We will be talking in-depth about Asia. Specifically, we will be talking about ancient Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, and the Indus River Valley, while next week we will cover the Asian Steppes and China, along with other minor civilizations.
Mesopotamia
To begin, we will look at Mesopotamia, one of the earliest civilizations known to man. Muggle history often describes it as the "cradle of civilization" or "the fertile crescent" and we study it for the same reason. Mesopotamia is Greek for "the land between rivers" because of its positioning between the Tigris and Euphrates. Despite the amount of history that I would love to cover regarding Mesopotamia, we will focus today on the city-state of Sumer.
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Here you can see a map of Mesopotamia in green, with the city-states and rivers included.
Sumer, located south of Akkad, was one of the most important city-states in Mesopotamia. Sumerian people were among the first in the world to create potions, specifically healing and defensive potions. The potions they created were so wild, and so magically potent, that when archaeologists found an amulet tainted with this magic in modern-day Iraq several thousand years later, they ended up in St. Mungo's for over three months. The strength of this magic is a testament to how strong the people of this time were, and how unforgiving their magic was. Modern-day potions tend to be much more controlled and diluted.
Magic was an important factor in Sumerian culture; however, they couldn't explain it the way we can today. In their minds, magic was a sign of godliness. They often revered those they saw using magic, as it was seen as a gift from the gods when in reality they were just wizards and witches. However, these witches and wizards wouldn't have known this themselves, so they often accepted this theory, and became immortalized as gods and heroes.
One such case is in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh was the fifth king of Uruk and is often described as two-thirds god, one-third man. This is, as usual, a Muggle misconception. He was, in fact, a wizard. He reigned for 126 years as king (old even in wizard standards for that time). Interestingly, Gilgamesh may have used magic to prolong his life. A magiarchaeologist and potioneer, Akim Malaam, found the remnants of a very weak immortality potion in Sumer that is currently being studied at the Iraqi Institute of Potioneering and Magical Medicine.
As far as other extraordinary feats, Gilgamesh is also said to have fought a beast known as the Huwawa (or the Humbaba). Magihistorians originally claimed that this beast was an ancient predecessor to our modern-day dragon species, but we now know from more accurate descriptions of the beast that it seems to correlate more with the Nundu.
As a side note, the story of Ja'mam Biba bears mentioning briefly before moving on from this area of the world. Ja'mam Biba was a Muggle woman living in Babylon (a city within Akkad, just north of Sumer). She wrote what is known as the Letter of Severance, which survives today, about the terrible pain she experienced when several of her teeth were pulled from her mouth and her eyes were gouged out of her head by a man who never touched her. This letter, in addition to being an invaluable resource for magihistorians and anthropologists, is also believed to have led to the creation of the Hammurabi Code, or the code of law for ancient Mesopotamia. However, the letter paints a darker picture as well.
