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How did the rule of Cyrus the Great differ from the rule of Assyrian kings?
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A History of
Western Society
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Origins
to
1200 b.c.e.
What is history? That seemingly simple question hides great complexities. If history
is the story of humans, what does it mean to be human? As they have in the past, philosophers, religious leaders, politicians, physicians, and others wrestle with this question every day, as do scientists using technologies that were unavailable until very
recently, such as DNA analysis and radiocarbon dating. Is all of the human past “history”? Previous generations of historians would generally have answered no, that history
only began when writing began and everything before that was “prehistory.” This leaves
out most of the human story, however, and today historians no longer see writing as
such a sharp dividing line. They explore all eras of the human past using many different
types of sources, although they do still tend to pay more attention to written sources.
For most of their history, humans were foragers moving through the landscape,
inventing ever more specialized tools. About 11,000 years ago, people in some places
domesticated plants and animals, which many scholars describe as the most significant change in human history. They began to live in permanent villages, some of which
grew into cities. They created structures of governance to control their more complex
societies, along with military forces and taxation systems. Some invented writing to
record taxes, inventories, and payments, and they later put writing to other uses, including the preservation of stories, traditions, and history. The first places where these new
technologies and systems were introduced were the Tigris and Euphrates River Valleys
of southwest Asia and the Nile Valley of northeast Africa, areas whose history became
linked through trade connections, military conquests, and migrations. ■
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CHAPTER PREVIEW
Understanding Western History
What do we mean by “the West” and “Western civilization”?
The Earliest Human Societies
How did early human societies develop and create new technologies and
cultural forms?
Civilization in Mesopotamia
What kind of civilization did the Sumerians develop in Mesopotamia?
Empires in Mesopotamia
How did the Akkadian and Old Babylonian empires develop in
Mesopotamia?
Life in New Kingdom Egypt,
ca. 1500–1300 b.c.e.
In this wall painting from the tomb of
an offici , a man guides a wooden
ox-drawn plow through the soil, while
the woman walking behind throws
seed in the furrow. The painting was
designed not to show real peasants
working but to depict the servants
who would spring to life to serve the
deceased in the afterlife. Nevertheless,
the gender division of labor and the
plow itself are probably accurate.
(Deir el-Medina, Thebes, Egypt/Bridgeman
Images)
The Egyptians
How did the Egyptians create a prosperous and long-lasting society?
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to 1200 b . c . e .
CHAPTER 1 | Origins
Understanding Western History
FOCUS QUESTION What do we mean by “the West”
and “Western civilization”?
Most human groups have left some record of themselves. Some left artifacts, others pictures or signs, and
still others written documents. In many of these
records, groups set up distinctions between themselves
and others. Some of these distinctions are between
small groups such as neighboring tribes, some between
countries and civilizations, and some between vast
parts of the world. Among the most enduring of the
latter are the ideas of “the West” and “the East.”
Describing the West
Ideas about the West and the distinction between West
and East derived originally from the ancient Greeks.
Greek civilization grew up in the shadow of earlier
civilizations to the south and east of Greece, especially
Egypt and Mesopotamia. Greeks defined themselves in
relation to these more advanced cultures, which they
saw as “Eastern.” Greeks were also the first to use the
word Europe for a geographic area, taking the word
from the name of a minor goddess. They set Europe in
opposition to “Asia” (also named for a minor goddess),
by which they meant both what we now call western
Asia and what we call Africa.
The Greeks passed this conceptualization on to the
Romans, who saw themselves clearly as part of the
West. For some Romans, Greece remained in the West,
while other Romans came to view Greek traditions as
vaguely “Eastern.” To Romans, the East was more sophisticated and more advanced, but also decadent and
somewhat immoral. Roman value judgments have
continued to shape preconceptions, stereotypes, and
views of differences between the West and the East —
which in the past were also called the “Occident” and
the “Orient” — to this day.
Greco-Roman ideas about the West were passed on
to people who lived in western and northern Europe,
who saw themselves as the inheritors of this classical
tradition and thus as the West. When these Europeans
established colonies outside of Europe beginning in
the late fifteenth century, they regarded what they were
doing as taking Western culture with them, even
though many aspects of Western culture, such as
Christianity, had actually originated in what Europeans by that point regarded as the East. With coloniza■ civilization A large-scale system of human political, economic, and
social organizations; civilizations have cities, laws, states, and often
writing.
Paleolithic era The period of human history up to about 9000 b.c.e.,
when tools were made from stone and bone and people gained their
food through foraging.
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tion, Western came to mean those cultures that included
significant numbers of people of European ancestry,
no matter where on the globe they were located.
In the early twentieth century educators and other
leaders in the United States became worried that many
people, especially young people, were becoming cut off
from European intellectual and cultural traditions.
They encouraged the establishment of college and university courses focusing on “Western civilization,” the
first of which was taught at Columbia University in
1919. In designing the course, the faculty included
cultures that as far back as the ancient Greeks had been
considered Eastern, such as Egypt and Mesopotamia.
This conceptualization and the course spread to other
colleges and universities, developing into what became
known as the introductory Western civilization course,
a staple of historical instruction for generations of
college students.
After World War II divisions between the West and
the East changed again. Now there was a new division
between East and West within Europe, with Western
coming to imply a capitalist economy and Eastern the
Communist Eastern bloc. Thus, Japan was considered
Western, and some Greek-speaking areas of Europe became Eastern. The collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe in the 1980s brought
yet another refiguring, with much of eastern Europe
joining the European Union, originally a Western organization.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Western still suggests a capitalist economy, but it also has
certain cultural connotations, such as individualism
and competition, which some see as negative and others as positive. Islamist radicals often describe their
aims as an end to Western cultural, economic, and political influence, though Islam itself is generally described, along with Judaism and Christianity, as a
Western monotheistic religion. Thus, throughout its
long history, the meaning of “the West” has shifted,
but in every era it has meant more than a geographical
location.
What Is Civilization?
Just as the meaning of the word Western is shaped by
culture, so is the meaning of the word civilization. In
the ancient world, residents of cities generally viewed
themselves as more advanced and sophisticated than
rural folk — a judgment still made today. They saw
themselves as more “civilized,” a word that comes from
the Latin adjective civilis, which refers to a citizen, either of a town or of a larger political unit such as an
empire.
This depiction of people as either civilized or uncivilized was gradually extended to whole societies. Beginning in the eighteenth century, European scholars
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Chronology
ca. 250,000 b.c.e.
Homo sapiens evolve in Africa
described any society in which political,
economic, and social organizations op250,000–9000 b.c.e. Paleolithic era
erated on a large scale, not primarily
9000 b.c.e.
Beginning of the Neolithic; crop raising;
through families and kin groups, as a
domestication of sheep and goats
civilization. Civilizations had cities;
laws that governed human relationships;
ca. 7000 b.c.e.
Domestication of cattle; plow agriculture
codes of manners and social conduct
ca. 5500 b.c.e.
Smelting of copper
that regulated how people were to behave; and scientific, philosophical, and
ca. 3800 b.c.e.
Establishment of first esopotamian cities
theological beliefs that explained the
ca. 3200 b.c.e.
Development of cuneiform and hieroglyphic
larger world. Civilizations also had some
writing
form of political organization, what political scientists call “the state,” through
ca. 3100b.c.e.
Unific tion of Upper and Lower Egypt
which one group was able to coerce reca. 3000 b.c.e.
Development of wheeled transport;
sources out of others to engage in group
beginning of bronze technology
endeavors, such as building large structures or carrying out warfare. States
ca. 2500 b.c.e.
Bronze technology becomes common in
established armies, bureaucracies, and
many areas
taxation systems. Generally only soci
ca. 2300 b.c.e.
Establishment of the Akkadian empire
eties that used writing were judged to be
Hyksos people begin to settle in the Nile
ca. 1800b.c.e.
civilizations, because writing allowed
Delta
more permanent expression of thoughts,
ideas, and feelings. Human societies in
1792–1750b.c.e.
Hammurabi rules Babylon
which people were nomadic or lived in
1258b.c.e.
Peace treaty between Egyptian pharaoh
small villages without formal laws, and
Ramesses II and Hittite king Hattusili III
in which traditions were passed down
orally, were not regarded as civilizations.
ca. 1200b.c.e.
“Bronze Age Collapse”; destruction and
Until the middle of the twentieth
drought
century, historians often referred to the
places where writing and cities develA note on dates: This book generally uses the terms b.c.e. (Before the Common
Era) and c.e. (Common Era) when giving dates, a system of chronology based on
oped as “cradles of civilization,” proposthe
Christian calendar and now used widely around the world.
ing a model of development for all
humanity patterned on that of an individual life span. However, the idea that
all human societies developed (or should develop) on a
years, and it still shapes the way many people, includuniform process from a “cradle” to a “mature” civilizaing people in power, view the world.
tion has now been largely discredited, and some historians choose not to use the term civilization at all
because it could imply that some societies are superior
to others.
FOCUS QUESTION How did early human societies develop
Just as the notion of “civilization” has been quesand
create new technologies and cultural forms?
tioned, so has the notion of “Western civilization.”
Ever since the idea of “Western civilization” was first
Scientists who study the history of the earth use a varideveloped, people have debated what its geographical
ety of systems to classify and divide time. Geologists
extent and core values are. Are there certain beliefs,
and paleontologists divide time into periods that last
customs, concepts, and institutions that set Western
many millions of years, determined by the movements
civilization apart from other civilizations, and if so,
of continents and the evolution and extinction of plant
when and how did these originate? How were these
and animal species. During the nineteenth century, arvalues and practices transmitted over space and time,
chaeologists coined labels for eras of the human past
and how did they change? No civilization stands alone,
according to the primary material out of which survivand each is influenced by its neighbors. Whatever
ing tools had been made. Thus the earliest human era
Western civilization was — and is — it has been shaped
became the Stone Age, the next era the Bronze Age,
by interactions with other societies, cultures, and civiand the next the Iron Age. They further divided the
lizations, but the idea that there are basic distinctions
Stone Age into the Paleolithic (Old Stone) era, during
between the West and the rest of the world in terms of
which people used stone, bone, and other natural
cultural values has been very powerful for thousands of
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CHAPTER 1 | Origins
products to make tools and gained food largely by foraging — that is, by gathering plant products, trapping
or catching small animals and birds, and hunting larger
prey. This was followed by the Neolithic (New Stone)
era, which saw the beginning of agricultural and animal domestication. People around the world adopted
agriculture at various times, and some never did, but
the transition between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic is usually set at about 9000 b.c.e., the point at
which agriculture was first developed.
From the First Hominids to the
Paleolithic Era
Using many different pieces of evidence from all over
the world, archaeologists, paleontologists, and other
scholars have developed a view of human evolution that
has a widely shared basic outline, though there are disagreements about details. Sometime between 7 and
6 million years ago in southern and eastern Africa,
groups of human ancestors (members of the biological
“hominid” family) began to walk upright, which allowed them to carry things. About 3.4 million years ago
some hominids began to use naturally occurring objects
as tools, and around 2.5 million years ago one group in
East Africa began to make simple tools, a feat that was
accompanied by, and may have spurred, brain development. Groups migrated into much of Africa, and then
into Asia and Europe; by about 600,000 years ago there
were hominids throughout much of Afroeurasia.
About 200,000 years ago, again in East Africa, some
of these early humans evolved into Homo sapiens
(“thinking humans”), which had still larger and more
complex brains that allowed for symbolic language and
better social skills. Homo sapiens invented highly specialized tools made out of a variety of materials: barbed
fishhooks and harpoons, snares and traps for catching
small animals, bone needles for sewing clothing, awls
for punching holes in leather, sharpened flint pieces
bound to wooden or bone handles for hunting and
cutting, and slings for carrying infants. They made
regular use of fire for heat, light, and cooking, increasing the range of foods that were easily digestible. They
also migrated, first across Africa, and by 70,000 years
ago out of Africa into Eurasia. Eventually they traveled
farther still, reaching Australia using rafts about 50,000
years ago and the Americas by about 15,000 years ago,
or perhaps earlier. They moved into areas where other
types of hominids lived, interacting with them and in
some cases interbreeding with them. Gradually the
Neolithic era The period after 9000 b.c.e., when people developed
agriculture, domesticated animals, and used tools made of stone and
wood.
■
■ Fertile Crescent An area of mild climate and abundant wild grain
where agriculture first developed, in present-day Lebanon, Israel, Jordan,
Turkey, and Iraq.
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to 1200 b . c . e .
other types of hominids became extinct, leaving Homo
sapiens as the only survivors and the ancestors of all
modern humans.
In the Paleolithic period humans throughout the
world lived in ways that were similar to one another.
Archaeological evidence and studies of modern foragers suggest that people generally lived in small groups
of related individuals and moved throughout the landscape in search of food. In areas where food resources
were especially rich, such as along seacoasts, they settled more permanently in one place, living in caves or
building structures. They ate mostly plants, and much
of the animal protein in their diet came from foods
gathered or scavenged, such as insects and birds’ eggs,
rather than hunted directly. Paleolithic peoples did,
however, hunt large game. Groups working together
forced animals over cliffs, threw spears, and, beginning
about 15,000 b.c.e., used bows to shoot projectiles so
that they could stand farther away from their prey
while hunting.
Paleolithic people were not differentiated by wealth,
because in a foraging society it was not advantageous
to accumulate material goods. Most foraging societies
that exist today, or did so until recently, have some
type of division of labor by sex, and also by age. Men
are more often responsible for hunting, through which
they gain prestige as well as meat, and women for gathering plant and animal products. This may or may not
have been the case in the Paleolithic era, or there may
have been a diversity of patterns.
Early human societies are often described in terms
of their tools, but this misses a large part of the story.
Beginning in the Paleolithic era, human beings have
expressed themselves through what we would now
term the arts or culture: painting and decorating walls
and objects, making music, telling stories, dancing
alone or in groups. Paleolithic evidence, particularly
from after about 50,000 years ago, includes flutes,
carvings, jewelry, and amazing paintings done on cave
walls and rock outcroppings that depict animals,
people, and symbols. Burials, paintings, and objects
also suggest that people may have developed ideas
about supernatural forces that controlled some aspects
of the natural world and the humans in it, what we
now term spirituality or religion. Spiritually adept men
and women communicated with that unseen world,
and objects such as carvings or masks were probably
thought to have special healing or protective powers.
(See “Evaluating the Evidence 1.1: Paleolithic Venus
Figures,” at right.)
Total human population grew very slowly during
the Paleolithic. One estimate proposes that there were
perhaps 500,000 humans in the world about 30,000
years ago. By about 10,000 years ago, this number had
grown to 5 million — ten times as many people. This
was a significant increase, but it took twenty thousand
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EVALUATING
EVIDENCE
THEHE
EVIDENCE
AD NUMBER
1.1
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Paleolithic Venus Figures
Written sources provide evidence about the human past only after the development of writing, allowing us to read the words of people long dead. For most of
human history, however, there were no written sources, so we “read” the past
through objects. Interpreting written documents is difficult, and i erpreting
archaeological evidence is even more difficult and ten contentious. For
example, small stone statues of women with enlarged breasts and buttocks
dating from the later Paleolithic period (roughly 33,000–9,000 b.c.e.) have been
found in many parts of Europe. These were dubbed “Venus figu es” by
nineteenth-century archaeologists, who thought they represented Paleolithic
standards of female beauty just as the goddess Venus represented classical standards. A reproduction of one of these statues, the s ix-inch-tall Venus of Lespugue
made from a mammoth tusk about 25,000 years ago in southern France, is
shown here.
EVALUATE THE EVIDENCE
1. As you look at this statue, does it seem to link more closely with fertility or
with sexuality? How might your own situation as a twenty-firs -century
person shape your answer to this question?
2. Some scholars see Venus figu es as evidence that Paleolithic society was
egalitarian or female dominated, but others point out that images of
female deities or holy figu es are often found in religions that deny
women official auth ity. Can you think of examples of the latter? Which
point of view seems most persuasive to you?
years. The low population density meant that human
impact on the environment was relatively small, although still significant.
Planting Crops
Foraging remained the basic way of life for most of human history, and for groups living in extreme environments, such as tundras or deserts, it was the only
possible way to survive. In a few especially fertile areas,
however, the natural environment provided enough
food that people could become more settled. About
15,000 years ago, the earth’s climate entered a warming phase, and more parts of the world were able to
support sedentary or semi-sedentary groups of foragers. In several of these places, foragers began planting
seeds in the ground along with gathering wild grains,
roots, and other foodstuffs. By observation, they
learned the optimum times and places for planting.
They removed unwanted plants through weeding and
selected the seeds they planted in order to get crops
that had favorable characteristics, such as larger edible
parts. Through this human intervention, certain crops
became domesticated, that is, modified by selective
breeding so as to serve human needs.
(Museo Civico Palazzo Chiericati, Vicenza, Italy/De Agostini Picture
Library/Alfredo Dagli Orti/Bridgeman Images)
Intentional crop planting first developed around
9000 b.c.e. in the area archaeologists call the Fertile
Crescent, which runs from present-day Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan north to Turkey and then south and
east to the Iran-Iraq border. In this area of mild climate, wild barley and wheat were abundant, along
with fruit and nut trees, migrating ducks, and herds of
gazelles and other animals. Over the next two millennia, intentional crop planting emerged for the most
part independently in the Nile River Valley, western
Africa, China, India, Papua New Guinea, Mesoamerica, and perhaps other places where the archaeological
evidence has not survived.
Why, after living successfully as foragers for tens of
thousands of years, did humans in so many parts of the
world begin raising crops at about the same time? The
answer to this question is not clear, but crop raising
may have resulted from population pressures in those
parts of the world where the warming climate provided
more food through foraging. More food meant lower
child mortality and longer life spans, which allowed
populations to grow. People then had a choice: they
could move to a new area — the solution that people
had always relied on when faced with the problem of
food scarcity — or they could develop ways to increase
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to 1200 b . c . e .
CHAPTER 1 | Origins
the food supply. They chose the latter and began to
plant more intensively, beginning cycles of expanding
population and intensification of land use that have
continued to today.
A very recent archaeological find at Göbekli Tepe in
present-day Turkey, at the northern edge of the Fertile
Crescent, suggests that cultural factors may have
played a role in the development of agriculture. Here,
around 9000 b.c.e., hundreds of people came together
ulti-ton elaborately carved
to build rings of massive, m
limestone pillars, and then covered them with dirt and
built more. The people who created this site lived some
distance away, where archaeological remains indicate
that at the time they first carved the pillars, they ate
wild game and plants, not crops. We can only speculate about why so many people expended the effort
they did to carve these pillars and raise them into place,
but the project may have unintentionally spurred the
development of new methods of food production that
would allow the many workers to be fed efficiently. Indeed, it is very near here that evidence of the world’s
oldest domesticated wheat has been discovered. Archaeologists speculate that, at least in this case, the
symbolic, cultural, or perhaps religious importance of
Pillar at Göbekli Tepe The huge limestone pillars arranged in rings at
the Paleolithic site Göbekli Tepe are somewhat humanoid in shape, and
the carvings are of dangerous animals, including lions, boars, foxes,
snakes, vultures, and scorpions. The structure required enormous skill
and effort of the people who built it, and clearly had great importance
to them. (Vincent J. Musi/National Geographic Creative)
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the structure can help explain why the people building
it changed from foraging to agriculture.
Implications of Agriculture
Whatever the reasons for the move from foraging to
agriculture, within several centuries of initial crop
planting, people in the Fertile Crescent, parts of China,
and the Nile Valley were relying primarily on domesticated food products. They built permanent houses
near one another in villages and planted fields around
the villages. In addition, they invented storage containers for food, such as pottery made from fired clay
and woven baskets.
A field of planted and weeded crops yields ten to
one hundred times as much food —
measured in
calories —
as the same area of naturally occurring
plants. It also requires much more labor, however,
which was provided both by the greater number of
people in the community and by those people working
longer hours. In contrast to the twenty hours a week
foragers spent on obtaining food, farming peoples
were often in the fields from dawn to dusk. Early farmers were also less healthy than foragers were; their narrower range of foodstuffs made them more susceptible
to disease and nutritional deficiencies, such as anemia,
and also made them shorter. Still, farmers came to outnumber foragers, and slowly larger and larger parts of
Europe, China, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa
became home to farming villages, a dramatic human
alteration of the environment.
At roughly the same time that they domesticated
certain plants, people also domesticated animals. The
earliest animal to be domesticated was the dog, which
separated genetically as a subspecies from wolves at
least 15,000 years ago and perhaps much earlier. In
about 9000 b.c.e., at the same time they began to raise
crops, people in the Fertile Crescent domesticated wild
goats and sheep, probably using them first for meat,
and then for milk, skins, and eventually fleece. They
began to breed the goats and sheep selectively for qualities that they wanted, including larger size, greater
strength, better coats, increased milk production, and
more even temperaments. Sheep and goats allow
themselves to be herded, and people developed a new
form of living, pastoralism, based on herding and raising livestock; sometimes people trained dogs to assist
them. Eventually other grazing animals, including
cattle, camels, horses, yak, and reindeer, also became
the basis of pastoral economies in Central and West
Asia, many parts of Africa, and far northern Europe.
Crop raising and pastoralism brought significant
changes to human ways of life, but the domestication
of certain large animals had an even bigger impact.
Cattle and water buffalo were domesticated in some
parts of Asia and North Africa, in which they occurred
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to 1200 b . c . e .
naturally, by at least 7000 b.c.e. Donkeys were domesticated by about 4000 b.c.e., and horses by about
2500 b.c.e. All these animals can be trained to carry
people or burdens on their backs and pull against loads
dragged behind them, two qualities that are rare among
the world’s animal species. The domestication of large
animals dramatically increased the power available to
humans to carry out their tasks, which had both an
immediate effect in the societies in which this happened and a long-term effect when these societies later
encountered other societies in which human labor
remained the only source of power.
Sometime in the seventh millennium b.c.e., people
attached wooden sticks to frames that animals dragged
through the soil, thus breaking it up and allowing
seeds to sprout more easily. These simple scratch plows,
pulled by cattle and water buffalo, allowed Neolithic
people to produce a significant amount of surplus
food, which meant that some people in the community could spend their days performing other tasks,
increasing the division of labor. Surplus food had to be
stored, and some people began to specialize in making
products for storage, such as pots, baskets, bags, bins,
and other kinds of containers. Others specialized in
making tools, houses, and other items needed in v illage
life or for producing specific types of food. Families
and households became increasingly interdependent,
trading food for other commodities or services.
The division of labor allowed by plow agriculture
contributed to the creation of social hierarchies, that
is, the divisions between rich and poor, elites and common people, that have been a central feature of human
society since the Neolithic era. Although no written
records were produced during this era, archaeological
evidence provides some clues about how the hierarchies might have developed. Villagers needed more
complex rules about how food was to be distributed
and how different types of work were to be valued than
did foragers. Certain individuals must have begun to
specialize in the determination and enforcement of
these rules, and informal structures of power gradually
became more formalized. Religious specialists probably developed more elaborate rituals to celebrate life
passages and to appeal to the gods for help in times of
difficulty, such as illness.
Individuals who were the heads of large families or
kin groups had control over the labor of others, and
this power became more significant when that labor
brought material goods that could be stored. The ability to control the labor of others could also come from
physical strength, a charismatic personality, or leadership talents, and such traits may also have led to greater
wealth. Material goods — plows, sheep, cattle, sheds,
pots, carts — gave one the ability to amass still more
material goods, and the gap between those who had
them and those who did not widened. Social hierar-
01_MCK_03101_ch01_0001_0033.indd 9
The Earliest Human Societies
9
chies were reinforced over generations as children inherited goods and status from their parents. By the
time writing was invented, social distinctions between
elites — rulers, nobles, hereditary priests, and other
privileged groups — and the rest of the population
were already in existence.
Along with hierarchies based on wealth and power,
the development of agriculture was intertwined with a
hierarchy based on gender. In many places, plow agriculture came to be a male task, perhaps because of
men’s upper-body strength or because plow agriculture
was difficult to combine with care for infants and small
children. Men’s responsibility for plowing and other
agricultural tasks took them outside the household
more often than women’s duties did, enlarging their
opportunities for leadership. This role may have led to
their being favored as inheritors of family land and the
right to farm communally held land, because when inheritance systems were established in later millennia,
they often favored sons when handing down land. Accordingly, over generations, women’s independent access to resources decreased.
The system in which men have more power and access to resources than women of the same social level,
and in which some men are dominant over other men,
is called patriarchy and is found in every society with
written records, although the level of inequality varies.
Men’s control of property was rarely absolute, because
the desire to keep wealth and property within a family
or kin group often resulted in women’s inheriting, owning, and in some cases managing significant amounts of
wealth. Hierarchies of wealth and power thus intersected with hierarchies of gender in complex ways.
Trade and Cross-Cultural
Connections
By 7000 b.c.e. or so, some agricultural villages in the
Fertile Crescent may have had as many as ten thousand
residents. One of the best known of these, Çatal
Hüyük in what is now Turkey, shows evidence of trade
as well as specialization of labor. Çatal Hüyük’s residents lived in densely packed mud-brick houses with
walls covered in white plaster that had been made with
burned lime. The men and women of the town grew
wheat, barley, peas, and almonds and raised sheep and
perhaps cattle, though they also seem to have hunted.
They made textiles, pots, figurines, baskets, carpets,
copper and lead beads, and other goods, and decorated
their houses with murals showing animal and human figures. They gathered, sharpened, and polished
■ pastoralism An economic system based on herding flocks of goats,
sheep, cattle, or other animals beneficial to humans.
■ patriarchy A society in which most power is held by older adult men,
especially those from the elite groups.
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LIVING IN THE PAST
10 Chapter 1 Origins ca. 400,000–1100 B.C.E.
The Iceman
O
n September 19, 1991, two German vacationers climbing in the Italian Alps came upon a corpse lying f ace-
down and covered in ice. Scientists determined that
the Iceman, as the corpse is generally known, died 5,300 years
ago. He was between twenty-fi e and thirty-fi e years old at
the time of his death, and he stood about fi e feet two inches
tall. An autopsy revealed much about the man and his culture. The bluish tinge of his teeth showed a diet of milled
grain, which proves that he came from an environment where
crops were grown. The Iceman hunted as well as farmed: he
was found with a bow and arrows and shoes of straw, and he
wore a furry cap and a robe of animal skins that had been
stitched together with thread made from grass.
The equipment discovered with the Iceman demonstrates that his people mastered several technologies. He
carried a hefty copper ax, made by someone with a knowledge of m
etallurgy. In his quiver were numerous wooden
arrow shafts and two finished arrows. The arrows had sharpened fli t heads and feathers attached to the ends of the
shafts with resin-like glue. Apparently the people of his
culture knew the value of feathers to direct the arrows, and
thus had mastered the basics of ballistics. His bow was made
of yew, a relatively rare wood in central Europe that is among
the best for archers.
Yet a mystery still surrounds the Iceman. When his body
was first discovered, scholars assumed that he was a hapless
traveler overtaken in a fie ce snowstorm. But the autopsy
found an arrowhead lodged under his left shoulder. The Iceman was not alone on his last day. Someone was with him,
and that someone had shot him from below and behind. The
Iceman is the victim in the first murder mystery of Western
civilization, and the case will never be solved.
QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS
1. What does the autopsy of the corpse indicate about the
society in which the Iceman lived?
2. How do the objects found with the Iceman support
the generalizations about Neolithic society in this
chapter?
The artifacts found with the body tell scientists much about how the Iceman lived. The Iceman’s cap, made of
bearskin pieces stitched together with sinew, was worn with the fur on the outside. He also had a coat made out of
domestic goatskin, in which light and dark stripes alternated in a striking pattern. (discovery of corpse: Paul Hanny/Gamma-Rapho
via Getty Images; quiver: S.N.S./Sipa Press; cap and ax: South Tyrol Museum of Archeology, Bolzano, Italy/Wolfgang Neeb/Bridgeman Images)
10
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to 1200 b . c . e .
o bsidian, a volcanic rock that could be used for knives,
blades, and mirrors, and then traded it with neighboring towns, obtaining seashells and flint. From here the
obsidian was exchanged still farther away, for Neolithic
societies slowly developed local and then regional
networks of exchange and communication.
Among the goods traded in some parts of the world
was copper, which people hammered into shapes for
jewelry and tools. Like most metals, in its natural state
copper usually occurs mixed with other materials in a
type of rock called ore, and by about 5500 b.c.e.
people in the Balkans had learned that copper could be
extracted from ore by heating it in a smelting process.
Smelted copper was poured into molds and made into
spear points, axes, chisels, beads, and other objects.
(See “Living in the Past: The Iceman,” at left.) Pure
copper is soft, but through experimentation artisans
learned that it would become harder if they mixed it
with other metals such as zinc, tin, or arsenic during
heating, creating an alloy called bronze.
Because it was stronger than copper, bronze had a far
wider range of uses, so much so that later historians
decided that its adoption marked a new period in human history: the Bronze Age. Like all new technologies, bronze arrived at different times in different places,
so the dates of the Bronze Age vary. It began about
3000 b.c.e. in some places, and by about 2500 b.c.e.
bronze technology was having an impact in many parts
of the world. The end of the Bronze Age came with the
adoption of iron technology, which also varied from
1200 b.c.e. to 300 b.c.e. (see Chapter 2). All metals
were expensive and hard to obtain, however, so stone,
wood, and bone remained important materials for tools
and weapons long into the Bronze Age.
Objects were not the only things traded over increasingly long distances during the Neolithic period,
for people also carried ideas as they traveled on foot,
boats, or camels, and in wagons or carts. Knowledge
about the seasons and the weather was vitally important for those who depended on crop raising, and agricultural peoples in many parts of the world began to
calculate recurring patterns in the world around them,
slowly developing calendars. Scholars have demonstrated that people built circular structures of mounded
earth or huge upright stones to help them predict the
movements of the sun and stars, including Nabta
Playa, erected about 4500 b.c.e. in the desert west of
the Nile Valley in Egypt, and Stonehenge, erected
about 2500 b.c.e. in southern England.
The rhythms of the agricultural cycle and patterns
of exchange also shaped religious beliefs and practices.
Among foragers, human fertility is a mixed blessing, as
too many children can overtax food supplies, but
among crop raisers and pastoralists, fertility — of the
land, animals, and people — is essential. Thus in many
places multiple gods came to be associated with
atterns of birth, growth, death, and regeneration in a
p
system known as polytheism. Like humans, the gods
came to have a division of labor and a social hierarchy.
There were rain-gods and sun-gods, sky goddesses and
moon goddesses, gods that ensured the health of cattle or
the growth of corn, goddesses of the hearth and home.
Civilization in Mesopotamia
FOCUS QUESTION What kind of civilization did the
Sumerians develop in Mesopotamia?
The origins of Western civilization are generally traced
to an area that is today not seen as part of the West:
Mesopotamia (mehs-oh-puh-TAY-mee-uh), the Greek
name for the land between the Euphrates (yoo-FRAY-
teez) and Tigris (TIGH-grihs) Rivers (Map 1.1). The
earliest agricultural villages in Mesopotamia were in
the northern, hilly parts of the river valleys, where
there is abundant rainfall for crops. Farmers had
brought techniques of crop raising southward by about
5000 b.c.e., to the southern part of Mesopotamia,
called Sumer. In this arid climate farmers developed
irrigation on a large scale, which demanded organized
group effort, but allowed the population to grow. By
about 3800 b.c.e., one of the agricultural villages,
Uruk (OO-rook), had expanded significantly, becoming what many historians view as the world’s first city,
with a population that eventually numbered more
than fifty thousand. People living in Uruk built large
temples to honor their chief god and goddess, and also
invented the world’s first system of writing, through
which they recorded information about their society.
Over the next thousand years, other cities also grew in
riting.
Sumer, trading with one another and adopting w
Environment and Mesopotamian
Development
From the outset, geography had a profound effect on
Mesopotamia, because here agriculture is possible only
with irrigation. Consequently, the Sumerians and later
civilizations built their cities along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and their branches. They used the rivers
to carry agricultural and trade goods, and also to provide water for vast networks of irrigation channels.
The Tigris and Euphrates flow quickly at certain
times of the year and carry silt down from the mountains and hills, causing floods. To prevent major floods,
the Sumerians created massive hydraulic projects, including reservoirs, dams, and dikes as well as canals. In
stories written later, they described their chief god,
■ Bronze Age The period in which the production and use of bronze
implements became basic to society.
■
01_MCK_03101_ch01_0001_0033.indd 11
11
Civilization in Mesopotamia
polytheism The worship of many gods and goddesses.
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Çatal
Tell Leilan
Hüyük Kazane
Hoyuk
MESOPOTAMIA
Ebla
Jarmo
ASSYRIA
SYRIA Euph
TS
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M
Nippur
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IRAN
SUMER
Lagash
Uruk
Ur
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Egyptian
Egyptian
E
a cul
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u tur
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M
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Mesopotamian
Neolithic site
Marshland
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Probable
ancient coastline
ia
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Akkad
Babylon
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PHOENICIA
40°N
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PALESTINE
Jericho
Avaris
LOWER DELTA
EGYPT
A R A B I A N
Giza
Memphis
D E S E R T
S A H A R A
M
ARMENIA
ra
Mediterranean
Sea
S
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Hacilar
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GREECE
CA
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MAP 1.1 Spread of Cultures in the Ancient Near East, ca. 3000–1640b.c.e. This map illustrates the spread of
MCK_03101_01_M01
of cultures
Cultures in
the Ancient
Near East, ca.
3000–1640
the
Mesopotamian and Spread
Egyptian
through
the semicircular
stretch
of landB.C.E.
often called the Fertile Crescent.
Black Cyan Magenta Yellow
From
this area, the knowledge and use of agriculture spread throughout western Asia, North Africa, and Europe.
First proof
BB191 01
Enlil, as “the raging flood which has no rival,” and believed that at one point there had been a massive flood, a
tradition that also gave rise to the biblical story of Noah:
A flood will sweep over the cult-centers;
To destroy the seed of mankind . . .
Is the decision, the word of the assembly of the
gods.1
Judging by historical records, however, actual destructive floods were few.
In addition to water and transport, the rivers supplied fish, a major element of the Sumerian diet, and
reeds, which were used for making baskets and writing
implements. The rivers also provided clay, which was
hardened to create bricks, the Sumerians’ primary
building material in a region with little stone. Clay was
fired into pots, and inventive artisans developed the
potter’s wheel so that they could make pots that were
stronger and more uniform than those made by earlier
methods of coiling ropes of clay. The potter’s wheel in
turn appears to have led to the introduction of wheeled
vehicles sometime in the fourth millennium b.c.e. Exactly where they were invented is hotly contested, but
Sumer is one of the first locations in which they appeared. Wheeled vehicles, pulled by domesticated
donkeys, led to road building, which facilitated settlement, trade, and conquest, although travel and transport by water remained far easier.
■ cuneiform Sumerian form of writing; the term describes the
wedge-shaped marks made by a stylus.
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01_MCK_03101_ch01_0001_0033.indd 12
Map positioning guide
Type block map
Bleeds top, right
Trim: 48p0 x 22p0, including hanging locator
Position left map trim at left type block
Cities and villages in Sumer and farther up the Tigris and Euphrates traded with one another, and even
before the development of writing or kings, it appears
that colonists sometimes set out from one city to travel
hundreds of miles to the north or west to found a new
city or to set up a community in an existing center.
These colonies might well have provided the Sumerian
cities with goods, such as timber and metal ores, that
were not available locally. The cities of the Sumerian
heartland continued to grow and to develop governments, and each one came to dominate the surrounding countryside, becoming
city-
states independent
from one another, though not very far apart.
The city-states of Sumer continued to rely on irrigation systems that required cooperation and at least
some level of social and political cohesion. The authority to run this system was, it seems, initially assumed
by Sumerian priests. Encouraged and directed by their
religious leaders, people built temples on tall platforms
in the center of their cities. Temples grew into elaborate complexes of buildings with storage space for
grain and other products and housing for animals.
(Much later, by about 2100 b.c.e., some of the major
temple complexes were embellished with a huge
stepped pyramid, called a ziggurat, with a shrine on
the top.) The Sumerians believed that humans had
been created to serve the gods, who lived in the
temples. The gods needed not only shelter but food,
drink, and clothing. Surrounding the temple and other
large buildings were the houses of ordinary citizens,
each constructed around a central courtyard. To support the needs of the gods, including the temple con-
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to 1200 b . c . e .
Civilization in Mesopotamia
13
Clay Letter Written in Cuneiform and Its
Envelope, ca. 1850b.c.e. In this letter
from a city in Anatolia, located on the
northern edge of the Fertile Crescent in
what is now Turkey, a Mesopotamian
merchant complains to his brother at home,
hundreds of miles away, that life is hard and
comments on the trade in silver, gold, tin,
and textiles. Correspondents often
enclosed letters in clay envelopes and
sealed them by rolling a cylinder seal across
the clay, leaving the impression of a scene,
just as you might use a stamped wax seal
today. Here the very faint impression of the
sender’s seal at the bottom shows a person,
probably the owner of the seal, being led in
a procession toward a king or god. (© The
Trustees of the British Museum/Art Resource, NY)
structions, and to support the religious leaders, temples
owned large estates, including fields and orchards.
officials employed individuals to work the
Temple
temple’s land, paying the workers in rations of grain,
oil, and wool.
By 2500 b.c.e. there were more than a dozen c ity-
states in Sumer. Each city developed religious, political,
and military institutions, and judging by the fact that
people began to construct walls around the cities and
other fortifications, warfare between cities was quite
common. Presumably their battles were sometimes
sparked by disputes over water, as irrigation in one area
reduced or altered the flow of rivers in other areas.
The Invention of Writing and
the First Schools
The origins of writing probably go back to the ninth
millennium b.c.e., when Near Eastern peoples used
clay tokens as counters for record keeping. By the
fourth millennium, people had realized that impressing the tokens on clay, or drawing pictures of the tokens on clay, was simpler than making tokens. This
breakthrough in turn suggested that more information
could be conveyed by adding pictures of still other objects. The result was a complex system of pictographs
in which each sign pictured an object, such as “star”
(line A of Figure 1.1). These pictographs were the forerunners of the Sumerian form of writing known as
cuneiform (kyou-NEE-uh-form), from the Latin term
for “wedge shaped,” used to describe the indentations
made by a sharpened stylus in clay.
Scribes could combine pictographs to express
meaning. For example, the sign for woman (line B)
and the sign for mountain (line C) were combined,
literally, into “mountain woman” (line D), which
meant “slave woman” because the Sumerians regularly
obtained their slave women from wars against enemies
01_MCK_03101_ch01_0001_0033.indd 13
in the mountains. Pictographs were initially limited in
that they could not represent abstract ideas, but the
signs that represented
development of ideograms —
ideas — made writing more versatile. Thus the sign for
star could also be used to indicate heaven, sky, or even
god. The real breakthrough came when scribes started
using signs to represent sounds. For instance, the symbol for “water” (two parallel wavy lines) could also be
used to indicate “in,” which sounded the same as the
spoken word for “water” in Sumerian.
The development of the Sumerian system of writing
was piecemeal, with scribes making changes and additions as they were needed. The system became so complicated that scribal schools were established, which by
2500 b.c.e. flourished throughout Sumer. Students at
the schools were all male, and most came from families
MEANING
A
Star
B
Woman
C
Mountain
D
Slave
woman
E
Water
In
PICTOGRAPH
IDEOGRAM
PHONETIC
SIGN
FIGURE 1.1 Sumerian Writing
MCK_03101_01_F01 Sumerian Writing
(Source: S. N. Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture and Character.
Black
Cyan
Magenta
Yellow of Chicago Press. All rights reserved.
Copyright
© 1963
by The University
First
Used Proof
by permission.)
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CHAPTER 1 | Origins
in the middle range of urban society. Each school had
a master, teachers, and monitors. Discipline was strict,
and students were caned for sloppy work and misbehavior. One graduate of a scribal school had few fond
memories of the joy of learning:
My headmaster read my tablet, said:
“There is something missing,” caned me.
…
The fellow in charge of silence said:
“Why did you talk without permission,”
caned me.
The fellow in charge of the assembly said:
“Why did you stand at ease without permission,”
caned me.2
Scribal schools were primarily intended to produce
individuals who could keep records of the property of
temple officials, kings, and nobles. Thus writing first
developed as a way to enhance the growing power of
elites, not to record speech, although it later came to
be used for that purpose, and the stories of gods, kings,
and heroes were also written down. Hundreds of thousands of hardened clay tablets have survived from ancient Mesopotamia, and from them historians have
learned about many aspects of life, including taxes and
wages. Sumerians wrote numbers as well as words on
clay tablets, and some surviving tablets show multiplication and division problems.
Mathematics was not just a theoretical matter to the
people living in Mesopotamia, because the building of
cities, palaces, temples, and canals demanded practical
knowledge of geometry and trigonometry.
Religion in Mesopotamia
To Sumerians, and to later peoples in Mesopotamia as
well, the world was controlled by gods and goddesses,
who represented cosmic forces such as the sun, moon,
water, and storms. Each city generally had a chief god
or goddess, or sometimes several, with a large temple
built in his or her honor. In Uruk, for example, one of
the central temples was dedicated to the goddess
Inanna, the goddess of love and sexuality, who was also
associated with the planet Venus. In one widely told
myth, Inanna descends to the underworld, setting off a
long struggle among her worshippers to find a replacement. Another deity is found to take her place, but
then Inanna returns, just as Venus sets and rises. The
king of the gods was Enlil, who was believed to rule
over the gods just as the king of a c ity-state ruled his
population. Almost as powerful were the gods of the
sun, of storms, and of freshwater.
The gods judged good and evil and would punish
humans who lied or cheated. Gods themselves suffered
for their actions, and sometimes for no reason at all,
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to 1200 b . c . e .
just as humans did. People believed that humans had
been created to serve the gods and generally anticipated being well treated by the gods if they served
them well. The best way to honor the gods was to make
the temple as grand and impressive as possible, because
the temple’s size demonstrated the strength of the
community and the power of its chief deity. Once it
was built, the temple itself, along with the shrine on
the top of the ziggurat, was often off-limits to ordinary
people, who did not worship there as a spiritual community. Instead the temple was staffed by priests and
priestesses who carried out rituals to honor the god or
goddess. Kings and other political leaders might also
visit the temple and carry out religious ceremonies
from time to time, particularly when they thought the
assistance of the gods was especially needed.
The peoples of Mesopotamia had many myths to
account for the creation of the universe. According to
one told by the Babylonians, in the beginning was the
primeval sea, known as the goddess Tiamat, who gave
birth to the gods. When Tiamat tried to destroy the
gods, Marduk, the chief god of the Babylonians,
proceeded to kill her and divide her body and thus created the sky and earth. These myths are the earliest
known attempts to answer the question, how did it
all begin?
Stories about the gods traveled with people when
they moved up and down the rivers, so that gods often
acquired new names and new characteristics over the
centuries. Myths and stories about them were not written down until long after they had first been told, and
often had many variations. Written texts were not an
important part of Sumerian religious life, nor were
they central to the religious practices of most of the
other peoples in this region.
In addition to stories about gods, the Sumerians
also told stories about heroes and kings, many of which
were eventually reworked into the world’s first epic
poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh (GIL-guh-mesh), which
was later written down in Akkadian. An epic poem is a
narration of the achievements, the labors, and sometimes the failures of heroes that embodies peoples’
ideas about themselves. Historians can use epic poems
to learn about various aspects of a society, and to that
extent epics can be used as historical sources. The epic
recounts the wanderings of Gilgamesh — the semihistorical king of Uruk — and his search for eternal life,
and it grapples with enduring questions about life and
death, friendship, humankind and deity, and immortality. (See “Evaluating the Evidence 1.2: Gilgamesh’s
Quest for Immortality,” page 16.)
Sumerian Politics and Society
Exactly how kings emerged in Sumerian society is not
clear. Scholars have suggested that during times of
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to 1200 b . c . e .
emergencies, a chief priest or perhaps a
military leader assumed what was supposed to be temporary authority over a
city. He established an army, trained it,
and led it into battle. Temporary power
gradually became permanent kingship,
and sometime before 2450 b.c.e. kings in
some Sumerian c ity-states began transferring their kingship to their sons, establishing patriarchal hereditary dynasties in
which power was handed down through
the male line. This is the point at which
written records about kingship began to
appear. The symbol of royal status was the
palace, which came to rival the temple in
grandeur.
Military leaders were sometimes able
to conquer other cities, and in about
2350 b.c.e. Lugalzagesi, king of the city of Umma, conquered a number of other c ity-states and created a more
unified state. Eventually he conquered Uruk as well,
and declared in a long inscription that the god Enlil
had given him a realm that extended from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Like many later rulers in all
parts of the world, Lugalzagesi claimed territory far beyond what he actually held.
Kings made alliances with other powerful individuals, often through marriage. Royal family members
were depended upon for many aspects of government.
Kings worked closely with religious authorities and relied on ideas about the kings’ connections with the
gods, as well as the kings’ military might, for their
power. Royal children, both sons and daughters, were
sometimes priests and priestesses in major temples.
Acting together, priests, kings, and officials in Sumerian cities used force, persuasion, and taxation to
maintain order, keep the irrigation systems working,
and keep food and other goods flowing.
The king and his officials held extensive tracts of
land, as did the temple; these lands were worked by the
palace’s or the temple’s clients, free men and women
who were dependent on the palace or the temple. They
received crops and other goods in return for their labor. Although this arrangement assured the clients of a
livelihood, the land they worked remained the possession of the palace or the temple. Some individuals and
families owned land outright and paid their taxes in
the form of agricultural products or items they made.
At the bottom rung of society were slaves. Slavery predates written records, so like many other aspects of social hierarchies, we are not sure exactly how and when
people first began to own other people. Like animals,
slaves were a source of physical power for their owners,
providing them an opportunity to amass more wealth
and influence. Some Sumerian slaves were most likely
prisoners of war and criminals who had lost their free-
01_MCK_03101_ch01_0001_0033.indd 15
Empires in Mesopotamia
15
Mesopotamian Harpist
This small clay tablet,
carved between 2000 b.c.e.
and 1500b.c.e., shows a
seated woman playing a
harp. Her fashionable
dress and hat suggest that
she is playing for wealthy
people, perhaps at the royal
court. Images of musicians
are common in Mesopotamian art, indicating music
was important in Mesopotamian culture and social life.
(Musée du Louvre, Paris/Erich Lessing/Art
Resource, NY)
dom as punishment for their crimes; others perhaps
came into slavery to repay debts. Compared to many
later societies, slaves were not widely used in Sumer,
where most agricultural work was done by dependent
clients. Slaves in Sumer also engaged in trade and
made profits. They could borrow money, and many
slaves were able to buy their freedom.
Each of the social categories included both men and
women, but their experiences were not the same, for
Sumerian society made distinctions based on gender.
Most elite landowners were male, but women who
held positions as priestesses or as queens ran their own
estates, independently of their husbands and fathers.
Some women owned businesses and took care of their
own accounts. They could own property and distribute
it to their offspring. Sons and daughters inherited from
their parents, although a daughter received her inheritance in the form of a dowry, which technically remained hers but was managed by her husband or
husband’s family after marriage. The Sumerians established the basic social, economic, and intellectual patterns of Mesopotamia, and they influenced their
neighbors to the north and east.
Empires in Mesopotamia
FOCUS QUESTION How did the Akkadian and Old Babylonian
empires develop in Mesopotamia?
The wealth of Sumerian cities also attracted
non-
Sumerian conquerors from the north, beginning with
the Akkadians and then the Babylonians. Both of these
peoples created large states in the valley of the Tigris
and Euphrates. Hammurabi, one ruler of Babylon,
proclaimed an extensive law code. Merchants traveled
throughout the Fertile Crescent and beyond, carrying
products and facilitating cultural exchange.
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EVALUATING
THE
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EVIDENCE 1. 2
Gilgamesh’s Quest for Immortality
The human desire to escape the grip of death appears in
many cultures. The Epic of Gilgamesh is perhaps the earliest
recorded treatment of this topic. The oldest elements of the
epic go back to stories told in the third millennium b.c.e.
According to tradition, Gilgamesh was a king of the Sumerian city of Uruk. In the story, Gilgamesh is not fulfilling his
duties as the king very well and sets out with his friend
Enkidu to perform wondrous feats against fearsome agents
of the gods. Together they kill several supernatural beings,
and the gods decide that Enkidu must die. He foresees his
own death in a dream.
v
Listen again, my friend [Gilgamesh]! I had a dream in the
night.
The sky called out, the earth replied,
I was standing in between them.
There was a young man, whose face was obscured.
His face was like that of an Anzu-bird.
He had the paws of a lion, he had the claws of an eagle.
He seized me by my locks, using great force against
me. . . .
He seized me, drove me down to the dark house, dwelling
of Erkalla’s god [the underworld], . . .
On the road where travelling is one way only,
To the house where those who stay are deprived of
light. . . .
Enkidu sickens and dies. Gilgamesh is distraught and determined to become immortal. He decides to journey to
Ut-napishtim and his wife, the only humans who have
eternal life. Everyone he meets along the way asks him
about his appearance, and Gilgamesh always answers
with the same words:
v
How could my cheeks not be wasted, nor my face dejected,
Nor my heart wretched, nor my appearance worn out,
Nor grief in my innermost being,
Nor my face like that of a long-distance traveller,
Nor my face weathered by wind and heat
Nor roaming open country clad only in a lionskin?
My friend was the hunted mule, wild ass of the mountain,
leopard of open country,
The Akkadians and
the Babylonians
16
In 2331 b.c.e. Sargon, the king of a city to the north
of Sumer, conquered a number of Sumerian cities
with what was probably the world’s first permanent
army and created a large state. The symbol of his triumph was a new capital, the city of Akkad (AH-
kahd). Sargon also expanded the Akkadian empire
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Enkidu my friend was the hunted mule, wild ass of the
mountain, leopard of open country.
We who met, and scaled the mountain,
Seized the Bull of Heaven [the sacred bull of the goddess
Ishtar] and slew it,
Demolished Humbaba [the ogre who guards the forest of
the gods] who dwelt in the Pine Forest,
Killed lions in the passes of the mountains,
My friend whom I love so much, who experienced every
hardship with me,
Enkidu my friend whom I love so much, who experienced
every hardship with me —
The fate of mortals conquered him!
For six days and seven nights I wept over him: I did not
allow him to be buried
Until a worm fell out of his nose.
I was frightened and
I am afraid of Death, and so I roam open country.
The words of my friend weigh upon me. . . .
I roam open country on long journeys.
How, O how could I stay silent, how, O how could I keep
quiet?
My friend whom I love has turned to clay: Enkidu my
friend whom I love has turned to clay.
Am I not like him? Must I lie down too,
Never to rise, ever again?
Gilgamesh finally eaches Ut-napishtim, to whom he tells his
story, and who says to him:
v
Why do you prolong grief, Gilgamesh?
Since [the gods made you] from the flesh of gods and
mankind,
Since [the gods] made you like your father and mother
[Death is inevitable] . . . ,
Nobody sees the face of Death,
Nobody hears the voice of Death.
Savage Death just cuts mankind down.
Sometimes we build a house, sometimes we make a nest,
But then brothers divide it upon inheritance.
Sometimes there is hostility in [the land],
But then the river rises and brings flood water. . . .
westward to North Syria, which became the breadbasket of the empire. He encouraged trading networks that brought in goods from as far away as the
Indus River and what is now Turkey. Sargon spoke a
different language than did the Sumerians, one of the
many languages that scholars identify as belonging to
the Semitic language family, which includes modern-
d
ay Hebrew and Arabic. However, Akkadians adapted
cuneiform writing to their own language, and
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Empires in Mesopotamia
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The Anunnaki, the great gods, assembled;
Mammitum [the great mother goddess] who creates
fate decreed destinies with them.
They appointed death and life.
They did not mark out days for death,
But they did so for life.
Gilgamesh asks Ut-napishtim how he and his wife
can be immortal like the gods, if death is inevitable.
Ut-napishtim tells him the story of how they survived a
fl od sent by the gods and the chief god Enlil blessed
them with eternal life. Gilgamesh wants this as well,
but fails two opportunities Ut-napishtim provides for
him to achieve it. At the end of the epic, he simply
returns to Uruk with the boatman Ur-shanabi, to
whom he points out the glories of the city:
v
Go up on to the wall of Uruk, Ur-shanabi, and walk
around,
Inspect the foundation platform and scrutinize the
brickwork! Testify that its bricks are baked bricks,
And that the Seven Counsellors must have laid its
foundations!
One square mile is city, one square mile is orchards,
one square mile is claypits, as well as the open
ground of Ishtar’s temple.
Three square miles and the open ground comprise
Uruk.
EVALUATE THE EVIDENCE
1. What does the Epic of Gilgamesh reveal about
attitudes toward friendship in ancient Mesopotamia?
2. What does the epic tell us about views of the
nature of human life? Where do human beings fit
into the cosmic world?
3. Although at the end of his quest, Gilgamesh did
not achieve personal immortality, how can his
final ords to Ur-shanabi be seen as a tribute to
long-lasting human endeavors?
Source: Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and
Others, trans. Stephanie Dalley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989),
pp. 88–89, 103–104, 107, 108–109, 120.
sed
U by permission of Oxford
University Press.
kkadian became the diplomatic language used over
A
a wide area.
Sargon tore down the defensive walls of Sumerian
cities and appointed his own sons as their rulers to help
him cement his power. He also appointed his daughter, Enheduana (2285–2250 b.c.e.), as high priestess
in the city of Ur. Here she wrote a number of hymns,
especially those in praise of the goddess Inanna, becoming the world’s first author to put her name to a
01_MCK_03101_ch01_0001_0033.indd 17
Victory Stele of Naram-Sin, King of Akkad On this victory
stele carved from sandstone about 2320b.c.e., King Naram-Sin,
Sargon’s grandson, climbs a mountain above his soldiers and
defeated enemies. Naram-Sin, under whose rule Akkad
reached its largest size, is shown here as a god-king in a
horned helmet, twice the size of the other men. (Musée du Louvre,
Paris, France/De Agostini Picture Library/Gianni Dagli Orti/Bridgeman Images)
literary composition. (See “Thinking Like a Historian:
Addressing the Gods,” page 18.) For hundreds of years
Enheduana’s works were copied on clay tablets, which
have been found in several cities in the area, indicating
that people may have recited or read them.
Sargon’s dynasty appears to have ruled Mesopotamia for about 150 years, during which time the Tigris
and Euphrates Valleys attracted immigrants from
many places. Then his empire collapsed, in part because of a period of extended drought, and the various
city-states became independent again.
One significant city-state that arose in the wake of
the Akkadian empire was settled by the Amorites
(AM-uh-rites), who migrated in from the west, probably starting during the time of Sargon’s empire. The
Amorites were initially nomadic pastoralists, not agriculturalists, but they began to raise crops when they
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Addressing
the Gods
Hymns and incantations
to the gods are among
the earliest written texts
in Mesopotamia and
Egypt, and sculpture and
paintings also often show
people addressing the
gods. The sources here are
examples of such works.
What ideas about the
gods and the way humans
should address them are
shared in all these sources,
and how do ideas in
Egypt differ from those
in Mesopotamia?
1
Enheduana’s “Exaltation of Inanna.”
Enheduana (2285–2250 b.c.e.), the daughter
of Sargon of Akkad, was appointed by her
father as high priestess in the Sumerian city
of Ur, where she wrote a number of literary
and religious works that were frequently
recopied long after her death, including
this hymn to the goddess Inanna.
Your divinity shines in the pure heavens. . . .
Your torch lights up the corners of heaven, turning
darkness into light. The men and women form a
row for you and each one’s daily status hangs down
before you. Your numerous people pass before you,
as before Utu [the sun-god], for their inspection.
No one can lay a hand on your precious divine
powers; all your divine powers. . . . You exercise full
ladyship over heaven and earth; you hold everything in your hand. Mistress, you are magnificent,
no one can walk before you. You dwell with great
An [the god of the heavens] in the holy restingplace. Which god is like you in gathering together . . . in heaven and earth? You are magnificent,
your name is praised, you alone are magnificent!
I am En-hedu-ana, the high priestess of the
moon god . . . . Mercy, compassion, care, lenience
and homage are yours, and to cause flood storms,
to open hard ground and to turn darkness into
light. My lady, let me proclaim your magnificence
in all lands, and your glory! Let me praise your
ways and greatness! Who rivals you in divinity?
Who can compare with your divine rites? . . . An
and Enlil [the chief god of Sumer] have determined a great destiny for you throughout the entire universe. They have bestowed upon you
ladyship in the assembly chamber. Being fitted for
ladyship, you determine the destiny of noble ladies. Mistress, you are magnificent, you are great!
Inanna, you are magnificent, you are great! My
lady, your magnificence is resplendent. May your
heart be restored for my sake! Your great deeds are
unparallelled, your magnificence is praised! Young
woman, Inanna, your praise is sweet!
(British Museum, London, UK/Werner Forman Archive/Bridgeman Images)
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THINKING LIKE A HISTORIAN
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Babylonian cylinder seal showing a man
addressing the deities. Dating from the
Old Babylonian period (1800–1600 b.c.e.),
this seal shows a man (second from left)
addressing three deities, the one on the
right holding the rod and ring, symbols of
authority. The cuneiform inscription reads,
“Ibni-Amurru, son of Ilima-ahi, servant of the
god Amurru.”
3
Pyramid text of King Unas. This incantation, designed to assist the king’s ascent to
the heavens after his death, was inscribed
on a wall of the royal burial chambers in
the pyramid of the Egyptian king Unas
(r. 2375–2345) at Saqqara, a burial ground
near the Nile.
Re-Atum [the sun-god], this Unas comes
to you,
A spirit indestructible
Who lays claim to the place of the four pillars!
Your son comes to you, this Unas comes to you
May you cross the sky united in the dark,
ANALYZING THE EVIDENCE
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1. In Source 1 from Mesopotamia, what powers and qualities of the goddess Inanna does
Enheduana praise? In Source 2, what qualities do the deities in the cylinder seal exhibit?
2. In Sources 3–5 from Egypt, what powers and qualities does the sun-god exhibit?
3. What common features do you see across all the sources in the powers ascribed to the
gods, and the proper attitude of humans in addressing them?
4. Continuing to think about similarities, bear in mind that Enheduana was a member of the
ruling dynasty of Akkad, and Unas and Akhenaton were kings of Egypt. How did their social
position shape their relationship to the gods?
5. Thinking about differences, how is the relationship of Unas and Akhenaton to the sun-god
distinctive?
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May you rise in lightland, the place in which you
shine!
Osiris, Isis, go proclaim to Lower Egypt’s gods
And their spirits:
“This Unas comes, a spirit indestructible,
Like the morning star above Hapy [the god of the
flooding of the Nile],
Whom the water-spirits worship;
Whom he wishes to live will live,
Whom he wishes to die will die!”
…
Thoth [the god of law and science], go proclaim
to the gods of the west
And their spirits:
“This Unas comes, a spirit indestructible,
Decked above the neck as Anubis
Lord of the western height
He will count hearts, he will claim hearts,
Whom he wishes to live will live,
Whom he wishes to die will die!”
4
5
Relief depicting Akhenaton,
Nefertiti, and their daughter,
Meritaton, making an
offering to Aton. This carved
alabaster relief comes from the
royal palace at Tell el-Amarna.
(Egyptian National Museum, Cairo, Egypt/Bridgeman Images)
Hymn to Aton. When the pharaoh Akhenaton (r. 1351–1334 b.c.e.) promoted the worship of the
sun-god Aton instead of older Egyptian gods, new hymns were written for the pharaoh to sing in
honor of the god.
Thou appearest beautifully on the horizon of heaven
Thou living Aton, the beginning of life!
When thou art risen on the eastern horizon,
Thou hast filled every land with thy beauty.
Thou art gracious, great, glistening, and high over every land;
Thy rays encompass the lands to the limit of all that thou hast made
…
Thy rays suckle every meadow.
When thou risest, they live, they grow for thee.
Thou makest the seasons in order to rear all that thou hast made,
The winter to cool them,
And the heat that they may taste thee.
Thou hast made the distant sky in order to rise therein,
In order to see all that thou dost make.
While thou wert alone,
Rising in thy form as the living Aton,
Appearing, shining, withdrawing or approaching,
Thou madest millions of forms of thyself alone.
Cities, towns, fields, road, and river —
Every eye beholds thee over against them,
For thou art the Aton of the day over the earth . . .
Thou art in my heart,
And there is no other that knows thee
Save thy son Nefer-kheperu-Re Wa-en-Re [Akhenaton],
For thou hast made him well versed in thy plans and in thy
strength . . .
Since thou didst found the earth
And raise them up for thy son
Who came forth from thy body:
The king of Upper and lower Egypt, . . . Akhenaton . . . and the
Chief Wife of the King . . . Nefertiti, living and youthful forever
and ever.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Using the sources above, along with what you have learned in class and in this
chapter, write a short essay that compares ideas about the gods in Mesopotamia
and Egypt. How do these refle t the physical environment in which these two
cultures developed, and how do they refle t their social and political structures?
Sources: (1) J. A. Black et al., Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/), Oxford 1998–2006, http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/
etcsl.cgi?text=t.4.07.3#. Used by permission of Oxford University, ETCSL Project; (3) Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature: A Book of Readings, vol. 1,
The Old and Middle Kingdoms (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), p. 31. © 2006 by the Regents of the University of California. Published by the
University of California Press; (4) John A. Wilson, trans., in James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament –– Third Edition with
Supplement, pp. 370–371. Reproduced with permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, in the format Book via Copyright Clearance Center.
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CHAPTER 1 | Origins
settled throughout Mesopotamia. One group of
Amorites made their home in the city of Babylon along
the middle Euphrates, where that river runs close to
the Tigris. Positioned to dominate trade on both the
Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the city grew great because of its commercial importance and the sound
leadership of a dynasty of Amorite rulers. Like other
Amorite kingdoms of the time, Babylon was more
than a city-state. It included smaller kingdoms whose
rulers recognized the king of Babylon as their overlord.
Life Under Hammurabi
Hammurabi of Babylon (r. 1792–1750 b.c.e.) was initially a typical king of his era. As ruler of Babylon, he
fought some of his neighbors, created treaties with
others, taxed his people, expanded the city walls, and
built temples. After he had ruled for thirty years, Babylon was attacked, and one of Hammurabi’s allies did
not provide the assistance he expected. Hammurabi
defeated the attackers and also conquered his former
ally and several other kingdoms, thus uniting most of
Mesopotamia under his rule. The era from his reign to
around 1595 b.c.e. is called the Old Babylonian
period.
As had earlier rulers, Hammurabi linked his success
with the will of the gods. He connected himself with
the sun-god Shamash, the god of law and justice, and
encouraged the spread of myths that explained how
Marduk, the primary god of Babylon, had been elected
king of the gods by the other deities in Mesopotamia.
Marduk later became widely regarded as the chief god
to 1200 b . c . e .
of Mesopotamia, absorbing the qualities and powers of
other gods.
Hammurabi’s most memorable accomplishment
was the proclamation of an extensive law code, introduced about 1755 b.c.e. Hammurabi’s was not the
first law code in Mesopotamia; the earliest goes back to
about 2100 b.c.e. Like the codes of the earlier lawgivers, Hammurabi’s law code proclaimed that he issued
his laws on divine authority “to establish law and justice in the language of the land, thereby promoting the
welfare of the people.” Hammurabi’s code set a variety
of punishments for breaking the law, including fines
and physical punishment such as mutilation, whipping, and burning.
Hammurabi’s code provides a wealth of information about daily life in Mesopotamia, although, like all
law codes, it prescribes what the lawgivers hope will be
the situation rather than providing a description of real
life. We cannot know if its laws were enforced, but we
can use it to see what was significant to people in
Hammurabi’s society. Because of farming’s fundamental importance, the code dealt extensively with agriculture. Tenants faced severe penalties for neglecting the
land or not working it at all. Since irrigation was essential to grow crops, tenants had to keep the canals
and ditches in good repair. Anyone whose neglect of
the canals resulted in damaged crops had to bear all the
expense of the lost crops. Those tenants who could not
pay the costs were forced into slavery.
Hammurabi gave careful attention to marriage and
the family. As elsewhere in the Near East, marriage had
aspects of a business agreement. The groom or his father offered the prospective bride’s father a gift, and if
this was acceptable, the bride’s father provided his
daughter with a dowry. As in Sumer, after marriage the
dowry belonged to the woman (although the husband
normally administered it) and was a means of protecting her rights and status. No marriage was considered
legal without a contract, and although either party
could break off the marriage, the cost was a stiff penalty. Fathers often contracted marriages while their
children were still young, and once contracted, the
children were considered to be wed even if they did not
live together. Men were not allowed to take a second
wife unless the first wife could not bear children or had
a severe illness.
The penalty for adultery, defined as sex between a
married woman and a man not her husband, was
Law Code of Hammurabi Hammurabi ordered his code
to be inscribed on stone pillars and set up in public
throughout the Babylonian empire. At the top of the pillar,
Hammurabi (left) is depicted receiving the rod and ring of
authority from Shamash, the god of justice. (Musée du Louvre,
Paris, France/De Agostini Picture Library/Gianni Dagli Orti/Bridgeman Images)
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to 1200 b . c . e .
death. According to Hammurabi’s code, “If the wife of
a man has been caught while lying with another man,
they shall bind them and throw them into the water.”3
A husband had the power to spare his wife by obtaining a pardon for her from the king. He could, however,
accuse his wife of adultery even if he had not caught
her in the act. In such a case she could try to clear herself, and if she was found innocent, she could take her
dowry and leave her husband.
A father could not disinherit a son without just
cause, and the code ordered the courts to forgive a son
for his first offense. Men could adopt children into
their families and include them in their wills, which
artisans sometimes did to teach them the family trade,
or wealthy landowners sometimes did to pass along
land to able younger men, particularly if they had no
children of their own.
The Code of Hammurabi demanded that the punishment fit the crime, calling for “an eye for an eye,
and a tooth for a tooth,” at least among equals. However, a higher-ranking man who physically hurt a commoner or slave, perhaps by breaking his arm or putting
out his eye, could pay a fine to the victim instead of
having his arm broken or losing his own eye. The fine
for breaking an arm or otherwise hurting a commoner
was huge — as much as five years’ salary for a laborer —
and commoners might have preferred to receive this
rather than the less tangible recompense of seeing
their assailant injured. As long as criminal and victim
shared the same social status, however, the victim
could demand exact vengeance.
Hammurabi’s code began with legal procedure.
There were no public prosecutors or district attorneys,
so individuals brought their own complaints before the
court. Each side had to produce witnesses to support
its case. In cases of murder, the accuser had to prove
the defendant guilty; any accuser who failed to do so
was to be put to death. Another procedural regulation
declared that once a judge had rendered a verdict, he
could not change it. Anyone accused of witchcraft,
even if the charges were not proved, underwent an ordeal by water. The defendant was thrown into the Euphrates, which was considered the instrument of the
gods. A defendant who sank was guilty; a defendant
who survived was innocent.
Consumer protection is not a modern idea; it goes
back to Hammurabi’s day. Merchants had to guarantee
the quality of their goods and services. A boat builder
who did sloppy work had to repair the boat at his own
expense. House builders guaranteed their work with
their lives. If inhabitants died when a house collapsed,
the builder was put to death. A merchant who tried to
increase the interest rate on a loan forfeited the entire
■ Hammurabi’s law code A proclamation issued by
Babylonian king Hammurabi to establish laws regulating
many aspects of life.
01_MCK_03101_ch01_0001_0033.indd 21
Empires in Mesopotamia
21
amount. In these ways, Hammurabi’s laws tried to ensure that consumers got what they paid for and paid a
just price.
The practical impact of Hammurabi’s code is much
debated. There is disagreement about whether it recorded laws already established, promulgated new
laws, recorded previous judicial decisions, or simply
proclaimed what was just and proper. It is also unknown whether Hammurabi’s proclamation was legally binding on the courts. Nevertheless, Hammurabi’s
code gives historians a valuable view into the lives of
the Mesopotamians, and it influenced other law codes
of the Near East, including those later written down in
Hebrew Scripture.
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Cultural Exchange in the
Fertile Crescent
Law codes, preoccupied as they are with the problems
of society, provide a bleak view of things, but other
Mesopotamian documents give a happier glimpse of
life. Countless wills and testaments show that husbands habitually left their estates to their wives, who in
turn willed the property to their children. Financial
documents prove that many women engaged in business without hindrance.
Mesopotamians found their lives lightened by holidays and religious festivals. Traveling merchants
brought news from far away and swapped marvelous
tales. The Mesopotamians enjoyed a vibrant and creative culture that left its mark on the entire Fertile Crescent. They made significant and sophisticated advances
in mathematics using a numerical system based on
units of sixty, ten, and six. They also developed the concept of place value — that the value of a number depends on where it stands in relation to other numbers.
Mesopotamian writing and merchandise, along
with other aspects of the culture, spread far beyond the
Tigris and Euphrates Valleys. Overland trade connected Sumer, Akkad, and Babylon with the eastern
Mediterranean coast. Cities here were mercantile centers rich not only in manufactured goods but also in
agricultural produce, textiles, and metals. The cities
flourished under local rulers. People in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East used Akkadian cuneiform to
communicate in writing with their more distant neighbors. Cultural exchange remained a mixture of adoption and adaptation.
Southern and central Anatolia presented a similar
picture of extensive contact between cultures. Major
Anatolian cities with large local populations were also
home to colonies of traders from Mesopotamia. Thousands of cuneiform tablets testify to centuries of commercial and cultural exchanges with Mesopotamia,
and eventually with Egypt, which rose to power in the
Nile Valley.
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CHAPTER 1 | Origins
The Egyptians
FOCUS QUESTION How did the Egyptians create a prosperous
and long-lasting society?
At about the same time that Sumerian city-
states
expanded and fought with one another in the Tigris
and Euphrates Valleys, a more cohesive state under a
single ruler grew in the valley of the Nile River in
North Africa. This was Egypt, which for long stretches
of history was prosperous and secure behind desert
areas on both sides of the Nile Valley. At various times
groups migrated into Egypt seeking better lives or
invaded and conquered Egypt. Often these newcomers
adopted aspects of Egyptian religion, art, and politics,
and the Egyptians also carried their traditions with
them when they established an empire and engaged
in trade.
The Nile and the G
od-King
The Greek historian and traveler Herodotus (
heh-
RAHD-uh-tuhs) in the fifth century b.c.e. called
Egypt the “gift of the Nile.” No other single geographical factor had such a fundamental and profound impact on the shaping of Egyptian life, society, and
history as this river. The Nile flooded once a year for a
period of several months, bringing fertile soil and
moisture for farming, and agricultural villages developed along its banks by at least 6000 b.c.e. Although
the Egyptians worried at times that these floods would
be too high or too low, they also praised the Nile as a
creative and comforting force:
Hail to thee, O Nile, that issues from the earth
and comes to keep Egypt alive! . . .
He that waters the meadows which Re [Ra]
created,
He that makes to drink the desert . . .
He who makes barley and brings emmer [wheat]
into being . . .
He who brings grass into being for the cattle . . .
He who makes every beloved tree to grow . . .
O Nile, verdant art thou, who makest man and
cattle to live.4
The Egyptians based their calendar on the Nile, dividing the year into three four-month periods: akhet
(flooding), peret (growth), and shemu (harvest).
Herodotus, accustomed to the rigors of Greek agricul■ pharaoh The title given to the king of Egypt in the New Kingdom,
from a word that meant “great house.”
■ ma’at The Egyptian belief in a cosmic harmony that embraced truth,
justice, and moral integrity; it gave the kings the right and duty to
govern.
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to 1200 b . c . e .
ture, was amazed by the ease with which the Egyptians
seemed to raise crops. Egyptian texts, however, paint a
different picture, recognizing the unrelenting work entailed in farming and the diseases from which people
suffered. One of these was guinea worm disease, a parasitic illness caused by drinking contaminated water,
evidence of which has also been found in Egyptian
mummies. Treatment for guinea worm today is exactly
the same as that recommended in ancient Egyptian
medical texts: when the head of the worm emerges
from the large blister it causes, wrap the worm around
a stick and gradually pull it out.
Through the fertility of the Nile and their own hard
work, Egyptians produced an annual agricultural surplus, which in turn sustained a growing and prosperous population. The Nile also unified Egypt. The river
was the region’s principal highway, promoting communication and trade throughout the valley.
Egypt was fortunate in that it was nearly
self-
sufficient — it had most of the materials required to
address its basic needs. Besides having fertile soil,
Egypt possessed enormous quantities of stone, which
served as the raw material of architecture and sculpture, and abundant clay for pottery. The raw materials
that Egypt lacked were close at hand. The Egyptians
could obtain copper from Sinai (SIGH-nigh) and timber from Lebanon, and they traded with peoples farther away to obtain other materials that they needed.
The political power structures that developed in
Egypt came to be linked with the Nile. Somehow the
idea developed that a single individual, a king, was responsible for the rise and fall of the Nile. This belief
came about before the development of writing in
Egypt, so, as with the growth of priestly and royal
power in Sumer, the precise details of its origins have
been lost. The king came to be viewed as a descendant
of the gods, and thus as a god himself. (See “Thinking
Like a Historian: Addressing the Gods,” page 18.)
Political unification most likely proceeded slowly,
but stories told about early kings highlighted one who
had united Upper Egypt — the upstream valley in the
south — and Lower Egypt — the delta area of the Nile
that empties into the Mediterranean Sea — into a single
kingdom around 3100 b.c.e. In some sources he is
called Narmer and in other sources Menes, but his fame
as a unifier is the same, whatever his name, and he is
generally depicted in carvings and paintings wearing
the symbols of the two kingdoms. Historians later
divided Egyptian history into dynasties, or families of
kings. For modern historical purposes, however, it is
more useful to divide Egyptian history into periods
(see “Periods of Egyptian History,” at right). The
political unification of Egypt in the Archaic Period
(3100–2660 b.c.e.) ushered in the period known as the
Old Kingdom (2660–2180 b.c.e.), an era remarkable
for prosperity and artistic flowering.
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to 1200 b . c . e .
The Egyptians
23
Periods of Egyptian History
Dates
Period
Signifi ant Events
3100–2660 b.c.e.
Archaic
Unification of Egypt
2660–2180 b.c.e.
Old Kingdom
Construction of the pyramids
2180–2080 b.c.e.
First Intermediate
Political disunity
2080–1640 b.c.e.
Middle Kingdom
Recovery and political stability
1640–1570 b.c.e.
Second Intermediate
Hyksos migrations; struggles for
power
1570–1070 b.c.e.
New Kingdom
Creation of an Egyptian empire;
growth in wealth
1070–712 b.c.e.
Third Intermediate
Political fragmentation and conquest
by outsiders (see Chapter 2)
The focal point of religious and political life in the
Old Kingdom was the king, who commanded wealth,
resources, and people. The king’s surroundings had to
be worthy of a god, and only a magnificent palace was
suitable for his home; in fact, the word pharaoh,
which during the New Kingdom came to be used for
the king, originally meant “great house.” Just as the
kings occupied a great house in life, so they reposed in
great pyramids after death. Built during the Old Kingdom, these massive stone tombs contained all the
things needed by the king in his afterlife. The pyramid
also symbolized the king’s power and his connection
with the sun-god. After burial the entrance was blocked
and concealed to ensure the king’s undisturbed peace,
although grave robbers later actually found the tombs
fairly easy to plunder.
To ancient Egyptians, the king embodied the concept of ma’at, a cosmic harmony that embraced truth,
justice, and moral integrity. Ma’at gave the king the
right, authority, and duty to govern. To the people, the
king personified justice and order — harmony among
themselves, nature, and the divine.
Kings did not always live up to this ideal, of course.
The two parts of Egypt were difficult to hold together,
and several times in Egypt’s long history there were periods of disunity, civil war, and chaos. During the First
Intermediate Period (2180–2080 b.c.e.), rulers of various provinces asserted their independence from the
king, and Upper and Lower Egypt were ruled by rival
dynasties. There is evidence that the Nile’s floods were
unusually low during this period because of drought,
which contributed to instability just as it helped bring
down the Akkadian empire. Warrior-kings reunited
Egypt in the Middle Kingdom (2080–1640 b.c.e.)
and expanded Egyptian power southward into Nubia.
01_MCK_03101_ch01_0001_0033.indd 23
Pharaoh Khafre This statue from around 2570b.c.e. shows King
Khafre seated on his throne, with the wings of the falcon-god Horus
wrapped around his head, a visual depiction of the close link between
the Egyptian rulers and the gods. Khafre built the second-largest of the
great pyramids at Giza as his tomb. (Egyptian National Museum, Cairo, Egypt/De
Agostini Picture Library/Alfredo Dagli Orti/Bridgeman Images)
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CHAPTER 1 | Origins
Egyptian Religion
Like the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians were polytheistic, worshipping many gods of all types, some mightier than others. They developed complex ideas of their
gods that reflected the world around them, and these
views changed over the many centuries of Egyptian
history as gods took on new attributes and often
merged with one another. During the Old Kingdom,
Egyptians considered the sun-god Ra the creator of
life. He commanded the sky, ear…
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