Compare And Contrast River Valley Civilization

The Neolithic Revolution was what paved the way for complex civilizations to emerge. With agriculture came permanent settlements,with permanent settlements came social stratification, and thus civilizations began to arise all over the world. The earliest of these societies developed near rivers for fertile farmland as well as fishing. Hence these civilizations were called River Valley Civilizations. Two very prosperous River Valley Civilizations were the Tigris and Euphrates and the Nile River, and although both civilizations were based around Rivers, they had their share of similarities and differences.Both Mesopotamia and Egypt differed in religion and politics but, shared similarities in social stratification.

Although both Egypt and Mesopotamia

The political structure of Egypt was very centralized where the Pharaoh was their sole leader. The Pharaoh decided all the laws and codes, collected taxes and protected the people of Egypt against foreigners. Having one ruler made it easier for Upper and Lower Egypt to be more unified, preventing any conflicts between the two. In contrast to the Mesopotamian Civilization, where it was split into many different city states. Each city state had its own king with its own laws, whereas in Egypt the entire Kingdom had to follow the same set of rules. And because there were many city states, there was often a lot of wars going on between them (due to the decentralization), unlike in Egypt where the Upper and Lower half was unified by having one leader. The citizens of Egypt also worshiped their Pharaoh like a god and considered him to be divining. The Pharaoh often had pyramids, statues and other monuments in his honor to express his divinity. In contrast to Mesopotamia where they built some monuments after their leaders, they did not worship or think their kings to be gods. Overall Egypt and Mesopotamia differed greatly in the way they ruled their civilizations,while Egypt was very centralized, Mesopotamia was

Both civilizations have their social stratification arranged in a pyramid, where power is given to few people at the top, and at each decreasing level of the pyramid, there is more people and less power. In both societies the most power went to the kings and pharaohs, then the priests and nobles, followed by the merchants and farmers, with the slaves and peasants remaining at the bottom. In contrast to another River Valley Civilization, Han China, where merchants were regarded as the lowest class (instead of peasants). This was due to the popular belief because that merchants were greedy and lazy, since they did not produce anything but rather traded goods with others to gain their wealth, contributing nothing to their society. Egypt and Mesopotamia were also both patriarchal societies limited the rights of women. In both societies women were expected to stay at home and raise their children. Both civilizations had the absence of women in government positions and other high ranking positions. Although in Egypt women were given slightly better treatment and more freedom than in Mesopotamia, they still remained a patriarchal society since men held the most powerful authority positions. In Egypt and Mesopotamia women were subordinate to men, as well as in Han China. In short the social stratification in Mesopotamia and Egypt were practically