Married women in West Asia
Grindstone from Syria, about 1500 BC (Louvre Museum) Where did they live? Most married women in West Asia lived with their husband's family, so young married women took orders from [...]
Girls and young women in West Asia
West Asian girls: An enslaved woman stands behind a free Elamite woman who is spinning (600s BC) Women were oppressed In West Asia, even more than in most other state societies all [...]
Mining and miners in ancient West Asia
Skeleton of a salt miner from Sassanid Iran Who worked in ancient mines? Mining was a dangerous job. So most people in the ancient world didn't want to do it. [...]
Inheritance in West Asia – Mesopotamia and Iran
Inheritance: an Akkadian will (in the Louvre museum, Paris) A will written in cuneiform This is the will of a man named Baal-Karad from Syria, who lived about 1300 BC, in the [...]
West Asian people – families, schools, slavery
West Asian people: Ur-Nanshe, the king's chief musician in Mari, 2400s BC Oppression of women What we notice most about the way people lived in West Asia is the widespread [...]
Vis and Ramin – Iran – West Asian stories
A Parthian noblewoman This is a story from the Parthian Empire, but the earliest written version that we still have is by the Islamic poet Gorgani, about 1050 AD: King Mobad of Marv saw the beautiful [...]
Sohrab and Rustem – Iran – West Asian stories
Sohrab and Rustem: The death of Sohrab (Iranian painting) Where did this story come from? This story is probably an old Indo-European story that Persian people told even before they moved south into Iran [...]
Aramaic alphabet replaces cuneiform
This inscription from Kandahar, in Afghanistan, has Greek writing at the top, translated into the Aramaic alphabet at the bottom. The Mauryan Indian king Ashoka put it up about 258 BC. [...]
What is cuneiform? Mesopotamian writing
Cuneiform writing (now in LACMA, Los Angeles) Early Sumerian writing West Asia is probably the first place in the world where people figured out how to write. (Though Egyptian people began writing [...]
Where does Hebrew come from? Semitic languages
Early alphabets and Hebrew Some time possibly around 4000 BC, as West Asian people settled down in towns and villages, each group of people began to develop their own special language. This was partly [...]
