Ancient History: Sumer and Akkad, Babylonia, Assyria

I started out meaning to do this as three separate units: Sumer and Akkad, then Babylonia, then Assyria. But so many of the resources we used discussed all of the civilizations together, so I ended up doing the same.

We started the unit by reading:

• Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History pages 110-113
• Story of the World: Chapter 3
• Story of the World: Chapter 5

After that, we went through one of the following periodically while continuing to work our way through other resources of interest:

• Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History page 132
• Story of the World: Chapter 7 
• Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History pages 146-149
• Story of the World: Chapter 8
• Story of the World: Chapter 16
• Usborne Internet-Linked Encyclopedia of World History pages 150-151
• Story of the World: Chapter 17
• I note that Chapter 17a is about Nebuchadnezzar's insanity. SOTW uses the Bible as a primary source for this story, and it is the only historical reference that seems to refer to his madness. While I did include the story here, I discussed it as one of the places where the historical narrative may be true or may be myth.

Nonfiction books we enjoyed:

• The Tigris and Euphrates: Rivers of the Fertile Crescent by Gary Miller (956.7 Mil)
• Write Around the World: The Story of How and Why We Learned to Write by Vivian French and Ross Collins (411 Fr)
• The Ancient Near East by Rebecca Stefoff (939.4 Ste) - Chapter 1 covers Mesopotamia

Fiction and myth books we enjoyed:

• Pepi and the Secret Names by Jill Paton Walsh and Fiona French
• The Three Princes retold by Eric A. Kimmel (398.2 Three Princes Kim) 
• Ishtar and Tammuz: A Babylonian Myth of the Seasons by Christopher Moore (398.2 Ishtar Moo) 
• The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor retold by John Yeoman, illustrated by Quentin Blake (398.208 Arabian Nights Yeo) - this was done as a longer read aloud 
• The Gilgamesh trilogy by Ludmila Zeman: Gilgamesh the King, The Revenge of Ishtar, The Last Quest of Gilgamesh (398.208 Gilgamesh Zem)
• Note: I would have liked to have included an Aladdin story, but my daughter was pretty much done with this time and place, so we moved on.

Documentaries we enjoyed:

• Ancient Civilizations for Children: Ancient Mesopotamia (935 Anc) - This has several bibilical references

Activities we enjoyed:

• Making a clay tablet with air-dry clay and trying to write in our own form of heiroglyphics
• Baking sebetu rolls (recipe found on page 80 of Ancient Egyptians and Their Neighbors

Following along in history? Go back to the main Ancient History page.