Ancient Mesopotamia

From the first farming villages, about 7000 BCE, through Uruk's first cities and writing, Sumer, Akkad, Ur, Hammurabi's Babylon, the Kassites and the Assyrian empires, to Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon and its fall to Cyrus in 539 BCE, with Alexander's death in Babylon in 323 BCE as an epilogue. A sample timeline built from the sources cited on each moment, mostly their Wikipedia articles; not a definitive history. **How to read it.** Chapter headings mark the eras. Periods, empires and reigns are durations; inventions, writings, laws, cities, buildings and battles are moments, coloured by tag. **Dates.** Before about 1500 BCE they depend on the chronology: this timeline uses the conventional **middle chronology** (Hammurabi 1792–1750 BCE, the Hittite sack of Babylon 1595 BCE); the high and low chronologies put the same events decades earlier or later. Prehistoric dates are approximate, and each moment's **Date precision** says how its date is known. A moment known only to the year sits at the start of that year. The display is proleptic Gregorian; days known from Babylonian records keep the Julian date historians give beside them (**Original historical date**), about six days later in the sixth century BCE.

90 moments · 7000-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE – 0323-06-06T00:00:00Z BCE · by @athan · @athan

Moments

1. The first farming villages 7000-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
2. Jarmo 7000-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
3. Tell el-'Oueili 6500-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
4. Hassuna villages 6000-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
5. Irrigation canals 5500-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
6. Eridu founded 5400-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
7. Uruk: the first cities and writing 4000-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
8. Cylinder seals 3500-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
9. The White Temple at Uruk 3450-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
10. Wheeled wagons 3400-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
11. Writing: proto-cuneiform 3300-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
12. Counting in sixties 3200-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
13. The Warka Vase 3100-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
14. The Sumerian city-states 2900-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
15. Uruk at its height 2900-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
16. Gilgamesh, king of Uruk 2700-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
17. Enmebaragesi of Kish 2600-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
18. The Royal Cemetery of Ur 2550-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
19. The Standard of Ur 2500-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
20. The Stele of the Vultures 2450-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
21. Urukagina's reforms 2370-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
22. Lugalzagesi unites Sumer 2350-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
23. The Akkadian Empire 2334-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
24. Akkad, the lost capital 2330-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
25. Enheduanna, high priestess at Ur 2285-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
26. The Victory Stele of Naram-Sin 2250-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
27. Akkad falls 2154-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
28. The cylinders of Gudea 2125-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
29. The Third Dynasty of Ur 2112-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
30. The Great Ziggurat of Ur 2105-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
31. The Code of Ur-Nammu 2100-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
32. Sumerian poems of Gilgamesh 2080-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
33. Ur falls to Elam 2004-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
34. Amorite kingdoms and Hammurabi 2004-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
35. Assyrian merchants at Kanesh 1950-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
36. The Code of Lipit-Ishtar 1930-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
37. The Laws of Eshnunna 1920-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
38. The First Dynasty of Babylon 1894-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
39. The Old Babylonian Gilgamesh 1800-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
40. Plimpton 322 1780-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
41. Hammurabi conquers Larsa 1763-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
42. Hammurabi destroys Mari 1761-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
43. The Code of Hammurabi 1754-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
44. The Epic of Atrahasis 1640-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
45. The Venus tablet of Ammi-Saduqa 1630-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
46. Kassite Babylon and Middle Assyria 1595-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
47. The Hittites sack Babylon 1595-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
48. Letters to Egypt 1350-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
49. Tukulti-Ninurta I takes Babylon 1225-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE
50. The Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh 1200-01-01T00:00:00Z BCE