DBQ Essay
By Joshua Yerdon
In ancient times there were many advanced civilizations, out of every ancient civilization that arose in the East, four civilizations really stood out, these civilizations excelled in many ways, Philosophy, religion, the creation of laws, and writing. Mesopotamia is one of the great cavitation’s that arose, it is located in the northern sector of Africa, they excelled in rule and law making. The creator of these laws was referred to as Hammurabi, the laws were based on an “eye for an eye” principle, meaning if you destroy the eye of another man, they shall destroy your eye. Every now and then there were exceptions to the rules, for example, if a man breaks the leg of another man he shall get his leg broke, unless the man is of lower social class, if this is the case then you simply pay a fine. When a man, or a person commits a crime it was often displayed for the town to see, this was an attempt to scare the people into obeying the rules/laws. Along with the development of laws, Mesopotamia was also known for their social classes, or a way of dividing people based on the nobleness of their birth, on the top of the social class there were the kings and priests/priestess, below them were the scribes, bellows them were the solders, then the farmers, and on the very bottom were slaves, and unskilled workers.
Egypt was another advanced civilization that arose in northern Africa, it is located in the northern sector of Africa as well, with a climate of hot, humid, and dry weather. Egyptians were mainly known for their writing system hieroglyphics, or a picture based writing system, and it was unable to be deciphered until the discovery of a stone with writing on it. This “stone” is called the Rosetta Stone, on it were languages, and how to translate the hieroglyphics, with the discovery of this stone, hieroglyphics