Mesopotamia Jeopardy

The Fertile Crescent, Sumer, cuneiform, and Hammurabi's Code in a free Mesopotamia review. Copy the board and students buzz in with their phones.

6 categories · 30 clues · Final Jeopardy · everyone buzzes in from their phone

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Every clue on this board

This page is public, so anyone can read the answers — copy the board and swap a few clues before game day.

The Fertile Crescent

$200
Most of ancient Mesopotamia lies in this modern country, whose capital is Baghdad.
What is Iraq?
$400
Rich soil was left behind on the fields each year by these, when the rivers overflowed.
What are floods?
$600
Farmers dug these channels to carry river water to their fields.
What are irrigation canals?
$800
Growing more food than they needed gave farmers this, which let some people take other jobs.
What is a surplus?
$1,000
The Fertile Crescent curved from the Persian Gulf up and around to the shores of this sea.
What is the Mediterranean Sea?

Sumerian City-States

$200
Sumerians are credited with inventing this round device, used first for pottery and later for carts.
What is the wheel?
$400
A Sumerian city-state was led by this ruler, who was believed to rule on behalf of the gods.
What is a king?
$600
This Sumerian city-state, known for its great ziggurat, is named in the Bible as Abraham's home.
What is Ur?
$800
The Sumerians counted in groups of this number, which is why an hour has 60 minutes.
What is 60?
$1,000
Often called the first true city, this city-state was ruled by the legendary king Gilgamesh.
What is Uruk?

Cuneiform Writing

$200
Cuneiform was written by pressing marks into tablets made of this.
What is clay?
$400
Writers made cuneiform marks with this pointed tool, cut from a reed.
What is a stylus?
$600
People trained for years in school to read and write cuneiform were called these.
What are scribes?
$800
The word cuneiform comes from Latin and describes marks shaped like this.
What is a wedge?
$1,000
Cuneiform began as these simple drawings, each one standing for an object.
What are pictographs?

Ziggurats and Gods

$200
A ziggurat was a huge stepped tower with this kind of building on top.
What is a temple?
$400
Mesopotamians believed in many gods, a belief called this.
What is polytheism?
$600
Ziggurats were built from these, shaped from earth and water and dried in the sun or baked.
What are mud bricks?
$800
Each city-state had this special god who was believed to protect it.
What is a patron god?
$1,000
The goddess of love and war that Sumerians called Inanna was known to later Mesopotamians by this name.
Who is Ishtar?

Hammurabi's Code

$200
Hammurabi was king of this city.
What is Babylon?
$400
Hammurabi's Code is famous for this phrase describing punishment that matches the crime.
What is an eye for an eye?
$600
The code was carved on this kind of tall stone slab, set up for all to see.
What is a stele?
$800
Hammurabi's Code is usually counted as having this many laws.
What is 282?
$1,000
The best-known stone copy of the code is kept today in this Paris museum.
What is the Louvre?

Rise and Fall of Empires

$200
Around 2300 BC, this king of Akkad created what is often called the world's first empire.
Who was Sargon?
$400
These fierce warriors built an empire with iron weapons and made Nineveh their capital.
Who were the Assyrians?
$600
According to legend, this king built the Hanging Gardens for his homesick wife.
Who was Nebuchadnezzar II?
$800
In 539 BC, this Persian king conquered Hammurabi's old capital city.
Who was Cyrus the Great?
$1,000
The Assyrian king Ashurbanipal gathered thousands of cuneiform tablets at Nineveh into one of the first great these.
What are libraries?

Final Jeopardy — Between the Rivers

The name Mesopotamia means land between the rivers, and these are the two rivers it lies between.

What are the Tigris and Euphrates?

How to run this board

Mesopotamia is where the story of civilization usually starts, and this board covers why: farming between two rivers, the first city-states of Sumer, cuneiform writing on clay tablets, ziggurats and religion, Hammurabi and his code of laws, and the empires that rose and fell in the region.

Students often blur Sumer, Babylon, and Assyria together. After each column, take ten seconds to place the answers on a rough timeline on the board; by the end of the game the class has built the sequence themselves.

For a hands-on touch, give each team a lump of clay and a craft stick and let them press a cuneiform-style mark as their team signature before play begins.

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