Egypt Vs Mesopotamia Essay

There are many similarities that characterize the two governments of Egypt and Mesopotamia. For example, both civilizations had manuscripts and inscriptions. These were written down to make sure that civilians would understand, follow, and obey their laws. These law writers were called Scribes. Their job would be writing things down. Sometimes, there were the only people in the land who were literate. This way, when people were caught disobeying a law, they could not escape the consequences. Also, both Egypt and Mesopotamia had to pay taxes. There were citizens in charge of collecting them. Moreover, the two had kings that were thought to be descendents from the gods. Both surmised that the kings were related gods in the skies. As to that
Egypt was a monarchy and Mesopotamia was a democracy. In Egypt, the Pharaoh was in charge of making laws and owned everything, meanwhile, in Mesopotamia, there were many kings in different city-states and they did not own people’s belongings. A difference is that the land was measured differently. In Mesopotamia, they divided the land into city-states. Also, both civilizations thought differently about their kings. In Egypt, the Pharaoh was considered a god. Meanwhile, Mesopotamia believed that the kings weren’t gods so they didn’t worship them as gods. At one point, when the Assyrians were expanding a lot, the city-state got cut up into provinces. The ancient egyptians wrote hieroglyphics about the profits, costs and laws civilians made. In Mesopotamia, the scribes would draw pictograms on clay boards. While Egyptians trusted their justice goddess to teach right from wrong among their citizens, Mesopotamians would follow Hammurabi's law that demanded and Eye for an Eye. With this law, the offended person would be free to do the same thing he suffered at the hands of the criminal. In Mesopotamia would have a voice and a vote for city matters as going to war or not meanwhile Egypt didn’t have a voice. Everything was decided by the Pharaoh. So after all, there are differences and similarities between these dissimilar civilizations that