Agriculture of Ancient Mesopotamian civilization

The Mesopotamian economy, like all pre-modern economies, was based primarily on agriculture.

The Mesopotamians grew a variety of crops, including barley, wheat, onions, turnips, grapes, apples and dates. They kept cattle, sheep and goats; they made beer and wine. Fish were also plentiful in the rivers and canals.

The rivers Tigris and Euphrates, and their numerous branches, made farming possible in Mesopotamia. However, they could be wild rivers, and floods were frequent. At the same time, the hot, dry climate meant that year-round irrigation was needed to grow crops.

The Euphrates river runs through a hot and dry landscape in Mesopotamia

(Sergeant James McCauley, US military)

Irrigation is needed to bring the arid Mesopotamian landscape to life (photo: jamesdale10)

The Mesopotamians were the first people to attempt to control water on a large scale by the use of an integrated system of dykes, reservoirs, canals, drainage channels and aqueducts. Maintaining, repairing and extending this system was seen as one of the prime duties of a king. Scribes and overseers managed the projects, and the common people were dragooned into working on them through the system of forced labour (or corvee ). The water control system was built up generation by generation, covering an ever wider area and involving an ever denser network of waterways.

As a result of the large and concentrated population which grew up in Mesopotamia, farming was carried out by peasants rather than by slaves (mass slavery tends to be a response to a shortage of labour). In early times these were bound to the land as temple or royal serfs; later, some became free farmers, owning their land outright, but many farmed estates owned by kings, temples, high officials and other wealthy members of the ruling classes. All remained liable to forced labour on irrigation projects, or on the construction and maintenance of temples, palaces and city walls.

Until the spread of the use of iron, in the first millennium BC, farming implements were made of stone and bone - as they had been during the Stone Age. Metals such as bronze were far too expensive to use in this way, while copper was too soft for most uses. Wood was also quite rare, as there is little tree cover in the region. However, the soil of Mesopotamia, once watered, is easy to work, and agriculture was highly productive.

if u like the post please like and shear