River civilisations

Between 5500 and 3200 years ago, along great rivers such as the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Nile, the Indus and the Yellow River, the first civilisations were born. Irrigated fields produced plenty of food, and villages grew into cities with temples, palaces and markets. To keep accounts and remember laws, people invented writing. Kings and pharaohs ruled whole nations and had enormous monuments built, such as the pyramids. With this age, history in the proper sense begins, because at last we have written records.

The era on a line: 25 events

1. about 4000 BC The first Sumerian cities
2. about 3200 BC Cuneiform writing
3. about 3200 BC Egyptian hieroglyphs
4. about 3100 BC The unification of Egypt
5. about 3000 BC Uruk, the great city
6. about 2800 BC The Egyptian calendar
7. about 2650 BC The Step Pyramid of Djoser
8. about 2600 BC The Standard of Ur
9. about 2600 BC Egyptian mummification
10. about 2560 BC The Great Pyramid of Giza
11. about 2500 BC The cities of the Indus Valley
12. about 2450 BC The drains and baths of Mohenjo-daro
13. about 2334 BC Sargon and the Akkadian Empire
14. about 2300 BC Trade between the Indus and Mesopotamia
15. about 2100 BC The Epic of Gilgamesh
16. about 2100 BC The Ziggurat of Ur
17. about 1800 BC Babylonian mathematics
18. about 1754 BC The Code of Hammurabi
19. about 1700 BC War chariots
20. about 1600–1046 BC The Shang dynasty
21. about 1479–1458 BC Hatshepsut, the woman pharaoh
22. about 1353–1336 BC The reign of Akhenaten
23. about 1279–1213 BC The reign of Ramesses II
24. about 1250 BC Writing on oracle bones
25. about 1200 BC The Bronze Age collapse

Did you know?

• Sumerian pupils went to a school called the ‘tablet house’, and on some tablets you can still read their exercises, full of mistakes.
• The 60 minutes in an hour and the 60 seconds in a minute come to us from the Babylonians, who counted in groups of sixty.
• The pyramid workers were given bread and beer every day: in ancient Egypt beer, which was only slightly alcoholic, was an everyday drink.

storiascopio.com/en/era/river-civilisations/ · free worksheet, you may photocopy it for your class

1. Put in order: write 1 next to the oldest and 5 next to the most recent.

• Sargon and the Akkadian Empire
• The Code of Hammurabi
• The reign of Ramesses II
• Egyptian hieroglyphs
• The Standard of Ur

2. Choose the right answer.

1. What did Sumerian scribes use to write on clay tablets?

   • An iron nail
   • A camel-hair brush
   • A pointed reed
   • A goose quill and ink

2. Who managed to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs?

   • The archaeologist Leonard Woolley
   • The pharaoh Ramesses II
   • The Frenchman Champollion
   • The architect Imhotep

3. Who worked on building the Great Pyramid of Giza?

   • Slaves in chains brought from abroad
   • Soldiers of the Hittite army
   • The people of Uruk
   • Teams of workers who were paid and fed

4. What ran beneath the streets of Mohenjo-daro?

   • The tombs of the kings
   • Secret grain stores
   • Tunnels for carts
   • Covered drains for dirty water

3. Match each person to what they did: write the right letter.

Storiascopio · texts by Ciro Simone Irmici, written with the help of AI and checked · sources in the online cards