modern Pakistan), and acquisition of raw materials, such as metals and precious stones, from Afganistan and Iran. |
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| Largest of the cities of the Indus Valley civilizations. IT was centrally located in the extensive flood-pain of the Indus River in contemporary Pakistan. Little is known about the political institutions of the Indus Valley communities, but the large-scale of construction of Mohenjo-Darothe orderly grid of streets, and standardization of building materials are evidence of central planning. |
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