Compare and Contrast Mesopotamia and Egypt

The ancient river-valley civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt share many similarities in their social, political, economic, intellectual, and cultural aspects, however, at the same time; both are very separate from one another. Mesopotamia developed first as a civilization without influence, while Egypt built off of the latter to create their own society, hence the shared traits of their educational system, government, religion, and social structure. But, the variable of location also takes place; once the basis of the civilizations were built, they branched off and continued to progress according to their own specific needs, which explains why the differences of the two lay in detail to the economy, intellect, government, and religion. Both Mesopotamia and Egypt shared certain aspects of their culture, due to the fact that Egypt based their original society off of Mesopotamia’s. The governments of both the civilizations were political monarchies, with a kind in Mesopotamia and a Pharaoh in Egypt. These governments gave the basis to the social structure, which started at the bottom with slaves and peasants, moving upward to the merchants and artisans, then the wealthy aristocrats, with the priest class presiding under the monarch. The educational system was only available for wealthy, upper class boys, who learned to write and went on to become scribes. The polytheistic faith also ran through both civilizations; the Egyptians and Mesopotamians believed in gods and goddesses who ruled over nature. These similarities were due to the basic society that Mesopotamia laid down for Egypt to later build off on; the plain and simple ideas that were adopted to the need of the civilization came from Mesopotamia. Although Mesopotamia and Egypt shared their basics of society, the differences lie in the details, where the simple ideas were fine-tuned to fit the needs of the society better. The government for both civilizations was a monarchy, however, due to geographical