1. Babylonia--Babylon had gained political and cultural ascendancy over the southern plain of Mesopotamia under the dynasty of Hammurabi in the eighteenth and seventeenth centuries BCE. After this, a people called the Kassites, from the Zagros Mountains to the east migrated into southern Mesopotamia. The Kassites retained names in their native language, but otherwise embraced Babylonian language and culture, and inter-married with the native population. During the 250 years of rule, the Kassites defended the core area and traded for raw materials, but did not pursue territorial conquest.
2. Assyria
a. "Old Assyrian" kingdom--as early as 2000BCE, the city of Ashur on the northern Tigris River anchored a busy trade route stretching north to the Anatolian Plateau, in what is now central Turkey. Assyrian merchant families settled outside the walls of the Anatolian cities to trade textiles and tin for silver.
b. "Middle Kingdom"--engaged in campaigns of conquest and expansion of its economic interest.
3. Hittites--emerged from what is now central Turkey, with their capital located in Hattusha (near present-day Ankara). The Hittites became perhaps the foremost power in the region because of two technical innovations:
a. Horse-drawn chariots, which gave them greater mobility than their opponents
b. Iron weapons--which made their weapons more deadly than their opponents. The methodology or iron manufacture was a closely held secret among the Hittite until the conquest of much of the area of the Middle East was complete.
4. Mesopotamian culture--came to dominate most of Western Asia: Akkadian was the language of diplomacy and communication between governments; cuneiform became the basis upon which most other written languages were constructed; and the list could continue on. Mediterranean myths, legends, and styles of art and architecture were widely imitated in the region.
B. New Kingdom Egypt, 1532-1070BCE
1. Decline of the Middle Kingdom--after flourishing for almost four hundred years, the Middle Kingdom declined during the seventeenth century BCE. Central authority began to breakdown, with local officials in the countryside becoming more independent, and new groups of people migrating into the Nile Delta region, less likely to follow edicts from Memphis and Thebes.
2. Reign of the Hyksos--although we are not exactly sure who the Hyksos were, or where they came from, they were able to overcome the Egyptians in their own country through their mastery of two technological innovations:
a. Horse-drawn chariot
b. Compound bow
3. Reunification--after decades of conflict, Kamose and his son Ahnose were finally able to overcome the Hyksos, remove them from power, and establish their own claim to the throne.
4. Expansionist--while the Old Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom had been largely content to maintain the core area of their respective kingdoms, the shock of a century of foreign rule spurred the kings of the New Kingdom, initially, to seek to expand into new territory--north into Syria-Palestine, and south into Nubia
a. Reign of Hatshepsut--the first woman to rule in Egypt. Opposition to her rule is indicated by the fact that her name was chiseled off buildings and memorials, and that statues commemorating her were pulled down.
5. Akhenaten--followed his father Amenhotep III to the throne. Akhenaten's significance it that he is the earliest known person to advocate the concept of monotheism--the belief in a single god. He closed all temples except those dedicated to Aten. Aten was the sun, and was unique in the Egyptian pantheon in that he had no anamorphic form--Aten simply existed. Questions exist as to how much Akhenaten did this because of his religious belief, and how much a factor his attempts to limit the power of the priestly class as a rival to his own.
a. During Akhenaten's reign, expansion of Egyptian territory halted, as he concentrated on building temples to the glory of Aten.
b. After Akhenaten's death, the other temples re-opened and the god Amon was once again proclaimed the chief god.
c. Akhenaten did not produce a male heir, and was instead succeeded by the nine-year-old Tutankhamen:
Tutankhamen is famous today not only as the butt of an elaborate Steve Martin joke, but also because his grave was one of the few not broken into by grave robbers in the ensuing centuries, and remained intact until its discovery in the 1920s
6. Ramessides Dynasty--came to power after the brief reign of Tutankhamen; the greates of the Ramessides rulers was Ramesses II. Ramesses embarked on a program of both monument building and territorial conquest.
a. Ramesses II fought the Hitties to a draw at Kadesh; the subsequent peace negotiation proved quite favorable to Egypt and Ramesses II's interests.
C. The Aegean World, 2000-1100BCE
1. Minoan Crete--by 2000BCE, the island of Crete was home to the first European civilization to have a complex political and social structure, as well as advanced technologies like those found in western Asia
a. Palaces--there were three minor palaces beside the main palace located in Cnossus. All lacked fortifications, however, leading one to assume that Crete was unified politically.
2. Mycenaean Greece--the legend of King Minos ties the emergence of Mycenaean culture to that on Crete--and the fact that that culture was at one time subservient to the parent culture, but eventually superseded it.
a. The importance of trade--the modern conception of trade obscures its aggressive beginning. People did not simply put goods in a ship, sail off to foreign lands, lay their goods out on the beach, and wait for customers to show up. Trade often grew out of its predecessor--tribute. Tribute was the result of victory on a field of battle
A. Geography--since the first century BCE, Nubia has been denoted as a 1,000 mile stretch of the Upper Nile, from Aswan in the north (just below the First Cataract) to Khartoum in the south.
1. Mineral wealth--Nubia was much richer than Egypt in mineral deposits, and local craftsmen soon were able to utilize these deposits to craft a variety of items that became highly sought after in Egypt.
2. Trade--lying between Egypt and sub-Saharan Africa (the only continuously inhabited stretch of land in those latitudes, since the Sahara is largely uninhabitable), Nubian traders acted as middlemen for sellers from sub-Saharan Africa and buyers in Egypt. The desire on the part of Egyptian buyers of such exotic trade items as ebony, ivory, and Pygmy slaves (among other goods) eventually led them to act to cut out the middlemen.
3. Development of Agriculture--from about 5000 BCE, bands of people in northern Nubia had made the transition from semi-nomadic hunting and gathering to a more settled existence based upon domesticated cattle and raising grain. People there settled into agricultural villages along the Nile.
B. Early Nubian Cultures and Egyptian Domination
1. Old Kingdom Egyptian trade missions--Nubia entered the historical record around 2300 BCE. At that time the southern frontier of Egypt was at Aswan, just north of the First Cataract. Trade missions from the Old Kingdom regularly visited to obtain ebony, ivory, slaves, and exotic animals from tropical Africa.
2. Middle Kingdom Egypt--Egyptian officials during the Middle Kingdom era took a more aggressive stance toward Nubia, and built a string of mud-brick forts south from Aswan to the Second Cataract in an attempt to regulate trade and to protect southern Egypt from Nubians and nomadic raiders. The relationship remained largely peaceful, however, and the garrisoned Egyptians had little contact with the local residents.
3. Kush--the Egyptian name for the Nubian kingdom that emerged further south of the Second Cataract, between the Third and Fourth Cataracts, where the Nile makes a broad, sweeping S-curve that forms the Dongola Reach.
a. Kings of Kush built fortification walls and monumental structures at Kerma, one of the earliest urbanized centers in tropical Africa.
b. The kings of Kush also sacrificed hundreds of servants and wives to accompany them on their journey upon their death.
4. New Kingdom Era (ca. 1532-1070 BCE)--Egyptians penetrated more deeply into Nubia during the early years of the New Kingdom, crushing Nubian forces in Kush and extending the southern frontier of Egypt to the Fourth Cataract.
a. Egyptian overseer governed from Napata, near the Gebel Barkal mountain, where a local god was thought to reside, and which contained copious amounts of gold. Locals worked in the mines under extremely harsh conditions, and were not very long-lived because of it.
b. During the 500 years of Egyptian control, Egyptian culture came to predominate. Children from noble families were held hostage in Memphis, where they learned all things Egyptian.
C. Kingdom of Meroë 800BCE-350CE
a. Fall of the New Kingdom--after 1200BCE, turmoil in Egypt led to it losing control in Nubia; almost 400 years after that, a new Nubian kingdom emerged. Initially, the first capital was located at the old Egyptian Nubian capital, Napata. During the heyday of the new kingdom, however, the capital was located further south at Meroë, near the Sixth Cataract.
b. Nubian rule of Egypt--between 712 and 660BCE, Nubian kings in fact ruled Egypt, until a fateful decision to assist local nobles in Palestine to rebel against their Assyrian rulers. In response, the Assyrians attacked Egypt and removed the Nubians from power.
A. Indus Valley--is a plain of more than 1,000,000 acres, stretching from mountains in western Pakistan east the the Thar Desert in the Sindh region, and south to the Indian Ocean.
1. River flooding--like in the Nile Valle, agriculture (and therefore civilization) was dependent upon people learning to work with the biennial flooding of the Indus River.
a. Mountain runoff--tributaries to the Indus begin in the two mountain ranges that form the northern border of its watershed--the Pumir Mountains (which form Pakistan's present border with Afghanistan), and the Himalaya Mountains. Water from the snow melt in March and April usually floods the Indus, and provides water (and silt) for agriculture.
b. Summer monsoon--as has been in the news in the last month, the Indus Valley receives its only substantial rainfall in August, with monsoon season. The daily rainfall causes the Indus to flood once again during the month--and creates the opportunity for farmers to have a second growing season.
c. The two periods of abundant water allowed this generally arid and hot region to grow two crops a year--and therefore create a greater agricultural surplus.
2. The Rise of Agriculture in the Indus Valley--lying roughly along the same latitudinal lines as Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley, people in the Indus Valley were able to utilize the same crops and animals that were domesticated there, and with the trade network that quickly developed--in part do to the rapid development of coastal trade in the region--getting these crops proved to be quite easy.
B. Rise of the Indus Civilization--the development of agriculture led to the rise of urban settlement, her in the Indus Valley as elsewhere. Two large cities seem to have been dominant forces in the Valley: Harappa in the northern region, and Mohenjo Daro in the central region.
1. Harappa--located in the northern region of the Indus Valley, in the Punjab State of present-day Pakistan. Harappa was a walled city (the wall was made of kiln-fired mud brick, and therefore resistant to floods) home to somewhere between 35,000 and 50,000 people at its height of influence. Streets were laid out in a rectangular grid pattern (similar to our cities today). Harappa's main function is thought to be that of a trade center, exchanging finished trade goods for metal ores and other raw materials.
2. Mohenjo-Daro (or Mohenjodaro)--was even larger than Harrappa, and at its height of influence was home to well in excess of 50,000 people. Both cities had an extensive system of wells (both public and private), large public baths, a system to carry away human waste that was separate from water used for drinking (something European cities did not do until the 19th century) and was covered (something US cities did not do until close to the 20th century).
3. Indus Valley--access to metal ore spurred the development of metallurgy, and goods made in the Indus Valley became readily available as for away as Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley. People in the Indus Valley developed an extensive irrigation system to help regulate the flooding of the Indus River. They also developed a writing system so complex and sophisticated that scholars today have yet to decipher it completely.
C. Fall of Indus Valley Civilizations--around 1900 BCE, all of this falls apart. Scholars are not sure of the causes as of yet, although it probably occurred because of some kind of catastrophic phenomenon; a severe earthquake, drastic drought, climate change--or a combination of those elements. Urban settlements in the valley were abandoned, and conditions were ripe for a new group of people to move into the area and to begin to compel the natives to abandon their previous practices.
II. Civilization in China, 2000-221 BCE
A. Geology--China is surrounded by formidable natural barriers: the Himalayas to the southwest; the Tian Mountains and the Takla Maken Desert to the west; the Gobi Desert to the northwest; the Manchurian steppe to the north; and the Pacific Ocean on the east.
B. Age of the Warring States
1. Late Neolithic period
1. 2000 BCE--Rise of cities and “states”
2. 1700 BCE--China enters the Bronze Age
3. Shang Dynasty--in Chinese tradition, the earliest kings were ideal and benevolent leaders of a tranquil Golden Age--interrupted by the Xi Dynasty. These early kings were have traditionally been portrayed as gods, was well--and the XI rulers are portrayed in this way, as well. Western scholars, therefore, argue that the Shang Dynasty is the first historical dynasty of China. Life in China under Shang rulers was dominated by an aristocracy that combined military, priestly, and administrative roles
a. Shang Civilization--little physical evidence has been uncovered about the Shang cities. With little stone to work with, the cities were enclosed with walls made of pounded earth, and the buildings within those walls were made of wood and mud daub--expedient for the time, but not material that leaves a large body of physical evidence thousands of year later
4. Zhou Dynasty (1100 BCE)--kings delegated much of their power to 100 or so local rulers in a quasi-feudalistic political system--about 2000 years before Europe itself developed such a system.
a. Warfare and technological advances--The need to remain abreast of technological advances of adversarial states in order to not get overtaken by them
b. Draining of marshes, spread of irrigation to make more land available for cultivation to ensure the continuation of food surplus
c. Development of intensive farming--deep plowing with oxen, the use of organic fertilizers (animal dung and human night soil), planting of leguminous crops to restore nitrogen to the soil, and the cultivation of wheat and soya beans
d. Development of consumer products in addition to tools of war--in addition to swords, spears, and knives, Chinese craftsmen also manufactured spades, hoes, sickles, plows, axes, and chisels for use by peasants (Recall that in Egypt, the used of these kinds of tools was restricted to workers working on pyramids, monuments, temples)
e. Advances in agriculture fed the growth of cities, which provided a market to feed the growth of agriculture (a dialectic process, rather than a causitive one)
g. Development of consumer products in addition to tools of war--in addition to swords, spears, and knives, Chinese craftsmen also manufactured spades, hoes, sickles, plows, axes, and chisels for use by peasants (Recall those materials were restricted to the use of building pyramids in Egypt).
C. Religion and Philosophy--the years in which these elite classes battled each other for dominance also saw the emergence of rival philosophical systems to justify the conflicting political systems
1. Confucianism--Confucius (or Kongzi-6th Century BCE) and his follower Mencius (or Mengzi-4th century BCE) advocated a respect for tradition and ritual, combined with personal honesty and self-control.
a) Motzer sect demonstrated that even philosophy used to buttress rule by the elites could be used to undermine that authority (if elites failed to meet their obligations to rest of society).
b) Taoism--preached that individual salvation lie in withdrawing from world in order to master it, rather than engaging in collective action to attempt to change the world. Vied with Buddhism as a religious practice in much of Asia.
D. Emergence of “legalism”--emphasized government administrators rationally and objectively enforcing government edicts, which were portrayed as being for the well-being of the entire society.
1. Nile River--the longest river in the world has had a huge role in shaping Egyptian society. Early civilization in Egypt was dependent upon learning to live with the annual flooding of the river. As this adaptation was made, the civilization that grew alongside the river became dependent upon these yearly floods, and civil upheavals and the rise and fall of political dynasties occurred when the floods were too severe, or did not occur.
a. Climatic change--the climatic change that helped to transform agriculture in Mesopotamia had a similar effect on the lands to the southwest of that region. The growing aridity of the former fertile grassland across northern Africa (known to us today as the Sahara Desert) found people moving eastward, toward a reliable source of life-giving water. This growing aridity had also moderated the flooding of this river, which previously had such wildly unpredictable flooding so as to make the Nile Valley largely uninhabitable for humans.
2. Upper Nile--refers to southern Egypt (the Nile flows south to north). The Upper Nile is more fertile than the Lower Nile, because it is a slightly higher elevation and the temperatures are slightly more moderate. The earth, or dirt, in the Upper Nile region is a rich black color, a result of alluvial deposits, and is prized for farming.
3. Lower Nile--the northern portion of Egypt. While the Upper Nile region is also referred to as the White Kingdom (probably a result of it being adjacent to the White Nile), the Lower Nile region was also called the Red Kingdom, because of the predominant color of the earth there.
4. The Rhythm of Life Along the Nile--human habitation was completely dependent upon learning to use the Nile River to the advantage of humans.
a. The Nile Delta is the only part of the country of Egypt that receives any substantial amount of rainfall, which emphasizes the aridity of the rest of the country--and of the importance of the river to agriculture there.
b. Nile Flooding--agriculture adjacent to the Nile is only possible because of the annual flooding. The floods bring fresh soil--silt washed along by the river as it descends from the tropical highlands to the Mediterranean Sea--that has prevented the soil in Egypt from becoming too heavily salinated.
c. The annual rhythm of this cycle--and the disaster that ensures when the cycle is interrupted--helped to reinforce the belief by most Egyptians that the world should be kept in balance. When the world was not in a state of equilibrium, bad things like too much flooding, or no flooding, occurred.
B. The Divine Kingship
1. King Scorpion--the name of two kings, father and son, from Upper Egypt who an Egyptian named Manetho credits with being the first to unite the two kingdoms of Egypt, and two wear the two crowns. The kings Scorpion straddle the divide between myth and history, and besides the ceremonial mace, we have little to tell us about their rule.
2. King Menes--ruler of the White Kingdom, who united the two kingdoms under his rule, and is credited with being the first king of the first dynasty of Egypt. Ancient Egyptian history has been divided into three main eras--the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, and the New Kingdom--with the years intervening between labeled the "Intermediate Periods" to designate the political fragmentation and cultural decline that characterizes those era.
3. 1st Dynasty--8 kings ruled about 600 years, and created a centralized state, a royal court, collected taxes, and created an economy that was able to support a huge number of people who did not work to raise their own food for at least part of the year.
4. Burial rites--Egyptians viewed their kings--not known as pharaohs until the New Kingdom era--as a personification of their gods living on earth. When these kings died (or, in the Egyptian view, began their journey to rejoin the other gods in the afterlife), they needed a great deal of material and assistance to ensure a safe journey and that they had to proper acoutrements when they arrived.
a. Common Egyptians--simply laid on the sand at the edge of the desert facing west (the direction of the underworld), where the sun and lack of humidity (and the occasional vulture, undoubtedly), disposed of most of the body.
b. Egyptian nobles--buried in what we would recognize today as a cemetery, which was located near Saqqara, just west of Memphis, which served as the political center of Ancient Egypt.
c. Kingly monuments--early during the 1st Dynasty, kings were buried in rooms made of mud bricks that were partially underground, but this raised concerns about their permanence--and their legacy.
i. Brotherly rivalry--Egyptians believed that the Underworld was ruled by Osiris, who was murdered by his brother Set over Set's jealous reaction to Osiris being given the right to rule over the entire world. Set drowned Osiris in the Nile. Isis, Osiris's wife (and sister to both Osiris and Set) found him, and brought him back to life enough that he was able to impregnate her. Their offspring, Horus, became king of the world (or at least, that part of it that most concerned Egyptians), while Osiris was given a new kingdom, the Underworld. Egyptian kings claimed descent from Horus, and soon after used the example of Osiris and Isis, since gods should not be made to mate with mere mortals; this began quickly to shrink the gene pool, of course.
ii. When Egyptian kings were living, the were the embodiment of Horus; when they died, they became the embodiment of Osiris.
iii. As long as everything remained in a state of equilibrium, common Egyptians were willing to go along with this interpretation. When the Nile failed to flood sufficiently, or flooded to sufficiently, and famine resulted, the ability of the king to maintain divine order was immediately called into question.
C. The Pyramid Scheme
1. 3rd Dynasty--during the era of the Old Kingdom, burial rites for the kings became increasingly more elaborate and abstract; by the time of the 3rd Dynasty kings no longer had to authority to order the murder of hundreds of courtiers to accompany them on their journey across the River Styx.
a. Heb-sed festivals--by the time of the 3rd Dynasty, kings had to prove annually that they were physically capable of handling the rigors of their office by partaking in a series of contests--which sometimes proved they were not physically capable, and ended their time in office.
2. Permanent tombs--before the reign of Djoser, the tombs of kings were low, flat affairs, largely underground and made of mud brick.
a. Tombs of stone--Djoser's prime minister, a man named Imhotep, changed the way the tombs were constructed. Probably influence by the construction of Mesopotamian ziggurats, Imhotep directed the construction of the Step Pyramid, the earliest of these new permanent structures.
b. Inside the tomb, in a room called the serdab, a small figure of Djoser sat the represent the body of the king, and sat within the a structure tiers high.
c. Subsequent kings of the 3rd Dynasty died too quickly in their reigns to get their own tombs constructed, and the resulting power vacuum meant that the dynasty itself fell into disarray.
3. Snerfu--the first king of the 4th Dynasty, he actually finished the pyramid of his predecessor, the Meydum Pyramid, which was the first pyramid to contain the burial chamber within its structure, rather than being built on top. The pyramid collapsed, however, and was never used
a. Snerfu quickly then turned to constructing a suitable pyramid for himself. This pyramid initially had a 52 degree pitch, but when it became apparent that this would mean that the base wasn't wide enough, the pitch was changed to 43 degrees, giving the pyramid a hunched appearance. Although the pyramid was finished, it was never used.
b. The construction of a third pyramid, north of the Bent Pyramid, incorporated the lessons learned from these earlier failures, and the imaginatively named (by Egyptologists) North Pyramid, also known as the Red Pyramid, became the final resting place of Snerfu.
4. Khufu--learning the lessons learned by his father Snerfu, Khufu directed the construction of one of the most stupendous buildings in the history of mankind, the Great Pyramid of Giza
Conclusion--our fascination with the engineering feats of building the pyramids tends to hide their real historical significance--the resources dedicated to their construction. Herodotus (not always the most reliable source on these things) claimed that the people of Egypt suffered terribly during this time because of the resources--and labor--dedicated to these projects. It is not hard to imagine that this must have been the case. But it also reveals much about the hierarchical nature of Ancient Egyptian society, and the apparent willingness of many people to accommodate this desire for immortality.
The larger cities of Mesopotamia--Kish, Ur, Urak, Adab, Erider, Akkar, Nippur, and eventually Babylon--were all dominated politically by Sumerians (with the lone exception of Akkar), but were not a unified political entity known as Sumer, or even Mesopotamia (which is the Greek name for the region). The kings that ruled in these "city-states"--as we have come to call them--only ruled in their own cities and the hinterland that immediately surrounded the city. The residents in these cities might identify themselves as citizens of their neighborhood or their city, as well as part of a family group, but they had no larger group. Why did Mesopotamian societies develop in this way?
A. Earliest Mesopotamia--Mesopotamia was not a country (even though it is contained in much of present-day Iraq); our present day used of the word comes to us from the Greeks, who used it to designate that area to their east that "lie between two rivers."
1. Rise of the city-state--the region we refer to as Mesopotamia consisted of a series of "city-states"--independent cities not belonging to a large political entity, along with their adjacent "sphere of influence." For thousands of years from their emergence to their demise, these city-states were often at war with one another, as one king or another attempted to increase the size of their sphere of influence--or attempted to obtain a ready supply of some needed material that was becoming scarce.
2. Lack of a National Identity--early Mesopotamian people had no national identity; in fact, during the course of this study we will find few people have any sense of a truly "national" identity. This only really comes about after the invention of the printing press, and then only with the production of books and newspapers and magazines in a vernacular language. For most of the people living in this region during this time period, their main identity lie with their family, then their extended family (or clan), and then to their village or maybe the city they lived in
B. Farming and Civilization
1. Farming in Mesopotamia--climatic changes contributed to the development of farming. As the climatic changes continued to occur, they also necessitated changes in farming techniques, like the development of irrigation.
2. Urban settlements--started as small farming villages, with people sharing tools and work with neighbors that they were usually related to. As farming fostered a growing population, these villages often grew together. This especially became the case after climatic change necessitated the development of irrigation, since the construction of irrigation channels and their upkeep took up a great deal of time.
a. Hierarchical ordering of society--with the advent of irrigation, societies also became more hierarchical in their structure, since the organization of labor for the construction of the irrigation system required greater amounts of planning.
3. Urban settlement and social stratification--urban settlements helped to generate the creation of different social classes, since it fostered the ability of some to exploit the labor of others.
a. Free land-owning class--consisted of royalty, high-ranking officials, warriors, priests, merchants, some artisans, and shopkeepers.
b. Dependent farmers and artisans--were tied by obligations to royal, temple, and private estates that restricted their personal freedom of movement in the society.
c. Slaves--a relatively small class of people in Mesopotamia, especially when compared to later Roman society.
C. Civilization and Religion
1. The Nature of Mesopotamian Religion--religion, in general, helps people make sense of the world around them, and assures them that even though life in this world seems random and chaotic, that there is an overarching plan that can be discerned, eventually.
2. Anthropomorphic gods--in Mesopotamia (as in most other parts of the world), early gods had a human appearance, as well as many human personality traits and desires--food and sex were among the most prominent, as a matter of fact.
3. Local focus--each of the Mesopotamian city-states had a particular deity that they viewed as the patron of their city, and whom they believed was just a little more powerful than the other gods.
a. Priest class--maintained the temples, interceded with the gods to whom the temple was dedicated. People made donations to particular temples seeking favors from a god, and the accumulation of this wealth allowed priests to gradually become wealthy, themselves. Priests passed on religious ritual and knowledge to their sons, which allowed these families to remain wealthy.
b. Building temples--priests argued that the only way to continue to received special favors from a particular god--or, at least, not to provoke their anger--was to build ever-more elaborate temples honoring them, which the priests enjoyed, as well.
D. Peoples of Mesopotamia
1. Sumerians--we are not sure where the Sumerians originated from, in part because we have not been able to figure out the origin of their language. Sumerians dominated early political life in Mesopotamia, however.
2. Semitic peoples--seem to have originated west and southwest of Mesopotamia. The probably moved into Mesopotamia when the began farming, and brought these farming techniques--and the language to explain it--with them.
3. Peaceful co-existence--the Sumerians and Semitic peoples lived together peacefully for thousands of years, with Semitic people often moving into positions of political influence in the Sumerian power structure.
E. The Struggle for Dominance--as resources continued to grow more scarce, we see more conflict between the city-states.
1. Emergence of the lugal--around 3000 BCE we see the emergence of the "big man" or lugal (what we would recognize as a king) in a number of Sumerian city-states. The most plausible theory for this happening is that the men chosen to lead armies during times of war were able to extend their authority in peacetime, and to assume by political, judicial, and religious functions greater claims to authority over society. In Mesopotamia, these kings claimed to be the earthly representatives of the gods, and saw that proper ritual practices were performed and the temples were properly maintained; gradually this influence spread to other areas of life to include the defense of the city, improving and maintaining irrigation channels, and guarding property rights.
2. Sargon--became the leader of the city-state of Akkad (and therefore leader of the Semitic people called the Akkadians), and was the first king in the region to unite many cities under one king and one capital--and to maintain this unity for about 120 years. Sargon was able to accomplish this through his military, utilizing new military techniques, and by bureaucratic innovations that he instituted.
a. Earlier, Sargon served as the cupbearer for the king of Kish, Ur-Zababa--a position much greater in importance than the modest title suggests. In the Sumerian power structure, the cupbearer was the king's righ-hand-man, and tasted the king's food in order to assure the king that he was not plotting against him.
b. Lugalzeggesi of Urak--the king of Urak during this ear (around 2300 BCE) was making a bid to consolidate the four most important Sumerian cities under his rule, and was then advancing upon Kish.
c. Ur-Zababa, growing suspicious of Sargon's loyalty, send him to the advancing Lugalzegessi, with a secret not, which bades Lugalzegessi to murder Sagon; Lugalzegessi ignores the request, and after letting Sargon go free, continued on to Kish.
d. While Lugalzegessi is conquering Kish, Sargon has gathered an army of his own, advanced on Urak, and quickly conquers the city.
e. When Lugalzegessi gets word of this development, he immediately turns to advance on his own city; Sargon is waiting for him, however, defeats his army, and takes Lugalzegessi captive. He puts a yoke around his neck, and marches him to the Sumerian holy city of Nippur, where he marched him through the gate of that city dedicated to the god Enil, whom Lugalzegessi claimed to have a special relationship with.
f. Sargon probably benefited from the increasing stratification of Sumerian society. The story of his birth emphasized his humble origins, and therefore his connection to the common Sumerian. The cities that Sargon quickly conquered seemed to put up little resistance to his army.
g. In the vast area that Sargon conquered, he placed his fellow Akkadians in positions of power, removed walls from those cities (which would make the reconquest easier, should conditions warrant that), banished local garrisons while placing troops loyal to him in those cities. These innovations meant that he and his four successors were able to control this vast region for 120 years.
F. Code of Hammurabi
1. Fall of Akkad--around 2150 BCE, Sargon's heirs lost control of Akkad to Elmite invaders from the north, through much of the area into chaos, since many kings attempted to step into the power vacuum that was left.
2. Rise of Hammurabi--assumed control of Babylon, a relatively new city near the now destroyed Akkad. Hammurabi, acutely aware of his relative weakness at this point in comparison to his neighbors, made diplomatic overtures to keep the peace, while invading lands his neighbors had little interest in, and making infrastructure improvements to his land so the population would be able to support a larger and better-equipped army.
3. Hammurabi's Code--after successfully conquering his neighbors and extending his kingdom, after years of waiting, Hammurabi next promulgated a code of laws and behaviors, which is credited with sparking the idea of rule of law, rather than the arbitrary decisions of human beings.
Early Sumerian Civilization--there was no country named Sumer; rather, it was a collection of substantial cities--city-states, in modern usage--that shared a common language and cultural traits.
A. Growing grain
1. Barley--Sumerians came to favor growing barley, because it was more resistant to the increased salinity of the soil that occurred because of the irrigation that had to be used in the increasingly arid region.
2. Malted barley--whether as an attempt to soften the tough barley kernel, or by accident, Sumerians discovered that wetting the barley kernels caused them to sprout, and activated the conversion of the starch within the kernel to begin to convert into sugar--the process of which they could stop by heating the kernels in an oven. This process brewers call malting.
3. Boiling the wort--boiling the malted barley allowed the Sumerians to extract much of the sugar from the barley that had been created in the malting process.
4. Fermentation--allowing the wort to cool in large open vessels permitted wild yeasts to settle in the concoction, consume a significant portion of the sugar, and convert that sugar into alcohol. Sumerians also discovered that by using the same vessels multiple times, they could obtain more predictable results (the yeast became cultivated).
5. Uses--beer (and its antecedent mead) became a staple in the diets of peoples throughout Eurasia. In the days before sanitation, it was a way of ensuring that what you were drinking was relatively free of harmful microbes--plus beer retains a portion of the nutritional value from the grain that it is made from. In addition, becoming inebriated consuming beer helped to the edge off a harsh existence.
B. Writing--earliest writing largely consisted of pictographs--pictures that represented things. As communication became more sophisticated and complex, cultures used these pictures to represent sounds, and many simplified their pictures to more symbolic representations of these sounds--what we today throughout much of the West call "the alphabet" and phonics. Cultures in the East, particularly in China, continued to use abstract pictographs for this purpose.
1. Accounting--Early Sumerians, after placing grain in a sack, would tie it closed, work a ball of clay around the knot, and then press a seal they had made into the clay. When the clay hardened, the design of the seal signified that they were the owners of the grain in the sealed sack. In addition, Sumerians also kept circular pieces of clay called "counters" to account for goods--like cattle. As some Sumerians became more wealthy, they would keep these counters sealed within another clay container, and it was necessary to account on the outside of the container (because clay is opaque and not easily reusable once it is opened. As trade became more complex, it became necessary to begin using more simplified symbols to designate what was being traded--plus, clay is a difficult medium to draw on, anyway. In addition, as communication became more complex, the symbols for things began to become symbols for sounds.
1. Egyptian hieroglyphics--seems to have developed independently, although they do seem to have borrowed some elements from their neighbors to the northeast. For Egyptians, however, writing had a higher power than merely counting possessions--writing had the power to bestow immortality (which is why all Egyptian kings had their names put on their tombs and other monuments). Because of the power of writing, the priest class in ancient Egypt kept the meaning of the hieroglyphs a secret among themselves, which is why they were a mystery to modern people until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. A simplified hieroglyph system came to be used in ancient Egypt for everyday communication, and is the basis for the English alphabet that we use in the United States today.
2. Chinese writing--rather that developing a phonic system like that in the West, China (and those countries in Asia influenced by Chinese culture) retained a greater pictograph element in their writing.
C. The Creation of the Epic
1. Gilgamesh--one of the earliest epic stories tells the story of a Sumerian king by the name of Gilgamesh. Although much of the story verges on mythology (and was created to ensure loyalty to Gilgamesh, and to ensure his legacy--much as leaders of countries today attempt to craft the story of their own time in power), it can be a valuable tool for historians, as well.
