Mesopotamia Word Search Printable

A Mesopotamia word search to print with its answer key, from the Tigris and Euphrates to Hammurabi and the ziggurat.

Name Date

Mesopotamia Word Search

Find every word hidden in the grid. Words go across and down.

0 of 16 words found

NFTAWENAILZSHEP

MTAQCADQNTHPFCL

PBRONZEGXIAIHFO

EOHEAFQHNGMIERW

TTXIYIRGJRMNPES

YTURUKCPEIUGSWN

ZETREFAHSSRKTBL

ULSILTNOORAGYDG

SARGONATRPBBLNP

NABABYLONDIWUTH

TYDTLMZFLOODSEB

SCRIBENINEVEHMO

IFYOANZSDLEPGPZ

PCUNEIFORMSAFLK

USSPLENFOCVLAEY

This grid is wider and taller than its box. Slide it to see every letter.To drag, hold the first letter for a moment, then slide.Keyboard: Tab to the grid, arrow keys to move, Enter on the first and last letter.

TigrisTIGRIS
BabylonBABYLON
UrukURUK
NinevehNINEVEH
SiltSILT
CuneiformCUNEIFORM
StylusSTYLUS
ScribeSCRIBE
SargonSARGON
HammurabiHAMMURABI
PlowPLOW
IrrigationIRRIGATION
CanalCANAL
BronzeBRONZE
TempleTEMPLE
FloodFLOOD

16 of 24 words from the Mesopotamia Favorites list.

Start from a list

Easy: words go across and down.

More options

Show clues, not words

Word list

Large print Lower-case letters Name and date line on paper

The puzzle changes as you go. See the puzzle

Answer key: Mesopotamia Word Search

NFTAWENAILZSHEP

MTAQCADQNTHPFCL

PBRONZEGXIAIHFO

EOHEAFQHNGMIERW

TTXIYIRGJRMNPES

YTURUKCPEIUGSWN

ZETREFAHSSRKTBL

ULSILTNOORAGYDG

SARGONATRPBBLNP

NABABYLONDIWUTH

TYDTLMZFLOODSEB

SCRIBENINEVEHMO

IFYOANZSDLEPGPZ

PCUNEIFORMSAFLK

USSPLENFOCVLAEY

TIGRIS, BABYLON, URUK, NINEVEH, SILT, CUNEIFORM, STYLUS, SCRIBE, SARGON, HAMMURABI, PLOW, IRRIGATION, CANAL, BRONZE, TEMPLE, FLOOD

Next step Encode a message for the class to decipher Run a spelling test on the rulers and empires

All 126 words

Rivers and Cities 27

Akkad The city and land north of Sumer whose king built the first empire of the region.
Ashur The first capital of Assyria and the name of its chief god.
Assyria The northern kingdom on the upper Tigris, known for its armies and stone palace carvings.
Babylon The great city of Hammurabi and later of the Ishtar Gate, in what is now central Iraq.
Chaldea The marshy far south, whose people gave Babylon its last line of kings.
City State A city with its own ruler, god and farmland, acting like a small country.
Crescent The curved shape of the fertile band of land running from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean.
Eridu The city that Sumerian tradition called the oldest in the world.
Euphrates The western and longer of the two rivers; Babylon stood beside it.
Floodplain The flat land beside a river that is covered when the water rises.
Iraq The modern country that holds most of this ancient land.
Kish A city so respected that later rulers used King of it as a proud title.
Lagash A Sumerian city-state whose ruler Gudea left many dark stone statues of himself.

Show all 126 words (113 more)

Rivers and Cities, continued

Larsa A southern city that was a rival of Babylon until Hammurabi took it.
Levee A bank of earth raised along a river to hold back high water.
Mari A trading city on the middle Euphrates where thousands of palace tablets were found.
Marsh The reed-filled wetland of the far south, where people built houses and boats of reeds.
Nimrud An Assyrian capital on the Tigris, known for winged bull statues at its gates.
Nineveh The great Assyrian capital on the Tigris, where a king gathered a huge library of clay tablets.
Nippur The holy city of Sumer, home of the chief temple of Enlil.
Persian Gulf The arm of the sea into which the two rivers empty.
Silt The fine rich mud a river leaves behind after it floods.
Sippar A city on the Euphrates sacred to the sun god.
Sumer The southern land where the first cities grew, more than five thousand years ago.
Tigris The eastern and faster of the two rivers; Nineveh stood on its bank.
Uruk One of the world's first cities; its legendary king was the hero of a famous epic.
Zagros The mountain range east of the plain, in modern Iran.

Writing and Learning 25

Akkadian The language of Babylon and Assyria, used for letters between kings across the Near East.
Astronomy The study of the sky; Babylonian watchers kept careful records of the Moon and planets.
Base Sixty The counting system that gave us 60 minutes in an hour and 360 degrees in a circle.
Behistun The cliff carving in Iran, in three languages, that helped scholars read wedge writing again.
Clay Tablet A pillow-shaped slab written on while soft, then dried in the sun or baked.
Cuneiform The wedge-shaped writing pressed into wet clay, first used by the Sumerians.
Cylinder Seal A small carved stone rolled across wet clay to sign it with a picture.
Decipher To work out how to read a forgotten script.
Edubba The Sumerian school for scribes; the name means tablet house.
Enkidu The wild man who becomes the best friend of the hero of Uruk.
Envelope A clay shell wrapped around a tablet to keep its message safe.
Epic A long poem about the deeds of a hero.
Gilgamesh The king of Uruk whose search for endless life is told in one of the oldest epics.
Law Code A written list of rules and penalties; the best known has 282 of them.
Library A collection of texts; the one at Nineveh held more than 30,000 tablets and pieces.
Pictograph A simple picture that stands for a thing; the earliest signs began this way.
Proverb A short wise saying; Sumerian scribes copied whole collections of them.
Reed The tall marsh plant cut for pens, mats, boats and houses.
Scribe A trained writer who kept records for temples, palaces and merchants.
Stele A tall stone slab carved with words or pictures and set up for all to see.
Stylus The cut reed a scribe pressed into clay to make each mark.
Sumerian The oldest written language of the region, related to no other known language.
Token A small clay counter used to keep track of goods before writing began.
Wedge The small triangle shape left by the corner of a reed pen.
Zodiac The band of twelve star signs, first divided up by Babylonian sky watchers.

Rulers and Empires 23

Amorites The people from the west who founded the first line of kings at Babylon.
Ashurbanipal The Assyrian king, a proud reader, who collected a great library at Nineveh.
Chaldeans The southern people whose kings ruled the last empire of Babylon.
Chariot A light two-wheeled cart pulled by horses and used in war and hunting.
Cyrus The Persian king who took Babylon in 539 BC.
Elamites Eastern neighbors, in what is now Iran, who carried off the stone of Hammurabi as loot.
Enheduanna High priestess of Ur and daughter of Sargon; the earliest author known by name.
Gudea Ruler of Lagash shown in many statues with his hands clasped.
Gutians Mountain people blamed for the fall of the Akkadian kings.
Hammurabi The king of Babylon, about 1792 to 1750 BC, remembered for his laws carved in stone.
Hittites A people of Anatolia whose army raided Babylon in about 1595 BC.
Kassites The people who ruled Babylon for about four hundred years after the fall of the first kings.
King List A Sumerian text naming rulers city by city, some with reigns of thousands of years.
Lugal The Sumerian word for king; it means big man.
Naram Sin Grandson of Sargon, shown on a famous stone slab climbing a mountain in victory.
Nebuchadnezzar The king who rebuilt Babylon in splendor and reigned from 605 to 562 BC.
Palace The grand home of a king, with halls, storerooms and workshops.
Persians The people of Iran whose king ended the last Babylonian kingdom.
Sargon The king of Akkad who joined the cities into the first empire, around 2300 BC.
Sennacherib The Assyrian king who made Nineveh his capital and built canals to water it.
Shulgi King of Ur, son of Ur-Nammu, who reigned for 48 years.
Throne The seat of a king.
Ur Nammu King of Ur whose law code is the oldest that survives.

Farming and Inventions 26

Barley The grain that stood up to salty soil; it was handed out as monthly rations.
Bitumen Natural tar that seeps from the ground, used as glue and to waterproof boats and baskets.
Bronze A hard metal made by melting copper with tin.
Canal A channel dug to carry water from a river to the fields.
Copper The reddish metal people learned to work before any other.
Date Palm The tree whose sweet fruit was a daily food in the south.
Dike A wall of earth built to keep flood water off the fields.
Flax The plant spun into linen thread.
Goat A herd animal kept for milk, meat and hair.
Granary A storehouse where the barley harvest was kept dry.
Irrigation Bringing river water to fields through ditches, which let farmers grow crops in a dry land.
Kiln An oven for baking pots or bricks hard.
Map A drawing of the land; a Babylonian clay one shows the world ringed by ocean.
Mud Brick A block of earth and straw dried in the sun; the main building material of a land with little stone.
Oar A long pole with a flat blade for rowing a boat.
Oxen Strong cattle trained to pull plows and carts.
Plow A tool pulled by oxen to cut and turn the soil before planting.
Seed Drill A plow with a funnel that drops seed into the furrow as it cuts.
Sesame A plant grown for the oil pressed from its tiny seeds.
Shaduf A pole with a bucket at one end and a weight at the other, for lifting water.
Sheep The animal herded for its fleece and milk.
Shekel A unit of weight; silver weighed out in it served as money.
Sickle A curved blade for cutting ripe grain by hand.
Surplus More food than farmers need, which frees others to be potters, priests or scribes.
Wheel A potter's tool at first; wagons in Sumer rolled on solid wooden ones more than five thousand years ago.
Wool Sheep's fleece, spun and woven into the everyday clothing of Sumer.

Gods and Temples 25

Akitu The spring New Year festival of Babylon.
Anu The sky god, father of the gods.
Enki The god of fresh water and wisdom, who warns the flood hero in the old stories.
Enlil The god of wind, air and storms, chief of the Sumerian gods.
Ereshkigal The queen who rules the dead.
Flood A great rush of water; an old story tells of one that covered the world.
Hanging Gardens A terraced wonder of the ancient world said to be at Babylon; no trace has been found.
Inanna The Sumerian goddess of love and war, linked with the planet Venus.
Ishtar The Akkadian name of the love and war goddess.
Lamassu A guardian figure with a human head on the body of a bull or lion, and wings.
Marduk The chief god of Babylon.
Myth A traditional story about gods and how the world came to be.
Nabu The god of writing and of scribes.
Ninhursag The mother goddess, lady of the mountains.
Offering Food, drink or goods given to a god.
Omen A sign thought to tell what the gods plan.
Polytheism Belief in many gods.
Priest A person who served a god with daily offerings and prayers.
Shamash The sun god and god of justice, shown handing a king his authority on a famous law stone.
Shrine A holy room or place set apart for a god.
Temple The house of a city's god, which also owned land, herds and workshops.
Tiamat The sea goddess defeated by the chief god of Babylon in the creation story.
Underworld The dim land below the earth where the dead were thought to go.
Votive Describes a small statue left in a temple to pray on the giver's behalf.
Ziggurat A huge stepped tower of brick with a temple on top.

How this list was compiled: Own work: the 126 words and every clue were written for this page. Dates, names and places in the clues were checked on October 7, 2026 against English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0), among them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopotamia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuneiform and the article on each person, place or thing named in a clue. Licence: own work

How it works

A printable Mesopotamia word search for an ancient civilizations unit. The sheet draws 16 of 24 favorites, such as Cuneiform, Ziggurat and Hammurabi, and five themed lists stand behind it. All 126 words carry a clue.

Read the full guide

Five lists, from Sumer to the fall of Babylon

Rivers and Cities (27) maps the land: Tigris, Euphrates, Uruk, Nineveh, Zagros. Writing and Learning (25) has Cuneiform, Stylus, Edubba and Gilgamesh. Rulers and Empires (23) runs from Sargon, around 2300 BC, to Cyrus, who took Babylon in 539 BC. Farming and Inventions and Gods and Temples finish the unit.

Clues that make it a review

With Show clues, not words, ticked under More options, a pupil has to recall each term before hunting for it: "A huge stepped tower of brick with a temple on top." is Ziggurat. For the next unit, print the ancient Egypt word search.

Ur has two letters, too short to hide. Uruk, Kish, Mari and Akkad are among the 40 short words of Easy Mesopotamia.
Ur Nammu and Naram Sin hide without the gap, as URNAMMU and NARAMSIN.

Questions and answers

What does Mesopotamia mean?

The name is Greek for the land between rivers. The rivers are the Tigris and the Euphrates. Both are in Rivers and Cities with the cities on their banks: Nineveh on the Tigris, Babylon beside the Euphrates.

Where is Mesopotamia on a modern map?

Mostly in Iraq. In the wider sense the region also takes in parts of Iran, Turkey, Syria and Kuwait. Iraq, Persian Gulf and Zagros are words in the puzzle.

What is Mesopotamia known for?

Cuneiform is the oldest writing system known, and the oldest law code that survives is from Ur. Counting in sixties gave us 60 minutes in an hour and 360 degrees in a circle. Cuneiform, Law Code, Base Sixty and Wheel are all words here.

Who was Hammurabi?

The king of Babylon from about 1792 to 1750 BC, remembered for 282 laws carved on a tall stone. Hammurabi, Law Code and Stele are in the lists, and so are the Elamites, who later carried the stone off.

All 126 words

Rivers and Cities 27

Rivers and Cities, continued

Writing and Learning 25

Rulers and Empires 23

Farming and Inventions 26

Gods and Temples 25

How it works

Five lists, from Sumer to the fall of Babylon

Clues that make it a review

Questions and answers

More tools