Mesopotamia, the "land between the rivers," occupies the fertile region between the Tigris and Euphrates in modern Iraq. Often called the "Cradle of Civilization," it produced some of humanity's earliest cities, writing systems, and legal codes. The first great civilization to emerge there was the Sumerian, around 4500 BCE in southern Mesopotamia. The Sumerians built independent city-states such as Ur, Uruk, Lagash, and Eridu, each ruled by a king called a lugal and centered on a massive stepped temple tower known as a ziggurat, which served as the dwelling place of the city's patron deity. They invented the wheel, the plow, and around 3200 BCE developed cuneiform, a writing system of wedge-shaped marks pressed into clay tablets that endured for over three thousand years across multiple Mesopotamian cultures.
Cuneiform tablets preserved everything from economic records to literature, including the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest known works of literature, which tells of a king's quest for immortality and includes a flood narrative predating the biblical account. Sumerian power eventually gave way to conquest by Sargon of Akkad around 2334 BCE, who created the first known empire by unifying the Sumerian city-states under Akkadian rule and spreading Akkadian as a lingua franca. After the Akkadian Empire fell, Babylonian power rose under Hammurabi around 1792 BCE, who issued the famous Code of Hammurabi around 1754 BCE, one of the earliest and most complete written legal codes. Its 282 laws covered property, trade, family, and criminal matters, with punishments varying according to social class.
To the north, the Assyrians built a fearsome military civilization renowned for iron weapons, siege warfare, and an efficient administrative system. At its height, the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 911 to 609 BCE controlled Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Levant. Among its lasting contributions was the Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, containing over 30,000 cuneiform tablets that preserved Mesopotamian literature, including the Epic of Gilgamesh, and remain essential for modern scholars. The final great Mesopotamian power was the Neo-Babylonian Empire from 626 to 539 BCE, which under Nebuchadnezzar II rebuilt Babylon into a magnificent city featuring the Ishtar Gate and the legendary Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Nebuchadnezzar also conquered Jerusalem and exiled the Jews, before Babylon itself fell to the Persian king Cyrus the Great in 539 BCE.