Comparative Essay

Egypt & Mesopotamia Around 5,000 years ago lived two of the most memorable first civilizations. Egypt and Mesopotamia were very advanced for their time, with their advance agriculture and religious beliefs that were the start of revolution and an example for almost all cultures to follow. While both Egypt and Mesopotamia live in the same religion with similar climates, Mesopotamia had a very pessimistic outlook on their life, while Egypt has a much more optimistic outlook on life. The difference of their views were most likely due to the fact that Mesopotamia had random flooding, droughts, and other natural disasters that they would blame on their good. However, Egypt’s Nile River had a natural occurring flood cycle that Egyptians used to their agricultural benefit and thanked their gods for it. These views probably shaped all the rest of their society’s organization. First, let’s look at the differences in social classes. While both Egypt and Mesopotamia had slaves, Mesopotamia had kings, but Egyptians had a pharaoh. Mesopotamia did not have a centralized government but it was broken into many city-states with a king that ruled over each one of the city-states. With all of these different rulers it lead to constant internal fighting. On the other hand, Egypt had one pharaoh that ruled over all of Egypt. The pharaoh was looked at to have posed the spirit of the god Horus within them. Pharaoh’s jobs were to share the religion and to keep balance within the society. Unlike in Mesopotamia, Egyptian pharaohs could be men or women. These differences in governmental ruling is just the basis for the rest of the differences in these two societies. The fact that Egypt is more of a religious society that Mesopotamia can go back to the views that they share on the cause of natural disasters. Next, we will see the differences of gender roles in both societies. While both Egypt and Mesopotamia had a separation of genders, Egypt saw men and women largely equal, whereas in