Mésopotamie is a term which comes from the Greek and who means: “between the rivers”. These rivers are the Tiger and Euphrate. Currently, most of Mésopotamie is in Iraq.

It understands two sectors. On the one hand, high Mésopotamie, or Djézireh (in Arabic the “island”), north of Baghdad, partly desert and stony zone, with oases (high Mésopotamie is divided between Turkey, Iraq and Syria). In addition, low Mésopotamie, vast marshy plain, drained by the two rivers forming a delta leading to Chatt Al-Arab and occupying a gulf in the process of filling since 7 ' 000 years. Low Mésopotamie very whole is understood in Iraq.

Agriculture and the breeding took their rise at the beginning of the Neolithic era (thousand-year-old Life), thanks to the ingeniousness of men able to design and arrange irrigation canals. Thousand-year-old Ve saw the concentration of the populations in important urban areas, prelude to the city-States, strictly treated on a hierarchical basis, the two millenia following. Directed by a hereditary sovereign, at the same time large priest and military chief, those knew an high degree of organization. The religion played a crucial role there: any event was regarded as a divine message, very human gesture took on a crowned function. With the construction of raw brick sanctuaries was born a true architecture, whose ziggourat, pyramid on floors, were the characteristic. Invented by the Sumerian ones, the writing - initially pictographic, then wedge-shaped - appeared in thousand-year-old IVe. It supported the administration and the accountancy of the city-States.

Mésopotamie was a hearth of civilization where the right and the literature radiated: codes of laws (of which that of various Hammourabi) and contracts (purchases, sales, exchanges, loans) were extremely elaborate; royal epopees (of Gilgamesh, in particular) and annals brought back the acts of war and the artistic or religious companies of the sovereigns.   Little by little were introduced between Tigre and Euphrate of new metals (copper), were proceeded (cast iron) and instruments (brick mould, potter's wheel), before the use of iron, as of XIIe century, does not upset the techniques (improvement of the plow, improvement of the armament).

As of the IX E thousand-year-old, the domestication of the Ovidae and the collection of wild cereals marked the beginning of the Neolithic revolution in Mésopotamie. These activities supported the sedentarisation of the populations and the formation of agricultural villages. The inhabitants practiced the irrigation, used tools initially comprising sickles and grinding stones, then hammered copper instruments and objects of ceramics. The evolution of the quality and the decoration of ceramics makes it possible to distinguish several types of cultures according to the areas and the times. With those of Hassouna and Samarra (thousand-year-old Life) succeeded, into high Mésopotamie, the culture of Halaf (medium of the thousand-year-old Life), and into low Mésopotamie, those of Eridou and El-Obeèd (fine of the thousand-year-old Life), which seem related with that of Samarra. These cultures remained sometimes until thousand-year-old IVe.

In thousand-year-old Ve the use of the seal and moulded copper appeared, as well as first great brick constructions. In thousand-year-old IVe, the diffusion of the pottery of Ourouk, without decoration, and of that, painted, of Djemdet-Nasr marks the appearance of an important culture in the South, whose center was Ourouk. At this point in time the first writing appeared and that the first great urban areas were formed, equipped with a political structure and economic already extremely developed.