Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Tigris and Euphrates rivers rise in the Armenian highlands before flowing southward to empty into the Persian Gulf. Their waters fed a semi-arid landscape that stretched from modern Turkey through Iraq and into southwestern Iran.
Sargon of Akkad established the first successful empire around 2350 BC, lasting beyond a single generation. The Akkadian Empire gave way to Babylonian dominance after being conquered within just a few generations.
Cuneiform script emerged around the mid-4th millennium BC for the Sumerian language, meaning wedge-shaped due to the triangular stylus tip used on wet clay. The earliest texts consist of seven archaic tablets recovered from Temple C at Uruk, dedicated to the goddess Inanna.
This document codified over 200 laws that progressively weakened women's rights while increasing severity toward slaves. The Code of Hammurabi was created around 1755 to 1750 BC as one of the earliest sets of laws found and best preserved examples from ancient Mesopotamia.
Mesopotamian mathematics relied on a sexagesimal base 60 numeral system, creating the 60-minute hour, 24-hour day, and 360-degree circle. The Babylonian clay tablet YBC 7289 from before 1600 BC approximates square root of two accurate to about six decimal digits.