Akkadian art – Bronze Age Mesopotamia
Head of Akkadian king (maybe Sargon) When the Akkadians, from northern Iraq, conquered southern Iraq about 2400 BC, they unified all of Iraq - Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates [...]
What is a ziggurat? Mesopotamian architecture
Remains of the ziggurat at Warka, in Iraq, 3000 BC (before it was reconstructed) Like the Egyptians at the same time, Bronze Age Sumerians and Iranians around 3000-2500 BC devoted a lot of energy to building [...]
Parthian and Sassanid architecture – West Asia
Parthian architecture - the so-called Arch of Sapor - Parthians - Ctesiphon, Iraq, probably about 500 AD Romans and Parthians About 100 BC, the Hellenistic Greek kingdoms gave way to [...]
West Asian architecture – Ancient Mesopotamian architecture
Mesopotamian architecture: The Ishtar Gate of ancient Babylon, built during the Neo-Babylonian period (600s BC). Now in Berlin. Mesopotamian architecture Builders in Mesopotamia always had a serious problem. There was not [...]
Sumerian architecture – Mesopotamia
Sumerian architecture: the ziggurat at Warka (reconstructed by Saddam Hussein) Mud-brick and brick Like other people around the world, the Sumerians started to build big temples on artificial platforms around 3500 BC. [...]
West Asian beds – Mesopotamian houses
History of beds: Drawing of the grass bed inside a reed hut from Ohalo II (Galilee, 21000 BC) When were beds invented? When people came to West Asia from Africa about 60,000 BC, they [...]
Assyrian palaces – West Asian architecture
On the walls of one of the Assyrian palaces, Assyrian soldiers attack a town. Some are swimming, using balloons made of goatskins to hold themselves up. Palace of Ashurnasirpal II, Nimrud, [...]
Iranian science – Safavid Empire
Iranian science: A Safavid astrolabe from the 1600s AD New ideas come to Iran Iranian scientists in the Safavid Empire, and then in the country of Iran, were well placed to hear [...]
Ottoman science – astronomy and clocks
Taqi al-Din in his observatory Ottoman scholars built many libraries in Istanbul and in other cities of the Ottoman Empire. They translated many earlier books into Turkish or Arabic, like [...]
West Asian religion – Ottoman and Safavid, Sunni and Shiite
Shah Mosque, Ishfahan, Iran (1611-38) West Asia was divided into two big empires in the 1500s AD - the Ottoman Empire and the Safavid Empire. Both the Ottomans and the Safavids followed Islam, but they followed two different kinds of [...]
