--- title: Mesopotamia: the first cities and writing — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Mesopotamia: the first cities and writing», a lesson of the history course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Mesopotamia means the land between the rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates, in what is now mostly Iraq. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/) / Mesopotamia: the first cities and writ… # Mesopotamia: the first cities and writing Lesson 3 of the history course of Mova's primary school: 21 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/0/) — Mesopotamia means the land between the rivers: the Tigris and the Euphrates, in what is now mostly Iraq. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/1/) — There, about 5,000 years ago, some of the first real cities in the world grew up. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/2/) — The land was dry, so farmers dug canals to bring river water to their fields. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/3/) — More food meant bigger towns, and cities like Uruk had tens of thousands of people. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/4/) — With so much grain and so many sheep to count, people needed a way to remember who owned what, like a shop writing down what you owe. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/5/) — So the Sumerians invented writing, first as little pictures of grain and sheep. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/6/) — Scribes pressed a cut reed into wet clay, making wedge-shaped marks called cuneiform. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/7/) — Children went to school to learn it, and some of their practice tablets still survive, mistakes and all. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/8/) — Over the city rose a ziggurat, a stepped tower of mud brick, and the Sumerians wrote down stories like the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest stories in the world. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/9/) — Mesopotamia means the land between the rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, in what is now mostly Iraq. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/10/) — Uruk, about 5,000 years ago, had tens of thousands of people, big temples and city walls, and is one of the first real cities in the world. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/11/) — Farmers dug canals to carry river water to their fields, which is called irrigation. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/12/) — The Sumerians invented one of the first writing systems about 5,200 years ago; it began as little pictures used to count grain and sheep. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/13/) — Scribes pressed a cut reed into wet clay, making wedge-shaped marks; the word cuneiform means wedge-shaped. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/15/) — Boys, and a few girls, learned to write at tablet-houses, and some practice tablets survive with mistakes and complaints about strict teachers. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/16/) — Each city had a ziggurat, a huge stepped tower of mud brick with a temple on top for the city's god. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/17/) — The Bible's story of the Tower of Babel was probably inspired by a real ziggurat in Babylon. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/18/) — The Sumerians counted in groups of sixty, which is why we still have 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/19/) — The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the oldest stories ever written down: a king loses his best friend Enkidu, searches for a way to live for ever and learns that all people die. - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/20/) — Gilgamesh includes a great flood in which a man builds a big boat, takes animals on board and sends out birds to find land. - [21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/3-mesopotamia-first-cities-and-writing/21/) — Many peoples tell flood stories, and the rivers of Mesopotamia really did flood badly. - ← previous: [The first farms and towns](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/2-the-first-farms-and-towns/) - next →: [Mesopotamia: wheels, laws and empires](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/4-mesopotamia-wheels-laws-and-empires/) - ↑ back to [History](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/history/)