What were the differences between the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations?

Answer 1

They both based their culture on religion. The Mesopotamians feared their gods because their gods punished them for wrong doings like making the river flood unpredictably. In Egypt, they accepted their gods, but didn't fear them. They viewed the world an consistent and peaceful because that's all they had known. The Nile flooded every year which helped the agriculture. Both civilizations were polytheistic, which means worshipped more than one god. The Mesopotamians followed the Code of Hammurabi, a law system. The egyptians did not have a law system set in stone. The Mesopotamians had a defined social grouping system, while the egyptians did not. There was a social grouping system, but it wasn't as complex or official. Women were held higher in Egypt, but still not as high as the men. Not much about mesopotamian women is known because they were not written about, but we know that they were much lower then men were. In Mesopotamia, the kings represented the gods, while the Egyptian kings were viewed as gods.

Answer 2

AnswerSimilarities: Priests are very influential in both societies, both worshiped polytheism and both societies had laws of honesty to obey, they had a place to worship their Gods. They both had civilization, irrigation, a calendar/writing system, and River Valley's that all flooded!

See differences below........

Egypt:

**pharaoh

**ramps/levers

**Menes

**number system (10)

**papyrus

**mummification

**Hieroglyphics

**pyramids

**dynasty

**protected

**believe in after life

**Chief God by the name of "Ra"

**calm (didn't really attack)

**Sun and Water Gods

**women had more opportunities

in life to rise higher life

**more prosperous

Mesopotamia Sumer:

**cuneiform

**arch

**ziggurats

**city-state

**less protected

**number system (60)

**invented wheel

** Chief by the mane of "Enlil"

**prone to attack

**no gender equality

**worried about death

Answer 3

I wish to be fair on this one. The grandiose achievements of ancient Egypt sometimes overshadow the equally phenomenal, although somewhat smaller scale achievements of Ancient Mesopotamia.

The advantage of living along East Africa's Nile River Valley is that quarries, where Egyptian masons transported large stones on barges and other transport tools, were close by, somewhat, to the sites where the Egyptians worked on them. Ancient Mesopotamia was located in a region where large stone quarries were inaccessible, therefore they had to use smaller scale blocks and hence, there architectural wonders, although splendid in every way, look a bit small when compared to Egypt.

Both of these civilizations were excellent record keepers, and I surmise that Cuneiform was the earlier language written down, as much of African history is oral. The Ancient Mesopotamian was a great accountant, and our oldest bonds, yes bonds, date back to this civilization (they were bearer bonds that actually paid interest).

Both civilizations had priesthoods, but for some reason, those in Ancient Mesopotamia actually deferred to their Egyptian predecessors, as attested by letters such as a 1350 B.C.E. letter by the King of Kish to one Akhenaten, where he is referred to as the Great King (Akhenaten).

Mesopotamia and Egypt were both muck-farming cultures along river valleys, but those in Mesopotamia did a much better job of convincing many far & wide that to join empires like Sumer, Assyria, Babylonia, was a better alternative than staying isolated, while Egypt had the desert to separate them from their neighbors and hence adopted an attitude of extreme ethnocentrism.

Mesopotamia established the world's oldest cities without a doubt, as attested by Jericho, but some villages in Egypt were larger than some of Mesopotamia's smaller cities. Remember, a city needs a central market, and many of Egypt's trading endeavors were not uniform like those of Mesopotamia.

I wanted to focus on social institutions in this answer, because to compare religions would be too long to condense here.

Answer 4

In Egypt lower classes could change rank; this was not so in Mesopotamia.