- agriculture: the domestication of plants and animals
- city-states: a city and its surrounding farmlands, with its own leaders and government
- cultural diffusion: the spread of ideas from one place to others
- cuneiform: an ancient wedge-shaped script used in Mesopotamia and Persia
- dikes: an embankment of earth and rock built to prevent floods
- Euphrates: a river that begins in Turkey, flows through Syria and Iraq, and empties into the Persian Gulf
- irrigation: the use of connected ditches, canals, dams, and dikes to move water to dry areas.
- labor: productive activity, esp. for the sake of economic gain
- Mesopotamia: an ancient land in southwestern Asia; located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers
- monarchy: the system of government in which a king or queen rules
- Moses: phrophet and lawgiver who, according to the Bible, led the Israelites out of Egyptian captivity and received the Ten Commandments
- Phoenicians: of or relating to ancient Phoenicia or its people, language, or culture
- Sargon: warrior who found the Akkadian Empire and so became the first ruler of an empire in the Fertile Crescent
- scribe: a person who writes
- surplus: an extra supply
- Tigris: a river in southwestern Asia; begins in eastern Turkey and joins the Euphrates river
- ziggurat: a huge mud-brick temple built by the ancient Sumerians