Differences in early river civilizations
... believed that their political leader, the pharaoh, was also important when it came to their afterlife. The Egyptians thought their pharaoh, was a monarch, and a god. The people made pyramids for the pharaohs, so that they might be comfortable in their afterlife. The social status of Egypt had mainly two levels. Priests and wealthy land owners were in the upper class, with of course, the pharaohs; and the poorer peasants were in the very lower class. Egyptians paid great respect to women, at least in the upper classes, in part because marriage alliances were vital to the preservation and stability of the monarchy. (Stearns, page 41) What the Nile River was to Ancient Egypt, the Tigris River and the Euphrates River were to Mesopotamia. The Fertile Crescent is a rich, food growing region in a part of the world, where most of the land is too dry to farm. There is some very good farmland in the Fertile Crescent between the Tigris River and the Euphrates River. Mesopotamians, unlike Egypt, developed city-states for their main form of government. These city-states are much like a county would be in a state of the United States today. They did not, for the most part, have one monarch. The authority was given to the city-states to make up their own form of government and their own laws. While religion did play a major role in the life of the Mesopotamians, it does not seem they were as concerned with it as the Egyptians were. Or at least, they were not as concerned with the afterlife. Like the Egyptians however, the Mesopotamians did believe in polytheism, that is, the belief in more than one god. They believed that gods were associated with the forces of nature. For instance, there was, in both civilizations, a god of fire, a god of water, a god of fertility, etc. Just as in Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia had the same social status. Priests and land owners on top, and peasants on the bottom. Mesopotamia, however, did not hold women in as high of regard as did Egypt. (Stearns, page 41) One defining feature of India is the Himalaya Mountains. Though not as importan...