Before the golden age of Islam-
Before the Islamic empire Baghdad was called Babylon and was in the area called Mesopotamia. We looked at a map of the world and identified the region that was Mesopotamia. We looked at the paths of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and discussed why civilisations developed in that region.
We learned about how the Mesopotamians became so successful. They were the first civilisation to develop writing using symbols to represent sounds. The writing system was made up of a series of wedge-shaped marks which would have been made by a stylus in soft clay. The word cuneiform means ‘wedge-shaped’, from the Latin ‘cuneus’ meaning wedge and ‘forma’ meaning shape. With this writing they could record lots of information about their harvest and how much grain they had sold. They could pass the information they had stored down to future generations. We then listened to one of the first stories ever written down – The Epic of Gilgamesh.
Finally, we made some cuneiform writing on squares of clay using the cuneiform ‘alphabet’. Look on the next page to see some of our designs. We found it really challenging and wondered how Mesopotamian people could write using this system!
