Developments in the Arts and Sciences

Mesopotamia

• Cuneiform (3300 BCE) - script using wedged shaped characters
  
• Gilgamesh Epic (2000 BCE) - one of the world's oldest literary works. This tells the story of a Sumerian king's quest to achieve immportality
• Pottery and metalworking
• Skilled astronomers
• developed a base-60 number system

Egypt

• Egyptian Book of the Dead - important religious text explaining what happened to the soul after death and how to reach a happy afterlife
• Hieroglyphics (3100 BCE) - script made of pictorial characters
  
• Pyramids (2630 BCE) - tombs for pharaohs
  
• Papyrus - paper made from the fibers of reeds

Phoenicians

• developed world's first alphabet (1100 BCE)

Greece

• Homer - poet who composed the Iliad and the Odyssey
• Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides - classical playwrights
• Socrates, Plato, Aristotle - philosophers
• Hippocrates - ancient Greek medicine
• Wide assortment of classical architecture and sculptures

Rome

• master road builders and engineers
• created many roads, fortifications, cities, and aqueducts
• imitated Greek cultu

Gupta Empire

• created the decimal system
• created the concepts of pi and zero

Byzantium

• Justinian ordered the creation of the Church of Hagia Sophia