Download WESTERN CIVILIZATION: AN INTRODUCTION

WESTERN
C I V. I A
Mesopotamia
Egypt
Mesopotamian and
Egyptian World Views
The Catastrophe of
1200 B.C. and the End
of the Bronze Age
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WESTERN CIVILIZATION: AN INTRODUCTION
This course is called Western Civilization I, so perhaps the first thing that we should
do is define what this means.
The “Western” part means that we won’t look at the history of areas of Asia that had civilization like China, Japan,
India. We will look at part of Western Asia – the Middle East and the Near East, because that’s one of the areas where
European civilization arose.
We also won’t be looking at Sub-Saharan Africa, because not much happened in terms of civilization there except
fairly late historically, and what there was had virtually no effect on European civilization. We will be looking at Egypt in
North Africa which is one of the oldest and longest enduring civilizations in the West, and had some effect on the growth
of European civilization.
So, that takes care of the “Western” part.
Next, what about “civilization”? This one is
a bit more difficult. The Oxford English Dictionary defines civilization as “the action or
process of civilizing or of being civilized; a
developed or advanced state of human society.” Well, that’s not a very satisfying definition. Various people have tried various ways
to define civilization. The Greeks had an
easy one, for instance, they defined as civilized all Greeks, and later, begrudgingly, the
Romans. Everyone else was a barbarian. We
can probably do better than that.
Le!: Circle shows approximate area of focus for this
course.
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What are Civilized Societies?
The best way to define civilization is to say that civilized societies have certain traits – do certain things – that
pre-civilized societies don’t. So, what are they?
1. Civilized peoples are organized: they cooperate to do
things that require a lot of labor, like build dams and
levies and temples and other great structures. They
also divide their labor to do other things more efficiently. Division of labor creates specialists who do
specific things well. There are farmers, craftsmen (like
carpenters, brickmakers, jewelers, blacksmiths), there
are doctors, priests, scribes, administrators, and other
specialists, all of whom contribute in their own way to
the continuance of their society.
2. Civilized societies are builders: they live in permanent
structures which they build themselves from wood or
brick or stone. In addition to family homes, they also
build monumental structures like temples, palaces, forts
and walls, and sometimes great tombs. This stuff requires a lot of effort and the ability to mobilize and
control large numbers of people in a group effort.
3. Civilized societies have some form of metal crafts.
They possess at least rudimentary skills at smelting and
forming tools and weapons from metal. The earliest
civilizations were skilled at crafting bronze (copper, tin)
tools, so the earliest period of history is called the
Bronze Age.
4. Civilized societies are producers. They possess agricultural skills, and are able to produce a surplus of foodstuffs in order to have seed to plant the next season and
to get by in poor farming years.
Evidence of Civilization
Civilized societies are capable of regimenting their population in
order to create monumental structures like the Egyptian Pyramids
above, built around 2500 B.C. as tombs for the Egyptian godkings, the Pharaohs.
Civilized societies also divide their
labor in order to do a lot more stuff
more efficiently. In this picture,
Egyptian bakers are producing
bread in an organized and efficient
fashion in order to feed an enormous
work crew.
5. Finally, civilized peoples are able to tell stories through
art, and more importantly, through writing. The more advanced the civilization, the more complex the stories and messages they can tell. Every civilization has had the ability to keep records and tell stories through some method of writing.
Individual Characteristics
Now, just because every civilization has these traits in common, that doesn’t mean every civilization is the same. As we
study various civilizations, we will observe that every civilization has its own individual characteristic way of carrying on
civilized activities. That is, every civilization is in some way different.
Let me give you a simple example. We have seen that one thing civilizations have is big buildings. To construct a big
building requires wealth, manpower, organization, and certain technical skills – none of which pre-civilized societies have.
When the early Egyptians acquired what was needed to create large buildings, what did they build? Pyramids, enormous
tombs for single individual. Modern Americans would never think the building such an enormous tomb. What do we
build? The Super Dome, the Washington Monument, or perhaps a pyramid shaped casino in Las Vegas. So big buildings
created by great civilizations differ widely in design, purpose, size, and even ownership. The same differences exist in almost all of the more complex functions of civilizations.
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Stone Age Societies
Early human societies subsisted by means of hunting food and
gathering wild seeds and fruits. they were pretty successful at it up
until about 40,000 years ago when the Ice Age began. As game
became scarce and the
weather got colder,
Stone Age humans
wandered and survived, or not, until
the end of the Ice
Age, about 12,000
years ago.
So, why do civilized people act in such different ways?
Because every civilization has different ideas about what is
important and what is not. These ideas are based on the
particular civilization's world view – a particular
civilization’s notion of what the world is like and what
man's place in the world is. We could say that each
civilization has certain problems to solve. These problems
are imposed by conditions of climate, of geography, or
conditions within the culture itself as it develops through
time. In solving these problems, the civilization uses ideas,
techniques, and institutions - that is various forms of
organizations. And each civilization, to some extent, comes
up with slightly different ways of solving their problems.
And in the process, each becomes a bit more unique.
Origins of Civilization
So, I’ve defined Western Civilization. Now I want to
spend a few minutes talking about where that civilization
came from. First, I should note that human beings, that is,
people not very different from us in the scientific ways that
count – DNA and stuff like that, originated in Africa well
over 150,000 years ago.
Some of them arrived in western Asia and Europe by
about 40,000 years ago, just before the Ice Age began. This
period is called the Mesolithic, the middle Stone Age.
These humans were hunters and gatherers. They used
stone tools and stone-tipped weapons to hunt and fight.
The Ice Age was pretty tough on these folks especially in
Europe and northern Asia because most of the Northern
Hemisphere was covered in ice and snow. Weather conditions tended to push some of these wandering hunters further south toward warmer climates and a greater food supply.
They wandered around Europe, just making do, as the herds thinned and food became scarce until the Ice Age ended
about 12,000 years ago.
Around 12,000 years ago, in what today is Turkey, Syria and Israel, humans
began to domesticate some game animals and some wild grains and to settle down
and raise their own food instead of hunting it. In short, they created agriculture.
Now these were still Stone Age people, what we call Neolithic -- that is “New Stone
Age. They had not yet begun to use metal, but they did build permanent settlements of mud brick, and we think that they began to divide their labor. They certainly used art at least in their religious ceremonies. Your book discusses several of
these very early settlements — Catal Huyuk in Turkey for instance. Their villages
and towns were a bit like built cave complexes, homes and other contained spaces
all interconnected, and attached to each other. Nevertheless, they were proper settlements, with homes, temples, storage areas and other kinds of public and private
spaces. These primitive cities grew and prospered for a time with the rudiments of
civilization and faded into obscurity. But they are important because they form a
sort of bridge between those wandering tribes and other small groups of the Stone
Age and the bright shiny new Bronze Age civilizations that we will start looking at
A “floor-plan” of Catal Huyuk in
next time.
Turkey. Note the interconnectedness of the village.
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Mesopotamia
Our story today begins on a chunk of desert real estate in the area of Western
Asia called Mesopotamia (Greek. “between the rivers”). At first glance, it seems
pretty surprising that the earliest civilization on our planet should appear in such a
hostile environment.
Average summer temperatures on the Mesopotamian plain hover around 104 degrees Fahrenheit and may reach as
high as 120 degrees. There is little rainfall, and no natural barriers protect against the windstorms and floods, and hostile
intruders that may sweep across the flat, open landscape. Resources are few: no stone, no metal ores, and no trees sturdy
enough to provide lumber. There was, however, an abundance of deep, rich soil deposited over eons by the annual flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Most of the primal civilizations (Sumer, Egypt, India, and China) sprang up along
great rivers. Once the Sumerians developed irrigation systems, water from their rivers made agriculture possible.
Earliest Arrivals in Mesopotamia
During the Neolithic era, farmers living in very
small communities worked the Iranian highlands
east of the Tigris River. Over time, these peoples,
and others, began to move down to the flood plains
of the Euphrates and use employ primitive irrigation
to grow enough crops that they could settle in larger
villages, and by about 4000 B.C., these peoples had
developed the first cosmopolitan civilization. They
expanded their agriculture and their communities
across the plain to the Tigris River, which gave them
more land to cultivate, but also greater challenges.
The Tigris ran fast through a relatively deep channel
that made its waters difficult to tap for purposes of
irrigation. The river sometimes broke through its
levees to turn wide stretches of farmland into
swamp, and it sometimes carved new channels that
altered its course. It also flooded at an inconvenient
time each year-in April, when grain crops were
ripening. More sophisticated engineering and greater
numbers of workers were needed to trap its waters
in reservoirs and distribute them where needed in
the appropriate seasons. Once the Sumerians had
hurdled these new obstacles their land could support
a population of unprecedented density.
Mesopotamia
From the Greek, “land between the rivers,” it is the annual flooding
of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that makes life possible in this
parched desert environment. A very unlikely place for civilization to
originate, but there you are!
The Sumerians
We do not know where the Sumerian people originated or when they settled the lands north of the Persian Gulf.
Language often provides a clue to a people's background, but it is of no help here. Sumerian is not related to any known
tongue. The Sumerians probably entered Mesopotamia from the east, from the Zagros Mountains. They were attracted to
southern Mesopotamia because the marshes along the rivers and the coasts of the Persian Gulf provided sources of food.
Pioneers in the region would have relied on a mixture of farming, herding, hunting, and gathering. Myths and
archaeological evidence identify the town of Eridu near the later, more famous city of Ur, as one of the area's earliest
settlements. It was inhabited by 5400 B.C.
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During the first phase in Sumer's development,
new kinds of settlements spread across the southern
Mesopotamian plain. They were larger than Neolithic
villages, and each boasted a major building, the
construction and maintenance of which required a
more sophisticated government than was characteristic
of a simple village. Because all the dwellings in these
communities were about the same size and there is little
evidence of differences in wealth or of occupational
specialization, privileged social classes may not yet have
appeared. The investment that these communities
made in their public buildings suggests, however, that
this was changing. Their great buildings were probably
temples, and temples create powerful priesthoods.
Sumerian city-states reached their full development
between 3600 and 3000 B.C. Gilgamesh's Uruk (or
Erech), for instance, grew by absorbing neighboring
villages until it had about 50,000 inhabitants.
Scholars have wondered why Sumerian civilization
quickly became dominated by cities in the 4th
millennium B.C. At one time, they assumed that the
development of irrigation systems promoted the
growth of cities, but archaeological evidence suggests
that the expansion of irrigation systems followed the
rise of cities. Legends and archaeological evidence
suggest that the Sumerians clustered together for
protection. Cities were walled, and warfare appears to
have been fairly commonplace as city states competed
for land with their neighbors and neighboring peoples
saw plenty in the river valleys and wanted to help
themselves to some of it. Another important feature of
Mesopotamian civilization that made cosmopolitan life
possible was the rise of the priesthood.
Scholars once believed, that all of a city’s wealth
was the property of the gods. Each city-state had many
gods, and each god owned a portion of the land that
the state had set aside for that particular god. The
farmers and others in a city worked for the gods, and
the gods were represented on this earth by a class of
specialists whose job it was to perform the necessary
tasks to keep the gods happy and to direct the work on
the lands of the gods they served. More recently,
scholars have determined that property ownership was
more varied in Sumerian cities. About one-third of the
land was owned by the temples; one third belonged to
a small number of “big men,” and one third belonged
to a large number of small farmers. The temple lands
and lands of the noblemen were worked by tenant
farmers, while small farms were worked by the owners
themselves.
Each city had many priests who had all kinds of
duties. They ran the economy of their city; they
supervised workers; they kept various kinds records;
they probably supervised inter-city trade, and, of
course, they performed all of the rituals that were
needed to keep the gods happy and supportive in an
environment that was often hostile.
Sumerian Civilization
The need for irrigation,
warfare and the rise of the
priesthood all contributed
to the rapid growth of citystate civilization in Mesopotamia some 5500 years
ago.
Sumerians were led by
priestly government.
Property belonged to the
gods and the priests
directed all civilized efforts
in the early Mesopotamian
city states.
Above is a map of the extent of Sumerian civilization. Right, a Sumerian god, or perhaps
a priest.
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Although Sumerian city-states each had lots of gods,
each city chose a deity to be its special patron. The priest of
that particular god often became the most important priest
in that state, and came to supervise all the other priests.
The chief god was provided with lavish accommodations.
Sumerian gods were assumed to want the same things that
human beings crave: shelter, food, and amusement. Temples were literally homes for gods. Sacred images were
cared for like living things. They were provided with
changes of clothing, meals, and entertainments. The Sumerians believed that a god's residence should be elevated
above the ordinary human plane. Before 3000 B.C., lofty
terraces were being built to serve as foundations for temples. Builders then began to layer terraces on top of terraces to create pyramidal structures called ziggurats
("mountain tops"). The largest ziggurats covered about two
acres and may have been as tall as a seven-story building.
Sumerian Trade
The print above is from a Sumerian signature cylinder. Below is a
statue made of gold and precious stones made around 3500 B.C.
Sumerian Trade and Industry
Sumer produced surpluses of grain that it could trade
for things that were not locally available. The merchants
who procured goods from abroad did not necessarily make
long journeys, for many items reached Sumer simply by
passing from hand to hand. Lapis lazuli, a blue stone used
for jewelry, came from northern Afghanistan some 1,500
miles from Sumer. Carnelian, a red stone, was mined in
equally distant India. Sumerian artisans made skillful use of
the materials merchants imported. They created splendid
jewelry from beaten gold and silver, and semiprecious
gems. They carved statues from blocks of stone brought
from distant mountains. They built furniture and musical
instruments from rare woods and decorated these objects
with subtle inlays. They wove garments from wool and linen for both domestic and foreign markets. (Cotton was not
known to the Mediterranean world until the seventh century B.C., when an Assyrian king imported cotton plants from
India to ornament his palace garden.) Sumerians knew how to make glass, and by
3000 B.C., their potters were using wheels to throw their vessels. (The Sumerians
may have been the first to explore uses for the wheel; by 3500 B.C., they were replacing sledges with wheeled carts.) The most distinctive Sumerian artifact was an
exquisite object called a cylinder seal. This was a small, engraved cylinder that was
rolled across a clay tablet to imprint a design that served as a signature.
The management of Sumer's cities and their economies prompted the most
famous Sumerian invention: writing. The Sumerians wrote on tablets made from
their country's most abundant and inexpensive resource: mud. Many of these, some
sun-dried and others fired, have survived burial in the earth for thousands of years.
The earliest specimens of writing come from Uruk and may date as far back as
3500 B.C. No one has yet deciphered them, but they are consistent with the theory
that writing was invented by accountants. As early as 8000 B.C., people began to
make small clay tokens whose size, shape, or design represented quantities of variVery early Sumerian writing on a
ous commodities. By assembling piles of these tokens, a merchant or warehouse
clay tablet, ca. 3300 B.C.
manager could keep track of his inventory.
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At some point, these accountants began to draw their
tokens instead of modeling them. The early tablets from
Uruk often display rows of lines that seem to indicate numbers. All the evidence suggests that writing was not invented
to preserve the words of scholars and poets, but for more
mundane, if vital, purposes. It was a long time before Sumerian scribes produced anything but business ledgers. As
busy scribes developed ways to speed up their work, writing
systems became more efficient. Because it took a lot of time
to draw realistic pictures of objects or tokens, scribes began
to strip their images down to a few essential lines. This
made writing easier to do but harder to learn. The meaning
of simplified signs was not self-evident. People had to be
taught what each one represented. The physical act of writing was also reformed to improve speed and clarity. Linear
drawings were difficult to make on mud tablets. Inscribed
lines gouged furrows that had jagged edges and ended in
messy clumps. It was cleaner and faster to poke a stylus (a
reed) into a clay tablet than to push or pull it across one.
Poking produced a triangular indentation instead of a line,
but a quick series of jabs could create a clump of wedgeshaped impressions that approximated one of the older linear symbols. The triangular indentations that cover Sumerian tablets constitute a script that modern scholars have
named cuneiform (cuneus, Latin for "wedge"). The cuneiform writing system is complex. Its symbols can represent
both objects and prominent sounds in the words for objects.
The latter function allowed a scribe to record the sounds of
speech. Once writing began to be thought of as a way to
describe not what was seen but what was heard, a tablet
could record anything that could be thought and said. Early
cuneiform employed about 1,200 signs. Scribes steadily reduced their number, but the Sumerians never developed a
true alphabet (a set of symbols for a language's elemental
sounds).
Change in Mesopotamia after 3000 B.C.
These were the conditions that prevailed in Mesopotamia under the early Sumerians. But gradually, between
3000 and 2250 B.C., certain important changes took place
that we should consider. Because they were civilized, they
produced food surpluses, had trade and the wealth that
came with it, and produced cool stuff, increasingly, peoples
from less civilized neighboring areas were attracted to the
region. These outsiders came from all directions – especially
from the Arabian desert to the south, and from the Iranian
plateau to the north. Increasingly, the Sumerian City-states
had to defend themselves from these external threats.
Akkadians & Amorites
Sumer's cities probably began as independent foundations, but as they grew, they came into conflict with one another. From time to time, one would subdue others, but
Sumer was a difficult country to unify. Its featureless plain
provided no natural boundaries for a state.
One of the most numerous invading peoples came out
of the Arabian Desert sometime around 2400 B.C. They
were a Semitic group called the Akkadians. At first the Akkadians moved into older Sumerian cities or founded cities
of their own in Mesopotamia. Although the Akkadians
adopted Sumerian religion and culture, the Akkadian language came to dominate Mesopotamia by about 2400 B.C.
Increasingly also during this period, the power of the priests
gave way to war leaders and a professional warrior class.
Some lands that had belonged to the gods were relegated to
war chiefs (lugals) and professional soldiers. Lugals began to
control government and the economies of the city-states.
Professional military leaders became an aristocratic class
and lugals became, essentially kings. This increased power
in the hands of a warrior class probably reflects the increasingly violent conditions of life in Mesopotamia. As warriors
became more and more important, we can assume that they
needed something to do, so warfare became both more frequent and more sophisticated.
Sumer was eventually unified by a man named Sargon
(2371-2316 B.C.), a native of Akkad, on Sumer's northern
border. Sargon was a self-made man of obscure origin. He
is said to have been abandoned as an infant and found floating in a basket on the Euphrates. (Similar stories were later
told about the infancies of the Hebrews' Moses and Rome's
Romulus and Remus.) Sargon's empire extended from the
Persian Gulf up the Euphrates and across the caravan stations of northern Syria to the Mediterranean and Asia Minor. He could not have exercised much direct control over
such a large area, for communication systems were primitive. If his major concern was continuously to police the
trade routes that coursed through these territories, it is easy
to see why he created history's first standing army. He
doubtless hoped that family ties would foster loyalty, for he
assigned key posts to relatives--some of whom were women.
Another group of Semitic peoples had already begun to
wander into Mesopotamia by then. These peoples, called
the Amorites gradually took control of the region and
founded a new Empire, often named after their capital,
Babylon. Possibly the founder of the Babylonian Empire,
and greatest Amorite leader was Hammurabi, who ruled
from ca. 1792-1750 B.C.
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Hammurabi conquered all of Mesopotamia and took the modest title “King of the Four Quarters of the Earth.” Hammurabi
solved one of the perennial problems of rulership; how do you rule an empire? He appointed governors to rule in each of his cities.
These governors represented the king, supervised in his name, and presided over the local courts. Hammurabi also created a single law
code for his entire empire, providing a relatively stable and uniform system of law throughout his empire. The Amorite Empire lasted
down to about 1650, when again, Mesopotamia fell to outside invaders. Weakened by a series of barbarian invasions, the great citystates fell in the mid-1500s B.C. to an Indo-European people called the Hittites. This very militant people who probably came from the
Caspian region and had settled in Northern Asia Minor by 1650 B.C., created an empire that covered most of the Near East and
flourished from 1400-1300 B.C.
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EGY P T
Ancient Egypt was located in the valley of the Nile
River, which flows northward from East Africa into
the Mediterranean Sea. Most of the valley is very
narrow and surrounded on both sides by dry, mountainous desert. At the mouth of the river, the land
spreads out into a wide fan-like delta.
Ancient Egypt
The Nile performs the same service for Egypt that the Tigris and Euphrates
does for Mesopotamia. It provides water and rich soil to a land that would
otherwise be desert. Like the Tigris and Euphrates, the Nile floods regularly,
but its annual flooding is regular and easier to predict and control. It rises in
the summer (rather than the spring) just after the harvest, and its gentle inundation provides a new layer of silt just in time for planting season.
The Nile was such a gentle provider of necessities that Settlers on its
banks were slow to take up agriculture. Wildlife flourished along its banks, so
the earliest Egyptians could hunt and fish and exploit wild plants for food in
order to meet their needs. By about 5000 B.C., Egyptians had domesticated
sheep, cattle and goats, and had begun to raise wheat and barley to supplement the Niles generous natural bounty. Village communities that were fully
dependent on agriculture may not have appeared until around 3500 B.C.
Since the Nile was fairly easy to control, no large workforce was necessary in
order to exploit it, so settlement patterns along its banks tended toward village communities rather than the cities that dominated Mesopotamian civilization. City formation was further slowed by the fact that communities did
not need to support armies because the Nile valley was virtually surrounded
(East & West) by nearly impassable desert. The desert not only provided protection from outsiders, but also provided metal ores and good building stone
that provided the building materials for Egyptian civilization.
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Unification of Egypt
By about 3300 B.C., two kingdoms existed in the Nile
valley– Upper and Lower Egypt – and these two kingdoms
were united in 3100 B.C. when the king of Upper Egypt
conquered the entire Nile valley. A stone palette from the
period honors a certain Narmer, or Scorpion, as the first
ruler of both Upper and Lower Egypt. On one side the palette shows Narmer wearing the crown of Upper Egypt and
on the other he wears the crown of Lower Egypt. It was easier to both create and preserve a central government in
Egypt because everyone lived on the river. Additionally,
trade and government were simplified by the fact that the
Nile provided one great highway for the entire kingdom.
Prevailing winds made it possible to coast north with the
river current and sail south in the other direction. In short,
the Nile provided Route 1 (and only) for Egyptian civilization!
Pharaoh
The heart and soul of Egyptian civilization was its monarchy. It was so important that the office of the king became
the dominant institution of Egyptian history. The pharaoh
had enormous power and prestige. Egyptians believed that
their king was also their chief god – which I’m sure you will
agree, goes beyond the Mesopotamian view that the king
only represented the gods! Pharaoh was divine in a number
of ways. At first, he was identified with Horus, one of
Egypt’s sun gods. He was also linked with another sun god –
Ra. Pharaohs were, of course, mortal, they were born and
died like everybody else, so how could Egyptians consider
them to be gods?
Pharaoh
The god-king of Egypt for some 3,000 years was the pharaoh. He was both the god Ra, or Horus, AND the living ruler
of Egypt. His power was
absolute and complete bothy in
this world and the next. His
word was greater than law, it
was everything!
Behold the Pharaoh!
Well, there were lots of things in nature that were born
and died and were reborn. Every day the sun did just that –
and pharaoh was,
after all, a sun god!
But it was still the same sun, yes? The year was born with the Nile flood each year
and died at the end of the year. Nature is full of “rising and dying” cycles, and the
gods are part of nature, and so the pharaohs’ reign and divinity follow the same
pattern. So, one after another, for nearly 3,000 years, pharaohs were born and died,
each a new iteration of the sun god, and each oversaw Egypt and represented
Egyptian affairs among their fellow deities. Needless to say, pharaoh’s control of
Egypt was, in theory, absolute. He commanded the army; he ran the government,
supervised trade and religious activities, dispensed justice, coordinated food production and provided patronage for Egypt’s artisans. He owned everything and every
person in Egypt. Of course he also had certain less mundane duties. He caused the
sun to rise each day, the Nile to flood at the appropriate time, the fields to bring
forth their bounty and the animals and people of his kingdom to be fruitful and
multiply. This enormous power enabled the pharaohs to mobilize Egypt for massive
The Narmer Palette, ca. 3000 B.C, public works programs like irrigation and levies, military activities on a large scale
and building projects of enormous proportions.
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The only limit on pharaoh’s power was theoretical.
Egyptians expected him to rule justly and to preserve the
balance among the various competing forces in nature and
society. He was expected to preserve and exercise ma’at
(justice) in all of his dealings, both human and divine. In
fact, pharaoh’s authority was limitless. For this reason,
Egypt never adopted any codes of laws; the only law was
the will of the pharaoh.
The Old Kingdom
The first stage of Egyptian history is called the Old
Kingdom. It extended from 2700 B.C. down to around
2200. During this period the pharaohs had their greatest
power. This is the era of the pyramids. Egyptians believed
during this time that only the god-king was immortal and
thus when the pharaoh passed on to live with the gods,
Egyptians built huge tombs to their rulers – the pyramids.
Beginning in this period. Pharaohs ruled Egypt with
the help of an enormous bureaucracy – some 2,000 titles
have been identified for officials of the Old Kingdom.
Since he controlled every aspect of life and civilization in
his realm, he needed a horde of royal officials to get stuff
done. Egypt was highly centralized, but only minimally
urbanized. Most Egyptians lived in small farming villages
along the banks of the Nile. So administration was subdivided into small units of local government. Groups of
small communities were combined into provinces called
nomes (21 in all), and a royal official called a nomarch administered each nome. These administrators were the
Pharaoh’s eyes and ears and hands in their own province.
The Old Kingdom
The power of the pharaoh was at its greatest during the Old
Kingdom (2700-2200 B.C.). this is the age of the great
pyramids, built by the Egyptians to entomb their god-kings.
The greatest achievements of the pyramid builders were the
Pyramids of Giza, built near the capital city of Memphis
for the fourth dynasty kings Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure
who ruled through 2589-2504 BCE. But pyramid building soon waned as the power and prosperity of the kings of
Egypt weakened with the end of the Old Kingdom.
To pay the nomarchs, Pharaohs gave them lands to farm. Initially, the nomarchs ruled at the king’s pleasure and lost the land when they were fired, retired
or died. But, gradually, the lands and the title became the property of the nomarch
and became hereditary, this from the Old Kingdom, an Egyptian aristocracy grew
up, and nomarchs began to use the profits from their lands to create armies loyal
to them. Eventually the nomarchs became strong enough to fight each other for
dominance, and even to revolt against the Pharaoh. This happened in about 2200
B.C. and brought down centralized government for nearly 200 years (first Intermediate Period).
The Middle Kingdom
Mummification was undertaken to
preserve the pharaoh’s body for
the next world. In the Old Kingdom
it was believed that only pharaoh
had immortality.
Egypt was reunified around 2000 B.C. when one family of nomarchs defeated the
others and established themselves as pharaohs. This established the Middle Kingdom (2000-1800). The new dynasty established a small standing army to defend
themselves from their rivals. They were good generals and used their military both
to maintain order at home, and expand their empire. They kept the nomarchs under control, and over time these administrators became more important. During
this period they began to share power somewhat with their royal masters.
P a g e 11 o f 24
This new order is illustrated by the fact that Middle
Kingdom nomarchs began to build elaborate tombs for
themselves. During this period Egyptians came to believe
that all men could earn immortality, by living just lives. As a
result of this new belief, Egyptian thinkers began to try to
define more exactly what a just life was, and to draw up lists
of specific rules to live by. Over time, some writers began to
explore the possibility that it might not be necessary to actually life a just life, so long as the soul could convince the
judge of the afterlife that it had lived one. So you begin to
get books and tomb paintings that show the departed what
they will have to go through to arrive at the place of judgment, and what the soul should saw to the gods of judgment
in order to achieve immortality.
The New Kingdom
The new pharaohs of the New Kingdom had
learned that isolationism was a luxury that they could
no longer afford. They embarked on a series of conquests that expanded the kingdom and brought Egypt
to the height of its wealth and power. Thutmose (15041492), the third ruler of the 18th Dynasty led armies as
far east as the Euphrates and south into the mineralrich Sudan. Over the next 200 years expanded their
empire well beyond their valley. By 1425 B.C., Egyptian warrior-Pharaohs had expanded into Syria- Palestine and the Near East, south into Nubia, and West
into Libya. Wealth flowed into Egypt from their new
Strong and stable government during the Middle King- tribute states and sparked the most ambitious building
dom gave Egypt four centuries of peace, prosperity and sta- program since the pyramids. Pharaohs spent lavishly
bility until it was brought down by unanticipated outside
on palaces and temple complexes and on the source of
attack. In about 1630 Egypt was invaded by a people whom
their new power, the army and its commanders.
the Egyptians called the Hyksos (“foreigners”). These were
Semitic peoples whose ferocity and military technology
made it possible for them to conquer the better organized
and more numerous Egyptians. In about 1660 B.C. the
Hyksos crossed the Sinai Peninsula and occupied Lower
Egypt. They brought down the pharaoh and forced the
nomarchs of Upper Egypt to pay them tribute. The Egyptians, protected in the past from outside invasion were unprepared for the Hyksos who brought with them the latest
in military technology the most important of which were
chariots.
It is unclear whether the Egyptians even had made
much use of the wheel before about 1700 B.C.; simple
sledges were really all they needed to drag goods to and
from the Nile. They had oxen and donkeys for beasts of
burden, but, before the coming of the Hyksos may not have
been introduced to horses. By around 1700 B. C., in Asia
Minor warriors were employing the chariot with great effect. Egyptian military technology had, by the 1600s, not
really changed much since the Late Stone Age. Most of the
weapons in the Egyptian arsenal were stone, and, although
they possessed the bow, it was used mostly for hunting. Enter the Hyksos armed with bronze weapons, chariots, and
powerful bows. Hyksos archers speeding across the battlefield in chariots quickly devastated the Egyptian infantry.
When it came to military affairs, the Egyptians were comparatively quick learners, and in a few generations, the
chiefs of Upper Egypt mastered the new technology, built
chariots, and rebelled against the Hyksos, expelling them
around 1550 B.C.
As a result of the Hyksos occupation, New Kingdom Pharaohs expanded the borders of Egypt to create a buffer between
their lands and the rest of the world.
P a g e 12 o f 24
the desert, as was Egypt’s brief experimentation with monotheism.
The Military Pharaohs
Tutankhamen’s successors were all military men who
expanded Egypt’s power in the ancient world, and the prestige of the pharaoh after Akhenaten’s dangerous experiment. The most important of these was the great warriorbuilder pharaoh, Ramses II. Ramses was an amazing
builder, constructing about one half of all of the extant
monuments in Egypt. He fought a number of campaigns,
and was largely successful in maintaining the greatness of
the Egyptian Empire in the face of new and dangerous
Eastern and Western kingdoms. He also tried his best to
insure the dynastic future of his family by siring some 160
children (with the aid of a pretty impressive harem). His 60year reign was about the longest of any pharaoh. In many
ways, Ramses’ reign marks the high point of Egyptian history, and as we will see, the end of the Age of Bronze and
beginning of a new threat, not only to Egypt, but to all of
the ancient world.
The Pharaoh Akhenaten
Akhenaten
One result of the pharaoh’s attention to temple complexes was the growth of power of the Egyptian priesthood.
Increasingly the temple priests of Egypt became wealthier
and more powerful, especially in local affairs. By 1350, the
priests of Amun-Ra owned nearly a quarter of the land in
Egypt. Their power began to threaten the power of the
pharaoh, himself. They also threatened the prestige and
power of the relatively new military aristocracy that clung
to the pharaoh for their influence. Perhaps as a result of this
new danger, Amenhotep IV (r. 1352-1338) announced that
henceforth Egypt would worship only one god, a new deity
names Aten (the disk of the sun). In 1348, the young pharaoh changed his name to Akhenaten (beloved of the sun),
and moved the capital from Thebes to a new capital he constructed called Akhetaten (horizon of the sun – Arabic
name Tell el Amarna). The new religion was a royal religion, its rites conducted by the Pharaoh and his family. It was
supported by the military aristocracy and the Pharaoh’s
court, but was not very well received by other Egyptians.
The very conservative Egyptians had no desire to change
their religion. In around 1336, Akhenaton died and his son
Tutankhaten came to the throne. Shortly thereafter, the
young pharaoh’s name was changed to Tutankhamen, and
the court returned to Thebes. Amarna was abandoned to
Ramses II, the greatest of the military pharaohs, shown
about to execute enemy prisoners with the help of his
trusty Axe. Ramses was the greatest of the builder pharaohs; he liked to keep busy -- he fathered 91 children!
P a g e 13 o f 24
MESOPOTAMIAN &
EGY P TI A N W O R L D
V I EW S
We have seen that their political and economic organizations were very different from our own. Clearly the
ideas of Mesopotamians and Egyptians about government, economic activity, and life in general were different form ours.
Today I want to look at the ideas of these Near Eastern peoples more closely. I
want to consider what I call their outlook, that is, their attitudes about life and how
they expressed them in religion, art, and literature. In early civilizations, intellectual
activity and ideas were heavily influenced by the geographical and other conditions
under which men in the civilizations lived. We have seen that conditions in Mesopotamia and Egypt were similar in some ways but different in others. The same is true of
their ideas. I want to look at their common beliefs first.
The most important ideas that Egypt and Mesopotamia shared were those used to
explain the world and what happened to them in the world. They did not explain this
as we would. Like all primitive peoples, they explained life in terms of religion. Most
primitive explanations of the natural world are based on what anthropologists call
animism. Animism is the belief that the world is filled with gods and spirits who control natural phenomena. There were major
gods who lived in important phenomena
like the sun, the moon, or the rain; and
there were other, lesser spirits who lived in
rocks, and trees, and animals. These gods
controlled all of nature. If the sun rose, it
was because the sun god wanted to journey across the sky. If the rain fell, the rain
god wanted to nourish the land with water.
A votive statue...
either representing a
Sumerian priest or god.
Every Mesopotamian city
state had thousands of
similar statues made out
of lots of different materials, from mud clay to
ivory. Left is a model of
the ziggurat at Ur.
P a g e 14 o f 24
The Place of Myths
It is necessary to realize that the gods were thought to control human affairs and what happened in the life of
individuals and governments as well. Mesopotamians believed that if a man stubbed his toe on a rock, it was because the
spirit of the rock wanted to trip him. When two cities were at war, it was because the gods of the cities were quarreling.
The city with the stronger god would win.
If you wanted to explain anything that happened in life, you had to explain why the gods made it happen. For this
purpose, ancient peoples used myths. We still do! A myth is a
story about gods or men, or both, that imparts some
essential truth about what the gods are like and why they
make things happen as they do. Mythology is how societies
explain the world and what happens in it. The Oxford English
Dictionary defines “myth” as, “A purely fictitious narrative
usually involving supernatural persons, actions, or events,
and embodying some popular idea concerning natural or
historical phenomena.” Your middle- or high-school
teacher might have told you that myths are “primitive
stories,” or “religious fictions,” or some such. But, myths are
at once more real and more important than those
definitions would suggest. First, a myth is a story about the
gods that usually describes the relationships of humans
toward the gods, and also life, the universe and everything.
Secondly, the story imparts some essential TRUTH about
how something really, really important works. The story
might be true, or half true, of completely false. The hero
may have existed, or might be a compilation of several real,
This picture from a cylinder seal (ca. 3000 B.C.), shows
long dead, people, or the hero might never have existed.
BUT, the message of the story is absolutely true, and, so,
Apsu (left) and Tiamat (rt.) in the act of creating the world.
the whole myth is absolutely true.
The myths of the Egyptians and Mesopotamians were
extremely important because they influenced what men
would think and how they would act and organize themselves. They would also influence art and literature. Both the
Egyptians and Mesopotamians had many myths, but they were not the same because the conditions under which they
lived were not he same, as I suggested before.
Mesopotamian Myths
Life in Mesopotamia was precarious and uncertain. As we saw, the Mesopotamian cities were continually threatened
by destructive floods and war with other cities. Thus, Mesopotamian ideas were very pessimistic.
Mesopotamians explained the dangers of life through their myth of how the world was created. This myth is called
Enuma Elish. It was first written around 3000 B.C. It goes like this. Before the creation of the world, nothing existed but
one vast ocean; most of the gods who control the world had not been born yet. There were only two deities — Tiamat,
goddess of salt water, and Apsu, god of sweet water. They were mixed together in the ocean. Eventually, as a result of
their mixing, the other gods were born from the ocean; and the other phenomena of nature, like the earth and the storm,
came into existence.
Then the war god Enlil gathered some of the gods into an army. By military power, he forced all the other gods to
recognize him as king and to follow his commands. He made each god take over some function of nature. Some made the
rivers flow, others made the crops grow, and so on. In this way, Enlil created the world and nature as we know them. The
organization of the gods and nature was based on the military power of Enlil, just as the government of a Mesopotamian
city was based on the military power of a human king. At the end, Enlil created men and organized their cities. He
decreed that men should work for the gods, just as they did in Mesopotamia. So the cities and the temple communities
P a g e 15 o f 24
were created in the same way and at the same time as the natural world. It was no more possible to do away with kings
and priests than to stop the rain.
Men could not change their basic institutions. But it was possible for them to be destroyed. Mesopotamian cities were
often destroyed by floods or war. Mesopotamians were
always afraid that Enlil’s government of the world would
be overthrown and destroyed too. If that happened, the
world would suddenly come to an end. Especially in
summer when the floods came, men feared that the world
was ending. They thought it was about to be drowned and
that everything would become an ocean once more.
At this time of year, Mesopotamians had their most
important religious festival, the Zagmuk, or New Years festival. As the floods rose, there was universal mourning. The
king’s power weakened, and there was widespread immorality. Since the world was ending, human social restraints
were being removed too. At the height of the flood, the
people would meet at the ziggurat and reenact Enlil’s military victory over the other gods. The king would usually
take the part of Enlil. By reenacting this victory, it was
thought that the world would be recreated all over again.
This was necessary to keep the world going for another
year. After the ceremony, the king would be re-crowned,
social ties would be restored, and in most cases the floods
would recede. This made men believe that the ceremony
had worked.
This cylinder-seal picture shows Gilgamesh and his best buddy
During the rest of the year, men had to keep on the
Enkidu smiting a monster together. Gilgamesh is the guy on the
good side of the gods by serving them and protecting the
right.
society they had created. Artists and writers served the gods
by producing works with a religious content and purpose.
For example, the major buildings were the ziggurats where
the gods lived and were worshiped. Most Mesopotamian art depicts events from myths or shows the king conquering his
enemies with the help of the gods. It also reflects the fear and uncertainty of Mesopotamian life. Art is frequently filled
with monsters and dangerous animals. Death in war, floods, people and livestock drowning.
The Epic of Gilgamesh
It is the greatest work of Mesopotamian literature, The Epic of Gilgamesh. An epic is a long narrative poem. This one
tells the story of Gilgamesh, a legendary Sumerian king. He is a great hero who has accomplished many daring feats for
his city. In the story, his best friend, Enkidu, dies, and Gilgamesh is broken-hearted. Mesopotamians believed that death
was terrible. The souls of the dead lived in a dark, gloomy place under the earth and subsisted on dust and dirt. Gilgamesh
sets out to find the secret of immortality to bring his friend back to life. He also wants to find it for himself, because he
gradually comes to fear his own death. Gilgamesh has many terrible adventures on his search. He has to fight monsters,
and eventually he is forced to go to the land of the dead himself to find the secret. There he finds a plant that will provide
immortality. But as he is bringing the plant home, it is stolen from him by a serpent. He is forced to give it up. The point of
the story is that all men must die, even great men like Gilgamesh. And when they die, they suffer more than they do while
they are alive. This work perfectly reflects the gloomy, pessimistic view that Mesopotamians had about life and the world.
Egyptian Myths
If we consider the outlook of Egypt, we see that it is very different. Egypt was not threatened by floods, and peace and
political stability existed through most of their history. Egyptians thought that the world was secure and serene and
unchanging.
P a g e 16 o f 24
Egyptians had many different myths about the creation
of the world, but the most typical is found in the Theology
of Memphis (ca. 2700 B.C.), which was written early in the
Old Kingdom. Let us look at it.
As in Mesopotamia, the world begins as water, and the
various gods are born from the water. But the Egyptian gods
are not compelled to assume their jobs in nature by military
force. Their Egyptian creator is Ptah. He is not a war god,
but the god of wisdom and magic. He uses magical power
and the force of his mind to assign the gods to their jobs.
Thus, the Egyptian world is founded on wisdom and reason.
It is completely stable and unchanging. To insure stability,
Ptah assigns the Pharaoh to rule over man in this life in the
form of Horus and to rule over man in the next world in the
form of Osiris. Just as in Mesopotamia, therefore, Egyptians
could not change their government. But they did not need
to change. It was perfect, just like everything else in life.
The New Years festival was important in Egypt, but
there it was a real celebration. It had none of the gloomy
features of Zagmuk. Egyptians gave thanks that life had
proceeded without change in the previous year and
expressed confidence that it would continue that way.
The optimistic view that life is perfect and would always
be perfect is reflected in many aspects of Egyptian culture
and thought. It was only during the intermediate periods,
when government was weak that Egyptians ever despaired
of a happy life.
Egyptians even developed a happy idea of death and
A golden statue of the Egyptian god, Ptah from the tomb
the after-life. They thought that the soul of man had three
of Tutankhamun.
interconnected parts. The part most like our soul was called
ka. At first, they believed that the ka lived in the body after
death. But in the Middle Kingdom, the idea arose that it went to live in the next world, which was underground.
As it was pictured in art and described in literature, this next world is pretty much like the world of the living except
that it has no hardships at all. As we saw, the soul had to prove that it was good enough to get into the next world; but the
Egyptians provided notes to insure that no one would be kept out. It was once thought that Egyptians were morbid
because so much of their art and literature dealt with death. But that was only because they looked forward to death with
hopeful anticipation.
Egyptian art also reflects a happy, serene outlook in the way it was done, how it developed, and what it shows. Modern
observers often find Egyptian art funny because the figures are represented in a curious way. The head and feet are shown
from the side, but the body and eyes are shown straight on. There is a reason. Egyptians believed that in a perfect human
figure all parts of the body were in exact proportion to each other. The breadth of the shoulders was so many times as
wide as the eye. Artist only wanted to show perfect figures in their paintings, and they could only do this by turning
different parts of the body in different directions.
This method of depicting human figures was created very early, and it changed very little for almost 3,000 years. That
is also very significant. The Egyptians considered their art perfect, like everything else in their world. So there was no need
to change it.
P a g e 17 o f 24
The content of Egyptian art is also optimistic. There are no monsters, as in the art of Mesopotamia. Most Egyptian
art shows pictures of every-day life in Egypt. As we might expect, the most common figure in art is the Pharaoh. When he
is pictured, he is often much larger than everyone else because he is a god. All of Egyptian life revolved around him, and
they believed that they would continue to be happy and prosperous only as long as they obeyed his rule. This may seem
like a strange idea to us; but as we saw last time, historically it was true.
Conclusion
If we look at Mesopotamian and Egyptian culture as a whole, perhaps the most curious feature of it to us is the idea
that political, economic, and social organization are natural. They are governed by the same rules and forces as the rising
and setting of the sun, and they cannot be changed ever.
Now, we have seen, of course, that change did take place in the ancient Near East. But it was so slight and so gradual
that Near Easterners were generally unaware of it. At any given time, men did not know about any way of life other than
the one they had. They had no history; so they could not compare conditions in the present with conditions in the past. At
first, they had little contact with people outside their own civilizations. Thus, they could not compare their lives with the
lives that others led. They tended to think that their present conditions must exist everywhere and always and that their
way of organizing themselves was the only way possible. Later on, this made it very difficult for them to adjust to new
conditions that arose after many centuries.
P a g e 18 o f 24
THE CATASTROPHE
OF 1200 B.C. & THE
E N D O F T H E B RO N Z E
AGE
Today I want to do two things. First, I
want to give you some idea of Bronze
Age civilization in the eastern Mediterranean down to about 1200 B.C. Next,
I want to spend some time on what historians call the “catastrophe of the
1200s,” and the results of that catastrophe which heralded in the Iron Age.
Today we will move around quite a bit – we will
look at the Near East and Asia Minor, and we’ll take a
look at a couple of Bronze Age civilizations in the Aegean – Crete and Mycenaean Greece. I’ll talk a bit
about these cultures and quite a bit about one of traits
that all of them had in common – dependence on
chariots in warfare – and we will see that, no matter
where these civilizations existed, all of them may have
suffered much the same fate! If we look at a map of
the eastern Mediterranean, we will see Near East and
Egypt; to the North is Syria-Palestine, and further
north, Asia Minor. Look to the West of Asia Minor and
you will see the Aegean Sea and the end of the Balkan
Peninsula (Greece), and at the very bottom of the Balkan Peninsula, in the Mediterranean, is the little island
of Crete. We’ll take a look at all of the main Bronze
Age civilizations in these areas today, and then, we will
destroy them. Cool, huh?
In my last lecture, I discussed the two major civilizations of the ancient Near East: Mesopotamia and
Egypt. For a long time, they were the only civilized societies in the world. But, gradually, civilization spread
out of the great river valleys into surrounding regions.
One area affected was the region of Syria-Palestine
that lay between the two early civilizations.
Some “more advanced (civilized)” communities
began to appear here as early as 2000 B.C., but the region only became important in the late 1000's and after. We already had a glimpse of this region earlier. As
we saw, beginning in 1575 B.C., the pharaohs of the
Egyptian New Kingdom conquered this territory and
brought it into an Egyptian empire.
For almost three hundred years, the Egyptians
ruled many small states in the region without serious
opposition. But around 1300 B.C., another powerful
people invaded it and tried to take the lands away from
Egypt. These new invaders were the Hittites.
The Hittites
The Hittites invaded Asia Minor around 2000 B.C.
and conquered many primitive peoples living there.
The invaders came from the north — somewhere in
Central Asia. The Hittite language is one of the oldest
representatives we have of a large family of languages
called Indo-European languages. They get their name
from the fact that they are spoken in most of Europe
and part of India in historic times.
P a g e 19 o f 24
Scholars once assumed that the secret of Hittite expansion was the use of iron armor and weapons, in their military activities from a very early date. Scholars made, in fact,
two faulty assumptions.
1. That the Hittites were Europeans, and therefore racially
superior to the peoples that they conquered.
2. That the Hittites were the first civilization to use iron
that they somehow guarded as a secret weapon against
their rivals.
In the first place, the homeland of these Indo-Europeans
was most likely Central Asia, rather than Europe, but it
doesn’t really matter, since late 19th century notions that
Europeans are “racially superior” is poppycock anyway. In
the second place, yes, the Hittites had developed limited use
of iron materials by about 1300 B.C., but so had most of
their rivals. Ironically, the iron technology of this period
didn’t produce a quality of iron that was much more useful
than bronze for weapons, but what the Hittites had was
LOTS of iron, as well as silver and other materials found in
Asia Minor. Iron was a VERY valuable metal. We know
that lumps of iron were traded like gold or silver in the
Eastern Mediterranean. In the Iliad, iron is often mentioned as a valuable trophy or prize, and these aren’t things
made out of iron – they are just lumps of the stuff. So, perhaps the secret to the success of the Hittites lay more in
their mineral wealth than in their secret iron weapons!
The Hittite Empire
The Hittite Empire was
centered at its capital of
Hattusas in Asia Minor.
The Hittite expanded their
empire until they ran into
the Egyptians. From then on
they fought to a standstill.
The Hittites chief weapon
was the war chariot which
was a mobile missile platform. See picture of the
archer in his cart right.
Anyway, the Hittites were very warlike, and made good
use of the war chariot in their military conquests. Another
Central Asian people, who arrived in Mesopotamia in the
mid-1600s B.C. had introduced the war chariot and used it
to conquer a fair sized chunk of the Babylonian Empire.
The weapon that enabled these new invaders to gain a substantial military advantage was the war chariot. The Hittites took the war chariot and improved upon it, and then they
employed their new weapon to finish off the rest of Babylonian Empire in 1595
B.C. The Hittite Empire reached its peak between 1450 and 1300. During this period their empire stretched from northern Asia Minor down the Mediterranean
coast through Syria and Lebanon, and as far east as the Euphrates River.
In the early 1200s, the Hittites fought a long war with Egypt over SyriaPalestine. Neither side could win a decisive victory. The main result of the war was
to drain the resources and undermine the strength of both Egypt and the Hittite
kingdom. This weakness proved disastrous for both sides. As we will see, around
1200, serious problems began to appear throughout the eastern Mediterranean.
The Bronze Age Aegean
The map above shows Egyptian
and Hittite expansion into SyriaPalestine.
Now I want to turn our attention to the area of the eastern Mediterranean that is
dominated by the Aegean Sea. It is comprised of Greece and the islands of the Aegean down to Crete. The earliest civilization in the area grew up on that little island
which was inhabited from as early as 7000 B.C.
P a g e 20 o f 24
Minoan Civilization
An Early Bronze Age culture
flourished and grew on the island. By
about 2200 B.C. a very high
civilization had developed. This
culture is called Minoan, after the
mythical king Minos. Cities began to
appear on Crete at about this time.
The largest and most important of
these cities was Knossos. A large
palace was begun here in about 2000
B.C. The palace was an enormous
structure that appears to have housed
thousands of people.
We do not know what the
relationship was between the various
cities on Crete. The absence of
fortifications suggests that all of these
cities were part of the same kingdom.
There was considerable traffic
between the cities, which tends to
support this theory. Truth is, we would
like to know lots more about Minoan
civilization, but we can’t read their
writing – Linear A, so we have to rely
on a wealth of archaeological
evidence.
The economy of Minoan Crete
was primarily agricultural. Most
people were farmers. They cultivated
figs, olives, grapes, beans, and peas
and raised livestock. Some of these
crops, especially figs and legumes were
specialty produce which were
probably traded with other areas of
the Mediterranean. Some other trade
ware included jewelry (made in the
cities) and pottery.
It is probable that
the great cities of
Minoan Crete
owed their
prosperity to sea
trade in their own
produce, and
everyone else’s all
over the eastern
Mediterranean.
The Bronze Age Aegean
The Aegean Sea is at the top of the eastern Mediterranean. People have
lived there since the Stone Age. By about 2000 B.C., there existed two
Bronze Age cultures in the area. The earliest is called Minoan
civilization, which was situated on the island of Crete. The second was
situated on the Greek mainland. It is called the Mycenaean civilization.
We don’t know what these folks called themselves. The labels that we
use were created by European scholars in the late 19th century. The
picture right
is an artistic
reproduction
of the city of
Knossos on
Crete in
about 1600
B.C. when it
may have
had 15,000
inhabitants.
Left, Minoan
goddess of
fertility.
P a g e 21 o f 24
Minoan Religion
Trying to reconstruct religious patterns on the basis of archaeology is dangerous. We get some clues from artifacts and
some from later survivals, which were incorporated, into the
Greek legends and myths. The Minoans probably worshiped
fertility gods. We know that they worshiped a male god who
was born and died annually. This cult may have been imported from the Near East, where dying and rising gods were
associated with agricultural fertility worship. Another cult
was dedicated to animal fertility and is associated with small
statues of a woman holding snakes and usually surrounded
by small animals. These figurines are found all over Crete.
Decline of Minoan Civilization
Sometime around 1550 B.C., the island of Santorini exploded in a volcanic eruption that caused a
massive tidal wave that swept across Crete. The
Island civilization never recovered from the blow.
Between about 1550 and 1450 B.C. Minoan civilization fell
on some pretty hard times. There was an enormous volcanic
eruption on the island of Santorini, about 140 miles north of
Crete around 1550 B.C. Scholars believe that it was one of
the most cataclysmic eruptions in history. The volcanic explosion literally tore the island of Santorini apart, incidentally destroying a vibrant Bronze Age civilization situated
there, and sending tsunamis across the Eastern Mediterranean. One scholar surmised that Crete was hit by a series of
these waves, some of which were 400 to 600 feet high. Since
most of the cities of Crete were coastal harbors, and since
the island depended on sea trade for its prosperity, the tidal
waves could have crippled Minoan civilization. We know that
by 1450 B.C., Crete may have been invaded and conquered
by the Mycenaeans of the mainland. Linear A disappears
from usage to be replaced by the Mycenaean script, Linear
B.
Mycenaean Civilization
Although the Greek mainland had been settled from about 6000 B.C. onward, I am going to begin this lecture with the first Bronze Age culture that had
a written language – the Mycenaeans. The Mycenaean culture takes its name
from the first site from that civilization to be unearthed in modern times.
Bronze Age Mycenae was built on a hilltop. It was continuously occupied
and improved upon from about 2000 B.C. until 1200 B.C. It was a walled fortress with a large palace and some smaller buildings inside the walls. Unlike
Knossos, the Minoan city on the island of Crete, Mycenae was never a city. Most
of the populace lived in outlying villages and worked the land. Mycenae was
built to house and protect the king – wanax – and his administrators and craftsmen. It was a heavily fortified center of government.
In 1939, archaeologists found a second center of Mycenaean culture – Pylos.
As they dug into the ruins they began to find bits of clay tablets upon which
there was a previously unknown kind of writing – Linear B. In all, some 600
The ruins of the fortress palace at
complete tablets were found at Pylos. These tablets remained undeciphered until
1954 when a young British archaeologist named Michael Ventris discovered that Mycenae in Greece.
Linear B was a form of the Greek language.
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These 600 tablets began to give us some idea of what the
Mycenaean culture was like. There were several city-states on
the mainland of Greece. Each of these was a center of government for a sizable territory. Each state was ruled by a king
(wanax). In turn, each king’s holdings were administered over
by a complicated hierarchy of servants who saw to it that the
local taxes were paid, organized and trained the military, and
organized the populace (demos) when necessary.
The Mycenaean culture flourished until about 1200 B.C.
At this time, new settlements and burial patterns became established all over the Aegean – especially in Greece. Somewhat
later, Bronze Age tools began to be replaced with iron technology. The Mycenaean culture that had dominated Greece vanished altogether.
The Catastrophe of ca. 1200 B.C.
In fact, archaeological evidence indicates that around 1200
B.C. civilizations all over the eastern Med. were either destroyed or aversely effected by something, and scholars have
come to call that something the catastrophe of the 1200s B.C.
Various scholars have come up with a number of interpretations to try to explain the catastrophe. So, we should review the
main interpretations briefly. What happened? We don’t know,
but several factors probably led to the change. Here are some
theories:
The Sea People
Professor Robert Drews argues that the Sea People were
Europeans mercenaries and raiders who invaded the eastern
Mediterranean in the 13th century B.C. and plundered the
rich Late Bronze Age cities there in order to bring the wealth
home. The frieze above is part of an Egyptian temple relief
commemorating the victory of Ramses III over the Sea People
ca. 1200 B.C. The Egyptians had better luck against these
folks than other states. Between 1260 and 1200 B.C., some
fifty cities fell in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Hittite
Empire fell, as did Troy, a rich city in Asia Minor, and the
Mycenaean civilization, and lots of others.
1. Several European historians in the late 19th century argued
that the Bronze Age civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean were overrun by invading hordes of European invaders who settled in these areas. This would square with the Greek legends of Dorian invaders who wandered into
Greece in the 1200s and settled there, displacing the older Mycenaean culture. Volkwanderung, that is migrations of
peoples from central Europe displacing inferior non-Europeans in the East was a favorite fantasy of European nationalist scholars of the 19th century, and the ideas was revived briefly by Nazi historians in the 1930s. Problem is that the
theory isn’t supported by any real archaeological evidence. There is no sign of the pre-existing populations being replaced by invaders with a different culture, and no real evidence of new peoples moving in and adapting older cultures
to fit, as had happened in Mesopotamia in the past. The best evidence indicated the original populations living in the
same places with a much lower level of wealth, prosperity, security and material culture. So much for volkwanderung!
2. Another popular theory, this one crops up from time to time in the 20th century we might call the “massive acts of
god” argument. Essentially, scholars who subscribe to this one argue that a series of earthquakes, tsunamis, severe
droughts, whatever, devastated the Eastern Med. between about 1350 and 1200 B.C., destroying the great cities and
thus devastating those civilizations. We know that this happened occasionally – I’ve already talked about the case of
Crete, and it may be that an earthquake destroyed Troy, at least once. But lots of the cities were not in earthquake
zones, and there is no evidence of any of the other stuff, either. If earthquakes or whatnot had destroyed the cities,
there would be lots of valuable artifacts on the sites. Natural cataclysms tend to destroy the buildings and bury people
and artifacts in rubble. Good examples of this are Pompeii, covered by volcanic ash, and one level of Troy (VIIa). Most
of the cities of the eastern Med. yield archaeological evidence that suggests the cities were attacked, sacked and
burned, and whoever did it grabbed all the goodies that they could carry and split.
3. Some historians surmise that Bronze Age kingdoms all over the eastern Med. collapsed under the weight of their own
internal social/economic failings. This argument has been real popular among Marxist historians since the 1940s (Brit.
Gordon Childe). These folks argue that the city societies became increasingly top heavy, bloated with a greedy warrior
and bureaucratic palace-based aristocracy whose needs were met by an increasingly oppressed peasant population.
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Usually the trigger for a peasant revolt is a drought, which reduces production so that there aren’t enough goodies to go
around. Under this theory the peasants, in good Marxist fashion, rise up and destroy their oppressors. Again, there isn’t
any good evidence, and there are lots of problems: a) Why would the peasants destroy the cities? b) How did oppressed
and downtrodden peasants who had been dominated by the ruling class and professional armies suddenly have the
clout to overthrow their oppressors, especially if a drought had reduced their caloric intake so severely that they had to
rise up? c) Why is there no record of troubles up to the moment when the cities were destroyed? Finally d) how can we
rationalize so many relatively identical peasant uprisings and cities destroyed – over 50 of them – all over the eastern
Med. in roughly a century?
4. In 1993, a historian named Robert Drews of Vanderbilt University offered a new interpretation that accounts for all of
the evidence in a way that I find much more satisfying. In The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the
Catastrophe ca. 1200 B.C. Drew argues that, by 1400 B.C., the main form of military power in the civilized East was
the chariot. Despite Homeric descriptions of chariot warfare that depict the chariot as a sort of battle-taxi for warrior
heroes who dismount to fight, real chariot warfare involved pairs of warriors, one to guide the chariot, and one firing
arrows at the enemy. Massed chariots advanced on the enemy, fired missiles, then veered off, returned to the lines and
did it again.
Over time, eastern Mediterranean states invested more and more in chariots, and employed infantry as offensive
troops less and less. Chariots are very expensive, and scholars once thought that Egyptian and Hittite descriptions of
armies with thousands of chariots were mostly official bragging. But written inventories of chariots and horses in Mycenaean Pylos indicates that even that small city state had an army with as many as 1,600 chariots. So maybe Egypt at
the height of its power might have had 5 or 6 thousand chariots. At any rate, Drews surmises that by about 1300 B.C.,
the great states in the eastern Mediterranean supported large professional armies of aristocratic charioteers, and had
only small infantry units to guard camps and supplies and to dispatch wounded enemy troops after the chariots had
done their thing.
Written evidence indicates that, since the warrior aristocrats had no desire to arm their peasants, these kingdoms
began to hire mercenaries from areas on the fringes of the civilized world to serve as garrison soldiers and guards.
Some of these mercenaries came from the Western Med. Europe – Italy, Spain, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, and the Aegean. These areas were materially poor, so mercenaries who served in Eastern armies were most impressed by the material wealth of their employers, VERY impressed!
These barbarian warriors were not only able soldiers, but also very good sailors. They fought with small, light
shields, effective thrusting/cutting swords, and light throwing spears (javelins). They wore light armor and practiced
very mobile group infantry tactics. Sometime around 1200 B.C., these outsiders realized that they were well equipped
to attack and destroy chariot-based armies. Their javelins could be employed to bring down the horses and they could
swarm over the drivers and archers and use their swords to kill them. Between 1300 and 1200, groups of these folks
began to make sea raids against Eastern cities, much as their cousins the Vikings would against European civilization
some 2000 years later. These “Sea People” had no interest in settling in the cities that they attacked, they weren’t conquerors, they were looters. They defeated the chariot armies, plundered the cities, burned them, and then returned
home to enjoy the fruits of their efforts. They were very successful. As I mentioned earlier, some 50 cities in the Eastern
Med. exhibit signs that they were attacked quickly, methodically plundered and destroyed between roughly 1260 and
1190 B.C. The “Sea People” did not conquer the Egyptians but the Egyptian state was considerably weakened by a
series of their attacks during the period, and never fully recovered. The Hittite Empire was destroyed by a series of
raids from the sea and her major cities were destroyed including Hattusas, the capital, in about 1200 B.C.
The overall effect of these raids made much of the Near East and Egypt easy pickings for Iron Age invaders who began
to expand into the area in the 1100s B.C., among them the Assyrian and later, the Persians. For nearly 200 years after the
invasion of the “Sea People,” Egypt was ruled by invaders from Libya and Nubia, who took advantage of the weakened
state of the Egyptians. As we will see later in the course, the great fortress-palace Mycenaean culture disappeared from
Greece, to be replaced by a “Dark Age” that lasted from 2 to 4 centuries. So, the catastrophe marks the end of the great
Bronze Age civilizations in the eastern Mediterranean. Now, is Drews’ theory the last word on the subject of the Catastrophe of 1200 B.C.? Probably not, but, his interpretation fits the evidence better than any other theory so far.
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Study Guide for History 101 Unit 1
Read Chapter 1 in the text and watch, take notes and study Lectures in the first unit.
Early Man:
✓When do the first human-like creatures appear on earth?
✓How do these earliest “humans” compare to Homo Sapiens?
✓Identify, compare and contrast:
• Homo Erectus
• Neanderthal Man
• Homo Sapiens
✓Understand the basic evolution of man from the hunter-gatherers of 75,000 years ago
through the civilizations of the Neolithic Age.
✓When were humans hunter-gatherers?
✓Mr. Elliott spends quite a bit of time discussing the diet of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers.
What is the significance of the protein-rich diet of hunter-gatherers and what
consequences does that diet have on their lives and society?
✓What was the technology of Paleolithic man like?
✓What does “sedentary” mean and why is it important?
✓What and when was the Paleolithic period?
✓What and when was the Neolithic period?
✓Of what importance was agriculture?
✓Mr. Elliott argues that the transition from Paleolithic hunter-gatherer to Neolithic farmer
involved several “tradeoffs” in terms of the overall human condition. Describe these
tradeoffs and make sure that you understand them.
✓What are Jericho and Catal Huyuk, and why are these communities important?
The Ancient Near East (Mesopotamia)
✓Understand the basic characteristics of “civilization” and where these took place in the
Ancient Near East.
✓Identify the basic geography of the "Ancient Near East."
✓Know major rivers as well as settled areas.
• Tigris
• Euphrates
• the Fertile Crescent
• Sumer
✓Know the basic characteristics of Mesopotamian civilization, including:
• irrigation
• stratified society
• theocracy
• cuneiform
• animism
• polytheism
History 101 — Study Guide of Unit 1
• descriptions of cities
• ziggurat
• lugal
✓You should be familiar with the Epic of Gilgamish, the earliest example of epic poetry
in the West. Who was Gilgamesh? Who was Enkidu? What is the important message
of the story?
✓And, while we are at it, what is a myth? What is the essential purpose of myths?
✓Identify and explain the other major groups of people in the Ancient Near East, as
discussed in the lectures and in your text. Explain who belongs where geographically;
understand the leadership and major events or characteristics as discussed in class.
• Akkadians
• Phoenicians
• Amorites
• Hebrews
• Assyrians
• Chaldeans
• Hittites
• Persians
• Canaanites
The Aakkadians
✓Akkadians were a semitic people who united much of Mesopotamia into the world’s
first empire.
✓Akkadian lugal (king) named Sargon invaded Sumeria in about 2350 B.C.
✓Akkadian Empire faded out by about 2100 B.C.
The Amorites (Babylonians)
✓The Amorites are the Semitic speaking people who replace the Akkadians as empire
builders in Mesopotamia.
✓The set up their capital in the ancient Sumerian city of Babylon.
✓The greatest Amorite king was Hammurabi (c. 1790-1750 B.C.). He is best known for
the code of laws that are named after him.
✓Study the Codes of Hammurabi in and the text.
✓What advantages did a unified code of laws have for the Amorites?
Ancient Egypt
✓What was the “Gift of the Nile”? How did the Nile River differ from the Tigris and
Euphrates and what effect did those differences have on Egyptian civilization and the
Egyptian world view?
✓What are the major geographic characteristics of Ancient Egypt?
✓What are Upper and Lower Egypt?
✓Who unified Egypt? When?
✓Recognize the various time phases of Ancient Egyptian civilization (the various
“Kingdoms”) and Intermediate Periods, and the major characteristics and leaders of
each.
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History 101 — Study Guide of Unit 1
✓Understand the characteristics, duties and political position of the pharaoh. I note in
one of my lectures that, whereas Mesopotamian lugals (kings) professed to be agents
of the gods, Egyptian pharaohs were gods. How does that work out? What are the
consequences for Egypt?
✓Using your lectures and the text, Identify the following:
• nomes
• The Book of the
• Thutmose III
Dead
• nomarchs
• Hatshepsut
Memphis
ma’at
•
•
• Amenhotep III
• Narmer or Menes
• pyramids
• Akhenaten
Horus
mummies
•
•
• Aten
• Ra
• sarcophagus
• Tutankhamun
Osiris
hieroglyphics
•
•
• Ramses II
• Ptah
• Rosetta Stone
The
Theology
of
•
• demotic
Memphis
• Hyksos
✓Understand the relationship between the Egyptians and the Hittites in the New
Kingdom and identify the Battle of Kadesh and its consequences.
The Hittites
✓Who were the Hittites? Where did they come from? How did they change the
development of Civilization in the Near East?
✓Who were the Hurrians and the Mitani and what was their relationship to the Hittites
and Egyptians?
✓What was Hittite government like?
✓Professor Robison discusses military innovations introduced by the Hittites. What
were they and what effect did they have on warfare in the Near East?
The Canaanites and Phoenicians
The Canaanites and Phoenicians were Semitic speaking peoples who settled in the
area of Syria-Palestine during the Later Bronze Age and became the dominant culture
by the beginning of the Iron Age (c. 1100 B.C.). You should be familiar with both groups,
and especially with the Phoenicians, who traded and colonized throughout the
Mediterranean and introduced the “Phonetic Alphabet” to Europe.
The Hebrews
✓Understand the general history of the Ancient Hebrews from 1900 BC to 722 BC; also
the relationship between the Jews and their religion.
✓Judaism is both the first major religion based on “exclusive monotheism” and the
concept of ethical behavior toward men as part of the “covenanted” relationship
between God and his devotees. What do the following terms mean?
✓exclusive monotheism
✓ethical religion
✓the laws
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History 101 — Study Guide of Unit 1
✓the Covenant
✓the Ten Commandments
✓What are the major aspects of the religion of the Hebrews? Historians believe that the
earliest nomadic Hebrews started out as polytheistic animists in much the same mold
as the other civilizations we have looked at. How did the Hebrews develop from
nomadic animists to exclusive monotheists? This process didn’t happen overnight;
what were the”steps” involved?
✓Identify the following:
• Abraham
• Moses
• Palestine
• Saul
• the Philistines
• David
• Solomon
• Judea
• Jerusalem
• Israel
• the prophets
✓Discuss the relationship that the Hebrews had with the other civilizations of the Near
East, especially the Canaanites, Phoenicians, Philistines, Assyrians, Egyptians,
Hittites and Chaldeans.
✓Who were the “Ten Lost Tribes of Israel?”
✓Who was King Nebuchadnezzar?
✓What was the “Babylonian Captivity of the Jews,” and what effect did it have on
developments in the Hebrew religion?
✓What is the Torah?
The Assyrians
✓The Assyrians are another Semitic people who flourished in the Near East.
✓They first appear in the northern area of Mesopotamia around 2000 B.C.
✓They begin to expand into southern Asia Minor and south into Mesopotamia after 800
B.C.
✓By the mid-600s, they had created an empire that included most of the areas that we
have seen so far (see map, text p. 41).
✓The Assyrians were the first to use Iron weapons. They learned a technique for
making Iron very hard from the Hittites.
✓With their powerful weapons and their large, well trained, and highly organized armies,
the Assyrians were the greatest military power in Mesopotamia at the time.
✓The capital of the Assyrian Empire was the city of Nineveh, on the Tigris river. From
here powerful kings would appoint officials who would control the many provinces of
the Assyrian Empire.
✓Because the Assyrians were harsh rulers, they were generally not liked by the people
they took over.
✓The last great Assyrian king was Ashurbanipal (668-627 B.C.)
✓The Assyrians combined militaristic brutality with a love of culture.
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History 101 — Study Guide of Unit 1
✓Study the Assyrian conquest of Israel and the results of that conquest (“lost tribes”).
✓Ashurbanipal created the great library at Nineveh, which contained an extensive
collection of materials from all over the empire.
✓The Assyrian Empire falls in 626 B.C. See the lecture to find out why.
The Chaldean Empire (Neo Babylonian)
✓The Chaldeans were descendants of the Babylonians that the Assyrians conquered.
✓The Chaldeans consolidated an empire for themselves on the ruins of the Assyrian
Empire.
✓Over the next 40 or 50 years, the Chaldeans rebuilt the city of Babylon. It was one of
the most magnificent cities of the ancient world.
✓Chaldeans under the leadership of Nebuchadnezzar II conquered Judea and brought
leading Hebrew families back to Babylon (see “Babylonian Captivity”).
✓Nebuchadnezzar fashions himself a new Hammurabi.
✓Babylon reaches its height as a great city under the Chaldeans. As Dr. Robison notes
in the TV lecture, the city became a center of magnificent buildings and also a
religious center. Study both aspects.
✓Not even 100 years after the Chaldeans came to power, a group from outside
Mesopotamia called the Persians invaded and claimed the region as part of their
empire.
The Persians
✓Know the basic history of the Persians, an people who, like the hittites, spoke a
language related to the Indo-European language group.
✓Where did the come from?
✓Where was their empire located?
✓Who was Cyrus the Great?
✓Study the process whereby Cyrus the Great created the Persian Empire.
✓Study the policies of the Persians. How did Persian administration differ from the
administrative policies of the Assyrians?
✓Prof. Robison remarks that the Persian Empire represents the “first multicultural
empire.” Explain.
✓Study Cyrus’ treatment of the Hebrews of the “Babylonian Captivity.”
✓Study Persian military structure.
✓Who was Cambyses?
✓Who was Darius the Great?
✓What is Persepolis?
✓What is a Satrap/satrapy?
✓What is Zoroastrianism? Ahura Mazda?
✓Zoroastrianism is called a “dualistic religion.” What does that mean? Learn the basics
of the religion, its origins in earlier Persian animistic beliefs, its basic ideas and how
Zoroastrianism becomes associated as the state religion of the Persians.
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History 101 — Study Guide of Unit 1
✓In what ways does Zoroastrianism effect the beliefs of the Hebrews, in turn effecting
the nature of Christianity and Islam?
✓Persia had not one, but four capitals. Why?
✓What were the short and long term consequences of the series of wars that the
Persians fought against the Greeks from about 500 B.C. down to around 320 B.C.?
✓Identify the following:
• Iranian Plateau
• Xerxes I
• satraps
• Salamis
• satrapies
• Plataea
• King of Kings
• Artaxerxes II
• Lydians
• Darius III
• Medes
• Alexander
• Cyrus the Great
• Ahuras
• Achaemenid Dynasty
• Devas
• Cambyses
• Magi
• Darius
• Zoroaster (Zarathustra)
• Darius II
• Ahura Mazda
• Ionian greeks
• Ahriman
• Marathon
Finally, what was the Catastrophe of 1200? Review various theories for the
Catastrophe.
This concludes the study guide for the first exam. You should also study the maps in the
text book and should have some basic idea of where stuff is. I will expect that you will
know the relative locations of states, important cities and other “map oriented” concepts.
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