What Are The Similarities Between Mesopotamia And
Egyptian...
Term Paper (Comparison of two ancient civilizations)
Egyptian and Mesopotamian Writing System
Joonhee Kim
1M111059 8
Ancient Civilizations of the World
Kawai Nozomu
The Egyptian civilization and the Mesopotamian civilization developed at roughly
the same time, by 3,100 BC, in nearby regions, probably with some indirect contact.
However, these two earliest states/civilizations are often compared in that it has
similarities, yet, also differences within the society and culture. Many aspects of the
two civilizations can be compared, for instance, geography, politics, culture,
economics, religion, arts, and etc. Among these various differences, I will be
focusing on the writing system of each civilization, as it was the key characteristics ...
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Writings may have been introduced from Mesopotamia, and played a major role for
inspiration; yet, there were differences in characters and material. The description,
developed form could be explained as the Egyptian writing was able to describe every
spoken language into a written language, even though it was not an alphabetical
system. Ancient Egyptian language had several forms and developed as time passed
by: Old Egyptian (2650 2135BC), Middle Egyptian (2000 1750BC), Late Egyptian
(1550 700), Demotic (600BC AD500), Coptic (AD300 present), and Greek (332
30BC). In fact, as the Coptic Church still uses the Coptic for liturgical languages,
the Egyptian language can be said that it is used for more than 5,000 years, which
is longer than any other languages. In addition, there were Hieroglyphs, which were
sacred carvings of the words of God. It was used shortly before 3100BC to 40AD
and was used for carving on walls and stones. Hieratic was a writing that was used
instead of Hieroglyphs when wring on Papyrus, and indeed, it was made to make
writing letters easier for priests and scribes. Demotic was a more simple writing
system than previous ones, which was used widely by ordinary people. However,
Coptic was used by only ruling elites, which described Ancient Egyptian with Ancient
Greek. Indeed, the archeological material and pictorial evidence from Egypt shows
that the writing were mainly monumental and centered on the ruling group, religion,
and on the symbols of Egypt as a single polity . This explains a clear comparison in
the usage of the written system of Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations, which
further can be interpreted within its politics as the Egyptian had a more centralized
ruling