Urban revolution in ancient Mesopotamia
Overview: In this two-to-two-and-a-half-page paper, you’ll explore how analyzing a primary source and a secondary source together helps you gain a richer or more complicated understanding of a particular aspect of the urban revolution in ancient Mesopotamia or Egypt.
Pick a Primary and a Secondary Source from:Primary: Either “Hammurabi’s Code, c. 1800 B.C.E.,” pp. 52-55 or “Be a Scribe: Egyptian Writing Lessons, c. 1100 B.C.E.,” pp. 55-59. Secondary: Either Reilly, “Cities and Civilization,” pp. 26-37 or Clay et al., “Women in the First Urban Communities,” pp. 20-24.
think about: (1) how secondary works can help us interpret primary sources, (2) the questions that researchers bring to primary sources, and (3) how these writers interpret primary texts to build arguments and offer new interpretations of the past.
This is an analytical essay that uses and interprets concrete evidence and ideas to build an argument and persuade us of its merits. It is not an opinion paper based on supposition. Introduce us to your sources, the concrete idea or topic you’ll explore, and your thesis.You might start the body of your essay by focusing on an idea or topic from your primary source and how it helped you see your secondary source in a different light. Another approach is to discuss a particular idea or argument from your secondary source and how it helped you approach and interpret your primary source.In all cases, show how reading your two texts together helps you better understand a particular aspect of the urban revolution in ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia.
