What are some types of ancient mesopotamia entertainment?

Answer 1

Music, songs and instruments.

Some songs were written for the gods but many were written to describe important events. Although music and songs amused kings and rulers, they were also enjoyed by ordinary people who liked to sing and dance in their homes or in the marketplaces. Songs were sung to children who passed them on to their children. Thus songs were passed on through many generations until someone wrote them down. These songs provided a means of passing on through the centuries highly important information about historical events that were eventually passed on to modern historians.

The Oud (Arabic:العود) is a small, stringed musical instrument. The oldest pictorial record of the Oud dates back to the Uruk period in Southern Mesopotamia over 5000 years ago. It is on a cylinder seal currently housed at the British Museum and acquired by Dr. Dominique Collon. The image depicts a female crouching with her instruments upon a boat, playing right-handed. This instrument appears hundreds of times throughout Mesopotamian history and again in ancient Egypt from the 18th dynasty onwards in long- and short-neck varieties.

The oud is regarded as a precursor to the European lute. Its name is derived from the Arabic word العود al-'ūd 'the wood', which is probably the name of the tree from which the oud was made. (The Arabic name, with the definite article, is the source of the word 'lute'.)

Games

Hunting was popular among Assyrian kings. Boxing and Wrestling feature frequently in art, and a form of polo was probably popular, with men sitting on the shoulders of other men rather than on horses. They also played a board game similar to senet and backgammon, now known as the "Royal Game of Ur."