Ancient

Uruk was one of the
most important cities (at

one time, the most
important) in
ancient Mesopotamia.
According to the Sumerian
King List, it was founded by
King Enmerkar sometime
around 4500 BCE. Located in
the southern region
of Sumer(modern day
Warka, Iraq), Uruk was known in the Aramaic language
as Erech which, it is believed, gave rise to the modern name for the
country of Iraq (though another likely derivation is Al-Iraq, the Arabic
name for the region of Babylonia). The city of Uruk is most famous for its
great king Gilgamesh and the epic tale of his quest for immortality but also
for a number of `firsts’ in the development of civilization which occurred
there.
Cuneiform is a system of writing first
developed by the
ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia c. 3500-
3000 BCE. It is considered the most significant
among the many cultural contributions of the
Sumerians and the greatest among those of the
Sumerian city of Uruk which advanced the
writing of cuneiform c. 3200 BCE. The name
comes from the Latin word cuneus for 'wedge'
owing to the wedge-shaped style of writing. In
cuneiform, a carefully cut writing implement
known as a stylus is pressed into soft clay to
produce wedge-like impressions that represent word-signs (pictographs)
and, later, phonograms or `word-concepts' (closer to a modern-day
understanding of a `word'). All of the great Mesopotamian civilizations
used cuneiform until it was abandoned in favour of the alphabetic script at
some point after 100 BCE, including:
 Sumerians
 Akkadians
 Babylonians
 Elamites
 Hatti
 Hittites
 Assyrians
 Hurrians
The first successful efforts to control the

flow of water were made in Mesopotamia and
Egypt, where the remains of the prehistoric
irrigation works still exist. In ancient Egypt,
the construction of canals was a major
endeavor of the pharaohs and their servants,
beginning in Scorpio's time. One of the first
duties of provincial governors was the digging
and repair of canals, which were used to flood
large tracts of land while the Nile was flowing
high. The land was checkerboarded with small basins, defined by a
system of dikes . Problems regarding the uncertainty of the flow of
the Nile were recognized. During very high flows, the dikes were
washed away and villages flooded, drowning thousands. During low
flows, the land did not receive water, and no crops could grow. In
many places where fields were too high to receive water from the
canals, water was drawn from the canals or the Nile directly by a
swape or a shaduf. These consisted of a bucket on the end of a cord
that hung from the long end of a pivoted boom, counterweighted at
the short end. The building of canals continued in Egypt throughout
the centuries. The Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia built city
walls and temples and dug canals that were the world's first
engineering works. It is also of interest that these people, from the
beginning of recorded history, fought over water rights. Irrigation
was extremely vital to Mesopotamia, Greek for "the land between
the rivers." Flooding problems were more serious in Mesopotamia
than in Egypt because the Tigris and Euphrates carried several times
more silt per unit volume of water than the Nile. This resulted in
rivers rising faster and changing their courses more often in
Mesopotamia.
The use of cosmetics in Egypt varied slightly
between social classes, where more make-up
was worn by higher class individuals as
wealthier individuals could afford more
cosmetics. Although there was no prominent
difference between the make-up styles of the
upper and lower class, noble women were
known to pale their skin using creams and
powders. This was due to pale skin being a sign
of nobility (especially in the Late and Graeco-
Roman Periods of Egypt) as lighter skin meant
less exposure to the sun whereas dark skin was
associated with the lower class who tanned
while taking part in menial labor such as
working in the fields. Thus, paler skin represented the non-working
noble class, as noble women would not work in the sun.
Upper-class Egyptian men and women

considered wigs an essential part of
their wardrobe. Wearing a wig
signaled a person's rank in Egyptian
society. Although a shaved head was
a sign of nobility during most of the
Egyptian kingdoms, the majority of
Egyptians kept their heads covered.
Wigs were worn in place of
headdresses or, for special occasions,
with elaborate headdresses. Egyptian
law prohibited slaves and servants
from shaving their heads or wearing
wigs.
The base of an Egyptian wig was a fiber-netting skullcap, with

strands of human hair, wool, flax, palm fibers, felt, or other materials
attached. The wig hair often stuck straight out from the skullcap,
creating large, full wigs that offered wearers protection from the
heat of the sun. Most often black, wigs were also other colors.
Queen Nefertiti, who lived during the fourteenth century b.c.e., was
known for wearing dark blue wigs, and festive wigs were sometimes
gilded, or thinly coated in gold.
A water clock or clepsydra (Greek κλεψύδρα from κλέπτειν kleptein,
'to steal'; ὕδωρ hydor, 'water') is any timepiece by which time is
measured by the regulated flow of liquid into
(inflow type) or out from (outflow type) a
vessel, and where the amount is then
measured.
Water clocks are one of the oldest time-
measuring instruments.[1] They were invented
in ancient Egypt. The bowl-shaped outflow is
the simplest form of a water clock and is
known to have existed in Babylon and
in Egypt around the 16th century BC. Other
regions of the world,
including India and China, also have early
evidence of water clocks, but the earliest
dates are less certain. Some authors,
however, claim that water clocks appeared in
China as early as 4000 BC.[2]

Ancient

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Ancient

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Uruk was one of the

most important cities (at

The first successful efforts to control the

Upper-class Egyptian men and women

The base of an Egyptian wig was a fiber-netting skullcap, with

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