THE WORLD'S FIRST AQUEDUCT
Most of the world believes that the Romans invented and built the world's first aqueduct.
That is not true. When Rome was nothing but a cow path, the Assyrian King Sennacherib (Suen
Akhiihe Ghareeba (The god Suen caused his brothers to depart) (ruled 705-681 B.C.) built an aqueduct 30 miles long to carry pure mountain spring water from the mountains around Dohuk to his palaces in Nineweh. The aqueduct was built from more than two million stones and waterproof cement and watered the king's gardens as well as the palaces.
THE WORLD'S FIRST PONY EXPRESS SYSTEM
The Assyrians built a series of small forts, or outposts, all over their empire, each a day's ride from its nearest neighbor. In addition to being staffed by a small cadre of soldiers, each of these posts kept a healthy supply of fresh horses on hand. This was so that intelligence from one part of the empire could be brought to the king's attention at speeds faster than ever before because it could be relayed from post to post nonstop.
These outposts also doubled as "motels" (or dare we say "horsetels" or "hotels") for merchants and itinerant travelers.
All subsequent empires in the Middle East maintained a similar system.
SCHOOLS IN MESOPOTAMIA
Most schools in Ancient Mesopotamia, from the time of the Sumerians to the end of the neo-Babylonian Empire, were one-room jobs, with all age groups in the one room under one teacher. Often, the teacher would assign some of the older, more advanced students to act as tutor, or "big brother" to the younger students. Most of the students were male, but occasionally girls were allowed to attend.
Originally, only the sons (and sometimes daughters) of royalty and/or other high placed notables attended school, and the schools were held in the palaces of the ruler and/or in one or more of the local temples. Overtime, however, as the economies grew and diversified, the need for ever more scribes gave rise to a multitude of private schools--all modeled after the original one-room schools.
Discipline in Mesopotamian schools was extremely strict, and the teacher had absolute authority over the students--even if they were the sons or daughters of the king. The teacher usually carried a staff of some sore, and often used it to whack a student for the slightest error, or out of place comment. More serious disciplinary problems would be handled by the "master of the whip" whose job was pretty well described by his title. The pic below is what an average school in Mesopotamia would look like.
KALHU: THE WORLD'S FIRST "WEST POINT."
The ancient Assyrians are often thought of as being the "Spartans" of the ancient Near East. Their military conquests, of course, are legendary, but the back bone of Assyria's military successes was a professional officer corps. To supply the army with a steady stream of highly-trained professional officers, a former capital of Assyria, Kalhu, became the world's first "West Point" or "Sandhurst" type of entity. Potential crown princes were also often sent to Kalhu for training.
Kalhu was located on the Tigris, just south of Nineweh.
THE WORLD'S FIRST LIBRARY
Mesopotamian kings had kept archives of official government documents from at least 2,000 B.C., however the ASHURBANIPAL of our story built the world's first true library where he collected writings for all over the empire, and then filed it in shelves based on subject matter.
Ashurbanipal's library therefore became the model for all future libraries.
A POPULAR BOARD GAME IN ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA: TWENTY-TWO SQUARES
Archaeologists have been puzzled as to exactly how this game was played, because the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians failed to leave us the directions. However, by looking at the physical evidence (as pictured below) I can make a guess as to how it was played.
First, as the picture shows, it was a game for just two people and each player started with seven buttons, or pieces. The moves were determined by a roll of the dice, or I should say, the die, because they only used one, not two like we do today for our board games.
The players probably started at the tail end of the larger portion of the board, then the object would be to place six of your pieces in the top portion of the board.
However, one of your opponent's pieces landed on top of yours, you have to take that piece off the board.
Now, given that there's a bottleneck at the top of the board, there would more than ample opportunity for both players to eliminate pieces belonging to their opponent, thus making it very difficult to your pieces through the bottleneck and into the smaller section of the board. And, even these could be eliminated by your opponent before you filled up all 6 squares. Thus the challenge of the game.
