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"Grandpa?" Laurie called, knocking on the study door.

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"It's dinnertime!" She opened the door and found Grandpa bent over his desk, as usual.

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He was an archaeologist and worked very hard.

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When he wasn't out traveling and researching, he was home in his study. "What are you doing, Grandpa?"

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"I’m tracing an ancient map of Mesopotamia," he said.

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"Meso-what?" Laurie peeked over his shoulder and saw a piece of tracing paper covered in wavy lines.

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Two lines were drawn in blue and made a sort of V. "What are those two squiggly lines?"

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"Mesopotamia was the name of a region in the Middle East, where human civilization arose thousands of years ago.

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These two lines are the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

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Thanks to them, humans in that area had water for farming, fish to eat, and mud and reeds to build houses.

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You may have heard of the Sumerians.

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They were the most powerful people there—in what became known as the cradle of civilization.

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The Sumerians may have lived in mud houses, but they were very sophisticated and we owe a lot to their inventions.

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For example, they developed the first writing system!

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They began writing with pictures. So to indicate a star, they would draw a picture of a star.

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And water would be written by drawing wavy lines, like the waves in the Tigris and Euphrates.

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Later they developed those pictures into symbols that represented ideas or objects.

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Eventually they created signs to represent the sounds of their language.

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Their writing looks choppy because it was pressed into clay tablets using thin tools made from reeds.

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After that they baked the tablets in the sun.

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In addition to being masters of language, the Sumerians were clever mathematicians

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who tried to use numbers to organize the world around them.

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They were especially keen on dividing time.

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Our calendar—with a 30-day month, 7-day week, 24-hour day, 60-minute hour, and 60-second minuteㅡis based on their math!

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Can you believe we owe so much to people who lived over five thousand years ago?"

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"No, but I can believe Mom will be mad at us if we don't go downstairs and eat dinner," Laurie said.

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"Your mother is like the great King Hammurabi of ancient Babylonia, which was an area of Mesopotamia," Grandpa said.

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"She lays down the laws around here!"

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"I've heard of him! Wasn't he the scary king who asked for 'an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth'?" Laurie shuddered.

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"Yes, I guess we might say he sounds scary now.

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But Hammurabi's laws kept society in order at a time when there was lots of fighting between tribes.

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I think his laws are interesting because they teach us about what was considered important in ancient Mesopotamia.

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For example, we know that people were expected to take responsibility for their work and actions.

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If a house collapsed and killed the people inside, the builder was put to death.

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But unfortunately, punishment wasn't always as clear-cut as it sounds.

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You were often able to escape a harsh sentence by paying a large fine.

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In ancient Babylonia it helped to be wealthy.

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Would you like to see pictures of Babylonia's capital?

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It was called Babylon and was one of the most impressive cities in Mesopotamia.

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Those huge structures are called ziggurats. They were built entirely out of mud bricks.

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They were probably very difficult to build.

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People took great care in building them, however, because they were made for worshipping gods.

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The steep sides were stepped and covered with beautiful gardens.

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At the top was a shrine. The most famous ziggurat is the temple to the god Marduk in the city of Ur.

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You recall the Tower of Babel from the Bible, don't you?

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In that story people tried to build a tower that would reach the heavens, but they failed in the end.

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Some believe the ziggurat in Ur is the basis of the biblical legend.

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The city of Ur, which is in present-day Iraq, is thought to connect to other stories from the Bible as well.

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It was the home of Abraham, and when archaeologists first discovered the ruins of Ur in the 1800s,

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they found evidence of a great flood that had likely wiped out most of the city.

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They believe this may have been the basis of the great flood story in the Bible as well.

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You know, the one that led to Noah building his ark.

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Wait a minute. I have something to show you from the excavation at Ur.

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A British archaeologist uncovered some of the grandest treasures of the ancient world when he found the temples and cemetery there in the 1920s and ’30s.

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The tomb of Lady Puabi, for example, was full of beautiful things.

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This royal woman was buried with all her riches, and was covered from head to foot in jewels and gold.

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Lady Puabi's real headdress is in a museum, but I have a replica.

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A replica is something that's made to look exactly like the real thing.

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Try this on for size, Lady Laurie."

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Grandpa leaned over and placed a delicate headdress decorated with dangling golden leaves, rings, and flowers on Laurie's head.

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"Laurie, didn't I send you to call Grandpa for dinner ten minutes ago?" Laurie's mom shouted.

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"What are you two doing up there? Dinner is getting cold!"

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"That's Lady Laurie to you, Mom!" Laurie said.

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She turned on her heel and strode out the door, her headdress jingling.