The document summarizes key aspects of ancient Mesopotamian civilization, including:
1. Writing first developed in Mesopotamia around 3200-3400 BC, where Sumerians used clay tablets and cuneiform writing.
2. Sumerian society was highly structured with divine kings, aristocrats, workers, slaves. They lived in independent city-states.
3. Notable features included extensive irrigation canals and ziggurats, which were terraced temples used for religious and government functions.
4. Sumerian law was harsh, following the principle of "lex talionis" or retributive justice, and emphasized blood feuds between families
The document summarizes key aspects of ancient Mesopotamian civilization, including:
1. Writing first developed in Mesopotamia around 3200-3400 BC, where Sumerians used clay tablets and cuneiform writing.
2. Sumerian society was highly structured with divine kings, aristocrats, workers, slaves. They lived in independent city-states.
3. Notable features included extensive irrigation canals and ziggurats, which were terraced temples used for religious and government functions.
4. Sumerian law was harsh, following the principle of "lex talionis" or retributive justice, and emphasized blood feuds between families
The document summarizes key aspects of ancient Mesopotamian civilization, including:
1. Writing first developed in Mesopotamia around 3200-3400 BC, where Sumerians used clay tablets and cuneiform writing.
2. Sumerian society was highly structured with divine kings, aristocrats, workers, slaves. They lived in independent city-states.
3. Notable features included extensive irrigation canals and ziggurats, which were terraced temples used for religious and government functions.
4. Sumerian law was harsh, following the principle of "lex talionis" or retributive justice, and emphasized blood feuds between families
The document summarizes key aspects of ancient Mesopotamian civilization, including:
1. Writing first developed in Mesopotamia around 3200-3400 BC, where Sumerians used clay tablets and cuneiform writing.
2. Sumerian society was highly structured with divine kings, aristocrats, workers, slaves. They lived in independent city-states.
3. Notable features included extensive irrigation canals and ziggurats, which were terraced temples used for religious and government functions.
4. Sumerian law was harsh, following the principle of "lex talionis" or retributive justice, and emphasized blood feuds between families
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Mesopotamia Civilization
Ancient Sumeria was the first writing society known to man. In
our last lecture we considered that long, long period of millions of years of preliterate human experience, which gave us so much: a physical body and a wondering curious mind. That prehistoric period finally resulted in the Agricultural or Neolithic Revolution about 8 to 10 thousand years ago. And one of the most important consequences that came out of that Agricultural Revolution you may remember was writing. The first writing society of which we have any record developed in Mesopotamiaa Greek term that means the land between the rivers. It was here in the area of modern Iraq that these first agricultural villages, products of the Neolithic Revolution, produced some written documents. We date this first writing society in the late 4 th millennium B.C., around 3200, 3300, or 3400 B.C.
Cuneiform Writing
Some scholars have argued that the Egyptians preceded the Mesopotamians with the invention of writing, but the consensus, which is what we must go by, though it is shifting, is that writing first occurred in Mesopotamia, in the area occupied by modern Iraq. They used clay tablets because there was a lack of wood and things with which to make paper. With a little pen like instrument called a cuneaus they wrote pictures on clay that had a word or sound value. We call these pictures, preserved on clay tablets, cuneiform writing. It was fortunate that they used clay because once it hardened, it survived violence and fire. We now have thousands of clay tablets which are thousands of years old, dating back to the period of the late 4 th millennium B.C. They record the thoughts and ideas, chiefly about commerce in their earlier writing, but increasingly about literature, religion, and law. Though we have an enormous number of them, it wasnt until the middle of the nineteenth century, around 1845 or 1850 that a scholar named George Rawlinson successfully deciphered them. Now they can be read as rapidly as English by those who know the language. One foremost Sumerian scholar in Americawas Professor Samuel Noah Kramer, whose book, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character I consulted in preparing this lecture. Though we can read them, there are tablet that have not yet been deciphered. Young scholars are yet going into the field hoping to discover something new about ancient Mesopotamian civilization. This first civilization, this first society is usually referred to as Sumeria, the land of Shumer. The Bible refers to it as the land of Shimar. They are all the same. We refer to the people who lived there as Sumerians. The Sumerians were a remarkable people. They were a long lasting civilization of enormous accomplishment. One of the exciting things about the Sumerians is that when the curtain goes up, everything is already in full motion. From their very first writings they reveal an organized society with kings, laws, literature, schools, and libraries. They appear on the world scene as a very sophisticated people. I could not help wondering, Where is the evolution? Where are the preliminaries? It is amazing that with their first written records on these clay tablets, they come across as a very accomplished and sophisticated people. Ultimately, the Sumerians will last about a thousand years, from about 3200 B.C. until about 2000 B.C. or after.
Religion, Government and Social Structure
We discover from the tablets that in ancient Sumeria religion and government became one and the same. We encounter divine kingship. The leader of government was usually referred to as the Ensi. The Ensi was the king or the ruler of the city-state. He became also the high priest. He was the one getting revelations from God and telling the people what their religious ritual should be. He was also the one who decided where the canals should be dug and handed out the work assignments. Government and religion become intertwined. We encounter a society that is very structured, with the Ensi, this divine king, at the top. Beneath him was the aristocracy, the wealthy landowners; then there were some artisans and merchants; a large number of workers or peasants, and at the bottom, slaves. At every one of these strata, women ranked very low. The government structure was built around a city-state. Each village or city in ancient Sumeria, in southern Mesopotamia, was a separate political entity in its own right. It was a nation, a city- state, much the same kind of entity that we will encounter later among the Greeks, or even later, during the Renaissance in Italy, where each city is a separate independent political sovereignty. And so it was in ancient Sumeria. And just as among the Greeks and in Renaissance Italy, these Sumerian city-states didnt get along very well and often went to war. Some of them would sometimes ally or confederate themselves with other city-states for purposes of common defense. But still the dominant political structure remained the city-state.
Canals and Ziggurats
If you were able to visit ancient Sumeria, there would be two outstanding physical features that were very obvious. The first was the great canal. Remember that cities developed out of agriculture. Ancient Sumerians were tremendous farmers. We believe they were among the first people in history who learned to irrigate. Water was very precious in the Middle East, as it is today. They learned how to siphon it out of the rivers, the Tigris and the Ephrates, and move it to their fields. Those canals were so large and well dug that they are visible even today, a testament of their success and determination and ability as agriculturalists. The second physical structures that you would see were the ziggurats. A ziggurat was a high terrace which gradually developed into a massive tower upon which the main temple was situated. This was Sumers most characteristic contribution to religious architecture. There was always at least one, and sometimes more than one, ziggurat in each city. These ziggurats were very interesting structures. They were tiered or staged structures with some kind of walkway to the top. They were solid inside, unlike the Egyptian pyramids, which would sometimes have interior corridors and burial chambers. These ziggurats were entirely solid, made of brick or adobe. Sometimes they had decorations, made by inserting thousands of painted clay cones into the mud plaster. The chief functions occurred at the top, where there would be a little enclosure for the purpose of religious ritual. The Ensi would go up to the top in order to communicate with heaven. They also required others to go up and participate in ritual to satisfy the gods. The Greek traveler, Herodotus, indicates that these included some very interesting sexual rituals. He said that as recent as 500 B.C. they were still having these sexual rituals. That would be 2500 years after the Sumerians started, so one may well be skeptical, but he described rituals undoubted for the purposed of fertility. He tells some funny stories about it. This was a kind of a temple. But not only for religious purposes, but because it was combined with government, it fulfilled secular, governmental purposes as well. The same was true of the Greeks, that their temples were both religious edifices and buildings used for governmental purposes as well because of the combination and merging of church and state. And so with the ziggurats, the remains of which are still visible today.
Law and the Lex talionis
What do we read on the tablets about Sumerian law? Law may seem dry and uninteresting, but it can be fascinating when you get into the details. In studying ancient Sumerian law from their clay tablets on which they wrote it down, we learn that there were three chief characteristics of Sumerican law. There characteristics will remain typical of all Mesopotamian societies and even some societies that came after. The first was its harshness, which falls into the category that we call the Lex talionis, or the Law of the Talon. The talon is the claw of a bird of prey, like a hawk. The law of the claw means that it is a very harsh code of law. They put many to death for what we might consider menial crimes. They punished people severely. The law of the talon would characterize many societies long after the Sumerians. Our phrase, A pound of flesh, is literally taken from Roman practice, where in early Roman times they would sometimes take out a pound of flesh for various infractions of the law by Roman citizens. The Lex talionis also has another feature. As part of this harsh approach, we encounter the old tradition of the blood feud. The blood feud is a phrase that we use for very primitive, very early forms of law. It is employed as a way to satisfy justice with a minimum of burden on the state. The blood feud is predominantly private justice. If I hit you in the nose and break your nose, you have the right to hit me and break mine. But it is more than just a leveling of the scale of justice. It is that the responsibility for leveling the scale of justice rests with you. You must hit me in the nose. Or if I steal from you, you must then steal back from me. It is private justice. We call it the blood feud because it you are unsuccessful in satisfying justice, it falls to your blood kin to satisfy that justice. This is inexpensive justice because society doesnt have to hire policemen or establish an elaborate court system because it is up to individuals. But the problem is that it is also inefficient. What if in the process of breaking my nose, you also knock out some of my teeth, and then I go after you for teeth. In the course of a generation or two we forget the original problem but we have entire families at war with one another, like the Hatfields and the McCoys. It goes on generation after generation. In most societies the blood feud is put aside at some point because of these problems. They begin to establish some kind of court system where a third party is involved, like a judge. In ancient Sumeria they were moving in that direction as early as 1050 B.C. Yet we find in some of their laws evidence of the blood feud, which seems to be a part of the Lex talionis. So that rather than making me pay a fine if I broke your nose, justice is satisfied only by harsh individual centered retaliation. Both the Lex talionis and the blood feud are applicable descriptions of their system of law.
Inequality before the Law
There is one other great feature of Sumerian law that we must mention. This is the idea of inequality. This is difficult for us to understand, but throughout most of history the assumption has been that people are not equal. It is only in the last three generations that we have become so passionately attached to the idea that people are equal. Throughout most of history they would have laughed at that idea. How can we possibly be equal. Some are stronger than others. Some are richer than others. Some are smarter than others. In what sense are we all equal? To ancient men and women it seemed obvious that people are not equal. Individuals with power, wealth, and authority should be treated better than poor beggars living off of the garbage and trash of others. How could they possible be looked upon as equal. Consequently, an unequal or differential approach to the administration of the law was a part of the ancient philosophy. A poor person was punished more harshly for the same crime than a rich person. Throughout most of human experience this was considered the way it should be. Part of the privilege of being well educated and wealthy was that you were not punished as harshly.
Religion: Polytheistic; Mythopoeic
Ancient Sumerian religion, like all ancient societies except for two, were polytheistic. That means they believed in many gods. In addition, they were mythopoeic and animistic. Mythopoeic means that all the world was alive. There was a spirit in the brook, the mountain, and in the storm. All of nature had some life force. They were animistic because they believed that that life force was able to assert itself. A rock could leap up and hit you. They were animistic, mythopoeic, and polytheistic. These characteristics of ancient Sumerian religion, like the characteristics of their legal system would continue through society after society, through most of the societies we well talk about this semester. Though they had many gods, their pantheon, the way they organized their gods reflected society on earth. The gods were structured like society. There were more powerful gods, and less powerful gods. The chief god, called Enlil was the god of the wind and the skies. Right at the beginning the chief rulers were in heaven, and people would look up. Perhaps one of the reasons they built ziggurats, as a way to get closer to heaven. Another thing about Enlil was that he was male. Remember that in Paleolithic times, we think the dominant deities were female and that with the Neolithic or agricultural revolution there was a transition that occurred. Women lost status and men became more dominant, so in their pantheon the most powerful gods were male. However, some female gods retained considerable status. The chief most of those female goddesses among the Sumerians was Ishtar, strongly associated with fertility rituals. The ancient Sumerians believed in an afterlife. They did not divide it into heaven and hell. They believed that in the next life there would be a kind of structural diversity similar to that on earth today. The powerful would be in a better position than the weak. But altogether, powerful and weak alike, found the next life a rather unpleasant place. They called it Sheol. It was a kind of dark region that nobody looked forward to, even if they were wealthy and powerful. The fact that they tended to denigrate the afterlife, looking upon it as a dusty, dark, unpleasant, existence, resulted in the fact that most Mesopotamian societies, including this first one of Sumeria, did not give much attention to funerary rites. When somebody died, unless they were especially wealthy and powerful, they were just buried quickly under the floor. This absence of elaborate funerary rites stands in sharp contrast to the Egyptians, where they looked on the next life as a wonderful desirable place to go, like the Christian heaven or the Islamic paradise. In Egypt funerals were very elaborate. Sumerian funerals were looked upon as inconsequential and not deserving of much attention.
Literature
The next topic is their literature. One of the fascinating things about the Sumerians was that so early we encounter so much, not only in their laws and religion, but also in their literature. They had literary tales and stories including a creation epic called the Enuma Elish. This was their account of how the world began. It describes this struggle between the gods, a war in heaven that resulted in a truce in which one of the gods, Enlil, won out. Every year that struggle was re-enacted in a kind of dramatic morality play. And every year at a certain time everyone was encouraged to breed to help the fertility of the crops, just as the gods had done at the beginning when two gods had mated and brought about the whole human race. This is described in the Sumerian Enuma Elish, the creation epic which was written about on their tablets.
Gilgamesh Epic
But the most popular of all Sumerian literature was the Gilgamesh Epic. The Gilgamesh Epic has been recognized as one of the great stories in all world literature and it is fascinating that we have it right at the beginning of human writing. The Sumerians wrote it over and over again in different versions with great variety. The book of readings provides an edited account compiled from one of the most recent versions. It should give you a sense of the way they thought and help you to see how mythopoeic they were. I will include questions about it on the exam that will not be included in the lecture. To assist you in understanding it, however, I will present a brief summary of it to you. Gilgamesh, the historical Gilgamesh was an Ensi, king of the Sumerican city-state of Uruk. He ruled the city of Uruk sometime about 2500 B.C. He was the divine king, remembered for building the citys walls and temple. Sumerian stories recounting his adventures are so shadowed with myth and legend that it is impossible to separate myth from reality. Perhaps the stories reflect his abilities or perhaps they merely project later events or imagination. Gilgamesh was considered a god. His deeds brought him such fame that he became the supreme hero of Sumerican myth and legend. Poems extolling him were written and rewritten for centuries. Samuel Noah Kramer, the foremost expert on ancient Sumeria, has called Gilgamesh, the hero par excellence of the ancient world. The following is a quote from the primary source reading on the Epic of Gilgamesh, which you should read in its entirety:
Surpassing all other kings, heroic in stature, brave scion of Uruk, wild bull on the rampage! Going at the fore, he was the vanguard, going at the rear, one his comrades could trust!
Who is there can rival his kingly standing, and say like Gilgamesh, It is I am the king? Gilgamesh was his name from the day he was born, two-thirds of him god and one third human.
The Epic of Gilgamesh portrays him as a tremendous athlete, large, strong, but cruel. Gilgamesh was a tyrant and he tyrannized his subjects in his pursuit of pleasure. Because he had all power, he insisted on having his way. He loved to eat and he loved women. He indulged himself with his love of both food and women. Gilgamesh insisted on exercising le droit de seigneur, which means the right to deflower the bride before the bridegroom consummated the marriage. He insisted on enjoying the favors of the daughters of his warriors as well. In this way, he abused his power over men and women and if anybody crossed him, he simply had them put to death. In the Gilgamesh Epic, the people cried for relief from the gods from this very hard and self-centered king. Their response to the kings oppression was to create a kind of equal double for Gilgamesh, named Enkidu, who could rival Gilgamesh and distract him from oppression of the people of Uruk. Then the story shifts without any transition out of the city to an isolated region in the desert and introduces the character of Enkidu. Enkidu is also a powerful manly figure. But he is uncivilized. He is ignorant of how to dress properly and of how to behave using acceptable manners. He is primitive and raw and simply eats wild animals and behaves like a cave man. Yet, there is something appealing about his innocence. He knows nothing about wine or women and is completely naive about the ways of the world and city life. Enkidu is seduced by a temple prostitute who introduces him to human ways. A hunter instructs the harlot, Shamhat to lure Enkidu away from the herd. He tells her to strip off her clothing and reveal her charms so that Enkidu will see her when he and the herd come down to the water-hole. The following is a quote from the seduction of Enkidu from the version of the epic provided in your primary source book.
Spread your clothing so he may lie on you, do for the man the work of a woman! Let his passion caress and embrace you, his heard will spurn him, though he grew up amongst it.
Shamhat unfastened the cloth of her loins, she bared her sex and he took in her charms. She did not recoil, she took in his scent: she spread her clothing and he lay upon her.
She did for the man the work of a woman, his passion caressed and embraced her. For six days and seven nights Enkidu was erect as he coupled with Shamhat.
After Enkidu lost his innocence, his herd no longer accepted him. Shamhat persuades Enkidu to come to Uruk where he encounters Gilgamesh in a terrible confrontation. They fight until they finally give out and lay on the ground to rest before they intend to go at it again. While they rest, they begin talking to one another. Very slowly they become friends. Before long, Gilamesh persuades Enkidu to go to the city with him. The city is all new to Enkidu. There he learned to wear fine clothes, to eat refined delectable foods and intoxicating liquors, and to enjoy the company and pleasure of women. In short, Enkidu is corrupted. All of the morality themes that you find in the masterpieces of literature are present. Eventually, Enkidu becomes very ill and dies. But before he dies, he curses urban life and expresses regrets that he gave up the innocent life of the country. Then, an even more exciting thing follows. Gilgamesh, who had come to love Enkidu like a brother, witnesses the death of Enkidu and is overcome with grief. He is extraordinarily sad. He realizes that he, too, is mortal and will someday die. This realization grips him with anxiety. Here he is the most powerful man in his world and is unable to prevent his brother-like friends death or his own mortality. That realization leads Gilgamesh to undertake a great epic search for immortality. And so he begins his journey looking for the key to everlasting life. He doesnt find it for a long time. Then finally, he hears about this old guy living up in the mountains who has been alive as long as anyone can remember. His name is Utnapishtim. Gilgamesh gets directions and makes his way up and asks Utnapishtim if its true. And Utnapishtim says, Yes its true, I have the magic herb. Then, he tells Gilgamesh the story of how he obtained the magic plant that gave him his immortality. This story is written on Sumerian clay tablets right at the beginning of civilization. And what Utnapishtim tells him is this: A long time ago when he was a young man, everybody behaving sinfully and the gods became angry and made it rain. And it rained and it rained and it rained. And everybody drowned but me and my family and some birds and animals. And we floated and succeeded in escaping. You recognize that story? After the flood was over, Utnapishtim found an herb growing at the bottom of the water and ate it, giving him eternal life. This story pre-dates the story of Noah and the flood by about 2,000 years. Undoubtedly, this Sumerian story was the source of the ancient Israelites story of Noah. It is one the oldest stories in all of world literature. Well, Gilgamesh is elated. He has found it. He heads for the lake. He gets into a canoe and goes out in the middle of the lake. At the bottom of the lake he finds the magic herb. He swims up and climbs into the canoe. Hes got it. Sure enough, he is going to live forever. But before he can get off of the lake, a serpent swims across the lake and steals it from him. It takes away the herb that will guarantee him eternal life. He is greatly saddened. And at about that point the tablets break off. So we dont know how it ends. Its a great story but you have to make up your own ending. When you look at all of the themes that are present right there at the beginning of world literature: good versus bad, country life versus city life, the problem of mortality, tyranny versus freedom, its all there. It truly is one the great pieces of world literature. Hopefully, you can read this account a little more easily than had I not rehearsed it for you.
Mesopotamian Societies after Sumer
I want to tell you what happened to ancient Sumeria? Weve been describing its culture, its literature, it law, its religion. What happened to this sophisticated society? It lasted about a thousand years. What happens will set a pattern that will be repeated again and again by many other civilizations. Sumeria located between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers about 2331 B.C., about the 24 th century B.C. , sophisticated, urbanized, writing society, all of these things going on in Sumeria. What happens is that all of a sudden, like a great storm out of the desert, a bunch of barbarians invade. They cant write. They cant read. They are not at all sophisticated. But theyre tough, and theyre lean, and they know how to fight. They came out of the Arabian Desert. We call them the Akkadians. They invaded and they overthrew the Sumerians. We do not know the ethnic nature of the Sumerians, but as you will see in the slides, some of them seemed to have blue eyes. The Akkadians were Semitic. They were desert folks, related to the Semitic societies that live in the Near Easttoday. They drove in on foot. They did not have horses. They overthrew the Sumerians and took over. The great king of the Akkadians was named Sargon. He was one of the most remarkable figures of the ancient Near East. Not only was he a military genius but he was also a capable administrator, who began as a high official to the Sumerian king of Kish named Ur-Zababa. During the constant warfare that plagued Sumeria, Ur-Zababa was dethroned by an ambitious rival, King Lugalzaggesi of Umma. Sargon defeated Lugalzaggesi in a surprise attack against his capital, Erech and brought Lugalzaggesi to the gates of Nippur in a neck stock and chains where he was reviled and spat upon by all who passed by. Sargon built the city of Akkad after which his people were called the Akkadians. After conquering the Sumerians, and especially under Sargons grandson named Naram-sin, the Akkadians began to adopt Sumerians culture, and life, and religion. Now, this is that fascinating pattern which will be repeated again and again. The invaders, though culturally inferior, conquer a culturally superior culture, in this case the Sumerians, and then after conquering them are themselves culturally conquered by those whom they defeat militarily. These Akkadians then adopted Sumerian religion and began to worship Sumerian gods. They learned to write like the Sumerians. They started writing stories like the Gilgamesh Epic. They began to erect schools for their kids like the Sumerians. In other words we have a replication by the conquerors of the people that they conquered. This pattern will repeat itself again and again and again, right down to near the end of the course when European barbarians from Europe storm into Rome and begin to wear Roman clothes and worship Roman gods. It will happen again and again and again. The French philosopher, Jean Jacque Rousseau, said that all history can be reduced to the story of the fellow in his silken pajamas and slipper coming with his lamp at night out of his bedroom only to meet at the top of the stairs the hob-nailed, booted barbarian coming up the stairs after him. But then that hob-nailed barbarian becomes the fellow in silk because he becomes cultivated and civilized only in his turn to have to come out and encounter some barbarian coming after him. We are going to see that pattern repeat itself again and again and again. Under Naram- Sin, Sargons grandson, the Akkadians spread Mesopotamian culture throughout the region from Mesopotamia north through Syria and south toEgypt. Yet after a relatively short time, the Akkadians themselves, but only after they had adopted Sumerian culture and become quite cultured, experienced a tragic end. They were invaded from the opposite direction by the Guti or Gutians, a barbarian people who came out of the Zaggros Mountains of modern Iran. They descended into Mesopotamians and overthrew the Akkadians. The Gutians were so barbarous that they were called the wild beasts of the mountains. The Gutians overthrew the Akkadians, adopted their culture, their religion, their writing, and became very cultivated and civilized. In fact one of the most famous kings during the Gutians rule, Gudea, is preserved in statues showing him sitting in a rocking chair with a garment inscribed with all of his good deeds. The wild beasts of the mountains assimilated the Sumerian culture of those that they had defeated. So once again this pattern is replicated. After the Guti an unexpected development occurred. The Sumerians achieve a come back. We have the period known as the Sumerian Revival. It lasted from 2150 until about 1800 B.C.about 350 years. What seems to have been the case is that the Sumerians all along had simply been in a subordinated status. Once conquered by the Akkadiians and then the Guti. The Sumerians had simply been put on the bottom of society. But they had not been destroyed. They yet existed in large numbers, such that in 3250 B.C. they rose up in rebellion, threw the Guti out and took over. The fascinating thing about this revival is the brilliant of the culture that they succeeded in creating after they took over once again. The period of the Sumerian Revival was like an Indian summer, a last hurrah, which is louder and more beautiful than anything that had come before. In that 350 year period, the so-called Sumerian revival, Sumerian culture was more beautiful and brilliant than ever before. The Sumerians wrote more literature, sculpted more statues, became more civil, made more pottery, built more roads and canals than ever before. Thus, the period is divided into three segments, all named after the most dominant cultural city of the time, Ur. We call these three periods within the Sumerian revivalUr I, Ur II, and Ur III. Each one was more productive and brilliant than the one preceding it.
The Amorites (1800-1650 B.C.) and Hammurabi
Finally, the Sumerians came to an end. They were invaded once again, this time by the Amorites, and this is the last we hear of them except in the writings of other societies that came after them. Their civilization survived about 2,000 yearsa long time. Not many civilizations survive that long. The next group who invaded the Sumerians and became their successors brought a final end to the Sumerian story around 1800 B.C. were the Amorites. They were a Semitic people who came out of the Arabian Desert, invading from the west and overrunning the Sumerians. Their great leader was Hammurabi. He unified Mesopotamia and became ruler of a united kingdom, reaching from the Persian Gulf north to Anatolia and west to Syria and Palestine. Hammurabi is remembered chiefly for his great law code though it was not the first written law code. The significance of the Code of Hammurabi cannot be overstated. It is very long, numbering over 100 laws. Carved on a huge pillar of stone standing as tall as a normal ceiling, it is now located in the Louvre in Paris, France. It is important to remember that these laws, though we associate them with Hammurabi and the Amorites, reflect the early laws of the Sumerians themselves because of this pattern of conquest and assimilation that has already been described. Thus, what we are probably reading in the laws of Hammurabi are the laws of the very early Sumerians themselves. A number of the laws are provided in the book of readings. I am going to use a few of them to illustrate concepts that we have already mentioned. Consider this one: number six. If a man has stolen goods from a temple or house, he shall be put to death. And he that has received the stolen property from him shall be put to death. This is an example of the Lex Talionis. Stealing means death. The next item: If a nobleman has stolen ox, sheep, ass, pig, or ship, weather from a temple or a house, he shall pay 30 fold, but if he be a commoner, he shall return 10 fold, if the thief cannot pay, he shall be put to death. Then, number 108: If the mistress of a beer shop has not received corn as the price of beer of has demanded silver on an excessive scale and has made the measure of beer less than the measure of corn (shes cheated her customers), that beer seller shall be prosecuted and drown. In other words, throw her in the river. If she serves beer and doesnt fill the glass up, shes in trouble. This suggests that women sometimes ran shops or taverns. We can see that the translator has taken some license in referring to corn because corn was a product of the new world and did not exist in ancient Sumeria. Neither did coinage exist until about a thousand years later. Although there is some evidence to indicate that rings of silver were used as a kind of money. Listen to this one, number 132: If a mans wife has the finger pointed at her on account of another but has not been caught lying with him, for her husbands sake she shall plunge into the sacred river. This is a forced suicide if a woman has simply been accused. The one before is less harsh. If a mans wife has been accused by her husband and has not been caught lying with another, she shall swear her innocence and return to her house. There is a little inconsistency in terms of the severity of the penalty. I think youll find these laws very interesting. Consider number 148: If a man has married a wife and a disease has seized her, if he is determined to marry a second wife, he shall marry her (polygamy was common). He shall not divorce the wife, however, whom the disease has seized. In the home they made together she shall dwell and he shall maintain her as long as she lives. A man might think that there is a measure of equity here. If he takes another wife, at least he is required to maintain his first wife. Im not convinced that a woman would agree that this arrangement was equitable. Dont forget that these probably reflect the laws of societies well before the time of Hammurabi. They probably closely reflect the laws of the ancient Sumerians.
Kassites (1650-1300 B.C.)
Now, it used to be that the common thing to say was that they wasnt very much to say about the Kassites. They were very warlike people and they seem not to have done much of a cultural nature to be remembered. But increasingly, Im reading that we are finding more and more about the Kassities that would perhaps give then greater importance and significance than we had traditionally believed. At the least, we know that it was the Kassites, around 1600 BC who in their conquest of the Amorites, introduced the horse. Until that time, they hadnt used the horse. They had the wheel. They had chariots. But they hadnt domesticated the horse until cavalry, as a military device, first made its appearance at this time with the Kassites, around 1600. Then the pattern continued.
Assyrians (1300-612 B.C.)
The Kassites were overthrown after about 300 year by the Assyrians. The Assyrians were around for a long time, for the better part of 7 or 8 hundred years. They are a very warlike people. They established their capital way up in northern Mesopotamia at a place called Ninevah. In addition to that, they expanded their authority and rule far beyond the land between the rivers. Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers, the area now occupied by modern Iraq, largely contained most of these empires we have mentioned up until this time: the Sumerians, the Akkadians, the Guti, the Amorites, and the Kassites. But come the Assyrians, about 1300 BC, Mesopotamian rulers expanded their hegemony far beyond the Tigris and the Euphrates even as far away as Egypt. The Assyrians constituted a large empire and were a very militaristic people who established a very regimented authoritarian kind of regime. One of their kings named Sargon II illustrates that there was a memory of the Akkadian period. You may remember Sargon I, who lived about a thousand years earlier and was king of Akkai. The Assyrians were still naming some of their kings after the Akkadians. Sargon II charged into the land of ancient Israel and carried off thousands of Israelites captive back to Mesopotamia. The kingdom of ancient Israel was conquered by the Assyrians under Sargon II. This illustrates the extent of their far-ranging well outside of Mesopotamia. We are going to have an entire lecture on ancient Israel and will consider this fact again at that time. The Assyrians ruled Mesopotamia from about 1300 to about 600 B.C.quite a period of time, about 700 years.
Chaldeans or Khaldi (612-549 B.C.)
Then, they are overthrown by another people known as the Chaldeans or the Khaldi. They are known by both names and it is spelled both ways. They are a people referred to in the Old Testament of the Bible as ruling in Mesopotamia, greatly feared by the ancient Israelites. It was one of their kings, Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 B.C.), who stormed into Israel and carried off those remaining Israelites who had not been taken the first time around by Sargon II. And we will mention that again at a little greater length in our lecture about Israel. But again, we see a Mesopotamian people or society conquering far a field. The Chaldeans themselves are very short-lived in terms of their kingdom. They do not survive much beyond about 50 years. It is one of the shorter-lived and abbreviated empires of antiquity.
Persians
In the middle of the century, about 550 B.C. the Chaldeans were overwhelmed by an eruption from within Mesopotamia when the Medes and the Persians rise up and take over. This really begins the story of one of the longest lasting civilizations and societies of which we have a record, that of the ancient Persians. They are still in existence today, a very long lived people indeed. They took over in Mesopotamia from the Chaldeans around 550 BC. I dont intend to say much about the Medes. They seem to have been an allied or confederated people with the Persians. But they sort of dropped out of sight and the Persians were left as the prominent or singly ruling people in Mesopotamia. They became one of the great powers of the world in ancient times and, of course, are yet flexing their muscles in the Middle East today.
Cyrus (fl. 549-529 B.C.)
Their first king was Cyrus the Great, who led the Persians in their revolt against the Chaldeans and ruled over the Persians for some time. He was followed by his son, Cambyses, who was followed by his son, Darius, who was followed by his son, Xerxes, who was followed by his son, Darius IIIa long series of powerful Persian kings. But these early Persian kings beginning with Cyrus were very ambitious. In one of our later more dramatic lectures we will recollect the story of how these Persian kings came into conflict with the Greeks. The Persian Wars between the Persians and the Greeks are remembered and told and retold until the present day. In any case, the Persians were successful as empire builders for two or three reasons. They extended their empires even farther than the Assyrians. Remember, the Assyrians had extended their rules as far asEgypt. The Persians not only did that, dominating Assyria, Palestine, and Egypt, but they also extended their rule far to the east as well. Ancient Persia extended as far as India. It was an enormous empire reaching from modern Turkey all the way to Egypt.
Reasons For Persian Success
One of the reasons the Persians were so successful in establishing such a great empire that lasted so long was that they were willing to delegate authority to local district rulers, whom they called Satraps. In other words, they divided the Persian kingdom into provinces and placed over each of those provinces a separate ruler and gave him extensive authority. He was called a Satrap and the province was called a satrapy. By permitting the Satrap to exercise his own judgment in his own region the Persians were able to diminish the sense of oppression and undercut the likelihood of revolt. Persian kings could be very cruel but they were willing to permit a great deal of decentralization. For example, we believe that in ancient Persia there existed a great variety of religions and a variety of different ethnic groups of people. And they tolerated those differences, further illustrating the kind of decentralization and local authority and local differences that they were willing to permit. Another factor that contributed to Persian governmental success was that they were great road builders. They built a vast spread of roads, particularly the Royal Road that extended all the way from their capital in Sousa 16 hundred miles to the Mediterranean Sea. It also had branch roads running off in all directions, allowing them to communicate with the various provinces and peoples under their jurisdictions quickly and effectively. The Persians had a postal system, whereby people could send letters and messages to each other and whereby, of course, the king and the Satraps, and other officials could communicate rapidly and efficiently as well.
Persian Religion
While there were a variety of religions and different ethnic people in ancient Persia, the major religion and oldest religion associated ancient Persia was Mithraism. It was named after Mithrai, a god associated with the sun. Many Persians worshipped the sun as a deity. The Persians, like the Sumerians, were polytheistic and worshipped many deities. Almost all of these ancient people were polytheistic. Although they worshipped many gods, their dominant and most powerful god was Mithrai. Mithraists believed in sin and righteousness, in a final judgment, in baptism, and in a heaven. A second religion that we believe may have derived from Mithraism was Zoroastrianism. This religion partook of many of the same theological ideas and doctrine as Mithraism. And Zoroastrianism has survived until this day. There are Zoroastrians in India and in the United States today. But in the ancient world, Zoroastrianism never succeeded in challenging the popularity and widespread extent of Mithraism. Mithraism was one of the great religions of the Roman Empire as well. At the time of Christ, few people would have believed that Christianity would survive to be the dominant religion of the future. Most people would have thought that a thousand years later the dominant religion of the world would be Mithraism. Nobody would have bet on Christianity at that time. And many Romans and many non- Persians believed and followed the worship of Mithrai. We have found shrines in England, dating back to the period of Roman rule about 200 or 300 A.D. containing inscriptions indicating a worship of Mithrai. Because they practiced baptism, they may well have had an influence on early Christianity. The Christians themselves came to date the birth of Jesus at the time of the rebirth of the sun, or Mithrai. Scholars think it is much more likely that Jesus was actually born in the spring time but the influence of Mithraic belief on Christians resulted in Christmas being celebrated in December, which is the time of the winter solstice. But the larger point Im making is the extent of Mithraic influence. So, quite apart from the Persian military conquest, we have an example of the strong influence of ancient Persia.
Related Mesopotamian Peoples
Let us consider some neighboring peoples and societies existing near ancient Mesopotamia, which the Mesopotamians influenced. The McKay, Hill, and Buckler textbook refers to the Eblaites and the tablets found at Ebla. The Eblaites were located west of Mesopotamia and constituted a kingdom as early as 2800 B.C. contemporary with very early Sumeria. Existing outside Mesopotamia, yet writing with cuneiform characters like the Sumerians, the Eblaites are an example of a non-Mesopotamian society that was very much influenced by people insideMesopotamia.
Hittites (1500-1200 B.C.
The Hittites are another example. They were centered way up in central and eastern Turkey and exerted great influence in the Mideast for a time. Like the Eblaites, the Hittites flourished not within Mesopotamiabut outside of it, yet they were very much influenced by Mesopotamian societies and practices.
Significance of the Hittites
The Hittites are memorable for other reasons. With their capital at Hattusas, in central Turkey, it seems that they were the first, or among the first to learn to smelt iron. They took rocks with iron seams and placed them in hot fires and melted the iron out of them and then used the iron to make weapons and various kinds of implements. This was what gave them such a great military advantage over many of their neighbors. Iron is harder than bronze. And until the time of the Hittites, around 1200 or 1300 B.C. the dominant metal had been bronze, which is an alloy of copper and tin. Bronze is harder than either copper or tin, so it was a preferred metal for spears and knives. But iron is harder than bronze. So other societies still using bronze found on the field of battle that they were at a great disadvantage when they came up against the Hittites because the Hittites swords and spears were made of iron. The Hittites prevailed in battle after battle because of this. So that is something that ought to be remembered and associated with the Hittites. Another significant thing to remember is that we think they had a kind of primitive military democracy. The Hittite kings were often selected by the body of soldiers in the army, which was a kind of democracy. The soldiers in the military, by a shout, or beating on their shields would indicate who it was they wanted to be king.
Voelkerwanderung and Decline of the Hittites (1300 B.C.)
Then, something happened. And because this happened repeatedly in history, it is another one of those patterns that you want to remember. It is similar to the pattern we saw with the barbarians overrunning more advanced societies, followed by assimilation and civilization only to face subsequent invasion by other barbarians. The Voelkerwanderung Zeitwhich means a people wandering time is another common pattern in history. It refers to a time when everything seems to be in upheaval. Around 1200 or 1300 B.C. we encounter a people wandering timea Voelkerwanderun Zeitwhen everybody seems to be going in all directions. Nothing seems to be stable. The Hittites were overthrown at this time. This is the period of Homer and the Battle of Troy, about which we will learn in a future lecture. This is the time when Moses was leading the children of Israel out of Egypt, about which we will learn soon. There was great upheaval and movement and migration and violenceit was indeed a people wandering time. And when it was all over, the Hittites no longer existed. Scholars believe Voelkerwanderung Zeits are closely associated with the climate. When you have a series of dry years and the cattle and animals cannot feed on plants, they begin to move to try and find food and forage. And this has happened again and again. People were hungry and desperate and were moving looking for food. We believe that climatic change and crisis was very much a part of what stimulated the Voelkerwanderung Zeit. This particular one was accompanied by volcanic explosives, especially in the eastern Mediterranean area. Islands were blown out of existence. Dust and clouds filled the skies. It became cooler and grass did not grow. Many factors contributed to the geological and climatic crises, resulting in great political and human drama taking place at that time. As I said, among the consequences of the upheaval, the Hittites disappeared, but in their place other peoples came into view.
Phoenicians (1300-774 B.C.)
And one of these newly appearing peoples were the Phoenicians. Now the Phoenicians are important because they made a very significant contribution. The Phoenicians were located in the area that is now occupied by modern Lebanon, in the eastern Mediterranean, near modern Israel. They were sea builders and they were great merchants. They were probably the greatest sailors and maritime folk of their day. The Phoenicians sailed all over the Mediterranean World, carrying their goods and agricultural products, particularly olive oil. They traded with people all over the ancient Mediterranean world. They even sailed out of theMediterranean. And we have found evidences of Phoenicians trading and contact as far north as England. Some scholars have argued that the Phoenicians were such great sailors that they made it as far as the New World. Cyrus Gordon, who for a time, was looked upon as the foremost Hebrew scholar in the United States, even argued that there are Phoenician remains that have been found in North and South Carolina. This is disputed, however. It is a matter of controversy. But whether or not it is true, it is at least possible that the Phoenicians made it across the Atlantic. They were tremendous sailors. And along the way, they established a lot of colonies. They established colonies in Spain, we mentioned England already, and in North Africa, and in Italy. When we come to the story of Rome, we will encounter the best known of their colonies, which was ancientCarthage, a large, powerful, beautiful city located in North Africa. But the most important thing to remember and associate with the Phoenicians is their writing. They took these cuneiform characters that I have earlier describedpicture wordssometimes just an animal or an ox-head, or a wagon, or a ship, or something to which they gave a sound value, and from them they constructed words. The Phoenicians took these cuneiform characters and reduced their number. Originally, there were as many as 600. But the Phoenicians reduced them to about 35 characters. From those 35 characters, our alphabet of twenty-six letters derived. And because they were such a formidable maritime power and traveled all over the Mediterranean world, they carried their written language with them. And the Greeks, for example, picked up the Phoenician alphabet and adapted it to their own language. So, we are greatly indebted to ancientPhoenicia for our alphabet, a very important contribution because of the immense centrality of writing to cultural civilization.
The Mesopotamian Heritage
Now, I want to address several factors in conclusion. Most importantly, what we have found is that in ancient Mesopotamia and in associated and allied societies nearby, they invented writing. First, we must acknowledge the importance of the cuneiform script used by the Sumerians. And that was later developed and refined, especially by the Phoenicians. It is probably impossible to adequately emphasize the importance of writing. Writing makes civilization possible because writing escapes time. We know about the Gilgamesh Epic because of writing. We know something about how the Sumerians thought and believed because of writing. It is a magical kind of thing. And we are owing to these early Mesopotamian societies, especially the Sumerians, for it. Literature, world literature, is possible because of writing. Literature is not only wonderful because of communication, but it further stimulates our imagination. One of the hallmarks of being human is our capacity to wonder, which writing compounds. We can cock our heads and squint our eyes and gasp and look at something, and wonder how it works, and be curious about it, and we can determine how it works by investigating it. Then we can write about it and be thrilled by it, because of literature. The most wondering and investigative societies are those who communicate through writing. We stimulate each other through the written language. And the importance of writing is enhanced because it eventually led to mathematics, to computers, and all kinds of technological innovations. There is no way we can adequately evaluate the significance of this great Mesopotamian contributionwriting. We also owe a lot to the Sumerians and those who came after them in the area of mathematics. They were pretty good mathematicians. They learned to multiply. They could add and subtract. They based their time and their measuring devices on sixes and twelvesa sexagesimal system, we say. And remnants of that system are yet with us today. Our clock is based on twelve. We divide the day into 12 or 24 units. The multiplication of six came right out of Mesopotamia. We have 12 months in a year, 12 inches in a foot. Have you ever wondered how we ever settled on those units? Well, they came from ancient Mesopotamian Civilization. They also had clocks. They were the first to invent water clocks. You know how we drain sand through an hourglass? They used the same principle with dripping water in Mesopotamia. Many people open the morning newspaper and look to see what their astrological sign says is in store for them today. That comes right out of Mesopotamia, where they divided the heavens into certain regions and said if you were born under this sign and the planets and stars were in this position, it meant something for you and your life. Some folks still believe in that today and follow it and read it. And that belief came directly fromMesopotamia. The Mesopotamians attempted to practice Medicine, but they werent very good at it, not nearly as good as the Egyptians, in part because they relied on astrology to heal people. And because thats nonsense, they didnt have much success. The Egyptians, when we get to them, youll see that though they believed in myths, they were much more scientific than the Mesopotamians when it came to medicine, and they were very, very good at it. Well consider that subject when we come to ancient Egypt. We are also owing to the ancient Mesopotamians for a number of architectural forms. They gave us the vault, the arch, and the dome as building devices for covering a building. What good does it do to be able to live indoors if you dont have a roof? But how are you going to construct a roof without these kinds of supporting devices? We need some kind of an arch, vault, or dome. They learned how to do that and do it very well. They built these huge ziggurats from clay brick, very impressive, the remains of some of which are still standing out in the Iraqi desert today. You may view some images of them in the Gallery. And we must not forget the canals. Irrigation didnt begin with the American West, you know. It began with the very first civilization, 5,000 years ago with ancient Sumeria in Mesopotamia. The idea of divine kingship, of government, which we mentioned in connection with the Neolithic or agricultural revolution continued and even came to acquire a greater luster and significance with succeeding civilizations in Mesopotamia. The king became extremely powerful and was both a governmental ruler and a high priest, a pattern that persisted in nearly all civilization that we will consider in this course.
The Urban Pattern Continued
Finally, it is in Mesopotamia, beginning with ancient Sumeria and continuing with all of the societies that followed them, that we encounter urbanism, town life. And Im going to emphasize this because we tend to take it for granted. We all live in the city and we think it has always been that way. But for most of history, most people have lived in rural areas. The way most of us live today in close quarters is quite recent. It is largely a product of the twentieth century. Prior to 1900, most people lived on farms. Now, we live in cities. And cities began it ancient Mesopotamia. And cities changed us. You and I are very different folks from our great- grandparents and from people who lived in rural areas. Gilgamesh and Enkidue were very different. Enkidu was a country boy and Gilgamesh was a city dweller. In the city, we have conveniences and pleasures. We have running water. We have sanitation and sewers and places for waste and garbage disposals. We have schools and libraries. We have a more immediate authority structure of government. We have laws and rules of which we are more aware. On the lone prairie, outside the city, you can be a Marborough Man. You can go where you want when you want. You can cuss and spit and do what you want. That kind of life-style is no longer available to most of us. And the interesting thing is that most of us choose not to live that way. Wed rather live in cities. Its more comfortable. We like to be around others most of the time. We like the advantages of urban dwelling. That historical pattern began in ancient Mesopotamia. It was an outcome of the Neolithic or agricultural revolution that was very quickly cultivated by the ancient Sumerians and the societies that followed them. And it has been with us and growing ever sinceurbanism. And we owe it to ancient Mesopotamia that we experience it today.
Egyptian Civilization Overview The basic element in the lengthy history of Egyptian civilization is geography. The Nile River rises from the lakes of central Africa as the White Nile and from the mountains of Ethiopia as the Blue Nile. The White and Blue Nile meet at Khartoum and flow together northward to the Nile delta, where the 4000 mile course of this river spills into the Mediterranean Sea (see map). Less than two inches of rain per year falls in the delta and rain is relatively unknown in other parts of Egypt. Most of the land is uninhabitable. These geographical factors have determined the character of Egyptian civilization. People could farm only along the banks of the Nile, where arid sand meets the fertile soil. Of course, each summer the Nile swells as the rains pour down and the snow melts on the mountains. The river overflows its banks and floods the land with fresh water and deposits a thick layer of rich alluvial soil. The land would then yield two harvests before winter. This yearly flood determined more than just the agricultural needs of early Egypt. It also determined the lifecycle of society and helped to create the world view of ancient Egyptian civilization. The basic source of Egyptian history is a list of rulers compiled in c.280 B.C. by Manetho for the Macedonians who ruled Egypt. Manetho divided Egyptian kings into thirty dynasties (a 31st was added later) in the following manner. Early Egypt was divided into two kingdoms, one in Upper Egypt (Nile Valley), and one in Lower Egypt (Nile delta). Remember, the Nile flows from south to north. Egyptian Dynasties Menes (or Narmer) unified Upper and Lower Egypt and established his capital at Memphis around 3000 B.C.. By the time of the Old Kingdom, the land had been consolidated under the central power of a king, who was also the "owner" of all Egypt. Considered to be divine, he stood above the priests and was the only individual who had direct contact with the gods. The economy was a royal monopoly and so there was no word in Egyptian for "trader." Under the king was a carefully graded hierarchy of officials, ranging from the governors of provinces down through local mayors and tax collectors. The entire system was supported by the work of slaves, peasants and artisans. The Old Kingdom reached its highest stage of development in the Fourth Dynasty. The most tangible symbols of this period of greatness are the three enormous pyramids built as the tombs of kings at Giza between 2600 and 2500. The largest, Khufu (called Cheops by the Greeks), was originally 481 feet high and 756 feet long on each side. Khufu was made up of 2.3 million stone blocks averaging 2.5 tons each. In the 5th century B.C. the Greek historian Herodotus tells us that the pyramid took 100,000 men and twenty years to build. The pyramids are remarkable not only for their technical engineering expertise, but also for what they tell us about royal power at the time. They are evidence that Egyptian kings had enormous wealth as well as the power to concentrate so much energy on a personal project. The priests, an important body within the ruling caste, were a social force working to modify the king's supremacy. Yielding to the demands of the priests of Re, a sun god, kings began to call themselves "sons of Re," adding his name as a suffix to their own. Re was also worshipped in temples that were sometimes larger than the pyramids of later kings. In the Old Kingdom, royal power was absolute. The pharaoh (the term originally meant "great house" or "palace"), governed his kingdom through his family and appointed officials. The lives of the peasants and artisans was carefully regulated: their movement was limited and they were taxed heavily. Luxury accompanied the pharaoh in life and in death and he was raised to an exalted level by his people. The Egyptians worked for the pharaoh and obeyed him because he was a living god on whom the entire fabric of social life depended. No codes of law were needed since the pharaoh was the direct source of all law. In such a world, government was merely one aspect of religion and religion dominated Egyptian life. The gods of Egypt came in many forms: animals, humans and natural forces. Over time, Re, the sun god, came to assume a dominant place in Egyptian religion. The Egyptians had a very clear idea of the afterlife. They took great care to bury their dead according to convention and supplied the grave with things that the departed would need for a pleasant life after death. The pharaoh and some nobles had their bodies preserved in a process of mummification. Their tombs were decorated with paintings, food was provided at burial and after. Some tombs even included full sized sailing vessels for the voyage to heaven and beyond. At first, only pharaohs were thought to achieve eternal life, however, nobles were eventually included, and finally all Egyptians could hope for immortality. The Egyptians also developed a system of writing. Although the idea may have come from Mesopotamia, the script was independent of the cuneiform. Egyptian writing began as pictographic and was later combined with sound signs to produce a difficult and complicated script that the Greeks called hieroglyphics ("sacred carvings"). Though much of what we have today is preserved on wall paintings and carvings, most of Egyptian writing was done with pen and ink on fine paper (papyrus). In 1798 Napoleon invaded Egypt as part of his Grand Empire. He brought with a Commission of Science and Arts composed of more than one hundred scientists, engineers and mathematicians. In 1799 the Commission discovered a basalt fragment on the west bank of the Nile at Rachid. The fragment is now known by its English name, the Rosetta Stone. The Egyptian hieroglyphics found on the Rosetta Stone were eventually deciphered in 1822 by Jean Franois Champollion (1790- 1832), a French scholar who had mastered Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit and Coptic. The Rosetta Stone contains three inscriptions. The uppermost is written in hieroglyphics; the second in what is now called demotic, the common script of ancient Egypt; and the third in Greek. Champollion guessed that the three inscriptions contained the same text and so he spent the next fourteen years (1808-1822) working from the Greek to the demotic and finally to the hieroglyphics until he had deciphered the whole text. The Rosetta Stone is now on display at the British Museum in London. During the period of the Middle Kingdom (2050-1800 B.C.) the power of the pharaohs of the Old Kingdom waned as priests and nobles gained more independence and influence. The governors of the regions of Egypt (nomes) gained hereditary claim to their offices and subsequently their families acquired large estates. About 2200 B.C. the Old Kingdom collapsed and gave way to the decentralization of the First Intermediate Period (2200-2050 B.C.). Finally, the nomarchs of Thebes in Upper Egypt gained control of the country and established the Middle Kingdom. The rulers of the Twelfth Dynasty restored the power of the pharaoh over the whole of Egypt although they could not control the nomarchs. They brought order and peace to Egypt and encouraged trade northward toward Palestine and south toward Ethiopia. They moved the capital back to Memphis and gave great prominence to Amon, a god connected with the city of Thebes. He became identified with Re, emerging as Amon-Re. The Middle Kingdom disintegrated in the Thirteenth Dynasty with the resurgence of the power of the nomarchs. Around 1700 B.C. Egypt suffered an invasion by the Hyksos who came from the east (perhaps Palestine or Syria) and conquered the Nile Delta. In 1575 B.C., a Thebian dynasty drove out the Hyksos and reunited the kingdom. In reaction to the humiliation of the Second Intermediate Period, the pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty, most notably Thutmose III (1490- 1436 B.C.), created an absolute government based on a powerful army and an Egyptian empire extending far beyond the Nile Valley. One of the results of these imperialistic ventures of the pharaohs was the growth in power of the priests of Amon and the threat it posed to the pharaoh. When young Amenhotep IV (1367-1350 B.C.) came to the throne he was apparently determined to resist the priesthood of Amon. Supported by his family he ultimately made a clean break with the worship of Amon-Re. He moved his capital from Thebes (the center of Amon worship) to a city three hundred miles to the north at a place now called El Amarna. Its god was Aton, the physical disk of the sun, and the new city was called Akhenaton. The pharaoh changed his name to Akhenaton ("it pleases Aton"). The new god was different from any that had come before him, for he was believed to be universal, not merely Egyptian. The universal claims for Aton led to religious intolerance of the worshippers of other gods. Their temples were closed and the name of Amon-Re was removed from all monuments. The old priests were deprived of their posts and privileges. The new religion was more remote than the old. Only the pharaoh and his family worshipped Aton directly and the people worshipped the pharaoh. Akhenaton's interest in religious reform proved disastrous in the long run. The Asian possessions fell away and the economy crumbled as a result. When the pharaoh died, a strong reaction swept away his life's work. His chosen successor was put aside and replaced by Tutankhamon (1347- 1339 B.C.), the husband of one of the daughters of Akhenaton and his wife, Nefertiti. The new pharaoh restored the old religion and wiped out as much as he could of the memory of the worship of Aton. He restored Amon to the center of the Egyptian pantheon, abandoned El Amarna, and returned the capital to Thebes. His magnificent tomb remained intact until its discovery in 1922. The end of the El Amarna age restored power to the priests of Amon and to the military officers. Horemhab, a general, restored order and recovered much of the lost empire. He referred to Akhenaton as "the criminal of Akheton" and erased his name from the records. Akhenaton's city and memory disappeared for over 3000 years to be rediscovered by accident about a century ago.
Egyptian Religion Religion was integral to Egyptian life. Religious beliefs formed the basis of Egyptian art, medicine, astronomy, literature and government. The great pyramids were burial tombs for the pharaohs who were revered as gods on earth. Magical utterances pervaded medical practices since disease was attributed to the gods. Astronomy evolved to determine the correct time to perform religious rites and sacrifices. The earliest examples of literature dealt almost entirely with religious themes. The pharaoh was a sacrosanct monarch who served as the intermediary between the gods and man. Justice too, was conceived in religious terms, something bestowed upon man by the creator-god. Finally, the Egyptians developed an ethical code which they believed the gods had approved.
J. A. Wilson once remarked that if one were to ask an ancient Egyptian whether the sky was supported by posts or held up by a god, the Egyptian would answer: "Yes, it is supported by posts or held up by a god -- or it rests on walls, or it is a cow, or it is a goddess whose arms and feet touch the earth" (The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man, 1943). The ancient Egyptian was ready to accept any and all gods and goddesses that seemed appropriate. For instance, if a new area was incorporated into the Egyptian state, its gods and goddesses would be added to the pantheon of those already worshipped. From its earliest beginnings, Egyptian religious cults included animals. It is no accident that sheep, bulls, gazelles and cats have been found carefully buried and preserved in their own graves. As time passed, the figures of Egyptian gods became human (anthropomorphism) although they often retained the animal's head or body. Osiris, the the Egyptian god who judged the dead, first emerged as a local deity of the Nile Delta in Lower Egypt. It was Osiris who taught the Egyptian agriculture. Isis was his wife, and animal-headed Seth, his brother and rival. Seth killed Osiris. Isis persuaded the gods to bring him back to life, but thereafter he ruled below. Osiris was identified with the life-giving, fertilizing power of the Nile, and Isis with with the fertile earth of Egypt. Horus, the god of the sky, defeated the evil Seth after a long struggle. But Horus was only one kind of sky god. There was also Re, the sun god, later conjoined with Amen, and still later Aten. The moon god was the baboon-headed Thoth, who was the god of wisdom, magic and numbers. In the great temple cities such as Heliopolis ("city of the sun"), priests worked out and wrote down hierarchies of divinities. In the small communities of villages, all the forces of nature were deified and worshipped. One local god was part crocodile, part hippopotamus, and part lion. Despite the ever-increasing number of deities which could be added to this hierarchy of deities, one thing is certain: Egyptian religion, unlike the religion of Mesopotamia, was centralized. In Sumer, the temple was the focus of political, economic and religious organization. Indeed, it was often difficult to know where one aspect began and another ended. By contrast, the function of an Egyptian temple was focused on religion. We are certain that ancient Egyptians were preoccupied with life after death. They believed that after death each human being would appear before Osiris and recount all the evil that had been committed during one's earthly existence: "I have not done evil to men. I have not ill- treated animals," and so on. This was a negative confession and justification for admittance into the blessed afterlife. Osiris would then have the heart of the person weighed in order to determine the truth of their confession. The Egyptians believed not only in body and soul, but in ka, the indestructible vital principle of each person, which left the body at death but which could also return at other times. This explains why the Egyptians mummified the dead: so that the ka, on its return, would find the body not decomposed. And this also explains why tombs were filled with wine, grain, weapons, sailing ships and so on -- ka would find everything it needed, otherwise it might come back to haunt the living.
Indus Valley Civilization. The earliest traces of civilization in the Indian subcontinent are to be found in places along, or close, to the Indus river. Excavations first conducted in 1921-22, in the ancient cities of Harappa and Mohenjodaro, both now in Pakistan, pointed to a highly complex civilization that first developed some 4,500-5,000 years ago, and subsequent archaeological and historical research has now furnished us with a more detailed picture of the Indus Valley Civilization and its inhabitants. The Indus Valley people were most likely Dravidians, who may have been pushed down into south India when the Aryans, with their more advanced military technology, commenced their migrations to India around 2,000 BCE. Though the Indus Valley script remains undeciphered down to the present day, the numerous seals discovered during the excavations, as well as statuary and pottery, not to mention the ruins of numerous Indus Valley cities, have enabled scholars to construct a reasonably plausible account of the Indus Valley Civilization. Some kind of centralized state, and certainly fairly extensive town planning, is suggested by the layout of the great cities of Harappa and Mohenjodaro. The same kind of burnt brick appears to have been used in the construction of buildings in cities that were as much as several hundred miles apart. The weights and measures show a very considerable regularity. The Indus Valley people domesticated animals, and harvested various crops, such as cotton, sesame, peas, barley, and cotton. They may also have been a sea-faring people, and it is rather interesting that Indus Valley seals have been dug up in such places as Sumer. In most respects, the Indus Valley Civilization appears to have been urban, defying both the predominant idea of India as an eternally and essentially agricultural civilization, as well as the notion that the change from rural to urban represents something of a logical progression. The Indus Valley people had a merchant class that, evidence suggests, engaged in extensive trading. Neither Harappa nor Mohenjodaro show any evidence of fire altars, and consequently one can reasonably conjecture that the various rituals around the fire which are so critical in Hinduism were introduced later by the Aryans. The Indus Valley people do not appear to have been in possession of the horse: there is no osteological evidence of horse remains in the Indian sub-continent before 2,000 BCE, when the Aryans first came to India, and on Harappan seals and terracotta figures, horses do not appear. Other than the archaeological ruins of Harappa and Mohenjodaro, these seals provide the most detailed clues about the character of the Indus Valley people. Bulls and elephants do appear on these seals, but the horned bull, most scholars are agreed, should not be taken to be congruent with Nandi, or Shivas bull. The horned bull appears in numerous Central Asian figures as well; it is also important to note that Shiva is not one of the gods invoked in the Rig Veda. The revered cow of the Hindus also does not appear on the seals. The women portrayed on the seals are shown with elaborate coiffures, sporting heavy jewelry, suggesting that the Indus Valley people were an urbane people with cultivated tastes and a refined aesthetic sensibility. A few thousand seals have been discovered in Indus Valley cities, showing some 400 pictographs: too few in number for the language to have been ideographic, and too many for the language to have been phonetic. The Indus Valley civilization raises a great many, largely unresolved, questions. Why did this civilization, considering its sophistication, not spread beyond the Indus Valley? In general, the area where the Indus valley cities developed is arid, and one can surmise that urban development took place along a river that flew through a virtual desert. The Indus Valley people did not develop agriculture on any large scale, and consequently did not have to clear away a heavy growth of forest. Nor did they have the technology for that, since they were confined to using bronze or stone implements. They did not practice canal irrigation and did not have the heavy plough. Most significantly, under what circumstances did the Indus Valley cities undergo a decline? The first attacks on outlying villages by Aryans appear to have taken place around 2,000 BCE near Baluchistan, and of the major cities, at least Harappa was quite likely over-run by the Aryans. In the Rig Veda there is mention of a Vedic war god, Indra, destroying some forts and citadels, which could have included Harappa and some other Indus Valley cities. The conventional historical narrative speaks of a cataclysmic blow that struck the Indus Valley Civilization around 1,600 BCE, but that would not explain why settlements at a distance of several hundred miles from each other were all eradicated. The most compelling historical narrative still suggests that the demise and eventual disappearance of the Indus Valley Civilization, which owed something to internal decline, nonetheless was facilitated by the arrival in India of the Aryans.
Chinese Civilization THE HISTORY OF CHINA, as documented in ancient writings, dates back some 3,300 years. Modern archaeological studies provide evidence of still more ancient origins in a culture that flourished between 2500 and 2000 B.C. in what is now central China and the lower Huang He (Yellow River) Valley of north China. Centuries of migration, amalgamation, and development brought about a distinctive system of writing, philosophy, art, and political organization that came to be recognizable as Chinese civilization. What makes the civilization unique in world history is its continuity through over 4,000 years to the present century. The Chinese have developed a strong sense of their real and mythological origins and have kept voluminous records since very early times. It is largely as a result of these records that knowledge concerning the ancient past, not only of China but also of its neighbors, has survived. Chinese history, until the twentieth century, was written mostly by members of the ruling scholar-official class and was meant to provide the ruler with precedents to guide or justify his policies. These accounts focused on dynastic politics and colorful court histories and included developments among the commoners only as backdrops. The historians described a Chinese political pattern of dynasties, one following another in a cycle of ascent, achievement, decay, and rebirth under a new family. Of the consistent traits identified by independent historians, a salient one has been the capacity of the Chinese to absorb the people of surrounding areas into their own civilization. Their success can be attributed to the superiority of their ideographic written language, their technology, and their political institutions; the refinement of their artistic and intellectual creativity; and the sheer weight of their numbers. The process of assimilation continued over the centuries through conquest and colonization until what is now known as China Proper was brought under unified rule. The Chinese also left an enduring mark on people beyond their borders, especially the Koreans, Japanese, and Vietnamese. Another recurrent historical theme has been the unceasing struggle of the sedentary Chinese against the threat posed to their safety and way of life by non-Chinese peoples on the margins of their territory in the north, northeast, and northwest. In the thirteenth century, the Mongols from the northern steppes became the first alien people to conquer all China. Although not as culturally developed as the Chinese, they left some imprint on Chinese civilization while heightening Chinese perceptions of threat from the north. China came under alien rule for the second time in the mid-seventeenth century; the conquerors--the Manchus-- came again from the north and northeast. For centuries virtually all the foreigners that Chinese rulers saw came from the less developed societies along their land borders. This circumstance conditioned the Chinese view of the outside world. The Chinese saw their domain as the self-sufficient center of the universe and derived from this image the traditional (and still used) Chinese name for their country--Zhongguo, literally, Middle Kingdom or Central Nation. China saw itself surrounded on all sides by so-called barbarian peoples whose cultures were demonstrably inferior by Chinese standards. This China-centered ("sinocentric") view of the world was still undisturbed in the nineteenth century, at the time of the first serious confrontation with the West. China had taken it for granted that its relations with Europeans would be conducted according to the tributary system that had evolved over the centuries between the emperor and representatives of the lesser states on China's borders as well as between the emperor and some earlier European visitors. But by the mid-nineteenth century, humiliated militarily by superior Western weaponry and technology and faced with imminent territorial dismemberment, China began to reassess its position with respect to Western civilization. By 1911 the two-millennia-old dynastic system of imperial government was brought down by its inability to make this adjustment successfully. Because of its length and complexity, the history of the Middle Kingdom lends itself to varied interpretation. After the communist takeover in 1949, historians in mainland China wrote their own version of the past--a history of China built on a Marxist model of progression from primitive communism to slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and finally socialism. The events of history came to be presented as a function of the class struggle. Historiography became subordinated to proletarian politics fashioned and directed by the Chinese Communist Party. A series of thought-reform and antirightist campaigns were directed against intellectuals in the arts, sciences, and academic community. The Cultural Revolution (1966-76) further altered the objectivity of historians. In the years after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, however, interest grew within the party, and outside it as well, in restoring the integrity of historical inquiry. This trend was consistent with the party's commitment to "seeking truth from facts." As a result, historians and social scientists raised probing questions concerning the state of historiography in China. Their investigations included not only historical study of traditional China but penetrating inquiries into modern Chinese history and the history of the Chinese Communist Party. In post-Mao China, the discipline of historiography has not been separated from politics, although a much greater range of historical topics has been discussed. Figures from Confucius--who was bitterly excoriated for his "feudal" outlook by Cultural Revolution-era historians--to Mao himself have been evaluated with increasing flexibility. Among the criticisms made by Chinese social scientists is that Maoist-era historiography distorted Marxist and Leninist interpretations. This meant that considerable revision of historical texts was in order in the 1980s, although no substantive change away from the conventional Marxist approach was likely. Historical institutes were restored within the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and a growing corps of trained historians, in institutes and academia alike, returned to their work with the blessing of the Chinese Communist Party. This in itself was a potentially significant development. THE ANCIENT DYNASTIES Chinese civilization, as described in mythology, begins with Pangu, the creator of the universe, and a succession of legendary sage- emperors and culture heroes who taught the ancient Chinese to communicate and to find sustenance, clothing, and shelter. The first prehistoric dynasty is said to be Xia, from about the twentyfirst to the sixteenth century B.C. Until scientific excavations were made at early bronze-age sites at Anyang, Henan Province, in 1928, it was difficult to separate myth from reality in regard to the Xia. But since then, and especially in the 1960s and 1970s, archaeologists have uncovered urban sites, bronze implements, and tombs that point to the existence of Xia civilization in the same locations cited in ancient Chinese historical texts. At minimum, the Xia period marked an evolutionary stage between the late neolithic cultures and the typical Chinese urban civilization of the Shang dynasty. The Dawn of History Thousands of archaeological finds in the Huang He Valley--the apparent cradle of Chinese civilization--provide evidence about the Shang dynasty, which endured roughly from 1700 to 1027 B.C. The Shang dynasty (also called the Yin dynasty in its later stages) is believed to have been founded by a rebel leader who overthrew the last Xia ruler. Its civilization was based on agriculture, augmented by hunting and animal husbandry. Two important events of the period were the development of a writing system, as revealed in archaic Chinese inscriptions found on tortoise shells and flat cattle bones (commonly called oracle bones), and the use of bronze metallurgy. A number of ceremonial bronze vessels with inscriptions date from the Shang period; the workmanship on the bronzes attests to a high level of civilization. A line of hereditary Shang kings ruled over much of northern China, and Shang troops fought frequent wars with neighboring settlements and nomadic herdsmen from the inner Asian steppes. The capitals, one of which was at the site of the modern city of Anyang, were centers of glittering court life. Court rituals to propitiate spirits and to honor sacred ancestors were highly developed. In addition to his secular position, the king was the head of the ancestor- and spirit- worship cult. Evidence from the royal tombs indicates that royal personages were buried with articles of value, presumably for use in the afterlife. Perhaps for the same reason, hundreds of commoners, who may have been slaves, were buried alive with the royal corpse. The Zhou Period The last Shang ruler, a despot according to standard Chinese accounts, was overthrown by a chieftain of a frontier tribe called Zhou, which had settled in the Wei Valley in modern Shaanxi Province. The Zhou dynasty had its capital at Hao, near the city of Xi'an, or Chang'an, as it was known in its heyday in the imperial period. Sharing the language and culture of the Shang, the early Zhou rulers, through conquest and colonization, gradually sinicized, that is, extended Shang culture through much of China Proper north of the Chang Jiang (Yangtze River). The Zhou dynasty lasted longer than any other, from 1027 to 221 B.C. It was philosophers of this period who first enunciated the doctrine of the "mandate of heaven" (tianming), the notion that the ruler (the "son of heaven") governed by divine right but that his dethronement would prove that he had lost the mandate. The doctrine explained and justified the demise of the two earlier dynasties and at the same time supported the legitimacy of present and future rulers. The term feudal has often been applied to the Zhou period because the Zhou's early decentralized rule invites comparison with medieval rule in Europe. At most, however, the early Zhou system was proto-feudal, being a more sophisticated version of earlier tribal organization, in which effective control depended more on familial ties than on feudal legal bonds. Whatever feudal elements there may have been decreased as time went on. The Zhou amalgam of city-states became progressively centralized and established increasingly impersonal political and economic institutions. These developments, which probably occurred in the latter Zhou period, were manifested in greater central control over local governments and a more routinized agricultural taxation. In 771 B.C. the Zhou court was sacked, and its king was killed by invading barbarians who were allied with rebel lords. The capital was moved eastward to Luoyang in present-day Henan Province. Because of this shift, historians divide the Zhou era into Western Zhou (1027-771 B.C.) and Eastern Zhou (770-221 B.C.). With the royal line broken, the power of the Zhou court gradually diminished; the fragmentation of the kingdom accelerated. Eastern Zhou divides into two subperiods. The first, from 770 to 476 B.C., is called the Spring and Autumn Period, after a famous historical chronicle of the time; the second is known as the Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.). The Hundred Schools of Thought The Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, though marked by disunity and civil strife, witnessed an unprecedented era of cultural prosperity--the "golden age" of China. The atmosphere of reform and new ideas was attributed to the struggle for survival among warring regional lords who competed in building strong and loyal armies and in increasing economic production to ensure a broader base for tax collection. To effect these economic, military, and cultural developments, the regional lords needed ever-increasing numbers of skilled, literate officials and teachers, the recruitment of whom was based on merit. Also during this time, commerce was stimulated through the introduction of coinage and technological improvements. Iron came into general use, making possible not only the forging of weapons of war but also the manufacture of farm implements. Public works on a grand scale--such as flood control, irrigation projects, and canal digging--were executed. Enormous walls were built around cities and along the broad stretches of the northern frontier. So many different philosophies developed during the late Spring and Autumn and early Warring States periods that the era is often known as that of the Hundred Schools of Thought. From the Hundred Schools of Thought came many of the great classical writings on which Chinese practices were to be based for the next two and onehalf millennia. Many of the thinkers were itinerant intellectuals who, besides teaching their disciples, were employed as advisers to one or another of the various state rulers on the methods of government, war, and diplomacy. The body of thought that had the most enduring effect on subsequent Chinese life was that of the School of Literati (ru), often called the Confucian school in the West. The written legacy of the School of Literati is embodied in the Confucian Classics, which were to become the basis for the order of traditional society. Confucius (551-479 B.C.), also called Kong Zi, or Master Kong, looked to the early days of Zhou rule for an ideal social and political order. He believed that the only way such a system could be made to work properly was for each person to act according to prescribed relationships. "Let the ruler be a ruler and the subject a subject," he said, but he added that to rule properly a king must be virtuous. To Confucius, the functions of government and social stratification were facts of life to be sustained by ethical values. His ideal was the junzi (ruler's son), which came to mean gentleman in the sense of a cultivated or superior man. Mencius (372-289 B.C.), or Meng Zi, was a Confucian disciple who made major contributions to the humanism of Confucian thought. Mencius declared that man was by nature good. He expostulated the idea that a ruler could not govern without the people's tacit consent and that the penalty for unpopular, despotic rule was the loss of the "mandate of heaven." The effect of the combined work of Confucius, the codifier and interpreter of a system of relationships based on ethical behavior, and Mencius, the synthesizer and developer of applied Confucian thought, was to provide traditional Chinese society with a comprehensive framework on which to order virtually every aspect of life. There were to be accretions to the corpus of Confucian thought, both immediately and over the millennia, and from within and outside the Confucian school. Interpretations made to suit or influence contemporary society made Confucianism dynamic while preserving a fundamental system of model behavior based on ancient texts. Diametrically opposed to Mencius, for example, was the interpretation of Xun Zi (ca. 300-237 B.C.), another Confucian follower. Xun Zi preached that man is innately selfish and evil and that goodness is attainable only through education and conduct befitting one's status. He also argued that the best government is one based on authoritarian control, not ethical or moral persuasion. Xun Zi's unsentimental and authoritarian inclinations were developed into the doctrine embodied in the School of Law (fa), or Legalism. The doctrine was formulated by Han Fei Zi (d. 233 B.C.) and Li Si (d. 208 B.C.), who maintained that human nature was incorrigibly selfish and therefore the only way to preserve the social order was to impose discipline from above and to enforce laws strictly. The Legalists exalted the state and sought its prosperity and martial prowess above the welfare of the common people. Legalism became the philosophic basis for the imperial form of government. When the most practical and useful aspects of Confucianism and Legalism were synthesized in the Han period (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), a system of governance came into existence that was to survive largely intact until the late nineteenth century. Taoism (or Daoism in pinyin), the second most important stream of Chinese thought, also developed during the Zhou period. Its formulation is attributed to the legendary sage Lao Zi (Old Master), said to predate Confucius, and Zhuang Zi (369-286 B.C.). The focus of Taoism is the individual in nature rather than the individual in society. It holds that the goal of life for each individual is to find one's own personal adjustment to the rhythm of the natural (and supernatural) world, to follow the Way (dao) of the universe. In many ways the opposite of rigid Confucian moralism, Taoism served many of its adherents as a complement to their ordered daily lives. A scholar on duty as an official would usually follow Confucian teachings but at leisure or in retirement might seek harmony with nature as a Taoist recluse. Another strain of thought dating to the Warring States Period is the school of yin-yang and the five elements. The theories of this school attempted to explain the universe in terms of basic forces in nature, the complementary agents of yin (dark, cold, female, negative) and yang (light, hot, male, positive) and the five elements (water, fire, wood, metal, and earth). In later periods these theories came to have importance both in philosophy and in popular belief. Still another school of thought was based on the doctrine of Mo Zi (470-391 B.C.?), or Mo Di. Mo Zi believed that "all men are equal before God" and that mankind should follow heaven by practicing universal love. Advocating that all action must be utilitarian, Mo Zi condemned the Confucian emphasis on ritual and music. He regarded warfare as wasteful and advocated pacificism. Mo Zi also believed that unity of thought and action were necessary to achieve social goals. He maintained that the people should obey their leaders and that the leaders should follow the will of heaven. Although Moism failed to establish itself as a major school of thought, its views are said to be "strongly echoed" in Legalist thought. In general, the teachings of Mo Zi left an indelible impression on the Chinese mind.
THE IMPERIAL ERA The First Imperial Period Much of what came to constitute China Proper was unified for the first time in 221 B.C. In that year the western frontier state of Qin, the most aggressive of the Warring States, subjugated the last of its rival states. (Qin in Wade-Giles romanization is Ch'in, from which the English China probably derived.) Once the king of Qin consolidated his power, he took the title Shi Huangdi (First Emperor), a formulation previously reserved for deities and the mythological sage-emperors, and imposed Qin's centralized, nonhereditary bureaucratic system on his new empire. In subjugating the six other major states of Eastern Zhou, the Qin kings had relied heavily on Legalist scholaradvisers . Centralization, achieved by ruthless methods, was focused on standardizing legal codes and bureaucratic procedures, the forms of writing and coinage, and the pattern of thought and scholarship. To silence criticism of imperial rule, the kings banished or put to death many dissenting Confucian scholars and confiscated and burned their books. Qin aggrandizement was aided by frequent military expeditions pushing forward the frontiers in the north and south. To fend off barbarian intrusion, the fortification walls built by the various warring states were connected to make a 5,000- kilometer-long great wall. (What is commonly referred to as the Great Wall is actually four great walls rebuilt or extended during the Western Han, Sui, Jin, and Ming periods, rather than a single, continuous wall. At its extremities, the Great Wall reaches from northeastern Heilongjiang Province to northwestern Gansu. A number of public works projects were also undertaken to consolidate and strengthen imperial rule. These activities required enormous levies of manpower and resources, not to mention repressive measures. Revolts broke out as soon as the first Qin emperor died in 210 B.C. His dynasty was extinguished less than twenty years after its triumph. The imperial system initiated during the Qin dynasty, however, set a pattern that was developed over the next two millennia. After a short civil war, a new dynasty, called Han (206 B.C.- A.D. 220), emerged with its capital at Chang'an. The new empire retained much of the Qin administrative structure but retreated a bit from centralized rule by establishing vassal principalities in some areas for the sake of political convenience. The Han rulers modified some of the harsher aspects of the previous dynasty; Confucian ideals of government, out of favor during the Qin period, were adopted as the creed of the Han empire, and Confucian scholars gained prominent status as the core of the civil service. A civil service examination system also was initiated. Intellectual, literary, and artistic endeavors revived and flourished. The Han period produced China's most famous historian, Sima Qian (145-87 B.C.?), whose Shiji (Historical Records) provides a detailed chronicle from the time of a legendary Xia emperor to that of the Han emperor Wu Di(141-87 B.C.). Technological advances also marked this period. Two of the great Chinese inventions, paper and porcelain, date from Han times. The Han dynasty, after which the members of the ethnic majority in China, the "people of Han," are named, was notable also for its military prowess. The empire expanded westward as far as the rim of the Tarim Basin (in modern Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region), making possible relatively secure caravan traffic across Central Asia to Antioch, Baghdad, and Alexandria. The paths of caravan traffic are often called the "silk route" because the route was used to export Chinese silk to the Roman Empire. Chinese armies also invaded and annexed parts of northern Vietnam and northern Korea toward the end of the second century B.C. Han control of peripheral regions was generally insecure, however. To ensure peace with non-Chinese local powers, the Han court developed a mutually beneficial "tributary system." Non-Chinese states were allowed to remain autonomous in exchange for symbolic acceptance of Han overlordship. Tributary ties were confirmed and strengthened through intermarriages at the ruling level and periodic exchanges of gifts and goods. After 200 years, Han rule was interrupted briefly (in A.D. 9-24 by Wang Mang, a reformer), and then restored for another 200 years. The Han rulers, however, were unable to adjust to what centralization had wrought: a growing population, increasing wealth and resultant financial difficulties and rivalries, and ever-more complex political institutions. Riddled with the corruption characteristic of the dynastic cycle, by A.D. 220 the Han empire collapsed. Over the centuries a great many peoples who were originally not Chinese have been assimilated into Chinese society. Entry into Han society has not demanded religious conversion or formal initiation. It has depended on command of the Chinese written language and evidence of adherence to Chinese values and customs. For the most part, what has distinguished those groups that have been assimilated from those that have not has been the suitability of their environment for Han agriculture. People living in areas where Chinese-style agriculture is feasible have either been displaced or assimilated. The consequence is that most of China's minorities inhabit extensive tracts of land unsuited for Han-style agriculture; they are not usually found as long-term inhabitants of Chinese cities or in close proximity to most Han villages. Those living on steppes, near desert oases, or in high mountains, and dependent on pastoral nomadism or shifting cultivation, have retained their ethnic distinctiveness outside Han society. The sharpest ethnic boundary has been between the Han and the steppe pastoralists, a boundary sharpened by centuries of conflict and cycles of conquest and subjugation. Reminders of these differences are the absence of dairy products from the otherwise extensive repertoire of Han cuisine and the distaste most Chinese feel for such typical steppe specialties as tea laced with butter. HAN DIVERSITY AND UNITY The differences among regional and linguistic subgroups of Han Chinese are at least as great as those among many European nationalities. Han Chinese speak seven or eight mutually unintelligible dialects, each of which has many local subdialects. Cultural differences (cuisine, costume, and custom) are equally great. Modern Chinese history provides many examples of conflict, up to the level of small-scale regional wars, between linguistic and regional groups. Such diversities, however, have not generated exclusive loyalties, and distinctions in religion or political affiliation have not reinforced regional differences. Rather, there has been a consistent tendency in Chinese thought and practice to downplay intra-Han distinctions, which are regarded as minor and superficial. What all Han share is more significant than the ways in which they differ. In conceptual terms, the boundary between Han and non-Han is absolute and sharp, while boundaries between subsets of Han are subject to continual shifts, are dictated by local conditions, and do not produce the isolation inherent in relations between Han and minority groups. Han ethnic unity is the result of two ancient and culturally central Chinese institutions, one of which is the written language. Chinese is written with ideographs (sometimes called characters) that represent meanings rather than sounds, and so written Chinese does not reflect the speech of its author. The disjunction between written and spoken Chinese means that a newspaper published in Beijing can be read in Shanghai or Guangzhou, although the residents of the three cities would not understand each other's speech. It also means that there can be no specifically Cantonese (Guangzhou dialect) or Hunanese literature because the local speech of a region cannot be directly or easily represented in writing. (It is possible to add local color to fiction, cite colloquialisms, or transcribe folk songs, but it is not commonly done.) Therefore, local languages have not become a focus for regional selfconsciousness or nationalism. Educated Chinese tend to regard the written ideographs as primary, and they regard the seven or eight spoken Han Chinese dialects as simply variant ways of pronouncing the same ideographs. This is linguistically inaccurate, but the attitude has significant political and social consequences. The uniform written language in 1987 continued to be a powerful force for Han unity. The other major force contributing to Han ethnic unity has been the centralized imperial state. The ethnic group takes its name from the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220. Although the imperial government never directly controlled the villages, it did have a strong influence on popular values and culture. The average peasant could not read and was not familiar with the details of state administration or national geography, but he was aware of belonging to a group of subcontinental scope. Being Han, even for illiterate peasants, has meant conscious identification with a glorious history and a state of immense proportions. Peasant folklore and folk religion assumed that the imperial state, with an emperor and an administrative bureaucracy, was the normal order of society. In the imperial period, the highest prestige went to scholar-officials, and every schoolboy had the possibility, at least theoretically, of passing the civil service examinations and becoming an official. The prestige of the state and its popular identification with the highest values of Chinese civilization were not accidents; they were the final result of a centuries-long program of indoctrination and education directed by the Confucian scholar-officials. Traditional Chinese society can be distinguished from other premodern civilizations to the extent that the state, rather than organized religious groups or ethnic segments of society, was able to appropriate the symbols of wisdom, morality, and the common good. The legacy for modern Chinese society has been a strong centralized government that has the right to impose its values on the population and against which there is no legitimate right of dissent or secession.
Mesoamerican Civilization San Lorenzo and La Venta: 1200 - 400 BC The first civilization in central and north America develops in about 1200 BC in the coastal regions of the southern part of the Gulf of Mexico. Known as the Olmec civilization, its early site is at San Lorenzo. From about 900 BC the capital city of the Olmecs moves further east along the Gulf coast to La Venta, an island site in the Tonal River. For the next 500 years La Venta is the cultural centre of a large region, trading with much of central America. The Olmec traditions of sculpture and of temple architecture, developed over eight centuries, will influence all the subsequent civilizations of the region. The most characteristic sculptures of San Lorenzo and La Venta are astonishing creations. They are massive stone heads, more than two metres in height, of square-jawed and fat-lipped warriors, usually wearing helmets with ear flaps. The chunky and uncompromising quality of these images will remain typical of much of the religious art of Mesoamerica, particularly in the region around Mexico City. It can be seen in the rain-god masks of Teotihuacan (about 2000 years ago), in the vast standing warriors at Tula (about 1000 years ago) and in the brutally severe monumental sculpture of the Aztecs (500 years ago). The first American monuments: from 1200 BC In both the centres of Olmec civilization, at San Lorenzo and then La Venta, numerous large clay platforms are raised. At their top there are believed to have been temples, or perhaps sometimes palaces, built of wood. The concept of climbing up to a place of religious significance becomes the central theme of pre-Columbian architecture. Its natural conclusion is the pyramid, with steps by which priests and pilgrims climb to the top (unlike the smooth-sided tomb pyramids of Egypt). La Venta initiates this long American tradition too. One of its pyramids is more than 30 metres high. The Olmec temple complexes set the pattern for societies in America over the next 2000 years. The pyramids, with their temples and palaces, dominate the surrounding dwellings as powerfully as the priestly rulers and their rituals dominate the local community. It is also probable that the Olmecs engage in a custom which remains characteristic of all the early civilizations of America - the ritual of human sacrifice, reaching its grisly peak in the ceremonies of the Aztecs. The Zapotecs and Monte Alban: from 400 BC The Zapotecs are among the first people to develop the Olmec culture in other regions. From about 400 BC at Monte Alban, to the west of the Olmec heartland, they establish a ceremonial centre with stone temple platforms. Monte Alban eventually becomes the main city of this part of southern Mexico. Pyramids, an astronomical observatory and other cult buildings and monuments (including America's earliest carved inscriptions) are ranged in a temple district along the top of a ridge. In terraces on the slopes below there is a town of some 30,000 people. The Zapotecs thrive on this site for more than 1000 years, finally abandoning it in about AD 700. Teotihuacan and Tikal: early centuries AD Around the beginning of the Christian era two regions of central America begin to develop more advanced civilizations, still based on a priestly cult and on temple pyramids. The dominant city in the northern highlands is Teotihuacan. It eventually covers eight square miles, with a great central avenue running for some two miles. At its north end is the massive Pyramid of the Moon. To one side of the avenue is the even larger Pyramid of the Sun (66 metres high). The sculptures on an early pyramid in Teotihuacan introduce Quetzalcoatl, the most important god of ancient Mesoamerica. His image is a snake's head with a necklace of feathers (the plumed serpent). The other classic civilization of Mesoamerica is that of the Maya, developing in what is now the eastern part of Mexico and the neighbouring regions of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and western Honduras. Much of this region is jungle. The inaccessibility of the great centres of Maya culture (of which the largest is Tikal) means that they outlast all rivals, surviving a succession of violent changes in the civilization of central Mexico. The first of these changes is the sudden collapse of Teotihuacan in about AD 650. It is not known for certain which invaders overrun this greatest city of ancient America. But the next people to establish themselves as rulers of the valley of Mexico, in the 10th century, are the Toltecs.
The first American script: 2nd c. BC - 3rd c. AD Of the various early civilizations of central America, the Maya make the greatest use of writing. In their ceremonial centres they set up numerous columns, or stelae, engraved with hieroglyphs. But they are not the inventors of writing in America. Credit for this should possibly go back as far as the Olmecs. Certainly there is some evidence that they are the first in the region to devise a calendar, in which writing of some sort is almost essential. The Zapotecs, preceding the Maya, have left the earliest surviving inscriptions, dating from about the 2nd century BC. The first Mayan stele to be securely dated is erected at Tikal in the equivalent of the year AD 292. The Mayan script is hieroglyphic with some phonetic elements. Its interpretation has been a long struggle, going back to the 16th century, and even today only about 80% of the hieroglyphs are understood. They reveal that the script is used almost exclusively for two purposes: the recording of calculations connected with the calendar and astronomy; and the listing of rulers, their dynasties and their conquests. Thus the priests and the palace officials of early America succeed in preserving writing for their own privileged purposes. In doing so they deny their societies the liberating magic of literacy.