Mesopotamia, Land of rule, land of strife
... Mesopotamia was so vulnerable. Also it is visible in document eight how war oriented they were as shown by an Assyrian likely bearing down on an enemy of sorts with bow drawn. A possible bias here is it is possible the artist who made this was trying to portray the Assyrians as gallant war heroes. War and invasion was a constant source of strife. The Mesopotamians were threatened by invaders who were still nomadic and were very battle oriented. A quote on this can be found in document one “The fox could not build his own house so he came to the house of a friend as a conqueror” showing that these invaders were nomadic. The potential for bias here lies in once again ethnocentrism because the quote could have been translated in a manner that possibly alluded to a modern culture. Also the Mesopotamians were sometimes inclined to invade other places as stated in document two they conquered Dilmun (India) and wished the next leader to do so also. Bias in this document could be located in the presentation of the extremeness of the adjectives for if they had been less extreme a different message entirely would be conveyed. There was also strife on a more cultural level. Some people despised involvement in others conflicts such as in document three where a father warns his son that if he got involved in others disputes he would be called upon to perform many duties in the settling of such a dispute. Possible bias here is that the father was a timid man afraid of conflict, not showing the morale of an average Mesopotamian. A really useful document would be a document that was a journal of the daily hardships common Mesopotamians faced. Though Mesopotamia was surely a land of strife, with a government, a fairly set system, and other advantages it was not quite the horrible place of residence it may seem. More so than a land of strife Mesopotamia was “Home of the Rule of Law.” With Hammurabi’s code Mesopotamia became the first civilization with a written code of laws. An example of Hammurabi’s code can be found on Document seven where four laws and their punishments were stated. Bias here could be once again ethnocentrism because any direct translation is done with a bias towards making more sense in the language into which it is being translated, possibly missing another meaning to the words. The punishments were important because it made the system significantly more just than normal because punishments could not be made up on the spot if they were unfair. That was just Hammurabi’s laws from Babylon. In other places in Mesopotamia there soon was law like that also...