MESOPOTAMIA
Map
of Mesopotamia c.2000-1600 BC :
This
general map of Mesopotamia and its neighbouring territories roughly
covers the period between 2000-1600 BC. It reveals the concentration
of city states in Sumer, in the south.
This
is where the first true city states arose, although the cities of
northern Mesopotamia and Syria were roughly contemporaneous. However,
the latter remained relatively minor states with a less intensive
level of development until the collapse of Sumerian civilisation.
In
the ensuing power vacuum, cities such as Ashur (one of the three
main Assyrian cities), Ebla, and Babylon (both Amorite cities) quickly
grew in wealth and strength. Shubat-Enlil, in the Khabur river valley
in northern Mesopotamia was the rapidly-developed capital of Shamshi-Adad's
kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia in the nineteenth century BC. Before
that it had been a town of the Halaf culture and the capital of
a minor state called Apum.
![](Map1800BC.jpg)