GEOGRAPHY
The
area known as Mesopotamia—Greek for "land between the
rivers"—encompasses the territory in and around the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers and their tributaries. The rivers stretch some 1,700 miles to the
southeast, from their headwaters in Turkey to their common mouth on the Persian
Gulf.
The region is bounded to the north and east by the Taurus and Zagros mountains, and to the west by the great Syrian Desert, and roughly corresponds with modern Iraq, northeastern Syria, and southeastern Turkey. In antiquity, the world's earliest urban centers develop in Sumer and Akkad, or Babylonia to the south, and later in Assyria to the north.
The region is bounded to the north and east by the Taurus and Zagros mountains, and to the west by the great Syrian Desert, and roughly corresponds with modern Iraq, northeastern Syria, and southeastern Turkey. In antiquity, the world's earliest urban centers develop in Sumer and Akkad, or Babylonia to the south, and later in Assyria to the north.
