WHI.3

Hieroglyphics

1. A hieroglyph is a character of the ancient Egyptian writing system. Logographic scripts that are pictographic in form in a way reminiscent of ancient Egyptian are also sometimes called "hieroglyphs". 2. The Egyptian hieroglyphic script was one of the writing systems used by ancient Egyptians to represent their language. 3. Because of their pictorial elegance, Herodotus and other important Greeks believed that Egyptian hieroglyphs were something sacred, so they referred to them as 'holy writing'.

Ziggerat

1. A ziggurat is a massive structure built in ancient Mesopotamia and the western Iranian plateau. 2. The core of the ziggurat is made of mud brick covered with baked bricks laid with bitumen, a naturally occurring tar. 3. It had the form of a terraced step pyramid of successively receding stories or levels.

Abraham

1. Abraham, originally Avram or Abram, is the common patriarch of the three Abrahamic religions. 2. In Genesis 22 he is ordered by God to sacrifice his son Isaac as a test of faith, a command later revoked. 3. Moses was the main founder of Judaism, but Jews can trace their history back as far as Abraham.

The Huang Ho Valley

1. China's second longest river. 2. Its mouth is the Gulf of Bohai. 3. The river is called the Yellow River, named for the color of the silts that are carried downstream in its flow.

Cuneiform

1. Cuneiform is a system of writing first developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia c. 3500-3000 BCE. 2. Cuneiform was used by people throughout the ancient Near East to write several different languages. 3. Cuneiform was first developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia around 3,500 B.C.

Hammurabi

1. Hammurabi's Code was proclaimed at the end of his reign and carved onto a massive, finger-shaped black stone stela (pillar) that was looted by later invaders and rediscovered in 1901 by a French archaeological team in present-day Iran. 2. Hammurabi was the sixth king in the Babylonian dynasty, which ruled in central Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) from c.1894 to 1595 B.C. 3. His family was descended from the Amorites.

Torah

1. It is the central and most important document of Judaism and has been used by Jews through the ages. 2. According to dating of the text by Orthodox rabbis, this occurred in 1312 BCE; another date given for this event is 1280 BCE. (writing date.) 3. It is clothed with embroidered fabric (Askenazic) or cases (Sephardic) and kept in a special cabinet called an ark.

Moses

1. Moses is a prophet in the Abrahamic religions. 2. After the Ten Plagues, Moses led the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt and across the Red Sea, after which they based themselves at Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments. 3. He was born in Egypt during the period in which the Israelites (Hebrews) had become a threat to the Egyptians simply because of their large population.

Pyramids

1. The Egyptian pyramids are ancient pyramid-shaped masonry structures located in Egypt. 2. The ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids may have been able to move massive stone blocks across the desert by wetting the sand in front of a contraption built to pull the heavy objects, according to a new study. 3. The ancient Egyptians built pyramids as tombs for the pharaohs and their queens.

Euphrates Rivers

1. The Euphrates is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. 2. Transcript of The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers were very important for ancient civilizations. 3. It comprises the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which follow roughly parallel courses through the heart of the Middle East.

The Indus River Valley

1. The Indus Valley Civilization or Harappan Civilization was a Bronze Age civilization mainly in the northwestern regions of South Asia, extending from what today is northeast Afghanistan to Pakistan and northwest India. 2. The Indus Valley Civilization was an ancient civilization located in what is Pakistan and northwest India today, on the fertile flood plain of the Indus River and its vicinity. Evidence of religious practices in this area date back approximately to 5500 BCE. 3. The Indus Valley was home to one of the world's first large civilisations.

Nile River

1. The Nile is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It is commonly regarded as the longest river in the world, though other conflicting sources cite a 2007 study that gave the title to the Amazon River in South America. 2. The average Water level height is 8 to 11 metres deep. 3. Its sources are the Blue Nile and the White Nile.

Tigris

1. The Tigris is the eastern member of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. 2. Our word Tigris comes from an Old Persian word that can be translated as "fast" or "arrow-like". 3. Rising in the mountains of southern Turkey, the Tigris flows southeast through Iraq, where in the southern part of that country it merges with the Euphrates to become the Shatt al Arab, which then flows to the Persian Gulf.

Mesopatamia

1. This region is known as the Fertile Crescent or land between the rivers-the Tigris and Euphrates. 2. The name Mesopotamia comes from ancient Greek words meaning "between rivers"--which exactly describes its situation. 3. Mesopotamia (from the Greek, meaning 'between two rivers') was an ancient region in the eastern Mediterranean bounded in the northeast by the Zagros Mountains and in the southeast by the Arabian Plateau, corresponding to today's Iraq, mostly, but also parts of modern-day Iran, Syria and Turkey.