Quiz 001

Episode 1 Quiz

Welcome to the quiz for Episode 1: The Tower of Babel. See what you remember about Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, and most of all, cuneiform by clicking “START” below!

1 / 15

In the 1890s CE, archaeologists discovered a large mass of _________ from around the 1340s BCE in Amarna, Egypt.

Gallic ewers

Persian lyres

beached trading vessels

cuneiform tablets

Chinese terra cotta figures

2 / 15

The 7th-century Assyrian monarch Ashurbanipal was a fierce conqueror who guzzled wine after dismembering his foes. We have extensive evidence that another of his hobbies was. . .

. . .an early version of pole vaulting.

. . .collecting and warehousing Mesopotamian texts.

. . .inventing more efficient designs for reed boats, based on Hurrian ones.

. . .breeding and entering into competitions with sheepdogs.

. . .making hats out of bulrushes from along the Euphrates.

3 / 15

The chronological order of Mesopotamia’s dominant civilizations, from oldest to youngest.

(1) Persia, (2) Babylon, (3) Sumer, (4) Assyria

(1) Sumer, (2) Babylon, (3) Assyria, (4) Persia.

(1) Babylon, (2) Assyria, (3) Persia, (4) Sumer

4 / 15

What are “tells?”

Another name for sheepfolds, a common feature of ancient Sumerian life.

Plants related to desert mesquite used by Sumerians as an analgesic.

Archaeological dig sites with multiple layers.

The wooden casing used to pack river clay into bricks.

5 / 15

The Sumerian city of Ur saw a major resurgence during these two centuries:

3400-3200 BCE

1100-900 BCE

1500-1300 BCE

5100-4900 BCE

2200-2000 BCE

6 / 15

The Bible’s historical books and Biblical archaeology generally agree that a key subset of ancient Judah’s population were forcibly relocated from Jerusalem to Babylon. During which century did this take place?

The 300s BCE.

The 900s BCE.

The 700s BCE.

The 100s BCE.

The 500s BCE.

7 / 15

Initially, writing appeared in the Ancient Near East in order to do what?

Writing arose in Sumer as a cryptographic way to exchange information about the movements of the Elamites to the east.

Proto-cuneiform writing first appears in the form of love poetry.

Writing helped record economic transactions and exchanges.

It helped reed boat surveyors record the shifts of the Euphrates.

Its purposes were apotropaic (or designed to ward off evil) inscriptions on temples.

8 / 15

Consider the following statement: “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” Who says this, and where does it appear?

Gilgamesh, or Bilgames, on a tablet from Sippar about the newly ascendant Akkadian regime.

Nabonidus, the 6th-century Babylonian king, on an inscription at Tayma, in relation to the Persian Empire.

The Old Testament God, in Chapter 11 of the Book of Genesis, about the beautiful and ancient city of Babylon, near modern day Baghdad.

Ashurbanipal, on a wall relief in the palace at Nineveh, in a castigation of the impious Hurrians.

9 / 15

The first named writer in the historical record lived in the early 2200s in Sumer. Her name was:

Mushezibti

Nintuda

Girin

Enheduanna

Siduri

10 / 15

A stone object, about the size and shape of a lipstick tube or pill bottle, with shapes carved into its sides, designed to be rolled onto a flat sheet of clay, is called what?

A giparu

A Mesopotamian straw

A cylinder seal

A picture rod

An etemenanki

11 / 15

On October 12th, 539 BCE, in the city of Babylon. . .

. . .the Persian leader Cyrus the Great invaded Babylon, deposed a decaying Babylonian regime, and allowed the Judahites to return home.

. . .the Etemenanki tower at the heart of Babylon was mysteriously destroyed by an unknown force.

. . .the resurgent city of Ur was in the midst of a cultural renaissance.

. . .Alexander the Great crested the slopes of the Zagros mountains and began the first major western expedition into the Persian plateau.

12 / 15

The end of this episode proposes that:

The Tower of Babel story is about the blasphemous Persians and their wicked leader.

The Tower of Babel story is about the decline of Second Temple Jewish solidarity during the rise of the Pharisees and Essenes and other splinter groups.

The Tower of Babel story is about the decline of cuneiform under the pressure of migrating language groups like the Aramaeans who used phonetic writing systems.

The Tower of Babel story is about the Ziggurat of Ur, rather than Etemenanki, the structure at the heart of Babylon.

13 / 15

The last king of Babylon, who had a bookish temperament and ruled from 556-539 BCE, was:

Sennacherib

Nabonidus

Tiglath-Pileser

Enheduanna

Sargon

14 / 15

The 3,100 BCE inscription that says “2. Sheep. God. Inanna,” discovered in the ruins of Uruk, probably means what?

Two lovers were as low as sheep in their supplications to Inanna.

Two sheep were donated to the temple of the goddess Inanna.

Inanna's breasts were as pale as sheep's wool.

The neighboring cities of Kish and Lagash were sheepish before Uruk's goddess, Inanna.

15 / 15

This monarch is the most famous ruler of Old Babylon, a civilization that rose in the 1900s and 1800s BCE.

Hammurabi

Shalmaneser

Labashi-Marduk

Nabopolassar

Kudur-Enlil

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